CNN, NBC, FB and now even Fox News have either refused to run or dropped the President’s closing ad for being too racist.
I’ve been trying to hit various polls, late shifting races and more here in the Ed Blog. But I think the best wrap is this podcast episode Cameron Joseph and I just did. We work our way through all the latest trends, what to make of the polls, possible big surprises and the heavy weight of uncertainty. You can listen here or subscribe on iTunes.
Or maybe not. Ben Smith and I were on a panel a couple weeks ago at a conference about content moderation, the press, the 1st amendment, yada yada. The conference was organized by TPM alum and now law professor big shot Kate Klonick. The panel was moderated by Jack Balkin of Yale Law School. Video of the panel after the jump …
Gab, the Twitter-like social network for racists and anti-Semites, is back online after getting dumped by its former web host. Allegra Kirkland has the story.
In related news, President Trump comments on his latest ad.
There are now three states in which the total “early vote” is larger than the entire vote (early and election day) in 2014. Those states are Texas, Nevada and Arizona.
Don’t forget to join us tomorrow night. We’ll be hosting live election results for every congressional race, gubernatorial race and major referendum and proposition across the country. We’ll also be bringing you all the latest news, commentary, video of key moments and all the rest. We’re going to leave everything on the field bringing you coverage of the most important mid-term elections of our lifetimes. Join us.
I’ve been waiting so long for this. You’ll remember that one of the big scammers in the US Attorney firing scandal, which was really a voter suppression scandal, was a guy named Bradley Schlozman, a character who was just as democracy-malevolent as Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams but somehow outdid them both in pure hapless gooberism. Well he’s back, as the lawyer representing the official trying to find ways to make it hard to vote in Dodge City, Kansas. John Light has our full Schloz report and retrospective (sub req) here.
If you really need an additional Schlozman fix watch this video of Sen. Leahy slapping Bradley around in congressional testimony in 2007. Video after the jump …
This is an ad (“Like a Girl”) for MJ Hegar who’s running against Rep. John Carter (R-TX). I’m not sure whether it’s getting a heavy run on TV. But Hegar has massively out-raised Carter. So I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be. Cook rates this a “Likely Republican” district, so well on the outer margin of the possible for a Democrat. As far as I can tell though it hasn’t been polled.
Ad after the jump …
From TPM Reader AC in Georgia …
You are undoubtedly getting a massive number of emails from across the country, and especially the most contested races. I thought I’d throw in a few cents, fwiw.
We live in John Lewis’s City of Atlanta district, but we’ve been canvassing heavily in the burbs — GA-6 and GA-7, both competitive House races in increasingly Asian and Latinx communities (Gwinnett County), as well as the southern suburbs of Clayton County, which are majority African American. Much of this organizing has been done through the Working Families Party (which you no doubt know from NY politics, and is trying to build a base in the South) and the New Georgia Project (founded by Stacey Abrams herself as the sort of ACORN-ish nemesis of the GOP vote-suppressing crowd).
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Kemp proved the old saying “no good deed goes unpunished” by taking concerns flagged for his lawyers about potential cyber vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voter registration website and turning it into an unfounded claim that Dems had tried to hack the system.
It was the least surprising October surprise in recent memory. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview with Bloomberg News, was asked about the federal deficit, which ballooned to $779 billion last year after the implementation of the Trump tax cuts.
With the current political system in turmoil, we face a generational opportunity to redefine liberalism and the Democratic Party.
After “further review,” NBC decided the immigration ad — sponsored by Donald J. Trump For President and deemed too “racist” to run by CNN — was “insensitive” and will pull the ad from its network as soon as possible, NBC News reported.
NEW NBC statement regarding the Trump immigration ad:
“After further review we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible.” – NBCUniversal Spokesperson.
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) November 5, 2018
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will monitor “compliance with the federal voting rights laws by deploying personnel to 35 jurisdictions in 19 states” as well as watch for “fraud in the voting process.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is leading Republican challenger Josh Hawley by three points in the newest NBC poll, an edge still within the poll’s margin of error.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Monday that Republicans will be in a “really great position” if people vote based on policy and the economy.
WH press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Republicans' chances on Tuesday pic.twitter.com/GGMIbwf77o
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) November 5, 2018
On Sunday, NBC ran the immigration ad that President Donald Trump tweeted earlier this week, a video that CNN declined to air because the content was too “racist,” The New York Times reported.
President Barack Obama pulled no punches Sunday, joking that the Trump administration had “racked up enough indictments to field a football team.”
“Nobody in my administration got indicted,” Obama said during a Sunday campaign stop. “Which, by the way, is not that high a bar.”
Watch here.
Not for much longer…me nor my people would ever be at or around one of those tragic rallies, so thanks for the heads up philip! https://t.co/dRgRi06GrJ
— Rihanna (@rihanna) November 5, 2018
President Donald Trump on the midterms: “I think we are going to do well in the House, I think we are going to do really well in the Senate … the level of fervor, the level of fever is very strong on the Republican side” pic.twitter.com/WHrn1NNiYE
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 4, 2018
After announcing a last-minute probe of the Democratic Party of Georgia for “possible cyber crimes,” the Georgia Secretary of State’s office — which is still being led by GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp — released some more information on the probe Sunday. In total, the office has released three paragraphs of information about the probe, but has offered no evidence to support it, leading Democrats to allege that Kemp has used his office in a political attempt to tilt Tuesday’s election. The most recent statement from Kemp’s office reads:
Civilian militia groups are headed to the border, ginned up by President Donald Trump’s racist and often inaccurate rhetoric about the so-called “caravan” of migrants and asylum seekers that’s still hundreds of miles away from United States soil.