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New Polls: Trump Seems To Be Losing Ground In Electoral College Contest

New Polls: Trump Seems To Be Losing Ground In Electoral College Contest

Unless there is a dramatic sea change in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, frontrunner Donald Trump has a good chance of going up against President Joe Biden next year.

Republican and Democratic strategists have been paying close attention to what polls are saying about a hypothetical Biden/Trump rematch. A Morning Consult poll released on September 6 found Biden with a 3 percent lead over Trump, while Biden trailed Trump by 1 percent in a CNN poll that came out the following day.

Those are national polls, however. And the Biden and Trump campaigns are also studying polling data on key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan (all of which Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020).

In a report published on September 11, the New York Times' Nate Cohn stresses that Biden may be gaining an "Electoral College advantage."

"In the midterm elections last fall," Cohn explains, "Democrats fared about the same in the crucial battleground states as they did nationwide. And over the last year, state polls and a compilation of New York Times/Siena College surveys have shown Mr. Biden running as well or better in the battlegrounds as nationwide, with the results by state broadly mirroring the midterms."

Cohn adds, "The patterns in recent polling and election results are consistent with the trends in national surveys, which suggest that the demographic foundations of Mr. Trump's Electoral College advantage might be fading."

According to Cohn, three "basic pieces of evidence" indicate that Trump's "key advantage might be diminished today: the midterms, the Times/Siena polls and state polls."

"On average, Mr. Biden continues to match his 2020 performance in the states where Democrats fared better than average in the midterms, a group that includes every major battleground state," Cohn observes. "Instead, all of his weakness in Times/Siena national polling is concentrated in the states where Democrats fared worse than average last November. In the sample of 774 respondents in the battleground states, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump, 47-43, compared with a 46-44 lead among all registered voters nationwide."

Cohn continues, "On the other hand, Mr. Biden leads by 17 points, 50-33, in a sample of 781 respondents in California and New York — the two blue states that primarily cost Democrats the House last November — down from a 27-point margin for Mr. Biden in 2020."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Flip-Flops On 'Security Disaster' Ballot Drop Boxes

Trump Flip-Flops On 'Security Disaster' Ballot Drop Boxes

Donald Trump laid the groundwork early in the 2020 election for his possible defeat by attacking voting by mail and ballot drop boxes, insisting they should be illegal while making clear if he lost the White House those proven safe and effective means of voting would be to blame.

But now, with a flailing 2024 campaign, the failed ex-president who is under multiple investigations is demanding ballot drop boxes be deployed – but only in churches.

“Some states use ‘drop boxes’ for the collection of Universal Mail-In Ballots,” Trump tweeted in August of 2020. “So who is going to ‘collect’ the Ballots, and what might be done to them prior to tabulation? A Rigged Election? So bad for our Country. Only Absentee Ballots acceptable!”

That was just one of his many attacks on drop boxes.

“So now the Democrats are using Mail Drop Boxes, which are a voter security disaster,” Trump tweeted just days later. “Among other things, they make it possible for a person to vote multiple times. Also, who controls them, are they placed in Republican or Democrat areas? They are not Covid sanitized. A big fraud!”

The tweet was so false Twitter appended a warning label to it that reads: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity.”

Fast forward to now.

On his social media platform Trump reposted a “truth” (the word Truth Social uses instead of “tweet”) from far-right activist, conspiracy theorist, and provocateur Jack Posobiec. Posobiec was “one of the most prominent promoters of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, that held that the Washington D.C. pizzeria Comet Ping Pong was really a front for a child sex dungeon run by Hillary Clinton. He even went to the restaurant to find out ‘what’s really going on’ there,” according to The Daily Beast.

“In 2017, BuzzFeedreported text messages suggesting that Posobiec held a ‘Rape Melania’ sign during an anti-Trump protest in an apparent attempt to discredit the protesters as insidious and deranged.”

On Trump’s Truth Social platform, Posobiec wrote: “I don’t know who needs to hear this but Republicans should put ballot drop boxes in the back of churches in every state where it’s legal.”

Hours later Trump was all over the idea, demanding the Republican National Committee implement it.

“Best idea I’ve heard in a long time,” Trump wrote in all-caps, “put them all over the place. RNC, every Republican, get to work on this now!!!”

Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias’ Democracy Docket platform just last week reported that in 2020, “Trump first attacked mail-in voting itself, then tried to undermine the postal service’s ability to handle the volume of ballots. Soon after, he began to target drop boxes as well.”

As Trump learned, making it more difficult to vote is not a winning strategy, unless you’re highly unpopular and can block a significant number of your opponents’ votes while retaining your own, which he did not.

But the GOP sure tried.

“Republicans in many states soon followed Trump’s lead and began restricting the deployment of drop boxes even if the state had previously used them without controversy. [Ohio] Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) limited each county to a single drop box no matter how populous. Similarly, the Texas Supreme Court upheld Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) order limiting every county to a single ballot drop-off location — from Loving County (population of 64 people) to Harris County (population of 4.7 million people). In other states, Republicans moved to ban drop boxes entirely, and Missouri officials decided against deploying 80 boxes the state had already purchased,” Democrat Docket adds.

Meanwhile, Trump’s – or rather, Posobiec’s – strategy is clear: “Republicans should put ballot drop boxes in the back of churches,” because Trump thinks he still owns the Christian vote, despite attacking “disloyal” evangelical leaders just weeks ago.

But drop boxes are largely the purview of state election officials, and there would be a strong case to make against putting drop boxes only in churches. What about other houses of worship? And why just houses of worship – are they more secure than other areas?

Some might think it’s difficult to flip-flop on such a basic idea as drop boxes, especially if you went to court to void voters’ ballots that were deposited in them.

“In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign sued to invalidate the use of drop boxes in the primary election and prevent their use in the general election,” Democracy Docket adds. “Then after the election, Republicans pointed to drop boxes as a reason to question the results in a lawsuit filed in Michigan.”

Now that Trump has succeeded in. ensuring Ronna McDaniel remains head of the RNC, this will be a test of his strength, or lack thereof.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Greene Says Trump Promised 'Over And Over Again' To Pardon January 6 Rioters

Greene Says Trump Promised 'Over And Over Again' To Pardon January 6 Rioters

Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) revealed that former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump are both "just sick" because some January 6 defendants are still behind bars.

During an interview with right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon on Saturday, Greene explained that she had posted a thread of messages defending the former president on Twitter. Greene said that she was trying to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday when she saw Twitter users angry at Trump for failing to pardon the January 6 defendants.

"I thought, this is ridiculous; they're lying about him," the lawmaker recalled. "People are lying about him. The very idea that he could have pardoned all the January 6 defendants before he left the White House on January 20 is impossible because the high majority of those people weren't even arrested until after he left office!"

"And he didn't even know them!" she continued. "He had no idea who they are. He doesn't know who they are still. He had nothing to do with what they did on January 6, um, so it would have been impossible for him to magically know how to find these people and pardon them."

Greene said that she gave a report about the January 6 defendants to Trump and the former first lady.

"President Trump and Melania were both just sick over what they learned," she revealed. "And he said over and over that he will — he will pardon the January 6 defendants."

"This is real political persecution," Greene added. "And it shouldn't be happening in America and so the criticism on President Trump is ridiculous!"

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Former FBI Agents: Mar-a-Lago Raid Is ‘A National Security Issue’

Former FBI Agents: Mar-a-Lago Raid Is ‘A National Security Issue’

Two former FBI agents are weighing in on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s execution of a search warrant Monday at the Florida residence of Donald Trump, the former President, which he called a “raid.”

“This is a nat sec/CI issue,” tweeted Asha Rangappa Tuesday morning, meaning national security and counterintelligence. Rangappa is an attorney, former FBI special agent, senior lecturer at Yale, and CNN commentator.

She was pointing to a tweet by another former FBI special agent, James Harris.

Harris has an extensive bio, highlights of which include his role at FBI HQ Cyber Division as a Program Manager and then Unit Chief (Acting), FBI Senior Liaison Officer to DHS Cybersecurity and Communications, and FBI Assistant Section Chief of the Counterterrorism Internet Operations Section. Earlier in his FBI career he says he “built up the largest Federal Cybercrime Task Force in the US.”

Harris points to this section of a CNN article published Tuesday morning, written by seven CNN reporters:

“In early June, a handful of investigators made a rare visit to the property seeking more information about potentially classified material from Trump’s time in the White House that had been taken to Florida. The four investigators, including Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department, sat down with two of Trump’s attorneys, [Christina Bobb] and Evan Corcoran, according to a source present for the meeting.”

Harris on Twitter highlights this sentence: “The four investigators, including Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department…”

He tweets: “All you ‘outraged’ GOPers better cool your jets. You might be walking your rhetoric back really fast when you figure out what this seems to be. The devil is in the details.”

In January the National Archives was forced to transport from Mar-a-Lago 15 cartons of documents and other items that, according to the Presidential Records Act and the National Archives, should have been turned over to the Archives.

The FBI’s execution of the search warrant and reports that they left with a large quantity of documents suggests Trump might not have turned over everything taken from the White House.

Rangappa earlier Tuesday tweeted: “Ask yourself: What kind of info makes its way to the WH, and specifically to the president? —> HIGH LEVEL SECRETS. PDB stuff. Defense info. These aren’t low-level diplomatic cables or overclassified State Dept. correspondence. Just saying.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.