• Enumerati

  26,849

  “Contest Every Race, a new coalition of Democratic groups, is launching a seven-figure campaign to challenge Republican incumbents in 26,849 down-ballot local races,” Axios reports. “2020 is more than just the presidential election. Democrats are getting serious about trying to gain more power at the local level, whether through city council seats, school boards, or state legislatures. … There are 520,000 elected offices in the country. As many as 75% go uncontested, per the group, ceding many of those seats to Republicans.”

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• Enumerati

  1 million

  One million people have donated to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, Politico reports. He is the first candidate to announce reaching that milestone.

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• Enumerati

  40%

  Washington Post: “College students across the United States more than doubled their rate of voting between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, according to a study published Thursday by Tufts University — a dramatic spike in political engagement that could draw unprecedented attention to these voters in next year’s presidential election. … The study found that 40% of students who are eligible to vote cast ballots last year, up from 19% in 2014.”

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• Enumerati

  59%

  A new Fox News poll finds 59% of voters are extremely interested in the 2020 presidential election. That’s 27 points higher than around this same time in the last presidential cycle — and only one point off the record 60% extremely interested the week before Election Day in 2008.

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• Enumerati

  50% to 41%

  A new Democracy Corps (D) survey finds the leading Democratic presidential candidates all defeating President Trump in a general election match up. Joe Biden leads Trump by 50% to 41%, while Elizabeth Warren leads by 48% to 41% and Bernie Sanders leads by 48% to 43%. More important: “The percent who say they are ‘extremely interested’ in the election has reached 80%, the highest point in the history of our polling.”

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Poetic Justice

Light’s Not Right

Buck Banks | Sep. 16, 2019

We do not lack symptoms that Trump is deranged,
But still, his war on lightbulbs is exceedingly strange.
His attacks on energy efficiency
Just highlight his deficiencies,
While the LEDs, he says, just make him look orange.

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• Verbatim

  “After four national security advisers, three chiefs of staff, three directors of oval office operations and five communications directors, the president is now finding the White House finally functions in a way that fits his personality. Trump doubters have largely been ousted, leaving supporters to cheer him on and execute his directives with fewer constraints than ever before.”

  — Politico

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• Verbatim

  “I believe that there is an effort to prevent this information getting to Congress. And if the assertion is accurate … then at one level or another, it likely involves either the president or people around him.”

  — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), quoted by CBS News, on the White House trying to stifle a whistleblower complaint.

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• Verbatim

  “Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call. I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!”

  — President Trump insisted on Twitter that he would never “say something inappropriate with a foreign leader” over the phone because he’s well aware “many people” listen into his calls.

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• Verbatim

  “There is a process to become states for the United States. Clearly 30 million Mexican illegal immigrants want to be United States citizens, probably half the country wants to be United States citizens.”

  — Daniel McCarthy (R), who is challenging Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) in the Republican primary, suggesting the United States annex Mexico, RealClearPolitics reports. McCarthy also suggested that adding some “beachfront property” to U.S. territory might be nice.

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• Verbatim

  “Beto’s one human being. He gave his own opinion, OK? I think it was very harmful to make it look like all the Democrats. I can tell you one thing: Beto O’Rourke’s not taking my guns away from me. You tell Beto that, OK?”

  — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

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