(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Sunrise/Sunset: Saturday's GNR [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-08 My oldest graduating from high school has given me and my husband a certain “sunrise/sunset” vibe. You know, from Fiddler . The sunrise/sunset theme is strong for us not only with our teenagers becoming amazing adults, and the joy -- but also loss — that comes with that, but also with our facing the difficult circumstances of our parents confronting the sunset of their lives. The last years, for my husband and I, have been full of eldercare and stress and grief and loss. Last night we got more sad and difficult news on that front with a cancer diagnosis of one of our parents. And our paths bring us closer to more difficulty and the reminder of the sunset that greets everyone. But that is life, right? And, for now life goes on. And with it more sunrises and more sunsets and more love and more hope. With love comes loss, but without love, there is nothing. Thank you all, for being in community with me for all of this years. It means a lot. If you are of the mind to support me and my family, donations to Biden’s campaign are always appreciated: Now onto the good news! Good Economic News Economy added 272,000 jobs in May, surging past expectations Employers added 272,000 jobs in May, reflecting a booming labor market that continues to fuel the economy with workers benefiting from wages that are outpacing inflation. Job creation accelerated from the previous month, rising above the average monthly level of growth so far this year, which was already strong, after a period of cooling for part of 2023. “The American middle class is seeing their economic standing improved. The strong wages and improving living standards are the main takeaway from this very strong jobs report,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US. Gas Prices Keep Dropping gas prices across the United States have continued their downward trend as summer approaches. According to the data from the American Automobile Association, the national average gasoline price has seen a decline, with states expected to see their averages dip below $3 per gallon in the coming weeks. AAA reported that the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.49 on June 6, marking an eight-cent drop from the previous week and the largest weekly drop of the year. ccording to AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross, "This drop in pump prices appears to have some sticking power for now. More states should see their averages dip below $3 a gallon in the coming weeks." Good Election News 49% of Independents think Trump should drop out post-guilty verdict One of the first polls conducted since a New York Jury found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records find that a significant minority of Republicans and Independents want him to drop out and a majority of registered voters approve of the jury's decision. Why it matters: The Morning Consult poll conducted on Friday offers some of the first clues about how voters are reacting to the unprecedented situation. By the numbers: 54% of registered voters "strongly" or "somewhat" approve of the guilty verdict compared to 34% who "strongly or "somewhat" disapprove. 49% of Independents and 15% of Republicans said Trump should end his campaign because of the conviction. One in 10 Republicans less likely to vote for Trump after guilty verdict, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday. Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote forfollowing hisfor falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to athat closed on Friday. The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate's conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal. Donald Trump Suffers Triple Polling Blow in 48 Hours After Guilty Verdict Trump has suffered losses in three separate polls in the 48 hours since his guilty verdict in his Manhattan criminal trial. Of the 2,220 registered voters, 51 percent said Trump should end his presidential campaign, while 43 percent said he should not. The majority of Republicans surveyed in the poll (79 percent) believe Trump should not drop out, however, 15 percent said he should. Meanwhile, 87 percent of Trump supporters don't want him to end his campaign while 8 percent do. There were 977 Trump supporters surveyed. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted between Thursday and Friday found that 5 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of independents said they are much less likely to vote for Trump because of the jury's ruling. Meanwhile, 30 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of independents said the verdict made them much more likely to vote for Trump. However, the majority of Republicans (55 percent), independents (58 percent), and Democrats (58 percent) said the verdict didn't change their minds on whether or not to vote for the former president. Why I Am Optimistic About Winning This November Longtime Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg sees the race in almost exactly the opposite terms. Rosenberg, who was the most prominent Democrat predicting that the widely anticipated red wave would fizzle in 2022, believes the vulnerabilities of Trump and his MAGA movement are so insurmountable that they eventually will overwhelm voters’ doubts about Biden. Rosenberg leans heavily on the precedent of 2022. Though Republicans rolled to big victories in red-leaning states, he noted, Democrats vastly exceeded expectations by winning the gubernatorial races in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Senate races in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Those victories, he said, have created a template for Democrats to exploit the resistance to Trump’s agenda in enough swing states to reach 270 Electoral College votes this year. “We know what happens when we go in with lots of money and a big campaign and talk about MAGA to swing-state voters: We win and they lose,” he said. “If MAGA in 2024 is even more extreme and more dangerous … that is just the more likely scenario of what happens then the alternative.” Rosenberg would prefer if more voters held positive views about Biden, but he insists it’s not necessary for the president to win because the “constant dynamic” in our politics since 2018 has become opposition to Trump and MAGA. “Who the Democratic candidate is to some degree immaterial,” Rosenberg said. “Because this has been a pattern that has repeated again and again and again” in the statewide races across the battlegrounds “regardless of who the Democratic candidate has been.” New NYT Poll Has Biden Gaining 2 Points I expect that Trump’s convictions will not shift polls all that much in the short term. It’s rare for public opinion in the US to move rapidly. Changes in an election take time to move through an electorate where tens of millions don’t pay close attention to the news. So in my view we won’t really know if these verdicts are changing the election for a few weeks. But I think these guilty verdicts can and will erode the integrity of Trump’s brand, making future negative information voters receive about him more believable, and damaging. For a guy who excels in negatives, this is a very big electoral problem. n fact, the polls this week have continued to show what we’ve seen over the last few weeks - it is a close, competitive election, with neither candidate leading outside the margin of error in the national popular vote or states getting to 270. Nothing much has changed. So it is a bit of welcome news this morning that when the New York Times called back voters they had polled earlier this spring Biden had gained 2 points. In a close election, if it is both true and it holds, this shift could be early signs of meaningful movement in the race, and something we’ve long believed would happen as voters woke up to the ugliness of Trump 2024: Trump’s felony conviction has hurt him in the polls But will it last? Trump’s lead over Biden has long rested on a shaky foundation: In many polls, the Republican has owed his advantage to unusually high support among politically disengaged, Democratic-leaning voters. There’s always been cause to suspect that these voters would eventually find their way back into Biden’s camp, and the available data indicates that Trump’s conviction might have served as a catalyst for returning this bloc to the Democratic fold. The Two-Time Trump Voters Who Have Had Enough The day after former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, I sat down for a focus group with nine voters from across the country who voted for him twice and don’t want to vote for him again. They are not, however, all committed to voting for President Joe Biden instead. These are the “double haters”: the chunk of voters who are dissatisfied with both candidates, and are trying to decide which one is less bad. Although many of them are “out” on Trump, they’re struggling to get there on Biden. If Biden is going to win in November, these are the voters he must persuade to hold their noses and vote for him. And there’s reason to believe that Trump’s recent felony conviction just made it a little bit easier for them to do it. Kennedy Jr. is no H. Ross Perot Everything about Perot’s relative success as a third-party candidate in 1992 is not possible for Kennedy. In retrospect, everything about Perot’s candidacy was wild and not even remotely replicable by Kennedy. It starts with the media blitz Perot used to build momentum in the spring of 1992. This was the era before 24-hour cable news networks dominated, when most of us watched the evening news around dinnertime, or maybe Larry King Live on CNN a bit later. There were only a few news programs. Perot made appearances on many of them, able to leverage his substance as a businessman to gain credibility and access. Kennedy has none of that available to him. Our media environment is incredibly fractured, and people often choose what media to pay attention to based on what fits their beliefs. There is little space for someone to come in from the outside and gain credibility. And Kennedy doesn’t have the business reputation that Perot had to leverage contacts and be taken seriously. Then there’s the political environment. In 1992, Americans’ party identification didn’t look much different from where it is now. But what has changed is the intensity of partisanship and negative views of the other side. Good News from Around the world Claudia Sheinbaum elected Mexico’s first female president Claudia Sheinbaum was elected Mexico’s first female president in a landslide on Sunday, an official quick count of votes showed, cementing the dominance of the left-leaning Morena movement that over the past six years has upended the country’s political establishment. A beaming Sheinbaum appeared in front of a cheering crowd at a Mexico City hotel. “This is a recognition by the people of Mexico of our national project,” she said. She tried to assure critics she would not use her mandate to concentrate power. “We are democrats, and by conviction, we would never establish an authoritarian or repressive government.” Modi Claims 3rd Term in India, but His Party Suffers Losses One of the biggest surprises was in the northern city of Ayodhya, where Mr. Modi had inaugurated a contentious Hindu temple in January, a capstone of his Hindu nationalist agenda. The B.J.P. was poised to lose its seat there, a sign, according to some supporters, that the party’s focus on pro-Hindu policies had given the opposition a rallying cause. The main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, was doing better than expected, indicating a sharp turnaround for the once dominant political force. The Congress-led opposition coalition united out of fear that a third Modi term would wipe it off the political map and push India toward one-party rule. Congress and its allies tapped into local grievances in the hope of winning back competitive seats. Suddenly, the aura of invincibility around Narendra Modi has been shattered. In an Indian election in which his party’s slogan had promised a landslide victory and Mr. Modi even repeatedly referred to himself as sent by God, the results announced on Tuesday were unexpectedly sobering The significance of the Indian elections The general election of 2024 is a wondrous moment. The air of despondency, the suffocating shadow of authoritarianism, and the nauseous winds of communalism have, at least for the moment, lifted. The NDA may form a government for the third time. That is not a milestone to be scoffed at. But this election was not an ordinary election. At stake was the continuing possibility of politics itself. At the very least, the result pricks the bubble of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authority. He made this election about himself: His performance, his omnipotence and omniscience, and his ideological obsessions. Modi is, for the moment, not the indomitable vehicle for History, or the deified personification of the people. Today, he is just another politician, cut to size by the people. [...] The election is a reconfiguration of the social imagination of Indian politics. The BJP had upended conventional wisdom over the last decade by reconceiving the social imagination of Indian politics. The first was the consolidation of a Hindutva identity that, in part, tried to widen its social base to include OBCs and Dalits. It also used fragmented contests to make the minority vote irrelevant. But these strategies have now run its course. There is some evidence that the Dalits have moved away from the BJP and, more improbably, moving to the INDIA alliance. The minorities have finally found enough resoluteness in the Congress and the SP. The BJP’s poor performance shows the limits of his autocratic, Hindu supremacist policies. Narendra Modi will be sworn in for his third term as India’s prime minister on Sunday after winning the post again in India’s momentous 2024 elections. But this week’s elections delivered a shocking blow to Modi’s dominance and will likely curb his autocratic tendencies. There was never any serious doubt that Modi would remain in the top spot; he faced no credible opposition during the last two elections. And heading into this year’s six-week-long staggered election, he was widely expected to further consolidate his hold over Indian politics. But surprisingly, he did not: Not only did Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lose a huge number of parliamentary seats to a revitalized opposition coalition, but it also lost big in states where it has enjoyed massive popularity He’ll likely face new constraints on his increasingly authoritarian leadership thanks to a renewed opposition coalition — and possibly from within his own coalition, too. But the bigger picture is that, at least for now, the Indian electorate is pushing back against his authoritarian and populist policies and re-entrenching the democratic principles, including secularism, on which its constitution is based. Other Good News Judge rules Bannon must go to prison by July 1 while appealing contempt case A federal judge on Thursday ordered former Trump political adviser and right-wing podcaster Stephen K. Bannon to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving a four-month prison term for contempt of Congress. Supreme Court sides with Native American tribes in health care funding case The Supreme Court sided with Native American tribes Thursday in a dispute with the federal government over the cost of health care when tribes run programs in their own communities. The 5-4 decision means the government will cover millions in overhead costs that two tribes faced when they took over running their health care programs under a law meant to give Native Americans more local control. Covering those costs is “necessary to prevent a funding gap,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. Not reimbursing them forces tribes to “pay a penalty for pursuing self-determination." On the Lighter Side What can you do to save democracy Take action. Nothing makes you feel better than action. and/or Your donations will come bundled with others from our Good News community and will show the Democrats and the Biden team that there are many of us who support him and combine hard work with optimism in our battles for a better America! Looking for something else? GREAT! Here are some other ideas: You can also educate people about how great Biden is! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/8/2245390/-Sunrise-Sunset-Saturday-s-GNR?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/