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Elections are won on messages that can be put in one line. FDR's in 1932 he stated clearly and applies to Biden in 2024- it has Abraham Lincoln's message from his writings. FDR said in 1932 "Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people." America in 2024 during the pandemic resembles America in 1932 during the Depression with widening gaps between the upper and lower classes and in opportunity for better life. Philip Bump in his Analysis in the Washington Post points out that the 2024 US election remains a referendum on the former president Trump. This is because as is already evident the voters have made up their minds, on Biden's side people that have decided they will not vote for Trump, and on Trump's side people who will vote for Trump. Biden has a stable vote when the election is referendum on Trump. Crime has come down so that crime is not so much of an issue. Immigration is also coming down and the Lankford- Biden immigration legislation did not pass to close the border as it was seen not attractive for the reelection bid on basis of immigration fears from the former president. Biden has take steps to close the border using executive action in the absence of Congress stalling on advice of the former president. The other issue is abortion and the selection of J.D. Vance for VP creates more fears about abortion bans for suburban women in all 51 states. Climate Change action is another issue and if stalled for 4 years it would cost the US upward of 1 trillion dollars to make up for action not taken till 2028. Donilon has said elections are fought on issues that can be put in one line for focus and concentration. For Democrats it is democracy in the words of FDR in his 1932 address: "Give me your help not to win votes alone but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people." It is good to reflect and know that this is what president Abraham Lincoln would also have said knowing Lincoln's views from his writings on the this aspect of freedom in the Civil War in fighting the plantation economies of the Southern states. ...

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Judge Aileen Cannon handling the Trump classified documents case in Florida was appointed by Mr. Trump during the last days of his administration after losing the 2020 election. This WSJ report looks at Ms. Cannon handling of previous cases and what lies ahead.

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Fitch Ratings drops US top credit rating for "erosion of governance." This happens as Mr. Trump runs for the 2024 election after a series of indictments for election interference.

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November 18, 2020 WSJ ran the editorial from the Editorial Board- Rage against the Voting Machine. Rejecting the claims made by Mr. Trump and others about the 2020 election. WSJ cites this editorial and an Op-ed by the CEO of Dominion on its pages that showed its position was not affected by FNN even though News Corporation is the parent company of both. And showing its independent judgement after the election of president Biden with a margin of over 7 million more votes, in rejecting such erroneous claims.

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California governor Newsom faces a recall election in 2021. Only 3 governors in the US have faced recall elections, says the NYT. Newsom faces criticism for his handling of the pandemic, homelessness in California, and other issues. It is also a sign of the rural-urban divide and polarization in the US as Newsom is running his campaign as one against former president Trump.

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The Senate election in Georgia with Governor Kemp running for the Republican party will show how much support there is for Mr. Trump's idea that the 2022 presidential election was stolen by Democrats. Mr. Kemp has avoided getting into Mr. Trump's contention that the election was stolen, preferring to focus on good governance for the state and local issues relating to the economy. Kemp is likely to be the Republican nominee for the election to the US Senate and is well positioned to win the Senate seat.

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Trump's Attorney General William Barr was Attorney General of George Bush in 1992-1994 and brings extensive experience, which may have helped him stand his ground on December 1, 2020 rejecting claims of presidential election fraud at a meeting on Dec. 1 with Mr. Trump. In his book 'One Damn Thing After Another," Barr describes what happened on December 1, when he had lunch with Mike Balsamo of the Associated Press. Mike asked him what Barr was finding about election fraud claims. Barr's answer was that to date he had not found fraud on a scale that would have affected the outcome of the election. Within a short time this information was all over the country.

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The Trump indictment under RICO or racketeer laws draws this reaction in the WSJ. WSJ says the alleged behaviour was rotten, but does it gain credibility by being prosecuted under racketeer laws. It describes the Trump response as more delusional than criminal- that a decisive share of Republicans in suburbs did not want Mr. Trump for four more years. WSJ Editorial Board view is that there is no defending the conduct undermining confidence in the election result in 2020 and it would be a mistake for Republicans to try.

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This analysis in the BBC News says the Trump acquittal is likely now in the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. It says as the votes were nearly party line, and the situation in terms of people's views is much the same as before, not much has changed. The president's ratings hover around low 40's to mid 40's much the same as during his entire term in office. What has changed is that this may have energized Mr. Trump's base. Ms. Pam Bondi, the BBC says, reflected the Republican view in her opening statement for the defense that with Ukraine policy handled by Mr. Biden, his son Hunter Biden's role on the Board of a Ukrainian energy company Burisma raised all sorts of questions which may have resulted in Mr. Trump's decision to ask the Ukrainian government to look into the Bidens. BBC cites an October poll showing some Democrats and majorities of Republicans and independents think Hunter Biden's Ukraine dealings are a valid issue. This BBC report says Republicans are likely to focus on this issue in coming days as they respond to the impeachment trial. ...

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The nearly unanimous support for president Trump in the impeachment inquiry from Republicans in Congress is a result of strong consistent support from a loyal base, strong fund raising in competitive races for members of Congress who supported Trump, and the sense that the whole process was flawed and part of partisan politics. There was also a sense among members of Congress in the House and Senate that the actions in Ukraine did not rise to the level of impeachable offense.  Throughout the process from the beginning Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence, Mr. McCarthy minority leader in the House and Mr. McConnell majority leader in the Senate stayed engaged with individual members keeping together a tight knit community of legislators. As a result unprecedented action was seen in 2019-2020 with every single Democrat voting for impeachment and every single Republican voting against, and prominent members of each side showing outrage at events or how the proceedings were conducted. Each side even seeing the impeachment inquiry as a strategic step towards the presidential election in 2020. Democrats looking for some slight advantage in the midwestern states that moved the election to Trump the last time. Republicans seeing this as a way to rally the base, play to Mr. Trump's strengths in persuasion, and to vigorously defend the economic achievements in international trade agreements and the economy. ...

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Americans look to programs to build a better future. Gerald Seib in the WSJ says Trump's focus on the 2020 election is unlikely to help Republicans when the country is looking to rebuild for the future. 

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Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York, only a second crime turns it into a felony. WSJ Editorial Board asks the question what is the second crime in the Trump indictment that turns a misdemeanor into a felony under New York law. District Attorney Alvin Bragg says "under New York election law it is illegal to promote a candidacy by unlawful means." With the hush money payments Mr. Trump is seen as promoting his candidacy unlawfully, and the payments themselves as illegally done campaign contributions. Another aspect of law is that the situation was not brought up in 2017, yet is perceived very differently in 2023. Much more is known in 2023 than in the early days of  the election campaign in 2017.

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Only 27 of 249 Republicans in the House of Representatives have accepted that Mr. Biden won the presidential election, the rest refused to answer. And only 32 of these Republicans in the House say they will accept if this is certified by the Electoral College. The Senate is split 50 Republicans to 48 Democrats with 2 runoff elections in Georgia. In one Senate seat a Libertarian candidate too a slice of the vote denying a clear victory to the Republican Perdue for that seat. In the other election for Senate seat with  about 20 candidates running no one could secure a clear win. Mr. Biden with a very thin margin of 13,000 votes in Georgia over Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump contested the election because of the unprecedented nature of the 2020 election with mail in votes allowed in a way and in huge numbers that was not always well organized to be fault proof. With federal elections being run by state officials in 51 states and not by a national election commission as in India, and each state improvising its way of handling mail in ballots there was not a fault proof way of knowing if everything was 100% unquestionably correctly done. A national federal election commission not belonging to any party and unrelated to state or federal authority can ensure an election is free and fair better than the way it is organized in the U.S. Use of electronic machines for over 1 billion voters also ensures consistent way of doing it in India compared to the haphazard nature of the American process of vote ballots and separate counting in each state. This is the second election in which both parties differed on the election and disputed the result. The earlier one was Bush vs. Gore when Mr. Clinton was outgoing president following 2 terms in office. Yet surprisingly there are no calls for setting up a structure like that in India that would organize the vote collection under the authority of a national election commission and the use of modern technology consistently across the nation. ...

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About one and a half time of voters are more likely to be against voting for Mr. Trump for president in 2024 than for Mr. Trump, according to a WSJ poll taken after the four indictments, says this Editorial Board opinion in WSJ. It cites the poll of 1500 respondents taken August 24-30 which shows 24% more likely to vote for Trump in a general election and 37% less likely, 35% no effect. WSJ says this presents political headwinds for Republicans.

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How third party candidates in 2016 put Trump in the White House is shown in graphs in the WSJ. Since 2000 about 2% of the vote goes to third party candidates such as Greens, Libertarian, and others, in 2016 this reached 6%. It hurt Clinton the most as the Trump lead in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was merely 5-10% of 200,000-300,000 votes for independent candidates in Wisconsin,  in Michigan and in Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton lacked clear focus in her campaign and her years as overseas traveling foreign minister left her out of touch with the alienation of the working class and fragmentation as Silicon valley tech and financial interests intruded into the Democratic party. This had the effect of muddying the focus on the Democrats FDR/Truman working class base and also with America's rural voters suffering from a toxic mix of problems. In 2024 the Kennedy candidacy takes as many or more votes from Mr. Trump says the WSJ. The Biden focus on workers and families gives the Democrats a clear direction along with wage gains by union labor and a resilient economy with low unemployment. This suggests that the independent candidates may not find more traction than the 2% of previous elections since 2000. ...

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The union vote will be critical in this election in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. Mr. Trump has worked hard to bring manufacturing in the U.S. back to the days after World War II when the U.S. was the dominant nation in manufacturing.  This report says the fight to improve the prospects of workers in manufacturing in midwestern and northeastern states could determine the election in 2020. It looks at the situation in Pennsylvania.

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Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, wins 55% to 45% for Republican Daniel Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. This gives Democrats a one vote majority in the Supreme Court. It will mean a challenge of a 1849 abortion law and the redrawing of the electoral maps that gives Republicans  a majority in the state assembly. The governor is Democrat Tony Evers and the legislature in Wisconsin has a Republican majority.  States in the midwest such as Michigan and Wisconsin played a part in Mr. Trump's gain of the presidency. Since then Ohio has moved into the Republican side, and the close contests are in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Colorado moved to the Democratic side. Just 40,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden from Trump in the election of 2020 even though Biden had 7 million more votes than Biden because of the Electoral College system which goes by state's won. In 2016 Trump and Biden were separated by just 80,000 votes.   ...

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Pennsylvania is one of the critical states in the 2020 U.S. election. It is also one of the states hit hard by the coronavirus. Pennsylvania has also seen the impact of layoffs in the vital steel industry during two decades of neglect by previous administrations till the tariffs on steel from China by president Trump began a reversal of this trend. Unemployment is high in Pennsylvania as a result of the pandemic. 51 of 67 counties in the state recorded unemployment rate increases for 2020 that are in the top 20% for the U.S. Pennsylvania and Michigan are two critical states for the 2020 election. Pennsylvania has done much worse than other states including Michigan when it comes to the impact of the pandemic on unemployment rates in all counties. Voters could decide to blame the Democratic governor for lockdown restrictions  that worsened unemployment or president Trump for his approach to the coronavirus. There is also concern among conservative voters about the kind of change they seek between steady improvement in unemployment and a shift to radical changes in the economy. ...

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U.S. president Trump is to announce U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate change agreement. The process of withdrawing is one that takes 4 years to complete, putting off a final decision till after the presidential election of 2020.

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At its core what Peter Baker of the NYT calls a question that settles the future of American democracy-Mr. Trump's indictment for efforts to reverse 2020 election result- is a question of culture, of American culture and education having deteriorated in profound and unthinkable ways. Peter Baker who has covered 5 American presidents writes in the NYT that the fourth indictment gets to the heart of the matter, which will define the future of American democracy. This indictment asks whether a sitting president can spread lies to hold on to power when the election shows voters have rejected him. The indictment says that Mr. Trump "knew that his claims were false," yet he "made them anyway to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode public faith in the administration of the election."  Baker also points out that one third of the electorate still believes this to be true as a result of the claims Trump made. And 75% of the Republicans in NYT-Siena poll think Mr. Trump was simply acting in good faith to question election results in some states and it was nothing more than pursuing his legitimate legal options. This is about 40% of the American electorate. How is this possible unless the education and culture of the country has been allowed by successive failed administrations to deteriorate to an extent never before seen in this way since the country's independence in 1776. Even recent reports that two thirds of America's fourth graders fail basic reading comprehension tests have not jolted the nation out of its tech based glorification of a failing culture and education. ...

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Two women Claudia Sheinbaum of Morena party and Xochitl Galvez of National Action party are contesting the presidential election in Mexico in 2024. President Lopez Obrador is from the Morena party, he was former mayor of Mexico city and led the socialists to government in 2018 with his book presenting his message "Saying No to Corruption, Violence and Trump's Wall." He won by a landslide and during his term he targeted corrupt officials and worked with the US Trump administration, and now Biden administration on tackling migration and border issues.

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In the closing days of the Harris vs Trump election campaign in October 2024, Trump attends a rally in Madison Square Garden in New York city. Harris visits a Baptist church in Philadelphia, and talks to young black men at a barber shop, visits a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philly. The visit to the Puerto Rican restaurant comes as a comedian at the Trump Madison Square Garden rally makes racist remarks about Latinos, Blacks and Jews, and calls Puerto Rico an "island of garbage." About 579,000 Latinos and Puerto Ricans make up the voting public in Pennsylvania. Latino stars put up video clips of the comments on Latinos on social media expressing their disapproval.

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Simply put the party that makes the best case for the economy and for a better future consistently and constantly will prevail as at the end of the day white, black, rural and urban voters will be listening carefully. The cost of living, immigration, the economy, are major issues in 2024. Nate Cohn of the NYT looks at the 2020 election, the 2022 midterms and polling for 2024. He says Republicans are doing better in states they did well in the midterms in 2022. Nationally they are doing as well as in the midterms making gains in noncompetitive blue states such as New York and California where there is less impact of Roe vs Wade abortion rights and voters can show discontent with Democrats for the way they have governed. Trump can also gain with black and Hispanic voters but more in California and New York and Texas noncompetitive states.  Harris does well in Florida, and Texas, and in some red states for the same reason as voters look for alternatives from being tied down to the Republican party or the Trump Republicans.  In the key Electoral College states in midwest Harris is holding up well in polling- in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In these states Black and Hispanics are not in the same population numbers as in other states. ...