Democrats in the early presidential contest states of Iowa and Nevada will be able to cast their votes over the telephone instead of showing up at their states’ traditional neighborhood caucus meetings next February, according to plans unveiled by the state parties.
The tele-caucus systems, the result of a mandate from the Democratic National Committee, are aimed at opening the local-level political gatherings to more people, especially evening shift-workers and people with disabilities, whom critics of the caucuses have long said are blocked from the process.
The changes are expected to boost voter participation across the board, presenting a new opportunity for the Democratic Party’s 2020 candidates to drive up support in the crucial early voting states.
In the last presidential election cycle, my neighborhood’s caucus was held on a Saturday morning. If you didn’t attend, you didn’t get to weigh in with your choice for Democratic nominee.
If you had to work, too bad. If you had to take care of the kids’ weekend activities, too bad. No other options were available.
Plus, it was a bit of a mad house, and it took over two hours.
And, some campaign supporters can be pretty suppressive. The guy below was at my caucus representing Bernie Sanders in 2016.
He claimed he was there to make sure there weren’t ‘irregularities.’ Instead, he was something of a bully stepping in and interfereing a few times.
Gee, can you imagine why some folks don’t bother to be involved? I really wish we would just have a primary over several days like we do other elections.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (L) shuts down racist troll at campaign event
Speaking to voters in Iowa during an Independence Day event, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg clapped back at a man for making a racially-charged comment about black Americans.
Due to the recent police shooting of an African American man in his hometown, Mayor Pete has encountered questions and scrutiny on matters related to race on the campaign trail.
“Mayor Pete, there has been some controversy in South Bend between the police and the black community, and I have a solution for you, and I’d like you to make a comment on my proposal,” said a man who later identified himself as Dave Begley. “Just tell the black people of South Bend to stop committing crime and doing drugs.”
After a pause in the crowd, Begley was roundly booed as Buttigieg shook his head before responding, “Sir, I think racism is not going to help us get out of this drama.”
“No, no, just stop committing crimes,” insisted Begley. “It has nothing to do with race.”
p.s. when the subject of your suggestion is “black people,” the issue has intrinsically turned to race.
“The fact that a black person is four times as likely as a white person to be incarcerated as a white person for the exact same crime is evidence of systemic racism,” Buttigieg told Begley, as the crowd applauded. “It is evidence of systemic racism.”
“And, with all due respect sir, racism makes it harder for good police officers to do their job, too,” added the Democratic presidential contender. “It is a smear on law enforcement.”
As chants of “USA, USA” began, Mayor Pete stared the man down before continuing, “Sir, when black people and white people are treated the same by the criminal justice system, it will be easier for white people and black people to live in this country.”
“And it will be easier for law enforcement to do their job,” he added. “But racism has no place in American politics, or in American law enforcement.”
Politico reports that Begley spent the rest of the event looking at his phone.
Begley later told reporters he is not a member of the Carroll County Democratic Party, but he attended the event as a writer for a conservative blog, Power Line. According to the website, he is a practicing attorney in Omaha, Nebraska. He has posted several ‘reports’ following Democratic presidential candidates out on the campaign trail.
Saying he planned to file a “full report on this,” Begley insisted that he didn’t believe his comment was racist and said he “resented” Buttigieg’s response.
Begley told reporters after the question-and-answer session said he resented Buttigieg’s response. Begley said he didn’t think his comment was racist.
“I just urged him, in order to resolve the racial controversy in South Bend, to urge the blacks in South Bend to obey the law so they’re not going to have confrontations with the police,” said Begley. “And he dismissed me as a racist, which I resented, and he knows he’s wrong.”
New polling shows how the first Democratic presidential debates affected the early race.
The latest from Quinnipiac University polling shows former Vice President Joe Biden getting his lowest numbers to date dropping to 22 percent.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) jumped up to second place with 20 percent support.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren follows at 14 percent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is at 13 percent, and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg gets 4 percent. No other candidate garnered more than 3 percent.
The June 11 Quinnipiac University Poll showed Biden at 30 percent, Sanders at 19 percent, Warren with 15 percent, Buttigieg at 8 percent, and Harris with 7 percent.
And in Iowa, Elizabeth Warren has vaulted to the number one position in the new David Binder Research poll.
Elizabeth Warren leads the pack in the Iowa Caucus, according to a new poll out this morning from David Binder Research, currently earning the support of 20% of likely Democratic caucus-goers.
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are both within the margin of error with Warren for first place, but they trail just slightly at 18% for Harris and 17% for Biden.
Bernie Sanders has fallen to fourth place in the polling, sitting at 12%, while Pete Buttigieg has 10% in the survey.
Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker round out the the field with 4% and 2%, respectively, while everyone else is at 1% or below.
Click to enlarge pic (image via Twitter/SenGillibrand)
New York Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Kirsten Gillibrand dropped by local gay bar The Blazing Saddle in Des Moines, Iowa, to help celebrate the city’s Pride weekend.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) served drinks at a gay bar in Des Moines on Friday to kick off Pride Month celebrations in Iowa’s capital city this weekend. The 2020 hopeful was behind the bar at The Blazing Saddle, answering questions about her policies and taking drink orders.
She was also spotted at popular Des Moines-based retailer Raygun with Chasten Buttigieg, the spouse of campaign rival Pete Buttigieg, where she was shopping for rainbow pride gear.
Gillibrand’s stop in Iowa comes days after she released a sprawling LGBT rights agenda, which includes codifying marriage equality, banning “conversion therapy” and rescinding the Trump administration’s policy banning transgender people from serving in the military.
“The LGBTQ community is not a monolith with a finite set of needs, and equal rights and freedom from discrimination should be the bare minimum we accept,” she wrote in a Medium post outlining her plan.
“As president, I will do more than defend LGBTQ rights — I will stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBTQ community in the fight for equality,” she added. “We’re in this together, because LGBTQ rights are human rights.”
Kirsten Gillibrand enters Des Moines gay bar The Blazing Saddle to cheers and chants. It’s her second time here this year, this time for Pride Week pic.twitter.com/u9obVjxxi6
— Iowa Starting Line (@IAStartingLine) June 8, 2019
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand got a lesson in divadom at a Des Moines gay bar called Blazing Saddles, where she struck touched up her makeup to strike a pose with drag queens
“Vana and the amazing queens at the Blazing Saddle in Des Moines invited me for a visit tonight before their show. I felt underdressed, so I brought a dress I picked up yesterday—turns out it fit me, but it fit Vana even better! Thank you for having me, ladies!”
Vana and the amazing queens at the Blazing Saddle in Des Moines invited me for a visit tonight before their show. I felt underdressed, so I brought a dress I picked up yesterday—turns out it fit me, but it fit Vana even better! Thank you for having me, ladies! pic.twitter.com/l0ISbENSwg
Openly gay presidential hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, has jumped to a double-digit (11%) third-place ranking in a new Iowa poll.
Eleven percent of likely Democratic Iowa caucus goers surveyed by Emerson Polling said they would pick Buttigieg to be their 2020 presidential nominee.
Overall, Buttigieg placed third behind Former Vice President Joe Biden, at 25 percent, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), at 24 percent.
The only other candidate to receive double-digit support was Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who was the choice for 10 percent of respondents.
“The biggest surprise in this poll is Mayor Pete, last week we saw him inching up in our national poll, and now he’s in double digits in Iowa, America is going to be asking who is ‘Mayor Pete’?” Spencer Kimball, director of the Emerson Poll, said.
Buttigieg, who has formed an exploratory committee but has not officially declared, was polling at 0 percent in Emerson’s January survey of Iowa, which shows his recognition and support have grown significantly in the last few months.
It was just days after I launched The Randy Report that 19-year-old Zach Wahls of Iowa stood up in front of state lawmakers to introduce his two mothers as he argued for marriage equality in his state.
It was one of the most moving speeches I’d ever seen.
“I’m not really so different from any of your children. My family really isn’t so different from yours. After all, your family doesn’t derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, ‘You’re married—congratulations!’ No, the sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other, to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones; it comes from the love that binds us. That’s what makes a family.”
Speaking to legislators about the importance of marriage equality to his family, Zach was beyond poised and focused. Here’s the speech:
The Advocate called it “the most popular political video of 2011.”
Last night, now-26-year-old Zach won his primary in Iowa as he runs to become a state senator in Iowa’s District 37. The woofy Wahls garnered 60% of the vote in his race.
Wahls moves on to the November election to fill the seat vacated by Democratic Sen. Bob Dvorsky, who announced his retirement after more than 30 years in the Iowa legislature.
If Wahls wins the seat, he will be one of the youngest people to ever serve in the state Senate.
Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) gets up and walks out of an interview with KCRG reporter Josh Scheinblum after being asked why he’s prescreening constituents who plan to attend his town hall that night. Blum’s staff was apparently checking IDs to ensure that only his constituents attended his town hall Monday night.
Even after prescreening, though, he ended up getting screamed at the crowd at his town hall.
It would seem the congressman came to the interview with a chip on his shoulder. Scheinblum told Talking Points Memo that the “kids as backdrop” wasn’t anything previously discussed for the interview. When the reporter asked Blum about it, the congressman apparently responded with something to the effect of, “Well, you know, all Republicans are evil, right?”
Blum represents a swing district that barely went for Trump in 2016 after supporting Obama in 2012, and now faces tough questions about his vote for Trumpcare.
Watch below as he leaves this interview just moments into the segment.
