Progressives Every Day: Now do you believe in karma?
Well, that was a day.
Welcome to the Friday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere!
It’s not quite the Kennedy assassination, but I’ll always remember where I was when I learned that Donald Trump had been diagnosed with COVID-19:
I woke up to a 5 am text message from my mom that simply said, “Now do you believe in karma?”
While groggy, I knew exactly what she meant. A few weeks ago, I told her that I thought karma was impossible when so many rich, awful people held so much power and would never suffer any consequences for their lifetime of terribly evil deeds. I still mostly believe that — to be honest, as I said just last night, it’s remarkable that it took so long for Trump to get COVID in the first place.
That being said, Trump really did have a banner week. Imagine having the entire world learn that you’re a tax cheat and have at least a billion dollars in debt… and that being the third-worst thing to happen to you in a single week.
Then imagine deserving all of it.
Don’t feel bad for Donald Trump (who was, by the way, just flown to Walter Reed hospital). He’s receiving the best healthcare in the world from a literal army of doctors, entirely free of charge. He’s not getting furloughed. If he’s evicted, it won’t be because he can’t pay the rent (which he doesn’t pay, anyway).
Who should you feel bad for? My close friend is a White House correspondent and in an early morning text exchange this morning, he told me that reporters are just about the only people who wear masks on the premises. Political appointees and staffers don’t wear them in the tight quarters, which, I’d imagine, makes it just about impossible for non-partisan facilities workers to protect themselves. Food workers, maintenance workers, technical workers, even Secret Service agents… all of them, put at risk by these arrogant, evil assholes.
Oh, and three White House journalists have now tested positive for COVID-19, despite wearing masks.
Meanwhile, this is the trash that Fox News is now spewing. Pathetic:
Trump, for his part, put up this echo-y video that does nothing to discourage conspiracy theories that the GOP might just Weekend at Bernies him if need be. Dude’s face is the palest I’ve ever seen it:
OK, that’s it for the rant. None of this is surprising. I don’t want Trump to die, I just want him to experience the full effect of the horrible illness he let 7.3 million Americans suffer... then watch on TV as he is decisively and emphatically rejected by voters in an election landslide that embarrasses him for the rest of his life.
Also worth noting that at least two senators have tested positive for COVID-19 today: Mike Lee (R-UT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). Both are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and were at the super-spreader event that was Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination announcement event. I dunno if RBG is pulling strings upstairs... but the fact that the rushed event celebrating the nomination of her arch-conservative replacement on the Supreme Court turned out to be a COVID super-spreader event is pretty perfect. The hearing on Coney Barrett’s confirmation may even be impacted.
Maybe karma does exist.
Elections and Voting Rights
Georgia: In a blow to voting rights and my free time, a federal court on Friday rolled back an extended deadline for absentee ballots to be returned to the Board of Elections by three days.
Now absentee ballots only have three days past Election Day to get to the BOE in Georgia, which means that I have to update the state’s entry on AbsenteeBallots.info yet again.
Would it shock you to know that the two judges who voted to roll back the deadline were appointed by Donald Trump?
Georgia: OK, let’s go with some good news in Georgia. After trailing by a few points throughout most of the election, a new poll shows Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff leading Republican incumbent David Purdue by five points.
Two weeks ago, pollsters Redfield & Wilton Strategies found Ossoff and Purdue deadlocked, so there has been some clear movement.
It’s just one poll, but Democrats clearly have momentum in the state. Ossoff was up two points in a poll released by Civiqs yesterday and Pastor Raphael Warnock, who is running in the free-for-all special election for Kelly Loeffler’s seat, has been on a clear ascendency, as well.
Texas: As I mentioned yesterday, Gov. Greg Abbott decided to limit every county to just one ballot dropbox center, no matter its size or population. Now, a lawsuit has been filed, as promised, challenging the decision.
A whole cadre of organizations filed suit in a federal court in Austin today, claiming that Abbott’s order was unconstitutional and discriminatory.
“The impact of this eleventh-hour decision is momentous, targets Texas’ most vulnerable voters—older voters, and voters with disabilities—and results in wild variations in access to absentee voting drop-off locations depending on the county a voter resides in,” they wrote in their argument. “It also results in predictable disproportionate impacts on minority communities that already hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis.”
Early and absentee voting has already started in the state, which makes this extra absurd. In fact, as the Texas Tribune notes, Abbott and the GOP just recently argued against restoring straight-ballot voting because of how close we are to the election. Shocker that they’re being hypocrites, right?
Ohio: Oh, speaking of that dropbox fiasco, an appeals court ruled today that Secretary of State Frank LaRose can add more dropboxes to every county… but wasn’t required to do so.
Now it’s time for LaRose to put up or shut up. The Ohio SoS said previously that he’d love to allow counties to have more than one dropbox, but gosh darn it, he was limited by the law from doing so.
Democrats have already called on him to make good on his promise… but I’m not holding my breath.
Kentucky: I’ve raised a lot of money for Amy McGrath via an ActBlue page I set up last year and never promote, but she’s probably not going to beat Mitch McConnell. It was a long-shot. I’ll admit that her fundraising has been a nice source of new (unpaid) subscribers for the newsletter, and if she didn’t have more money than she could ever spend at this point and it’d make a difference, I’d pull the page at this point.
Why? Because her latest ad is not just awful (it praises Trump!), but because it’s actually airing in Ohio, where Biden could well win next month.
I just really wish Charles Booker had won that primary.
I also wish all her donors were giving to down-ballot candidates instead. There are so many well-intentioned Democrats who give out of anger, which is often helpful, but in this case, it’s a waste of money. I’m doing what I can to turn them into repeat donors, for better causes!
COVIDSuperSpreaders.com: I didn’t get as much time to add new names to the list today, considering how much more information I had to add to the people who were already on it, but I did add a few.
First, this joker in Michigan, who came down with COVID after railing against masks and Gov. Whitmer’s shutdowns for months and trying to sue China for COVID back in May.
And then I added a trio of dangerous dunces in the Pennsylvania legislature. I got even more information after the fact from a local source, who sent this along:
National: The Wisconsin Democratic Party pioneered the TV/film cast reunion/script-reading fundraiser last month with its Princess Bride reunion, opening the floodgates for bored celebrities to actually be useful with their political activism.
Some are better than others, but this latest one looks pretty sweet:
The Future: By Sunday, we’ll have less than a month to go until the election. I’m doing a few more candidate interviews in the next few months, introducing new ones to the stable. Ahead of those interviews, I’m adding a couple of new candidates to each swing state’s donation list.
This Sunday, I’ll be asking people to dig deep for whatever they can give to [mostly legislative] candidates running in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan.
I’ll also be giving bios of the new candidates!
If we want to have a wave election, we need to support as many candidates as we can. With some looking likely to flip seats, we can expand the circle.
Wait, before you go!
Progressives Everywhere is a one-person operation funded by readers like you (and whatever spare change I have in my pocket after paying rent). Together, we’ve raised over $4.2 million for truly progressive candidates and causes since 2018, helping to flip seats, restore voting rights, expand healthcare, and much more.
I’d love to do this as a full-time job (or at least make it one of my full-time gigs), but I’ve got a long way to go.
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