Biden berates Bibi daily on how to get hostages released. Yeh right. Biden and Harris, the great hostage negotiators. Biden has always had one and one approach alone to dealing with Iran and that is to find out what they want and give it to them. And Biden- with Obama- was part of the deal to exchange the Taliban Dream Team for an American traitor. Another brilliant example of their hostage negotiating skills. Putin’s ‘Merchant of Death’ Is Back in the Arms Business. This Time Selling to the Houthis. Russian gunrunner Viktor Bout was traded in 2022 for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/pu...ess-this-time-selling-to-the-houthis-10b7f521
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...tein_cornel_west_on_swing_state_ballots_.html Trump Allies Worked To Keep Jill Stein, Cornel West on Swing State Ballots By Philip Wegmann - RCP Staff October 04, 2024 A war for the margins has raged quietly this year between Democrats, who tried to keep third-party and independent candidates off the ballot, and Republicans, who worked overtime to keep them there. One month before the election, allies of Donald Trump are already celebrating. The right has next to nothing in common with Jill Stein and Cornel West, but ideology isn’t the point. It’s simple arithmetic instead. Those candidates have the potential to siphon votes away from Vice President Harris in swing states. This nightmare was enough to build a political machine designed to crush any candidate that could divide the anti-Trump coalition and cost Democrats the White House. It failed. Either Stein, the nominee of the Green Party, or West, an independent, will appear on ballots in no fewer than six of the battleground states. Candidates like this usually attract such a tiny share of the vote that they amount to a rounding error on election night, but in a close race, where margins are expected to be razor thin, they can be determinative. Enter the Fair Election Fund, the Republican-aligned dark money group now taking a victory lap. Founded by former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the organization provided a counterweight to a Democratic coalition led by the likes of a super PAC called Clear Choice, the opposition research group American Bridge, and the moderate Democratic group Third Way. That dark money machine had been working since early this year to cull, first, the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and later, Stein and West. “The Democrats openly ran around this spring thumping their chests about how they were going to war against third party candidates and trying to limit the choices of the American people at the ballot box,” Collins told RealClearPolitics. His group, he said, was “fighting back against their vote suppression scheme, leveling the playing field, and ensuring this November’s election will be free and fair.” While Democrats vehemently disagree with that characterization, they say that Fair Election Fund has at least clarified things. “Republicans are admitting here to buying nearly a million dollars of paid media to prop up Jill Stein and Cornel West’s spoiler candidacies,” Adrienne Watson, an adviser to the Democratic National Convention, told RCP. “Jill Stein delivered Trump the presidency in 2016 and she’s working alongside his closest allies to do it again in 2024. Thanks to Fair Election Fund for making it clear that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.” The fund focused its efforts on boosting West because, according to an after-action report reviewed by RCP, they concluded that Stein had “a more sophisticated operation.” And again, Democrats can attest to that fact. They are still haunted by the specter of Stein. The Green candidate never came close to overtaking either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in 2016. All the same, Stein won more votes than Clinton lost by in Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump won that state by 23,000 votes. Stein carried 31,000. It was enough to earn Stein the enduring ire of Democrats and the perennial description of a “spoiler.” Fast forward eight years. Harris leads Trump nationally by 2 points in the RealClearPolitics Average, a polling lead smaller than the one that led Clinton to a popular vote victory but a lost White House. “This election could easily come down to less than a point in some of the swing states,” said Matt Bennett, executive vice president for Third Way, “and that could be the difference.” Hence the reason why a Democratic machine went into overdrive to kick Stein and West off the ballots in states like North Carolina and Michigan with legal challenges to their candidacy. When Clear Choice Action, a super PAC run by Biden alums, filed a complaint against the West campaign with the state election board, the Fair Election Fund mobilized. They ran television ads, bought billboards, and even projected images on the North Carolina State Election Board’s building. Visible at night, the projection included pictures of Democratic members of that election board along with the caption: “Working to block your voting rights by blocking Biden’s competition from the ballot.” The decision was eventually overturned in court, and West returned to the ballot, but not after setting a precedent. “We blasted the efforts to keep West off the ballot as the racist, anti-democratic, voter suppression moves that they were,” a memo by the Fair Election Fund reads. “In essence, we ran the Democrats’ own playbook against them, and they had no answer for how to stop us.” They ran a similar strategy in other battleground states like Michigan, where both Stein and West remain on the ballot. And when Democratic lawyer Marc Elias threatened to sue the state of Virginia after election officials restored West to the ballot, the group launched an advertising blitz. The Fair Election Fund ran ads thanking Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for keeping West on the ballot, a move meant to frame the debate as one where the Republican executive was “on the right side of history.” According to the memo, “This cut off Elias’ ability to file a credible lawsuit against West in Virginia.” The fact that Collins served four terms in Congress as a Republican and remains a close Trump ally isn’t lost on Democrats. Said Bennett, “It is the height of cynicism for Collins to be doing this.” He put the chances of Stein or West meaningfully competing at “literally 0.00%” and described the Green Party nominee as “an attractive nuisance,” who isn’t serious about environmental issues so much as she represents a serious political threat to Harris. “No third party or independent candidate can win the 2024 Presidential election, yet they’ve played a decisive role as spoilers in recent presidential elections – often helping the candidate who wins fewer votes secure victory in the electoral college,” a mission statement on the Clear Choice PAC website reads. “We exist to show Americans the clear choice between President Biden’s strong vision for the future, and the danger of unelectable spoiler candidates tipping the election to Donald Trump.” They have since focused their efforts on backing Harris. Republicans, meanwhile, have their own examples of bad behavior. They point to efforts by Democrats to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the ballot in North Carolina before reversing course to try and keep the independent there, even after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. While Bennett’s organization was not involved in the RFK fight in North Carolina, he said the distinction is clear: “The overwhelming effort here has been on the Trump side to help third parties and almost everything the Democrats and their allies, including us, have done is try to keep the third parties off the ballot.” But Collins countered that there is more than just politics at play and that there is an underlying principle. “This effort was about ensuring the fairness of our elections by stopping Democrats from blocking Harris’ competition from the ballot and disenfranchising the tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West,” he said. All the same, there was also a very real practical effect: “Exposing the Democrats’ overall hypocrisy on voting rights.” Biden was in the habit of framing the election as a referendum on the fate of democracy itself, and after him, Harris often refers to “the sacred right to vote.” Republicans like Collins say those words ought to taste bitter when she delivers them, given that her allies worked to limit the choices of the electorate. “Thanks to our comprehensive efforts shining a spotlight on how Democrats were engaging in voter suppression,” he said, “they will never again have credibility when they claim to be the party standing up for democracy.” The race for the White House remains close, and both campaigns are making regular overtures to independents. And as Collins prepares for Election Day, he is declaring an early victory. “Democrats not only lost the ballot access battle,” he said of the marginal war over Stein and West, “but they also angered a key segment of their base in the process in a way that those voters will never forget.” Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.
The Republicans won the battle over third party candidates Oct 7, 2024 4:30 AM A war for the margins has raged quietly this year between Democrats, who tried to keep third-party and independent candidates off the ballot, and Republicans, who worked overtime to keep them there. Those candidates have the potential to siphon votes away from Vice President Harris in swing states. These candidates usually attract a tiny share of the vote, but in a race where margins are expected to be razor thin, they can determine who wins. One month before the election, allies of Donald Trump are already celebrating. Either Stein, the nominee of the Green Party, or West, an independent, will appear on ballots in no fewer than six of the battleground states.
The major crack in Kamala's Blue Wall? Why Democrats in sleepy town are terrified of radical outsider who could catapult Trump into the White House Wisconsin Democrats are terrified a radical outsider will catapult Donald Trump into the White House. The swing state party members fear Green Party candidate Jill Stein will steal votes from them and hamper Kamala Harris' chances of election victory. The far-left Stein is often considered a spoiler candidate who swung votes away from Hillary Clinton 2016. She is back on the ballot in 2024 and determined to make a statement. Stein believes that anti-Israel sentiment - along with rhetoric about the Jewish state committing 'genocide' - from Muslims and Arab Americans in swing states like Michigan will ultimately deny Harris the presidency this November. However, it's in Wisconsin where Stein's Green Party seems to be causing liberals the most anxiety, after Joe Biden won the state by just 21,000 votes in 2020. Stein is expected to be on the ballot in 2024 after the party's 2020 candidate Howie Hawkins was left off on a technicality and Democrats are sweating out every vote. Pete Karas, the Green Party leader in Wisconsin, is glad to cause them consternation. 'We need to teach Democrats a lesson. They're trying to mess with us and mess with democracy, and they have a couple of choices,' he told Politico. 'They can continue to do that and suffer the consequences, or they can pass ranked choice voting so that we actually do have fair elections.' Caroline Bechen, a Democrat activist and elected official in a suburb of state capital Madison, is certainly uncomfortable. 'Of course I have concerns. I'd be a fool if I didn't have concerns. I am almost afraid to be optimistic,' she said. Stein has already spoken about what she believes is a betrayal of Muslims in the midwest. 'The Democrats cannot win without the support of the Muslim American community,' she said. 'And that community has left the station and is not coming back unless the Democrats decide that it's more important to them to win the election than it is to conduct the genocide.'
US: Abandon Harris endorses Green Party's Jill Stein Endorsement of Stein and Butch Ware comes as Muslims channel anger over US support for Israel into supporting third parties The Abandon Harris movement that sprouted late last year out of the widespread outrage over the Biden-Harris administration's support for the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has officially endorsed the Green Party's Jill Stein for US president. The endorsement is the first of its kind for Stein and the Green Party, with the Abandon Harris campaign being the first major Muslim-led political group to endorse her campaign this election cycle. Last month, a smaller group, the Muslim American Public Affairs Council NC, also endorsed Stein. "We are not choosing between a greater evil and a lesser evil. We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through," the Abandon Harris campaign said in a statement released on Monday. "We call on Muslim-Americans and all those who stand firmly against genocide to vote for the Green Party in 2024. The path to justice is long, painful, and difficult, but it is ours to pave and follow." In an interview with Middle East Eye in August, Stein said that if she were to win the presidential election, one of the first decisions she would make would be to end all military support to Israel. The endorsement also comes amid a growing shift in the Muslim American community's voting patterns. For decades, the majority of Muslim voters cast their ballots for the Democratic Party. However, the US military and diplomatic support for Israel's war on Gaza, which Israel recently expanded into a ground invasion of Lebanon, is a major priority for the voter bloc in the elections taking place in November. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have spent the last few weeks arguing over which candidate, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, would be the more pro-Israel president. In an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday, Harris was asked whether the US lacks any influence over its ally Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing Netanyahu's rejection of a US-French proposal for a truce with the Lebanese movement Hezbollah. "It is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks," Harris said, referring to a retaliatory Iranian ballistic strike on Israel last week. As a result, Muslim voters have exited the Democratic party in droves. A series of polls conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that there was a 43 percent drop in Muslim support for the Democratic Party between 2020 and July 2024, when Biden was still the Democrat's candidate for president. Ballot Access There are around 2.5 million registered Muslim voters in the United States, according to data from one of the leading Muslim American civil rights groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This is a marginal amount out of the entire pool of registered voters, which is 161 million Americans. But electoral data shows that Muslim voters could make a significant impact in states key to winning the presidential election, like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In the states of Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Stein is leading against Harris among Muslim voters. Jaylani Hussein, a co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, told MEE that there are a number of good third-party candidates that match their policy priorities. However, the major factor in endorsing Stein came as a result of ballot access. Stein is officially on the ballot in 38 states that together hold a total of 437 electoral votes — 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidential election.
Leading US imams and scholars urge Muslim voters to snub Kamala Harris over Gaza Dozens of Muslim scholars and faith leaders unite to send a powerful message to the Democrats A group of leading Muslim American scholars and imams have signed a letter calling on Muslim voters to spurn Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming election over US support for Israel's war on Gaza. The letter comes as polling within the Muslim American community shows a major departure from the Democratic Party over the Biden-Harris administration's unfettered support for Israel's war on Gaza, which they along with rights groups and legal experts view is a genocide against Palestinians. "We may not know what the future holds, but we know this: we will not taint our hands by voting for or supporting an administration that has brought so much bloodshed upon our brothers and sisters," said the letter, released on Monday and seen by Middle East Eye. The letter calls on Muslims to instead vote for any of the third-party candidates, including the Green Party's Jill Stein whose support has swelled among the Muslim American community in recent weeks. "We want to be absolutely clear: don’t stay home and skip voting. This year, make a statement by voting third party for the presidential ticket," the letter said.
As a US diplomat, I helped circumvent Trump’s Muslim ban – then realised I was part of the problem https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/15/us-diplomat-donald-trump-muslim-ban-embassy
I highly recommend "The Achievements of Kamala Harris" book https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-achievements-of-kamala-harris-jason-dudash/1146342231 It is highly recommended for meditation. Looking at empty pages for hours, one can switch the brain off for good. Some Amazon comments: How can one person condense that many accomplishments in half a lifetime. Writing masterpiece! Exceptional Such A Devoted Pubic Servant! Amazing book that really opens your eyes…
I have voted Democrat all my life.I have never voted for a Republican,I have never voted for the Green Party or any other 3rd party candidate.I will be voting for Jill Stein in November.I believe there are millions of left wing voters that will be doing the same. I'm thankful for everyone,including Republicans,that have fought for me and millions of other left wing voters to have a choice to vote for other left wing candidates other than the Democrat.