Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: US Elections 2020

Presidential and congressional elections were held in the United States on November 3. The Atlantic Sentinel endorsed Democrat Joe Biden, who defeated Republican president Donald Trump. Democrats defended their majority in the House of Representatives and gained five seats in the Senate, where they split control with Republicans.

  • How Trump Will Try to Steal the Election

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump enters a limousine at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, September 17 (White House/Shealah Craighead)

    America could be heading into its worst political crisis since the Civil War.

    If, as the polls predict, Joe Biden wins more votes in November but Donald Trump refuses to leave, there is no template for how to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power.

    Asked on Wednesday if he would commit to one, the president said, “We’re going to have to see what happens.”

    You know that I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster. … Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly. There’ll be a continuation.

    He also explained why he’s in a rush to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court:

    I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.

    Ginsburg, a liberal justice appointed by Bill Clinton, died a week ago. The Court now has five conservative and three liberal members.

    In 2016, Trump told supporters he would only accept the outcome if he won.

    When he did win, Trump claimed — without evidence — that three million people had voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, the very margin by which she won the popular vote. Trump prevailed in the Electoral College.

    If Trump loses this year and refuses to concede, that alone could throw the period between the election on November 3 and the inauguration on January 20 into chaos.

    But there’s more Trump and his party could do to stay in power. (more…)

  • Biden Outpolls Trump in Swing States

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden campaigns in Greenville, South Carolina, August 30, 2019 (Biden For President)

    Polls puts Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in the states that decided the outcome of the last presidential election:

    Trump is narrowly ahead in the swing states Iowa and Ohio as well as once solidly Republican Georgia and Texas. As recently as 2012, Democrats didn’t even campaign or spend money in those two states.

    National polls give Biden an average of 50 percent support against 42-43 percent for Trump.

    Although the presidential election will be decided state-by-state, national polls tend to be of higher quality and are still useful. Polling guru Nate Silver points out that Biden would need to win the national popular vote by 3 points or more to have a higher than 50-percent chance of prevailing in the Electoral College. (more…)

  • After November: Can US-Africa Ties Be Rebuilt?

    Nairobi Kenya
    Nairobi, Kenya at night, July 29 (Unsplash.
    Mustafa Omar)

    Donald Trump has never been to Africa. At least not as president. Not for six decades, since John F. Kennedy, has an American president even met with fewer African leaders than Trump. During JFK’s time, of course, most African states were still colonial territories. His attitude toward the continent appears to be mired in either indifference or outright hostility, as his “shithole countries” comment and repeated (but unsuccessful) efforts to cut foreign aid demonstrate.

    The feeling is mutual. As with the rest of the world, Africa’s view of the United States has declined under Trump’s leadership. (more…)

  • Republicans Live in an Alternate Reality

    Donald Trump
    Voters wait outside a convention center in Rochester, Minnesota, where American president Donald Trump is giving a speech, October 5, 2018 (Lorie Shaul)

    Donald Trump and the Republicans have been in power for nearly four years, yet everything that’s wrong in America is somehow Joe Biden’s fault.

    180,000 Americans have died of coronavirus, because Trump couldn’t be bothered to deal with the crisis. 10 percent of Americans are out of work, more than during the Great Recession.

    Nobody mentioned either during the four days of the Republican National Convention.

    Trump insisted Biden would be the “destroyer of America’s jobs.” (more…)

  • What Biden Would Mean for Russia

    Joe Biden
    American vice president Joe Biden listens during a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House in Washington DC, February 2, 2015 (White House/Pete Souza)

    With Joe Biden favored to win the American presidential election in November, Vladimir Putin’s days of comfort may be coming to an end.

    Unlike Donald Trump, who has coddled the Russian leader, accepted his denials of 2016 election interference and lifted sanctions on Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who funded pro-Russian political parties in Ukraine (which were advised by later Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort), the Democrat considers Putin a “thug”, a “dictator” and a threat to “the foundations of Western democracy.”

    Unlike Trump, who has given up America’s power to shame, Biden insists America should lead “not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” (more…)

  • How Republicans Became the Party of Trump

    I don’t think I will ever get used to hearing once-sensible Republicans singing Donald Trump’s praises.

    Four years ago, the likes of Nikki Haley, Rand Paul, Tim Scott and Scott Walker knew that Trump was a bully without ideas; a would-be strongman with an unhealthy admiration for Vladimir Putin; a failed tycoon who didn’t grasp the basic principles of economics; and a thrice-married philanderer who had clearly never read a Bible.

    Four years later, with the economy in free fall, America’s reputation in tatters, multiple former Trump campaign officials in prison and 180,000 Americans dead as a result of coronavirus, they’re telling the Republican National Convention that Trump is the only thing standing between them and the abyss.

    How did this happen? (more…)

  • What Biden Wants

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, January 4, 2020 (Phil Roeder)

    Joe Biden could become the most progressive president of the United States since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    That might sound odd after he was declared a “centrist” and the “establishment” candidate in the Democratic primaries.

    The former vice president isn’t as left-wing as some of his former rivals, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He doesn’t want to break up big tech, defund the police, forgive all student loans or nationalize health insurance.

    But the whole Democratic Party has moved to the left and Biden has moved with it. He has involved Democrats and allies from the left to the center, including environmental and minority rights groups, gun control advocates and trade unions, in drafting his program. Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped write his climate policy. Biden incorporated Senator Cory Booker’s proposal to tie federal funding to looser building codes in his housing plan.

    The result is that Biden has buy-in from across the Democratic coalition, which — provided the party wins not just the presidency but the Senate in November — means his plans stand a good chance of becoming reality. (more…)

  • What If Trump Refuses to Leave?

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump boards Marine One outside the White House in Washington DC, July 31 (White House/Tia Dufour)

    Democrats and political experts in the United States are worried that President Donald Trump might not recognize the outcome of the upcoming election.

    When over 100 former politicians and government officials, civil society leaders and journalists gamed out four election scenarios, they ended up in a constitutional crisis, “featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition,” in all but one: a decisive win for Joe Biden. A close result could trigger civil and political unrest not seen in a century.

    The last time a presidential candidate refused to concede was in 1876. (more…)

  • Harris Is a Good Choice

    Kamala Harris
    Democratic senator Kamala Harris of California listens during a meeting in Los Angeles, April 21, 2017 (Office of Senator Kamala Harris)

    Joe Biden has tapped California senator Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate for the election in November.

    It’s a good choice. Elite-educated, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, a former prosecutor and incumbent senator, Harris ticks many of the right boxes.

    When she herself ran for president earlier this year, I argued Harris was “ideologically right where many Democrats want their candidate to be.” She could appeal to key Democratic constituencies: “women, voters of color, party loyalists and West Coast progressives.” (more…)

  • Trump Needlessly Disparages Postal Voting

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump attends a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018 (Office of the President of the Republic of Finland/Juhani Kandell)

    The coronavirus pandemic will likely necessitate mail-in voting on an unprecedented scale in the United States.

    At least 4.8 million Americans have been infected with the disease. Almost 160,000 have died. America has 4 percent of the world’s population but so far suffered 23 percent of the world’s COVID-19 fatalities.

    With the virus showing no sign of abating, requiring 100+ million Americans to vote in person, indoors, would be hugely irresponsible.

    Yet President Donald Trump disparages the best alternative. (more…)

  • Why Republicans Need to Lose Decisively

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump answers questions from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, July 18, 2019 (White House/Shealah Craighead)

    Anti-Trump conservatives in the United States are debating how much to punish the Republican Party for enabling a would-be strongman.

    David French argues against voting out Republicans at every level, calling it “counterproductive for those of us who still believe that the conservative elements of the Republican Party provide the best prospects for securing the liberty, prosperity and security of the American republic” and “completely devoid of grace.”

    It ignores the monumental pressures that Donald Trump has placed on the entire GOP and the lack of good options that so many GOP officeholders faced.

    Charles Sykes is less forgiving, arguing it’s impossible to defeat Trumpism while leaving his bootlickers in power.

    I agree. Going against Trump may have been difficult for Republican legislators; we don’t elect politicians to do the easy thing. (more…)

  • Republicans Could Lose Presidency, Senate: Polls

    Washington DC
    Skyline of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, September 28, 2017 (Ted Eytan)

    Republicans in the United States could suffer a crushing defeat in November.

    FiveThirtyEight reports that Joe Biden’s lead over President Donald Trump has been unusually large and stable: 9-10 percent since mid-June.

    Polls in the swing states Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all of which Trump won in 2016 — also put Biden ahead.

    Henry Olsen writes in The Washington Post that Republicans are at risk of losing their majority in the Senate. Polls put Democratic challengers ahead in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Montana and North Carolina. In Georgia, Democrat Jon Ossoff is neck and neck with Republican incumbent David Perdue. Republicans currently have 53 seats in the upper chamber against 47 for Democrats.

    Republicans are unlikely to do better in the House of Representatives. Democrats have held an 11-point lead in generic polls this year so far, 3 points above their lead in 2018, when they took control of the lower chamber from Republicans.

    National Republican defeats could reverberate at the state level. Republicans gained 680 state legislative seats in 2010. Democrats picked up 309 seats in 2018. Another Democratic landslide could hand them control of a number of key legislative chambers, writes Olsen — including Texas! (more…)

  • Biden’s Housing Plan Emulates Europe

    Seattle Washington
    Homes in Seattle, Washington, April 21, 2011 (Harold Hollingsworth)

    One of the areas in which I think America should emulate Northwestern Europe is housing.

    Stagnant wages, restrictive building codes and underinvestment in construction have caused home prices to rise faster than wages in eight out of ten metro areas in the United States.

    Young Americans are one-third less likely to own a home at this point in their lives than their parents and grandparents, delaying their wealth accumulation and possibly family formation. Among young black Americans, homeownership has fallen to its lowest in more than sixty years. Americans of all ages are less likely to move, which has contributed to a decline in social mobility and an increase in regional inequality.

    I like the Dutch system, which is a combination of government-built social housing rented out at below-market prices and rental subsidies, which can reach up to a third of the average private rent, and for which about one in five households qualify.

    Turns out that’s close to Joe Biden’s plan. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Joe Biden has become the presumptive Democratic nominee.
    • Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, his last two opponents, have ended their campaigns and endorsed the former vice president.
    • So have Barack Obama, the former president, and Elizabeth Warren, another former rival. (more…)

  • Sanders Is Right to Quit

    Bernie Sanders
    Vermont senator Bernie Sanders gives a speech in Phoenix, Arizona, July 18, 2015 (Gage Skidmore)

    Bernie Sanders has ended his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in the United States.

    It’s the right decision.

    Sanders had virtually no chance of defeating former vice president Joe Biden anymore. Prolonging the contest would only delay the reconciliation of Sanders’ supporters with a Biden candidacy and make it harder for Democrats to decide whether to vote at all amid the outbreak of coronavirus. (more…)