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The Republican National Committee, which compiled information on all possible candidates, released a lengthy research document titled Radical Kamala Harris Gives Democrats The Most Extreme Ticket In History.

She is extreme, said Sean Spicer, Trumps first press secretary who remains close to the White House. She could alienate anybody thats not on the far left.

Republicans criticized Harris for supporting the Green New Deal climate change plan and voting against the vast majority of Trumps judicial nominees, including his Supreme Court picks. Tea Party Patriots Action called her a reliable vote for higher taxes, bigger government, and less freedom for individuals.

This has completed the leftist takeover of the party and of their radical agenda, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on a call with reporters. Kamala Harris will be the most liberal leftist nominee for VP that our country has ever seen.

Trump on Tuesday described Harris as his No. 1 choice for Bidens running mate, weeks after saying, I think shed be a fine choice.

But he and his aides focused their line of attack through the same lens theyve used on other potential running mates, perhaps indicating after months of research on Harris they dont have much else to criticize.

Many in Trumps orbit had hoped Biden would tap Susan Rice, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, whom they had thought could fire up his MAGA base. Despite their eagerness for her, Rice being selected likely wouldnt have helped Trump attract the independent voters his team has been trying to win over for years.

With less than three months until the election, Trump is lagging behind Biden in most national polls and battleground states. His standing has even fallen in traditionally red states as the coronavirus pandemic has dragged on.

Republicans, who have found little success in tarnishing Biden, will now try to damage Harris by describing her as a failed presidential candidate who didnt generate excitement in her own party. Most of Trumps attention on Harris during the Democratic primary was about her performance in the race, and he returned to that theme Tuesday at the White House to recall her poor showing in the campaign.

Privately, some Republicans acknowledged that Harris, the first Black female candidate on a major party ticket and daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, would help Biden win over women and people of color. She will be the first woman, first Black and first Asian American vice president if elected.

In a video to supporters and text messages to donors, the Trump campaign nicknamed Harris phony Kamala for criticizing Biden for his record on school integration during the Democratic primary but then agreeing to join his ticket. Biden picked Phony Kamala for VP: He isnt smart enough to see her lies, the campaign wrote in the text.

In addition to attacking her for being liberal, Republicans highlighted her record as a prosecutor which now appears out of step with the Democratic Party after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police though that could contradict their message that shes too soft on crime. Harris joined Black Lives Matter demonstrations this summer.

She is now trying to bury her egregious record as a prosecutor in order to appease the anti-police extremists that are now controlling the radicalized Democrat Party, Trump 2020 senior adviser Katrina Pierson told reporters Tuesday.

At a campaign event in Mesa, Ariz., on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence welcomed Harris to the race to a round of boos.

"As you all know, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left, he said. So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine and abortion on demand, it's no surprise that he chose Sen. Harris.

Republicans are split on how Pence would fare against Harris in the vice presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 7. at the University of Utah. Some say Harris would be tough to debate because of her prosecutor background which she deployed regularly for pointed questioning during Senate hearings but others say Pence would come across as more relatable.

She is a fierce questioner ... and is certainly an energetic candidate, a Republican Capitol Hill staffer said. It will make a tough contrast in debates against Pence for the Trump Team.

In 2011 and 2013, Trump donated twice to Harris for a total of $6,000. Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to her father, also gave Harris $2,000 just six years ago.

When asked about the donations Tuesday, Pierson said they should prove once and for all that Trump is not racist.

I will note that Kamala Harris is a Black woman and he donated to her campaign so I hope we can squash this racism argument now, she said.

CORRECTION: Kamala Harris will be the first Black female on a major party ticket, but Barack Obama was the first Black person on a major party ticket.

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Team Trump assails Phony Kamala, while privately acknowledging her appeal - POLITICO

Redlands City Councilman Eddie Tejeda and Treasurer Robert E. Dawes will face no opponents on the ballot in the Nov. 3 election.

Tejeda, who was elected to a four-year term on the council in 2016, represents District 2, which is between Tennessee and Church streets and from Citrus Avenue to the northern border of the city. Dawes, who was first elected in 2012, was also unchallenged four years ago.

Both names will be on the ballot, said Redlands City Clerk Jeanne Donaldson.

Four candidates qualified for council District 4, where Councilwoman Toni Momberger decided not to seek another term. They are Steve Frasher, vice chairman of the Planning Commission; Lane Schneider, founder of the Redlands Tea Party who led the campaign to defeat Measure G in March; Jenny Guzman-Lowery, who is training to become a marriage and family therapist; and Ivan Ramirez, an analyst with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority.

District 4 is east of Church Street and west of Ford/Judson streets and between Pioneer Avenue and Sunset Drive.

There will be no council elections this year in districts 1, 3 and 5, where council elections are next scheduled in 2022.

City clerk and treasurer are elected citywide every four years. Donaldson has one challenger, Roy George, a real estate finance executive. The registrar of voters verified his nomination petition on Saturday.

The Redlands measure calling for a 1-cent sales tax increase doesnt have a letter designation. The designation and arguments for and against should available by the end of August.

For four years, the Redlands Unified School District has not had a representative for Area 3

Friday, Aug. 7, was the regular filing deadline for the Nov. 3 election, but the filing dead

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City treasurer and Tejeda unchallenged on the Nov. 3 ballot - Redlands News

COVID-19 update: DHEC announced 907 new cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths connected to the virus on Thursday, the fourth-straight day with less than 1,000 new cases.

The percent positive rate was 15.7%.

As of 5:24 p.m. Aug. 13, via S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control:

Confirmed cases in S.C.:103,051(+907new cases since Tuesday)Positive tests in Charleston County (total): 12,598 (+76)Negative tests in S.C.: 729,395Deaths in S.C. from COVID-19: 2,057 (+35)

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Before You Go: New cases remain below 1,000; IOP will ease parking restrictions; Chs. GOP holding rally tonight - Charleston City Paper

As a historian working on 19th-century US history projects over the past couple of years, I have read numerous scholarly books and articles on the last two decades of the Antebellum and subsequent Civil War. It soon dawned on me that at night I was watching news that mirrored what I was reading in the morning and afternoon.

Astonished by the historical parallels between the Antebellum and contemporary developments, I began writing a series of comparative essays. This is part 2. Read part 1 here.

In July, CDC director Robert Redfield blamed northerners who headed south for Memorial Day weekend vacations for the latest surge of COVID-19. Harvard scientists and New York Governor Mario Cuomo retorted that it was not the Norths fault, blaming instead the increase on southern politicians who decided to reopen their states too soon.

Likewise, states are divided on mandates about wearing or not wearing masks, roughly along the Mason-Dixon line, the same two sections which during the Antebellum and Civil War were bitterly and violently split over slavery, its expansion, and a few other interrelated socio-political matters.

Founding Father and fourth US President James Madison, with his extraordinary political wisdom and foresight, could not have anticipated that so many Americans would come to cherish the freedom to not wear a mask as almost worthy of inclusion in the hallowed Bill of Rights. No one would have conceived just three months ago, that such an issue would divide the nation to the extent that it has.

There is somewhat of a historical precedent, however. During the Spanish Flu pandemic (1918-1919), opponents of mask-wearing ordinances organized and marched in protest in many US cities.

Anyone barely familiar with the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War and its long conflictive aftermath knows that the peace signed at Appomattox, far from healing the wounds of division, aggravated sectional and interracial tensions. It also gave way to long decades of systematic exploitation of former slaves, their illegal disenfranchisement, segregation, and lynching.

Sectionalism in North America actually precedes the formation of the United States. It reflects the reality of a vast territory divided by latitude and climate, thus by different economic activities, and hence by divergent economic interests, labor systems, domestic policy objectives, and even foreign policy.

The Antebellum South was geographically suited for producing tropical and semitropical staples such as tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar, which many landowners believed required enslaved labor. While the North imported part of that production, much of it headed toward European markets, resulting in southern politicians insistence on friendly relations with Europe and keeping tariffs as low as possible.

Contrastingly, since colonial times, the northern economy focused on temperate climate agricultural activities, commerce, navigation, and manufacturing, a system that thrived on high, protectionist tariffs and did not depend on slave labor.

Historians have long recognized southern secessionism as a form of nationalism, whereby many white southerners viewed themselves as constituting a different nation with its own distinct culture, and therefore deserving of political autonomy, if not independence.

The North had its own form of nationalism, which strove to preserve the Union at whatever cost necessary. The Civil War was the culmination of tensions between southern secessionist nationalism and northern unionist nationalism.

A belt of five border states, meanwhile, extended west from Delaware through Missouri. Neither slavery nor southern nationalism were particularly strong in that region, and none of those states seceded.

Before the secession of 11 southern slave states, the formation of the Confederate States of America, and four years of all-out civil war, the North-South divide had been intensifying for decades.

It reached an explosive climax in the 1860 presidential elections, when party alignments overlapped sectional divisions to such extent that northern Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln carried all free states (northern [except New Jersey] and western) and lost all southern slave states. He did not receive a single popular vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, or Texas.

Since the 1990s, but particularly following Barack Obamas 2008 electoral victory, sectionalism, rural versus urban antagonism, and other manifestations of geographical political rivalry have remerged with a vengeance. This was exacerbated during the first years of Donald Trumps presidency and reached feverish levels of vitriol and violence in 2019 and 2020.

As was the case during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction, these conflicts are intertwined with manifestations of nationalism, partisan politics, and secessionist sentiments.

While the correspondence between political party affiliation and geographical region is nowhere close to what it was 160 years ago, geography still matters. According to Pew Research Center polls, in 2014, there was a clear overlap between region and party affiliation with 51 percent of North-eastern voters identifying as Democratic/leaning (only 31 percent Republican/leaning). Republican affiliation was much stronger in the South at 41 percent, a statistical tie with Democrats (42 percent).

An examination of the 2016 presidential electoral map reflects uncanny parallels with its 1860 counterpart. Map colors are, of course, inverted because the Republican and Democratic parties have since swapped ideological positions regarding many issues, including civil rights, race relations, and social justice. What has remained constant is the social conservatism and states rights ideology of the South.

Out of the 29 states that voted Republican or Democratic in 1860, all but seven went to the opposing party in 2016. Among them were Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Republican candidate Trump won by margins of less than 1 percent and a combined total of 78,000 votes.

Tellingly, the political party inversion rate between 1860 and 2016 was 100 percent in New England, the Southern, and Pacific coast states.

During the Antebellum, cities overall leaned more Republican than Democratic, and rural areas are still more conservative than urban centers. These political correlations overlap with contrasting demographic and cultural realities: racially diverse and multicultural cities and apple-pie and Chevrolet truck rural settings.

Stanford University Political Science Professor Jonathan Rodden, who studies the growing political divide between urban and rural areas, has gone as far as stating that contemporary political polarization is all about geography.

A 2018 Pew Research Center poll assessing political and ideological differences among urban, rural, and suburban adults found wide gaps and polarization between urban and rural residents in views about Trump, immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage.

Interestingly, the researchers concluded that such differences had more to do with party affiliation than with geographic setting. Urban Republicans are significantly more moderate (more evenly split) than their rural counterparts.

The urban-rural political divide has been growing for a couple of decades. In 2008, defeated red presidential candidate John McCain carried 53 percent of the rural vote. Eight years later, Trump received nearly twice as many rural votes (62 percent) as blue candidate Hillary Clinton, who got just 24 percent.

Suburban America, meanwhile, has become purple, mirroring the Antebellums frontier states. May the metaphor of battleground states and regions remain so.

Just like Lincoln was unacceptable to the white South in 1860, Obamas election was intolerable to broad segments of the electorate in 2008. His election gave rise to numerous radical conservative groups and movements, starting with the Tea Party formation in February 2009.

Likewise, the United States has seen an upsurge of neo-confederate militancy and racial hatred and violence, far beyond the geographical limits of the old Confederacy. Confederate flags are flying in states like Mississippi and Alabama but also in old unionist states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

As fringe as they may be, neo-secessionist organizations and petitions multiplied after Obamas election. They have quieted down in the last few years but are likely to mobilize if Trump does not win re-election.

A recent Pew Research Center poll on mask-wearing practices shows some fascinating, if not completely surprising, correlations.

Northeasterners responded that they always (54 percent) and very often (23 percent) wore masks outside their homes. Numbers are much lower in other regions; the Midwest, for example, reflected that only 33 percent of its adult population wore masks all the time and another 29 percent very often.

There was an even stronger correlation with party affiliation with 94 percent of reds wearing masks either all the time or very often, compared to only half as many blues (46 percent). Only 1 percent of Democrats never wore masks, in contrast to 27 percent of Republicans.

It appears that to wear-or-not-wear a mask is todays single most politicized and polarizing issue.

There have been dozens of instances of verbal and physical violence, even deaths over mask-wearing. Are Walmarts, Dollar Stores, and Waffle Houses the counterparts of Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry, the rehearsals of the US Civil War?

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Past as Present? Geographical Polarization, Nationalism, and Secessionism in the US - The Globe Post

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A national and state effort is putting new electoral pressure on Republicans in Harrisburg, who have controlled either the House or Senate every year since 1993.

After the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, Democrats are hoping theyll control both houses of the state legislature. Photo by billnoll/Getty Images.

The last time Democrats in Pennsylvania controlled both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, it was 1993. Bob Casey Sr. was governor. Ed Rendell was mayor. The latest corrupt City Councilmember to be indicted was Jimmy Tayoun. In short: Its been a while.

Sure, there have been ebbs and flows over the years Democratic control of the House for a few years during the Obama administration but by and large the makeup of the state legislature has remained firmly entrenched under Republican control.

Theres a chance, though, that 2020 is shaping up differently for Democrats. Promises from the minority party of an impending wave are standard election-year fare. But sometimes those oceanic metaphors actually come to pass, and theres reason to believe 2020 could be one of those years in Pennsylvania.

One such reason: As part of a broad left-wing campaign to flip state legislatures across the country in advance of redistricting in 2021, and also to end the lame-duck Republican power grabs recently displayed in Wisconsin and North Carolina, national figures are homing in on statewide races. Barack Obama recently endorsed 21 candidates seeking office in Pennsylvania second only to Texas. The Working Families Party, which successfully organized to wrest a City Council seat from Republican control last year, has also endorsed a slate of statewide candidates taking on Republican incumbents. And Jamie Perrapato, a former Philly-area lawyer, has started a political operation called Turn PA Blue whose singular goal is to, you know, turn Pa. blue. She says volunteers from her group made 75,000 calls to voters just last weekend. The groups PAC also has more than $200,000 on hand, according to its most recent financial disclosure.

Many of these contested races will be playing out away from Philly. But the implications of a Democratic-led Capitol could be huge. Its rite of passage for any Philly mayor with significant policy ambition to go to battle against unsympathetic lawmakers in Harrisburg. Usually, they come away defeated. But maybe, just maybe, that could be changing.

To actually flip the state House and Senate, Democrats would need to build on their gains of 2018 (five Senate seats and 14 House seats), capturing nine seats in the House and four in the Senate. Thats a big ask, but Perrapato says she has an advantage: Many of these areas are already trending Democratic. Theyre the sort of places, like Senate District 13 (in Lancaster County) and Senate District 15 (in Dauphin and Perry counties) that might have gone for Trump in 2016, but then voted for Tom Wolf and Bob Casey two years later. And then there are other areas, some of which are in the Philly suburbs, that actually voted forClinton in 2016, but also reelected their Republican statewide legislators.

Getting otherwise-Democratic voters to ditch those long-term Republican incumbents is one of Perrapatos main challenges. She has a sales pitch for this kind of voter, which usually goes something like this: Your Republican representative may be a great guy who fills potholes and gives out candy when theres a parade, but then he gets on train to Harrisburg and votes to support anti-abortion. Perrapatos bet is that for a socially liberal suburban Clinton voter, that argument will hold water.

The pandemic has provided Perrapato other evidence of Republican shortcomings. When people wonder why the unemployment office was unresponsive for weeks, she tells them its the fault of those same legislators, who left state agencies underfunded for years. (Lawmakers did pass a bill funding the unemployment office in 2017, but only after their prior inactivity resulted in 500 layoffs.) At the heart of Perrapatos pitch is the notion that statewide office impacts daily life just as much as higher office.

The problem is that the most obvious targets for Democrats places like House Districts 160 and 152, both located in counties that voted for Hillary in 2016 but represented by Republican state Reps. are increasingly becoming few and far between. Democrats have already flipped so many suburban red seats in the Philly burbs, there simply isnt much real estate left. To court the voters that will ultimately flip the legislature, theyll have to search farther afield.

Some of those voters might be found in southwestern part of the state near Pittsburgh. But there and elsewhere, Democrats will be fighting an uphill battle. What the 2018 cycle showed was that while blue got bluer, in some places, red got redder, says longtime political consultant Neil Oxman. Thats a problem for incumbent Democrats like Frank Burns, whose district is in Cambria County, a county that voted for Trump over Clinton by nearly 40 points. To win the House, then, Democrats wont just have to flip seats theyll have to retain ones theyve already won. In a high-turnout presidential election, thats an additional challenge.

But Mustafa Rashed, another longtime political analyst, says the Democrats have one other unimpeachable advantage: Trump, whos going into reelection with one of the lowest presidential approval ratings in recent history. He is, Rashed says, the best recruitment tool and best campaign tool for Democrats in a generation.

Theres no city that would stand to benefit more from the state legislature switching hands than Philly. For years, Philly mayors have fought a stubborn Harrisburg capital full of antipathy for the states largest city whether it be in matters like the state seizing control of the Philadelphia Parking Authority back in 2001, or on legislative issues like passing a higher minimum wage or more restrictive gun laws, both of which arent currently possible because weaker state laws specifically preempt any would-be Philly legislation. Democratic control of the legislature could end that practice of state preemption and would likely prompt immediate policy action from Mayor Jim Kenney on two of the issues he seems to care about the most: poverty and guns.

The irony is that Philadelphians have virtually no say in the matter. Nearly all of the state House and Senate seats in the city are already held by Democrats.

Thats part of Perrapatos strategy with Turn PA Blue, harnessing the deep blue hue of Philly and forcing it to bleed over into other parts of the state. The same goes for the Working Families Party. The state chapter of the W.F.P still focuses most of its attention on Philly and Black and brown working class working poor communities, says director of organizing Nicolas ORourke. And though these are decidedly not the kinds of voters who will decide whether the state legislature flips, the W.F.P. has endorsed a number of candidates anyway. Part of that is a simple calculation about expanding the partys base of power to other parts of the state. But its hard not to see Philly reflected in those endorsements, too. After all, a $15 minimum wage is one of the core planks of the W.F.P. platform. Philadelphia not being able to create a structure where folks are paid a living wage, because of preemption thats happening in Harrisburg, is deeply problematic, says ORourke.

So will any of this end up happening? Those with skin in the game are unsurprisingly optimistic. Its not just possible, I think its probable that we can flip the House as well as Senate this year, says ORourke. Perrapato is a tad more cautious. Nobody knows whats going to happen in November, she says. It could be a tsunami, not just wave it could be the equivalent of [Tea Party gains in] 2010. Or, Trump could cheat his way into the presidency. We dont know.

As for the pundit class, there is both doubt and consensus. Doubt that the Democrats will flip enough seats in both the House and Senate; consensus that, no matter what happens, theyll gain ground. Will there be more Democrats in the legislature after 2020 than there are now? Absolutely, says Oxman. Does it get to [a House majority of] 102? Its going to be close. Rashed agrees. Its a tall order, he says of the efforts in both houses. Its possible, but maybe not probable.

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Democratic Control of Harrisburg Would Have Huge Implications for Philly. Can It Really Happen? - Philadelphia magazine