Tag: david ige
Former President Donald Trump

‘They’ve Lost Control Of The Mob’: Trump Booed For Boosting Vaccination

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

You know we've reached a low point as a country when even the loyal-to-a-deadly-and-illogical-fault supporters of former President Donald Trump boo him when he recommends vaccinations against COVID-19. "I believe totally in your freedoms, I do, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I recommend take the vaccines," the former president said at a rally on Saturday in Cullman, Alabama. "I did it. It's good." The crowd responded with boos.

"That's okay, that's alright," Trump pressed on. "But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn't work, you'll be the first to know. But it is working. You do have your freedoms, you have to maintain that." Trump is only the latest Republican to make the 180-degree turn from denying the virus to falling in line with efforts to see the general public vaccinated. "These shots need to get in everybody's arm as rapidly as possible, or we're going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don't yearn for, that we went through last year," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month. "Ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice."

JUST IN: "Take the vaccine" shouts Trumpwww.youtube.com

Fox pundits took similar stances. "Please take COVID seriously," Fox News host Sean Hannity told his viewers last month. I can't say it enough. Enough people have died. We don't need anymore death. Research like crazy." Hannity added: "Talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals you trust based on your unique medical history, your current medical condition, and you and your doctor make a very important decision for your own safety. Take it seriously. You also have a right to medical privacy. Doctor-patient confidentiality's also important, and it absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccination."

GOP Rep. Barry Moore went from calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a "tyrant" for enforcing a mask mandate to encouraging people to talk to their doctors about getting the vaccine. Catching COVID-19 apparently led to the difference in messaging for him. Moore posted on Facebook Friday:

"I'm sad to share that Heather and I have tested positive for COVID-19. To every extent possible, I will continue working virtually while recovering in quarantine.
While I believe every American has the freedom to make their own health-related decisions, I encourage talking with your doctor about the different vaccines and therapies available and making an informed decision about the prevention and treatment that is best for you. Now is the time to act—don't wait until you or someone you love is sick.
Please join me and Heather in praying for our country and world as we fight this horrible virus. We're thankful for the support and prayers on our behalf."

Not every Republican leader, however, is embracing reality, and the result has been a dangerous trickle-down effect of conspiracy theories and lies. Since states have started re-implementing mask mandates and urging vaccinations amid a spike in COVID-19 cases, entitled protesters have taken to voicing their concerns in the most inappropriate ways, some also turning to violence. "A parent in Northern California barged into his daughter's elementary school and punched a teacher in the face over mask rules," Associated Press reporters wrote. "At a school in Texas, a parent ripped a mask off a teacher's face during a 'Meet the Teacher' event."

Dozens of unmasked demonstrators lined the entrance of Hawaii's Lt. Gov. Josh Green's condo building, where he lives with his wife, their 14-year-old, and their 10-year-old. "They should protest me at my place of work, where I'm the lieutenant governor," Green told the AP. "But it's different than flashing a strobe light into a 90-year-old woman's apartment or a strobe light into a family's apartment, where they have two kids under age 4."

Hawaii. Gov. David Ige told KHON last month that the only thing more alarming where the pandemic is concerned than the six-day triple-digit spike in COIVD-19 cases was the lagging number of people getting vaccinated. "We administered about 15,000 vaccinations per week in the month of July," Ige told the news station. "So that's significantly lower than, for example, in May, it was at 72,000 per week. So based at that pace, it would probably go into September before we hit 70%."

Ige "took a lot of heat" for keeping a mask mandate in place even in May when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised that those who are fully vaccinated don't have to wear masks, KHON writer Lauren Day wrote. The CDC has since changed that guidance to advise that masks be worn indoors.

Green, an emergency room doctor, told the AP he wasn't home during the recent anti-masking and anti-vaccination protest. Instead, he was treating COVID-19 patients on the Big Island. "I will personally be taking care of these individuals in the hospital as their doctor when they get sick from refusing to wear masks and refusing to be vaccinated," he said.

The California father banned from his daughter's school in the Amador County Unified School District could face criminal charges after he became enraged when his daughter returned from school one day wearing a mask, the AP reported. Vaccinated teachers were permitted to take their masks off, Amador County Unified School District Superintendent Torie Gibson told the Associated Press. When the parent caught wind of the rule, he went to the principal's office, and the teacher later joined them. That's when the father got violent, the AP reported. "The teacher had some lacerations and bruising on his face and a knot on the back of his head," Gibson said.

He was treated and able to return to the classroom the next day, but the incident triggered a fearful and hesitant atmosphere at the school. "The teachers have definitely been on edge. They are fearful because the last thing they want is to have an issue with a parent," Gibson told the AP. "They definitely looked over their shoulder for quite a few days, but I think things are now a little bit more calm."

‘Self-Inflicted’ Wounds Led To Hawaii Governor’s Defeat, Analysts Say

‘Self-Inflicted’ Wounds Led To Hawaii Governor’s Defeat, Analysts Say

By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times

Somehow, 40 years into a political career that was crowned by his election as Hawaii’s governor, Neil Abercrombie ignored the most basic lesson of the trade: It’s a popularity contest.

After years of antagonizing not just partisan opponents but key elements of his own Democratic Party, retaliation came Saturday in the form of an epic thumping. Abercrombie lost his party’s primary by 35 points to state Sen. David Ige, who campaigned on his mastery of the state budget but implicitly promised a return to the more workman-like, less bombastic style that defined Hawaii’s political class before Abercrombie.

The depth of anger toward the incumbent was evident in two statistics: Abercrombie, 76, lost to a candidate he outspent by a 10-1 margin. And he lost to a candidate who, one poll showed, was unknown to almost 4 in 10 Hawaii Democrats as recently as February.

Ige’s victory highlighted a strange primary election for Hawaii, one that will not end for weeks: Two Democrats vying for the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat were separated by about 1,600 votes, and the outcome of the race may hinge on ballots yet to be cast in two precincts where voting was canceled because of Friday’s pounding by Tropical Storm Iselle.

State elections officials said that voters who had not cast ballots in the Big Island precincts will be mailed new ones, which must be returned within three weeks. But the timing of the start of that process was not clear Sunday, nor was it clear how the Senate candidates would marshal their forces to campaign in the damaged areas.

Some strategists said that both Abercrombie’s trouncing and Sen. Brian Schatz’s narrow lead over Rep. Colleen Hanabusa in a race he was expected to easily win suggested that Asian American voters in particular had rallied to Ige and Hanabusa to the detriment of the incumbents.

The races were fraught with ethnic divisions driven in part by the circumstances of Schatz’s appointment by Abercrombie to the Senate seat held by Daniel Inouye until his death. In a deathbed missive, the 50-year senator had made clear he wanted Hanabusa to be appointed to his seat, but Abercrombie sided instead with his lieutenant governor, Schatz.

Then, pouring acid into the wound, Abercrombie earlier this year suggested in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that someone other than Inouye had manufactured the imprimatur. (He later apologized to Inouye’s widow, Irene, but insisted the senator had given him free rein to pick his successor.)

The contretemps escalated what was already a perilous circumstance for the first-term governor and, before that, legislator and member of Congress. Jennifer Duffy, who studies governor’s races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that after Abercrombie’s comments on Inouye, “people kind of looked at him in a different light.”

“A lot of it is just self-inflicted,” she said.

Indeed, Abercrombie entered the race woefully weakened — one poll said almost half of Hawaiians had a negative view of him — which required him to both curry favor among his fellow Democrats and run an artful campaign. Those who watched his fall said he did neither.

Barely six months after his election, he angered the tourism industry — the state’s biggest source of income — by saying that it was “so stupid” for the state to pay to host the NFL Pro Bowl, a game that generated upwards of $30 million in visitor spending and state tax revenue.

He alienated the state’s teachers union by imposing a contract upon it during labor negotiations; the union became an early and important backer of Ige.

And then he cast aspersions on Inouye’s braintrust and by extension the state’s largest voting group, Asian Americans, and inflamed the elbowing between them and the more liberal white voting bloc that was Abercrombie and Schatz’s power base.

“This is a very small place and people have very long memories,” said Floyd Takeuchi, a writer and former political journalist.

Ben Tulchin, a California-based Democratic pollster who has worked extensively in Hawaii, said Abercrombie ran, “quite frankly, one of the worst campaigns imaginable for an incumbent in trouble.”

Time after time, he said, Abercrombie’s combative style pushed aside voters he needed, even if he eventually worked his way toward their views when it came to policy. A personality that was bearable when he was working in the statehouse or in far-off Washington became less so in the in-your-living-room role of governor.

Tulchin said Abercrombie negated his overwhelming financial advantage by refusing to define Ige before Ige had the money to define himself. In hewing to Hawaii’s traditional distaste for negative campaigning, he gave up one of the few options left to an unpopular politician.

“If you’re an incumbent who is in trouble and you have the resources, it can’t just be a referendum on you,” Tulchin said. “You have to tell others why the other guy is worse than you.”

In the end, being the anti-Abercrombie was more than enough for Ige. The question now is whether it will carry him to victory in November. The general election race will feature three major candidates: Ige, Republican Duke Aiona, and independent Mufi Hanneman.

While Ige easily outdistanced the others Saturday, he opens the campaign with more momentum than money. Three-way races are notoriously difficult to predict and the winner in the Democratic state may be dictated by where Hanneman gets his voters, analyst Duffy said.

“If he pulls votes from Ige, this is really a race,” she said.

The winner of the Democratic Senate primary is expected to have no such difficulty against Republican Cam Cavasso; the race is not expected to alter the balance of power in the Senate. The winner will hold the seat until 2016, the conclusion of Inouye’s original term.

“In the Senate race, it was all about the primary,” pollster Tulchin said.

Photo via WikiCommons

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