Heading Into July Women Of Color Dominate Biden Vp Speculation
Liz Brown-Kaiser and Melissa Holzberg
WASHINGTON While there are reports that the search for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Bidens running mate is beginning to wrap up, theres still a long list of contenders whose moves are being closely watched.
Biden has pledged to pick a woman as his running mate and the continue to grow louder. The Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., recently told NBC News that Biden choosing a woman of color would make me really happy.
Here are this weeks most notable veepstakes developments from the NBC News political unit:
Sen. Kamala Harris: Harris name continues to make veepstakes headlines, and Friday afternoon, she appeared with Jill Biden for the first time during a virtual event targeting Wisconsin voters. The former V.P.s wife is a longtime adviser heavily involved with the Biden campaign but previously voiced that she was shocked when the California senator went after her husbands record in the presidential primary.
“Our son Beau spoke so highly of her and, you know, and how great she was. And not that she isn’t. I’m not saying that. But it was just like a punch to the gut,” Jill Biden said in March.
Her joint appearance with Harris Friday could represent an effort to work more closely with her husbands potential veep pick.
Abrams also appeared on MSNBC Wednesday and stressed that there’s a signal that can be sent by having a Black woman on the ticket.
Trump Campaign Returns To Airwaves In Wi Still Dark In Mi And Pa
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON President Trumps campaign returned to the Wisconsin airwaves on Tuesday, marking the first time the campaign aired significant TV or radio advertising in the state in almost two weeks.
Trumps campaign spent $110,000 there Tuesday, and its slated to spend the same on Wednesday, according to data from Advertising Analytics. It had been dark there since July 29.
But while the campaign has returned to Wisconsin airwaves, it has been off the air in both Pennsylvania and Michigan for at least two weeks .
But while the campaign isnt spending on TV or radio ads there, it has had some outside help. Since the campaign dropped off the air, the GOP group Restoration PAC has spent $2.4 million on ads in Michigan, and America First Action super PAC has spent $2.9 million in Pennsylvania.
The Trump campaign announced last month it would briefly pull ads to review its ad strategy, and it returned to the air days later touting a new focus on North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona ahead of early voting.
But that new strategy so far hasnt included the Great Lakes states key to Trumps victory in 2016, states he won by the narrowest of margins.
We Need To Burn The Affordable Care Act And Rebuild It Piece By Piece
After airline deregulation, a free and competitive airfare market emerged, reducing prices by about 50 percent while improving quality, safety and access. Travelers can now easily shop around based on prices and quality.
Like health care, air travel has many variables including weather, airport traffic, plane repairs, fuel prices, etc. that affect costs. Yet airlines are able to offer upfront, clear pricing that provides travelers with financial certainty and creates a market signal for competitors to try to undercut. The health-care industry can too.
Lower health-care and coverage prices will leave more money for patients and employers. That means improved family and business budgets, increased local spending and faster wage growth. The health-care beast, which now consumes nearly a fifth of GDP, will shrink, leaving the economy freer to prosper.
Trumps price-transparency rules will prove a dramatic breakthrough for American health care, just as price deregulation did for air travel, allowing all Americans to protect their health and wealth.
Cynthia A. Fisher is an entrepreneur, founder of PatientRightsAdvocate.org and former CEO of Viacord Inc.
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Kushner Confirms Kanye West Meeting: A Great Discussion
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and a top adviser, confirmed Wednesday that he met with rapper Kanye West amid the superstars presidential bid thats been aided by Republicans.
Asked about the meeting during a Thursday White House briefing, Kushner said hes known West for about 10 years and that they met when they both happened to be in Colorado.
We had a great discussion about a lot of things. He has some great ideas for what hed like to see happen in the country, and thats why he has the candidacy that hes been doing, Kushner said.
Theres a lot of issues that the presidents championed that he admires, so it was great to have a friendly discussion.
The meeting, first reported on by the New York Times, comes as Wests quixotic presidential bid has not filed to appear on enough ballots to compete for the presidency, but has filed to be on the ballot in a handful of states that are typically key presidential battlegrounds.
West so far will be on ballots in Colorado and Oklahoma, while his campaign awaits verification in states like Ohio and Wisconsin, where hes submitted the required paperwork and state election officials will rule on whether he met those states standards
Those ties between Wests candidacy and Republicans have raised concerns among Democrats that people are using Wests campaign in an attempt to siphon votes away from former Vice President and apparent Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Dnc Launches Ad Campaign On Trump ‘descent’
Heidi Przybyla
WASHINGTON The Democratic National Committee is beginning its general election offensive against President Donald Trump Tuesday, with a new television and digital ad campaign running in battleground states.
The effort marks the five year anniversary of Trumps 2016 presidential candidacy, which he announced after a ride down a golden escalator at Trump Tower. The opening DNC ad, titled Descent, revives that image, tying it to the decline of American jobs, health care, race relations, and immigrant rights.
Five years ago Donald Trump descended to the basement of Trump Tower. And for the last five years, hes brought America down with him, says the ad provided to NBC News.
Trump’s descent didn’t stop when he got to the bottom of that escalator. He’s shown there’s no depth he won’t sink to and no depth he won’t drag our country to along with him.
DNC War Room
Its the first television ad campaign the DNC has run in four years, and signifies a more visible role for the organization following the turmoil in 2016 that culminated in the resignation of former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of the party convention. That year, a Russian-led hack of DNC computer servers unearthed internal emails suggesting staff unfairly favored the candidacy of former Senator Hillary Clinton over her then-challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
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Kanye West Files Signatures In Hopes Of Getting On Ballot In Ohio And Colorado
Ben Kamisar and Julia Ingram
WASHINGTON Music superstar Kanye West’s presidential campaign has filed petitions to gain ballot access in Colorado and Ohio, the latest attempt by the musician’s team to get on the presidential ballot in key states.
Spokespeople for both the Ohio and Colorado Secretary of State’s office confirmed Wednesday that West’s representatives filed the necessary paperwork aimed at winning West a spot on the presidential ballot.
West isn’t guaranteed a spot on the ballot, as officials will need to certify that his signatures are valid before granting him ballot access. That process is currently ongoing in the other states where West has filed Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The only state where West has made the ballot so far is Oklahoma, where he only needed to send a check in lieu of petition signatures.
And West has had issues with his petitions before his representatives dropped their bid to get the rapper on the ballot in New Jersey after a complaint was raised by a local lawyer. And citizens in Illinois have filed three challenges to his petitions signatures there.
Things Trump Has Done To Fix Obamacare
Armed with real prices, patients and employers will be put in the drivers seat of their health-care decisions. No longer will they be at the mercy of the pricing whims of the health-care industry, blinded to prices until after their bills arrive in the mail weeks and months after treatment.
Hospitals and health-insurers pricing power, which is almost absolute under the current opaque model, will collapse as upfront cost information empowers patients with the same financial certainty, discretion and choice that consumers enjoy in every other economic sector.
No wonder price transparency is supported by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of about 90 percent of Americans, including 98 percent of women under 40.
Health-care cost relief is needed now. A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that average premiums for employer-sponsored family health-care plans have increased by 55 percent over the last decade to $21,300 per year. Including deductibles, which run roughly $8,000 per family on average, total health coverage costs around $30,000 per year.
According to a recent RAND report, hospital prices average 2.5 times more than what Medicare pays, and rise to three or four times in many hospital systems nationwide.
Prices and routes were heavily regulated and opaque. Travelers were forced to visit high-priced travel agents, who could price-gouge without consequence.
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The Trump Administration Isnt Telling The Truth About Its Plan Because The Truth Isnt Very Popular
Theres a reason that Mulvaney isnt going on a Sunday morning show and telling its host that the Trump budget endorses policies that would lead to millions of Americans losing coverage and that would let states bring back preexisting conditions.
Its the same reason you dont see the Trump administration pointing back to this budget that Im writing about, which officials coulddo to back up White House adviser Kellyanne Conways recent claims that the Republicans health care plans are manifold.
Preexisting conditions and canceled insurance plans are not, it turns out, very popular. Most Americans, regardless of their political views, think its important to not bring back preexisting conditions.
Obamacare has never been very popular. But the ideas that Trump and the Republicans have rolled out over the past two years are even less popular because they take aim at some of the parts of Obamacare that people actually like.
But instead of touting unpopular policies, the Trump administration has simply decided not to tell the truth about them. We saw that during the original Obamacare repeal push. And were seeing it again now.
It would be a disservice to the Trump administration officials to say that they dont have a health care plan. They quite clearly do. But its one that they arent telling the truth about, and Americans deserve to know that.
Priorities Usa Drops New Ad Criticizing Trump On Affordable Care Act
Mike Memoli
WASHINGTON Priorities USA, which has been blitzing the airwaves for weeks with ads focused on President Donald Trumps handling of the coronavirus crisis, is expanding its campaign with a focus on the administrations efforts to undercut the Affordable Care Act.
The Democratic super PACs new campaign comes as former Vice President Joe Biden is set to deliver remarks about the fate of the Obama administrations signature legislative achievement, which faces another Supreme Court test as the White House is set to file brief urging justices to strike down the law.
A new broadcast television ad targeting voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan says that even now, amid the ongoing pandemic crisis, the president is trying to end the Affordable Care Act.
Health care costs would skyrocket, and insurance companies would again be allowed to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, the spot warns, saying Trump is failing America.
Priorities is also debuting a pair of digital ads about the healthcare law and the consequences of its potential undoing. The PAC says it is spending $2 million per week on the new campaign.
Democrats up and down the ballot campaigned aggressively in 2018 on protecting Obamacare, mainly focused on its requirement that insurers cover individuals with preexisting health conditions.
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Rnc Still ‘working Through’ Press Access For Charlotte Convention Events
Monica Alba
WASHINGTON The Republican National Committee says it is still weighing whether press will be allowed to attend and cover Charlotte convention events in-person later this month.
No final decision has been made and we are still working through logistics and press coverage options. We are working with the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events, RNC communications director Michael Ahrens told NBC News in a statement.
Republicans are hoping the issue will be finalized in the coming weeks but stress that the already scaled-back conference will likely be subject to more change given all the alterations made so far.
A livestream is one of the press coverage options we are considering, Ahrens added.
As of now, its unclear whether the president will attend any convention business in North Carolina but theres a possibility he will go to Charlotte on Aug. 24 to thank a smaller footprint of delegates in a private meeting, an RNC official said. Its also still unknown where Trump will accept his re-nomination formally on Aug. 27.
The president of the White House Correspondents Association, AP reporter Zeke Miller, called the possibility of a closed press convention an ill-advised decision and urged the GOP to open events in a over the weekend.
Hopefully theyll give the American people the access they deserve, he wrote.
Accuracy Of Cbo Coverage Forecasts
In general, CBO has been more accurate than other significant forecasting entities regarding the coverage impact of the ACA/Obamacare. It has been very accurate with respect to forecasting the number of uninsured and change in uninsured, but off significantly in forecasting the number of persons who would enroll in the exchanges. Instead, many more persons retained their employer-based plan than CBO had anticipated. CBO revises its forecasts for health insurance coverage due to current law annually.
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Empty Promises And Falsehoods
Trump rattled off a litany of policies his administration has implemented or proposed, ranging from relaxing health insurance regulations to attempting to lower drug prices, few of which have amounted to anything.
In fact, some of his supposed accomplishments further give the lie to his claim that he supports protections for preexisting conditions. The Trump administration has expanded access to several kinds of health insurance that arent available to people with preexisting conditions, like short-term health plans.
The term gaslighting gets overused these days, but theres no better way to describe what Trump is perpetrating. His claims about these executive orders are entirely detached from reality and his claims about his own record on health care range between completely made-up to highly exaggerated.
A president whose primary health policy objective is scrapping his predecessors law that brought the uninsured rate to a historic low cant plausibly claim to be fixing the health care system. Obamacare is bad is not a policy, and anyone who expected Trump to finally, at long last, explain to the public how he would replace that law if such a person still exists has been disappointed yet again.
Well, it turns out that protection might disappear, along with the rest of the ACA, because Trump and the Republican Party want it to.
So, again, his plan is to not have a plan. If he had one, he would tell us.
Anticipation Over Biden’s Running Mate Pick Builds Ahead Of Decision
Liz Brown-Kaiser and Melissa Holzberg
WASHINGTON Despite presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Bidens pledge to announce his running mate by the first week of August, the political world still awaits his decision as the clock ticks down to the formal party nomination.
NBC News reported Monday that Biden planned to whittle his vice presidential list down to three or four candidates this week and have in-person meetings with his top contenders.
But Bidens wife, Dr. Jill Biden, assured that an announcement was coming soon.
We’re close, she said in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday. He’s close, he’s got to make the final decision.
With the highly-awaited choice just around the corner, heres what some of the contenders have been up to this week.
Sen. Kamala Harris: The California senator has been highly visible over recent days, continuing to put herself in the public eye as a top pick. And Biden himself confirmed that Harris remains in the veepstakes amid reports that some of his aides were pushing against her as the choice.
She’s very much in contention, he said during an interview Thursday.
Harris remained vague, however, telling reporters on Capitol Hill, You probably know more than I do!
But she wasnt quiet on other matters namely that shes too ambitious to be the presumptive Democratic nominees veep.
Sometimes you get cut, sometimes it hurts, but it is worth it, she added.
Rep. Karen Bass: With more national name recognition comes more scrutiny.
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Rep Steve King On The Ropes And Other Tuesday Races To Watch
WASHINGTON Amid the coronavirus pandemic and widespread protests following the death of George Floyd, primary contests will take place Tuesday in eight states, as well as the District of Columbia.
The race that has generated the most buzz is in Iowas 4th Congressional district where controversial GOP Rep. Steve King is getting a primary challenge from state Sen. Randy Feenstra. With all of the news and discussion about race in America, the verdict of Iowa Republicans will be significant. But there are several other notable down-ballot primaries occurring outside of the Hawkeye States fourth House district.
Here are the contests on the NBC News political units radar:
Iowa Senate: Democrats will pick their Senate nominee Tuesday to face GOP Sen. Joni Ernst in the fall. The favorite is businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, and national Democrats feel confident that shell get the 35 percent-plus needed to avoid a party convention to decide the nomination.
Montana Governor: In Montanas race to replace term-limited Gov. Steve Bullock , Republican Congressman Greg Gianforte who assaulted political reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017 is competing in the GOP gubernatorial primary against state Attorney General Tim Fox and state Sen. Al Olszewski. The Democrats running for governor are Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney and businesswoman Whitney Williams.
Ben Kamisar and Liz Brown-Kaiser contributed.
