InsideSources

The New York Times headline reads,  “A President Impeached, and a Nation Convulsed.”

But if you’re looking for evidence of a political convulsion — on either side of the aisle —  you’ll need a microscope.

The most newsworthy aspect of the “historic” impeachment of President Trump may be how little impact the “historic” event has had on American politics.

Supporters of President Trump have repeatedly pointed to the fact that Democrats have been urging Trump’s impeachment since he took office — and they’re right. A Democrat-backed website,ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow launched literally on Inauguration Day, 2017.

(“From the moment he assumed the office, President Trump has been in direct violation of the US Constitution,” the website reads.)

As Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noted on the Senate floor Thursday, Wednesday’s vote to impeach Trump wasn’t the Democrats’ first. It was their seventh. It’s just the first time they had a majority of members in support.

This impeachment vote was “the predetermined end of a partisan crusade that began before President Trump was even sworn in,” McConnell said.

There are more interesting data from early 2017: President Trump’s approval numbers. According to the data-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s approval average on Impeachment Day was identical to his support on March 16, 2017: 43.5 percent.

Three years of Russia investigations, twelve weeks of impeachment inquiry, hundreds of hours of speeches by politicians and mountains of negative media coverage, and the president’s standing with the voters is where it was back when he first took office. If the Democrats’ goal was to “find a way to bring Trump down” – and 59 percent of Americans believe it is, according to a Monmouth poll — they failed.

But that doesn’t mean President Trump should be popping the champagne corks, either. “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan Wednesday night as the votes were being cast. “I don’t know about you, but I’m having a good time.”

Perhaps. But a president who can’t get his approval rating above 45 percent still has plenty to worry about. While it’s true that a recent Suffolk poll found Trump beating all the Democrat front-runners in head-to-head match-ups, it’s also true that Trump trails former Vice President Joe Biden by about 5 points in the RealClearPolitics average, and loses to Biden in 47 out of the last 50 polls.

Yes, Trump’s approval has risen a bit — a “six-point surge” as his campaign calls it — since the impeachment inquiry, and yes, most Americans believe the Democrats are motivated by partisanship, not patriotism.  But those same polls show most Americans think President Trump did something wrong and deserved to be investigated, if not punished.

In fact, as bad as Congress’ poll numbers are (25 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove), they’ve also risen a bit since the impeachment inquiry began, as has Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s approval rating (39 percent approve, 49 percent disapprove).

Just days before the impeachment vote,  Pelosi told The New York Times, “My numbers are better than Trump’s. So if I’m not doing well, he’s doing worse.”

What’s actually happening, based on the polling data, is both politicians are getting higher and more intense support for their bases, while moderate, independent and less-engaged voters are shrugging off the whole impeachment fight.

“I was out talking to customers and vendors all day Wednesday, and you know how many mentioned impeachment to me? None,” Randall Bloomquist, a small business owner in the liberal-leaning Atlanta suburb of Decatur, GA told InsideSources. “It was all over the media, but not on the minds of my customers.”

According to the latest Suffolk poll, just 33 percent of independent voters support impeachment, while 46 percent oppose. And in a new Quinnipiac poll, only 28 percent of independents approve of how Congress is doing its job.

And while politicians and the press have talked nonstop about impeachment for months, when Suffolk asked voters to pick their priorities from a list of 12 issues, impeaching President Trump came in next to last at 19 percent — well behind the economy (53 percent), health care (48 percent) and immigration (40 percent).

Which is why many Americans simply tuned out. The week before the impeachment vote, more people watched a single episode of CBS’s “Magnum, P.I.” reboot than tuned into primetime programming on all three cable news networks combined.

“Why bother? They were always going to impeach him,” says Paul Norell, a sales executive and Trump supporter based in Dallas, Texas. “The Senate’s not going to throw him out of office, right? So what do I care?”

The net result of the over-hyped impeachment battle is that 40 percent of the country loves Trump, about 45 percent hate him, and the 2020 election will be won by whichever side does the best job of both motivating its base and bringing along the last five percent of persuadable voters.

Which is why the biggest news of the week may actually be Speaker Pelosi’s threat to stretch out the (seemingly-unending) process by refusing to send over the articles of impeachment for a Senate trial.

After years of investigations, charges and debates, the only thing the typical American voter hates more than impeachment are the words “more impeachment.”

This week a group of prominent anti-Trump Republicans announced the formation of a new super PAC, the Lincoln Project, with the explicit goal of defeating President Trump in 2020 and congressional Republicans who support him. And, they add, they are prepared to work with Democrats to do it.

In a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson wrote:

“Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.”

Daily activities of the new super PAC will be overseen by veteran GOP strategist Reed Galen and longtime New Hampshire GOP activist Jennifer Horn. A former two-term chairman of the NHGOP and a Republican candidate for Congress, Horn has been an outspoken opponent of President Trump since the 2016 campaign. InsideSources caught up with her and asked her about the new project.

IS: So why did you join the Lincoln Project?

HORN: There are multiple reasons. Of course, I believe very strongly it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing this for the same reason I ran for Congress and served as the chairman of the New Hampshire Party. I’ve spent years as a spokesperson for Republican values, like small government and defending the Constitution.  And Donald Trump doesn’t have a clue about what Republican values are.

I believe that what we’re doing here is being a voice for Lincoln, for Reagan, for all of those sound, conservative Republicans who’ve come before us.

And I firmly believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to our Republic. I believe that Mitch McConnell is leading the Senate Republicans into a constitutional crisis when he says that he’s going to manage the impeachment trial in complete coordination with the White House. They are supposed to be a separate and equal branch of government, and instead they are completely under Trump’s thumb.

IS: What would you say to the pro-Trump Republican who say “Look, we didn’t like the Bushes, we didn’t like Romney and we really didn’t like McCain, but we stuck with the party because Establishment Republicans like you said sometimes you have to back a candidate who’s not your first choice. But now that we’ve got a nominee who represents us, you Establishment types don’t like him and won’t accept him.” What’s your answer?

HORN: What I would say is that I was working for the Republican Party and Republican principles when Donald Trump was still donating to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. So I reject outright any comparison between Donald Trump and Republicans like George Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney. I would say to those Republicans that our party has always said that in addition to our political principles and policies, we are the party that defends the Constitution and believes that character matters, that we must have integrity in our leaders.

 

IS: So what, specifically, is the Lincoln Project trying to accomplish? According to reports, you’re targeting Trump supporters in Congress, is that right?

HORN: That’s correct. Our goal is to both educate voters and hold Trump-supporting Republicans accountable. They have abandoned their oath of office. Our priority geographically is Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine, Colorado and Arizona. New Hampshire is a swing state, our four electoral college votes are very important, so we may play there as well.

IS: So when you say Maine, you mean Sen. Susan Collins. There’s one Republican left in all of New England who’s still in the federal legislature, and you’re targeting her?

HORN: Collins has a reputation for being an independent voice, for standing firm and standing up for what’s right. And we are very much hoping she will do their thing. She is one of the senators who has refused to take a public position on impeachment, distancing herself from McConnell’s debacle of a statement the other day. And so we are hopeful that she will stand for the Constitution and do the right thing.

IS: And the right thing is voting the president out of office?

HORN: Yes.

IS: And if she votes against removing President Trump from office, or casts a vote to end the impeachment process…

HORN: She will be a target, yes.

IS: And what do you, Jennifer Horn, hope to accomplish with the Lincoln Project?

HORN: I know this sounds corny, but it is absolutely true:  I believe that history will remember where Republicans stood in this moment. I believe President Trump is an existential threat to the Republic and I believe that history will not look kindly on those who were silent in the face of a weak and cowardly president. I haven’t moved from my conservative principles. I’m still pro-life, pro-second-amendment, pro-small government, and Trump isn’t really any of those things.

And so I will not be bullied out of the Republican Party because I continue to stand on Republican values when so many in our party refuse to.

You cannot be for the Constitution, for our Republican principles, and for Donald Trump. It is simply not possible.

After months of avoiding questions about his views on impeachment, Rep. Chris Pappas took to the friendly media environs of New Hampshire Public Radio to discuss his support for impeaching President Trump and removing him from office.

Unfortunately, a few significant questions somehow slipped through the cracks. We here at New Hampshire Journal have sent them over to Rep. Pappas’ office. When we get his answers, we’ll be happy to share them with the voters of the First Congressional District.

 

1: Rep. Pappas, you said these impeachment articles represent “a very strong, clear-cut case with respect to the issue of Ukraine.” A clear-cut case of what? Neither article of impeachment alleges President Trump broke the law. Do you believe future Democratic presidents should face the prospect of removal from office by a Republican Congress without even the assertion of having violated any federal law?

2: Rep. Pappas, you’re supporting articles of impeachment that have no bipartisan support. In fact, even some of your fellow House Democrats are voting against impeachment. Do you view an entirely partisan impeachment vote to be as legitimate as a bipartisan one, such as the 410-4 vote in 1973 to start an impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon?

 

 

3: When the House of Representatives voted articles of impeachment in 1998, 31 Democrats joined with Republicans to impeach President Bill Clinton, who admitted that he had committed perjury before a federal judge and federal grand jury. Rep. Pappas, do you believe the impeachment of President Clinton was legitimate? Would you have voted to impeach him?  If not, why?

4: Rep. Pappas, you said you objected to Senate Republicans coordinating the handling of the impeachment trial with the White House, calling it “colluding.” But then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has acknowledged that he frequently met with the Clinton White House during the impeachment process. And the Clinton White House issued demands that there be no witnesses called during the impeachment, a demand upheld by the Democratic minority in the Senate.  Should Republican presidents be impeached differently from Democrats?

5: Rep. Pappas, you rejected the suggestion that your support for impeachment is a sign that you’re merely a water carrier for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and your party’s leadership. “I’m also willing to stand up to members of my own party when they’re wrong for New Hampshire,” you told NHPR.  Can you give an example?

 

And a bonus question, the same question New Hampshire Journal’s been asking the congressman since he first announced his support for an impeachment inquiry in July:

Rep. Pappas, what is your message to the majority of voters in your district, who voted to make Trump president and whose votes you’d be overruling by removing Trump from office?

We look forward to sharing Rep. Pappas’ answers to these reasonable and timely questions in this space.

The only question NH political observers have about Chris Pappas’ announcement that he’ll vote to impeach President Donald Trump is what took him so long?

Sticking with his fellow Democrats was always the smart play for Pappas, one of the 31 Democrats in Congress representing a district Trump carried in 2016. While polls show swing voters tend to oppose impeachment and removal of President Trump — and that opposition is rising — for Pappas there’s simply no upside to breaking with his party leadership and going rogue.

“Voting against impeachment won’t get him a single Republican vote, and voting for it won’t cost him a single Democrat,” one NH Democratic insider told NHJournal. “Pappas was always going to vote this way.”

That certainly appeared to be the case in July when Pappas became the first Democrat from a Trump district to back the impeachment inquiry. It was an unusually aggressive move from the reputedly mild-mannered congressman, one that left some NH Democrats puzzled.

Was Pappas going to aggressively embrace the impeachment push?

Instead, the congressman quickly dropped the subject, refusing months of requests for comment and leaving the impeachment topic out of his public statements and social media, even as the debate raged in Washington, D.C. and on the front pages of New Hampshire’s newspapers.

Sunday night, with the impeachment vote looming and most Granite Staters watching the NFL, Pappas posted a statement on his website announcing his decision.

“I have reviewed the articles and the underlying evidence and testimony very closely. I have heard from constituents on all sides of this issue. Ultimately, this comes down to the facts, the Constitution, and my conscience,” according to the statement. “What the President has done is blatantly wrong, and I will not stand idly by when a President compromises the rule of law and our national security for his own personal political benefit.

“I will support both articles when they come to the floor for a vote. The President abused the powers of his office and obstructed Congress as it sought to put facts on the table for the American people and hold him accountable,” Pappas wrote. “Our nation’s founders created a government with shared powers and co-equal branches of government. They gave us the presidency — not a monarchy.

“They created a system where no one is above the law, even the President of the United States. If Congress does not act in this case where bright Constitutional lines have been crossed, we dishonor the wisdom of our founders and undermine the institutions of our democracy.”

A new Suffolk Poll released Sunday finds that only 41 percent of Americans say House members should vote to impeach Trump. Independent voters, who will determine Pappas’ fate next November, oppose a House impeachment vote by an 11-point margin, 52-41 percent.

The NHGOP and the Trump campaign immediately went on the attack.

Trump ally and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told NHJournal, “Chris Pappas’s vote for impeachment is in direct conflict with the people of the First Congressional District who voted to elect Donald J. Trump President.

“Congressman Pappas has sold his vote to appease AOC, Rashid Tlaib and the extreme left of the Democrat party.  I predict he will be a one-term Congressman because NH voters don’t support a ‘Do-Nothing Democrat’ who has accomplished nothing while in Washington, D.C.”

Other GOP sources tell NHJournal internal polling shows voting for impeachment is unpopular among NH-01 voters, and they believe it creates an opportunity to take back a seat they lost in 2016.

“Chris Pappas just let down all those in the First District who want a Congress that works for them, not for the far-left Democrat base. Coming out in favor of impeaching the President on a Sunday night after weeks of lackluster Democrat circus hearings in D.C. is disgraceful,” NHGOP chairman Steve Stepanek said in a statement. “Congressman Pappas clearly didn’t listen to Granite Staters when making his decision, and voters will swiftly replace him on November 3rd.”

RNC Spokesperson Nina McLaughlin said, “Chris Pappas’ choice to support the impeachment sham is the ultimate betrayal of his constituents. Granite Staters won’t forget that Pappas chose Nancy Pelosi and the socialist squad over them.”

Pappas joins fellow NH Democrat Rep. Annie Kuster in publicly announcing his support for impeachment, and both U.S. senators, Democrats Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, are expected to vote to remove Trump from office when the impeachment comes to the Senate floor next year.

Interestingly, even in announcing his decision, Pappas declined yet again to answer the same, simple question: What’s his message to the majority of voters in his district who backed President Trump in 2016 and whose vote he’s now attempting to overturn?

His inability to answer is yet another sign of how tricky the impeachment issue is for swing-district Democrats like Pappas.

Rush Limbaugh could hardly contain his excitement. “We’ve got three polls today showing Donald Trump at 30 percent or higher with black voters,” he told his national radio audience on Monday. “We’ve got Emerson, we’ve got Rasmussen and we’ve got Marist!”

Rush was echoing a Trump 2020 campaign email entitled “Black Voters Are Raising Their Voices in Support of President Trump. Recent Polls Show Significant Increase in Support from Black Community.”

“You can’t dispute the fact that African Americans have been benefiting from President Trump’s policies,” Katrina Pierson with the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Four years ago, the President asked the black community, ‘What do you have to lose;’ now we are thinking, ‘Imagine what we stand to gain!’”

The new Emerson poll puts Trump at 35 percent with black voters and 38 percent with Hispanics. “If you add in Asian voters at 28 percent approval,” notes Emerson’s director of polling Spencer Kimball, “our number is very close to the new Marist poll,” which finds Trump’s approval at 33 percent among non-white voters.  A recent RasmussenReports poll has Trump support among black voters at 34 percent, and even the new CNN poll has Trump’s approval among non-white voters at 26 percent.

Why is losing black voters by a two-to-one margin something to shout about? Because if Donald Trump came anywhere close to those numbers on Election Day, he’d likely win a 50-state sweep. Minority voters–and black voters in particular– are an absolutely vital part of the Democratic base. And they don’t vote for Republicans, particularly for president.

Over the past 40 years, black voter support for Republican presidential candidates has consistently registered somewhere between “embarrassingly low” and “nonexistent.”  Running for re-election with a red-hot economy, President Reagan got just 9 percent of the African-American vote in 1984. That’s the same 9 percent GOP presidential candidates averaged ever since, according to data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

In his 2012 race against President Obama, Republican Mitt Romney got just 6 percent support from black voters. John McCain? Four percent.

Enter Donald Trump. His 8 percent support in 2016 was typical for a GOP candidate, but there’s been nothing typical about the Trump presidency. Could these new polls be a sign he’s making progress with voters of color where a traditional Republican could not?

“Absolutely,” says John Burnett, a strategic advisor to the New York GOP and an African-American Republican.

“Trump is the wedding crasher,” Burnett told NHJournal. And while Democrats have a longtime relationship with African-American voters, Burnett says “they never really sealed the deal. Now Trump has shown up at the ceremony and he’s telling us, ‘You can do better!'”

Is 30 percent support among black voters for Trump really impossible?

“I have a better chance of jumping center for the Celtics tonight than Donald Trump having 30 percent support in the African-American community,” former Hillary 2016 advisor Joel Payne, who is African-American, told NHJournal.  “Donald Trump’s presidency is an existential crisis for the African-American community and I would predict historically-low African-American support for him next November.”

CNN’s anti-Trump host Ana Navarro-Cárdenas went even further. “Zero chance this is accurate. Zero,” she tweeted. “The poll must have only been conducted in the homes of Ben Carson, Kanye, that sheriff guy with the hat and those two Cubic Zirconia & Polyester-Spandex ladies.” (She’s referring to former Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke and African-American Fox News personalities Diamond & Silk.)

And it’s true that these polls are contradicted by data from Gallup and Quinnipiac University, where Trump’s numbers among black voters remain both steady and unimpressive.

“Trump clearly thinks he should be improving on the 8 percent vote among blacks he received three years ago,” writes Gallup’s senior scientist Frank Newport. “Based on what we see so far in terms of black ratings of the job Trump is doing as president, currently at 10 percent, I don’t see a high probability of that happening.”

And it may not.  But the non-traditional nature of the Trump presidency combined with his overt efforts to engage black voters means Democrats may have to change their math.  From Kanye West’s Oval Office photo op to the campaign’s “Black Voices for Trump” coalition to a focus on historically black colleges and universities, Donald Trump is reaching out to African-American voters more aggressively than any Republican president in recent years.

Meanwhile, some black activists are stepping up, too. African-American conservatives Autry Pruitt and James Golden — better known as Rush Limbaugh’s senior producer ‘Bo Snerdly’ — just launched a new website, MAGA.BLACK, with the self-declared mission to “Make Black Americans Republican Again.”

Golden, aka ‘Snerdley,’ told InsideSources that Democrats aren’t having a conversation that’s connecting with black voters. “My mother is a die-hard Democrat, and even she is sick of the Democrats’ impeachment efforts. She’s not paying any attention to it. She recently told me her party should stop picking on Trump and let the man do his job.”

Democrats may be right about talk of 30 percent of black voters backing Trump being unrealistic. But if Trump gets half that support, his re-election would be all but assured. According to research reported by the Washington Post, Trump’s 2016 win was aided in part by a national drop in black turnout of just 4.7 points from 2012. In the swing states, black turnout fell a modest 5.3 percent.

Are black voters who stayed home rather than back Hillary Clinton really going to turn out for a Pete Buttigieg or Liz Warren?  If low unemployment and investment in education convince just 5 percent of black voters to cast their first GOP ballot, or (more likely) stay home, how do Democrats make up for those lost votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Jacksonville?

Critics at CNN can mock Trump’s high-profile black supporters like Kanye, but Golden believes that’s a mistake. “Kanye isn’t alone. There are more African Americans speaking out now than at any other time I remember.”

Maybe just enough to re-elect Donald Trump.

Rush Limbaugh could hardly contain his excitement. “We’ve got three polls today showing Donald Trump at 30 percent or higher with black voters,” he told his national radio audience on Monday. “We’ve got Emerson, we’ve got Rasmussen and we’ve got Marist!”

Rush was echoing a Trump 2020 campaign email entitled “Black Voters Are Raising Their Voices in Support of President Trump. Recent Polls Show Significant Increase in Support from Black Community.”

“You can’t dispute the fact that African Americans have been benefiting from President Trump’s policies,” Katrina Pierson with the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Four years ago, the President asked the black community, ‘What do you have to lose;’ now we are thinking, ‘Imagine what we stand to gain!’”

The new Emerson poll puts Trump at 35 percent with black voters and 38 percent with Hispanics. “If you add in Asian voters at 28 percent approval,” notes Emerson’s director of polling Spencer Kimball, “our number is very close to the new Marist poll,” which finds Trump’s approval at 33 percent among non-white voters.  A recent RasmussenReports poll has Trump support among black voters at 34 percent, and even the new CNN poll has Trump’s approval among non-white voters at 26 percent.

Why is losing black voters by a two-to-one margin something to shout about? Because if Donald Trump came anywhere close to those numbers on Election Day, he’d likely win a 50-state sweep. Minority voters — and black voters in particular — are an absolutely vital part of the Democratic base. And they don’t vote for Republicans, particularly for president.

Over the past 40 years, black voter support for Republican presidential candidates has consistently registered somewhere between “embarrassingly low” and “nonexistent.”  Running for re-election with a red-hot economy, President Reagan got just 9 percent of the African-American vote in 1984. That’s the same 9 percent GOP presidential candidates averaged ever since, according to data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

In his 2012 race against President Obama, Republican Mitt Romney got just 6 percent support from black voters. John McCain? Four percent.

Enter Donald Trump. His 8 percent support in 2016 was typical for a GOP candidate, but there’s been nothing typical about the Trump presidency. Could these new polls be a sign he’s making progress with voters of color where a traditional Republican could not?

“Absolutely,” says John Burnett, a strategic advisor to the New York GOP and an African-American Republican.

“Trump is the wedding crasher,” Burnett told InsideSources. And while Democrats have a longtime relationship with African-American voters, Burnett says “they never really sealed the deal. Now Trump has shown up at the ceremony and he’s telling us, ‘You can do better!'”

Is 30 percent support among black voters for Trump really impossible?

“I have a better chance of jumping center for the Celtics tonight than Donald Trump having 30 percent support in the African-American community,” former Hillary 2016 advisor Joel Payne, who is African-American, told InsideSources.  “Donald Trump’s presidency is an existential crisis for the African-American community and I would predict historically-low African-American support for him next November.”

CNN’s anti-Trump host Ana Navarro-Cárdenas went even further. “Zero chance this is accurate. Zero,” she tweeted. “The poll must have only been conducted in the homes of Ben Carson, Kanye, that sheriff guy with the hat and those two Cubic Zirconia & Polyester-Spandex ladies.” (She’s referring to former Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke and African-American Fox News personalities Diamond & Silk.)

And it’s true that these polls are contradicted by data from Gallup and Quinnipiac University, where Trump’s numbers among black voters remain both steady and unimpressive.

“Trump clearly thinks he should be improving on the 8 percent vote among blacks he received three years ago,” writes Gallup’s senior scientist Frank Newport. “Based on what we see so far in terms of black ratings of the job Trump is doing as president, currently at 10 percent, I don’t see a high probability of that happening.”

And it may not.  But the non-traditional nature of the Trump presidency combined with his overt efforts to engage black voters means Democrats may have to change their math.  From Kanye West’s Oval Office photo op to the campaign’s “Black Voices for Trump” coalition to a focus on historically black colleges and universities, Donald Trump is reaching out to African-American voters more aggressively than any Republican president in recent years.

Meanwhile, some black activists are stepping up, too. African-American conservatives Autry Pruitt and James Golden — better known as Rush Limbaugh’s senior producer ‘Bo Snerdly’ — just launched a new website, MAGA.BLACK, with the self-declared mission to “Make Black Americans Republican Again.”

Golden, aka ‘Snerdley,’ told InsideSources that Democrats aren’t having a conversation that’s connecting with black voters. “My mother is a die-hard Democrat, and even she is sick of the Democrats’ impeachment efforts. She’s not paying any attention to it. She recently told me her party should stop picking on Trump and let the man do his job.”

Democrats may be right about talk of 30 percent of black voters backing Trump being unrealistic. But if Trump gets half that support, his re-election would be all but assured. According to research reported by the Washington Post, Trump’s 2016 win was aided in part by a national drop in black turnout of just 4.7 points from 2012. In the swing states, black turnout fell a modest 5.3 percent.

Are black voters who stayed home rather than back Hillary Clinton really going to turn out for a Pete Buttigieg or Liz Warren?  If low unemployment and investment in education convince just 5 percent of black voters to cast their first GOP ballot, or (more likely) stay home, how do Democrats make up for those lost votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Jacksonville?

Critics at CNN can mock Trump’s high-profile black supporters like Kanye, but Golden believes that’s a mistake. “Kanye isn’t alone. There are more African Americans speaking out now than at any other time I remember.”

Maybe just enough to re-elect Donald Trump.

When your iPhone or Android phone dies or goes on the fritz, do you buy a new phone?

If you do, that’s exactly what smartphone manufacturers want you to do — and that’s why they make it so hard for you to fix your phone yourself.

Manufacturers like Apple, Google, Samsung and others say you’re not allowed to fix your phone yourself because (for example) if you change your phone battery incorrectly, you could blow up yourself and a whole bus full of people.

Instead, Apple and other manufacturers want you to either take your broken phone to one of their own licensed professionals — where you’ll pay an arm and a leg just to get it working again — or just buy a new, thousand-dollar phone.

Most people buy a new phone.

But consumers are fed up with the status quo, and now 20 states are looking at bills that would grant consumers the “right to repair” anything from their smartphones to their farming equipment.

2020 presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both list Right-to-Repair laws as part of their platforms, and the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hosted a workshop over the summer to discuss Right-to-Repair solutions for consumers.

“The FTC didn’t question IF repair is being monopolized — they asked why [manufacturers] were so determined to monopolize and what they should do about it,” the Repair Association said after the workshop.

Kay-Kay Clapp, director of communications at iFixit, an online community and advocacy group that shares guides, tips and tricks for repairing smartphones, laptops and cameras among other devices, said there’s been a huge surge in the Right-to-Repair movement over the last two years.

In 2017, only 12 states were exploring Right-to-Repair laws. Now there are 20.

“This is really a bipartisan issue, everybody wants to fix their stuff. A lot of folks are used to having a repair manual shipped with their devices,” Clapp told InsideSources.

The concept behind Right-to-Repair really began in 2012, when Massachusetts passed a law granting car owners the right to repair their cars. Every other state followed suit, but now consumers want the right to repair their phones and their tractors.

“Farmers rely on their equipment and if it breaks they have to fix it really quickly, and because of the law, they have to go to John Deere, the manufacturer,” Clapp said. “And they don’t have the diagnostic access to fix their equipment themselves. It’s very similar with your smartphone. Consumers don’t have access to the OEM parts, tools and software that manufactures do.”

Because smartphone manufacturers don’t make phone parts and user manuals accessible to anyone outside the company, it’s extremely difficult — almost impossible — for a consumer to fix her phone without going directly to Apple or Google.

Clapp thinks if states codify Right-to-Repair, the repair industry will rapidly expand, resulting in more new jobs within the service economy.

Consumer Reports, a consumer advocacy group, argues that Right-to-Repair laws would not only help consumers, but also small businesses who don’t have time or the profit margins to ship electronic equipment like phones or laptops to the manufacturer for repairs. For many small businesses, losing that time and money hurts their business.

Because repairs are so costly and inconvenient, most consumers just throw away their phones instead of fixing them, which allows smartphone manufacturers to sell more phones and keep revenue streams flowing while simultaneously creating more waste and less cost efficiency for consumers.

Some electronics manufacturers try to stop independent repairs by revoking consumers’ warranties if they use other parts or repair services other than the manufacturer’s. But in 2018, the FTC issued a warning to electronics manufacturers that conditional warranties based on consumers’ use of non-branded parts or independent repairs is illegal.

The independent repair industry is also growing rapidly, so now manufacturers are lobbying states to drop Right-to-Repair bills, according to reports from Pew Charitable Trusts and Motherboard.

“Pretty much every major smartphone maker is lobbying against these bills,” Clapp said.

Just this week, the New Hampshire Assembly sent a Right-to-Repair bill back to the drawing board. In an op-ed for the New Hampshire Business Review, the executive director of a tech trade association decried Right-to-Repair as “dangerous” and argued that manufacturers only want consumers to be “safe.”

“Repairing today’s consumer electronics is a very complex issue,” the Security Innovation Center’s Dusty Brighton wrote. “Manufacturers have created a system of checks and balances that enables consumers to have their products fixed while also knowing technicians are being held accountable. As New Hampshire legislators examine the repair issue, we strongly caution policymakers to resist unwarranted intervention with mandates that compromise consumer privacy, safety and security.”

Josh Zecher, of the Security Innovation Center, told InsideSources in an email that manufacturers worry that Right-to-Repair adds more risk to the repair process.

“This is a complex issue that extends far beyond the stated intent of the legislation to provide access to parts, tools, technical manuals, and software,” he said. “There is absolutely nothing in the proposed legislation that makes consumers more safer or secure – or even holds independent repairers accountable.”

To appease the movement, Apple recently launched a repair program that grants a limited number of independent repair shops access to Apple parts, diagnostics and manuals.

“That was a huge concession on Apple’s part,” Clapp said, but they can still control who gets into the program and can “charge whatever they want.”

Editor’s Note: This piece was updated at 8:30 a.m. October 25 to include comments from Josh Zecher of the Security Innovation Center.

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He was 6 feet tall and had an athlete’s build. He played football in high school and was active in sports throughout college. He spent one summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.

But after he graduated college in the spring of 1968 and became eligible for the draft and —possibly — combat duty in Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that let him avoid military service.

No, not bone spurs. Asthma.

And his name was Joe Biden.

Just a few months before President Donald Trump received his now-infamous diagnosis of “bone spurs in the heels,” former high school football star Biden got the same 1-Y draft deferment for “asthma as a teenager.” It was one of five deferments Biden received (the same number as notorious GOP “draft dodger” Dick Cheney) and allowed him to avoid being drafted at the height of the war. The year 1968 was one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam conflict with 296,406 Americans drafted into military service — the second-highest during the war.

Fifty-one years after the Summer of Love, the draft records of the sitting president, and at least one of the Democrats who want to replace him, are issues in the 2020 campaign.  In recent weeks, two of the military veterans in the race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — have been highlighting Trump’s draft record and their own military service.

“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg told ABC’s This Week. He served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.

Moulton, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq, also accused Trump of dodging the draft. “I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,” Moulton said. “I hope he’s still alive.”

Military veterans running on their record of service is nothing new. And criticism of an opponent’s military background — or lack thereof — isn’t unusual either, as the Bill Clinton and John Kerry campaigns can attest. But by highlighting Trump’s record, they’re also turning a spotlight on other candidates who were eligible for service during the Vietnam War, including Biden.

In fact, some Democratic strategists believe that’s their true goal.

“They’re not talking about Donald Trump. They’re talking about Joe Biden,” one long-time Democratic activist told InsideSources.

The Moulton campaign, which was the first to highlight the draft issue, denies any intra-party purpose. “Seth is running to take on Donald Trump and has been leading the field in challenging him directly as commander-in-chief,” Moulton campaign spokesperson Matt Corridoni told InsideSources. “There’s nothing more to read into this than Trump is a draft dodger and Seth is a decorated four-tour combat veteran who is calling the president out.”

The Biden and Buttigieg campaigns declined repeated requests for comment. But it’s naïve to think that raising the issue of Trump’s Vietnam-era behavior isn’t going to blow back on Biden.

DID BIDEN DODGE THE DRAFT?

There’s no denying that, by all appearances, the Joe Biden of 1968 was the picture of health.  During his time at Archmere Academy, Biden excelled at sports.  And while he once falsely claimed he played for the University of Delaware football team, he considered playing on the team (he chose to focus on his double-major in history and political science instead, he says) and he was active in intramural sports.

As the Associated Press noted in 2008, “Promises to Keep,” Biden’s best-selling memoir,  “never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.”

 

Video of Joe Biden playing football as a teen

Biden frequently tells the story of his decision to spend a summer home from college working as the only white lifeguard at a pool predominately used by black residents. His goal was to learn more about the community, in part because he already had political ambitions.

One incident from that summer stands out: How Biden had to wrap a six-foot length of metal chain around his arm to face off against a knife-wielding local tough who went by the name “Corn Pop.”

“You might cut me, Corn Pop, but I’m going to wrap this chain around your head before you do,” Biden told him. Strong words, but he was a healthy, high school football player who could back them up. Biden and Corn Pop resolved their differences without violence and, according to Biden, became poolside friends.

Just six years later, at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, that same poolside athlete avoided mandatory military service due to “asthma as a teenager.”

Does this prove that Biden was dishonest or made a false claim? No. But a similar story from Donald Trump was enough for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D- Wis.), who was wounded while serving in Iraq,  to label President Trump a “coward.”

“@realDonaldTrump got his deferments for the wrong thing. They shouldn’t have been for his disappearing, imaginary bone spurs — they should have been for that yellow streak down his back. At least that would have been a real condition,” Duckworth tweeted on Wednesday.

Based on the lack of media coverage and interviews with Democratic primary voters, it appears that few potential Biden supporters even know about his draft deferments. And even if they did, would it matter?

“The Vietnam War is ancient history in the Democratic Party,” veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told InsideSources.  “The war was unpopular then and it’s unpopular now. The idea that someone didn’t want to go or [like Sen. Bernie Sanders] was a conscientious objector, that’s not going to keep them from winning the nomination.”

And a new Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered Democrats found that more than half didn’t believe it was important for their party’s nominee to be a veteran. Only a third of Democrats said military service by their nominee was important at all.

The question is particularly problematic for Blake Bassett, an Army veteran and co-founder of Veterans for Joe Biden. Bassett told InsideSources his group is unaffiliated with the Biden campaign and that he started it after seeing a photo of Biden giving money to a homeless veteran at a Washington, D.C. movie theater.

“I really thought it showed strength of character, and I knew he was thinking about running for office, so we created the organization in the hopes that we could somehow influence that in a small way,” Bassett said. “And we have since been trying to bolster the support amongst the veteran community for Joe Biden.”

And what about the “strength of character” in 1968? What would Bassett say to someone questioning Biden’s decision not to serve?

“I would say that there are a lot of different ways to serve, right? Going to Vietnam is one of them.  Teaching America’s youth is another. And running for office and implementing policies that are for the greater good, that’s another way to serve.

“Joe Biden is a very strong advocate of the military and veterans, despite having not served,” Bassett said.

Combat medic and former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives Amelia Keane is more direct.

“I certainly don’t agree with someone taking a deferment and to avoid service to their country, particularly when they have aims of public service at the time,” she told InsideSources. “They should do their full duty to the country, and if there is a draft, they should make every effort to serve their time just like other Americans had to do.”

Until recently Keane was head of the influential New Hampshire Young Democrats, who’ve been wooed by the young military veterans in the race like Buttigieg, Moulton and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.  At the same time, military issues have thus far taken a back seat to both economic issues like Medicare For All and social issues like abortion.

And Shrum adds one more data point to ponder:

“No Vietnam veteran has ever been elected President of the United States.”

He was 6 feet tall and had an athlete’s build. He played football in high school and was active in sports throughout college. He spent one summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.

But after he graduated college in the spring of 1968 and became eligible for the draft and —possibly — combat duty in Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that let him avoid military service.

No, not bone spurs. Asthma.

And his name was Joe Biden.

Just a few months before President Donald Trump received his now-infamous diagnosis of “bone spurs in the heels,” former high school football star Biden got the same 1-Y draft deferment for “asthma as a teenager.” It was one of five deferments Biden received (the same number as notorious GOP “draft dodger” Dick Cheney) and allowed him to avoid being drafted at the height of the war. The year 1968 was one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam conflict with 296,406 Americans drafted into military service — the second-highest during the war.

Fifty-one years after the Summer of Love, the draft records of the sitting president, and at least one of the Democrats who want to replace him, are issues in the 2020 campaign.  In recent weeks, two of the military veterans in the race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — have been highlighting Trump’s draft record and their own military service.

“You have somebody who thinks it’s all right to have somebody go in his place into a deadly war and is willing to pretend to be disabled to do it. That is an assault on the honor of this country,” Buttigieg told ABC’s This Week. He served in the Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, spending six months in Afghanistan.

Moulton, a former Marine officer who served in Iraq, also accused Trump of dodging the draft. “I’d like to meet that American someday who went to Vietnam in Donald Trump’s place,” Moulton said. “I hope he’s still alive.”

Military veterans running on their record of service is nothing new. And criticism of an opponent’s military background — or lack thereof — isn’t unusual either, as the Bill Clinton and John Kerry campaigns can attest. But by highlighting Trump’s record, they’re also turning a spotlight on other candidates who were eligible for service during the Vietnam War, including Biden.

In fact, some Democratic strategists believe that’s their true goal.

“They’re not talking about Donald Trump. They’re talking about Joe Biden,” one long-time Democratic activist told InsideSources.

The Moulton campaign, which was the first to highlight the draft issue, denies any intra-party purpose. “Seth is running to take on Donald Trump and has been leading the field in challenging him directly as commander-in-chief,” Moulton campaign spokesperson Matt Corridoni told InsideSources. “There’s nothing more to read into this than Trump is a draft dodger and Seth is a decorated four-tour combat veteran who is calling the president out.”

The Biden and Buttigieg campaigns declined repeated requests for comment. But it’s naïve to think that raising the issue of Trump’s Vietnam-era behavior isn’t going to blow back on Biden.

DID BIDEN DODGE THE DRAFT?

There’s no denying that, by all appearances, the Joe Biden of 1968 was the picture of health.  During his time at Archmere Academy, Biden excelled at sports.  And while he once falsely claimed he played for the University of Delaware football team, he considered playing on the team (he chose to focus on his double-major in history and political science instead, he says) and he was active in intramural sports.

As the Associated Press noted in 2008, “Promises to Keep,” Biden’s best-selling memoir,  “never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school.”

 

Video of Joe Biden playing football as a teen

Biden frequently tells the story of his decision to spend a summer home from college working as the only white lifeguard at a pool predominately used by black residents. His goal was to learn more about the community, in part because he already had political ambitions.

One incident from that summer stands out: How Biden had to wrap a six-foot length of metal chain around his arm to face off against a knife-wielding local tough who went by the name “Corn Pop.”

“You might cut me, Corn Pop, but I’m going to wrap this chain around your head before you do,” Biden told him. Strong words, but he was a healthy, high school football player who could back them up. Biden and Corn Pop resolved their differences without violence and, according to Biden, became poolside friends.

Just six years later, at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, that same poolside athlete avoided mandatory military service due to “asthma as a teenager.”

Does this prove that Biden was dishonest or made a false claim? No. But a similar story from Donald Trump was enough for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D- Wis.), who was wounded while serving in Iraq,  to label President Trump a “coward.”

“@realDonaldTrump got his deferments for the wrong thing. They shouldn’t have been for his disappearing, imaginary bone spurs — they should have been for that yellow streak down his back. At least that would have been a real condition,” Duckworth tweeted on Wednesday.

Based on the lack of media coverage and interviews with Democratic primary voters, it appears that few potential Biden supporters even know about his draft deferments. And even if they did, would it matter?

“The Vietnam War is ancient history in the Democratic Party,” veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told InsideSources.  “The war was unpopular then and it’s unpopular now. The idea that someone didn’t want to go or [like Sen. Bernie Sanders] was a conscientious objector, that’s not going to keep them from winning the nomination.”

And a new Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered Democrats found that more than half didn’t believe it was important for their party’s nominee to be a veteran. Only a third of Democrats said military service by their nominee was important at all.

The question is particularly problematic for Blake Bassett, an Army veteran and co-founder of Veterans for Joe Biden. Bassett told InsideSources his group is unaffiliated with the Biden campaign and that he started it after seeing a photo of Biden giving money to a homeless veteran at a Washington, D.C. movie theater.

“I really thought it showed strength of character, and I knew he was thinking about running for office, so we created the organization in the hopes that we could somehow influence that in a small way,” Bassett said. “And we have since been trying to bolster the support amongst the veteran community for Joe Biden.”

And what about the “strength of character” in 1968? What would Bassett say to someone questioning Biden’s decision not to serve?

“I would say that there are a lot of different ways to serve, right? Going to Vietnam is one of them.  Teaching America’s youth is another. And running for office and implementing policies that are for the greater good, that’s another way to serve.

“Joe Biden is a very strong advocate of the military and veterans, despite having not served,” Bassett said.

Combat medic and former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives Amelia Keane is more direct.

“I certainly don’t agree with someone taking a deferment and to avoid service to their country, particularly when they have aims of public service at the time,” she told InsideSources. “They should do their full duty to the country, and if there is a draft, they should make every effort to serve their time just like other Americans had to do.”

Until recently Keane was head of the influential New Hampshire Young Democrats, who’ve been wooed by the young military veterans in the race like Buttigieg, Moulton and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.  At the same time, military issues have thus far taken a back seat to both economic issues like Medicare For All and social issues like abortion.

And Shrum adds one more data point to ponder:

“No Vietnam veteran has ever been elected President of the United States.”