George Clooney Warns Against Fear, Hatred From Trump Administration in Stirring Power of Women Speech
Nate Nickolai, Variety October 12, 2018
George Clooney didn’t shy away from criticizing the Trump administration’s culture of hate and disbelief while introducing Emma Gonzalez at Variety’sPower of Women event. But that doesn’t mean he’s given up hope.
After introducing himself as “Amal Clooney’s husband” (“I know, I know, I can read this room,” he joked), the actor called out the current administration’s work in creating “a time where fear is our stock in trade” before highlighting the numerous hateful stances it has taken toward people of different religions, races and genders.
“Fear of Muslims. Fear of immigrants. Fear of minorities. Fear of strong women,” he said. “And because our government needs us to be afraid, the question is, are we really scared of all the things that actually make America great? And if the answer is yes, then we’ll have history to answer to. Because these are the ideas that will define us for generations.”
Clooney warned that the government’s actions would have repercussions, especially with the upcoming midterm elections in November.
“When you call an entire religion your enemy, you might very well make an enemy out of an entire religion. When you tell a whole race of people that you value them less, you can’t be surprised when they question your values. When you tell women that coming forward to testify about their abuse is a joke, don’t be shocked when they’re standing on your lawn, laughing on Nov. 7,” Clooney said.
He continued, “After all the jokes, and insults, and reality show frenzy, what will be remembered, what will stand the test of time, is holding responsible these wolves in wolves’ clothing.”
Clooney praised Gonzalez for her tireless efforts to obtain more gun control regulation, while reminding the audience at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, Calif., that trying times can also create inspirational leaders.
He highlighted Gonzalez’s speech at the March for Our Lives campaign in March, during which she stood in silence for six minutes and 20 seconds, the same amount of time a school shooter took to massacre 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Gonzalez, Clooney said, became an overnight expert when it came to gun control, and it’s her heart that is one of the driving forces for change today.
“She made us listen to her heart,” Clooney said. “A heart that believes that we as a country can be so much better. A heart that called for adults to act like adults so children don’t have to.”
Solar power now accounts for around 1% of the world’s electricity generation, up from a negligible amount of solar capacity only a decade ago. But that’s just scratching the surface of the industry’s potential. Solar energy is the most abundant form of energy on earth, with enough solar energy hitting the planet’s surface every hour to provide for all of humanity’s energy needs for a year.
If the Energy Transition Outlook 2018 report from DNV GL, a quality-assurance and risk-management company, are true, solar electricity production could grow 65-fold by 2050, eventually making solar one of the largest sources of energy in the world. That presents a tremendous opportunity for long-term investors.
Image source: First Solar.
Why 6,500% growth is within reach
One of the reasons solar energy could grow 6,500% between 2016 and 2050, the period this report is analyzing, is because solar energy is growing from a fairly small base. According to DNV GL, only 290 gigawatts (GW) of solar was installed at the end of 2016, and about 100 GW are now being built per year. By 2050, DNV GL expects 18,895 GW to be installed by 2050.
Solar and wind power together are projected to provide two-thirds of all electricity in 2050. Incredibly, this is expected to come at a cost saving, with energy expenditures as a percentage of GDP falling from 5.5% in 2016 to 3.1% in 2050. Wind and solar will actually save money for consumers as they grow.
Who is installing all of this solar energy?
Thirty percent of that 18,895 GW of solar energy capacity is projected to be installed on rooftops around the world. That presents a potential growth opportunity for a global rooftop solar leader like SunPower Corporation(NASDAQ: SPWR), which makes high-efficiency solar panels that pay more power generation on each roof. Since customers are willing to pay a premium for efficiency, SunPower can even charge more than commodity solar panel prices for its products, and that will help its economics as the industry grows.
What’s left is 70% of the solar market, which will be installed in large and small ground-mounted systems known as utility-scale solar projects. This is where First Solar(NASDAQ: FSLR) thrives as a solar panel provider, and Canadian Solar(NASDAQ: CSIQ) and JinkoSolar(NYSE: JKS) make solar panels and build their own projects.
We’ve seen the utility-scale solar business become highly competitive over the last decade, but First Solar, Canadian Solar, and JinkoSolar have a global scale few other companies can match, and that will be a competitive advantage in the long term. We’re also seeing them slowly upgrade the manufacturing process to higher-efficiency components (although still well behind SunPower), which will squeeze slightly more power from each acre of land and lead to a growing competitive advantage.
Can this turn around solar stocks?
Usually, an industry that’s expected to grow 6,500% over the course of three decades would be a big winner for investors. But solar stocks have struggled over the past decade as the sale prices for panels and projects have come down and put pressure on margins and over-leveraged balance sheets.
What I think we’ll see over the next decade is a few winners emerge and consolidate power in the industry around advantages like high efficiency or low-cost utility-scale solar technology. That’s why I think SunPower, First Solar, Canadian Solar, and JinkoSolar are set to succeed, despite a sketchy past of value creation for some of them. At least we know the industry is expected to grow, and investors will hopefully enjoy some tailwinds from that growth.
“MARCH TO THE POLLS” Live look over downtown Chicago where people are marching to early voting sites after an earlier rally in Grant Park. Women’s March Chicago put on the event in an effort to “use our voices and our votes to remove anti-female politicians from office.” bit.ly/2NBZRQc
"MARCH TO THE POLLS" Live look over downtown Chicago where people are marching to early voting sites after an earlier rally in Grant Park. Women's March Chicago put on the event in an effort to "use our voices and our votes to remove anti-female politicians from office." bit.ly/2NBZRQc
Colin Kaepernick talks Nike, why he kneels while receiving one of Harvard’s highest honors
Jason Owens,Yahoo Sports October 12, 2018
Colin Kaepernick was one of eight recipients of the W.E.B. Dubois Medal from Harvard on Thursday for his work in social justice.
Comedian Dave Chapelle and artist Kehinde Wiley were among the others awarded “Harvard’s highest honor in the field of African and African-American studies.”
Kapernick improvises acceptance speech
After receiving a rousing ovation, Kaepernick appeared to scrap his prepared remarks for an off-the-cuff speech shared by WHDH Boston’s Eric Kane that addressed his recent Nike deal and the first time he took a knee in protest.
“I had a short speech written, but it just didn’t seem true to what it should’ve been with the authenticity and the passion and the inspiration that’s been in this room,” Kaepernick said to start a speech that he requested not be broadcast.
Why Kaepernick kneels
He went on to talk about the first time he took a knee and the response from Oakland’s Castlemont High football team, whose players took a knee the next week to support him. He visited the team on game day.
“One of the young brothers says ‘We don’t get to eat at home, so we’re going to eat on this field,’” Kaepernick said. “That moment has never left me.
“And I’ve carried that everywhere I went. And I think that’s the reality of what I’ve fought for, what so many of us have fought for. People live with this every single day.”
Kaepernick on Nike and sacrifice
Kaepernick also addressed his Nike campaign and what sacrifice means to him.
“I go to what recently happened with the Nike campaign where, to believe in something even it it means sacrificing everything quote became huge,” Kaepernick said. “As I reflected on that, it made me think of if we all believe something, we won’t have to sacrifice everything.”
Kaepernick made a call to action for people in the room and people of privilege to stand up for those in need.
“I feel like it’s not only my responsibility, but all our responsibilities as people that are in positions of privilege, in positions of power, to continue to fight for them and uplift them, empower them,” Kapernick said. “Because if we don’t, we become complicit in the problem. It is our duty to fight for them, and we are going to continue to fight for them.”
Kaepernick: Love drives the resistance
He concluded by focusing on love, not divide being the driving force behind his protests.
“I go back to something I said in a speech previously, that love is at the root of our resistance, and it will continue to be, and it will fortify everything we do.”
Eggs are a great source of protein, which is important for building muscle and losing weight.
One large egg contains 6.3 grams of protein
Egg whites contain the most protein, but yolks are packed with vitamins and nutrients.
Who doesn’t love eggs? They’re inexpensive, and they’re a great source of protein, which is important whether you’re trying to lose weight or build muscle. Plus, eggs are versatile, so you can eat them scrambled at breakfast, hard boiled as a snack, or fried on top of a big pile of vegetables at dinner.
But can something so small really contain that much protein?
Here’s how much protein is in one egg
The amount of protein varies depending on size, but here’s how much you can expect from one egg, according to the United States Department of Agriculture:
Jumbo: 90 calories and 7.9 grams of protein
Extra large: 80 calories and seven grams of protein
There’s a lot of debate about whether it’s best to eat the whole egg – the egg white and the yolk – and recent studies have shown that whole eggs are a great food for weight loss and don’t increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. Although egg yolks contain many important nutrients like iron and vitamins A, D, E, and K, the whites pack the most punch of protein. The whites from one egg contain about four grams of protein, while the yolk includes 2.7 grams of protein.
Need ideas for how to get creative with your egg eating? Check out this list of 21 deviled egg recipes that make a great post-workout snack.
FDA Bans 7 Cancer-Causing Food Additives Found in Popular Foods
Environmental Working Group October 10, 2018
Astrakan Images / Cultura / Getty Images.
Under pressure from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and other environmental and public health groups, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned seven substances used in artificial flavors that have been linked to cancer in animals.
“Chemicals that could cause cancer should never have been allowed in our food in the first place, especially not hiding behind the confusing label of ‘artificial flavors,’” said Melanie Benesh, EWG’s legislative attorney. “The FDA finally did the right thing by taking this important step to better protect consumers.”
These food additives are most commonly used to enhance the flavor of baked goods, ice cream, candy, chewing gum and beverages. The newly banned flavors are benzophenone, ethyl acrylate, eugenyl methyl ether, myrcene, pulegone, pyridine and styrene.
“Consumers will never know which foods were made with these chemicals, since manufacturers have been allowed to hide these ingredients behind the vague term ‘flavor,’” said Dawn Undurraga, EWG’s nutritionist. “This is a positive step forward, but the FDA should empower consumers to make their own fully informed decisions by requiring full ingredient disclosure.”
The ban on styrene was also supported by a petition from the food industry. But the FDA acted on the other six after public interest groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit petitioning the FDA to make a final decision whether to prohibit the seven cancer-causing artificial chemicals from use in food.
Earthjustice represented the petitioners, including Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, the Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, Natural Resources Defense Council, and WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
Manufacturers that use these food additives will have two years to comply with the new rules.
To learn more about the chemicals used in processed foods, please visit EWG’s Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Additives. Consumers looking for healthier options can also visit EWG’s Food Scores database or download EWG’s Healthy Living App, which provides ratings for more than 120,000 food and personal care products.
48 Hours With Heidi Heitkamp In North Dakota, Post-Kavanaugh Vote
Kevin Robillard, HuffPost October 10, 2018
TURTLE MOUNTAIN INDIAN RESERVATION, N.D. — Two days after she cast the vote that could both define and end her political career, Heidi Heitkamp was back home in North Dakota, and near tears.
On this reservation near the Canadian border on Monday, far from the drama of Washington, the women of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians had a gift for the Democratic senator.
A ribbon skirt, decorated with the colors of the rainbow, was meant to tell her grey skies would soon pass.
“This is for everything you’ve done for us,” said tribal member Cathie Gladue, presenting her with the skirt as Heitkamp began to tear up. “And it’s especially for the stand you’ve recently taken. It was an honorable stand for all women, of all colors.”
The stand she took — choosing to believe Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when both were teenagers, and to dismiss the then-Supreme Court nominee’s angry denials — is one Heitkamp and almost all of her supporters acknowledge has put her political career in jeopardy.
Running for re-election against Republican GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer in a state President Donald Trump won by roughly 36 percentage points, Heitkamp already was seen by analysts as the senator most likely to lose re-election. And Republicans now crow that her vote last week against Kavanaugh’s confirmation signed her political death warrant.
Some public polling has shown her down double digits. Democrats insist the margin is much closer.
A Heitkamp loss harms an already tough path for Democrats to a Senate majority; it likely means they need to sweep GOP-held seats in Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee to have a chance of winning Congress’ upper chamber. In the wake of the battle over Kavanaugh, Republican Senate candidates in red-leaning territory are running on a backlash to the Me Too movement, hoping it can expand the GOP’s 51-49 majority in the Senate.
Heitkamp knows she’s an underdog. And so, in an frequently emotional 48 hours after she cast the vote, as she traveled to a farm-town parade, a small-dollar fundraiser near her hometown, a panel in front of energy executives in Bismarck and finally up to this reservation, her supporters worked relentlessly to buoy the senator’s spirits, as she simultaneously tried to defend and move past her vote against Kavanaugh.
It was a vote Heitkamp, a moderate former state attorney general who grew up in a town so small her seven-member family made up one-tenth of the population, made clear was directly related to Ford’s Senate committee testimony that she was “100 percent certain” it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her and to Kavanaugh’s angry, partisan testimony in response.
“First and foremost, I believed her,” Heitkamp told the crowd of about 250 who gathered at a garage to eat bratwursts, drink beer and snack on homemade desserts at the Oktoberfest-themed small-dollar fundraiser in Wyndmere. “And I think it was really, really important for our future that we believe her.”
“This has been a tough week for me,” Heitkamp said. “The political rhetoric is, ‘You can’t vote that way if you expect to come back.’ And I tell people, Ray and Doreen Heitkamp didn’t raise me to vote a certain way so that I could win. They raised me to vote the right way.”
The crowd responded with a standing ovation.
Asked if she was planning on supporting Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Sept. 27 hearing, Heitkamp delivered a one-word response: “Yep.” But she said supporting him after Ford’s testimony would’ve been a betrayal of her long-time supporters.
“It’s beyond Kavanaugh himself,” Heitkamp said in an interview in the back seat of a campaign staffer’s SUV. “It’s an affirmation of why they support me. People say politics is local. In North Dakota, politics is personal.”
That was on display Sunday night in Wyndmere, where Heitkamp seemed to know every attendee on a first-name basis. The crowd, filled with farmers furious over the Trump administration’s trade war, was hopeful but not optimistic the rest of the state’s voters would side with her.
“What drives people’s votes is whether you have an R or a D next to your name,” said Gary Friskan, a soybean, wheat and corn farmer. “This is a red state.”
Still, he hoped Heitkamp’s “middle of the road” style would appeal more to voters than Cramer’s loyalty to Trump. (The congressman once compared voting against Trump to sleeping with women other than his wife.)
“The commercials for her opponent keep trying to turn her into [Hillary Clinton]. Baloney!” he scoffed.
Friskan said he and other soybean farmers had lost tens of thousands of dollars because of the trade war, and were worried about losing customers in China and elsewhere permanently if it continued. Heitkamp’s fight against the trade war had been a key part of her message, but she’s now airing television ads defending her vote against Kavanaugh instead.
“I voted for Neil Gorsuch,” Heitkamp says in the 30-second spot, referring to Trump Supreme Court pick confirmed last year. “So I know there are plenty of other conservative judges who can fill this job without tearing this country apart.”
Heitkamp also has engaged in a mini-media blitz, appearing on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and CNN to explain her opposition to Kavanaugh and has become an unlikely online fundraising superstar, bringing in at least $1 million in the days following her vote.
The fight over Kavanaugh intensified the spotlight on her race — reporters from at least three national outlets were at the fundraiser in Wyndmere.
She admits a victory in the Nov. 6 election would be of the come-from-behind variety. To try to make that happen, she said her campaign is focused on identifying and turning out 150,000 to 160,000 supporters (she won her first term in 2012 with just over 161,000 votes).
Republicans, meanwhile, say no amount of money or campaigning can save Heitkamp.
“No matter how much she tries to run to the middle, she can’t escape the left-wing resisters and black-masked antifa activists that now define the Democrat Party to much of middle-America,” said Andrew Surabian, a GOP strategist and former Trump White House official. “The overreach from national Democrats during the Kavanaugh fight was simply the last straw. She is a walking dead candidate at this point.”
Heitkamp, 62. started her Monday in the state capital of Bismarck, sharing a stage with Cramer at the conference on energy production, a key subject in the state. She told the crowd her bipartisan approach to energy issues would make her more effective for the state than Cramer.
The 57-year-old Republican sought to keep the focus on Kavanugh, saying the newly minted Supreme Court justice would be good for energy production.
As Heitkamp traveled on to the Chippewa reservation, the Kavanaugh vote was far from her mind.
She met with tribal leaders at the Sky Dancer casinos, where the front doors were still plastered with fliers advertising a rally with Heitkamp that had been set for Saturday; it was canceled because she was still in Washington voting against Kavanaugh’s nomination. She visited the house of Twila Martin Kekahbah, a former tribal chief, and discussed the unemployment, housing, drug addiction and crime problems on the reservation.
She went to the local community college, where a group of tribal leaders was educating voters on how to grapple with a North Dakota law that requires voters to present IDs with residential street addresses. Many tribal members use P.O. boxes instead. Heitkamp and many other Democrats believe the law was passed in response to her 2012 win, when tribal members played a key role in propelling her to an upset over then-Rep. Rick Berg.
At the college, she delivered a modified version of her stump speech, tearing into Cramer as someone “with a fundamental lack of understanding on tribal issues.”
It’s part of a harsher line she’s taken on him in recent weeks, prompted in part by Cramer’s own questionable comments throughout the debate on Kavanaugh. Cramer, in a recent interview with The New York Times, seemed to disparage the Me Too movement that promotes solidarity among sexual assault victims. He called it a “movement toward victimization” that the female members of his own family can’t relate to.
His comments sparked an emotional response from Heitkamp, including her decision to reveal to the New York Times that her mother was a victim of sexual assault.
“It demonstrates someone who is not knowledgeable of what happens to a victim, it demonstrates a callousness, and it’s an approach with a certain level of arrogance,” she said. “He’s demonstrated a lack of knowledge, he’s demonstrated a lack of empathy.”
Cramer’s campaign didn’t respond to a HuffPost email requesting a comment, but a North Dakota GOP spokesman referred to the candidate’s comments on Tuesday to The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. Cramer told that news outlet that Heitkamp’s response showed she was “unhinged” and that the Me Too movement had been “weaponized … for political purposes at the expense of victims.”
Empathy was a subject Heitkamp returned to again and again as she campaigned over the last few days. She mentioned it in her speech in Wyndmere, in the HuffPost interview and during her time on the reservation.
“We’ve lost the ability to be empathetic,” she said at Kekahbah’s house. “And our nation is divided.”
A few minutes later, the women at the gathering formed a circle around Heitkamp. “We’re going to just enclose her, and give her all the power we can,” Kekahbah said.
In her Senate floor speech on Friday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) resolutely defended Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh both on his judicial philosophies and against sexual assault allegations, sounding no different than ring-wing GOP senators like Orrin Hatch of Utah or John Cornyn of Texas.
She validated and rewarded the Trumpian tactics of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who stacked the deck against Christine Blasey Ford and the others who alleged sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh. Despite his clear and repeated lies, Collins lauded Kavanaugh’s “forceful” testimony to the committee denying all of the accusations,
Even after that, some in the Beltway media over the weekend were still locked in time, describing Collins, as they always have, as a “moderate.” One New York Times reporter actually characterized her speech as “reasoned [and] carefully researched.”
But these descriptions were fewer and far between compared to the past. And in Maine, where it matters, a Portland Press Herald editorial called the speech anything but reasoned and careful, clearly identifying what was either naivete or political spin:
Even in areas where experts in the field raised warnings, Collins put her judgment ahead of theirs… Only Collins appears to believe that Kavanaugh considered Roe v. Wade “settled law” or that he was deeply committed to preserving precedent, something legal scholars say is inconsistent with the way the Supreme Court works. It makes precedent when it wants to, and it takes only five votes to do it.
Similar to the characterizations of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) despite facts to the contrary, Collins has consistently been described as a “moderate” or a “maverick” by many establishment Washington political reporters, treating her with kid gloves in discussing possible political motivations.
Often in a Washington bubble themselves, they’ve allowed Collins to perpetuate a myth that she’s a principled bridge-builder who rises above partisanship, so much so that she believes it herself and thinks she’s invincible. Collins appears to have no idea what she’s about to face if she’s seeking re-election in 2020 (and she implied she will in a CNN appearance on Sunday defending her support for Kavanaugh), drunk on the standing ovation she received from Republicans on the Senate floor and the accolades that no doubt came in from President Donald Trump’s base all across the country.
Yes, she voted to protect funding for Planned Parenthood, voted to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military and has defended the environment. These high-profile votes, in a GOP caucus that is so extreme, allowed her to distinguish herself ― and allowed some in the Washington press to distinguish her ― as someone who was anything but right-wing.
But this was always simplistic. Collins voted with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the White House almost 90 percent of the time in the first year of the Trump administration. Her much-heralded vote against Obamacare repeal was negated by her vote for the GOP tax bill. She insisted that in backing that latter bill she got a promise from McConnell that the Senate would consider several fixes to Obamacare ― pledges that never materialized.
Collins refused to support marriage equality as that debate heated up in Maine over the years and as LGBTQ activists came under vicious verbal assault by extremists in the GOP. She finally came out for marriage equality in 2014, two years after the state became one of the few in which marriage equality was achieved via a ballot measure. Thus, she never actually lifted a finger to help Mainers get equality.
She announced her evolution just in time for her re-election bid in 2014, having garnered the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest national LGBTQ group. That backing, along with endorsements of her from abortion rights groups, helped her thwart her Democratic challenger.
Collins has since voted to confirm a constant stream of stridently anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ judges nominated to the federal courts by Trump.
Collins voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, who, like Kavanaugh, promised her and the world that he respected precedent, even calling the Obergefell marriage equality ruling “absolutely settled law.” Four months after joining the court Gorsuch wrote a vigorous dissent inviting states to challenge Obergefell.
Collins’ party-line votes on district level and appeals court judges ― posts that are a top priority of McConnell’s ― haven’t gotten much media attention. That has only helped Collins ― and McConnell ― continue to promote the myth of her as a moderate while she votes with the GOP’s right-wing on the issues that mattered most to it.
Whether she is trying to avert a 2020 primary from the right that Trump could lead against her ― he has already threatened Sen. Murkowski (R-Alaska) with political retribution for voting against Kavanaugh ― or she truly believed what she was saying, Collins this time couldn’t keep her political machinations under the radar. The allegations against Kavanaugh ― and the outrage over him they sparked ― placed a glaring spotlight on her vote.
Nor could Collins even get cover from her good friends in the Senate ― Murkowski was joined by conservative Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota in opposing Kavanaugh, even though the latter lawmaker conceded the vote could harm her re-election bid this year. So Collins stood as the sole so-called “moderate” woman in the Senate to have abandoned millions of women across the country and many others who will be hurt by the court’s likely lurch to the extreme right.
In this moment, the mask of moderation has been ripped off Collins. There will be those who say that she’s untouchable ― as they have said in the past ― and that Mainers who re-elected her before will do so again. They’ll tell you that she’ll have plenty of money from the Koch brothers and others, and she surely will.
But we’re in a different time, both nationally, with regard to the political energy of women and the Me Too movement, and in Maine. Already, people in Maine running a grassroots campaign have raised $3.5 million via crowdfunding to funnel to the Democratic opponent who takes on Collins in 2020. Several potential candidates have emerged in the past few days, as Democratic officials look to a deep pool of possible contenders in the state.
Polls in recent weeks found voters in Maine would be less likely to vote to re-elect Collins if she voted to confirm Kavanaugh. And in a Suffolk University poll in early August, she had only a 49 percent favorable rating, down from an impressive 67 percent in a Portland Press Herald 2016 poll.
University of New England political science professor Brian Duff told the Press Herald last week that voting against Kavanaugh “would be the more popular choice in Maine and easier for her to recover from, especially if she is able to vote for another conservative appointee later.” Two years, he said, is a long time in politics and “it’s hard to see a primary challenger emerging with any strength just because she voted ‘no’ on Brett Kavanaugh.”
Now that she’s voted yes, however, Collins can’t put her mask back on.
The Human Rights Campaign and several other national LGBTQ groups slammed her for backing Kavanaugh, as did Planned Parenthood and NARAL. It seems implausible that any of these groups would risk their members’ outrage by backing Collins in 2020.
And what does Collins do about Trump in her re-election year? In 2016, she announced in a scathing Op-Ed that she wasn’t voting for him that year, vocally distancing herself from his bigotry and recklessness as Hillary Clinton took Maine in the election. In 2020 Trump ― who tweeted accolades to Collins over the weekend ― presumably will be on the ballot with her. Will she dare endorse him ― or dare to not?
And as Kavanaugh rules with the far right of the court on issue after issue, as he undoubtedly will, Collins will sink even further, having taken full ownership of this Supreme Court nomination in the end.
Collins had a good gig, promoting herself as something she’s not. She’s now been fully exposed.