Mediaboss Marketing

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

The venue, the King Middle School, was decorated with signs on the wall featuring Lees name and the hashtag #Resist,according to theSan Francisco Chronicle, whilevendors soldanti-Trump buttons outside.

Lee brought guests to address the meeting: President Richard Nixons former White House counsel, John Dean, and Malcolm Nance, a retired Navy senior chief petty officer and spy, to Berkeley to help educate her constituents and encourage them to keep fighting.

TheChronicle notes that Lee accidentally introduced Nance as Malcolm X.

Dean and Nance disappointed the audience, according to the Chronicle,by telling them that Trump was not likely to be impeached quickly, nor was he likely to be removed from office by being declared mentally unfit to serve under section 4 of the 25th Amendment. They apparently pleased the audience, however, by bashing Trump and the Republican Party.

Lee has been pushing for Trumps impeachment in recent days. Last week, she issued a statement declaring: The American people deserve to know if President Trump tried to quash the FBI investigation into his campaigns alleged collusion with the Russians. If true, this would constitute obstruction of justice, which is an impeachable offense.

Not content with the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller within the Department of Justice to investigate any potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Lee demanded an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what she called a constitutional crisis.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the most influential people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author ofHow Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Photo: file

Here is the original post:
California Democrat Plots Trump's Overthrow at Berkeley Town Hall - Breitbart News

GREENE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) -

Democrats in central Virginia are encouraging voters to show up at the polls, starting with a primary less than a month away.

Fifty-eighth District Del. Rob Bell (R) Rob Bell has held his seat since 2001. He will face some competition this November to hold on to that seat.

Democrat Kellen Squire hosted a potluck Sunday evening at Grace Episcopal Church in Greene County. He's only the fourth candidate to challenge Bell while he's been a delegate.

Squire says part of the reason he decided to run was because of last November's divisive election. Now, he and the Democratic chair of the 5th District, Suzanne Long, are encouraging voters to get to the polls.

We're at a crossroads both in the commonwealth of Virginia and our nation. I think we've seen what happens when people get disconnected from politics, Squire said.

"The Democratic party of Virginia is energized and active and really focused on getting Democrats elected in the fall, Long said.

The 58th District covers all of Greene County and parts of Albemarle, Rockingham, and Fluvanna counties.

Right now, Squire is the only candidate running against Bell. Squire is an emergency room nurse and believes he can give voters a "fresh face" in November's election.

Follow this link:
Democrat Running Against Rob Bell Hosts Potluck in Greene Co. - NBC 29 News

Democrats are heading into the homestretch of three special elections over the next month amid a national frenzy over the investigation into the possible connections of President Trumps 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the election.

Yet in all three races, Democrats have made a tactical decision not to turn the contests into a referendum on Trumps alleged scandals and instead are focusing on policy decisions by the president and congressional Republicans.

Democratic strategists privately say that this might be the recurring theme through the November 2018 midterm elections. Democrats say that they have learned a lesson from the 2016 elections, in which House Democratic candidates relentlessly focused their campaigns on trying to tie Republican incumbents to the personal scandals of Trump or some of his more outlandish policy statements.

That strategy failed in almost spectacular fashion, providing a net gain of only six seats when, just two weeks before Election Day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was predicting gains of more than 20 seats and possibly winning the majority.

From Montana to the suburbs of Atlanta, voters are getting a steady diet of commercials from the Democratic candidates that focus on GOP plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act without enough protections for those who have preexisting health conditions. Theyre talking about tax breaks for the middle class and small businesses, blasting their opponents for helping special interests.

Greg Gianforte would make people like Tom pay thousands more just so he can pay less. Im Rob Quist and I approve this message to fight for people with preexisting conditions, Quist, the Democratic candidate, says in one of two closing ads ahead of Thursdays election to fill Montanas at-large House seat.

Both ads one a minute long and one 30 seconds focus on the Republican health bill that passed the House earlier this year and on Gianfortes wavering views on the legislation.

Neither of them even mention Trump once.

Its the same with the newest ad for Democrat Jon Ossoff running in the June 20 election for Georgias 6th Congressional District north of Atlanta, a 30-second spot that criticizes the Republican, Karen Handel, for her role in trying to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood while serving as an executive of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

And in South Carolina, Democrat Archie Parnells underdog race to fill the seat vacated by Mick Mulvaney, Trumps budget director, is focusing on trying to increase his popularity by touting his business experience and running as an outsider.

The danger for Democrats is that they might be overlearning the lesson of the last war, applying the 2016 mind-set to what could be a different environment in 2018. These newest Trump scandals do not involve his personal behavior or outlandish statements they are about possible abuse of power in firing James B. Comey as FBI director because of his investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged ties to Russia.

This decision to not focus on Trump is partly out of political geographic necessity. Trump won the Montana and South Carolina districts by 20 and 19 percentage points, respectively, so even as his first four months as president have been a slog in terms of accomplishments, Trump remains popular enough in those places that it makes little sense to run a campaign attacking him.

This cowboy-poet is trying to steal a Republican House seat in Montana

Even in the Georgia district, vacated by Tom Price to become Trumps health secretary, the president won by 1.5 percentage points, which means a lot of voters there support him even if it was a dramatically smaller margin of victory than the typical GOP nominee received in that well-educated region.

In several after-action reports following the 2016 elections, Democrats discovered that it was a mistake to try to tie Trumps behavior to well-known incumbents who had their own brand identity with voters.

In Denvers suburbs, Democrats tried to turn Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) into the originator of Trumps accusation that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In the suburbs of Minneapolis, they tried to make Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) responsible for Trumps degrading behavior toward women.

Both Republicans won their races by large margins, their fifth-straight win each.

Republicans made a similar mistake back in 1998, when President Bill Clinton was mired in a sex scandal that led to impeachment by the House. In the closing weeks of the 1998 midterms, Republicans tried to turn the election into a referendum on Clintons personal behavior but voters did not hold Democrats responsible for what was such a personal foible of the president. Republicans ended up losing seats that year.

So now, Democrats are making a conscious decision to focus their attacks on kitchen-table issues, not the latest tweet from Trump that sparked outrage inside Washington.

In announcing a $750,000 investment into the Georgia race, House Majority PAC did not mention Trumps name once and focused on Ossoffs ability to work in bipartisan fashion and get results for the district.

If Democrats dont win one of three upcoming special elections, how can they take back the majority in 2018?

The choice couldnt be more clear between Ossoffs jobs-focused agenda and career politician Karen Handels record of misusing taxpayer dollars and putting her own ambition ahead of the people she was supposed to represent. Were going to deliver that message clearly and aggressively at the doors and on the air, Charlie Kelly, executive director of the Democratic super PAC, said.

While the national media focuses on every Trump scandal, Democrats are going to stick to the script of focusing on how the president and congressional Republicans are not keeping their promises to help the working class and instead are focusing on policies that might hurt workers.

Expect to see campaigns like Parnells in South Carolina.

Politicians promise, then dont deliver, he says straight to the camera, pledging to help veterans and protect Social Security. I wont promise you the world, but I will work every day to make your life better.

He never mentions Trump.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

View original post here:
For Democrats, special elections may be preview of 2018 campaigns - Washington Post

By Lawrence Hurley | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Republicans in North Carolina unlawfully took race into consideration when drawing congressional district boundaries, concentrating black voters in an improper bid to diminish their overall political clout.

The justices upheld a lower court's February 2016 ruling that threw out two majority-black U.S. House of Representatives districts because Republican lawmakers improperly used race as a factor when redrawing the legislative map after the 2010 census. The court was unanimous on upholding the ruling on one of the districts and split 5-3 on the other, with three conservatives dissenting.

"The North Carolina Republican legislature tried to rig congressional elections by drawing unconstitutional districts that discriminated against African-Americans and that's wrong," North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat took office in January, said in a statement.

The decision came in one of a number of lawsuits accusing Republicans of taking steps at the state level to disenfranchise black and other minority voters who tend to back Democratic candidates.

Critics accused Republicans of cramming black voters into what the NAACP civil rights group called "apartheid voting districts" to diminish their voting power and make surrounding districts more white and more likely to support Republicans. Both districts are held by the Democrats. Of North Carolina's 13 representatives in the U.S. House, 10 are Republican.

Race can be considered in redrawing boundaries of voting districts only in certain instances, such as when states are seeking to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. That law protects minority voters and was enacted to address a history of racial discrimination in voting, especially in Southern states.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking a number of steps at the state level, also including laws imposing new requirements on voters such as presenting certain types of government-issued identification, in a bid to suppress the vote of minorities, the poor and others who generally favor Democratic candidates.

Republicans have said the laws are needed to prevent voter fraud.

The Supreme Court has never said legislative districts cannot be mapped based on plainly partisan aims like maximizing one party's election chances. North Carolina Republicans said one of the two districts, called the 12th congressional district, was drawn on purely partisan grounds to benefit Republicans at the expense of Democrats, and the other was drawn to comply with the demands of the Voting Rights Act.

'DISPOSABLE HOUSEHOLD ITEM '

The split among the justices was over the 12th district, with conservative Justice Samuel Alito writing in dissent that the court should have been bound by an earlier precedent in which a previous version of the same district was challenged. He was joined by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"A precedent of this court should not be treated like a disposable household item -- say a paper plate or a napkin -- to be used once and then tossed in the trash," Alito wrote.

Writing for the court's majority, liberal Justice Elena Kagan countered that evidence at trial "adequately supports the conclusion that race, not politics, accounted for the district's reconfiguration."

Conservative Clarence Thomas, the court's only black justice, joined the court's majority in both parts of the ruling.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had not yet joined the court when arguments in the case were heard in December, did not participate in the ruling.

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to throw out a lower court's decision upholding a similar Republican-backed state legislature redistricting plan in Alabama that crammed black voters into certain districts in a way critics said lessened their influence at the polls.

In another redistricting case, the justices ruled on March 1 that a lower court should reassess whether Virginia's Republican-led legislature unlawfully tried to dilute the clout of black voters when it drew a series of state legislative districts. The justices threw out a decision that had upheld all 12 state legislature districts that were challenged.

Monday's ruling came one week after the justices rebuffed a Republican bid to revive a strict North Carolina voter-identification law that a lower court found deliberately discriminated against black voters, handing a victory to Democrats and civil rights groups.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a Republican challenge to a federal campaign finance restriction that prevents political parties from raising unlimited amounts of cash to spend on supporting candidates.

WASHINGTON The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the chief judge and seven other members of Venezuelas Supreme Court on

NEW YORK Lawyers for former New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son Adam on Thursday urged a U.S. appeals court to overturn the two men's corruption convictions in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Originally posted here:
US Supreme Court tosses Republican-drawn North Carolina voting districts - Reuters

New York Times

What Scandal? In Montana Race, a Republican Is All Aboard the Trump Train New York Times The candidate was Greg Gianforte, a Republican running for Congress in Montana's closely watched special election. But if it wasn't immediately obvious where he took his political inspiration, Mr. Gianforte spelled it out in five gold-plated letters ... and more »

Read the original:
What Scandal? In Montana Race, a Republican Is All Aboard the Trump Train - New York Times