Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Emphasizing an issue of growing political significance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading Democratic presidential hopeful, yesterday called for the end of the electoral college.
* On a related note, the Massachusetts Democrat was also asked during a town-hall forum about the prospect of reparations. “I love the idea of this congressional commission,” she replied. “I believe it’s time to start the national, full-blown conversation about reparations.”
* Presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) has generally been reluctant to throw his support behind Medicare-for-All proposals, though yesterday the former congressman endorsed the Medicare-for-America plan outlined last by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
* At this stage in the 2020 cycle, Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is reportedly spending “nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads.”
* The president also tweeted over the weekend that Democrats tried to “steal” the 2016 election. Ordinarily, such an accusation might be considered provocative news, but in the Trump era, this was largely ignored as random background nonsense. * In the wake of allegations that Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) improperly used her state’s voter registration system to access information about her rivals, the state legislature has passed a bill to “strip [Grimes] of her authority over the State Board of Elections.” * And in the state of Washington, lawmakers are moving forward with legislation that would keep presidential candidates off the ballot unless they release five years’ worth of tax returns. Gov. Jay Inslee (D), a 2020 contender, supports the proposal.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
