Free Republic

Donald Trump famously won the combined 56 electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan by a total of 77,744 in the popular vote. Had those quarter-percentage-point squeakers gone the other way in the three states, Hillary Clinton would have won the Electoral College in addition to the popular vote, by a score of 283 to 248. It's no wonder that the president's re-election campaign is focused foremost on, well, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Lyndon LaRouche, the quixotic, apocalyptic leader of a cultlike political organization who ran for president eight times, once from a prison cell, died on Tuesday. He was 96. His death was announced on the website of his organization, La Rouche/Pac. It did not specify a cause or say where he died. Defining what Mr. LaRouche stood for was no easy task. He began his political career on the far left and ended it on the far right. He said he admired Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan and loathed Hitler, the composer Richard Wagner and other anti-Semites,...

Maybe this will convince the left to dial down their meltdown over Howard Schultz’s candidacy from “Chernobyl” levels to a more manageable “Three-Mile Island.”The obvious problem for Scott Rasmussen in polling this was how best to measure support for someone like Schultz. You can’t ask people if they’d vote for him specifically. Most of the public hasn’t the faintest clue who he is yet. So Rasmussen tried a different tack, offering generic alternatives to Trump to try to gauge how broadly receptive voters might be to the idea of a three-way race. Would they even consider directing their vote...

As a member of the Second-Greatest Generation, I vaguely remember H. Ross Perot. He was the funny little fella with the big ears who ran for president as an independent back in 1992. He was a Texas billionaire who made his money in computers, long before everybody had computers in their pockets, and he had never held public office. He seemed to be running for president because... well, because he damn well felt like it, that's why. As I recall, his solution to all of America's problems at the time was simple: "Fix it. Just fix it. What are...

Third Way: As Democratic candidates line up to vie for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination, a #NeverTrump GOP activist and establishment lobbyist is courting the like-minded to form a coalition around former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Mitt Romey, RINO-Utah, who has lost two bids for the presidency. Juleanna Glover, during a day-long meeting of anti-Trumpers that getting to the “path to 270 [electoral votes] might not be that hard,” Breitbart News reports. Glover’s plot is for Biden to pick Romney as his running mate and for them to run on a one-term party unity ticket pledging to...

The Green Party strikes again, this time likely winning the Arizona Senate seat for Republican Martha McSally: Manu Raju ✔ @mkraju Democrat Krysten Sinema trailing by fewer than 15,000 votes in #azsen with 99% reporting. The Green Party candidate got nearly 40,000 votes 7:36 AM - Nov 7, 2018 1,206 1,174 people are talking about this

A third-party Senate candidate in Montana has effectively dropped out of the race and endorsed Republican candidate Matt Rosendale in his bid to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.). Rick Breckenridge, a Libertarian and a surveyor, cited his anger with an anonymous campaign mailer encouraging voters to choose him over Rosendale because of privacy concerns. The Republican nominee said Tester's allies were behind the message, and he said he was honored to have Breckenridge's backing.

BILLINGS — The Libertarian candidate in Montana's U.S. Senate race has thrown his support behind Republican Matt Rosendale in response to an election mailer from an unknown group that appears aimed at undermining Rosendale's support among conservatives. Rick Breckenridge said Wednesday that he doesn't know the source of the mailer promoting him as a "true conservative" and claiming Rosendale supports using drones to spy on private citizens. Breckenridge says it's an attempt by so-called dark money groups to influence Montana's election and he's decided that Rosendale is the best candidate to stop such efforts.

A June poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, published in The Atlantic magazine, reported that just 28% of young adults 18 to 29 said they were absolutely certain to vote; but 74% of seniors (a group that voted for Donald Trump) were absolutely certain to vote. So Republican supporting seniors said they would be voting and 18 to 29 year olds were distinctly disinterested in voting. Of course you didn’t hear anything about this; but that doesn’t mean it is not a dangerous red flag for the Democrats. “That was June, and things change”, some would say. Nevertheless, that...

The bizarre history of the Anti-Masonic Party William Morgan believed he had a big story to tell. What happened to him ended up being even bigger. An itinerant stone mason and failed brewer cursed by what one critical observer called “a wonderful faculty for getting into debt and none for getting out,” Morgan, 52, turned his ambition to writing in 1826. He thought he had a seemingly surefire way to cash in on the conspiratorial zeitgeist that flourished in the early years of the 19th century and remains a hallmark of American politics. Morgan was poised to expose what he...

The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office today released data on the number of persons who changed their party affiliation on their voter registration in the weeks before or on the date of the 2018 Primary Election – August 21st.12,509 persons in total changed their party affiliation between July 6th and September 20th: 6,057 Democrats changed and registered as Republicans;4,355 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Republicans;744 Unaffiliated persons changed and registered as Democrats;477 members of the Constitution and Libertarian parties changed and registered as Republicans;430 Republicans changed and registered as Democrats; and296 persons of various parties changed and registered as...

There had also been an eye-opening moment on the streets of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, when [Johnson and I had] been walking behind a cigarette-wielding Ohioan. As the smoker’s exhaust wafted in our faces, I remarked offhand that—with the advent of e-cigarettes—I thought there was a good libertarian case for banning regular cigarettes. “I do too,” replied the health-obsessed triathlete, recounting his support for anti-smoking efforts in New Mexico.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that, despite winning the Democratic primary, he will run for re-election in 2018 as an Independent. Sanders said, “I have always run as an Independent, and that’s what I will do. And I think people in Vermont understand that. We have a very good relationship with the Democratic Party. I suspect that this coming campaign we’ll be putting more money — our campaign will be putting more money into the Vermont Democratic Party than anybody else and supporting a whole lot of good Democratic candidates.” Host Ali Velshi...

ALBANY — Expressing frustration that urban issues are not being sufficiently addressed in New York, members of the hip hop community are looking to form their own party line for the coming state elections. The line, which would be called the New American Party, is being pushed by Jineea Butler, founder of the Hip Hop Union and a Republican congressional candidate against Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan). Butler said she and others have spoken to rap star Busta Rhymes about potentially running for governor on the line, but he has not committed. Butler said she also has reached out to LL...

On Saturday former 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential candidate Cody Robert Judy sent by fax a “Proposed Executive Order” declaring Barack Hussein Obama “Unqualified and a Usurper of the Office Of the President under the Constitution of the United States of America.” The “Executive Order” is addressed to “President Donald Trump” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC, the address of the White House. Written from the hypothetical signer’s point of reference, the document text invokes “National Security and Election Integrity” as at the forefront of determining presidential eligibility. Judy first challenged Obama’s eligibility in 2008, when he filed...

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano suggested that third-party votes in the Ohio special congressional election Tuesday evening could be the result of “Russian meddling.” In a close race, GOP candidate Troy Balderson led Democrat Danny O’Connor in a special election for Ohio’s 12th Congressional District on Tuesday evening. Balderson obtained 1,754 more votes than O’Connor. There are still 3,435 provisional ballots must still be counted, according to the New York Times. There are also more than 5,000 absentee ballots that were mailed to voters but not returned as of election day. Green Party candidate Joe Manchik secured approximately 1,127 votes,...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210975925

Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe paved way for candidacy. A confessed pedophile who served prison time for threatening to assassinate the president of the United States is running for Congress in Virginia. The candidacy of Nathan Larson, an independent, was made possible by former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who restored the rights of felons in 2016 to vote and run for office.

At least eight people associated with white nationalist groups are running for state or federal office around the country this year, NBC News reported this week, citing data from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The candidates, which NBC noted represent more white nationalists running that any other election in recent memory, include some who are pushing for segregating neighborhoods in their communities as part of their campaign platform. NBC News correspondent Morgan Radford spoke with several such candidates for the report broadcast Thursday, including Arthur Jones, a former member of the American Nazi Party who is vying for a...

Nathan Larson, a 37-year-old accountant from Charlottesville, Virginia, is running for Congress as an independent candidate in his native state. He is also a pedophile, as he admitted to HuffPost on Thursday, who has bragged in website posts about raping his late ex-wife.