Posts Tagged ‘cronyism’

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 4, 2019

Monday, November 4th, 2019

Beto goes bye bye, sticker shock sets in for Warren, Grandpa Simpson forgets which state he’s in (again), and a failing Harris goes all-in on Iowa. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

Polls

The story had been about how Biden was doomed and Warren’s rise was inexorable, but Biden tops every national poll this week, maintaining a modest lead over Warren, while Harris is in freefall. Also notice that there’s not a single poll outside Iowa or New Hampshire where Warren leads Biden. (For one thing, Quinnipiac, which has constantly shown a more pro-Warren tilt than any other poll, evidently didn’t do one last week.)

  • NBC/Wall Street Journal: Biden 27, Warren 23, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 6, Klobuchar 5, Harris4, Yang 3, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, O’Rourke 1, Castro 1, Bennet 1.
  • ABC/Washington Post: Biden 27, Warren 21, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 7, Booker 2, Castro 2, Gabbard 2, Harris 2, Yang 2, Bennet 1, Delaney 1, Klobuchar 1, O’Rourke 1, Steyer 1.
  • Fox News: Biden 31, Warren 21, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 7, Harris 3, Yang 3, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 2, Steyer 1.
  • Harvard Harris (page 145, and be prepared to use the zoom button): Biden 33, Sanders 18, Warren 15, Harris 5, Buttigieg 4, Booker 3, Klobuchar 3, Yang 2, O’Rourke 2, Steyer 1, Gillibrand 1, Williamson 1, Gabbard 1.
  • New York Times/Siena (Iowa): Warren 22, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 18, Biden 17, Klobuchar 4, Harris 3, Yang 3.
  • Franklin & Marshall (Pennsylvania): Biden 30, Warren 18, Sanders 12, Buttigieg 8, Gabbard 2, Bennet 2, Harris 1, Booker 1, Yang 1.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 186): Biden 27, Warren 23, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 8, Harris 4, O’Rourke 4, Yang 3, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, Castro 1, Booker 1, Steyer 1, Bennet 1, Delaney 1.
  • CNN/UNH (New Hampshire): Sanders 21, Warren 18, Biden 15, Buttigieg 10, Yang 5, Klobuchar 5, Gabbard 5, Steyer 3, Harris 3, Booker 2, O’Rourke 2, Sestak 1. Good news for Yang, Gabbard and Klobuchar, though I’m not sure if this is a DNC qualifying poll or not.
  • Emerson (Arizona): Biden 28, Warren 21, Sanders 21, Buttigieg 12, Yang 5, Harris 4, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 2, Sestak 1.
  • Politico/Morning Consult (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada): Biden 32, Sanders 20, Warren 20, Buttigieg 7, Harris 6, Yang 3, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Everyone thinks Biden is toast in New Hampshire:

    The assumption that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren will win New Hampshire is all but baked, Democratic insiders told POLITICO; the neighbor-state senators could easily take the top two spots. The biggest prize, at this point, is the surge of momentum that would come from eclipsing Joe Biden, as the race turns to Nevada and then South Carolina.

    I think the story coming out of this state may not be first place,” said former Democratic state Sen. Andrew Hosmer. “It may be who shows up as a strong second or third place that really propels them.”

    Hosmer’s assessment was broadly shared by more than two dozen knowledgeable Democrats interviewed for this story, including the party chair, current and former state lawmakers, several underdog campaigns and one of the candidates. Officials with several Democratic candidates’ campaigns, meanwhile, described the race as fluid, with no real frontrunner despite the advantage enjoyed by Sanders, who won New Hampshire in 2016, and Warren, who has been building inroads for years.

    The candidates and campaign aides said superior organization will trump all in the state — more so than a heavy TV ad presence or endorsements. And with more than four of five voters still undecided or only leaning toward a candidate, there’s an enormous opportunity for a lower-polling candidate to emerge.

  • With no clear frontrunner and at least four plausible candidates, superdelegates might make a comeback in a brokered convention.
  • More on how the 15% delegate threshold plays out:

    Depending on how frontloaded a primary calendar is, late April tends to be around the point where enough delegates have been allocated that the presumptive nominee is, if not already clear, coming into sharper focus. So if three candidates are still cresting above the 15 percent threshold by the six-contest “Acela primary” in late April, when more than 75 percent of delegates will have been awarded, that could wreak havoc on the 2020 Democratic nomination process.

    But of course, much of this depends on how wide the margin is by which the candidates clear that threshold. If, say, only one candidate is getting a supermajority while the others struggle to hit 15 percent, then the fact that three candidates are above the threshold matters very little — see Trump in 2016. But if three candidates are tightly bunched at 40, 30 and 20 percent, it potentially becomes much more problematic. This is especially true if that clustering happens early and often, especially on delegate-rich days like Super Tuesday, which is scheduled for March 3 this year and is the first series of contests after the four early states.

    But:

    Here’s why I think a logjam situation is unlikely: How the threshold is applied tends to already have a built-in winnowing effect on the candidates. Yes, there is a proportional allocation of delegates, but that only applies to candidates who win 15 percent of the vote. And that qualifying threshold is not applied just once, but three different times. A candidate must meet that threshold at the statewide level twice, once for at-large delegates and once for party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates. A candidate must also win 15 percent of the vote in a given congressional district (or other subdivision) to lay claim to any district-level delegates. In other words, a candidate who surpasses 15 percent of the statewide vote by running up margins in a few concentrated areas will not earn as many delegates as a candidate who hits the 15 percent statewide threshold by earning at least 15 percent of the vote across districts. A candidate must build a coalition of support more uniformly across a state — and the country — in order to win delegates. It’s more than just peeling off a delegate or two here and there.

  • Hey Democrats, when even Nancy Pelosi says your ideas are too far left to win elections, don’t you think you should listen?
  • It’s do or die time for second tier candidates.
  • Biden mentions down, Gabbard mentions up.
  • State of play roundup. Nothing new if you read the clown car update regularly.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bennet slams Warren yet again for her phony baloney socialized medicine numbers.

    “Voters are sick and tired of politicians promising them things that they know they can’t deliver,” the Colorado senator said in a statement. “Warren’s new numbers are simply not believable and have been contradicted by experts. Regardless of whether it’s $21 trillion or $31 trillion, this isn’t going to happen, and the American people need health care.”

    Warren on Friday released the cost estimate of her plan, which increases federal spending by $21 trillion over the next ten years, a significant increase that is nevertheless cheaper than the $31 trillion increase attributed to Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan.

    Our incestuous ruling class: Bennet’s brother James is a top editor at New York Times. Former Colorado Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart endorses Bennet. Which makes you wonder just how much the endorsement of a candidate who couldn’t overcome the raw charisma of Walter Mondale is worth. Hart managed to be Howard Dean in 1984 and John Edwards in 1988.

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Joe Biden Repeatedly Asked Federal Agencies To Do What His Son’s Lobbying Clients Wanted“:

    While serving as senator of Delaware, Joe Biden reached out discreetly to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to discuss matters his son Hunter Biden’s firm was then lobbying for, according to government records Goodman gathered.

    The latest revelations further buttress accusations that Joe Biden’s work as senator and vice president frequently converged with and assisted Hunter Biden’s business interests. Whether it be getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son’s company fired or meeting one of his son’s business partners while on a diplomatic trip to China in 2013, Joe Biden’s political activities in relation to his son Hunter have continued to garner scrutiny.

    In 2002, while his father was a senator, Hunter founded the lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which lobbied on the Hill. When his father announced his candidacy for president in 2008, Hunter opted to leave the firm, claiming it was to reduce concerns about conflicts of interest.

    While Hunter was still at the firm, in late February 2007, then-Sen. Joe Biden reached out to DHS, expressing concern over the department’s proposed chemical security regulations. The regulations were in accordance with Section 550 of the DHS Appropriations Act of 2007, which called for chemical facilities to submit detailed “site security plans” for DHS approval. Part of these plans were expected to include specifics related to training and credentialing employees.

    Biden’s call seems like an eerie coincidence. Two months prior to that phone call, the Industrial Safety Training Council had enlisted Hunter Biden’s firm to lobby DHS precisely on Section 550. The Industrial Safety Training Council is a 501(c)3 that offers safety training services to employees of chemical plants. In the midst of debates over regulations stemming from Section 550, ISTC launched significant lobbying efforts to encourage the expansion of background checks under the new regulation regime.

    Hunter was not registered as an individual lobbyist on behalf of ISTC, but he did serve as a senior partner at his namesake firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which only boasted three partners at the time. According to Goodman, from early 2007 to the end of 2008, his firm earned a total of $200,000 from ISTC in return for its lobbying efforts.

    While we don’t know the source of Joe Biden’s concern over Section 550 and whether his “concern” was the one ISTC shared, it is worth noting this repeated crossover between Hunter Biden’s business and his father’s political stratagems. At some point, coincidences stop being merely a product of a chance. In the case of Hunter and Joe Biden, the coincidences continue to pile up.

    Joe Biden’s use of his political power for his son’s business dealings didn’t stop there. At one point, Hunter’s firm was lobbying on behalf of SEARCH, a national nonprofit devoted to information-sharing between states in the criminal justice and public safety realm. SEARCH was interested in expanding the federal government’s fingerprint screening system and hired Hunter’s firm to lobby on behalf of this issue.

    During that very time, Joe Biden sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales expressing a desire to unpack this very topic. In his letter, then-Sen. Joe Biden asked to meet with DOJ to explore the benefits of the expanding the federal government’s fingerprint system.

    “Joe Biden: The Frontrunner Dems Don’t Really Like.”

    From the Yogi Berra Institute for Advanced Whackery — er, Business Insider, actually — comes a new poll showing that while Joe Biden is the most-loved Democratic presidential contender, he’s also the least-liked. According to figures releasedon Sunday, “27% of likely Democratic voters would be unsatisfied with a Biden nomination, 21% would be dissatisfied with a Sanders win, and 15% would be dissatisfied with Warren.”

    What that means is, should Biden win the nomination next summer, more than a quarter of Dems would face a serious “Meh” moment when deciding whether to even bother showing up at the polls in November.

    Snip.

    Registered voters (it’s too soon to narrow down to likely voters) who approved of Trump’s job performance are either “extremely” or “very” enthused about voting next year — by a whopping 79%. If you’re a registered voter and you disapprove of Trump, you’re only 66% likely to be extremely or very enthused. 13 points is a major enthusiasm gap. And as Kilgore also notes, “White folks are more enthusiastic about voting than nonwhite folks; old folks are more psyched than young folks; Republicans are more whipped up than Democrats.” Those demos suggest that Democratic primary voters had better think long and hard about nominating someone who generates serious enthusiasm, but their frontrunner doesn’t seem to be the guy to do that.

    The head of Joe Biden Super-PAC Unite the Country is a registered foreign agent for the government of Azerbaijan.

    Records filed with the Department of Justice show that Rasky is also a registered foreign agent lobbying on behalf of the government of Azerbaijan. The records, which were filed pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, show that Rasky was hired by the Azerbaijani government on April 23, 2019. Federal documents signed by Rasky show that he reports directly to Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the United States.

    “[The government of Azerbaijan] will pay RASKY a minimum monthly non-refundable fee (the ‘Monthly Fee’) for the Services provided of $15,000 per month, plus a 5% administrative fee as described below,” Rasky’s contract with the foreign government states. “The Monthly Fees totaling $94,500 shall be paid in two equal installments. The initial payment of $47,250 is due upon the signing of this agreement. The second payment of $47,250 is due on July 15, 2019.”

    Rasky changed the name of the PAC from “For The People” to “Unite the Country” on Monday, according to FEC filings. The filings do not state which country Rasky intends to unite on Biden’s behalf.

    Grandpa Simpson confuses Iowa with Ohio. By now, wouldn’t you think Biden’s advance team would have a little piece of paper for him that says something like “It’s MONDAY, November 4th, and you’re in IOWA”? How hard can that be? Speaking of Biden gaffes, he did a Edward James Olmos as Lt. Castillo in Miami Vice homage by staring at screen with his back to the camera. Here’s a roundup of his fumbles through the Carolinas. He was denied communion at mass in a South Carolina Catholic church. Which is another sign of his Catholic problem:

    The vainglorious, name-dropping Biden also couldn’t help himself from invoking Pope Francis and noting that he “gives me Communion.”

    Such brief asides won’t solve his Catholic problem. For one thing, invoking Pope Francis plays poorly in American politics, as the opponents of Donald Trump found out in 2016. Trump’s poll numbers didn’t fall but rose after the pope slammed his immigration position. Hiding behind an obnoxious left-wing pope won’t help Biden any more than it helped Hillary and Kaine, who tried to drive that wedge between Trump and Catholic voters. Kaine’s faux-Catholic schtick — he would go on and on about his “Jesuit volunteer corps” work in Latin America with commies — went over like a lead balloon.

    The Catholics who bother to go to Mass regularly anymore are loath to vote for a candidate who supports abortion in all its grisly stages and presides over gay weddings (which Biden has done since pushing Barack Obama to support gay marriage in 2012). That poses an insuperable impediment to picking up Catholic votes. Notice that Biden’s I-grew-up-Catholic-in-Scranton lines are recited less and less. His strategists have probably concluded that that routine hurts him in the primaries and can only remind people of his checkered Catholicism in the general election. His “private” Catholic stances grow fainter and fainter and can’t even be found in a penumbra.

    Gets a PBS interview.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Thinking of Running After All? No new news on that front, but His Billionarness did drop $600,000 on two Democrats running for the Virginia House of Delegates, and an additional $110,000 to the Virginia Democratic Party.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Could Booker gain from O’Rourke’s exit? I rather doubt it. Booker’s no longer getting fawning profiles, but his director for state communications, Julie McClain Downey, is. The article opens stating she was “on the 12-week gender-blind paid leave available to all of the campaign’s full-time staffers.” Presidential campaigns are intense pressure cooker endeavors that require staffers to work killing hours over the course of (for a competitive campaign) 12-18 months. If key staffers are taking 12 months of leave during the white heat before the primary season, no wonder Booker is languishing around 1%.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Steve Bullock gets Anthony Scaramucci to unknowingly tape endorsement for $100.” That’s his big, exciting news this week. Maybe next week he can pay for Snooki’s endorsement. (And I know what you’re thinking, but no, she’ll only be 33 next year, making her constitutionally ineligible to be elected President…)
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Buttigieg threatens to eclipse Biden in Iowa:

    Joe Biden dropped to fourth place in Iowa, according to a new poll released Friday, his worst showing to date in the pivotal early state.

    A few hours later, at the largest gathering to date for any 2020 event, it was clear why.

    While Biden delivered a solid performance on stage before a crowd of 13,500 Democrats at the state party’s Liberty & Justice dinner, he was overshadowed and outshined by the candidate who just passed him in the polls — Pete Buttigieg.

    At the massive state party event known for its catalytic effect on campaigns — it’s widely remembered as a turning point for Barack Obama’s Iowa fortunes in 2007 — Buttigieg captured the audience’s imagination, articulating a case for generational change.

    “I didn’t just come here to end the era of Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said to a roaring crowd of supporters. “I’m here to launch the era that must come next.”

    Snip.

    Matt Sinovic, executive director of Progress Iowa, one of the largest left-leaning advocacy groups in the state, said Buttigieg generated considerable buzz with a recent statewide bus tour. He starts another on Saturday. But the Indiana mayor is also swamping his opponents in digital advertising, something that’s been hard to miss in Iowa.

    “I cannot overstate how many Buttigieg ads I see,” said Sinovic, pointing to data showing Buttigieg’s national digital spending numbers surpassing Biden almost five-to-one. “It’s just a massive outspending right now.”

    Almost always in politics, an early money lead counts for a hell of a lot more than an early poll lead.

    Biden’s campaign announced on Friday a new round of digital ad spending in Iowa. And he’s opening a new office in the state, giving him 23 overall as well as 100 staffers. The campaign also notes an October fundraising bump as a sign they’re not losing momentum — the campaign said it had its best month to date online, raising $5.3 million from 182,000 donations, with an average donation of $28.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Still not getting out. “Julián Castro plans to refocus his 2020 presidential campaign on Iowa, Nevada and Texas in the coming days and is supporting his staffers looking for jobs with other campaigns.” That pretty much says he’s broke, though Nevada and Texas make sense as last-ditch Hail Mary plays. In that CNN/UNH poll, Castro hard the largest net favorability decline of all the candidates listed, a whopping -25%. I’m sort of surprised voters actually noticed him enough to dislike him. Maybe it was the “abortion services for trannies” line that did it…
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But Dick Morris says she’s ready to jump in when Biden drops out.
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an ABC News interview. Talks about rural issues, jobs, and criticizes Warren’s socialized medicine plan. Gets a piece by Art Cullen in the Storm Lake Times (Iowa) boosting his opportunity zone proposal.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an MSNBC interview. Denies she interviewed for a job at the White House, despite what Steve Bannon says. Ann Coulter said something really stupid about her. Is Gabbard considering a third party run? No idea. I don’t have a mental map if the terrain inside Gabbard’s head.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris closed all her New Hampshire field offices to go “all in” on Iowa. This move reeks of desperation and a failing campaign, and is unlikely to work. Of course, her star has plunged so far fast, I’m not sure anything would work for her. Harris says her failing campaign shows that “America’s not ready for a woman of color as president.” Since her falling poll numbers are only from Democrats, that must mean that Democrats are racist.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Klobuchar had the second biggest net favorability jump, of 13%. Says Warren’s health care plan won’t work. “In 2008, Democratic presidential hopeful and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar requested $500,000 of taxpayer money to be donated to Minnesota Teen Challenge, a fundamentalist organization associated with the Pentecostal the Assemblies of God, which describes Pokemon, Harry Potter and Halloween as gateways to drug addiction.”
  • Update: Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: Dropped out November 1, 2019. 538 Postmortem:

    Coming off a close loss in Texas’s 2018 Senate race against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, O’Rourke entered the presidential race with great fanfare in March, though some wondered if he had waited too long to fully capitalize on the national notoriety he gained from his 2018 performance. Still, O’Rourke’s initial polling numbers suggested he might really be in the mix to compete for the nomination — he was polling at 10 percent or more in some national polls not long after he announced. However, his survey numbers quickly deteriorated as the race moved along, and he spent the past four months mostly polling below 5 percent even after he tried to revive his campaign in August by tacking left on some issues and focusing more on President Trump.

    ’Rourke’s tumble in the polls was also accompanied by fundraising difficulties. Having been a prodigious fundraiser in 2018, he seemed capable of attracting the resources to run a top-level presidential campaign, and he showed early promise by raising $6.1 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign, the second best opening day after only former Vice President Joe Biden. But fundraising dollars started drying up shortly thereafter. He had raised only $13 million by the end of the second quarter, and added just another $4.5 million in the third quarter.

    His debate performances didn’t help him recover either; in fact, his most recent performance seemed to have hurt him. After the October debate, O’Rourke’s net favorability among Democratic primary voters fell by about 6 points in our post-debate poll with Ipsos, the biggest decline for any of the 12 candidates on stage. His place at future debates was in serious jeopardy, too. O’Rourke was two qualifying polls shy of making the November debate and had yet to register a single qualifying survey for the December debate.

    But O’Rourke might always have struggled to attract a large enough base of support in the primary given the makeup of the Democratic electorate. As a moderate three-term congressman, he won over many suburban white voters in his Texas Senate bid, but as editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote back in July, a base of white moderates, particularly younger ones, wasn’t enough…only about 12 percent of 2016 Democratic primary voters fit all three descriptors — young, white, moderate.

    O’Rourke may have been billed as a moderate, but he quickly joined the Twitter Woke Circus, threatened to take our guns, and watched his polls crash even harder as a result. A fact that makes the NRA celebrate his exit:

    “Nation Surprised To Learn Beto O’Rourke Was Running For President.” He swears he’s not running for the senate. Let’s enjoy our last chance to snark on Bobby Francis:

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. He held a rally with Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis, despite the fact that his poll numbers have actually slipped after being endorsed by The Squad. “Heart-wrenching video shows Bernie Sanders touring Detroit with Rep. Rashida Tlaib.” Hey, remind me again which party has ruled Detroit for the last half century…
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. Appeared on Neil Cavuto’s show.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bashes Warren’s health care proposal, doesn’t want to scrap private insurance. Gets a Politico interview in which he natters on about climate change and…crony capitalism?
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren swears up and down that her $52 trillion socialized medicine scheme won’t require tax hikes on the middle class, evidently based on taxes obtained from magic space unicorns. Even Obama Administration alums think that her socialized medicine pitch will doom her campaign:

    Across the Democratic Party, ordinary voters, senior strategists, and health care wonks are increasingly nervous that the candidate many believe to be the most likely nominee to face Donald Trump has burdened herself with a policy that in the best case is extraordinarily difficult to explain and in the worst case could make her unelectable.

    On Tuesday night, in Concord, one of the more bougie New Hampshire towns that should be a Warren stronghold, Warren stepped inside Dos Amigos, a local Mexican restaurant. She made the rounds talking to voters as locals ate tacos and watched a football game playing above the bar. It didn’t take long before the first Medicare for All question came up.

    Martin Murray, who lives in neighboring Bow, came down for a taco and a beer and ended up having a conversation with Elizabeth Warren about single payer and slavery. (That’s what it’s like in New Hampshire.)

    “I paid pretty close attention to the last debate when Buttigieg was talking to her,” he told me, “and what I got from him was simply that going for the golden coin, if you will, might be a little too much all at once and maybe we have to take that step by step. And that’s what worries me too: that going for Medicare for All might be unattainable.”

    Murray, who is leaning toward supporting Warren, asked her about the Buttigieg critique. “You don’t get what you don’t fight for,” she told him. “In fact, can I just make a pitch on that? People said to the abolitionists: ‘You’ll never get it done.’ They said it to the suffragettes: ‘You’ll never get that passed.’ Right? They said it to the foot soldiers in the civil rights movement. They said it to the union organizers. They said it to the LGBT community.”

    She added, “We’re on the right side of history on this one.”

    Some Democrats I talked to found the comparisons that Warren used to be jarring. “I have the highest respect for Sen. Warren but she’s wrong about this,” said former Sen. Carol Mosley Braun, the first female African American in the Senate. “Abolition and suffrage did not occasion a tax increase. People weren’t giving something up — except maybe some of their privilege.”

    She added, “To compare the health care debate to the liberation of black people or giving women the right to vote is just wrong.”

    “Medicare for All does not equate in any shape, form or fashion to the Civil Rights Act, or Voting Rights Act, or the 13th Amendment, or 14th Amendment,” said Bakari Sellers, a Kamala Harris supporter whose father was a well-known civil rights activist who was shot and imprisoned in the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968. “It doesn’t.”

    Plus a history of Warren’s position, since she’s been on both sides of the issue whenever it suited her. Warren is a great candidate…if you want to see the stock market collapse. New York Times reporter had documents that proved Warren was lying about her “I was fired because I was pregnant” story, and sat on them. We all know why: They want Warren to win and they want Trump to lose. Saturday Night Live mocks Warren’s health care plan. The fact I’m linking here rather than embedding it should tell you how funny it is. Also, as with Hillary Clinton, SNL helps Warren’s campaign by having her played by an actress roughly half her age. “Elizabeth Warren Pledges To Crack Down On School Choice, Despite Sending Her Own Son To Elite Private School.”

    The 2020 presidential candidate’s public education plan would ban for-profit charter schools — a proposal first backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — and eliminate government incentives for opening new non-profit charter schools, even though Warren has praised charter schools in the past.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) This does not appear to be an official Warren campaign account, but it does offer up an infinite well of cringe.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s running on reparations in South Carolina. Doubt that moves the needle, but at this stage of the game her needle’s stuck on zero anyway.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Yang had the biggest favorability jump of all the candidates, of 15%. Says impeachment could backfire.

    “The downsides of that, the entire country gets engrossed in this impeachment process,” Yang said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And then, we’re gonna look up and be facing Donald Trump in the general election and we will not have made a real case to the American people.”

    Yang said that while he does support the impeachment, he feels Democrats waste too much time talking about it and not enough about the future of the US.

    “That’s the only way we’re going to win in 2020 and that’s the only way we’re actually going to start actually solving the problems that got him elected,” he told CNN.

    He’s staffing up:

    In the second quarter — from April to June — the campaign had under 20 staff members on its payroll, according to Yang’s Federal Election Commission filings. But a quarter later, it nearly quadrupled to include 73 staff members, POLITICO’s analysis shows, as well as several experienced and well-respected strategists in Democratic politics.

    The expansion, fueled by a nearly $10 million third-quarter fundraising haul, ensures that the 44-year-old entrepreneur can stick around through the beginning of early-state voting next year — and gives Yang a platform to build on if he should have a big moment in a later debate or show unexpectedly well in the Iowa caucuses. The hires also add critical experience to Yang’s campaign as it starts to spend on advertising, like a recent six-figure digital ad buy in the early states.

    Snip.

    Most notably, Yang’s campaign recently brought on Devine, Mulvey and Longabaugh as its media consulting firm. The firm — run by Tad Devine, Julian Mulvey and Mark Longabaugh — worked for Sanders’ insurgent 2016 primary campaign and produced the famous “America” ad before splitting early on with Sanders’ 2020 bid due to “differences in a creative vision.”

    Longabaugh says they were drawn to Yang because he’s “is offering the most progressive ideas” of the primary but that they see a long runway for the Yang campaign.

    “We wouldn’t have signed on with somebody we didn’t think was a serious candidate,” Longabaugh said, “Yang has a good deal of momentum and there’s a great deal of grassroots enthusiasm for his candidacy and that’s what’s driven it this far.”

    Other hires include senior adviser Steve Marchand, a former mayor of Portsmouth, N.H. and two-time gubernatorial candidate, who is a paid adviser to the Yang campaign since April and national organizing director Zach Fang, who jumped ship from Rep. Tim Ryan’s campaign in late August.

    The campaign has also paid Spiros Consulting — a widely used Democratic research firm helmed by Edward Chapman — for research throughout the quarter.

    The campaign’s field office game has ballooned recently. Currently all 15 of their field offices are in the first four states; 10 have opened since the start of October, according to the campaign.

    He’s also building out a ground game in South Carolina:

    That effort has evolved into more than 30 Yang Gangs across the state— 17 that South Carolina campaign chair Jermaine Johnson says are “100% structured.” The Columbia and Charleston group, made up of about 250 members, is the largest of these South Carolina Yang Gangs. The campaign maintains that while not all of these members are showing up to in-person events, the majority are active online.

    How Yang went from a prep-school-to-Ivy League student to walking away from a law firm job.

    It was fall of 1999, and Yang, 24, was in the job he had steered toward his whole life. Phillips Exeter Academy, Brown University, Columbia Law — the perfect elite track to land at Davis Polk & Wardwell, one of the country’s premier law firms. His Taiwanese immigrant parents were thrilled. Counting salary and bonus, he was making about $150,000 a year.

    He quit because he didn’t like it. “Working at a law firm was like a pie-eating contest, and if you won, your prize was more pie.”

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, who declared then dropped out, or whose campaigns are so moribund I no longer feel like wasting my time gathering updates on them:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin.
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In, but exiled to the also-rans after raising $5 in campaign contributions in Q3.
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Ding Dong, the ExIm Bank is Dead!

    Friday, July 3rd, 2015

    One bit of good news this week: The charter for one of crony capitalism’s favorite boondoggles, the Export/Import Bank, expired at Midnight June 30.

    Hopefully it will stay dead after congress returns from recess, despite attempts to revive it.

    If you can’t kill corporate welfare giveaways to Fortune 100 companies, what can you cut?

    Salon Writer Complains That Democrats Are Corporate Whores

    Tuesday, July 29th, 2014

    Well well well, what have we here?

    It’s a jeremiad by Democrat Bill Curry about how his party has abandoned its soul for the sweet smell of Wall Street crony capitalist dollars.

    Democrats hooked on corporate cash and consultants with long lists of corporate clients were less attuned to Nader’s issues.

    Democrats today defend the triage liberalism of social service spending but limit their populism to hollow phrase mongering (fighting for working families, Main Street not Wall Street). The rank and file seem oblivious to the party’s long Wall Street tryst. Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care.

    These days, says Curry, Democrats “don’t believe in ideas because they don’t believe in people” and calls for a Nader-esque populism. (Indeed, Nader’s latest book seems to provide the spine for his piece.)

    Curry actually sees the populist Tea Party energy on the right and laments its absence on his side of the aisle. “If there’s a true populist revolt on the left it is as yet invisible to the naked eye.” (Though I note one very hot populist issue, widespread opposition to the Democratic Party’s push for illegal alien amnesty, is conspicuous by its absence from his piece.)

    “Democratic elites are always up for compromise, but on the wrong issues. Rather than back GOP culture wars, as some do, or foreign wars, as many do, or big business, as nearly all do, they should back libertarians on privacy, small business on credit and middle-class families on taxes.”

    This advice is far from the worst Democrats have received, but they are congenitally unable to follow it for numerous reasons:

  • As a party, Democrats are all in on Big Government. Access to the Gravy Train and charging a transaction fee on robbing Peter to pay Paul are the only thing that holds their coalition together. Likewise, to say Democrats are unenthusiastic about cutting taxes is to vastly understate the case.
  • Democrats can’t embrace populism because both the political and cultural soul of the party is rooted in elitism. The people who run the party in D.C. are absolutely certain that they and their brethren can run peoples’ lives better than they can run their own. And the party’s biggest supporters in blue bastions like New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco are convinced that they are manifestly smarter, more moral, and above all more sophisticated than those gun-toting redneck freaks of JesusLand. Asking them to embrace real populism (as opposed to candidates making meaningless promises every 2 or 4 years) is almost certainly futile.
  • A significant fraction of their supporters in those blue bastions benefit directly from the crony capitalism Currey decries.
  • There are also numerous areas where Curry appears unable to shed his blue-colored glasses:

  • When he says “Oddly, the one system working relatively well, public education, is the object of our only sustained reform effort,” he’s ignoring the huge problems in teacher union controlled schools and curricula as documented everywhere from Waiting for Superman to Vergara vs. California. And in his conclusion, the very first member of his potential future coalition mentioned is “unions,” pointedly ignoring the populist revolt against fat cat public sector unions that have helped bankrupt Detroit and numerous California cities.
  • The plight of American workers pushed out of jobs by illegal aliens, and the popular revolt against busing them to communities across the country and amnesty? No mention.
  • He seems equally enthused about small business and fighting “global warming,” with nary a mention about how the EPA’s power grab thanks to the latter is crushing small business left and right, nor how many “green” firms are riding the crony capitalist gravy train.
  • Other populist “small ball” issues that never get mentioned: cheap light bulbs that work and toilets that flush. Though Shalt Not Question Washington’s Mandates.
  • Agribusiness subsidies, crony capitalism in almost its purest form? Not mentioned.
  • The Democratic Party faithful are never, ever, ever going to reengage with Nader, because their hatred for George W. Bush is far stronger and more visceral than their theoretical attachment to populist economic policies.
  • Of course, since it’s Salon, the piece has more than one inside-the-blue-bubble howler:

  • “Nader’s belief in convergence isn’t the same as Obama’s naïve pursuit of the holy grail of bipartisanship.” Obama has pursued “bipartisanship” with much the same fervor the late Amy Winehouse pursued “sobriety.”
  • “Republicans can talk values even while defending a corrupt status quo because, recent Tea Party convulsions aside, defending the status quo is their job. The Democrats’ job is to challenge the status quo; when they don’t do it, nothing they say sounds sincere. ” Republicans certainly defend many cultural status quos, but it is the Democratic Party that has consistently defended the status quo of the lumbering monstrosity that is Big Government.
  • When he says that until 1996, congress “had not enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s,” he’s flat out lying. (Kemp-Roth was certainly reform.) What he actual means is “No reforms that far left economic populists like myself approve of.”
  • In the next paragraph he decries the deregulation of the airline, trucking and phone industries, missing the point that these were not only reforms, but populist reforms that ended monopoly profits by entrenched special interests, and ones which radically brought down prices for consumers.
  • “But Nader always hit hard; you don’t get to be the world’s most famous shopper by making allowances or pulling punches.” I would venture to guess that the world’s most famous “shopper” is probably someone like Paris Hilton, which is probably not the image he wanted to convey…
  • “Liberals have spent the intervening years debating macroeconomic theory.” Have they? As far as I can tell, the only debate in the ideological vineyards of the Democratic Party is over how much Keynesian vs. how much Marxism.
  • “Democrats must also learn to argue history. They chortle when Michele Bachmann credits the founders with ending slavery or Sarah Palin forgets who Paul Revere rode to warn.” Tiny little problem: By and large Sarah Palin got Paul Revere’s story right, no matter how much liberals might insist otherwise.
  • “The best template of populism remains the career of William Jennings Bryan.” Well, it’s not that Curry is necessarily wrong per se, but one must view with a certain jaundiced eye the idea that current electoral models can be found in a man who probably peaked in 1896.
  • Indeed, when you get right down to it, Curry’s piece could be boiled down to “Talk vaguely about populism while pushing the same Big Government, redistributionist schemes liberals always push.” Maybe the Nader book itself is bolder (and if someone wants to pay me to review it, I’d happily give it a go), but Curry’s piece is very old and undistinguished wine decanted into a slightly shinier bottle.

    No matter how many times liberals declare “This is it! I’m finally fed up with the Democratic Party!”, the party’s fat cats know the truth. Come November 8, 2016, they’ll remember they loathe Republicans far more than they love reform, and pull the (D) lever no matter how many jeremiads Bill Curry and his ilk pen.

    We’ve seen this movie before, and we know exactly how it ends.

    Cronyism Lowering the Bar at UT Law

    Thursday, May 22nd, 2014

    For an example of how the cronyism scandal Wallace Hall uncovered is harming the University of Texas, take a look at UT’s law school.

    According to Erik Telford: “Only 59 percent of its graduates passed the most recent Texas Bar Examination, placing UT dead last among Texas’ nine law schools despite it being by far the most highly regarded school of the nine.”

    Speaker Joe Straus and two of his top lieutenants in the Texas House, Reps. Dan Branch and Jim Pitts, sent more letters to the president of the University of Texas on behalf of applicants than anyone else whose correspondence was included in a recent inquiry into admissions favoritism.

    Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa’s office recently reviewed 86 “recommendation” letters, almost all of them from lawmakers, sent to UT President Bill Powers instead of through the proper channels.

    In addition to Straus, the Fox piece fingers Democratic State Senator Judith Zaffrini (who is on the higher education committee) as one of the biggest cronyism abusers, and one who was not shy about sending letters for well-connected applicants. Telford:

    Of the 90 UT Law School graduates who have failed the bar exam twice in recent years, 12 — or 13 percent — came from Zaffrini’s hometown of Laredo, which comprises less than 1 percent of the state’s population. It’s a suspicious correlation, as previous investigations of Zaffrini found that the senator has attempted to use her political clout to skirt the admissions process at least three times in the past. Six more double-flunkers have connections to Straus’ political machine.

    While Zaffrini and Straus may possibly have muscled several of their unqualified hometown cronies into their state’s flagship public law school, many other state lawmakers appear to have snuck their children and employees through UT Law’s back door. The sons of Zaffrini, State Sen. John Carona and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts each graduated from UT Law and promptly failed the bar exam three times, as did the chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego [Democrat], and State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez [Democrat], who attended UT Law while serving in office.

    Carona was defeated by Don Huffines in March, and Dan Branch is about to be retired by Ken Paxton. It is the likes of Straus and Zaffrini who should be removed from public office for participating in the scandal, not Wallace Hall for exposing it.

    LinkSwarm for August 6, 2013

    Tuesday, August 6th, 2013

    Still catching up, so enjoy your complimentary LinkSwarm and beverage (minus the beverage):

  • No, the IRS did not target liberal groups like they targeted conservatives.
  • The scary truth about state and local debt.
  • The U.S. government has $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities. I don’t happen to agree with everything in that assessment (a situation in which the FDIC would actually have to make good on all $7 trillion in deposit guarantees would pretty much be tantamount to the complete collapse of civilization), but the rest is scary enough.
  • Powerline’s John Hindraker wonders what the Benghazi cover-up is really about. I still think the secret CIA interrogation center that David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell claims was there is a strong possibility.
  • Thanks to ObamaCare, insurance premiums will increase in most states.
  • How liberals managed to turn wealthy Connecticut into just another broke Blue State.
  • Obama’s Nixonian scandals just keep churning.
  • The Black Hole in China’s shadow banks
  • Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos. But he wasn’t stupid enough to take over existing pension liabilities. Bezos seems to be a liberal, but isn’t an overly active donor for a billionaire.
  • “Coming this fall on Cinemax: Leathers and Slutbag! They both got nailed by the same slimeball, and now they’re out for justice! Democratic politician not paying you your promised hush money? Call Leathers & Slutbag!”
  • Tawana Brawley finally starts paying for her 1987 rape hoax.
  • Liberal race-hustler Rep. Charlie Rangel takes time out of his busy schedule of defrauding the American taxpayer to suggest Tea Partiers are the “same group” who fought for segregation during the Civil Rights movement. Hey, Rep. Rangel, you know what the name of the group that fought for segregation was? The Democratic Party.
  • Attorney general Greg Abbott nails Texas Planned Parenthood for Medicaid fraud In fact, it was $4.3 million worth of fraud. More from Holly Hansen.
  • More show trails in Turkey.
  • Advocates of “green” energy cronyism seem to have found some Tea Party patsies.
  • On the differences between Austin and Texas.
  • Ace of Spades offers up an epic takedown of movie critic Andrew O’Hehir. “The man masturbates stupid and ejaculates embarrassment.”
  • And then does the same on Amanda Marcotte’s theory that men men hate sex and only use it to procreate.
  • Liberals get firebrand Twitter Gulag Defense Network founder Todd Kincannon’s Twitter account suspended. For all of two days.

  • Heh:
  • Rep. John P. Murtha, RIP

    Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

    Since I’ve slagged him fairly mercilessly in this space, I would be remiss not to mention the passing of Rep. John P. Murtha. Murtha served his country honorably in Vietnam, and then dishonorably in Congress, where he became the poster child for earmark corruption, doing everything in his power to steer pork patronage to his friends and relatives. The fate I wanted for Murtha was seeing him defeated and indicted, not dead. He’s now beyond the reach of any earthly justice, but the endemic congressional culture of cronyism and corruption he helped create and perpetuate survives him.