An old friend of mine: Senator Mandela Barnes meets with the White House after the 2020 midterm elections and asks what the media can tell us about our country

MADISON, Wis. — Politicians who visit diners know the deal: They must take photos in order to establish their class status, so they must accept a lot of advice.

But on Tuesday at Monty’s Blue Plate Diner here in Madison, one of the first people to approach Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, took the tradition to a new level, presenting him with a typed-up list of concerns about his campaign.

Barnes’ supporters were worried that Mr. Barnes could be susceptible to attack advertisements from Senator Ron Johnson and his Republicans.

Her assumptions are a series of leaps. McGowan argues that Americans are turned off from voting because of a rise in misinformation—such as the idea that Trump won the 2020 election—and a decrease in good information, the straightforward reporting that helps citizens understand who their local representatives are. Certainly Americans’ trust in Washington to “do what is right” has been on a slow decline since the Kennedy era, and charts tracking the metric since 2000 resemble lemmings plunging off a cliff. Can more reporting help reverse the decline? That’s hard to prove.

The chief of staff of the White House has a meeting with McGowan. (“An old friend,” Klain calls McGowan in an email.) Heading to the meeting, she tells me President Biden is clinging to an old model where he simply needs to win over a few journalists to break through with the public. “He still lives in a world a lot of the people I meet live in, which is, ‘It was better before. She asked, why can’t we just do that again?

I offhandedly mention to her that just that morning, Florida governor Ron DeSantis had said, “The thing people need to understand about these legacy DC, New York outlets is: We don’t care what you think anymore.” It seemed like a bit of bluster from the Republicans about the irrelevance of the mainstream press. DeSantis is reading the landscape like he needs to, and he gets what he needs from Fox News and others. She says she’ll judge that Courier has failed if, in a few years—around the time of the 2024 elections—her newsrooms don’t occupy a similar space.

The stakes are a bit higher. At issue is not so much the future of journalism as the future of cynicism. In her own, fraught way, McGowan is testing whether it’s still possible to combat the noise ceaselessly filling Americans’ heads and hammering the message that apathy is a reasonable response to the state of the world. The alternative—that citizens are fated to only grow more disconnected from the news of the day and less invested in the country’s fate—is almost too distressing an outcome to contemplate.

Biden is Unwelcome: Bringing God’s Mercy to the Local Government: Two Years of Oregon’s Blue State Elections

At a Union Hall in Portland, the volunteers with the state’s Democratic Party sat shoulder to shoulder at long tables while they spoke on their cellphones and President Biden walked in holding a pink and white box of doughnuts.

As the midterm elections draw closer, Biden has been spending more time on the road, trying to help Democratic candidates in tough races. This stop in Oregon was part of a Western swing that included a stop in Colorado and several in Southern California.

But there are many competitive races in other parts of the country where Biden is unwelcome. Like many presidents before him at this point in their first terms, Biden has found his approval ratings underwater. Recent polls put his approval at just above 40%. That means there are a lot of races where he could hurt more than he helps.

“The history books show that an incumbent president is not a boost to their party in their midterms. If Jesus Christ were president, members of his political party would probably push him out of office in a year’s time.

Biden carried the blue state of Oregon in the presidential election. It was nice winning by 16 points, Biden said while speaking to the group of volunteers that had gathered on a Friday night.

Two years later, Democrats are nervous about the tough three-way race for governor. There’s an independent candidate — a former Democrat — who could peel off enough Democratic votes to open the door for the first Republican governor of Oregon in more than a generation.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129524093/biden-2022-midterm-elections-the-campaign-trail

Any Given Tuesday: Why Biden, Bennet, and Obama Shouldn’t Come to Town During the Late-term Midterms

The next day, Biden attended a grassroots fundraiser for Kotek and the pair stopped at a Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream. While waiting for his waffle cone with his double scoop of chocolate chip, Biden said that he was certain Kokot would win.

Obama and Donald Trump held more traditional rallies in the run-up to the midterms in their first terms, according to a politics professor at the Naval Academy.

“Biden has held many official events with campaign undertones. Other presidents did this too, but for Biden, it’s his principal mode of campaigning in the leadup to the midterms,” Doherty said.

He’s also been in high demand at events to raise cash for his party. At a Friday night event in Los Angeles, Biden Helped raise $5 million, money that will be used to help congressional candidates all over the country, as well as those campaigning in swing districts who wouldn’t want to be seen with Biden.

Some Democratic candidates have claimed scheduling conflicts when Biden comes to town, conflicts that preclude joint appearances. Biden and his party have been mocked by Republicans. But Democratic strategist Lis Smith, author of campaign memoir Biden and Democrats are being smart, said Any Given Tuesday.

“This is not Joe Biden’s first rodeo. Smith says that Barack Obama was so visible in the 2010 election that it hurt the Democrats. “So, he’s trying to learn from the mistakes of the past, put his ego in the back seat. It is the best thing for the party as a whole.

But there are places where Biden can help the Democrats on the ballot: places where Democrats have a strong advantage in voter registration. Camp Hale, an important World War II training site, was designated as a new national monument by Biden. And at the picture-perfect site, he made sure to give a little extra love to Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for reelection in a tougher than expected race.

“I want Michael to come back up here a second,” Biden said before regaling the crowd with a story about Bennet’s hard sell to get Biden to designate the monument.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/17/1129524093/biden-2022-midterm-elections-the-campaign-trail

She’s Bringing Down the Cost of Things, Senator Biden told reporters after Arriving on Air Force One: “Lambda” and “Chirpi”

In Los Angeles, local officials lined up on the tarmac to greet the president after he arrived on Air Force One. Karen Bass was hugging the blue plane as she ran for LA mayor.

The next day, Biden touted the infrastructure law at a construction site for a new metro line, calling Bass the “soon-to-be Ms. Mayor” in a speech where he delivered the core of his midterm message.

We have an election in a month. Biden said voters have to make a decision. “Democrats are working to bring down the cost of things … that are talked about around the kitchen table, from prescription drugs, to health insurance, to energy bills, and so much more.”

“We’re always getting incoming requests,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with the president on Air Force One. That is definitely true. Of course. We have a lot of good things to talk about.”

What the New Democrat did to Save the Democratic Party and What the Rest Of Their Powers Have Learned About Its Failure To Rebuild Itself

That was the plan. And it succeeded. The Democratic Party’s war was won by the New Democrats. They were given many chances to rule. They triangulated and sought grand bargains. Today we live in the future to which they built their celebrated bridge, with a deregulated Wall Street, a devitalized heartland and college diplomas held up as the answer to all problems. The Democrats turned their backs on the populism they disliked, and didn’t take advantage of the financial crisis to remake the financial system. Instead, some of them came to identify with that system.

A majority of Americans want liberal measures like universal health care and economic fairness. But actually, existing liberalism, with its air of upper-crust contempt and its top-down moralism, rubs this deeply democratic nation exactly the wrong way.

The combination of high net worth and high moral virtue that the Democrats offer is a richly satisfying blend for some voters, a perfect summary of how they see themselves. It has meant that there are lucrative second careers at Silicon Valley giants, and Martha’s Vineyard and the presidential libraries surpass those of the Republicans in soaring monumentalism. If perpetual stalemate is the price the country must pay for such things, maybe it’s a bargain.

These things are obvious when viewed from a certain distance, but liberals, intoxicated by their own righteousness, can never figure it out. The Republicans keep dreaming of new culture wars against the liberal elite, even though they think the right to die off is dead.

And what do liberals do? We dig in. We cheer for our side and we demand that everyone else do the same. When there is bad news, we react irrationally, refuse any analysis that doesn’t refer to Satanism, and then go on the internet to scold those who are not up to our standards. This is not strategy. It is a bunch of people who like similar things.

A Conversation with David Pritzker: A New Perspective on Political Consultants and Policy Advisors in Chicago and the Mid-Atlantic Region

“They had resources, but those don’t make up for the absence of a father and the afflictions of his mother,” said David Axelrod, who watched Mr. Pritzker’s rise as an Illinois political consultant. He has suffered emotionally, but he has had an advantage.

At 33, he made his first lunge into politics, plowing $500,000 of his own money into a House race in Chicago’s heavily Democratic North Shore suburbs in 1998, only to come in third. He devoted himself to businesses and the business and technology council in Chicago.

He returned to politics in 2018, when Bruce Rauner, a Republican governor, was up for re-election after a damaging first term. Mr. Pritzker built his team of seasoned veterans, led by Anne Caprara who was executive director of Priorities USA, and Quentin Fulks, who came to Georgia to lead the re- election campaign of Senator Raphael Warnock.

It is a skill that may keep Mr. Pritzker in the conversation as Democrats wait for Biden to start his campaign.

“Look, we have only one president at a time,” said Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor and an ally of the governor. “But one of the things I watched when he became governor was the way he scooped up political and policy talent as he was taking office. His ability to put together a team was really impressive and he still is.