Former President Jimmy Carter has a request for the candidates already lining up to run for president in 2020.
From the AJC's Jill Vejnoska, who was at his annual town hall meeting with Emory University first-year students on Wednesday night:
Though he left little doubt who he and pretty much everyone who shares his last name would be voting for.
"In my family we have 22 voters, direct descendants of me and (his wife) Rosalynn," Carter said with a grin. "In the 2008 presidential campaign Obama got 22 votes out of 22. I would guess that this time Hillary Clinton will get 22 votes from the Carter family."
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The demographic changes that have Democrats in Georgia and other states with rising minority populations in a tizzy may be more overhyped than even some Republican critics argued.
The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton is getting "surprisingly" little bounce – maybe a net percentage point – from black and Hispanic voters. The reason why is more complicated.
The overall share of white non-Hispanic voters has plummeted from 81 percent in 2000 to 74 percent in 2012, and that number is destined to drop further this November. But what really helped President Barack Obama was a spike in turnout and higher support from swing voters who in the past voted for the GOP - and not a larger demographic trend - the paper reported.
From the story:
My view is that this is somewhat coincidental. Many of the red states with growing nonwhite populations also have the sort of older, Southern, less educated and more religious white populations that have trended toward the Republicans, even in states with far less demographic change and far fewer nonwhite voters (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri). The states with rapid demographic change but fewer Southern white voters — like California or New Jersey — did not see the same weakening in Democratic strength.
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Donald Trump's campaign team announced its "Congressional Leadership Team" in Georgia, and it's a clean sweep of the state's GOP delegation.
The chair, of course, is Sen. David Perdue, the Republican businessman’s top surrogate in Georgia. The co-chairs are Rep. Tom Price, Rep. Tom Graves and incoming Rep. Drew Ferguson. And the other seven congressman, plus outgoing Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, are on the list.
Rounding it out is Sen. Johnny Isakson, who has endorsed Trump but kept him at arms’ length as he runs for a third term in November.
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House Democrats on Tuesday renewed their push for votes on a pair of gun control bills but stopped short of the game-stopping theatrics that won them headlines all over the world in June.
The short version of the story: Lewis and other Democrats took to the podium. Republicans shrugged.
The long version via Roll Call:
They were led by Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, who yielded to each member who asked for bills to be introduced on behalf of victims "of gun violence who never received a moment of action on the House floor."
Their requests were ruled out of order because the time that had been yielded to Democrats related to debate on a different measure.
Lewis in his speech held up a picture of Taylor Hayden, a woman he said was celebrating a girls weekend in Atlanta when she was killed by gang crossfire:
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Democrats, if you remember from earlier this summer, want votes on legislation that would expand background checks for potential gun owners and a "no-fly, no-buy" proposal for people on the terror watch list.
Republican leaders have so far rejected their calls and moved to punish Democrats for breaking House rules during the sit-in. To that, Lewis said he's seen far worse.
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