“Democrats in Virginia won control of the state legislature in Tuesday’s elections, opening the door for lawmakers there to pass new gun-control laws, a higher minimum wage, and a host of other measures Republicans have long opposed. Wresting the House of Delegates and Senate from the GOP gives Democrats across-the-board political control in Richmond for the first time in 26 years. ..Some of the seats Democrats picked up were in House districts that were redrawn after a 2018 court ruling found boundaries in many districts had been racially gerrymandered.” Scott Calvert and Jon Kamp, The Wall Street Journal, MORE
“Protecting elections from hacking threats means a lot more than protecting election systems from being hacked. Malicious hackers can find plenty of other ways to interfere with elections - notably by discouraging voting through election-day attacks on municipal systems. Security firm Cybereason has been exploring that kind of election tampering in a series of tabletop simulations over the last year... A hacker tampering with traffic lights is just one way someone could sway an election by influencing which voters can show up, all without touching the systems most associated with voting. With so much focus on voting machines, we may be missing the threat of these kinds of attacks.” Joe Uchill, Axios, MORE
“Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin on Wednesday filed a formal request for a recanvass of the vote in his bid for re-election, a day after he appeared to come up roughly 5,150 votes short. NBC News declared his Democratic opponent, Andy Beshear, the state attorney general, the apparent winner of the race... Bevin campaign officials have not provided any specifics on the ‘irregularities’ they claim may have affected the election. Kentucky Republicans captured every other statewide race on the ballot Tuesday. A recanvass of the vote is a count by each county clerk to ensure that the vote totals they submitted to the State Board of Elections are accurate. Under Kentucky law, candidates can request a recount, but they have to pay for it.” Lauren Egan, NBC News, MORE
“In a party and a country that is only becoming more diverse, the ability to build multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalitions is not a nice-to-have - it’s a job requirement. I’m the only person in this race who has demonstrated time and time again, with only my own name on the ballot, an ability to turn out the vote and win in a heavily Black electorate...What we need to understand right now as a party is that every successful struggle for justice in America - not to mention every winning Democratic coalition in modern times - has included the active participation and engagement of Black people. In particular, they have included Black women, who in recent elections have been engaged more and vote at higher rates than the national average. That’s how Democrats won in 2008 and 2012 and 2018. And that’s how we win next year.” Senator Cory Booker [TCG Past Speaker]. Essence, MORE
“Somewhere around Halloween, the U.S. economy started to look a bit less scary. Top U.S. and Chinese officials are talking about a trade war truce. Many economic indicators, especially jobs and consumer spending, still look solid, if not strong. The stock market is back at record highs, and many corporate earnings are coming in better than expected. Even the bond market, which was flashing red at the end of the summer when the yield curve inverted, now looks a milder yellow. As recently as August, so.me models predicted a fifty-fifty chance of a U.S. recession in the next year. Now, many top Wall Street firms are telling clients the risk of a recession in the next year is modest. Goldman Sachs puts the risk level at 24 percent. Barclays says less than 10 percent. Morgan Stanley says “around 20” percent. The message from the markets, many experts, the latest economic data and top Federal Reserve officials is that recession risk has subsided.” Heather Long, The Washington Post, MORE
“In a town where polarization and partisanship seem to be the rule, there is one proposition to which politicians both right and left seem able to agree: it is time to end the ‘endless wars.’ It’s a notion that is difficult to resist — who exactly is for ‘endless war,’ after all? — and rooted in deep public frustration with the costly but seemingly fruitless interventions of the post-9/11 era. But as a guide to policymaking, opposition to ‘forever wars’ is not useful. Opposition to “endless wars” reflects skepticism regarding the deployment of U.S. military forces overseas, and of intervention as a policy tool. According to the Defense Department, there are about 200,000 U.S. service members deployed overseas in nearly 170 different countries or territories — a remarkable number given that there are just 195 countries in the world. Yet the differences among the United States’ various military missions are stark, and each deserves independent scrutiny rather than blanket opposition or, for that matter, knee-jerk support. It should be obvious that the 55,000 U.S. troops in Japan are engaged in different work than our 5,200 or so service members in Iraq. Less well-recognized, however, is how much even one combat mission in the Middle East differs from another.” Michael Singh, The Washington Post, MORE
