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RALEIGH, N.C.>> Republican victories in state legislative and gubernatorial elections in 2010 put them in a commanding position the next year to draw new voting districts for the U.S. House and state legislatures that helped fortify Republican power for much of the following decade.

But the celebration was short-lived for at least one of the Republicans' top redistricting strategists.

Behind the scenes, GOP consultant Thomas Hofeller was worried that Democrats were far ahead of Republicans in collecting data that could help them draw districts in their favor following the next round of redistricting that will occur after the 2020 census.

Hofeller died in August 2018 after a battle with cancer. But troves of his previously confidential digital documents, data tables and emails were publicly posted online this month by his estranged daughter, Stephanie Hofeller. She also supplied them to plaintiffs during a legal challenge brought by Democrats and Common Cause against the North Carolina state legislative districts that her father helped draw.

Stephanie Hofeller did not respond to a request for comment sent through her lawyer.

The records reviewed by The Associated Press reveal Hofeller's extensive involvement in drafting or defending Republican redistricting efforts against claims of racial or political gerrymandering. He worked not only for statewide efforts, such as in Missouri and Virginia, but even for local ones, such as in Galveston County, Texas, and Nassau County, New York. Hofeller also aided GOP legal challenges to Democratic-friendly maps in Arizona and Maryland.

Before the 2010 elections, the records reveal that Hofeller also strategized with Republicans about backing a successful California ballot initiative entrusting an independent commission instead of the Democratic-led Legislature with the task of congressional redistricting. A draft of one memo said it could help "avoid a GOP disaster" in the 2011 redistricting. More recently, Democrats have been backing successful ballot initiatives for independent commissions or nonpartisan redistricting efforts against the resistance of Republican-led legislatures in states such as Michigan and Missouri.

The Hofeller records also reveal the degree to which the once-a-decade task of redistricting has turned into a permanent, multi-million-dollar operation for political parties that are angling for every possible advantage to grasp or strengthen power.

"Redistricting is one of the most profitable and businesslike investment(s) that the GOP can make," stated a draft memo emailed by Hofeller to his GOP consulting partner in December 2014. "Even if it results in only the gain or preservation of one or two additional congressional seat(s) for 10 years, it is more (than) worth this investment."

Amid ongoing legal battles stemming from the 2011 redistricting, records show Hofeller already was turning his attention to the redistricting that will occur in 2021.

A July 2013 redistricting report to the Republican National Committee, stored in Hofeller's electronic files, warned that Democrats "have out-gunned the GOP in data preparation, community involvement and engagement in the redistricting process as well as committing legal resources."

"The GOP has been fortunate to have control of state government resources to fend off challenges to its plans in some key states to adequately offset some of these advantages," the memo stated.

Hofeller was one of several Republicans who believed the party needed to do more for the next round of redistricting.

Specifically, he wanted Republicans to establish a permanent redistricting entity . Its task would be to compile a decade's worth of precinct-level election results from around the country that could be matched with 2020 census data to give mapmakers a granular history of which neighborhoods were most likely to vote for Republicans or Democrats.

He noted that Democrats already had such a database in the hands of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, an entity founded by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her friends in 1948.

Instead of maintaining an ongoing effort, Republicans had a history of procrastinating pulling together a redistricting office at the end of a decade and scrambling to compile data. Hofeller's records show a contractor hired by Republicans to build an election-results database for use with the 2010 census figures didn't start work until November 2010, was focused on only a limited number of states and needed more money by the following February.

In November 2013, Hofeller emailed a couple dozen key GOP officials and consultants with an attached memo outlining a proposal for a permanent Republican data office focused on redistricting and spreadsheets detailing its potential cost. Hofeller suggested an annual budget of more than $1.4 million and a 16-person staff .

But his plan wasn't implemented. Two years later, Hofeller still was circulating a similar proposal among some Republicans.

In 2017, Republicans finally established a permanent redistricting operation. The National Republican Redistricting Trust has a broader role and a budget about 10 times larger than what Hofeller proposed, said the trust's executive director, Adam Kincaid, who was one of the recipients of Hofeller's 2013 proposal. The trust is focused not only on building an election-results database that state officials can use in redistricting but also on funding legal fights over maps and generating public awareness about redistricting.

"The Democrats' data on redistricting has always been ahead of where the Republicans' data has been on redistricting," said Kincaid, who was the redistricting coordinator for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2011 and 2012.

Part of the task of the National Republican Redistricting Trust "is helping the Republican Party catch up and eventually surpass what the Democrats have been doing for over a generation now."

The National Committee for an Effective Congress ramped up its use of precinct-level data for Democratic redistricting efforts following the 2000 and 2010 censuses, said Mark Gersh, a Democratic strategist who has worked with the committee since 1976.

Yet Gersh said having vast data resources only helps if a political party has the power to make use of them. For example, the Democrats' data did little after the 2010 elections in states such as Michigan and Ohio. The tea party wave helped Republicans win control of the state legislature and governor's offices, which then drew new boundaries for legislative and congressional districts.

"(Data) probably helped us marginally, but let's face it: Winning elections for the state legislature or having fair commissions do this is the best way of guaranteeing your success," Gersh said.

Read more:
Records reveal concerns of deceased GOP redistricting expert - The Oakland Press

Looking back in 1981, Biden said he had been persuaded to evolve by his fellow lawmakers.

I have been made a believer over the last nine years in the Senate, he said. The teachings of economists, he continued, had made him reluctant to listen to his Republican colleagues about the dangers of deficit spending, particularly when he was just an impressionable 29-year-old not too long out of college. But eventually, he was worn down. As I listened over the years in this body, I became more and more a believer in balanced budgets, he said.

Following what he termed an olive branch from Reagan a spending freeze that also raised taxes he linked arms with two Republican colleagues on the Senate Budget Committee to introduce his own freeze proposal in 1984. Acknowledging it would be labeled draconian (I dont know how to do anything else than bring it to a screeching, screeching halt, he said), Bidens plan cut $239 billion from the deficit over three years, almost $100 billion more than even Reagans proposal, and proposed doing it partly by eliminating scheduled increases for Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. It would, he said, shock the living devil out of everyone in the US Senate.

Biden indulged in doomsday predictions to sell the measure, warning that letting deficits go untamed would allow the economy to come crashing down and lead to an economic and political crisis of extraordinary proportions within twelve to eighteen months. As bemused commentators would note decades later, it was all straight from the playbook of Tea Party darling Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand-worshiping congressman from Wisconsin who was bent on taking a meat cleaver to Medicare and Social Security. When Biden ran directly against Ryan for vice president in 2012, he warned voters Ryan was a threat to their hard-earned entitlements.

Though the freeze failed, it was only the beginning. Bidens ongoing distaste for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution didnt stop him from introducing a similar amendment in 1984, this one tying spending to the growth of gross national product and inflation, which he referred to as a pay-as-you-go measure. Calling it a much more realistic approach, he proudly boasted that he had literally plagiarized it from Pete du Pont, a Republican. Later that year, Biden backed the line-item veto an anti-spending measure cherished by Reagan and the conservative movement and another budget measure, this one successful, requiring Congress to vote on freezing the budget for one year before it could raise the debt ceiling. His campaign then ran radio ads claiming that cutting the deficit is more important than party differences.

Bidens antipathy to government spending and deficits found its most radical expression in the form of the balanced budget constitutional amendment, which he had viewed as laughable and dangerous in previous decades. But with the advent of the 1990s, he now warmed up to it.

Its opponents viewed it with alarm: making a balanced federal budget a constitutional requirement would not only hamstring the government during times of emergency but require even during economic downturns, when most economists advised more government spending and when spending cuts had historically plunged countries into even greater misery the government to sharply raise taxes or, more likely, make drastic cuts to core, often life-saving programs.

To the relief of progressives and hundreds of economists, the amendment never passed under Clinton. But with the help of a wavering Biden, it came perilously close.

With the backing of Biden, its chairman, the Judiciary Committee started the decade by endorsing the amendment two years in a row. A 1991 report he issued warned that the spree of deficit spending by our federal government must be curbed. All the while, Biden acknowledged it would be a disaster. This is a lousy amendment, he said in 1991. Its not a good idea except I cant think of any other idea except maintaining the status quo. And the status quo stinks. He was, he explained, prepared to take what I consider radical medicine to tackle deficits.

Were the constitutional amendment process less onerous, the measure may well have passed several times in the mid-1990s. In 1994, Biden stayed undecided until the eleventh hour, when he and several other Democrats, including future presidential nominee John Kerry and future Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, came out against the amendment, causing it to fall four votes short of the sixty-seven needed to pass. Biden instead voted for a doomed alternative offered by Reid that insulated Social Security and construction projects from any painful cuts.

That sweetener was gone from the version that made it to the Senate floor the start of the following year, under a very different Congress and in a distinctly new political landscape. In between, the United States had experienced something of a political revolution, as a cadre of right-wing radicals, fed up with what they saw as the GOPs timidity and feebleness, took over the House, putting both chambers of Congress in the partys hands for the first time in forty years. In many ways, this was a more significant victory for the conservative movement than Reagans had been in 1980. After all, it was Congress that shaped and passed legislation, and Reagans vision had been largely stifled by Democratic control of the House throughout his presidency.

The George Washington of this victory was Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich, who fancied himself the most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times and called for large-scale, radical change. It was his Contract with America, a ten-point legislative plan that aimed to finish what Reagan had started, that victorious Republicans had signed and campaigned on. A balanced budget amendment was one of its key planks.

With the political calculus now altered, the Clinton administration toned down its opposition to the amendment. Even as Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget, warned that it would exaggerate the boom-bust cycle, engineer worse recessions, and make for bad economic policy and bad constitutional policy, the White House made clear that it had lost the appetite to fight. Gingrich left a meeting with Clinton with the impression that he was not going to engage in an aggressive campaign against the measure.

Gingrichs confidence was likely rooted in the fact that many Democrats had become devoted converts. The 1995 version of the amendment, which required the prohibitively high threshold of three-fifths of both chambers of Congress to either raise the debt limit or pass a nonbalanced budget, was sponsored and championed by Illinoiss Paul Simon, one of the Senates stalwart liberals, and backed by prominent Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and, of course, Biden.

Something is going to come bouncing out of here and sent to the states [to be ratified], Biden said. The amendment had real flaws, he repeated, but vowed to back it because we need something. After several Democratic attempts to make it more forgiving failed, Biden and the rest of the committee, on a 153 vote, once more sent the amendment to the Senate.

Some of us tried to make this a better proposal, he said as he prepared to vote for it. But he was faced with a choice of an imperfect amendment or continued spending, and he had sufficient confidence in our citizens and in our political institutions that we will confront any challenges from its many flaws.

What those flaws and imperfections would mean in practice was stark. To make the spending cuts a balanced budget demanded, countless programs that Americans relied on would have to be cut or eliminated: low-income housing, heating assistance, federally funded school lunches, mass transit, even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funded hundreds of TV and radio stations around the country, not to mention the big three entitlements: Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. It would be a disaster for working people, for elderly people, for low-income people, Bernie Sanders had warned.

In the end, a sufficient number of Democrats were spooked by the threat posed to Social Security and other programs to defeat the amendment, including Daschle and even Californias conservative senator Dianne Feinstein, both of whom had been on board with the idea in 1994. But the decisions of Biden and two other Democrats to switch their votes in favor of the amendment brought it a mere two votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

The 1996 reelection contest meant Biden doubled down on his support. Once more, Biden faced an opponent who sought to paint him as an overly liberal flip-flopper. But businessman Ray Clatworthy was not only considered too far right by the Republican he had beaten in the primary; he was the first rival in Bidens career who could match him in fundraising. Despite political experts stressing his seat was one of the countrys safest borne out by his eventual 22-point margin of victory Biden, per usual, moved right. While fighting for reelection, he became one of just twelve Democrats to side with a near-unanimous GOP to again bring the balanced budget amendment within two votes of passage.

Yet even after winning six more years, Biden stayed the course. This time, with Clintons second term in the bag, the measure faced stronger Democratic opposition. As the ground was readied for yet another vote in 1997, the White House lobbied key Democrats to reject the balanced budget amendment, and Clinton trashed it in his State of the Union speech, calling it unnecessary and unwise and warning that it could cripple our country in time of economic crisis. Biden, for his part, played unconvincingly coy. His spokesman told the press Biden would use his vote as leverage to make improvements to the measure, such as exempting Social Security but then quickly added that Biden would vote for it no matter what, undermining any leverage he might have had.

Whatever economic motivation Biden may have had to support the amendment was undercut when more than one thousand economists, including eleven Nobel Prize winners, signed a letter pleading with Congress not to adopt it. One economist, Nobel laureate James Tobin, cautioned it would put the federal government into a fiscal straitjacket during economic crises; another compared its insistence on keeping spending strictly below revenue to telling the Atlantic Ocean not to cross a line in the sand.

Despite dithering in the days leading up to the vote, Biden voted for the third straight year to approve the amendment that even he along with just about everyone outside of antigovernment, right-wing circles, including his local newspaper had warned would bring economic catastrophe. He joined all fifty-five of the Senates Republicans and just ten other Democrats. The amendment failed by just one vote. Against Bidens best efforts, disaster had been averted.

Read the rest here:
Joe Biden Tried to Cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare for 40 Years - Jacobin magazine

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What makes a better Disney souvenir than a keychain or bag clip? Small and easy to pack, they allow you carry around a little piece of Disney magic wherever you may go. If you love Disney Parks keychains and bag clips, take a look at the new collection that recently arrived at Walt Disney World.

The bag clips had us channeling our inner Dory. When we spotted them, we found ourselves thinking I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy.The foam clips are made out of a material similar to a stress ball and are basically begging to be squeezed.

The first one is an adorable Mickey-shaped donut keychain. The donut is light pink with purple icing and sprinkles.

The second is a Mouseketeer ear hat with the original Micky Mouse Club logo on it.

The final squishy bag clip is in the shape of Minnies signature bow. Its red with white polka dots.

All three bag clips have a plastic clip, making them easily attachable; they are $12.99 each.

These keychain sets are ideal if youve been assigned the task of purchasing souvenirs for friends or family. Each set contains five separate keychains.

Theres a set of Mickey-shaped donut keychains that match the squishy bag clip. The donuts are made out of plastic and come in a variety of colors.

With the next keychain set, you have enough teacups to make a tea party! Each keychain has a plastic teacup modeled after the iconic Mad Tea Party attraction and a small Mad Hatter hat in a corresponding color. The keychains come in various pastel shades.

The final keychain set has Minnie-shaped bobbles. Each Minnie is a different color of glittery plastic and topped with a polka dot bow.

Each of the keychain sets are $16.99 each. We found the bag clips and keychains at Celebrity 5 & 10 at Disneys Hollywood Studios.

If youre into collecting keychains, you should also take a look at the new Park Life foam keychains that have arrived at Walt Disney World.

Which new keychain is your favorite? Let us know in the comments!

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PHOTOS: New Colorful Keychains and Bag Clips Keep it Together at Walt Disney World - wdwnt.com

A part of the story of Americas political journey from President Barack Obama to President Donald Trump was the rise of racial anger as seen in the crude, racist stereotypes of Obama that showed up on signs at Tea Party rallies, and in the mainstreaming of the conspiracy that the countrys first African American president was not born in the United States.

Trump, a real-estate developer and reality TV star, became the face of the so-called birther movement and in the process attracted a political base that would support his eventual run for the presidency.

This oral history drawn from interviews conducted for FRONTLINEs Americas Great Divide: From Obama to Trump traces how Trump used the birther conspiracy as his political launching pad, how his response to a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville drew rebuke even from members of his own party, and how he has continued to leverage anti-immigrant rhetoric as a political tool. It includes accounts from former Obama and Trump administration officials, Republican lawmakers, veteran journalists and political commentators.

Note: The following interviews have been edited for clarity andlength and have been drawn from FRONTLINEs Transparency Project.

Wesley Lowery political correspondent, The Washington PostFrom the very early days of the Obama candidacy, there was an effort. It begins with kind of whispers and blog posts, and then insinuations made by some cable TV host or talk radio host, that there was something different, something other about Barack Obama, the skepticism of him, that he must have done something wrong. He must have cheated. He must not be what he says he is, because how could he be, right? Theres this hyper obsession around his college transcripts because could he have really gotten into all those schools and done so well at them, right? And then theres this obsession with his origin, with where hes from, where he was born. And this became a very simple and in some ways effective means of otherizing then-candidate Obama: Well, hes not even from here; hes not one of us. Prove it. Prove you were born here.

Now, it was clear that President [Barack] Obama was born in the United States. It was clear that he was eligible to be elected president if the voters so chose. But why the birther movement was so powerful was because it spoke to all types of other anxieties that many white Americans had about Barack Obama; that there was something about him that was just different; that there was something that was sinister; that he must have cheated; that he must be bending or breaking the rules.

Jelani Cobb staff writer, The New YorkerOne of the things, I think, that seems now like, fantastically nave is the kind of vogue comment that Obamas election suggested that we were headed toward being a post-racial society, which was ridiculous on its face for lots of reasons. But if you needed any evidence of the invalidity of that idea, you simply had to look at the culture surrounding the Tea Party and the reaction that you saw to the Affordable Care Act.

The reactions to Obama were not simply about policy. They were about the race of the person promoting that policy. So the Affordable Care Act, in that context, becomes something that is akin to welfare. And conspiracy theories proliferate: the death panels; the black president is going to come and kill your grandmother; that the fact that this is something which is being negotiated with insurance companies but is nonetheless thought of as the knifes edge of his socialist agenda.

But just as everything else about Obama was kind of viewed through a lens of race, it wasnt simply a matter of, I disagree with this policy on principle. There are these rallies where theyre depicting Obama as an ape on signs that theyre carrying. There are points that are making reference to him in all sorts of ways that kind of refer to pejorative stereotypes about Africa and Africans; that this is not simply a disagreement about policy; this is a repudiation of Obama and, more significantly, a repudiation of Obamas race and the possibility of it coexisting within the White House.

David Axelrod senior adviser in the Obama administration[W]hen I was in the White House, I was really eager not to engage in the discussion about how much race motivated some of the opposition. But the reality is, a lot of it was race. I mean, a lot of the sort of very, very overheated opposition to Obama was race-related, and it went to this deeper sense on the part of segments of our society who believe that they were being displaced, that they were being discarded. He became a symbol of that even as he pursued policies that would help those communities. And, you know, it was deeply frustrating, but it spoke to just how ingrained these sentiments are.

Molly Ball national political correspondent, TimeTrump had been making noises about running for president for decades, but in this era he really created his political brand on questioning Barack Obamas citizenship, teaming up with fringe conspiracy theorists like Joe Arpaio in Arizona to hunt for the birth certificate, long after the idea that Obama might not have been actually born in Hawaii had been resoundingly debunked continuing to beat this drum of what Obama and others saw as really just a racist attempt to convince people that Obama was The Other, that he wasnt one of us, that he was a secret Muslim and couldnt possibly be American.

And so that was what sort of launched [Trump] in contemporary politics.It got him on the radar of some of the more fringe right-wing media and got the attention of a lot of the sort of Tea Party activists who were concerned with this kind of American identity issue.

David Axelrod senior adviser in the Obama administration[T]here was a significant percentage of Republicans who questioned whether the president was actually a citizen. And at the core of it was less about whether he was a citizen than whether he was legitimate, that, you know, there was a questionthe question behind birtherism was, should a black man occupy the Oval Office? I mean, really, thats what birtherism was about. It was about race, pure and simple. And Donald Trump knew that when he picked it up. He saw it as a way of inflaming and developing a racial base for himself in American politics.

Steve Schmidt political strategist for George W. Bush and the John McCain presidential campaignAnd so Donald Trump went out, and he had been stoking racial grievance through the birther issue for some period of time. He came from that wing of the Republican Party, and he went all in on it. And it was at a moment in time at the end of eight years of Barack Obama, with a fatally flawed opponent who would ultimately be the Democratic nominee, it was a message, a grievance message, that worked.

Wesley Lowery political correspondent, The Washington PostCharlottesville was a clash between these forces, the forces of these far-right groups and then counterprotesters of them, folks who say, Why are there Nazis in our streets? Were going to go get them out, people who feel the need to protect their communities, their livelihoods. We see time and time again videos of the far-right protesters beating black attendees of the counterprotest. A man drives his vehicle into the crowd, killing Heather Heyer and wounding others. This was an incident that was clearly the tail of these far-right, white supremacist powers emboldened and out of control. And yet, in response to it, the president equivocates. He says, There are very fine people on both sides.

Steve Bannon former chief strategist in the Trump White HouseIn talking to the president the next dayand I think Trumpand this is where the mainstream media smeared him, because he was very adamant about what he said, about the Confederate monuments. He says there are very good people on both sides. There are. I come from Richmond, Virginia. In the commonwealth of Virginia, there is a heated and active debate on about the Confederate monuments, all the battlefields, everything, about cultural heritage, racism, all that, from two sets of people and voters. Democrats and Republicans and Independents are having aand this is all being worked out at the local level, at the commonwealth level, at the city level.

When it comes to the monuments, there are good people on both sides. Thats what he said, right? There are fine people on both sides. He understands what the argument is, and what the argument is is about the nations history, and where does it end? And thats where he said theres good people on both sides.

Jelani Cobb author, The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of ProgressI think Charlottesville is important because I mean, theres been racism in American politics since theres been American politics. And eventually, you get to a point where youre still playing the politics of racial resentment, but its in this very coded way. What Charlottesville did was reemphasize something that people really had good reason to know already, which is that Trump had dispensed with those old politics of coded racial language; that you could have a situation in which a white supremacist drives a vehicle, at full speed, into a crowd of protesters and kills an innocent woman, and the president of the United States could say that they were nonetheless very fine people who were on that side of the equation as well. ts kind of a strange contrast, because on the one hand, if there are people who are identifying themselves as Nazis, you would think that other people would be tainted by association. But his commentary was saying that thats not necessarily the case; that you can be in association with these people, that people who are going out and chanting that Jews will not replace us, people who are carrying torches, who are shouting racial epithets and those aspects that are kind of under the rock of American history, yeah, that has now entered the mainstream and become part of American politics, part of the dialogue.

Cliff Sims former communications aide in the Trump White HouseSo if you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, and he says, you know, this comment that there were good people on both sides, what does he mean by that? Well, what he means is, there areyou know, the monument debate. Should we have Confederate monuments? There are good people out there who say: I hate racism. I hate slavery. But I also think that these monuments are a reminder of a very dark period of our history that we should not erase. We should remember these bad parts of our history as well. And then there are good people who say: We shouldnt have monuments to slavery. We shouldnt have monuments to racism. And thats what I think they are, and I think they should go. I think reasonable people can agree that on both sides of that conversation, there could be good, well-meaning, decent people.

If you think Donald Trump is a racist, then you think that he just said there are good people on both sides, meaning there are good white supremacists out there and good non-white supremacists out there. You know, whatever. It just depends on your perspective on it. But the blowback to Charlottesville was so severe that it was really the first time that I heard, especially among more junior staffers, people asking the questions: What does this mean for the rest of my career? Am I now inextricably tied to Donald Trump in a way thats going to keep me from being able to get a job in the future?, or, Am I so offended by what I just heard that I have to leave out of principle?

Molly Ball national political correspondent, TimeAnd so when Charlottesville happened, it shocked a lot of people. It shocked members of his own administration. It shocked people in the Cabinet and his advisers and so on. And so my Republican sources in Congress, many of them were horrified, and the idea was that theynobody wanted to defend what Trump had said. And so they were sort of gobsmacked whentheres regular talking points that come out from the White House communications operation and are sent to Capitol Hill so that the party can all be on the same page and everyone can make the same arguments in support of the policies theyve all agreed to get behind.

But this was sort of different. This was at a time when there was almost universal condemnation of Trumps rhetoric. The White House was trying to tell its allies on Capitol Hill the president is exactly correct, and here is how you defend what he has just said. And in retrospect, it is a sort of marker, a signpost of the kind of loyalty that Trump would demand from Capitol Hill and the sort of place he would force them into on these divisive issues, that even a lot of Republicans who might have carved out reputations as moderates or as, you know, immigration reformers or what have you, they were going to have to accept the presidents rhetoric, if not in this particular case, then just overall.

Jeff Flake former U.S. senator from ArizonaI reacted in a way that most of my colleagues did as well, that this was notnot where a president should be. [T]his was a layup. This was easy, you know. If theres white supremacy in any form, you condemn it. I mean, thats the easy thing to do. And he didnt.

Charlie Dent former member of the House of Representatives from PennsylvaniaOne of the challenges of Charlottesville was if Charlottesville had just happened in isolation, if we hadnt experienced the comments about the Mexicans, Muslims, and you remember the president got in this issue with [former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and white nationalist politician] David Duke where he failed to condemn David Duke

So he had that history that I believe compounded the Charlottesville situation. You know, he might have been given a little bit more leeway on Charlottesville had there not been all these other issues, but because of past statements and actions and then his inability to clearly define the issue in Charlottesville and immediately denounce the [white] nationalists and neo-Nazis and others, I think thats what created the problem.

Yamiche Alcindor White House correspondent, PBS NewsHourCharlottesville is probably the first time where the country realizes, This is going to get bad. And by the president not acknowledging that the murder of an American citizen by a supporter of white supremacy is totally unacceptable, by him not doing that, he gives weight to the ideas of racists, and fast-forward, you see an increasing number of hate crimes. You see people telling their neighbors to go back to their countries. You see the president later ratcheting up his rhetoric. And it is the beginning of a time in America where people realize that America is not just a place where racist ideals can exist, but its a place where racist ideals can be fueled by the White House.

Susan Glasser columnist and staff writer, The New YorkerYou know, immigration has been central to Trumps identity as a political figure since the moment he rode down that escalator in Trump Tower and started talking about Mexicans and rapists.

Judy Woodruff anchor and managing editor, PBS NewsHourI think for President Trump, immigration becomes another way of saying, We dont need to let people in who dont look like us.And even as he denies that its racist or that hes anti-Mexico, or anti-Central America, it has the effect of being a statement about tolerance, acceptance in this country, andin essence, its saying to his base: Im with you.If youre worried about America changing, if youre worried about America becoming a diverse place, where youre not sure of how you fit in anymore, Im here to tell you, I have some of those same worries, and Im going to speak up, you know, for you.Im going to be here.Im going to fight this.

Jelani Cobb staff writer, The New Yorker[T]he presidency is the most important platform in the country, possibly the most important platform in the world. And when the president talks about immigrant populations, particularly Hispanics, in ways that are dehumanizing, he refers to people as animals, refers to people as rapists and criminals, when he paints with a broad brush about who members of that community are, it gives aid and comfort to people who are inclined to act upon their worst impulses.

Charlie Sykes founder and editor-at-large, The BulwarkDonald Trump didnt invent these darker impulses.They were preexisting conditions, but he found a way to tap into them and bring them out.And so there was a lot that was latent there.There was a lot of things that I think had been growing for some time that the Republican Party leadership had ignored or had dismissed but that he decided he was going to stoke those fires, and the success was pretty obvious.

By the way, part of it also was that he managed to take all of those anxieties of all those forgotten Americans and very quickly said: Its not your fault.Its these peoples fault.Its the immigrants fault.He managed to make them the target and the theme, and so all of that resentment is channeled through Donald Trump at immigrants, at foreign countries.Its the Mexicans; its the Chinese.And people said: Yeah, its nothing Ive done.Im not responsible for this.My country has betrayed me because its allowed these people to do this to me.

Yamiche Alcindor White House correspondent, PBS NewsHourThe president is always thinking about turnout in his base, and he decides that he wants to start using the caravans of immigrants coming to the United States as a foil for the 2018 midterms. And what we see is the president running ads that are deemed too racist even for Fox News to air, which is saying a lot.

Susan Glasser columnist and staff writer, The New YorkerDonald Trump, in the week before the [2018] midterm elections, decides to say that the United States is under the threat of invasion from a caravan of essentially poor migrants, women and children.Obviously, they werent invading the United States.And he uses this militaristic language, and then he actually orders up an actual militaristic response.

He orders thousands of actual U.S. military forces to the southern border of the United States in order to counter a migrant caravan thats still hundreds of miles away, of women and children.

Charlie Sykes author, How the Right Lost Its MindWell, the caravan was the perfect issue for Donald Trump because it showed it was America under attack and that he was standing as the defender of America; that America was under attack by thousands of these dark aliens who were coming to take your jobs and your women.This was the theme that Donald Trump, I think, felt most comfortable with in this campaign.And the pictures made for perfect imagery in conservative media because it was not abstract.And so of course, the president used his considerable power of the bully pulpit to draw as much attention to it as possible to create an emergency and to create a crisis that, again, would cause people to rally around him.

But this is part of what Trump has to do. Trump has to have an enemy. Trump has to make Americans fearful. He has to convince Americans that they are under attack or they are victimized in some way and that these are the enemies, and only I can protect you. And youre going to see that throughout 2020.

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Racism in the Era of Trump: An Oral History - FRONTLINE

Can a political party be too inclusive? Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently thinks so.

In a lengthy New York magazine profile this week, the New York congresswoman responded with a groan when asked what role she might play as a member of Congress if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president.

Oh God, she said of the man who has been leading the pack of her partys hopefuls in national polls. In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.

That may sound sarcastic, but it also happens to be true. Thats not a bad thing. It also happens to be a very good reason for us Americans to have a two-party system.

But thats not good enough for AOC and some others on the partys left-progressive wing.

She mocked the big tent strategy by which candidates in both parties have tried to grow and diversify their voter appeal. Democrats can be too big of a tent, she said.

She even went so far as to suggest that the Congressional Progressive Caucus expel members who stray from the progressives party line. Other Democratic caucuses in Congress require applications, she said. But her wing will let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive, she complained. Theres no standard.

Anybody who the cat dragged in? Ah, the impatience of youth.

I think former President Barack Obama had the right idea when he warned fellow Democrats against ideological purity tests. Ocasio-Cortez apparently thinks purity tests are a fine idea.

For years I have encouraged Republicans to broaden their reach and compete again for voters of color and other constituencies that used to feel more welcome in the party of Abraham Lincoln. Instead, we have seen the Grand Old Partys activists escalate their demonization of RINOs Republicans in Name Only in their ranks. Now I am disappointed to hear similar ideological purity promoted on the left.

DINOs? I dont think so.

But dont get me wrong. Unlike some commentators, I dont want to dislike AOC. I think she brings a youthful energy and excitement to national politics on the left that provides a much-needed counterbalance to the barnstorming extremism of President Donald Trump on the right.

Unfortunately, she also brings with her ideology an all-or-nothing attitude that can get in the way of her achieving her own goals. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom she has endorsed for president, knows the value of compromise enough to vote with the Democrats in the Senate and run for president in their primaries.

For examples of how extremism can backfire, she need look no further than her Republican colleagues. The tea party movement rose up on the heels of Obamas 2008 election with a zeal for spending cuts which all but evaporated after Trumps election.

The federal governments budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced in October. Thats the fourth year in a row of deficit growth, despite a sustained run of economic growth. Apparently, deficit spending is only a sin to Republicans in Congress when Democratic presidents do it.

Ocasio-Cortez bristled in the New York profile at the suggestion that her movement is following a tea party model. For so long, when I first got in, people were like, Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left? she said. And what people dont realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but its on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party.

Yet, she expressed frustration that her fellow Democrats havent been more candid about that. Its like were not allowed to talk about it, she said. Were not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does. I think I have created more room for dissent, and were learning to stretch our wings a little bit on the left.

Indeed, but try to avoid getting them clipped. At the risk of sounding like the pragmatic old man I am, I think Ocasio-Cortez should learn from her factions successes but avoid the hazards of overreach.

As the left-progressive Rev. Jesse Jackson preached to fellow Dems during his two presidential runs in the 1980s, It takes two wings to fly a left wing and a right wing. Right on, Reverend. Right on!

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Is the Democrats' big tent too big? - Lynchburg News and Advance