Election Connection: 40 Weeks: Democratic Primaries

Beginning next Monday is the first of nineteen voting days to choose the Democratic candidate for President. Voting will take place in fifty-seven primaries and caucuses from the fifty states and seven territories. What follows is all of the primary/caucus dates. Find your state, make sure you’re registered, and vote for the candidate you feel passionate about. Be part of the process; make your voice heard. Then after the Democratic National Convention in July, unify behind the candidate (more on that in later weeks) and return the country to the rule of law and common decency.

Before you review the primary schedule, visit Vote Save America. They have tips on how you can help the candidates, stop gerrymandering, volunteer, donate to the eventual nominee, check your voter registration, and other resources to make your vote count. Check them out.

February 3

Iowa (caucus) 41 delegates

February 11

New Hampshire 24 delegates

February 22

Nevada (caucus) 36 delegates

February 29

South Carolina 54 delegates

March 3 (Super Tuesday) 1344 total delegates

Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, American Samoa (caucus),

Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennesee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia

March 10 365 total delegates

Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota (firehouse caucus), Washington

Democrats Abroad voting period ends

March 14

Northern Mariana Islands (caucus) 6 delegates

March 17 577 total delegates

Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Ohio

March 24

Georgia 105 delegates

March 29

Puerto Rico 51 delegates

April 4 107 total delegates

Alaska, Hawaii, Louisianna, Wyoming

April 7

Wisconsin 84 delegates

April 28 663 total delegates

Connecticutt, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island

May 2 46 total delegates

Guam (caucus), Kansas

May 5

Indiana 82 delegates

May 12 57 total delegates

Nebraska, West Virginia

May 19 115 total delegates

Kentucky, Oregon

June 2 215 total delegates

District of Columbia, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota

June 6

United States Virgin Islands (caucus) 7 delegates

July 13-16

Democratic National Convention, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Election Connection: 41 Weeks: Be Informed

Being informed is not simply about the 2020 election although it is important to keep up to date on news. In order to do that, it is especially imperative to only glean your news from reliable news sources. This graphic should help you with that. Note the key on the right side of the graphic.

In addition to using this graphic as a tool, Google is your friend. I can’t tell you how many times I correct a cousin or an uncle because what they’ve posted on Facebook is untruthful when the truth is only a Google search away. (It’s practically a full-time job.)

As you know from previous posts, I listen to several podcasts that relate to the news, politics, and current events including the impeachment and the upcoming election (which will have separate posts as needed). It is possible that you have noticed that I am a big fan of the Crooked Media group. I listen to almost all of their podcasts and follow most of the major players on Twitter even when I don’t listen to their particular podcast regularly. Joking aside, they really should put me on their payroll!

Their new one, What A Day is something that I can’t remember how I managed without it. It is about fifteen minutes each weekday morning with what’s going on in our world and some headlines with a really needed dose of humor. I do not start my day without it and highly recommend giving them a try. There is also a read-only update that you can receive nightly by email subscription.

While What a Day is my favorite, two others out there with a similar idea of getting you the news on a daily basis are:

Today, Explained from Vox

What Next from Slate

Election Connection: 42 Weeks

From Crooked Media comes a new six-episode series talking to whomever necessary in order to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box on November 3rd. This election is too important to skip out on. We’ve seen what can happen when the wrong person is in The White House, and we have forty-two weeks to rectify this.

What will it take to defeat Donald Trump in November? In season 2 of The Wilderness, Jon Favreau looks for the path to victory in 2020 by talking to voters, strategists, organizers, and candidates in the battleground states that will decide the election.

Favreau takes listeners to the four most competitive regions on the road to 270 electoral votes and 51 Senate seats, where he conducts focus groups with voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin. The series also follows grassroots organizers and candidates in these states who share their winning strategies to reach these voters.

Through his own experience as a campaign veteran and speechwriter for Barack Obama, Favreau attempts to unpack the complicated and often surprising reasons voters support a particular candidate, or choose not to participate at all.

Episodes 1 and 2 are available now wherever you get your podcasts. (I personally use Player.FM and like its service very much.)

Subscribe so the rest of the series will automatically download each week and you won’t miss any. If you didn’t catch The Wilderness, Part 1 when it premiered, the link will take you to the first of fifteen episodes that are well worth listening to.

The Wilderness, Part 2

Episode 1: The Stakes

Episode 2: The Northeast

Current – Information on Iran Tensions and Soleimani

There has been a lot of news in the past week concerning Iran. There has also been a lot of misinformation, unfortunately coming from the State Department and the White House. Contradictory stories, communication mistake with Iraq, and no notification to Congress as required by law. There was even reporting that the President expressed wanting to keep some GOP Senators happy for his impeachment trial and they wanted Soleimani taken care of. I’m not going to get into what’s true, what’s not, but after three years, and more than 15,000 lies from the President, I’m inclined to not give him the benefit of the doubt.

What I offer instead is a podcast that will help you wade through the noise, hear the facts, hear some analysis, and inform yourself of what’s going on with the tensions with Iran.

Pod Save the World is co-hosted by Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes. It includes news, analysis, and interviews as well as their conversations about what’s happening around the world. Both worked in the Obama Administration on foreign policy, Vietor as spokesman for President Obama and the National Security Council (2011-2013) and Rhodes as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications (2009-2017).

Pod Save the World series

Pod Save the World – Iran retaliates to the Soleimani strike This includes a very informative interview about Iraq, Iran, and Soleimani’s death with Brett McGurk, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL from 2015 to his resignation in 2018.

NEW SERIES: Election Connection

Beginning today, each Tuesday, I will have a post related to the upcoming election. It will focus primarily on the Presidential race, but will also include important local and state races. As we saw in 2018 and 2019, all elections have consequences. We saw in 2016 what complacency and disinformation can do, not to mention foreign interference. We have forty-three (43) weeks until Election Day. It’s a lot less time than it feels right now. As I write this, we are on the cusp of another unnecessary war by an unfit and incompetent President. We cannot let him be re-elected. He does not represent the values that we espouse as Americans and the values we try to raise our children with. Everything he claims to be is a lie, and we need to continue to call out those lies; not just his directly, but all of his surrogates, supporters, and enablers. Voters may still like him and want him as President, and that’s their decision to make and to live with, but we can’t let them continue to lie and to gaslight the rest of us. As a journalist on Twitter reminded me the other day, there are more of us; we are the majority.

You’re probably wondering what you can do in the next 43 weeks?

I hope to share some ideas and advice with you between now and November 3rd.

First, are you registered? If you’re answer is ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know,’ find out and get registered. Right now. I’ll wait.

Second, visit Stacey Abrams organization, Fair Fight 2020 and find a way that you can help ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote will be able to vote and that their votes will not be suppressed. In all likelihood, Stacey Abrams would be governor of Georgia right now if not for the Republican candidate’s voter suppression efforts. He was the Secretary of State for Georgia and made the election rules including where and when polling places would be open, what kind of identification is acceptable, and whether or not and when to certify the election. He is now the Governor. Election fraud and voter suppression hurts everyone.

If you have any ideas to share for voter protection, please put them in the comments.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

The observance of this day was actually yesterday as determined by the United Nations, but I think that it’s important enough, especially in this era of #metoo and the Trump Administration’s corruption that I think it’s important to bring up before and after the determined day. We need to address the violence against women every day, and it needs to be talked about by everyone, whether we’re women, are involved with women, and any other arbitrary excuse that we should care about violence against women.

Congress first passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, and each time it comes up for reauthorization, primarily Republicans argue against it because of the NRA or somehow they think that women aren’t deserving of protection from violence and abuse. Is there any other legitimate reason/argument that they could have?

Here are some helpful and informative links for you to read at your convenience, but please read them, and talk about them with your family and friends.

VAWA (Wikipedia)

Congressional Reauthorization
National Domestic Violence Hotline (VAWA)

GET OUT THE VOTE!

Today is Election Day, and as we’ve seen in the last three years, ALL elections are important ones. On Friday, I was at a Nanowrimo kick-off event and I saw signs for early voting, which is new in New York. I took the opportunity to give it a whirl. It all went well, and it gave me something to talk about with one of our local candidates who was going door-to-door this weekend. It was a good talk, and I felt very confident in my side of the conversation which is unusual for me. As it happened, I had voted for him.

Check your state’s polling hours, and make sure you go to your appropriate polling place.

Close you phone, tablet, and/or computer, and VOTE!

Not Quite Everything You Wanted to Know About Impeachment, But It’s Something

Whether you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat, Independent or any other political designation, I hope that you believe, as I do that the impeachment of a President (or Cabinet member or judge) should be considered as a last resort, taken with the seriousness and gravitas that it deserves.Unfortunately, with this President and his Administration flouting the rule of law, ignoring subpoenas, and its blatant public acts of corruption and solicitation of foreign election interference, he, Mr. Trump has given Congress no choice.

And all of that was before this quid pro quo with Ukraine and giving the green light for Turkey to invade the Kurdish territory in Syria.

The G7 at the Doral Resort was just another cherry on the top of the ever growing Trump Corruption Sundae.

It may be hard to wade through the Republican lies and disinformation campaign. Personally, I am disappointed in Republicans who in the past at least pretended to be pro-America. They’ve truly shown their true colors and loyalties especially McConnell, Graham, and Meadows. I’m less surprised by Pompeo, Mulvaney, Jordan, and Nunes. This couldn’t have been proved any better than their deliberate and illegal interruption of impeachment testimony in a secure room in the House just yesterday. The President’s involvement in their stunt is another impeachable offense.

However, my opinion doesn’t mean anything without the facts to back it up.

This post offers sources to read, follow, and listen to as they lay out the impeachment case and continue to offer reasoned perspectives. As new information comes out or readers suggest other sources, I will update this post. I will also add it to my Home page.

Please comment with any of your own recs.

Podcasts (I provide links through Player.FM which is where I listen to my podcasts, but you can listen anywhere you already listen to podcasts.)

Rubicon: The Impeachment of Donald Trump from Crooked Media

Impeachment Primer – Amicus

Article II: Inside Impeachment from NBC hosted by Steve Kornacki

Impeachment, Explained from Vox hosted by Ezra Klein

Rachel Maddow Presents: Bag Man A series on the corruption of Vice President Spiro Agnew

Twitter

Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

Preet Bharara

Neal Katyal

Richard Engel – on the ground in Syria

or On Assignment with Richard Engel

Your own Senators and Representatives

Books and Other Publications

Neal Katyal is an attorney who served in the Justice Department, was the Acting Solicitor General during the Obama Administration from May 2010 until June 2011, taking over the position after Elena Kagan became Supreme Court Justice. He was born in Chicago, and has argued more Supreme Court cases than any other minority lawyer. He seems to always have cases before the Supreme Court. He drafted the Special Cousel regulations in 1999, and those are in continued use, and used to assign the parameters of the Mueller Investigation. He was one of Al Gore’s co-counsels before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore and teaches at Georgetown.

He has written his first book, Impeach: The Case Against President Trump, which is coming out on November 26th, just in time for those family dinner conversations, explaining impeachment to those of us asking the questions. It can be pre-ordered.

It is also helpful to read the following:

Mueller Report (this link will automatically download to your device)

The opening statements of the testimony of Marie Yovanivitch, former Ukraine Ambassador (this link will also automatically download to your device)

The opening statement of testimony by Bill Taylor (this link brings you to google docs)