Members of the North Carolina Democratic Party,

As we continue to work to safeguard against the COVID-19 outbreak, NCDP wanted to again update you on the latest steps our party is taking to protect the health and well-being of our Party members and staff while also continuing to work towards our shared goals this fall.

Last night, the Executive Council of the North Carolina Democratic Party met again to discuss the best possible solution for 2020 County and District conventions. The Council approved a resolution regarding county and district conventions that would, among other changes, move all conventions regardless of size to a virtual platform and change the dates of the conventions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The resolution and change are still subject to approval by the DNC. Read the full resolution online HERE. Among the key changes:

All County Conventions scheduled for March 28, 2020 will now be held April 25, 2020 and must be held as ‘Virtual County Conventions’ via North Carolina Democratic Party telecommunications tools. [This applies to Moore County] All District Conventions scheduled for April 25, 2020 will now be held May 16, 2020 and must be held as ‘Virtual District Conventions’ via North Carolina Democratic Party telecommunications tools.

These changes are on top of the additional precautions we as a party are taking to safeguard the health and well-being of our staff, our members, and all North Carolinians. As previously announced last week and earlier this week, those measures include: closing NCDP headquarters to the public through May 1, 2020; mandating remote working for all staff until at least April 1st; limiting in-person meetings when possible; and, postponing all party sponsored events, including fundraisers, until further notice.

NCDP has also launched a resource page on our website to direct visitors to appropriate guidance from state and local officials: https://www.ncdp.org/covid-19-response/. We have also created a pop-up on our website front page to encourage people to look to state leaders for appropriate information.

We understand that this is a difficult time, and that people are anxious and worried about the future. Our party is working diligently to protect the health and well-being of all of our members and all North Carolinians, and our state and local leaders are providing the sound, steady leadership this situation demands. Together, we will pull through this, ready and prepared for strong victories this November.

Respectfully,

Wayne Goodwin
Chairman, North Carolina Democratic Party

From:

The Trump Presidency Is Over

It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain.

Peter Wehner

Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC

When, in January 2016, I wrote that despite being a lifelong Republican who worked in the previous three GOP administrations, I would never vote for Donald Trump, even though his administration would align much more with my policy views than a Hillary Clinton presidency would, a lot of my Republican friends were befuddled. How could I not vote for a person who checked far more of my policy boxes than his opponent?
What I explained then, and what I have said many times since, is that Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. For me, that is the paramount consideration in electing a president, in part because at some point it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter.
“Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them” is how I put it four years ago. “No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.” I added this:
Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.
It took until the second half of Trump’s first term, but the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump.
… the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.

Read full article here