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Thursday, Nov 5, 6:30-8pm Election Zoom De-Brief, with Five New NM State Senators: Neomi Martinez Parra, Harold Pope, Pam Cordova, Carrie Hamblen, and Siah Correa Hemphill. Hopefully all five of these candidates will have won their races and will be readying for their first legislative session. They will be key votes in decriminalizing abortion, passing the Health Security Act, putting NM on a path to having a state public bank, and putting the Green Amendment on the ballot. You can meet them all, thank them for their effort ,and ask questions about their priorities and positions. Find out what will be possible with a fixed NM State Senate!
Click here to register for Nov. 5.
Tuesday, Dec. 1, 6:30 – 8 pm. Election Debrief and 2021 Legislative Agenda Review with Senate Floor Leader Peter Wirth and Speaker of the House Brian Egolf. We will discuss how the primaries and the general election have altered the Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate and what those changes mean for getting transformational legislation passed in 2021. We will also discuss the national election and what may have been a pretty chaotic November.
News In Brief: Three very different Briefs today. First, some very good news from South America — Bolivia was finally allowed to conduct an open election and the voters overwhelmingly restored Evo Morale’s party to power. If you are fuzzy on the details of what transpired a year ago, this is an uplifting piece. For even more good news, it is heartening to see labor stepping to the plate, developing plans for a general strike should Trump resist a smooth transition. The last piece should surprise none of us. The much touted COVID “CARE” act is exposed for being carefully constructed to benefit the most nimble and the best resourced of the “small” businesses seeking relief and as a result small, women-owned and people-of-color-owned businesses did not get much help. Shameful.
- From The Intercept: “Bolivians Return Evo Morales’s Party to Power One Year After a U.S.-Applauded Coup: Right-wing forces cheered by the U.S. tried to destroy one of Latin America’s most vibrant democracies. Voters just restored it.”
- From Truthout: “Labor Prepares for Last-Minute General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal Election“
- From Next City: “Damning Report Details How the Paycheck Protection Program Was Designed to Fail“
Election Update
Who Won the Debate?
I felt that Trump actually won this debate, mostly because he didn’t completely disintegrate. But the “mute” button was his friend as it contained his brutishness. Unfortunately, it did not prevent his serial lying. But both Roxanne and I felt Biden could have done a better job of stating clearly to Trump: “That is a lie.” But he didn’t.
After the debate, as Roxanne and I spoke more we realized one area where Trump failed miserably and that was in connecting with the audience. He spent almost all his time looking at Biden and when asked about COVID, he was utterly lacking in any compassion or empathy, just talking about how it came from China, about how we are just around the corner, and about how he beat it, completely oblivious to how his surviving the pandemic with all the medical expertise and treatment at his disposal would ring hollow with those who have lost someone to COVID.
One other parting thought from Roxanne: “Is this the best we can do in this country? We can’t come up with anything better than two 70+ white males as our choice for President?”
Who did you think won the debate? Do you think it will impact the race?
Who Is Leading in the Polls?
It is pretty hard to find polls that do not reflect the likelihood of a Biden victory. I only wish what all of you wish…that we could trust the damned polls. It is simply impossible to do so after 2016…and with so much at stake… enough said. But below is a summary from the NY Times. The numbers under 2016 and 2012 show what the result will be if the polls are as off as they were in those years. Roxanne thinks the polls were so off in 2016 because few people would admit they were voting for Trump. An unlikely issue this time around. The NYT generates the poll numbers from the rolling averages of 5 highly respected polling outfits. No time to stop working, friends. Remember 2016.
As for the Senate.
The most recent polls suggest that the Democrats will lose a seat in Alabama by a wide margin. But… most of the polls point to the Democrats flipping the Senate with very comfortable leads in AZ, CO, and ME, which would get us to 49 seats. Challengers are also leading in North Carolina, South Carolina (bye bye Lindsay Graham), Iowa, both races in Georgia, and within reach in Montana. If we grab just one of those and beat Trump, the Dems will control the Senate.
We can’t know the impact of what we do, but we have 11 days.There is no one to get this done but us folks. Links below.
- Election Strategy. Includes a brief description with links to the strategies below.
- GOTV Strategy. Simple strategy for reaching out to a couple dozen friends to ensure they have a plan to vote and to encourage them to reach out to a couple dozen of their friends to do the same thing;
- NM Legislative Races. Provides the priority races and contact info for how to help get some great candidates become legislators….most importantly, Neomi Martinez Parra….Here is a place where your involvement, just yours alone, could turn a close election. State legislative elections can be won or lost by a few dozen votes. Last night I heard from one of our Transformation Study Group members how he sends scores of texts each day. Another spoke of making calls for Neomi, with half of the calls being answered and leading to good conversations.
- National Races. With links to organizations who can direct you to swing states or key Senate races. They all need help.
That’s it for today. Frankly, I am out of steam and need the weekend to recoup for the week before election week. Yikes.
In solidarity & hope,
Paul
Categories: National Politics
I agree; Trump won this debate, but not by a lot. His Reality TV experienced kicked in, and Biden most of the time sounded and looked worn out. And yes, our existing political-economic system is geared to give us old white men for the “highest office in the land” (and much of the Congress). Further, if Joe, then its only back to Obama-land, which is hopefully only an interlude on path to what Bernie articulated as a much more equitable and just future.
As I understand the NYT’s method, they have adjusted the current poll values in the “If the polls were as wrong as they were in 2016” by the difference between the 2016 polls and the 2016 results. For example, Michigan’s polls were off by 4% in 2016, so perhaps Biden is not at +8%, but actually only at +4%. That’s unlikely, though, because the Rust Belt was under-sampled last time. This time everyone is polling the Midwest frequently.
How about Claudia Risner as a new NM Senator, in addition to the wonderful five mentioned?
Also, on stats on absentee and in-person early voting:
https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/f13b3107-e75e-4db1-8d44-c29bc6bd32de/page/k1EiB?s=jOzDeYPguLo
Can select by county. As residents of red Lincoln County, we were somewhat encouraged by the stats so far.
@Joyce – Yes, after the Indivisible Nob Hill New Mexico Blue Heat Wave Zoom call last night, I’m kind of concerned about Claudia Risner’s campaign. Any help there will be useful.
Some of the old political hands in the Zoom (everyone but me) noted that in New Mexico races, quite often campaigns don’t know how to best use their volunteers and their money. Maybe in 2021 we can come up with a NM campaigns best-practices manual.
I heard Biden say “That’s not true” multiple times during the pseudo debate. No one wins these.
https://www.politicususa.com/read-our-safe-news-rating
I posted the wrong link. It was a story about Biden winning the debate 59%
About election races in New Mexico: I’m worried about Amendment 1. Does anyone know of a way to campaign against it effectively?
Hi Paul. What is the sense or usefulness of asking who won something that was not part of a situation that involved winning or losing ‘something?’
We are asked and expected to take these ‘things’ on face value, if some ‘body’ calls ‘something’ a debate, well, that is what it is, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and more, ad infinitum.
This was, at a playground level, spit balling, using a cacophony of noise, to avoid any true interpretation of the ‘questions’ being asked by a very reliable and intelligent reporter. Once again, the public, exhausted from a plethora of crap spewed for years by each and every permutation of nonsensical idiot known to biota, was ‘extorted’ into forking over its payment to avoid being killed by being smothered by wads of wet paper churned around in the mouths of caricatures.
Neither man answered the question clearly, one because it could not fathom what the question meant, and the other because he could not comprehend why the question was asked in a debate where the other side could not comprehend the question, and despite the ‘mute’ button, which was NOT USED as advertised, he was interrupted and not allowed to extoll a single complete thought.
Why ask about a rigged scheme? Are we supposed to once again continue to ack like monkeys grabbing for a banana?
I tire, immensely and agonizingly, at this incessant jabberwocky of words about NOTHING of any import to the living biota of this planet. I would rather die in perihelion at the crash of a giant asteroid.
Mick Nickel
Frank Bruni’s column in the NYTimes about hte debate was excellent:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/opinion/debate-trump-biden-.html?smid=em-share
You can’t debate a sociopath and come out with a win. Biden was interviewed by Pod Save America today (Saturday, Oct 24) and he was honest, strong, passionate and articulate. He can do it – Trump is impossible.