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2020 Election Tag

According to Politico, the GOP finally has an answer to the Democrat Party's ActBlue, which brought in over $700 million small-dollar donations in 2018:
Following weeks of closed-door discussions, Republicans have agreed to create a new platform dubbed Patriot Pass, which will be used to cultivate and process online donations. The GOP — whose jungle-like ecosystem of vendors has long fought bitterly over contracts and dollars — has struggled in the past to create such a unified system.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) announced today that he will not seek re-election for a fourth term in 2020. From Politico:
"The people of Tennessee have been very generous, electing me to serve more combined years as governor and senator than anyone else from our state. I am deeply grateful, but now it is time for someone else to have that privilege," the 78-year old Alexander said in a closely-held statement on Monday. "I have gotten up every day thinking that I could help make our state and country a little better, and gone to bed most nights thinking that I have. I will continue to serve with that same spirit during the remaining two years of my term.”

Beto O'Rourke is scoping out a presidential run. According to Buzzfeed, his recon included a call to Al Sharpton to schedule a meeting. A Sharpton spokeswoman confirmed to Buzzfeed that "they spoke and agreed to meet within the next couple of weeks and they had a great conversation."

Midterms are over, so it's time for Democrat presidential hopefuls to eye the 2020 presidential election.  Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) is the latest to announce her plans to make a decision about running for the Democrat nomination. At the Know Your Value conference in San Francisco, Harris told co-host Mika Brzezinski that deciding to run is a "very serious decision":  “Over the holiday, I will make that decision with my family.”

There is a nagging suspicion among us conservatives that Democrats want to game the electoral algorithm to produce the snapshot of the electorate most favorable to themselves, and that they will continue tweaking it to improve their results in real time. Many on the left, of course, sincerely believe that they are fighting voter suppression or championing innovation.  One of the examples of their innovation is the ranked choice voting that adopted by the city of Oakland, CA in 2006.  In 2010, after a complicated campaign in which candidates vied for second and third place, Oakland has elected Mayor Quan, even though she performed poorly after the first round was tabulated.  A little more than a year later, Quan, who was nobody's first choice, pissed virtually everyone in town with her lackluster handling of the Occupy camp.  One would think this experiment was enough to show that traditional voting arrangements work better, but no.  Other municipalities, and the state of Maine, have adopted the system, and Utah is slated to do it.