Tag: coal industry
Kamala Harris

New Iowa Poll Is 'Canary In The Coal Mine' For Trump

Ann Selzer’s Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register came out Saturday, and it’s a political thermonuclear bomb:

Kamala Harris: 47
Donald Trump: 44

The previous poll had Trump up 47-43 in September, and leading President Joe Biden 50-32 in June.

And this matters far beyond saying “it’s just one poll.”

Selzer is one of the nation's most accurate pollsters, doing the vast majority of her work in her home state of Iowa.

Her track record is impeccable: (Actual results in parenthesis)

2022 Senate: R+12 (R+12)
2020 President: R+7 (R+8)
2020 Senate: R+4 (R+7)
2018 Governor: D+2 (R+3) — a rare miss
2016 President: R+7 (R+9)
2014 Senate: R+7 (R+8)
2012 President: D+5 (D+6)

I remember that 2016 poll like it was yesterday. At the time, Iowa was still considered a battleground state, with Hillary Clinton’s campaign heavily contesting it. When those results came back, we shrugged them off, as they were significantly out of line with other polling showing a close but steady Clinton lead. In hindsight, it was the canary in the coal mine.

And that’s what this is for Donald Trump now. It’s not just the trendlines. Trump won Iowa by eight points in 2020. Even a swing of a few points in a white, rural, midwestern state spells incredible danger for Republican chances across the entire midwest, and even into Nebraska, where independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn is trying to pull off a massive upset to unseat incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in that deep red state. Iowa also has two competitive House races, and if these numbers hold, Democrats could flip both of them on Tuesday.

The internals are downright brutal for Trump and his party.

“Independent voters, who had consistently supported Trump in the leadup to this election, now break for Harris. That’s driven by the strength of independent women, who back Harris by a 28-point margin, while independent men support Trump, but by a smaller margin,” the Register reported.

“Similarly, senior voters who are 65 and older favor Harris. But senior women support her by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 63 percent to 28 percent, while senior men favor her by just two percentage points, 47 percent to 45 percent.”

Harris is crushing it with white, older, rural women.

And who are the most reliable voters, not just in Iowa but the entire freakin’ country? Yeah, those white, older, rural women.

So the polling aggregators? Throw them out. Even Nate Silver admits that the data inputs for them—public polls—are garbage, with “herding” driving risk-averse pollsters into releasing the exact same numbers as their peers.

“Specifically, the odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin,” Silver wrote. Yet somehow he refuses to make the next leap—if the data is quite literally impossible, then how can his model still be of any insight given that it is based on that garbage data?

That goes for 538 and all the other aggregators. Throw them out. This is a different kind of election.

As I tweeted on Friday:

This Selzer poll proves my point, and it won’t be the only state in which the final results will be different than what the public polling and the aggregators claim.

I will say this: Harris is looking really good in the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And holy shit, the ground game is driving hard for that final victory.

The sunbelt states are tighter, and Trump has a real chance to win them. We don’t want that. We want to win everything and then some. Like Iowa. And the Texas and Florida Senate races.

So no, none of this is to say that Harris and Senate and House Democrats have it in the bag. We work hard for every last possible vote, everywhere.

But just like in 2016, Selzer has reset the expectations of the race.

Let’s freakin’ finish strong and bring it home.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Internet Slays Joe Manchin Over Dumb Comments That Fossil Fuels Can Produce Clean Energy

Internet Slays Joe Manchin Over Dumb Comments That Fossil Fuels Can Produce Clean Energy

United States Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) on Wednesday claimed that oil can be used to generate clean power as the nation transitions to renewables sources of energy.

"For us to be strong, to be the superpower of the world, we should develop here in North America a North American energy alliance with Canada and basically Mexico and the United States as one continent basically that could be the energy hub," Manchin told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe.

"We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can make sure that we produce the cleanest resources basically from fossil but also be able to segue into a cleaner environment with the technology and investments that it'll take to transition," Manchin continued.

"I think we can do both, but we have to maintain. You can't do just one and not the other and think we're gonna be fine. And that's what we're running into – the conundrum here. We should be ramping up production," Manchin added. "We should be out there doing everything we can to maintain our independence but be able to backfill everywhere we can. And if we don't get Europe up and loaded for next winter, for the summer when they've depleted all their reserves, there's gonna be a big problem coming."

Manchin – a wealthy coal magnate who drives a Maserati and lives on a yacht while representing one of the poorest states in the country – is a lone voice among the Democratic Senate caucus when it comes to retrofitting the American energy grid to tackle climate change. He killed President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan in part because of its provisions that called for investments in renewables. Manchin also refuses to consider amending the filibuster, which Republicans used to obstruct the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Twitter blasted him for touting the very industry that is padding his pockets and poisoning our biosphere.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

'He's A Threat To The Globe': Coal-Loving Joe Manchin Faces Planet-Wide Backlash

'He's A Threat To The Globe': Coal-Loving Joe Manchin Faces Planet-Wide Backlash

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is facing global backlash for his repeated efforts to block legislation that would help combat the climate crisis.

While it's no secret that the centrist lawmaker has become an outcast within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, he is now facing international criticism from climate advocacy groups around the world, according to The Guardian. Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, recently slammed the lawmaker describing him as "a threat to the globe."

“He’s a villain, he’s a threat to the globe,” said Huq. “If you talk to the average citizen in Dhaka, they will know who Joe Manchin is. The level of knowledge of American politics here is absolutely amazing, we know about the filibuster and the Senate and so on.

“What the Americans do or don’t do on climate will impact the world and it’s incredible that this one coal lobbyist is holding things up. It will cause very bad consequences for us in Bangladesh, unfortunately," Huq added.

Tina Stege, who works as a climate representative for the Marshall Islands, a Pacific area that faces the danger of being destroyed in the event of a climate disaster, is urging the United States to take "immediate action."

“I’ve been following the situation closely,” said Stege. “We have to halve emissions in this decade and can’t do it without strong, immediate action by the US.”

Some of the United States' closest allies have also expressed concern as Manchin continues to stall the passing of critical legislation. In Canada, Catherine McKenna, an environmental minister for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, explained how they have watched the political battle unfold from afar in hopes that lawmakers can strike a deal in the near future.

"Biden has done a fair bit in very challenging circumstances [but] in Canada we look on with bewilderment because it’s such a different political context. It’s very bizarre,” said McKenna, who served in Trudeau’s government when it introduced carbon pricing in 2019. “Politics is hard but I don’t think anyone has given up. We just really hope they are able to get a deal.”

Despite the calls for action, Manchin is still pushing back against proposed legislation to stave off the impacts of climate change.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Danziger Draws

Danziger Draws

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.

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