Trump pushes ‘President Kamala’ + New poll on Prop. 18 + Greenhouse gas reduction not on track
Good morning and happy Tuesday. Election Day is officially two weeks away.
FIRST UP: Watch for new guidelines today from the Newsom administration on how and when theme parks can reopen during the coronavirus outbreak. Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly is expected to release the details this afternoon.
PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS?
Via David Lightman...
The Trump campaign wants to convince you that electing Joe Biden would quickly put Kamala Harris in charge of the country.
No evidence exists of such a plan. But day after day, his backers portray Harris, the first woman of color to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, as a dangerous radical ready to benefit from a Nancy Pelosi plot to sideline Biden.
“Pelosi’s plan: Remove Biden if Elected and Install Kamala,” says a Thursday video from the Trump campaign. “Pelosi’s plan: Help Kamala Remove Biden from office.”
“He can’t even function to complete a sentence...This is basically Kamala Harris’ puppet show,” said Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump fundraising official, on the campaign video broadcast “The Right View” Thursday night.
The emphasis on Harris stems in part from Republicans’ difficulty making the accusations against Biden stick.
While Biden, 77, occasionally stumbles over his words, the attacks ignore the fact he has largely overcome a stutter that began as a young child. He is in fine physical condition; his doctor said in December the candidate is healthy and vigorous. He has a record of 47 years as a senator from Delaware and eight as vice president, accumulating a recording that he can argue is hardly radical.
“Biden has some appeal to white non-college voters in a way that potentially no other Democratic candidate could have matched,” said Kyle Kondik, managing director of the nonpartisan Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Harris, on the other hand, “has somewhat less of a record, and the narrative is she’s an extremely left U.S. senator from a thoroughly blue state,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute in New York.
Trump earlier this month told conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh that “Joe is in no condition to be a candidate. We can say it nicely or we can say it badly. The 25th Amendment that crazy Nancy’s playing around with — she’s gone crazy, she’s a nut job — but this 25th Amendment, I think they put it in so they can get Kamala in.”
The notion of any such plan is absolutely false, said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.
She has never mentioned any such plan, and the video takes several Pelosi comments out of context.
POLL SHOWS LACK OF SUPPORT FOR 17-YEAR-OLDS VOTING
A new poll suggests that a majority of Californians aren’t comfortable with letting 17-year-olds vote in primary elections (provided they turn 18 by Election Day), something that would become law if Proposition 18 passes this November.
The polling firm Probolsky Research, which does not have a client in this matter, released a poll finding that 52% of likely voters are opposed to the ballot measure.
“A majority of California voters say they oppose letting 17-year-olds vote,” pollster Adam Probolsky said in a statement. “If the proposition does pass, there are serious privacy issues when marketing to minors that would likely need to be addressed by legislation and with parents getting comfortable with campaigns talking to their teenagers.”
The firm surveyed 900 likely voters by telephone and online, with a margin of error of 3.3%.
Broken down by party preference, Democrats were much more supportive of the ballot measure (67% in favor) than were Republicans (5% in favor), with No Party Preference voters mostly split (49% in favor).
GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION NOT ON TARGET
California remains below its 2020 target when it comes to greenhouse gas reduction, according to a new report released by the California Air Resources Board.
The CARB released 2018 data that shows that while greenhouse gas levels remain below 1990 levels, reduction has been effectively flat since 2017, even as the economy grew 4.3%.
“The data shows a slight increase in overall emissions from the previous year, and a slight decline in emissions from transportation, which is the state’s main source of both (greenhouse gases) and air pollutants,” according to a CARB statement.
The state has a goal of complete carbon neutrality by 2045. Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a pair of executive orders in recent weeks aimed at helping the state reach that goal, including one on Sept. 23 that calls for 100-percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035 and another on Oct. 7 that would preserve 30% of state land and coastal waters by 2030.
“Those two groundbreaking executive orders paired with the accelerated and increasingly stringent goals of the state’s existing climate policies will be key to reaching the 2030 target and achieving carbon neutrality by 2045,” CARB Executive Officer Richard W. Corey said in a statement. “And CARB will continue to develop additional initiatives that support our long-term goals, as well.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Suggesting we can’t trust the FDA, Gov. Newsom has set up a separate approval process before anyone gets a COVID vaccine in California. Of course, we’ll continue trusting the FDA for every other drug whose distribution doesn’t threaten his hold on power.”
- Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
Even if vaccines for COVID-19 are approved in the next month, Californians shouldn’t expect widespread availability until sometime next year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, tempering expectations that the end of the pandemic could be on the horizon, via Sophia Bollag.
A study from the UCLA Labor Center and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West surveyed more than 300 app-based gig workers between April and June, more than three-quarters of whom had relied on gig work as their primary source of income. Nearly half of those surveyed stopped working during the pandemic, either because they had no work or they were concerned of catching the coronavirus. For those who kept working, 70% said they had to cut their hours, via Jeong Park.
President Donald Trump’s campaign on Monday said it sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates asking that the planned topics for the third and final debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden be changed, via Bailey Aldridge.