|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 8, 2020 14:25:27 GMT -5
Remember all that self-righteous palaver from Bernie about how his campaign was built on $27 contributions, not Super PAC money? Well, like Liz Warren's similar claim, it was mostly BS: "Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want a super PAC. Instead, he has Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization he founded that functions much the same as one. Like a super PAC, which is shorthand for super political action committee, Our Revolution can raise unlimited sums from wealthy patrons that dwarf the limits faced by candidates and conventional PACs. Unlike a super PAC, however, the group doesn’t have to disclose its donors — a stream of revenue commonly referred to as 'dark money.' Now, with less than one month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Our Revolution appears to be skirting campaign finance law, which forbids groups founded by federal candidates and officeholders from using large donations to finance federal election activity, including Sanders’ 2020 bid." linkAnd that's your "little guy" candidate, lol. Right up there with "my tax returns will be coming soon" (still waiting since 2016), his wife's disastrous role as President of Burlington College (now deceased) and her million-dollar buyout, the defense of the gun industry's liability protection... All that for what? The guy can't even explain how his various grandiose ideas will be paid for, in the highly unlikely event he'd be able to get Congress to approve them if he were elected. All a mirage for the Democrats' Trump.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 11, 2020 18:40:17 GMT -5
I was skeptical when I saw this article, but it's a less crazy argument once you read it through: "Democrats across the country will soon find themselves with a newfound appreciation for the virtues of one Mike Bloomberg, former Republican mayor of New York and billionaire founder of a financial data services empire. He might not have been exactly what they had in mind, but by Super Tuesday he’ll look like Brad Pitt. What people don’t yet seem to have grasped is this: Bloomberg is going to spend an astronomical amount of money on this race. Probably at least $1 billion. Maybe twice that. Possibly even more. Numbers like that upend every model of every presidential race in history. He can buy every news adjacency on cable and local television stations from now until November and not make a dent in his net worth. U.S. politics has never seen such financial throw weight in a presidential campaign. "Look at it from the point of view of the 'down ballot' Democratic candidates. If you’re running for the U.S. Senate, or in one of the 100 'competitive' House races, or for governor or state senate, it’s likely that one of Bloomberg’s many super PACs is going to put vast amounts of money behind your campaign with 'issues' TV advertising, digital advertising, voter-registration drives and organizational support. Buttressing that will be his national campaign infrastructure, staffed and financed at a level never before seen in presidential politics. By Election Day, every anti-Trump voter in every precinct will have been contacted repeatedly, and then driven to the polls, if need be. Which will increase Mr. or Ms. Down-Ballot Democratic Candidate’s vote by, what? Two percent? Five percent? Ten percent? It doesn’t matter. It will add untold votes to the D side of the ledger... "If Democrats nominate anyone besides Bloomberg, they will be outspent in the general election by 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1. If they nominate Bloomberg, he will outspend Trump at least 5 to 1 and dramatically improve the party’s chances of winning seats at every level of governance. Trump’s greatest vulnerability is the anxiety he creates. He makes people nervous. He makes his own people nervous. Bloomberg doesn’t make anyone nervous. He’s reassuring. And reassurance is what swing voters want. They’ve had their fill of angst." linkGeezus, a REAL billionaire vs. a FAKE billionaire? What is this, Ukraine?
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 14, 2020 11:58:54 GMT -5
"Bloomberg is running aggressively to win the Democratic nomination, but he is simultaneously building out a general election machine to defeat President Trump, with a new structure — data, field organizing, advertising and policy — that aims to elect Democrats up and down the ballot even if the party’s voters reject the former New York mayor this spring. The party he is moving to transform, which he only rejoined in October, has become little more than a bystander to his ambition. With more than 800 employees, $200 million in ad spending so far and a fully catered Times Square office that houses hundreds of employees, 'Mike Bloomberg 2020, Inc.' does not resemble a primary campaign in any traditional sense. It is an experiment in what happens to democracy when a single faction operates without economic constraints...The extravagance is part of the message, an attempt to demonstrate his competence and show that he can manage something big with good intentions." linkI'm not a fan of billionaires (Trump, Steyer, Yang) jumping into presidential politics just because they have the money to self-fund a campaign. Bloomberg's a bit different because he's actually been Mayor of New York and has actively worked on issues, especially gun control. He's not some half-cocked rich guy joy-riding for fun and profit. So you have to take him more seriously, even as our politics increasingly resembles Ukraine's long-running Battle of the Oligarchs. If we're gonna have a rich guy, at least this one's not only OK on most issues, he's also got governing experience. On top of that, he's pretty good at messaging: "His policy, though sometimes nuanced on paper, is uncomplicated in presentation, leaning heavily on phrases known to move focus groups." And he's pulling the Democratic Party up to the GOP's level of technical sophistication: "All parts of any campaign that have been run before — an aggressive constituency operation, a surrogate team, a Spanish-language effort, local media teams in dozens of states so far — have been built out. " Best of all, Trump's afraid of him: "The president has been monitoring Bloomberg’s campaign, impressed by his extraordinary spending and fearful of his potential rise, according to Trump confidants with whom the president has discussed Bloomberg."
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 16, 2020 10:47:28 GMT -5
Oh, not that he-said/she-said kerfuffle over whether a woman could beat Trump (Hillary did that by 3 million votes, and Pelosi does it daily), but how they differ in substance. Megan McArdle wrote a column today that picked up on the observation I made to Daughter #2 several months ago about the very different approaches of these two ostensible soul-mates, though I would not describe it in her language: "Sanders remains essentially a revolutionary who wants to replace large chunks of the economy with something completely new, and will keep saying so heedless of political risks. Warren is at heart more of a cautious bureaucrat whose ideal is something like her pet project, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: operating by regulatory fiat, through arcane rules for very complex markets, and deliberately structured to minimize its accountability to the electorate. That’s how bureaucrats think: Why replace the system when you could place it in thrall to unelected civil servants who might redirect its activity to better ends?" linkExactly! Sanders has been preaching a "revolution" for his entire adult life, all the way back to his undergraduate days, at least. Warren was a bankruptcy attorney working on behalf of big companies. He wants to make the US something like Denmark, only more so; she wants to use rule-making carrots and sticks to prod action. His vision requires sweeping legislation, hers an executive pen. Consider this example: "The distinction was clearest in their answers on health care, where Sanders issued yet another rousing defense of Medicare-for-all. Warren, too, is ostensibly totally for it, but when the time came to talk up her health-care agenda, she gave her Medicare-for-all plan just a glancing mention, then pivoted: 'What I can do are the things I can do as president on the first day. We can cut the cost of prescription drugs. I’ll use the power that’s already given to the president to reduce the cost of insulin and EpiPens and HIV/AIDS drugs. … And I will defend the Affordable Care Act.' ” In short, it's her CFPB solution extended to health care...and pretty much everything else. It's what a lawyer steeped in the arcana of bankruptcy law would consider normal, but not what a revolutionary would embrace. And that's why they are not appealing to the same voters. It's also why Bernie is less electable. As two center-left Democrats write today, "the United States has never elected anyone as president who is as far left as Sanders. The only modern Democratic nominees approaching Sanders’s ideological views were former vice president Walter Mondale in 1984 and then-Sen. George McGovern in 1972. Together, they won a scant 30 electoral college votes and lost the popular vote by a combined 35 million votes. Mondale’s wipe-out was the biggest electoral college loss in U.S. history. For those who say these landslide races were ages ago, and that Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan, fair enough. How about December 2019? That is when Sanders clone Jeremy Corbyn got routed by Trump clone Boris Johnson in the British parliamentary elections, sending the Labour Party to what some said was its worst defeat in more than 80 years. Corbyn, who Sanders predicted would lead his party to a resounding victory and 'should be a lesson for the Democratic Party,' tanked...In 2017, Sanders wrote in the New York Times that, to win in 2018, Democrats should run on an agenda that was unapologetically far to the left. Led by then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), they did exactly the opposite. When the dust settled on Democrats’ landslide victory, Sanders’s political organization could not claim a single flipped seat in the House, while the moderate New Democrat Coalition claimed 31 of the net 40 red-to-blue wins." linkLiz took a lot of lefty positions from Bernie, but has been backing away from some of them in a bid to fill the perceived gap between the far left and the center-left (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar). I don't think she can pull that off, and her recent tiff with Bernie over "sexism" is an indication that she's getting desperate as her poll numbers decline from the highs of last summer. But it is fair to say that she is no Bernie clone, either. In the end, neither's likely to be the nominee, which once more will leave the far-lefties disgruntled and grousing about a "rigged" system (how else could these correct-thinking people lose?). But the reality is that America's not a far-left country, never has been, and likely never will be. The challenge is to nudge it leftward without losing too many to the center-right, and that's tough enough.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 20, 2020 18:40:17 GMT -5
The New York Times editorial endorsing both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar was ludicrous on its face, but Alexandra Petri decided to plumb its hidden depths, to great effect: In a break from tradition, I am endorsing all 12 Democratic candidatesBy Alexandra Petri , Washington Post Both the radical and the realist models warrant serious consideration. If there were ever a time to be open to new ideas, it is now. If there were ever a time to seek stability, now is it. — New York Times editorial endorsing both Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in the Democratic presidential primary. In 2020, American voters must choose among several visions of the future. There is a serious debate going on in the Democratic Party about what is wrong with the country and what needs to be done to fix it. One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or — we don’t need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am telling you now which candidate to vote for. And I, for one, am not going to take a stance on that debate. Should we be realists? Should we be radicals? Should we be neither radical nor realistic? Yes, yes and yes! Put it this way: America is being attacked by a bear, and depending on what type of a bear it is, we either must play dead immediately or should NOT play dead at any cost — in fact, playing dead is the worst thing we could do. So I would advise America: Either play dead, or don’t! This building is either on fire or not, and consequently, I advise people either to rush out of the building with their children and valuables, or take a nap! Good luck! One of these 12 possible cups contains the antidote to the poison that has been coursing through America’s system. I would advise America: Definitely drink from one of these cups! One of two things is wrong with America: Either the entire system is broken or is on the verge of breaking, and we need someone to bring about radical, structural change, or — we don’t need that at all! Which is it? Who can say? Certainly not me, and that is why I am telling you now which candidate to vote for. We stand at an immense crossroads, a decision that will have enormous consequences. Some paths lead to destruction, and others to potential destruction, and others might lead to renewal. And my advice to you is: You had certainly better choose a path. If there were ever a time to be open to ideas, it is now. But if there were ever a time to seal off our minds from ideas, lest they contaminate and confuse us, it is also now. If there were ever a time to have principles and state them, now is surely that time. But, then again, if there were ever a time to cast principles aside and choose a candidate for sheer pragmatism, now is also that time. If there were ever a time to vote for a candidate who was polling well, now might be that time, more than ever. But if there were ever a time to question the entire concept of polls as an institution, might it not also be now, also more than ever? If there were ever a time to have a single opinion about something, and try to convince people by arguing for that opinion, it might be now. But then again, if there were a time to pick literally every possible opinion and try to have it at once, it might also be now. Maybe I should have come to a little bit more of a decision before writing this! No, I think this is good. I’m going to continue. If there were a time to advise people what candidate to select, it might be now, in this, my official endorsement. But if there were a time to not advise people what candidate to select, it might equally be now, in this, my official endorsement. On the one hand, every individual candidate has some flaw. On the other hand, in the aggregate, the candidates are pretty exciting. On a third hand, why limit yourself to two hands? Yes, in an ideal world, I would only endorse a single candidate. But this election has made it all too clear that we do not live in an ideal world. Therefore, I am endorsing one candidate for each reality: one for what I have dubbed an ideal reality (Warren), one for a “pragmatic” reality (Klobuchar) and 10 others for slightly different versions of reality, in one of which America and Canada are a single entity, and in another one of which, everyone has crab claws for hands! (Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney.) Also, I am endorsing Donald Trump, in the reality where he is a completely different man whom everyone would describe as “very not-racist.” I am glad I do not have to go to the voting booth and choose a single candidate. I will be voting 12 times, and I urge everyone else to do so, too. I hope this endorsement has been useful.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 21, 2020 9:59:06 GMT -5
Hillary weighs in on Bernie: “He was in Congress for years; he had one senator support him. Nobody likes him; nobody wants to work with him; he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it...It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don’t think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don’t know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you’re just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions...I think that both the press and the public have to really hold everybody running accountable for what they say and what their campaign says and does. That’s particularly true with what’s going on right now with the Bernie campaign having gone after Elizabeth with a very personal attack on her. Then this argument about whether or when he did or didn’t say that a woman couldn’t be elected, it’s part of a pattern. If it were a one-off, you might say, ‘okay, fine.’ But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me." linkBrava! This is Hillary Unbound, calling out the misogynist for his misogyny. She couldn't say these things in 2016 because she was a candidate and needed to bring as many of his supporters as possible back into the fold. But today she's "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty [she's] free at last" to let the old buzzard have it with both barrels. About time he got as good as he gives. Keep up the good work, Madam President.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 22, 2020 18:34:11 GMT -5
Hillary's not alone in worrying about what Bernie's doing to the Dems: "Sanders (I-Vt.) has been engaged in battles with rivals on various fronts over the past week — squabbling with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) over whether he once said a woman could not be president, attacking former vice president Joe Biden with an out-of-context video about Social Security and issuing a rare apology after a top surrogate called Biden corrupt. The conflicts have reignited Democratic fears that, whoever becomes the nominee, the party will rupture as it did four years ago, when divisions between the Clinton and Sanders camps marred the primaries and the summer convention, and were blamed by many for contributing to her loss to Trump that November... "The Sanders style of campaigning has increasingly grated on Biden and his campaign, who view his tactics as unfair and out of bounds. Sanders’s campaign aides promoted an out-of-context video of Biden that suggested he agreed with the proposals of then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to cut Social Security. Sanders said over the weekend that he wished they had shown the fuller context but stood by his criticisms of other comments by Biden on entitlements. On Monday, a top Sanders ally wrote an op-ed saying that “Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate.” Sanders apologized for the critique. "Some Democrats lamented that Sanders has not faced enough scrutiny [where are those tax returns promised four full years ago, btw?], even as he has been repeatedly underestimated by some party leaders. 'What Hillary is saying is a general concern I have and a lot of other people have, too,' said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), a former presidential candidate who has endorsed Biden. 'Socialism and taking away people’s private health care and, you know, all these things that make it very very difficult to beat Donald Trump in the industrial states we need to win. Hillary knows that better than anybody, how hard that is. To me, she’s articulating a concern that a lot of us have.' " linkThe real issue here is what Bernie and his band of lefties are up to, and it's not really winning the 2020 election. AOC had the honesty to tell us what they're really about: “We don’t have a left party in the United States. The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center, or a center-conservative party. There are left members inside the Democratic Party working to make that shift happen.” -@aoc Well, I was a Democrat before AOC's parents were born, and I'm offended that she describes Democrats like me as "center-conservative". That's plain nuts! I was out on the streets for civil rights back when it counted, for ending the pointless Vietnam War back when it counted, for the ERA back when it counted; I worked on a local commission fighting housing discrimination when it counted; I've been part of mass actions on gun safety when it's counted. Who the hell is she to tell me I'm "center-conservative"? It's this extremism, as usual wedded to self-righteousness, that long has kept the leftists from achieving real influence in the United States. It's why they feel no qualms over lying about real Democrats, who've actually been doing the work that they mostly talk about. It's why I find AOC as distasteful as Ted Cruz. It's also why I'm glad Hillary called out Bernie, who's the ringleader of this annoying band of gadflies.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Jan 23, 2020 16:29:35 GMT -5
Kellyanne Conway, Trump spokesperson (so this is what Trump wants said) in the WP just now: "Candidate Trump showed that so-called electability is no match for electricity and a relentless focus on the electoral college...He owned 'energy' and fresh ideas, and turned the 'experience' of his opponent into a liability...Four years later, Democratic candidates, party leaders and primary voters have been seduced into the trap of focusing on electability...In fact, if Democrats were serious about electability, they’d nominate the guy who actually won primary contests and proved he can play David to Goliath in key places four short years ago. Sanders bested Clinton in 22 states in 2016, including battlegrounds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while earning more than 13 million votes and 1,800 delegates. Now, with the first caucuses and primaries just weeks away, Sanders is showing strength in the polls and in fundraising, having outraised Biden last quarter, having taken the lead from Biden for the first time, and having outlasted candidates who were media darlings and more in the mold of 'transformative' and 'historic.' ” linkIf Trump wants to run against Bernie, whom should Dems want to run against Trump?
|
|
|
Post by leftylarry on Jan 30, 2020 15:50:13 GMT -5
i would guess, in an election against Bernie Sanders, Trump not only wins by a landslide but increases his control in the Senate and win back the congress.
Bernie talks his shit and the rest of the Dems don't fight him for fear of alienating his idiotic LEFTIST supporters.
In debates, if Trump sticks to the issues, Bernie will be exposed as a moron.
Why would we want to destroy the greatest economy in the world during a time when all BOATS are being lifted in the rising tide of expansion.
Guys like OB can make believe this economy isn't the result of Trump's policies however the American people are smarter than that and Bernie has ZERO chance of being elected which is why i am rooting for him to win the nomination.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 3, 2020 22:10:25 GMT -5
i would guess, in an election against Bernie Sanders, Trump not only wins by a landslide but increases his control in the Senate and win back the congress. Bernie talks his shit and the rest of the Dems don't fight him for fear of alienating his idiotic LEFTIST supporters. In debates, if Trump sticks to the issues, Bernie will be exposed as a moron. Why would we want to destroy the greatest economy in the world during a time when all BOATS are being lifted in the rising tide of expansion. Guys like OB can make believe this economy isn't the result of Trump's policies however the American people are smarter than that and Bernie has ZERO chance of being elected which is why i am rooting for him to win the nomination. Poli Sci 101, LL: The Senate is part of Congress. I assume you meant the House. I agree that Bernie at the head of the ticket would hand it back to the GOP. Trump can't stick to the issues because (a) he can't stick to anything for long (short attention span, well-attested by those who've worked for him), and (b) he doesn't understand the issues, and refuses to learn about them. Basically, they're both morons. Trump inherited an economy that had been growing for 8 years; in fact, in his first three years the rate of growth has been slower than in Obama's last three. Mostly that's because of his foolish tariff wars, which have raised prices for consumers and blocked exports of soybeans and other products due to retaliation from trading partners.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 8, 2020 16:42:09 GMT -5
James Carville gave a great interview to Sean Illing of Vox. I just love this guy, excerpts: JC: In 2018, Democrats recruited really strong candidates, really qualified candidates. And the party said, “This is what we’re going to talk about and we’re going to keep talking about it.” And you know what happened? We f---ing won. We didn’t get distracted, we didn’t get deflected. SI: Give me an example of what you mean by distractions. JC: We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party. For f---’s sake, we’ve got Trump at Davos talking about cutting Medicare and no one in the party has the sense to plaster a picture of him up there sucking up to the global elites, talking about cutting taxes for them while he’s talking about cutting Medicare back home. Jesus, this is so obvious and so easy and I don’t see any of the candidates taking advantage of it. SI: I wouldn’t endorse everything every Democrat is doing or saying, but are they really destroying the party? What does that even mean? JC: Look, Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat. He’s never been a Democrat. He’s an ideologue. And I’ve been clear about this: If Bernie is the nominee, I’ll vote for him. No question. I’ll take an ideological fanatic over a career criminal any day. But he’s not a Democrat — what I’m saying is the Democratic Party isn’t Bernie Sanders, whatever you think about Sanders. SI: Are we really sure Sanders can’t win? JC: Who the hell knows? But here’s what I do know: Sanders might get 280 electoral votes and win the presidency and maybe we keep the House. But there’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public. Eighteen percent of the country elects more than half of our senators [52]. That’s the deal, fair or not. So long as McConnell runs the Senate, it’s game over. There’s no chance we’ll change the courts and nothing will happen, and he’ll just be sitting up there screaming in the microphone about the revolution. SI: What’s the answer? JC: By framing, repeating, and delivering a coherent, meaningful message that is relevant to people’s lives and having the political skill not to be sucked into every rabbit hole that somebody puts in front of you. The Democratic Party is the party of African Americans. It’s becoming a party of educated suburbanites, particularly women. It’s the party of Latinos. We’re a party of immigrants. Most of the people aren’t into all this distracting sh-- about open borders and letting prisoners vote. They don’t care. They have lives to lead. They have kids. They have parents that are sick. That’s what we have to talk about. That’s all we should talk about. SI: So your complaint is basically that the party has tacked too far to the left? JC: They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. But not everything has to be on the left-right continuum. I love Warren’s daycare plan just like I love Booker’s baby bonds. That’s the kind of stuff our candidates should explain and define clearly and repeatedly for voters and not get diverted by whatever the hell is in the air that day. Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this sh--. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message. The real argument here is that some people think there’s a real yearning for a left-wing revolution in this country, and if we just appeal to the people who feel that, we’ll grow and excite them and we’ll win. But there’s a word a lot of people hate that I love: politics. It means building coalitions to win elections. It means sometimes having to sit back and listen to what people think and framing your message accordingly. That’s all I care about. Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House. We can’t do anything for anyone if we don’t start there and then acquire more power. www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/“were-losing-our-damn-minds”-james-carville-unloads-on-the-democratic-party/ar-BBZLcwb?ocid=spartandhp
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 10, 2020 21:11:57 GMT -5
OK, I realize I've never created a thread about the actual nomination contest. So, here's a start. Iowa: Why the hell is Iowa first? Why are they still using the 19th century invention of the local caucus? What went wrong, and why? First off, Iowa got into the game because of a fluke. With the rules changes following the calamitous 1968 Democratic National Convention ( link) Iowa decided to add a presidential preference poll to its regular caucuses to select delegates to the state convention. They first did this in 1972, but what got them seriously into the game was Jimmy Carter's "win" in the 1976 caucuses, which catapulted him from dark horse to the top tier of Dem candidates. Suddenly, every campaign had to be in Iowa, and a new tradition was born: licking the boots of rural Midwestern white people shortly before going to New Hampshire to lick the boots of rural New England white people. So, now, candidates and--more importantly--the media spend months on end trudging along the highways and byways of Iowa and letting us all in on the wisdom of voters whose basic knowledge of government and politics is best described as "low- to medium-information". And then they scurry to New Hampshire for an extra week of the same. The caucuses are undemocratic. If you've got kids and no babysitter (who's off caucusing for Bernie or whoever is the flavor of the month on college campuses in any given year) you probably can't attend. Work nights? Tough. Have a sick spouse who needs care? Meh! Unable to get into a non-accessible building? There's not even an app for that. Basically, it's a contest over who can get people to spend a long evening haggling with their neighbors, horse-trading their votes (one participant said the winner is the one with the best cookies...no, really), and generally pretending to "vet" candidates for those of us not lucky enough to live in I-O-W-A. You know, the place native-son Meredith Wilson parodied in The Music Man. After all those months of begging they managed to get fewer than 177,000 voters to show up. To put that into context, last November Fairfax Co., VA had 271,936 votes cast for State Senate elections, even though only 4 of the 9 districts involved were contested, and not a single race was at all competitive. And despite the fact that Fairfax Co.'s population of 1.15 million is barely more than 1/3 of Iowa's 3.15 million. And that they were voting for relatively anonymous State Senators, not the President of the United States. Really, how do you take that seriously? OK, the results: Bernie apparently got more first-round votes, but owing to their concentration around college campuses in Iowa City, Ames, and Des Moines, he got fewer delegates than Mayor Pete, who carried most of the really rural counties simply by actually showing up in them. The number of delegates is roughly proportional to the county population; getting a huge number of people to show up in Johnson Co. (Iowa City) doesn't add to the number of delegate equivalents coming out of Johnson Co. Kind of like the Electoral College, another anachronism. And then all hell broke loose because the app that was supposed to make aggregating all these votes produced "inconsistent" totals (not to mention that the untrained volunteers trying to use it often were clueless, and Republicans were jamming the lines to the central office so they had trouble getting help). What seems clear is that the app merely demonstrated what almost certainly has been a problem all along: because the caucuses do not use actual ballots, the counts are inherently error-prone. So, with all the trouble behind us, the number of "delegate equivalents" (and percentage of "votes"--no they're not actual votes but some formula) was: Buttigieg - 13 (26) Sanders - 12 (26) Warren - 8 (18) Biden - 6 (16) Klobuchar - 1 (12) [she got screwed by the distribution rules, apparently] Yang - 0 (1) Steyer - 0 (>1) Rest - 0 (0) Now on to New Hampshire, where the latest polling says Pete, Bernie and--surprise!--Amy are likely to do best. If Warren finishes 4th in NH, most of whose population is in the Boston media market, is it time for her to go home? OK, she's gonna wait for MA to vote on March 3, just as Amy's waiting for MN the same day. That's when the culling of candidates should happen in earnest. In the end, it's gonna be Bernie vs. Somebody Else (Uncle Joe? Mayor Moneybags?). Can't wait. ;-(
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 12, 2020 0:44:41 GMT -5
So, New Hampshire. Tonight I went to pick up a take-out order for dinner, and on the way home heard a live feed from WMUR in NH. The reporter was at Yang HQ, and was reporting that they were expecting him to do well tonight, that he had an enthusiastic following, and had been surging. Minutes after I arrived home The Fiancee reported that Yang had dropped out! We hadn't even started eating yet, lol! Bennet was right behind him.
As expected. Bernie won, but this time he got only 26 percent of the vote, just slightly more than Buttigieg's 24 and not far ahead of Klobuchar's 20.Warren was a distant third, and Biden fourth, neither passing the15 percent threshold for getting delegates.
For Warren, this is a disaster. The bulk of the NH vote is concentrated in the southern counties in the Boston TV market, and yet she's got only 9.3 percent of the vote (with 90 percent of precincts in). This was supposed to be a stand-off between her and Sanders, but instead it's Buttigieg and Klobuchar far ahead of her. In anticipation, her campaign sent out a memo to supporters which includes an analysis showing likely outcomes of Super Tuesday primaries by congressional district (I'd love to see their data base!). By their estimation, of the 165 CDs involved that day, Sanders should get delegates in 161, Biden in 159, Warren in 108, Bloomberg in 25, Buttigieg in 10. If true, that would make the race one between Sanders and Biden, with Warren as a spoiler--though that's not how the memo frames it. Their argument is: “Warren is poised to finish in the top two in over half of Super Tuesday states (eight of 14), in the top three in all of them, and is on pace to pick up at-large statewide delegates in all but one,” so she can slog it out picking up delegates, even if she actually doesn't win any primaries outright. This has been tried before in the post-1968 era; it's never worked in my memory.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 12, 2020 0:46:15 GMT -5
Andrea Mitchell: "@petebuttigieg is speaking congratulating @berniesanders @senamyklobuchar and all the other candidates after a remarkable finish too close to officially call but broad range across a coalition of voters: Democrats, Independents and Buttigieg says some newly former Republicans."
John Aravosis: "Meanwhile, Sanders’ HQ crowd is mocking and booing Pete."
David Frum: "Why does this keep happening? Why does nobody stop it?"
Bernie via Larry David on SNL this week: "Could I stop it? Yes. Should I stop it? Yes. Will I stop it? Ehhhhhh"
|
|
|
Post by leftylarry on Feb 13, 2020 12:14:30 GMT -5
Carville is a good phoney BS artist, always has been.
He's smart enough to know that these Socialists will never beat Trump , so he wants them to lie like Clinton and Obami did and make Americans believe they really aren't Leftwing/Sociailst/Globalists and then quietly implement the Leftwing/Socilaist/GLobalist agenda after they are elected.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 13, 2020 23:32:48 GMT -5
He's smart enough to know that these Socialists will never beat Trump , so he wants them to lie like Clinton and Obami did and make Americans believe they really aren't Leftwing/Sociailst/Globalists and then quietly implement the Leftwing/Socilaist/GLobalist agenda after they are elected. I see all those years of Fox News have taken their toll. Sad.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 13, 2020 23:58:59 GMT -5
Well, the Dem field is down to 8, and I'm not that happy with my choices. I loved Kamala Harris, but she's gone. Of those left...meh to ugh! Quick run-down:
Gabbard - Enough said.
Bernie - Ideologue who would destroy the Democratic Party for years to come (his actual goal), and if somehow elected would be a lousy President.
Warren - Aside from the fake Native American thing, her answer to most issues is some form of regulatory punishment for those who don't follow her policies. I guess this is a natural result of having worked in bankruptcy law for years, but it's not a good approach to most social policy. Her willingness to sign on to Bernie's M4A plan without checking its feasibility first was a lethal blow to her calling card: "I've got a plan for that."
Bloomberg/Steyer - Billionaire Presidents is just so...Ukrainian. Bloomberg's actual record and positions on issues are all over the map. I contribute to his Everytown PAC because it supports sensible gun safety legislation/regulations, but he's also shrugged over Putin's invasion of Crimea. Steyer was running to incite an impeachment of Trump; mission accomplished, so why's he still running? Beats me.
Mayor Pete - Again, aside from his on-my-sleeves religiousity, there's the complete lack of experience in national politics at any level, and the limited exposure to same as Mayor of a small city. When asked detailed policy questions he quickly lapses into generalities, a sure symptom of that lack of experience.
Klobuchar - I could get behind her if she continues to show the fire she did in New Hampshire. The problem is she's very short of money and has little organization in any of the upcoming states, having put all her eggs into the Iowa/NH basket (i.e., white voters). She's more conservative than I am on some issues, but she's been an effective US Senator and shown a real capacity for drawing votes from non-Democrats, at least in Minnesota. And she's got lots of experience.
Biden - Joe's run three times, and this is the furthest he's lasted. How much longer he can last is a good question after the first two contests. He's somewhat more liberal than he's painted (the ideological spectrum is skewed because Sanders is well to the left of most Democrats), though I'm still to his left; but he is about as mainstream a Democrat as there is. His biggest plus is continued support from African-Americans, so with him as nominee there's a decent chance AA turnout will be high enough to protect swing-district House Dems, even if Biden himself loses.
In truth, I am waiting to see what happens in NV and SC because a week after the latter I have to vote here in VA, and I'm badly torn. My main criteria will be: (1) which candidate is best-positioned to block Bernie, and (2) which will least harm the Dems in November, or perhaps even beat Trump. Not really very exciting, I admit, but this is not a very exciting field for me.
|
|
|
Post by leftylarry on Feb 14, 2020 18:30:50 GMT -5
I think they endorsed Michael Avenati at one point also. Them and CNN, good judgment there.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 14, 2020 21:37:02 GMT -5
I think they endorsed Michael Avenati at one point also. Them and CNN, good judgment there. I'm pretty sure not, lol.
|
|
|
Post by leftylarry on Feb 14, 2020 22:46:29 GMT -5
Look it up you are wrong. CNN was pushing him on air to run for President, google it. NYTIMES articles too.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 15, 2020 21:47:19 GMT -5
Look it up you are wrong. CNN was pushing him on air to run for President, google it. NYTIMES articles too. "Articles" does not equal "endorsement", though given that your news sources only operate that way I can understand how you got confused there.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 15, 2020 23:03:52 GMT -5
No myth is stronger in progressive circles than the magical, wonderworking powers of voter turnout...Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, [says]: Bernie Sanders has very unique appeal amongst [the younger] generation and can inspire, I think, a bunch of them to vote in percentages that they have never voted before.” This has remarkably little empirical support. Take the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats took back the House (a net 40-seat gain), carried the House popular vote by almost nine points and flipped seven Republican-held governorships. Turnout in that election was outstanding, topping 49 percent — the highest midterm turnout since 1914 and up 13 points over the previous midterm, in 2014 — and the demographic composition of the electorate came remarkably close to that of a presidential election year... Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of the Democrats’ improved performance came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes in both elections — yet switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018. The data firm Catalist, whose numbers on 2018 are the best available, estimates that 89 percent of the Democrats’ improved performance came from persuasion — from vote-switchers — not turnout. In its analysis, Catalist notes, “If turnout was the only factor, then Democrats would not have seen nearly the gains that they ended up seeing … a big piece of Democratic victory was due to 2016 Trump voters turning around and voting for Democrats in 2018.”... What’s more, States of Change data does not suggest that youth turnout, which Sanders promises to increase so significantly, was a particular Democratic problem in 2016. In fact, young voters (ages 18 to 29) increased their turnout more than any other age group in that election, from 42 percent in 2012 to 44 percent in 2016. They also increased — if only slightly — their margin of support for the Democratic candidate. In 2016, the age cohort that really killed Democrats was voters ages 45 to 64, who had split evenly in 2012 but leaned Republican by six percentage points four years later. Sanders’s bouquet of unpopular positions hardly seems likely to help the Democrats make up ground among these voters... As Nate Cohn of the New York Times has noted after scrutinizing the data, it’s a mistake to assume that Democrats would benefit disproportionately from high turnout. Trump is particularly strong among white noncollege voters, who dominate the pool of nonvoters in many areas of the country, including in key Rust Belt states. If the 2020 election indeed has historically high turnout, as many analysts expect, that spike could include many of these white noncollege voters in addition to Democratic-leaning constituencies such as nonwhites and young voters. The result could be an increase in Democrats’ popular-vote total — and another loss in the electoral college. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/ ... story.html Pervious believers in the Turnout Myth: Barry Goldwater (1964), George McGovern (1972).
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 16, 2020 22:29:29 GMT -5
Bernie feels the burn: "Three other topless women also crashed the stage with the words 'let dairy die' written on their chests, before pouring milk cartons full of fake blood on themselves. The women who were topless were arrested for indecent exposure and are held on $2,500 bond each, according to Direct Action Everywhere." thehill.com/homenews/campaign/483323-sanders-interrupted-by-anti-dairy-industry-protesters-during-nevada-rallyOne Twitter writer's comment: "Bernie Sanders has been running for President for five years straight and he doesn’t know how to handle a protestor in a civil, professional, respectful way. What he did was far from civil. He didn’t have to push her, get physical and avoid eye contact. What a shame."
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 21, 2020 12:33:48 GMT -5
Latest UMass-Lowell poll on the MA Primary:
Sanders: 21%
Warren: 20%
Buttigieg: 15%
Biden: 14%
Bloomberg: 12%
Klobuchar: 9%
Gabbard: 3%
Steyer: 2%
This was always going to be a fight between Bernie and Liz, but that she's at only about 1/5 of the vote in her home state should have her team panicking. My daughter, who lives in MA, reminds me that she has run behind other Dems in her elections there, and if this poll holds up in would confirm she's a weaker candidate than many had realized. She just dropped her previous pledge not to accept Super PAC money, now saying she'll do so because others are (and yes, that includes Bernie).
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 24, 2020 18:39:59 GMT -5
So, tomorrow morning Jim Clyburn is expected to endorse Biden in advance of the SC primary on Saturday. link But it's not clear that will help much. The latest NBC poll shows Biden leading Bernie by about 4 points (about the margin of error). Why? Well, mainly because Tom Steyer, who literally has no route to the nomination, is winning about 18 percent of African-American voters. Biden's well ahead among them (35 percent to 20 for Bernie), but Steyer's been running ads aimed at AAs for months and hiring AA firms in the state to do much of his campaign's actual work there. So he's clearly hurting Biden and helping Bernie, while getting 15 percent of the vote overall. None of the other candidates (Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, Gabbard) is getting 10 percent of the total, nor more than 7 percent among AAs. What they hell are they doing in this race at this point? Like the 2016 Republicans they individually think they are "the one" to stop the loopy insurgent (well, except for the loopier Gabbard), but collectively they're helping him sew up the nomination, probably next month. Nothing at all learned from that GOP experience.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 26, 2020 22:35:04 GMT -5
I never watch these cattle-call "debates" during primary season. My decision to skip this week's was validated by Steven Colbert shortly after the event ended:
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 27, 2020 23:23:08 GMT -5
Latest Monmouth poll of SC:
Biden - 36
Sanders - 16
Steyer - 15
Buttigieg -6
Klobuchar - 4
Gabbard - 1
Clemson poll:
Biden - 35
Steyer - 17
Sanders - 13
Two polls with such close results suggest the numbers are pretty robust. If you're wondering why Steyer's doing so well it's because he's spent millions in advertising in SC, while largely ignoring the first three states. Biden's lead is easy to understand because he's far ahead among African-Americans, about 60 percent of the SC Dem electorate. Monmouth's breakdown among them:
Biden - 45
Steyer - 17
Sanders - 13
Despite all the talk of Bernie's inroads among AA voters there still is little evidence of it. In 2016 he got 33 percent of the AA vote in SC.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 27, 2020 23:25:49 GMT -5
At last some good data on this whole electability thing! Political Scientists at UC-Berkeley and Yale did study with 40,000 respondents in which they used some clever methods to ferret out just how firm support is for the various Dem candidates while examining the possible effects their nomination would have on the fall elections. Here's what they found about Bernie: "Republicans are more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated: Approximately 2 percent of Republicans choose Trump over Sanders but desert Trump when we pit him against a more moderate Democrat like Buttigieg, Biden, or Bloomberg. Democrats and independents are also slightly more likely to say they would vote for Trump if Sanders is nominated. Swing voters may be rare — but their choices between candidates often determine elections, and many appear to favor Trump over Sanders but not over other Democrats." They do find that "11 percent of left-leaning young people say they...would turn out and vote for Sanders" but not for any other nominee. These are "almost entirely limited to left-leaning young people." As for other groups, "whites without a college degree — a demographic some speculate Sanders could win over — are actually more likely to say they will vote for Trump against Sanders than against the other Democrats. The same is true of the rest of the electorate, except left-leaning young people." To win, then, Bernie would have to get a huge boost in turnout among that sliver of the electorate. How much of a boost? Well, 11 percentage points above the increased turnout for voters overall. Using the increased turnout between the 2014 and 2018 midterms as a rough indicator of the expected increase in 2020 over 2016 (call it the Trump Effect), they calculate that turnout of the under-35s would need to go up by about 30 percent over 2016. And that's just to be as competitive as the other Democrats. Is that possible? "There is no way to be sure whether Sanders’s nomination would produce this historic youth turnout surge — but it seems doubtful. Turnout in the 2020 primaries so far has not exceeded 2008 levels, including among young voters. If anything, research suggests the opposite is more likely to occur: In response to an extreme Democratic nominee, Republicans could be inspired to turn out at higher rates to oppose him." They also tested plausible attack ads against each of the candidates (e.g., Biden supporting Social Security cuts, Buttigieg's same-sex marriage, etc.). "After showing three attacks against each candidate, we find that... Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and Biden still do better against Trump than Sanders does. (Warren still performs even worse than Sanders against Trump in this test. We did not include Klobuchar in this survey. [Who says sexism is dead? )" They conclude: "The gamble Democrats supporting Sanders based on his early polls against Trump must be ready to make is that, despite the evidence to the contrary, the lowest-participating segment of the electorate will turn out at remarkably high rates because Sanders is nominated." www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-dataIn short, Bernie's the Dem least-likely to beat Trump, but suddenly he's gonna be our candidate. Yeesh!
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 27, 2020 23:59:57 GMT -5
"Former Vice President Joe Biden is reclaiming his front-runner status in Florida, according to a survey released on Thursday by St. Pete Polls." linkBiden - 35 Bloomberg - 25 Sanders -13 Buttigieg - 8 Warren - 5 Klobuchar - 4 This poll had a big sample of nearly 2,800, so a small sampling error of only 1.9 percentage points.
|
|
|
Post by Old Badger on Feb 28, 2020 0:20:09 GMT -5
Further culling of the field is going to be very hard: Bloomberg: "Why would I spend all of this money, all of this time out of my life, and wear and tear, you know...I am going to stay right to the bitter end, as long as I have a chance." Warren: "You do know that [staying in after losing] was Bernie's position in 2016. The way I see this is, you write the rules before you know where everybody stands. And then, you stick with those rules." thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485097-bloomberg-im-going-to-stay-right-to-the-bitter-end-of-democratic-primary The other candidates apparently sense that neither Sanders nor Biden is going to pile up enough delegates to win on the first ballot, so they might as well stay in and hope for a later-ballot nomination or a major role in deciding who does get in (and in return for what). Oddly, simply by staying in they may divide the delegates up enough to make that a reality. The conventional wisdom is that a divided field helps Bernie the way the big GOP field helped Trump in 2016. But Trump benefitted from winner-take-all primaries that allowed him to pile up lots of delegates with a relatively modest share of the votes. By contrast, the Dems always scatter delegates across every candidate who gets at least 15 percent of the vote, making it much harder to leverage a minority of votes into a majority of delegates So, it may be that the best ABB (Anyone But Bernie) strategy is to have five or six candidates splitting the votes, and thereby denying Bernie a majority or something close to it. I've never seen that work, but then I never saw anything like Trump, either.
|
|