Sunday Serendipity

jamie, are we sure that he was “admitted to the room”?  probably wouldn’t have even made the trip except for slam in niece’s book about him going to movie rather than to see her dying dad.  hard to believe anything coming out of WH anymore. 

jack, apologies for breaking that fine mood your musical selection had put us in, but it was too hard to pass up a chance to hear & see roy clark.

news4JAX on meadows:

Now, as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Meadows is an unorthodox pick for the White House role, trying to negotiate a coronavirus relief package on Capitol Hill. He is seen more as a deal breaker than deal maker, a newcomer who arrived in Congress with the tea party, led a government shutdown and made a name for himself slashing budgets rather than building them.
On a private call, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York told senators this week it was Meadows, not the other key White House negotiator, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who threw roadblocks up as talks collapsed.
[…]
Meadows and Mnuchin often portray themselves as a White House team, but they more often resemble the counterforces at work, and at times at odds, within the administration and the GOP.
Mnuchin, the Yale-educated former Wall Street financier, draws wary skepticism from rank-and-file Republicans as too inclined to compromise with Democrats. He was the chief negotiator of the $2.5 trillion Cares Act virus aid package approved in March. Meadows, with his Freedom Caucus roots, gives conservative Republicans who oppose such big spending some comfort that the White House won’t yield too much to Democrats.
[…]
But those who have seen him up close also describe a polarizing figure. During the weeks of closed-door negotiations, he would often declare even the more simple proposals a “nonstarter,” according to an aide. Another aide disputed that, saying both Meadows and Mnuchin called several Democratic top-line numbers “nonstarters.” The aides were not authorized to publicly discuss the private talks and spoke on condition of anonymity
Pelosi said Meadows slammed his hand on the table during Friday’s meeting ending talks. Meadows said that didn’t occur.
Meadows has never cut a deal in Congress of the size and scope of the $1 trillion-plus rescue bill that was being negotiated before the two sides failed to reach agreement.
One of his biggest liabilities may not be the lack of legislative experience but that the negotiators ultimately know that the final decision rests with Trump, whose views often shift.

newsweek a couple days ago:

The new bilingual, six-figure ad buy on television and digital is aimed at Puerto Ricans in Florida and Latino voters in Arizona and Texas, and represents the first salvo in micro-targeting Hispanics who the group feels has reason to dislike Trump’s leadership and rhetoric on issues that matter to them.

The Florida ad, obtained by Newsweek, invokes the 3.5 million U.S. citizens who live on the island, and how they were devastated by Hurricane Maria and subsequent earthquakes, causing many of them to flee to Florida. The ad goes on to say Trump’s response was to question the mounting death toll that reached into the thousands, casting his statement “as lies and disrespect.”

The ad brings together George W. Bush veterans from his 2000 campaign, when exit polls showed he received a sizable 35 percent of the Latino vote, including Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid, consultant Cesar Martinez, and legendary ad man Lionel Sosa, who helped Ronald Reagan and Bush garner larger than expected support from Hispanics.

[…]

“Trump also asked if there was a way to sell Puerto Rico,” Sosa told Newsweek in disbelief. “The obvious answer is he doesn’t doesn’t feel they contribute to this country and doesn’t have respect for the U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico.”

Fernand Amandi, a Florida pollster who worked with the Obama campaign in 2008, said The Lincoln Project is arguably doing the best television ad work of anybody that’s working on the 2020 cycle, which should excite Democrats.

“They get it and they get Florida,” he told Newsweek. “They understand that Florida is won on the margins and usually those margins are provided by the Hispanic vote. Could a Lincoln Project spot targeting Puerto Ricans shift the results 1 to 2 percent and have that be the difference in a closely contested state like Florida? It very well could.”

Puerto Ricans represent about one-third of Latino voters in Florida, which also includes Cuban voters that voted at higher rates in 2018, and vote Republican in larger numbers, spotlighting why a focus on increasing the margins among Puerto Ricans makes sense for Trump opponents.

[…]

The Arizona and Texas ads focus on coronavirus mismanagement by the president and the issue of evictions, which could be problematic for Latino voters who have been disproportionately affected by the virus in terms of health and economic issues, and may have issues voting if they don’t have a current address.

“The ads are a reminder to Latinos that we didn’t have to be here,” Madrid said of White House response to the pandemic. He likened The Lincoln Project to pirates lighting fires to disrupt Trump’s reelection, and said the group’s analytics allow it to be nimble as they create ads, making changes within 24 to 48 hours based on findings from focus groups, and tweaks they want for an ad, like adding a Mexican-American accent in a state like Arizona.

The Lincoln Project pivot to engaging Latino voters will continue with new ads in new markets, the group told Newsweek, and comes on the heels of partnering with well-known Chicano cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz who recently drew a cartoon of Trump holding a rally for MAGA-hat wearing coronavirus in states where the virus was surging like Texas, Florida, and Arizona.