midterm

Saturday November 3, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 3, 2018

‘Edge of the knife’: Trump drags divided states of America towards his midterms reckoning

Maureen Osiecki remembers the shock of Donald Trump winning her home state, Michigan, on his march to the White House. “My heart died,” she says of that night nearly two years ago. “My father turned over in his grave.”

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: suspect Robert Bowers charged with 11 counts of murder

On 6 November, Osiecki gets her first chance to formally pass judgment on the Trump presidency. The midterm elections will decide control of Congress and could give the commander-in-chief a black eye. Few can remember midterms taking place in an America so perilously divided – underlined this week by pipe bomb packages sent to leading Democrats and a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue – or with a president so actively stoking the culture wars as an electoral strategy.

“He’s a pig,” said Osiecki, a 76-year-old retiree from a city planning department, sitting with friends in a Wendy’s restaurant in Pontiac. “No feeling, no empathy. My father was a Republican but we got along and didn’t call each other ‘horseface’.” 

The midterms, which early voting indicates could have their highest turnout in decades, are always more or less a vote of confidence in the sitting president. But Trump has put himself front and centre. “I’m not on the ticket, but I am on the ticket, because this is also a referendum about me,” he told supporters in Southaven, Mississippi.  “I want you to vote. Pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Where his predecessors have sought to build bridges and unify, he has embraced the politics of polarization across gender, race and culture lines in the hope of firing up his base, tacitly acknowledging he has lost a vast swath of the nation for good. The midterms will provide the first official measure of whether the sum of love for Trump is exceeded by the sum of hatred.

Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report newsletter, told an audience at the Washington Post this week: “The best way to think about where we are today is that we’re having elections in two different Americas.” (Continued: The Guardian) 

 

Thursday August 23, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 23, 2018

To impeach or not to impeach? Capitol Hill weighs the question after Cohen plea

Testimony from President Trump’s former longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Tuesday that Mr. Trump directed him to violate campaign finance law — claims he made as he pleaded guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations — renewed questions on Capitol Hill about the possibility of impeachment.

Cohen is not the only former Trump associate to be convicted of a crime — former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of financial fraud-related crimes on Tuesday, former national security adviser Mike Flynn is awaiting sentencing, and former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But Cohen’s allegations point back to the president directly.

A number of Democrats are still being cautious on the possibility of pursuing impeachment. For Republicans, a top GOP aide tells CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes, “This is the most uncomfortable Republicans have been” about the president’s actions, but they still don’t plan to take more decisive action than they have in the past.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said impeaching Mr. Trump is “not a priority” for Democrats, telling the Associated Press after the Cohen and Manafort court decisions that “impeachment has to spring from something else.” Pelosi said she prefers that Democrats — if they take the House come November — conduct oversight hearings and let special counsel Robert Mueller do his job.

“I think that everyone is a little cautious about throwing around impeachment” — at least before the midterms, a Democratic strategist told CBS News. But if Democrats get win the House, that could change, the strategist added.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said Cohen’s claims are serious and troubling — but it’s “premature” to discuss impeachment, because “more information has to come forward” and it’s “too early in the process to be using these words.”

However,  Durbin warned of a “constitutional crisis” should Mr. Trump attempt to fire Mueller. (Source: CBS News) 

 

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Wednesday, November 5, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Obama facing lame duck status as America goes to midterm polls

American voters head to the polls on Tuesday looking likely to take out their frustration with Barack Obama on his Democratic allies and hand control of the US Senate to his Republican opponents.

Polls show the American people have soured on their president after six years and are preparing to use today’s congressional midterm elections to give vent to their anger.

In the ten battleground states that will decide control of the Senate, Republicans are leading in seven and a number of Democrat senators are facing the prospect of being turfed out of office.

A Republican victory would give them complete control of Congress and doom Mr Obama to “lame duck” status in his final two years in the White House.

The President, whose poor approval ratings have largely kept him off the campaign trail, made a final appeal to black voters last night to turn out and prevent a Republican surge.

“It will make a difference in the lives of you, your family, and your community,” Mr Obama told an African-American radio station. “You’ve got that responsibility: live up to it.”

Mr Obama will watch the election unfold from the White House on Tuesday night.

Get some lame duck swag here

Get some lame duck swag here

Polls begin closing on the East Coast at 7pm (Midnight GMT) and will soon offer the first indication of what kind of night Democrats can expect.

Strategists in both parties will be closely watching the results in North Carolina and New Hampshire, two states currently held by Democrats and where the President’s party has maintained slim leads.

If either or both states fall to the Republicans it will be taken as a sign that Mr Obama’s party is in real trouble and potentially facing an electoral rout. (Source: Daily Telegraph)

 

SIGHTINGS

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