Posts Tagged ‘Joe Sestak’

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for December 2, 2019

Monday, December 2nd, 2019

Biden noms his wife in public, an ex-staffer reveals how badly Camp Harris sucks, Sestak drops Out (or at least stops pretending he was in), Gabbard weaponizes Joe Rogan, and New Hampshire voters beg Tom Steyer to make it stop. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

At little lite, as you would expect after Thanksgiving week. Who wants to talk about any of these turkeys over real turkey?

Update: Shortly after I posted this, I learned Steve Bullock also dropped out.

Polls

  • Economist/YouGov (page 181): Biden 23, Warren 17, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 12, Harris 4, Klobuchar 3, Yang 3, Bloomberg 3, Gabbard 2, Booker 2, Williamson 1, Castro 1, Patrick 1, Steyer 1, Delaney 1, Bullock 1.
  • Emerson (New Hampshire): Sanders 26, Buttigieg 22, Biden 14, Warren 14, Gabbard 6, Yang 5, Harris 4, Steyer 3, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Bloomberg 1, Williamson 1.
  • CNN: Biden 28, Sanders 17, Warren 14, Buttigieg 11, Bloomberg 3, Harris 3, Steyer 3, Yang 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Castro 1.
  • Survey USA: Biden 32, Sanders 117, Warren 16, Buttigieg 12, Harris 5, Yang 4, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Steyer 2, Castro 1.
  • Quinnipiac: Biden 24, Buttigieg 16, Warren 14, Sanders 13, Harris 3, Bloomberg 3, Klobuchar 3, Yang 2, Booker 2, Bennet 2, Castro 2, Gabbard 1. Warren’s fall to third in this poll is pretty relevant, since Quinnipiac was the only national poll that ever showed Warren up over Biden. Biden maintains his frontrunner status, but it’s essentially a dogfight for second among Buttigieg, Warren and Sanders. There’s a significant possibility that all four of them have enough money, popularity and organization to take their four-way fight all the way to the convention floor.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • “The Democratic presidential campaign has produced confusion rather than clarity.” Really? What first tipped you off?

    Early in the year, the party’s liberal wing seemed to be ascendant, defined by the candidacies of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the embrace of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health-care program. Sanders and Warren were calling for other dramatic changes to the system — economic and political — and their voices stood out. Some other candidates offered echoes of their ideas.

    That proved to be a misleading indicator of where the Democratic electorate stood on some of the issues, particularly health care, in part because fewer moderate voices were being heard. Former vice president Joe Biden didn’t join the race until April. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg wasn’t being taken very seriously. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wasn’t breaking through.

    The candidate debates provided the setting for the arguments to play out before a larger audience. Warren and Sanders came under attack from moderate Democrats at the first debate in June in Miami, with former Maryland congressman John Delaney the most vocal. But Warren and Sanders more than held their own. The progressive wing appeared to be on solid ground.

    Subsequent debates, however, have produced a different impression. The progressives have been much more on the defensive and the moderates more assertive. Biden tangled with Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) in the Detroit debate over the issue of health care. Harris subsequently modified her position, moving toward the center. On the issue of Medicare-for-all, the ground has shifted.

    During the Atlanta debate in late November, even Sanders seemed to be tempering his overall message. Asked about comments by former president Barack Obama, who had earlier told some wealthy Democratic donors that the country wasn’t looking for a revolution, Sanders replied, “He’s right. We don’t have to tear down the system, but we do have to do what the American people want.”

    Judged by the current polling in the four early states, the more-moderate candidates are prospering. To the surprise of many, Buttigieg is at the top of the field in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. No one would have predicted that last spring.

    Maybe not. But it was possible to do it when he led Q2 fundraising.

  • Democrat’s nightmare scenario: Bloomberg can’t win, but he can choose which Democrat to make lose:

    What is the worst-case scenario for Democrats in their upcoming primary? Is it a contested primary all the way to the convention, where no candidate gets enough delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot?…

    Is it Joe Biden hanging on, leaving a lot of progressives disappointed and uninspired, a sense that they’re counting on a man who just turned 77, and who’s looked not so sharp in the debates, to beat Trump? It’s not hard to imagine a “grumpy old men” general election, where Trump is his usual wildly unpredictable self with raucous, incendiary rallies, and Biden responds with his own meandering stories about “Corn Pop,” implausible anecdotes, un-woke language, cringe-worthy gaffes, and repeated insistence that his son did nothing wrong by joining Burisma’s board.

    With Elizabeth Warren tumbling fast, Bernie Sanders locked in around the high teens in most places, and Pete Buttigieg still a long way from frontrunner status, Biden stumbling his way to the nomination doesn’t seem so implausible. Lots of people comment on how Buttigieg is struggling to gain support among African Americans, but Warren and Sanders aren’t doing that much better than him among this demographic.

    But there’s one other new factor that could make things go even worse for Democrats. As noted on The Editors podcast, I don’t think Mike Bloomberg can be the king, but he could become the kingmaker. Having $30 million or so to spend on television advertising every week means Bloomberg can more or less take a sledgehammer to any rival whenever he wants. For Democrats, the nightmare scenario is that Bloomberg spends his millions tearing down anyone in his way, driving up voter disapproval of all the other candidates, but proves too unpopular to win the nomination himself — leaving the party angry and full of recriminations as Biden accepts the nomination on July 16 of next year.

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Appeared on the CBS Intelligence Matters Podcast. Insert your own Deep State joke here.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. He launched a “no malarkey” tour of Iowa, eveidently because that tested better than “Cut the Jibber Jabber,” “Dagnabit,” or “I Wore An Onion On My Belt, Because That Was The Style At The Time” as a tour name. On that tour, he chewed on his wife’s fingers while she was speaking like a playful Rottweiler puppy. Can the “black left,” AKA #BlackLivesMatters, stop Biden? Given that Harris was their champion, and they haven’t achieved any significant victories themselves, I’m going to go with “no.”
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Jumped In. Twitter. Facebook. Too bad for Bloomy he’s the most unpopular and unelectable candidate in the race.

    But that’s not stopping him from carpet bombing the race with money:

    Brace yourselves, America. This week you’re getting $30 million in television ads touting former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg to be the Democratic nomination. And don’t think that you’ll be missing out if you live in some small television market — Bloomberg’s campaign is spending $52,000 in Fargo, N.D., and $59,000 in Biloxi, Miss.

    The most enthusiastic supporters of Bloomberg’s bid appear to be television-station-ad sales reps, Bloomberg employees, and the Republican National Committee. Don’t think of it as an election, America; think of it as an acquisition by Bloomberg LP. Don’t listen to the people who say Bloomberg is trying to buy the nomination and the presidency; think of it as buying hearts and souls.

    Democrats complain a great deal about how terrible money in politics is, while secretly accepting the assistance of $140 million in “dark money” in the 2018 midterm elections. Bloomberg is going to be a great test of whether Democrats think and make decisions the way they want to believe that they do. On paper, Bloomberg is a terrible candidate. But if he gets traction in this race, it means Democratic primary voters are as easily persuaded by slick television ads as much as any other demographic. Note that Tom Steyer, a diminutive billionaire who is a walking vortex that no charisma can escape from, qualified for the last two debates and is at 2.5 percent in Iowa, 3 percent in New Hampshire, 3.5 percent in Nevada and 4 percent in South Carolina. But the most recent poll in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina all put Steyer at 5 percent. TV ads build name recognition.

    Bloomberg does not seem like the most natural choice for a party that is hell-bent on beating an incumbent president they see as an egomaniacal billionaire from New York with authoritarian impulses. You don’t have to be a conservative to recoil from Bloomberg (although it helps); you just have to dislike any smug billionaire who believes the rules don’t apply to him and that he knows what’s best for everyone.

    He says that Xi Jinping is not a dictator:

    I also can’t see this winning him many friends, well, anywhere:

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Had a mini-campaign telethon on Face the Nation because, like an 80-year old millionaire on a honeymoon with his new 20-something stripper wife, he needs all the help he can to keep going.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Another GOP attack ad against him…for the senate campaign he hasn’t launched yet. Update: He suspended his Presidential campaign this morning and says he’s not running for the senate.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He once sought the support of the Tea Party. I’m sure Democratic Party activist will be sympathetic and understanding about that. “Our Poll Shows That Buttigieg’s Post-Debate Bump Is Still Just His Base.”

    If Buttigieg was hoping his high debate marks would help him diversify his base of support, that hasn’t happened yet. The demographic cross-tabs in our poll show that he mainly made inroads among groups where he already enjoyed a disproportionate amount of support, like the college-educated, white voters and older voters. He had little success winning people over among groups where he has tended to struggle, like with black and Hispanic voters.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Mark your calendar, as Castro actually said something that wasn’t absurd left-wing pandering: He wants to reform opiod laws so people that actual need them can get them, and says he’s open to decriminalizing drugs. I hope he enjoys probably the only “attaboy” he’ll receive from me until he inevitably ends his moribund campaign.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? No time for Grandma Death this week.
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. BEEEEEFCAAAAKE!
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Comes in at 6% in a New Hampshire poll. Unfortunately for her, it’s not a debate qualifying poll. She’s “weaponized” her Joe Rogan interview:

    I’m not a Gabbard backer, but she makes several cognizant points in that clip. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. The rats are really complaining about conditions on the sinking ship:

    A blistering resignation letter from a member of the Kamala Harris campaign paints a picture of low morale among staffers of a directionless campaign with “no real plan to win” ahead of the crucial Iowa caucus in 2020.

    According to the New York Times, the sentiments expressed in a letter from now-former state operations manager Kelly Mehlenbacher were corroborated by more than 50 current and former campaign staffers and allies, speaking largely on the condition of anonymity to disclose the campaign’s many flaws and tactical errors, from focusing on the wrong states to targeting the wrong candidates, as a frustrated campaign staff draws closer to 2020 Democratic primaries, which at one point counted the California Senator as a likely star.

    Ms Mehlenbacher’s letter came a few days after a November staff meeting during which aides pressed campaign manager Juan Rodriguez about strategy and finances after sweeping layoffs ahead of the campaign’s movement in Iowa.

    “While I still believe Senator Harris is the strongest candidate” in 2020, Ms Mehlenbacher said, “I have never seen an organisation treat its staff so poorly … I no longer have confidence in our campaign or its leadership. The treatment of our staff over the last two weeks was the final straw.”

    She said it was “unacceptable” to move campaign staff from Washington DC to headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, “only to lay them off without notice” with “no plan for the campaign” and “without thoughtful consideration of the personal consequences to them or the consequences that their absence would have on the remaining staff.”

    I can believe both that departing staffers are unaware how highly uncertain and contingent presidential campaigns are and that Harris treats her staff like shit.

  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Probably not? Keeping him up here one more week so you can taste test this fine whine:

    Former Attorney General Eric Holder is “frustrated” former President Barack Obama did not emphatically encourage his presidential aspirations, those close to Holder and familiar with his thinking say.

    Holder, who has warned Democrats to be “wary of attacking the Obama record,” was reportedly “frustrated” that Obama, who he considers a close friend, did not actively encourage his presidential aspirations.

    Obama has remained notably silent throughout the Democrat primary – a development that should come to no surprise to those closely following the race. The former president signaled he would not endorse a primary candidate or speak out in an overly critical manner of any of the presidential hopefuls. According to Politico, Obama views his role as “providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear.”

    Obama has, largely, stuck to that strategy, refusing to endorse his former running mate Joe Biden (D) and refraining from encouraging the presidential aspirations of his “close friend” Holder, who teamed up with Obama’s Organizing For Action to create the All On The Line campaign, a redistricting project “aimed at thwarting the use of so-called gerrymandering across the country.”

    While reports, as recently as early November, indicated Holder was still mulling a last-minute presidential bid, the doors are slowly closing. Politico reported Holder was reportedly “frustrated” Obama did not encourage his plans for a presidential bid, with a source close to Holder telling the outlet that “he’s [Holder’s] still pretty sensitive about it.”

    Bet Obama never encouraged his plans to become an NBA center, either…

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. NYT writer says she’s actually expanding her campaign and may be peaking at the right time.

    As her rivals falter, Ms. Klobuchar has outlasted some national figures, like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Representative Beto O’Rourke, and she is one of just six candidates, so far, to have qualified for the next debate in December. Enough money has flowed in for her to expand her operation; she has doubled her offices in Iowa and her staff in New Hampshire at a time when many of her rivals are worried about contracting. After months stuck toward the bottom of the polls, she has earned around 5 percent in several recent surveys of early-voting states, as voters give her a second look.

    And in perhaps the highest mark of progress yet, her strong performance in last week’s debate inspired a spoof on “Saturday Night Live,” albeit one largely focused on her quivering bangs. (Ms. Klobuchar said she was standing under an air vent during the debate and hadn’t used enough hair spray.)

    Hoping to ride a wave of post-debate attention, Ms. Klobuchar planned to blaze through New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina this week, stopping briefly in Des Moines for a Thanksgiving Day celebration at the home of her campaign’s state chairwoman.

    “I’m hearing more talk about Amy. It’s picked up in the last couple weeks,” said Laurie McCray, the Democratic Party chairwoman in Portsmouth, N.H. “People have heard from the other candidates and they’re still looking.”

    The fresh interest comes as Democratic leaders express vocal concerns about whether sweeping progressive policies, like Medicare for all, could hurt the party in key battleground states. As some center-left voters seek an alternative to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and as former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York have entered the race, the competition to emerge as the party’s moderate standard-bearer has intensified.

    She’s certainly doing better than Booker, Bullock and Bennet, and the departed Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, and Inslee, and has a real chance to pass Harris…for fifth place. That’s not exactly winning. She might well be peking at the right time and still garner* no delegates…

  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Baby Yoda > Deval Patrick.

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Ross Douthat, theoretical conservative, makes the case for Bernie Sanders:

    The theory of the Kamala Harris candidacy, whose nosedive was the subject of a withering pre-mortem from three of my colleagues over Thanksgiving, was that she was well suited to accomplish this unification through the elixir of her female/minority/professional class identities — that she would embody the party’s diversity much as Barack Obama did before her, and subsume the party’s potential tensions under the benevolent stewardship of a multicultural managerialism.

    That isn’t happening. But it’s still reasonable for Democratic voters to look for someone who can do a version of what Harris was supposed to do, and build a coalition across the party’s many axes of division.

    And there’s an interesting case that the candidate best positioned to do this — the one whose support is most diverse right now — is the candidate whom Obama allegedly promised to intervene against if his nomination seemed likely: the resilient Socialist from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

    Like other candidates, Sanders’s support has a demographic core: Just as Elizabeth Warren depends on very liberal professionals and Joe Biden on older minorities and moderates, Bernie depends intensely on the young. But his polling also shows an interesting better-than-you-expect pattern, given stereotypes about his support. He does better-than-you-expect with minorities despite having struggled with them in 2016, with moderate voters and $100K-plus earners despite being famously left-wing, and with young women despite all the BernieBro business.

    This pattern explains why, in early-state polling, Sanders shows the most strength in very different environments — leading Warren everywhere in the latest FiveThirtyEight average, beating Biden in Iowa and challenging him in more-diverse Nevada, matching Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire and leading him easily in South Carolina and California.

    Now, I have stacked the argument slightly, and left out a crucial axis of division where Sanders does worse than you expect: He struggles badly with his fellow Social Security recipients, the over-65. This weakness and Biden’s strength with these same voters are obvious reasons to doubt the case for Bernie as the unifier, Bernie as the eventual nominee.

    Real analysis or concern trolling? You make the call. Sanders also gets an interview with WYFF in Columbia, South Carolina.

  • Update: Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: Dropped Out. He dropped out December 1, 2019. “Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) announced Sunday that he would drop out of the Democratic primary race after failing to gain traction in national polling despite months of campaigning.” His primary race accomplishments are talking coherently about defense policy and the threat posed by China, and to outlast Wayne Messam in the longshot derby. Plus all the Land of the Lost memes:

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. “New Hampshire voters to Steyer: Make it stop!” (I try, but sometimes you can’t improve on the original headline.)

    Maggie and Libby knew Tom Steyer’s ad by heart: “I’m going to say two words that will make Washington insiders very uncomfortable: Term limits!” they recently chirped in unison at the dinner table.

    Unfortunately for Steyer, their votes can’t be bought — they’re 10 and 13.

    “It was like a comedy act,” the children’s father, Loren Foxx, said. “His ads are on constantly.”

    Some Granite staters said they’re seeing Steyer’s ads dozens of times a day — and it’s become more grating than ingratiating. A POLITICO reporter who watched YouTube music videos this week by Pentatonix, a popular a capella group, endured 17 Steyer ads in just over an hour.

    Even some of Steyer’s local staff privately acknowledge the volume of ads has gone overboard.

    Steyer has massively outspent other Democratic candidates on social media in an effort to gain traction in polls and ensure he makes the debate stage. But the recoiling of some New Hampshire voters suggests there are limits to the strategy — Michael Bloomberg beware. Indeed, some residents feel like they can’t touch a piece of technology without seeing his face.

    “There is a point of no return in terms of visibility,” said Scott Spradling, a New Hampshire media analyst. “At some point, you become the uninvited guest. He uniquely is becoming dangerously close.”

    Little Tommy Steyer is bringing his special type of campaign to Nevada. And he wants Bloomberg to drop out, in much the same way the Miami Dolphins’ third string quarterback would like the first string quarterback to retire…

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Watching the Warren campaign burn down to the water-line:

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s downfall has begun and it’s not happening gradually. New polling shows that her support has been nearly cut in half, a sure sign that, as voters get to know her more, they find her less and less palatable.

    I actually wrote a piece speculating about Warren’s issues a little over a month ago.

    The last debate exposed Warren for who she is. She’s inauthentic, whiny, and way too rehearsed. Democrats love her and the media swoon when she’s reading off her talking points. When she’s pressed and shows no ability to answer real questions, she suddenly is revealed for the weak candidate she is…

    …For now, she’s still in the thick of things, but the longer the status quo drags on, the tougher it will be for her. The hype train is beginning to go off the tracks.

    It looks like the hype train has not only come off the tracks now, but plummeted into a ravine followed by explosions. Quinnipiac has a new poll out that shows Warren’s support has been cut in half since their last survey. Further, support for so called “Medicare for All” has cratered.

    Snip.

    But I’m not even sure this is all about policy realities. Warren’s fall coicindes with her last debate performance. I’ve been saying for a long time that she’s just plain unlikable. She’s Hillary Clinton but angrier. The running to her campaign rallies, dance moves, and rant sessions all just come off as incredibly inauthentic. Two decades ago, Warren was basically a Republican. Now, we are supposed to believe she’s a progressive warrior? Democrat primary voters certainly are beginning to suspect it’s all an act.

    Her socialized medicine plans may be ludicrous, but on the other hand, so is her plan for forgiving student debt.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Her campaign event seem to take place exclusively in yoga studios now. Here’s one at Heartland Yoga in Iowa City, and she also spoke at at Body and Soul Wellness Center in Dubuque. BoldStrategyCotton.jpg.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. He raised $750,000 in 24 hours. Honestly, of all the candidates outside the big four, I like Yang’s chances the best, as he seems to have run the smartest and most focused campaign. Problem: Bloomberg garnered* more media mentions in a week than Yang has all year. Maybe the DNC-led media really does hate him. Also got a hit piece about a woman claiming she fired her after she complained about pay disparity in his company in 2011. “The woman, who had worked for Yang’s Manhattan GMAT for two years when she made her complaint, said she was making $87,000 a year when Yang asked her to send employment offers to two men he wanted to hire. The men were offered $125,000 per year and a $50,000 ‘relocation bonus.'” Eh, eight years ago and no name attached. Hard to think the charge carries much juice.
  • 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)
  • 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: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
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    *Ann Althouse has been complaining about the word “garner,” so I feel compelled to throw it in every now and then…

    The Twitter Primary for November 2019

    Tuesday, November 26th, 2019

    As I did in previous months, here’s an update on the number of Twitter followers of the Democratic presidential candidates, updated since last month’s update.

    Three months ago I started using a tool that gives me precise Twitter follower counts.

    I do this Twitter Primary update the last Tuesday of each month, following Monday’s Clown Car Update.

    The following are all the declared Democratic Presidential candidates ranked in order of Twitter followers:

    1. Bernie Sanders: 10,027,745 (up 229,970)
    2. Cory Booker: 4,401,991 (up 15,451)
    3. Joe Biden: 3,965,181 (up 49,834)
    4. Elizabeth Warren: 3,504,758 (up 79,433)
    5. Kamala Harris: 3,252,966 (up 34,028)
    6. Marianne Williamson: 2,764,694 (up 929)
    7. Michael Bloomberg: 2,343,799 (new)
    8. Pete Buttigieg: 1,556,876 (up 50,422)
    9. Andrew Yang: 1,045,469 (up 62,655)
    10. Amy Klobuchar: 816,810 (up 16,338)
    11. Tulsi Gabbard: 734,646 (up 16,998)
    12. Julian Castro: 434,802 (up 18,464)
    13. Tom Steyer: 249,321 (up 1,606)
    14. Steve Bullock: 188,787 (up 1,280)
    15. Deval Patrick: 51,868 (new)
    16. Michael Bennet: 42,033 (up 1,462)
    17. John Delaney: 37,451 (up 406)
    18. Joe Sestak: 13,543 (up 343)

    Removed from the last update: Beto O’Rourke

    For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 67,030,782 followers, up 704,954 since the last roundup, so once again Trump has gained more Twitter followers this month than all the Democratic presidential contenders combined. The official presidential @POTUS account has 27,163,640 followers, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap with Trump’s personal followers.

    A few notes:

  • Twitter counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them. And if you’re not looking at the counts with a tool like Social Blade, Twitter does significant (and weird) rounding.
  • Sanders crushed it this month, adding nearly 230,000 followers; no one else even came close six digit follower gains.
  • Elizabeth Warren gained 237,827 followers last month, but only 79,433 this month. Even though that’s the second biggest gain, it suggests that her campaign may have peaked and that she failed to become the far-left alternative to Sanders.
  • Andrew Yang’s momentum seemed to slow as well, but it was still enough to carry him up over the 1 million mark.
  • Along with Joe Biden, Warren and Yang, Tulsi Gabbard was the only candidate to gain over 100,000 followers last month. That momentum seems to have slowed dramatically, with just under 17,000 new followers for November, which is right in line with what Amy Klobuchar and Julian Castro did. All are below The Andrew Yang Line, and none seem a threat to break into a higher tier anymore.
  • Michael Bloomberg joins the list in seventh place, with 2,343,799 followers, a majority of which I would guess are New York City/business related. Can he gain the 400,000+ followers to overcome the moribund Williamson campaign for sixth place between now and Iowa? I’d bet not.
  • Deval Patrick joins the race with 51,868 Twitter followers, or the sort of numbers garnered by people who drop out of the race, not get in it.
  • No one below Joe Biden is on a trajectory to pass Joe Biden in followers before Iowa.
  • Marianne Williamson’s second straight sub-1,000 gain month shows that the magic is gone and probably isn’t coming back.
  • Steyer still seems to be getting a pretty pathetic return on his Twitter ad buys.
  • Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 25, 2019

    Monday, November 25th, 2019

    Another debate, Bernie ties Biden, Buttigieg tops the first two states, and billionaire Bloomberg jumps in, only to find himself tied with the guy who just walked across New Hampshire alone. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • Emerson: Biden 27, Sanders 27, Warren 20, Buttigieg 7, Yang 4, Harris 3, Gabbard 2, Steyer 2, Klobuchar 1, Booker 1, Castro 1, Bloomberg 1, Sestak 1. That’s the first poll to have Biden and Sanders tied, but the sample size of 468 is puny for a national poll. Still, it’s pretty hilarious to see billionaire Bloomberg tied with Sestak, AKA the guy who just walked across New Hampshire alone. That’s some mighty fine use of your money, Bloomey…
  • Civiqs/Iowa State University (Iowa): Buttigieg 26, Warren 19, Sanders 18, Biden 12, Klobuchar 5, Yang 4, Gabbard 2, Harris 2, Steyer 2, Booker 1, Bullock 1, Bloomberg 1, Williamson 1, Castro 1. Sample size of 614.
  • Siena (New York): Biden 24, Warren 14, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 5, Harris 3, Yang 2, Booker 2, Castro 1, Klobuchar 1, Gabbard 1, Bennet 1.
  • St. Anselm (New Hampshire): Buttigieg 25, Biden 15, Warren 15, Sanders 9, Klobuchar 6, Steyer 5, Gabbard 3, Booker 3, Yang 2, Harris 1, Patrick, Williamson and Delaney all less than 1. Buttigieg has money and top polling spots in Iowa and New Hampshire, which would normally set you up pretty well to clinch the nomination, but outside of those two states he’s still in single digits, and non-white voters seem immune to his charms…
  • Economist/YouGov (page 92): Biden 30, Warren 22, Sanders 12, Buttigieg 9, Harris 4, Gabbard 3, Yang 2, Klobuchar 2, Booker 1, Bullock 1, Bennet 1, Steyer 1.
  • Marquette (Wisconsin): Biden 30, Sanders 17, Warren 15, Buttigieg 13, Booker 4, Klobuchar 3, Harris 2, Yang 2, Bullock 1, Steyer 1, Williamson 1,
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Post debate analysis from ZeroHedge. Warren spoke the most, Yang spoke the least, more on foreign policy than in most previous debates.
  • Biden continues to suck his way through first place:

    The most noteworthy event at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate in Atlanta was something that didn’t happen: Nobody did anything to change the fact that former Vice President Joe Biden is the seemingly unshakable front-runner for the nomination of his party.

    It’s easy to lose sight of how consistent the race has been since Biden announced his candidacy last spring. For all the momentary gyrations along the way, the polls have barely budged in the five months since the first debate. On June 26, Sen. Bernie Sanders stood at 16.9 percent in national polls; today he’s at 16.7. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has risen to the top of some Iowa and New Hampshire polls in recent weeks, was at 6.6 in late June; today he’s a bit higher at 8 percent. Sen. Kamala Harris was a little higher then (7 percent) than she is now (4.3). Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and most of the other candidates on stage Wednesday night have remained mired around 2 percent since they entered the race. The biggest shift over the past five months has been Elizabeth Warren’s surge from 12.8 to 18 percent.

    But Joe Biden? The former vice president was at 32 percent on June 26, and today he sits at … 30.7 percent.

    It gives me no great pleasure to point out that Biden remains the overwhelming favorite to win his party’s nomination. Biden has never been my favorite Democrat; he certainly wasn’t Wednesday night — which happened to be his 77th birthday — when he struggled, as he always does, to complete coherent sentences. That matters to me. But does it matter to most Democratic primary voters? I see no evidence that it does — any more than it matters that pundits like myself swoon for Harris and Booker and Klobuchar, with their well-formed arguments and turns of phrase, month after month, debate after debate, while they barely manage keep their campaigns running and funded.

    Snip.

    And so it went, with every candidate playing to type. Warren talked with fire in her eyes about all the amazing things she’ll do with the money she takes from rich people. Sanders sounded just as angry and disgusted with American capitalism as he always does. Buttigieg looked like a guy who’ll run a very effective campaign for president 15 years from now. Harris, Klobuchar, and Booker seemed frustrated at their inability to make any headway.

    And Joe Biden kept right on winning, despite himself.

  • That last one is via Ann Althouse, who says “Maybe Joe Biden is gumming up the works. They don’t know how to attack him, and he stands there, undying, grinning forever, secure in the doting expectation that the nomination will wander over and snuggle into his lap like a new grandchild.”
  • The obligatory SNL debate skit.
  • Politico wants to bring on a moderator for the December debates who isn’t in the tank for Democrats. Naturally the DNC is throwing a hissy fit.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. He criticized the front-runners and boosted his own “Medicare X” plan, which presumably boils the frog more slowly by allowing people to keep their private health insurance for now.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Why he’s struggling in Iowa:

    Nancy Courtney displays a Joe Biden sign in her yard, makes phone calls for his campaign and supports the former vice president “100 percent,” she said. But the sluggish state of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s organization in her city of Burlington, Iowa, had her fuming one recent evening.

    “In Burlington, they are duds,” said Ms. Courtney, an activist who is married to the Democratic chairman in Des Moines County. “I will help, but there’s no excitement there. There’s nothing. I will do whatever it takes to get him elected, but I can’t go down there when there’s nothing going on.”

    Bob Kling, a city councilman in Indianola, just south of Des Moines, was promoted by the Biden campaign as a prominent local endorser. But asked about Mr. Biden’s standing in his state, Mr. Kling was blunt: “Not as great as he was. Buttigieg is kind of taking the lead in the polls,” he said, referring to Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind.

    Since late summer, Mr. Biden, the early front-runner in the Democratic primary, has faced an increasingly difficult path in Iowa — dropping in the polls and struggling with an enthusiasm gap and an inclination among undecided caucusgoers to consider all options. Now, 10 weeks before the Iowa caucuses, even his own supporters in the state are growing more worried about his prospects.

    The heightened anxiety comes as the candidate and campaign are raising expectations about his ability to compete here, an implicit acknowledgment that a substantial loss here could be a significant early setback.

    On Sunday, his campaign sent a fund-raising email that said, “we need to play to win in Iowa,” and on Saturday Mr. Biden declared that he would win the caucuses as he accepted highly coveted endorsements from former Gov. Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie Vilsack, a prominent party leader. The emphasis is a striking departure from the messaging earlier in the fall, when his campaign suggested he did not need to win the state to secure the Democratic nomination.

    Yet voters at Mr. Biden’s events, along with county chairs and party strategists, characterize his on-the-ground organization as scattershot, visibly present in some counties but barely detectable in others. His events are often relatively small and sometimes subdued affairs, and in a state where enthusiasm can make or break a candidate on caucus night — a big part of caucusing centers on persuading friends and neighbors — Mr. Biden’s operation has found it difficult to build contagious excitement, these Democrats say.

    There is also the sense among many Iowa Democrats that Mr. Biden, who entered the race later than many of his rivals, has been less engaged in the state than his top rivals. He has made roughly 50 stops in Iowa since joining the race in April, according to the Des Moines Register’s candidate tracker, far fewer than many of his opponents.

    Speaking of Iowa, he picked up the endorsement of former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack. Since Vilsack left office in 2007, I’m not sure that moves the needle. Biden mentioned four possible female veep picks:

    Biden did not provide any specific names, but he said several people are qualified, including “the former assistant attorney general who got fired,” referring to former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates; “the woman who should have been the governor of Georgia,” referring to Stacey Abrams; and “the two senators from the state of New Hampshire,” referring to Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D) and Maggie Hassan (D).

    The Yates name is pandering to the TDS crowd. Shaheen and Hassan make sense only if he’s more afraid of suburban women defecting to Trump than black people, for which Abrams is now the obvious pick over the failing Harris. One reason for Biden’s debate stumbles: occasional lapses into a childhood stutter:

    Bill Bowden had the locker next to Biden’s at Archmere. I called Bowden recently. “It was just kind of a funny thing, you know?” he told me. “Hopefully he wasn’t hurt by it.” Bob Markel, another high-school buddy of Biden’s, went a little further when we spoke: “ ‘H-H-H-H-Hey, J-J-J-J-J-Joe B-B-B-B-Biden’—that’s how he’d be addressed.” Markel said the Archmere guys called him “Stutterhead,” or “Hey, Stut !” for short. He fears that he himself may have made fun of Biden once or twice. “I never remember him being offended. He probably was,” Markel said. “I think one of his coping mechanisms was to not show it.” Bowden and Markel have remained friends with Biden to this day.

    Just because it’s story obviously planted in the media for sympathetic coverage doesn’t mean it’s not true.

  • Update: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Jumped In. Twitter. Facebook. It’s official:

    Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, has formally launched a Democratic bid for president.

    Ending weeks of speculation, the 77-year-old former Republican announced his candidacy Sunday in a written statement posted on a campaign website describing himself as uniquely positioned to defeat President Donald Trump. He will quickly follow with a massive advertising campaign blanketing airways in key primary states across the U.S.

    Snip.

    Bloomberg’s entrance comes just 10 weeks before primary voting begins, an unorthodox move that reflects anxiety within the Democratic Party about the strength of its current candidates.

    As a centrist [riiiight – LP] with deep ties to Wall Street, Bloomberg is expected to struggle among the party’s energized progressive base. He became a Democrat only last year. [False. He’s long been a Democrat, he just stopped pretending to be a Republican last year. – LP] Yet his tremendous resources and moderate profile could be appealing in a primary contest that has become, above all, a quest to find the person best-positioned to deny Trump a second term next November.

    Forbes ranked Bloomberg as the 11th-richest person in the world last year with a net worth of roughly $50 billion. Trump, by contrast, was ranked 259th with a net worth of just over $3 billion.

    Already, Bloomberg has vowed to spend at least $150 million of his fortune on various pieces of a 2020 campaign, including more than $100 million for internet ads attacking Trump, between $15 million and $20 million on a voter registration drive largely targeting minority voters, and more than $30 million on an initial round of television ads.

    What a pathetic, half-assed piker. You’re worth $50 billion and you’re only willing to dedicate less than 1% of your resources for running for president? If he were serious, he’s put a minimum of $1 billion into the race. That’s “Fuck you I want to win” money. Bloomberg’s chump change is “Eh, whatever” money. Conor Friedersdorf thinks that Bloomberg’s embrace of stop-and-frisk should disqualify him. Since when have Democratic voters showed over-much concern for civil liberties? (Maybe McGovern 72?) The hard left sorts at the Daily Beast think that Bloomberg’s entrance into the race is a gift from heaven inevitable historical processes for Warren and Sanders:

    Elizabeth Warren, who has spent much of the election staying clear of directly attacking political opponents while railing against systematic corruption, faces a new reality: a 77-year-old rich guy worth $54 billion has bulldozed into the Democratic primary. And Bernie Sanders, whose crusade against the billionaire class has become as ubiquitous as the finger wave that accompanies it, now has another reason to chomp at the bit.

    Enter: Michael Bloomberg, the latest billionaire to declare he is running for the Democratic nomination in 2020. In announcing his bid on Sunday, the former New York City mayor said he is running to “defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America.” In a statement and accompanying video, he said, “we cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”

    Allies of Warren and Sanders allies don’t think Bloomberg, a New Yorker by way of Medford, Massachusetts, will have the chance to take on fellow New Yorker, Donald Trump. In fact, they view the billionaire’s entrance into the party’s primary as a political gift.

    “This may be one of the most important things that happened to her campaign,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is supporting Warren. “Bloomberg’s entrance centers the conversation to the core themes that have been instrumental to Elizabeth Warren’s rise,” he said, including “the systemic corruption of our democracy by billionaires.”

    “The more the campaign is grounded and centered in those issues, the more likely it is that Elizabeth Warren will win.”

    The thought occurs to me that Bloomberg might actually do better if he embraced the role of evil plutocrat the same way “heel turn” wrestlers get the biggest fans. Show up at the next Democratic forum in a golden palanquin born by four beautiful, oiled blond women, only to step out and light a cigar with a $100 bill. That would get people’s attention. Right now he’s just a tiny mushy pile of richguy nothing. 538 doesn’t like his chances either:

    While some unknown candidates (like South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg) have been able to overcome even lower polling numbers early in the race, it is no longer early in the race, and Bloomberg is not unknown. Sixty-eight percent of likely Democratic primary voters are able to form an opinion of Bloomberg, again according to an average of national polls from November. They are split, too, on whether those opinions are positive (37 percent rated him favorably) or negative (31 percent rated him unfavorably). Those mediocre favorability ratings — among members of his own party, remember — are a major hurdle to him winning the nomination. Being popular is, generally speaking, helpful to a campaign (big surprise, I know).

    But we know Bloomberg, at least, still thinks he has a shot at the nomination — so what might be his strategy? Geographically, his campaign-in-waiting has already tipped its hand: Bloomberg plans to skip the first four states on the primary calendar and focus on winning the delegate-rich Super Tuesday states instead. (He won’t even be on the ballot in New Hampshire.) Needless to say, this strategy flies in the face of conventional wisdom about how to win a presidential primary, but the Bloomberg team feels it doesn’t have a choice: Other candidates simply have too much of a head start organizing in the early states. However, Bloomberg is a multi-billionaire and has said he will self-fund his campaign, so he probably does have the resources to get off the ground quickly in states where he doesn’t yet face a lot of competition. But there’s no guarantee that his approach would work — especially after a month of exuberant headlines about his rivals winning Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

    In fact, previous presidential candidates who tried some version of this strategy failed miserably. For instance, in 2008, when Rudy Giuliani was still best remembered as a former New York City mayor, he counted on a win in the Florida Republican primary to neutralize his expected losses elsewhere. He led in the Florida polls — often by huge margins — right up until Iowa and New Hampshire. But afterward, then-Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney surged past Guiliani in the Sunshine State, and he dropped out after placing third there. Similarly, in 1988, then-Sen. Al Gore attempted to win the Democratic nomination by ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire and focusing on winning a bunch of Super Tuesday contests in the South, his home region. And while Gore did win several states that day, it still didn’t translate into the momentum he needed in subsequent contests, and he too lost the nomination. Indeed, Bloomberg would be trying to join a short list of only two modern presidential candidates who won their party’s nomination despite losing both Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Those two were George McGovern and Bill Clinton, each of which picked up at least one second place finish in one of the two.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Cory Booker wins praise in presidential campaign. What he hasn’t won is much support“:

    As he struggles with low-single-digit polling and the prospect of missing the cut for next month’s debate, Booker has become a symbol for the harsh reality of this year’s nominating process. It is just not enough to win plaudits for performance, as he has after multiple events, or to execute a clear campaign strategy. In the shadow of Trump’s potential reelection, Democratic voters have become focused on winning and are unforgiving with their doubts.

    Booker has sought to answer that concern by preaching the power of empathy. He appeals to white Iowa and New Hampshire voters by talking about the problems of inner cities and poverty. He has confronted Trump by explaining his compassion for his supporters. And unlike other campaigns that have pivoted on message and policy, he has made clear he will not change his strategy to win.

    Yeah, I look out on leftwing Twitter, and “love” is not the first word that comes to mind. Why won’t anyone think of voting for Cory?

    In my heart, I know the answers. He’s relentlessly, unflappably earnest and corny—a fount of dad jokes whose speaking style, when cranked up to high, can make him come off as a campy youth pastor. (It doesn’t help in this regard that he decided to make “love” the central theme of his campaign.) There was his “I am Spartacus” moment during the Kavanaugh hearings (which, my God). As far as I can tell, he basically doesn’t have a health care plan. He will never, ever be beloved by the party’s left thanks both to his time as mayor of Newark, where he oversaw a massive and controversial charter-focused overhaul of the city’s public school system with a giant injection of cash from Mark Zuckerberg, and the fact that he’s the Democrat who decided it was a good idea to defend the honor of Bain Capital when President Barack Obama was hammering Mitt Romney for his time there.

    And, to be clear, he’s not even my first choice for a nominee. Personally, I’m still toggling between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

    But here’s the thing: It is pretty clear that some portion of the Democratic Party has made up its mind to vote for a business-friendly moderate who wants to build incrementally on the Obama administration’s accomplishments, and who will try futilely to bring some measure of unity back to the United States. And if that’s what you’re looking for, Booker strikes me as the best of our current options.

    “Sure, he sort of sucks, and I’m not voting for him, but for you people not as committed to social justice as I am, he’s a less horrible alternative than others.” Man, I can’t see any way that pitch can possibly fail…

  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bullock is subject to his first attack ad…but only as a possible senate candidate:

    The 60-second ad, titled “Out of Towner,” commemorates Mr. Bullock’s 100th day outside Montana running for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to the Senate Leadership Fund. The ad shows a cartoon “Bullock for Prez” plane jetting across the country to stops in San Francisco, New York and Washington and labels Mr. Bullock “Out of touch with Montana.”

    Term limits prevent the Montana Democrat from running for governor again, and his presidential campaign surrogates and spokespeople have repeatedly said that he has no interest in running for the Senate. Mr. Bullock, however, reportedly discussed his political future with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer this year, and other Senate Democrats have publicly called for him to challenge Mr. Daines.

    Some Republicans think Mr. Bullock may follow in the footsteps of former Gov. John Hickenlooper, Colorado Democrat, and ditch a long shot 2020 presidential bid for the chance to flip a GOP-controlled Senate seat. The Senate Leadership Fund’s ad appears to be the sort of preemptive fire Republicans hope dissuades Mr. Bullock from copying Mr. Hickenlooper.

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Buttigieg and the Intersectional Blues:

    While “Mayor Pete” rises in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, it is a delight to watch the media tiptoe around his very weak pull with black voters. The New York Times today ran a story headlined, “Pete Buttigieg is Struggling with Black Voters. Here’s Why.” Except the story never really tells you probably the biggest reason why: American blacks are highly hostile to homosexuality. This fact goes completely unmentioned anywhere in the Times story, no doubt because it would blow all the fuses at the Times‘s intersectionality switchboard.

    The Times does report something Henry Olsen noted in our podcast last week:

    No Democrat in modern times has won the party’s nomination without claiming majorities of black voters, the most crucial voting bloc in South Carolina and in an array of delegate-rich Southern states. . . Mr. Buttigieg has so few black elected officials and former elected officials backing him that they could all fit into a single S.U.V.

    Keep in mind that black voters in California voted the most heavily of all ethnic groups against same-sex marriage in the 2008 referendum on the issue. (A majority of whites and Asians voted in favor of gay marriage: Prop. 8 failed owing to hispanic and black voters.)

    Speaking of which, SNL also took a swipe at a Buttigieg campaign viral dance video, as “part of strategy to get a negative percentage of the black vote.” Here’s an editorial calling him the millennial millennials hate.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Castro discusses why his campaign is sucking. “What’s most surprising about Castro’s absence is how unsurprised so many people are by it, despite the fact that he’s been, by many measures, the most progressive candidate in the field.” Seems like you may have answered your own question there…
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But she’s still out there Clinton Foundationing
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an interview with the Burlington Hawk Eye. That’s Burlington, Iowa. Also this:

    Insert your own J. J. Watt and/or Bill Dauterive joke here.

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Democratic establishment absolutely hates her:

    Tulsi Gabbard trashed the Democratic Party as “not the party that is of, by and for the people,” accused Kamala Harris of trafficking in “lies and smears and innuendo” and attacked Pete Buttigieg as naive.

    Her performance at Wednesday’s debate earned an attaboy from the Trump War Room. And some rank-and-file Democrats are at wit’s end with the congresswoman who Hillary Clinton called “the favorite of the Russians.”

    “The question is whether she seriously hopes to be the nominee or if she has another agenda … her attacks on other candidates and her positions on issues seem very personal, not so much about a set of policies or worldview,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Bernie Sanders has “a coherent set of principles. Elizabeth Warren’s the same. I don’t perceive a fixed set of principles or worldview on her part.”

    Demonstrating how divisive her campaign has become, the Trump War Room tweeted out a video clip of Gabbard attacking her own party with a “100” emoji. It received 4,500 retweets and 15,000 likes.

    “She sort of seems to be filling a pretty strange lane. Is there a part of the party that hates the party?” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It’s a little hard to figure out what itch she’s trying to scratch in the Democratic Party right now.”

    Powerline translates:

    Murphy is at least getting warm: Tulsi’s lane is the one for liberals, not who hate the Democratic Party, but who love America. Her near-isolationism is that of a veteran who loves America and its military. In that, she contrasts sharply with the rest of the field. Visceral anti-military and anti-American views have been central to the Democratic Party for a long time. Bernie Sanders, to take just one obvious instance, didn’t honeymoon in the Soviet Union because he is proud to be an American.

    Mainstream Democratic candidates don’t announce their anti-Americanism out loud, of course. You generally need to infer it from their policies. But the presence of an actual patriot on the stage–and one, too, who considers Republicans to be fellow Americans–presents an obvious and unwelcome contrast.

    I think Tulsi Gabbard would be the Democrats’ strongest potential nominee. On domestic issues, she should be plenty liberal enough for her party, while her pro-military but non-interventionist foreign policy views would attract blue collar Democrats back into the fold. She is also young and highly attractive. I think there is a good chance she could beat President Trump, while, in my view, candidates like Joe Biden, Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders are no-hopers.

    The Democrats say they want a woman to be president, but they don’t mean it. When they have a woman on the debate stage who shares their views but not their hateful attitudes toward America and non-leftist Americans, they treat her like a skunk at a garden party.

    Pitching fundraising for her: Sean Ono Lennon. Pretty sure that name wasn’t on anyone’s endorsement bingo card…

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Evidently the only thing Harris can do competently is attack Tulsi Gabbard:

    “I think that it’s unfortunate that we have someone on this stage that is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama,” Harris said.

    Gabbard then interjected, calling Harris’ attack “ridiculous,” but Harris just kept going — chastising Gabbard for meeting with President Donald Trump after the 2016 election, for being too friendly with Steve Bannon “to get” that meeting, and for not labeling Bashar al-Assad a “war criminal.”

    The line of attack went well for Harris. The crowd went wild — but honestly, I sat on my couch shaking my head. See, what Harris (and apparently so many others in that audience) saw as a negative, I actually see as something great. Gabbard’s willingness to criticize people in her own party if she disagrees with them is not a flaw. In fact, it’s exactly what’s missing from our discourse.

    More on that subject:

    The tone-deafness here is so extreme that it’s almost funny. Harris—whose biggest liabilities involve her questionable prosecutorial past—”rests her case” against Gabbard on the flimsy fact that her opponent retweeted Gabbard’s words? That’s exactly the sort of cockamamie conception of justice that has earned Harris her reputation as a shady cop in the first place.

    Harris’ attack demonstrates exactly the sort of party-over-people and uphold-the-status-quo-at-all-costs mentality that Gabbard was trying to critique. It should not be considered a mark against a politician that she tries to influence people not already on her side. You can’t “bring the nation together” by refusing to talk to anyone who isn’t already on your political team.

    And if questioning endless war calls one’s commitment to Democratic Party values into question, that’s a pretty sad comment on the state of the party.

  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Probably not? Nothing since that now-two-week-old trial balloon. But he is headlining an MLK breakfast in Minneapolis January 20th. If nothing pops up in the next week or so, I’ll move him back down to the out of the running section again.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. A CBS news commentator said that Klobuchar and Buttigieg did best in the debate. Seems to be the only one with that opinion…
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Now that he’s in the race, people are not feeling the excitement:

    Top Granite State Democrats question whether Patrick can capitalize on any geographical advantage in a race that already includes Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

    Laurie McCray, chairwoman of the Portsmouth Democrats, says Patrick will get a “fair shake” from voters. But she also expressed skepticism that Patrick “has the same relationship with Democrats on the ground here as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders do.”

    Sanders won the 2016 New Hampshire primary by over 20 points and currently boasts a 90 full-time staffers in the state, according to his campaign. Warren made her first campaign stop back in January, and has since returned two dozen times to court voters.

    “I don’t see what lane is empty,” former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Kathy Sullivan told CBS News. “Every four years it seems somebody has to say they’re unhappy with the Democratic field, but there’s no new lane opened up by Deval Patrick or Michael Bloomberg.”

    “There’s a challenge now in recruiting talent. Back in January, you would probably have gotten dozens of former Obama allies coming out for him because he’s still beloved,” Democratic Strategist Michael Ceraso argued.

    Patrick looks more like Booker 2.0 than Obama 2.0. Three months ago he was boosting Warren. I guess he changed his mind…

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Hits 4 million donations. Which is different than donations from 4 million different people. Gee, who would have guessed that Sanders isn’t a Michael Bloomberg fan?

    “We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections, and that is why we are going to overturn Citizens United, that is why multi-billionaires like Mr. Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election, that is why we are going to end voter suppression in America,” Sanders said during a town hall in New Hampshire following Bloomberg’s announcement.

    Sanders aimed a $10 billion pander at black colleges. He also took a swipe at Buttigieg: “You can’t even take care of the needs of black folks in your own city.”

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets mentioned in a Reuters roundup. And as I noted up top, he’s currently tied with Bloomberg in New Hampshire, both at 1%…
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bad week for Moneybags Junior. Will Farrell plays him as a supercreep on the SNL skit. And now that Bloomberg’s in, he’s not even the richest guy in the race anymore.
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. As much as she might try to hide the fact, Warren’s socialized medicine scheme would require rationing. They always do. She’s sorta kinda lying about sending her kid to public school. Says she wants to tear down the border wall, putting her out front in the illegal alien pandering sweepstakes.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a USA Today questionnaire. Slideshow of her campaigning in California.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets high marks from a Forbes writer for his closing statement. Wants an apology from MSNBC for constantly leaving him off infographics. Can’t blame him.
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Update: Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: Not that you care, but he officially dropped out November 20, 2019. I hope he paid his campaign workers their back wages…
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Expect a Clown Car update the Monday after Thanksgiving, but it might be briefer than usual due to the holidays.

    Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 11, 2019

    Monday, November 11th, 2019

    Bloomberg is getting in, Holder is thinking about it, Yang boosts Williamson, the Steyer campaign commits a felony, and Biden keeps bide bide biding along at the top of polls. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • New York Times poll of six battleground states:
    • Arizona: Biden 24, Sanders 16, Warren 15, Buttigieg 5, Harris 3, Yang 1, Klobuchar 1.
    • Florida: Biden 27, Warren 19, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 5, Klobuchar 2, Harris 1, Gabbard 1.
    • Michigan: Biden 30, Warren 21, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 3, Yang 1, Klobuchar 1, Gabbard 1.
    • North Carolina: Biden 29, Warren, Sanders 13, O’Rourke 2, Buttigieg 1, Harris 1, Gabbard 1, Booker 1.
    • Pennsylvania: Biden 28, Warren 16, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 4, Yang 2, Harris 1, Klobuchar 1.
    • Wisconsin: Warren 25, Biden 23, Sanders 20, Yang 2, Harris 1, Gabbard 1, O’Rourke 1, Booker 1.

    Very small samples sizes, ranging from 203 in Michigan to 324 in North Carolina.

  • Hill/Harris X: Biden 26, Warren 15, Sanders 14, Harris 6, Buttigieg 6, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Castro 2.
  • Monmouth: Biden 23, Warren 23, Sanders 20, Buttigieg 9, Harris 5, Booker 3, Yang 3, Klobuchar 2, Steyer 1.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 168): Biden 26, Warren 25, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 8, Harris 6, Castro 3, Gabbard 3, Klobuchar 2, Williamson 1, Bullock 1, Steyer 1, Yang 1, Delaney 1.
  • Quinnipiac (Iowa): Warren 20, Buttigieg 19, Sanders 17, Biden 15, Klobuchar 5, Harris 4, Gabbard 3, Yang 3, Booker 1, Castro 1, Bennet 1, Bullock 1.
  • Nevada Independent (Nevada): Biden 29, Sanders 19, Warren 19, Buttigieg 7, Steyer 4, Yang 3, Klobuchar 3, Harris 3, Booker 1, Castro 1, Gabbard 1, Williamson 1.
  • Maine People’s Resource Center (Maine): Biden 26.8, Warren 22.1, Sanders 15.4, Buttigieg 9.1, Harris 5.0, Booker 2.7, O’Rourke 2.2, Yang 1.7, Other 6.5. 723 respondents. What I don’t get is that Maine Democrats show overwhelming majorities for every far left socialist scheme anyone has proposed (socialized medicine, Green New Deal, etc.), but Biden still comes out on top of their poll.
  • LA Times/USC: Biden 28, Warren 16, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 6, Harris 4.
  • Politico/Morning Consult: Biden 32, Sanders 20, Warren 20, Buttigieg 7, Harris 5, Yang 3, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, Bennet 1, Bullock 1, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Steyer 1, Williamson 1.
  • Emerson (Nevada): Biden 30, Warren 22, Sanders 19, Yang 5, Harris 5, Buttigieg 5, Steyer 3, Gabbard 1, Booker 1, Klobuchar 1, Bennet 1, Castro 1. I think this is the first poll that’s had Yang even tired with Buttigieg.
  • Texas Tribune (Texas): Biden 23, Warren 18, O’Rourke 14, Sanders 12, Buttigieg 6, Harris 5, Yang 4, Castro 2, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2. Poll conducted before O’Rourke dropped out (obviously), but it has to sting for Castro to be losing to Yang in his home state…
  • 538 offers up post-debate poll aggregation. Buttigieg and Sanders are up the most, while Warren is down the most.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets. Bloomberg has already zoomed up to fifth place, above Clinton, Yang, Gabbard and Klobuchar…
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Jonathan Chait has a bracing message for Democrats: “New Poll Shows Democratic Candidates Have Been Living in a Fantasy World“:

    In 2018, Democratic candidates waded into hostile territory and flipped 40 House districts, many of them moderate or conservative in their makeup. In almost every instance, their formula centered on narrowing their target profile by avoiding controversial positions, and focusing obsessively on Republican weaknesses, primarily Donald Trump’s abuses of power and attempts to eliminate health insurance for millions of Americans.

    The Democratic presidential field has largely abandoned that model. Working from the premise that the country largely agrees with them on everything, or that agreeing with the majority of voters on issues is not necessary to win, the campaign has proceeded in blissful unawareness of the extremely high chance that Trump will win again.

    A new batch of swing state polls from the New York Times ought to deliver a bracing shock to Democrats. The polls find that, in six swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona — Trump is highly competitive. He trails Joe Biden there by the narrowest of margins, and leads Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

    Normally, it is a mistake to overreact to the findings of a single poll. In general, an outlier result should only marginally nudge our preexisting understanding of where public opinion stands. This case is different. To see why, you need to understand two interrelated flaws in the 2016 polling. First, they tended to under-sample white voters without college degrees. And this made them especially vulnerable to polling misses in a handful of states with disproportionately large numbers of white non-college voters. The Times found several months ago that Trump might well win 270 Electoral College votes even in the face of a larger national vote defeat than he suffered in 2016.

    All this is to say that, if you’ve been relying on national polls for your picture of the race, you’re probably living in la-la land. However broadly unpopular Trump may be, at the moment he is right on the cusp of victory.

    What about the fact Democrats crushed Trump’s party in the midterms? The new Times polling finds many of those voters are swinging back. Almost two-thirds of the people who supported Trump in 2016, and then a Democrat in the 2018 midterms, plan to vote for Trump again in 2020.

    Snip.

    The debate has taken shape within a world formed by Twitter, in which the country is poised to leap into a new cultural and economic revolution, and even large chunks of the Democratic Party’s elected officials and voting base have fallen behind the times. As my colleague Ed Kilgore argues, the party’s left-wing intelligentsia have treated any appeals to voters in the center as a sign of being behind the times.

    Biden’s paper-thin lead over Trump in the swing states is largely attributable to the perception that he is more moderate than Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Three-quarters of those who would vote for Biden over Trump, but Trump over Warren, say they would prefer a more moderate Democratic nominee to a more liberal one, and a candidate who would find common ground with Republicans over one who would fight for a progressive agenda.

    There are lots of Democrats who are trying to run moderate campaigns. But the new environment in which they’re running has made it difficult for any of them to break through. There are many reasons the party’s mainstream has failed to exert itself. Biden’s name recognition and association with the popular Obama administration has blotted out alternatives, and the sheer number of center-left candidates has made it hard for any non-Biden to gain traction. Candidates with strong profiles, like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, have struggled to gain attention, and proven politicians like Michael Bennet and Steve Bullock have failed even to qualify for debates.

    But in addition to those obstacles, they have all labored against the ingrained perception that the Democratic party has moved beyond Obama-like liberalism, and that incremental reform is timid and boring. The same dynamic was already beginning to form in 2016, though Hillary Clinton overcame it with a combination of name recognition and a series of leftward moves of her own to defuse progressive objections. Biden’s name brand has given him a head start with the half of the Democratic electorate that has moderate or conservative views. But it’s much harder for a newer moderate Democrat lacking that established identity to build a national constituency. The only avenue that has seemed to be open for a candidate to break into the top has been to excite activists, who are demanding positions far to the left of the median voter.

    Golly, who else has been saying such things? Besides, you know, me and pretty much every right-of-center blogger over the last three years.

  • Look at New Hampshire voters. Buttigieg, Yang and Bennet all get mentioned.
  • Vox tells us that neither the current candidates nor voters are sold on Michael Bloomberg. Ya think?
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. He seems to be pinning his hopes on New Hampshire. Him and Joe Sestak…
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. “In midst of 2016 election, State Department saw Burisma as Joe Biden’s issue, memos show.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.) “Consulting Firm Hired by Burisma Leveraged Biden’s Name to Secure Meeting with State Dept.”

    A consulting firm representing Burisma Holdings used the Biden name to leverage a meeting between the gas company and State Department officials, according to documents released this week.

    The firm, Washington-based Blue Star Strategies, mentioned the name of Hunter Biden, who then sat on Burisma’s board, in a request for the Ukrainian natural gas company executives to meet with State Department officials, according to internal State Department email exchanges obtained by journalist John Solomon and later reported by the Wall Street Journal.

    Blue Star representatives also mentioned Biden’s name during the resulting meeting, which they claim was scheduled as part of an effort to rehabilitate Burisma’s reputation in Washington following a corruption investigation.

    Biden allies are worried about Bloomberg getting in. As well they should be. I doubt Millionaire McMoneyBags is going to be pulling too many Warren or Sanders voters over. Biden slams Warren’s sneering elitism: “If only you were as smart as I am you would agree with me.”

  • Update: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Getting In? Twitter. So the prophecy has foretold:

    Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is preparing to jump into the 2020 Democratic primary for president.

    Bloomberg, 77, a billionaire, has mulled over a presidential bid for months, according to the New York Times. Bloomberg has publicly downplayed and, at times, outright denied that he would enter the race for 2020.

    Bloomberg still has not yet made a decision on whether to jump into the crowded Democratic primary field, but he is expected to file paperwork in at least one state, Alabama, designating him a contender in the primary. He has hired staff and sent them to Alabama to collect enough signatures to qualify for a run. The deadline to file paperwork for a presidential run in Alabama is Nov. 8.

    “We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that,” said Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg adviser. “If Mike runs, he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”

    And indeed, he has filed paperwork for the Alabama primary. So I guess he’s already a declared candidate, even if he hasn’t made an official announcement. Should we take him seriously?

    The reason, though, why Bloomberg is considering a last-minute bid is that he is reportedly worried about the way the Democratic primary is unfolding, as one adviser told the Times. Back in March, Bloomberg said he believed that it was essential that the Democratic nominee be able to defeat President Trump, and last month it was reported that he would reconsider his decision not to run if former Vice President Joe Biden continued to struggle. Presumably, Bloomberg has now changed his mind after seeing Sen. Elizabeth Warren — whose ideas, especially the wealth tax, he has lambasted as socialism — gain ground in the polls and Biden struggle with fundraising.

    But there is arguably very little appetite among Democratic voters — donors may be a different story — for yet another presidential candidate. In October, a YouGov/HuffPost poll found that 83 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters were either enthusiastic or satisfied with their presidential choices. And it looks like there is even less appetite for Bloomberg specifically. According to last week’s Fox News poll, just 6 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said they would definitely vote for Bloomberg should he enter the race. And a hypothetical Harvard-Harris Poll of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Bloomberg mixed in with the rest of the Democratic field gave Bloomberg the same 6 percent of the vote.

    And those polls would probably qualify as good news for Bloomberg, given that he was generally registering around 2 or 3 percent in national primary polls before first taking his name out of consideration in March (which is also when pollsters largely stopped asking about him).

    In a field this crowded, entering the race in the high single digits wouldn’t even necessarily be a bad thing, but the problem is that it might be harder for Bloomberg to build on that support than it would be for other candidates. In an average of polls from January and early February, I found that 62 percent of Democrats knew enough about Bloomberg to form an opinion (which was pretty high), but his net favorability (favorable rating minus unfavorable rating) was only +11 (which was pretty low).

    “History suggests Bloomberg’s low favorability ratings would be a major obstacle to winning the nomination.” You don’t say. The last candidate to have a lower rating was also a New York City mayor.

    On the other hand, de Blasio didn’t have billions of his own money to throw at the campaign. Bloomberg’s net worth is around $52.3 billion, so if he wanted to, he could just buy every single minute of airtime on every TV station in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    That would certainly have a negative effect on longshot candidates trying to break through. Of course there is that tiny little problem that he recently said we need to take guns away from male minorities between the ages of 15 and 25. Because hey, what’s a little racism, collective guilt, and trampling civil rights next to the holy goal of gun control? Besides, the Northam blackface scandal showed that Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) don’t care about racism as long as the person committing it has a (D) after their name. President Donald Trump has already dubbed him “Little Michael” and says he relishes the opportunity to run against him. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) But this is the real kiss of death:

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He attended an “environmental justice” forum in South Carolina. Also attending: Warren, Steyer, Delaney, Williamson and Sestak. Pictures on Twitter of Warren speaking there suggests it was sparsely attended.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an interview with Austin’s KVUE, which suggests he thinks he has a chance to make it to Super Tuesday, a rather optimistic assumption. Also got a USA Today interview.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “The new candidate of the young elite.”

    Pete Buttigieg was quickly locking down a solid lane in the Democratic primary: a young, vibrant, gay, midwestern, war veteran mayor with progressive ideas and plenty of money — but both feet planted in fiscal prudence.

    Young Wall Street and tech-entrepreneur types were starting to fall in love — with his poll numbers and fundraising totals underscoring the Buttigieg boomlet. He was the “Parks and Recreation” candidate in the Democratic field and an alternative to seventy-somethings Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who are both looking to lock down the hyper-online progressive, anti-Wall Street crowd as well as blue collar workers across the Midwest.

    And Buttigieg is a lot younger than former Vice President Joe Biden, who has lagged in fundraising and hardly taken off in the big-donor crowd the way many expected. Buttigieg was poised to perhaps emerge as the leading moderate alternative to Biden.

    But then a funny thing happened last week: Another 70-something candidate beloved on Wall Street — billionaire mogul Michael Bloomberg — made an unexpected splash by suggesting he may still enter the race.

    Bloomberg will not steal Buttigieg’s momentum with younger, wealthier Democratic voters and donors, people close to the South Bend mayor say. But the former NYC mayor does give Big Finance, Big Tech and other more corporate-friendly Democrats another progressive prospect as an alternative to Biden, Sanders and Warren.

    (Which raises the question: Why would anyone donate to Bloomberg? Let moneybags 100% self-fund.) “Why Pete Buttigieg Annoys His Democratic Rivals.” “Many of their campaigns have griped privately about the attention and cash directed toward Buttigieg. They said he is too inexperienced to be electable and that his accomplishments don’t merit the outsize appeal he has with elite donors and voters. His public punditry about the race has prompted eye rolls from older rivals who view him as a know-it-all.” I linked a very similar story about a month ago. Is Buttigieg really annoying, or does one of his rivals keep pitching this story to a compliant press? “Pete Buttigieg Pitches Himself As The Obama Of 2020.”

    Like a gay white thirty-something mayor is going to tap two centuries of white guilt. That trick only works once, and not for you. OK, now I see why they say he’s annoying…

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. “With an Eye Toward Beto Voters, Castro Campaign Limps On.” Oh yeah, that’s what you want to do: add the 1% of voters who supported the guy who just dropped out to your 1%.

    When former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke dropped out of the race last week, Castro made the call and then made some more. And it worked. As the last Texan standing, he flipped nine Lone Star State endorsements that previously belonged to O’Rourke to his own campaign.

    He also launched a new ad campaign in Iowa. That, plus the endorsements, are evidence, his campaign manager said, of how Castro is prepared to “supercharge the coalitions needed to beat Donald Trump.”

    You snagged nine second-hand endorsements from your own state. Hoo freaking ray. That would almost matter in a statewide, but he won’t run one of those because he knows he’d lose.

    Except a supercharger requires an engine with some gas, and Castro bus appears to be dangerously close to empty. The endorsements come at a moment when the candidate has stripped his campaign down to bare bones. He laid off campaign teams in New Hampshire and South Carolina over the weekend.

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But: Another week, another Clinton strategist saying she might run, this time Mark Penn.
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. criticized Warren’s health care plans, which have become the pinata everyone can bang on.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s in the November debates. Gets an extensive Vice profile:

    CONCORD, NH — About 50 of her most devoted and bundled-up supporters gathered in the cold on the state house steps last week to watch Rep. Tulsi Gabbard firebomb the establishment.

    Over the next half hour, her fire was directed left and right: At Democratic leaders and President Donald Trump, at Saudi Arabian monarchs and at plutocratic warmongers, all of whom have become the bogeymen — or bogeywomen, in the case of Hillary Clinton — of her scrappy presidential campaign.

    She brought up Tim Frolich, a 9/11 survivor, to allege a conspiracy at the highest levels to conceal information about the true Saudi Arabian masterminds of the terror attack.

    It’s an unusual speech to deliver directly after filing paperwork to run in the state, especially amid a presidential primary field almost preternaturally occupied with health care. But Gabbard is an unusual candidate. And that’s exactly what is giving the four-term representative’s improbable presidential run a toe-hold in this early primary state.

    Her campaign got a polling bounce here after Clinton implied on a podcast that Gabbard is a Russian stooge and Gabbard replied in a tweet that Clinton is “the queen of warmongers” leading a conspiracy to destroy her reputation. Clinton is not exactly beloved in New Hampshire, after all; Sen. Bernie Sanders blew her out in the 2016 primary before she went on to beat Trump by just under 3,000 votes.

    “When I heard Hillary do that, the first thing I said was, ‘Oh my god,’ and the second thing I said is, ‘This is going to be great, because that’s going to really help Tulsi,’ — and it has,” said Peggy Marko, a Gabbard supporter and physical therapist in Candia, New Hampshire. “She has crossover appeal … and I think the folks in New Hampshire especially value that.”

    Gabbard recently polled at 5 percent here, outlasting sitting senators and governors by securing a spot on the November debate stage. Just 1 percent higher in two more New Hampshire polls would meet the Democratic National Committee’s threshold for entry to the next debate in Los Angeles in December. And from there on, who knows?

    So as candidates like Sen. Kamala Harris and Julián Castro have all but given up on the Granite State, Gabbard is digging in. This notoriously nonpartisan state is her ticket to staying in the race. Independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, and the state’s semi-open primary laws allow anyone to change affiliation up to the day of the primary to vote for whomever they want.

    “We’re seeing support coming from people across the political spectrum and building the kind of coalition that we need to be able to defeat Donald Trump, and it’s encouraging,” Gabbard told VICE News.

    Usual grains of salt apply, especially when it says she’s pulling in Trump voters. I can see a few, but not remotely enough to lift her up even to the 15% delegate threshold in New Hampshire. But Democrats are still freaking out about her:

    In 2012, Nancy Pelosi described Tulsi Gabbard as an “emerging star.” In 2019, Hillary Clinton decried the Hawaii congresswoman as a “Russian asset.” Suffice to say, the honeymoon is over.

    Gabbard is a major target of the liberal elite’s disgust. She feuded with the party organs in 2016 over her backing of Bernie Sanders. Now, during the 2020 election, she is upping the ante — Gabbard isn’t just criticizing the party mainstream; she’s doing so as a candidate for president. She hasn’t pulled punches, toed the party line, or been silenced by criticism from her peers or intraparty backlash. She’s an outsider and a long shot, but her poll numbers have edged slightly higher as she battles the Democratic old guard.

    Says she’s not going to run a third party campaign.

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Just when you thought Democrats couldn’t find new ways to make ordinary people hate them, Kamala Harris wants to expanded the school day to match the work day. So she found a way to piss off students, parents, teachers, bus drivers, and anyone who actually understands how the real world works.
  • Update: Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Thinking of Getting In?

    Eric Holder, the former attorney general and self-proclaimed “wingman” to President Barack Obama, may be on the brink of diving into the Democrats’ nomination fight, Newsweek reported Friday.

    The hint came from Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who tweeted that Holder has been “consulting strategists” about launching a campaign.

    Holder’s potential bid follows Michael Bloomberg’s late entry into the race last week – and would swell the historically huge Democratic field, with only 86 days to go until the Iowa caucuses.

    I just don’t see it. He’s not independently wealthy, and he’s never run in any political race, ever. Does he expect to yell “Obaminations, conglomerate!” and the Obama 2012 Campaign will magically come flying in, perform a superhero landing, and carry him off to contention?

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She went all catfight on Buttigieg and Bloomberg. Angry Amy is Best Amy…
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Sanders joins the crazy immigration plan party:

    Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Thursday released a sweeping immigration plan that would impose a moratorium on deportations, “break up” existing immigration enforcement agencies, grant full welfare access to illegal immigrants and welcome a minimum of 50,000 “climate migrants” in the first year of a Sanders administration.

    The plan effectively establishes Sanders at the far left of the immigration debate, as he aims to energize a base that helped drive his 2016 primary campaign amid competition from other liberal candidates in the field this time around.

    Following the heart attack and flush with cash, Bernie is going to buy more ads. Also, please stop:

    “Bernie Sanders Promises Crowd He Will Lock Trump Up And Also Millions Of Others Once The Gulags Are Up And Running.”

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a USA Today interview on health care. Pitches defense reform. Maybe his entire campaign is a job audition to be Secretary of Defense.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bad week for Tommy Make-A-Wish: Not only is he stuck at 1% in the polls, but, with Bloomberg getting in, he’s no longer the richest guy in the race either, Plus It looks like the Steyer campaign committed a federal felony by privately offering “campaign contributions to local politicians in exchange for endorsing his White House bid.” Oopsie!
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. A lot of Democratic Wall Street rainmakers are telling dems that they get no money as long as Warren is in the race. Warren’s health care plan is “the longest suicide note in recorded history. There’s no reason for the entire Democratic Party to sign it.” More on that plan’s fundamental dishonesty:

    It is hard to overstate how utterly insane and dishonest this is. Warren claims that in order to finance the $52 trillion her plan would entail over its first ten years, she’d ‘only’ need to raise taxes by approximately $20 trillion, to cover new spending. This math amounts to a $14 trillion shortfall, based on the nonpartisan consensus about the true mathematical cost of her plan (overall, her basket of proposals would double the annual federal budget). She does not even attempt to account for this staggering amount of money. Experts and commentators have been punching gaping holes in Warren’s proposals, including proving that her ‘not one penny of tax increases on non-billionaires’ assertion (even ignoring the $14 trillion gap) is a dramatic, fantastical, bald-faced lie.

    Where is Warren going to get $20 trillion in new taxes?

    Not only does this pie-in-the-sky funding scheme rely on dubious — some would say, “dishonest” — number crunching, it self-evidently breaks her promise not to raise middle-class taxes….

    Warren and her team are relying on a compliant media and other allies to hide her tax hike. That $9 trillion payroll tax is not coming from the super-rich or the undeserving wealthy. It won’t bleed billionaires or stick it to the upper class. That “head tax” will fall squarely on the shoulders of the American worker. And Warren’s shameful dishonesty is more than political posturing. It’s an assault on the middle class.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.) Warren is the WeWork of Candidates:

    Are presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and WeWork founder Adam Neumann the same person? I mean, they have different hairstyles and all, but their philosophies are more alike than not.

    They both claim, falsely, to be capitalists. Ms. Warren told the New England Council last year, “I am a capitalist to my bones.” She then told CNBC, “I am a capitalist. Come on. I believe in markets.” It was almost as if she didn’t believe it herself. Then came the caveat: “But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.” She clearly doesn’t understand capitalism.

    Neither does Mr. Neumann, who said of WeWork, “We are making a capitalist kibbutz.” Talk about mixed metaphors. In Israel, a kibbutz is often defined as “a collective community, traditionally based in agriculture.” WeWork’s prospectus for its initial public offering mentioned the word “community” 150 times. Yet one little secret of kibbutzim is that many of them hired outsiders to do menial jobs that the “community” wouldn’t do, similar to migrant workers on U.S. farms. A capitalist kibbutz is a plain old farm, much like a WeWork building is plain old shared office space. Big deal.

    Ms. Warren wants to reshape capitalism, while Mr. Neumann wants to “revolutionize your workspace.” Meanwhile, the Vision Fund, with capital from SoftBank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has thrown good money after bad, writing off $9.2 billion in its quest toward this WeWork revolution. The same mismatch between communitarian vision and market realities would doom Ms. Warren’s economic reshaping. It’s hard to repeal good old capitalism.

    The commonalities go on. Last year, Ms. Warren proposed the Accountable Capitalism Act. If it became law, large companies would have to obtain a federal charter that “obligates company directors to consider the interests of all corporate stakeholders,” or dare I say, community. For each company, Ms. Warren insists that “40% of its directors are selected by the corporation’s employees.” Back to the kibbutz?

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Rival Yang fundraises for Williamson, much the way she herself did for the now-departed Mike Gravel. If only all the longshots could Voltron themselves together into one viable candidate…
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s spending $1 million in TV advertising in Iowa.

    Gets a Wired profile:

    He’s a true nerd, and he’s making arguments common in the nerd capital of the world, Silicon Valley. Except for one thing: Much of his stump speech lacerates Silicon Valley.

    Yang’s candidacy is something of a toxic bouillabaisse for the tech industry. He presents himself as someone of the industry, wearing a lapel that says “math” instead of one with a flag. Pundits call him a tech entrepreneur, though he actually made his money at a test-prep company. He talks about breaking problems apart and finding solutions. He played D&D as a kid, read science fiction, and understands blockchain.

    He has run his campaign in the most modern of digital ways too. The guy is dynamite on Reddit, and he spends time answering questions on Quora. And that is part of why he’s going to win, he hollers from the stage. He can beat Trump on his own terrain—“I’m better at the internet than he is!”

    But the tech-friendly trappings mask a thorough critique of technology itself. His whole message is premised on the dangers of automation taking away jobs and the risks of artificial intelligence. He lambastes today’s technology firms for not compensating us for our data. If there’s a villain in his stump speech, it’s not Trump—it’s Amazon. (“We have to be pretty fucking stupid to let a trillion-dollar tech company pay nothing in taxes, am I right, Los Angeles?”)

    If Yang is the candidate of Silicon Valley, he’s the one driving a Humvee up the wrong side of the 101. Or, as Chris Anderson, one of my predecessors as editor of WIRED and now a drone entrepreneur, tweeted the night of the fourth Democratic debate, “I turned on the radio for 6 seconds, enough to hear that the Dem debates were on and @AndrewYang, who I thought I liked, was talking about how autonomous trucks were endangering driver jobs. Head slapped, vote changed. Bummer.”

    As Yang wraps up, he has another message: “What does this look like to you, Los Angeles? This looks like a fucking revolution to me.” That may be a bit much. It’s more an evolution, and it’s a killer party. Still, Andrew Yang has found his voice, found his message, and found his people.

    So it’s entirely possible that, long after most of the other candidates have dropped out, Yang will still be there tweeting, jumping onto Reddit threads, grabbing microphones, and using the best of modern technology to explain why modern technology is leading America into the abyss.

  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 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:





    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:





    The Twitter Primary for October 2019

    Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

    As I did in previous months, here’s an update on the number of Twitter followers of the Democratic presidential candidates, updated since last month’s update.

    Two months ago I started using a tool that gives me precise Twitter follower counts.

    I do this Twitter Primary update the last Tuesday of each month, following Monday’s Clown Car Update. Today’s falls on the 29th, while last month’s fell on the 24th, so feel free to adjust accordingly for the five day difference.

    The following are all the declared Democratic Presidential candidates ranked in order of Twitter followers:

    1. Bernie Sanders: 9,798,075 (up 94,034)
    2. Cory Booker: 4,386,540 (up 29,379)
    3. Joe Biden: 3,915,347 (up 167,504)
    4. Elizabeth Warren: 3,425,325 (up 237,827)
    5. Kamala Harris: 3,218,938 (up 89,581)
    6. Marianne Williamson: 2,763,765 (up 416)
    7. Beto O’Rourke: 1,658,964 (up 47,366)
    8. Pete Buttigieg: 1,506,454 (up 63,473)
    9. Andrew Yang: 982,814 (up 104,738)
    10. Amy Klobuchar: 800,472 (up 33,453)
    11. Tulsi Gabbard: 717,648 (up 143,711)
    12. Julian Castro: 416,338 (up 26,976)
    13. Tom Steyer: 247,715 (up 2,640)
    14. Steve Bullock: 187,507 (up 1,745)
    15. Michael Bennet: 40,571 (up 1,094)
    16. John Delaney: 37,045 (up 775)
    17. Joe Sestak: 13,200 (up 262)

    Removed from the last update: Tim Ryan, Wayne Messam

    For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 66,325,828 followers, up 1,626,646 since the last roundup, so once again Trump has gained more Twitter followers this month than all the Democratic presidential contenders combined. The official presidential @POTUS account has 27,008,334 followers, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap with Trump’s personal followers.

    A few notes:

  • Twitter counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them. And if you’re not looking at the counts with a tool like Social Blade, Twitter does significant (and weird) rounding.
  • Warren gained the most followers of all the Democratic contenders, 237,827, but she’s not quite on a pace to overtake Biden before Iowa.
  • Biden gained the second most, 167,504, which doesn’t sound that impressive until you realize that he’d only been making mid-five-figure gains in previous Twitter Primary roundups. A six-figure gain is the most momentum we’ve seen from him.
  • Gabbard’s 143,711 gain is the third biggest gain this month. We’re still waiting for that momentum to show up in her polling numbers.
  • Yang was the only other six-figure gainer (though Harris and Sanders were close), and he should break one million followers soon.
  • Marianne Williamson’s mere 416 gain shows her buzz is dead.
  • Steyer still seems to be getting a pretty pathetic return on his Twitter ad buys.
  • Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for October 28, 2019

    Monday, October 28th, 2019

    Biden is up, Ryan is out, a poll has Buttigieg second in Iowa, and the Yang Gang takes on Bernie Bros. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • Post and Courier (South Carolina): Biden 30, Warren 19, Sanders 13, Harris 11, Buttigieg 9, Steyer 5, Yang 4, Booker 3, Gabbard 3, Klobuchar 3, Bennet 1, O’Rourke 1.
  • Quinnipiac: Warren 28, Biden 21, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 10, Harris 5, Klobuchar 3, O’Rourke 1, Booker 1, Castro 1, Yang 1, Steyer 1.
  • Civiqs/ISU (Iowa): Warren 28, Buttigieg 20, Sanders 18, Biden 12, Klobuchar 4, Harris 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 2, Yang 2, Booker 1, O’Rourke 1, Bennet 1. That’s the first time Buttigieg has placed ahead of Biden in any poll, anywhere, ever. Could be an outlier (sample size of 598), or it could show his spending is finally having an effect there. My guess is some of each.
  • KQED (California): Warren 28, Sanders 24, Biden 19, Buttigieg 9, Harris 8, Yang 3, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 1, Williamson 1, Booker 1, Steyer 1.
  • SSRS/CNN: Biden 34, Warren 19, Sanders 16, Buttigieg 6, Harris 6, Klobuchar 3, O’Rourke 3, Yang 2, Bennet 1, Gabbard 1, Ryan 1, Steyer 1. Not only do the CNN and Quinnipiac polls diverge, but the divergence between the two seems to be getting larger.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 142): Biden 24, Warren 21, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 8, Harris 5, Yang 3, Gabbard 3, O’Rourke 2, Booker 2, Steyer 1, Castro 1, Klobuchar 1, Ryan 1, Williamson 1, Bennet 1.
  • Monmouth (South Carolina): Biden 33, Warren 16, Sanders 12, Harris 6, Steyer 4, Buttigieg 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, O’Rourke 1.
  • Marquette (Wisconsin): Biden 31, Warren 24, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 7, Harris 5, Klobuchar 3, Yang 3, Gabbard 2, Booker 1, Williamson 1.
  • WBUR (Massachusetts): Warren 33, Biden 18, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 7, Harris 3, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 1, Steyer 1, Delaney 1, Yang 1. But that poll notes than even liberal Massachusetts is not sold on her socialized medicine scheme.
  • Emerson: Biden 27, Sanders 25, Warren 21, Buttigieg 6, Harris 5, Yang 4, Gabbard 3, Booker 3, O’Rourke 2, Klobuchar 1, Steyer 1.
  • The Hill/Harris X: Biden 27, Warren 19, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 6, Harris 5, O’Rourke 3, Yang 2, Booker 1, Bennet 1, Klobuchar 1, Ryan 1, Steyer 1, Messam 1, Sestak 1.
  • KGTV (California): Biden 33, Warren 18, Sanders 17, Harris 8, Yang 4, Buttigieg 4, Booker 2, O’Rourke 2, Klobuchar 1, Castro 1, Steyer 1, Gabbard 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Nine candidates have made the November debates: Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, Steyer, Yang, Booker, Klobuchar.
  • 538 debates whether Iowa and new Hampshire matter as much as they used to:

    Winning Iowa or New Hampshire will likely be critical for someone in the 2020 Democratic primary, too, especially if the same candidate wins both states. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is currently in the lead in both places, according to a FiveThirtyEight average of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire since the third Democratic debate in September — although she barely leads in Iowa. She has a narrow 1-point lead over Biden in Iowa and a 4-point edge in New Hampshire, according to our analysis. (RealClearPolitics’s average puts Warren roughly 3 points ahead of Biden in New Hampshire and less than a point behind Biden in Iowa.) But in both states, we’re only talking about a few points separating the top two candidates, so to be clear, the race is still incredibly tight.

    And that’s important, because the margin by which a candidate wins Iowa or New Hampshire can have big consequences for the primary. A narrow defeat, for instance, wouldn’t necessarily spell doom for Biden’s campaign. Instead, it could give them an opportunity to spin the loss and talk about the relative lack of diversity in the first two states, said Josh Putnam, a political scientist and FiveThirtyEight contributor who tracks the nomination process. Putnam argued that a defeat by a wide margin would be harder to sell, and Caitlin Jewitt, a political scientist at Virginia Tech who studies presidential primaries, agreed. Jewitt stressed, however, that even a loss could be considered a good showing if the candidate lost by less than predicted. “It’s important to win in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Jewitt. “But it’s almost more important to do better than you were expected to do.”

    Winning or exceeding expectations in Iowa or New Hampshire seems to have a real effect on Democratic primaries, too — especially as it pertains to a candidate’s ability to attract national support. Take John Kerry in 2004. He was polling at about 8 percent nationally before Iowa, but after he won both Iowa and New Hampshire, his numbers went through the roof — a 37-point gain in the polls in a couple weeks — as he steamrolled to victory at the expense of opponents like Howard Dean. Similarly, in 2008, Barack Obama trailed the favorite, Hillary Clinton, by double digits in national polls, but after he won Iowa, he gained nearly 10 points in national support, even though Clinton recovered to win New Hampshire. Eventually, Obama won the lengthy nomination battle. And while Bernie Sanders didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 2016, his strong start in Iowa and New Hampshire helped force Clinton, once again the favorite, into a drawn-out race.

    Case against: They’re both much whiter states than the general Democratic electorate. Also:

    As we saw in the 2016 Democratic primary, Clinton was able to fight on despite underwhelming results in Iowa (where she narrowly won) and New Hampshire (where she lost). Granted, she had overwhelming support from the party establishment that Biden can’t currently match, but her position as the likely nominee was never really in doubt despite a poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire. What 2016 suggests, then, is that as long as expectations aren’t set too high, somewhat underwhelming results in Iowa and New Hampshire are survivable. Putnam described the Biden campaign’s efforts to discount the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire as “a gamble,” but “one that might pay off” if the results are relatively close and South Carolina still looks favorable for him.

    The media might also be more receptive to the idea that Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative of the Democratic Party, which may make them less important this year. Already there have been a number of stories about how the primary calendar — especially the Super Tuesday states — may shake up which states matter most to candidates. And as CNN analyst Ronald Brownstein wrote in February, the 14 states voting on March 3 “could advantage the candidates best positioned to appeal to minority voters, particularly African Americans.” So if Biden retains his solid support among African American voters and his campaign’s effort to lower expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire works, Biden might get what he wants — South Carolina and Super Tuesday as his real campaign tests.

  • Fortune tallies up the endorsement race while wondering if it actually matter anymore. (Spoiler: It doesn’t.) I note that every single Booker endorsement is from New Jersey…
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a PBS interview.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. His campaign gets a long profile in New York:

    Inevitably, he arrives late, by SUV or van. The former vice-president is thin and, yes, he’s old. He dresses neatly and always in blue. Staff envelop him. There’s the body man, the advance man, the videographer, the photographer, the digital director, the traveling chief of staff, the traveling press secretary, the local press secretary, the adviser, the other adviser, the adviser’s adviser, the surrogate, the other surrogate, and the bodyguard.

    Snip.

    And it is a production. This is true even when the event is small, which it often is, because the stakes never are — Joe Biden speaking off the cuff is something the entire campaign seems focused on preventing at all costs. Inside the community center or union hall or college auditorium, the stage is crafted just so. The red and blue letters — each roughly the size of a 9-year-old — spell IOWA 4 BIDEN. The American flag is stretched taut and stapled to the plywood. The lawn sign is stapled to the lectern. The delicate panes of teleprompter glass angle to meet his hopeful gaze, so that he may absorb the programmed speech as he peers out at his audience, which usually skews quite old and white, unless he’s in South Carolina.

    This first part — the reading of the speech — he almost always gets right. Even when he makes changes, rearranging the order of the words, skipping over a few, adding others, how could he not get it right? He’s been delivering some version of it for more than 40 years and living it for longer. He could deliver it in his sleep, if he ever sleeps. It’s like my father always said: Joey, a job is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say, “It’s gonna be okay …” There is an undercurrent of shame that pulses throughout, this idea that the unequalness of our society is embarrassing for those who have access to less, rather than embarrassing for those who have more than anyone could need.

    Folks … Not a joke! He’s always saying something rather solemn, about cancer or immigration, and then adding, “Not a joke!” as if anyone thought it might be. I’m being serious here … Come on … The bottom line is … I’m not kidding around … The fact of the matter is … Barack and me … Folks … Folks … Folks … folks … folks … folks … folks … folks … folks … folks … FOLKS … folks … FoLkS … fOlKs … F. O. L. K. S. …

    And this next part — the greeting of the voters — he gets right, too. In this context, he possesses an almost mystical quality that, for whatever reason, does not come across when filtered through the kaleidoscope of newsprint or television. It’s the way he focuses his eyes, which are as blue as the seas, except for (yikes) that time the left eye filled with blood on CNN a few weeks back.

    He is swarmed. Women reach out to him, linking their arms in his. He bows his head and lifts their hands to his mouth for a kiss and, later, when you ask them if that makes them uncomfortable, they look at you like you have three heads. This is the best day of their lives. Are you insane? There are men, too, who embrace him, wrapping their hands around his neck. He calls every male-presenting human he encounters “man.” I watched him call a baby “man.” As in, Hey! How­areya, man?! He is as skilled a selfie-taker as any influencer, and in the span of 30 or 40 minutes, he snaps hundreds, leaning his body against the rope that separates him from the crowd, straining it one, two, three feet forward. He really does connect with every living being this way, talking about their jobs or their health care as he listens, sometimes crying with them, whispering in their ears, taking their phone numbers and promising to call them. He does, in fact, do that. Everybody is Joe Biden’s long-lost friend. Every baby is Joe Biden’s long-lost child. A little girl in Iowa City called him her uncle Joe. On the Fourth of July in the town of Independence, he took off, running through the parade like a dingo with somebody’s newborn. As hard as it might be to believe that anything in this realm could not be bullshit, it’s simply true that this isn’t.

    His own loss is staggering in its scale and cruelty: Neilia, his wife, and Naomi, his infant daughter, killed in a car crash. Beau, his oldest son, who survived that crash with his brother, Hunter, killed decades later by brain cancer. And it’s as though in that loss he’s gained access to an otherwise imperceptible wavelength on which he communicates in this way, with the eyes and the hands.

    “I don’t know how to describe it, but sometimes some people would walk up with a lot of emotion in their face, and without even hearing their story, he could connect with them,” John Flynn, who served as Biden’s senior adviser in the White House, said. “He would know it was either one thing or another, and he would just know how to approach them and to get them to gently open up if they wanted to. And if they didn’t want to, he just said, ‘Hey, I’m with you, and I’m there for you. I feel your pain.’ ”

    Snip.

    The pitch goes like this: Joe Biden ought to be the nominee because he’s electable, a meaningless concept if recent history is any guide, and presidential, that wonderful word — the thing Donald Trump could never be even though he literally is president — despite the fact that Biden, who appears by almost any measure to be a good man, a man whose lone sin in life is ego (and does that even count anymore?), has spent a half-century grasping for this position and watching it slip through his fingers.

    To anyone paying attention — the army of political professionals more wired to observe shortcomings than are those likely to actually vote for him or for anyone else — it looks, unmistakably, like it’s happening again. His vulnerabilities are close to the surface. There’s the basic fact of his oldness and the concerns, explicit or implicit, about his ability to stay agile and alive for four more years. This was true of Biden, who is 76, even more than it was true of Bernie Sanders, who is the oldest candidate at 78, up until Sanders had a heart attack while campaigning in Nevada earlier this month. (It’s not true at all of Elizabeth Warren, who is 70 but seems a decade younger. And it’s not exactly true of Trump, who is 73 and really just seems crazy, not old.)

    But it’s not just his age itself. It’s his tendency to misspeak, his inartful debating style, and — most of all — his status as a creature from another time in the Democratic Party, when the politics of race and crime and gender were unrecognizably different. It’s not just that the Joe Biden of yesteryear sometimes peeks out from behind the No. 1 Obama Stan costume. It’s that the Joe Biden of today is expected to hold his former self accountable to the new standards set by a culture that’s prepared to reject him. And though he’s the party Establishment’s obvious exemplar, he can’t seem to raise any money — spending more in the last quarter than he brought in and moving into the homestretch with less than $9 million in the bank (roughly a third of what Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders has on hand). For political reporters, marveling every day at just how well this isn’t going, watching Biden can feel like being at the rodeo. You’re there because on some level you know you might see someone get killed.

    Yet Biden is still the front-runner. Volatile and potentially worthless as they may be, it’s what the polls say. Biden leads the field on average by a handful of percentage points, though his lead has trended steadily downward, from a high of 33 in May to 20 in June to 11, and then to 9.9, and 6.6, and 5.4, according to RealClearPolitics. In the whole campaign, there has only been one day — October 8 — when he slipped to second place, an average of 0.2 points behind Warren. He’s also the front-runner in South Carolina, Nevada, California, Texas, North Carolina, and Florida. “There is this sense of hanging on. And perhaps he can. But that’s generally not the way the physics of these things work,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod told me. “Generally, you’re either moving up or moving down. Warren is clearly moving up. There’s no sign that he is.”

    It’s a long, generally balanced piece. Remember how Biden was toast an Warren was the inevitable nominee? Yeah, not so much:

    Joe Biden is enjoying one of his largest leads over the rest of the Democratic field since joining the presidential race, a new poll finds.

    A CNN survey conducted by SSRS finds that 34% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters currently back the former vice president to unseat President Trump in November. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sits in second place, with 19% support. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont placed third with 16%.

    The rest of the pack is even further behind, with Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and California Sen. Kamala Harris earning 6% support, while Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke garnered 3% support.

    CNN/SSRS interviewed more than 1,003 Democratic voters for the poll Oct. 17-20, which has a +/- 3.7 margin of error.

    He got a 60 Minutes interview. Also, Biden called Castro “Cisneros.” Hey, Hispanic mayors of San Antonio whose last names start with “C”, I can certainly see how those neurons might get entangled. But as far as I know, Castro has never been convicted of a felony…

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Thinking of Running After All? Judge Judy backs a Bloomberg run.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. His emergency fundraising appeal worked. “Booker asked supporters to give $1.7 million in 10 days — donors ultimately chipped in $2.16 million, the campaign said.” But “Booker is still struggling to gain ground on his Democratic rivals and his campaign is still bleeding money. At the rate he’s been spending, the strong fund-raising performance bought him about an extra month of campaigning, making the next debate on Nov. 20 another critical moment.”
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. “The Red-State Savior Democrats Don’t Want“:

    Polls of the Democratic primary occasionally show that not a single person in the survey picked Bullock. He made the second debate, in July, but was then bumped from the stage, unable to garner enough donors or hit the 2 or 3 percentage points of polling support needed to qualify. Last week, during the fourth debate, instead of standing onstage alongside the other 12, he watched it at home in Helena with his family.

    In an enormous field dominated by a famous former vice president and four diverse blue-state senators with intriguing backgrounds, Bullock has been almost invisible. He’s never graced the cover of a glossy magazine, like Beto O’Rourke (Vanity Fair) and Pete Buttigieg (New York), who play to the cultural predilections of so many Gen-X male writers who can talk Fugazi and Joyce. He doesn’t have a gimmicky new policy idea for attracting a niche online audience the way Andrew Yang does. He’s never had a jaw-dropping debate confrontation with Biden the way Kamala Harris did. He hasn’t even been interesting enough to have had a cycle of widespread negative attention, as with Tulsi Gabbard’s unusual affection for Bashar Assad or Amy Klobuchar’s unusual use of a comb. As a middle-aged white guy in a mostly white state, there is no social justice barrier Bullock would break as the party’s nominee.

    What does it say about the Democrats and presidential politics in 2019 that the candidate who has arguably the most impressive governing credentials in the race, aside from the former vice president, has been a nonentity?

    Bullock swears he will stay in the race until at least the Iowa caucuses on February 3. I spent enough time with the governor and his small staff over four days in September in Montana and Iowa to know that he and his closest advisers are not delusional. They all know how unlikely it is that he’ll be the Democratic nominee. And yet maybe—just maybe—his decision to keep running is not completely insane. Joe Biden, the other moderate white guy in the race, is not exactly lighting people on fire.

    Snip.

    Like anyone working for an extreme underdog, Bullock’s aides oscillate between utter despair and glimmers of hope. “What motivates the whole team and certainly me as a Westerner. and as someone who’s not from the coasts, is you’re like, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to ignore these people who won red states or these Democrats that are in red states?’” said Ridder. “If we don’t have someone like Steve Bullock at least as part of the conversation to show that there are Democrats in red states, we have a big problem and we’re going to lose out on a whole swath of our country pretty quickly.”

    Snip.

    His candidacy exists in a strange netherworld where he did everything you were once supposed to do as an ambitious Democratic politician—become a governor, win over lots of Republican voters, rack up progressive achievements, put out serious policy proposals—but none of it seemed to matter. The biggest bump in attention Bullock has received all year is when Jeff Bridges—the Dude from The Big Lebowski—tweeted out an endorsement of him.

    It’s hard not to be left with the feeling that at a certain point in the 2000s the romantic era of presidential politics that began with Carter ended. In the 70s, the old system of party elites controlling the nominating process gave way to a more democratic system of voters in state caucuses and primaries taking control. Gradually that system, which was once defined by local campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, became nationalized. Now, candidates who can’t run an aggressive national pre-primary campaign seem doomed. The casualties of the new system, which reward the elusive quality of fame, strong ideological views, or both, have been government service and careers outside of the coasts.

    It just seems like the week for long, detailed profiles of candidates whose names start with “B”…

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 debates whether his surge is real or not.

    natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I think the narrative is mostly bullshit. Just want to get that on the record nice and early…. I certainly think he had a good debate, and he’s probably gained a point or so, which isn’t nothing! But to say there’s been a big Buttigieg surge is so far from reality that, if you simply glance at a table of polls, it almost feels like gaslighting. He’s maybe gained a point or so in national polls.

    Snip.

    sarahf: Right, but how should we interpret his higher standing in Iowa or New Hampshire?

    Is that meaningful at this point?

    natesilver: He’s a good candidate for those states because (1) They’re really white, and his supporters are really white; (2) He’s got enough money to build out a good ground game; (3) He’s got a regional advantage in Iowa by being one of the few Midwsterners in the race.

    So I take his chances in Iowa pretty seriously! I just don’t think anything much has changed about them over the past week.

    julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): I take Nate’s point about national polls, but an unexpected showing in Iowa seems like the kind of thing that could shape this race, especially if Joe Biden tanks and there’s an opportunity for someone else to wrestle the moderate mantle away.

    My guess money is on Buttigieg’s huge warchest starting to have a real effect in Iowa. As I suspected, he’s snatching up Biden donors.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Attended a forum in Las Vegas with Yang and Sanders.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? Evidently she’s still not ruling out a run. Heh: “Asylum Orderlies Return Hillary Clinton To Padded Cell Disguised As Oval Office.”
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Win a trip to the World Series by donating to John Delaney. Do runner-ups get a Delaney bobblehead?
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s not running for reelection to her House seat. Kurt Schlichter on the conservative crush on Gabbard:

    Tulsi gets Strange New Conservative Respect for several reasons, but the primary one is that she doesn’t seem to hate our guts. She is what an opponent should be – an opponent, not an enemy. Let’s face it – the mainstream Democrat Party hates our guts, and given its malignant druthers it would strip us of our First, Second, and probably Third Amendment rights in order to make sure that we never, ever have a say in our own governance again. Then, with us silenced and disarmed, it would take our money, corrupt our children and generally oppress us in ways that make today’s punitive straw bans look tame. If you don’t believe that a scary number of mainstream lefties want us Normals enslaved or dead, well, you’re either in denial or not on social media.

    Make no mistake – Tulsi is not one of us conservatives, though the kind of leftism she embraces (which owes a lot to the socialism of Bernie Sanders) shares some superficial similarities to the populism that has swept the GOP base. In many ways, we share her critique of an inept, corrupt ruling caste eager to send non-elite citizens off to fight their endless, mismanaged wars. We also share a critique of Big Business as a crony capitalist simulacrum of free enterprise, basically a bunch of rich jerks sidling up to the leaders of both parties to repeatedly shaft us regular folks to pump up a few digits on their balance sheets.

    That Tulsi will take on the corrupt leaders of her garbage party, like Felonia Milhouse von Pantsuit, is certainly a welcome change from the lockstep stonewalling we have seen from the others – “Why, I see nothing wrong with Toots McHoover Biden peeing hot then getting 50 grand a month from an oligarch, and if you do you’re racist!” When Mee Maw got into the cooking sherry again and started calling her a “Russian asset,” you knew Tulsi was drawing blood from Ole Granny Reset Button. That charge is particularly amusing since Major Gabbard is an Army officer and a veteran of the elite’s dumb wars – another thing the right appreciates about her. But then everyone is a Russian agent these days. We cons get the same insane idiocy, and not just the president.

    Snip.

    Gabbard is far more open to Assad than many of us cons like, but her opposition to the Fredocon warmonger model (like the opposition of many woke conservatives) seems to come from a place of genuine concern for the troops she serves and served with. Unlike most of the rest of her rivals, dead American warriors are not an abstraction. Moreover, you get the idea that, alone among the faux Cherokees, naggy mistresses, and militant furries up there on the Democrat debate stage, Tulsi actually likes America, and Americans.

    The Gabbard Left and the Trump Right share the conclusion that our elite sucks and that it has forfeited any moral authority to lead our country, but the similarity ends there. She is not conservative and is not traditional. Just because she has doubts about offing babies in the third trimester, as opposed to supporting abortion until high school graduation, does not make her pro-life. She would take your guns, she would take your money, and she would generally make Barack Obama look like William F. Buckley.

    Sometimes we forget that Tulsi is a leftist, and that she would screw up health care, open the borders and impose all sorts of climate hoax nonsense. A key difference from us, when you get past the surface similarities, is that she and her ilk have faith in the idea that government can take on more and more responsibilities, despite the fact that it has demonstrated that it cannot handle those responsibilities it already has, which themselves are mostly far beyond what government should be doing in the first place.

    There’s another issue, the fox in the room if you will, that we need to address, and it is not an indictment of Tulsi Gabbard. It’s her storied looks. She is pretty, and she does not give off the man-hating vibe of the rest of her competitors (this also goes for the nominal men on the stage). Tulsi certainly plays it up – those yoga-pants workout videos are not just to reassure us about her cardiovascular fitness. But the fact that she is a woman comfortable with being traditionally feminine gives her a leg up on that squad of bitter, spinster librarians she is running against.

    “Tulsi Gabbard: a Gandhi in Lycra“:

    Gabbard isn’t a left- or right-wing politician. She is a spiritual revolutionary, defying the categories of material and contractual politics –– overcoming them, as Blavatsky and Nietzsche had it. Her positions fit no party template because they are what Peter Viereck called ‘metapolitics’. She wishes to overcome the intolerable binaries and compromises that have, as she rightly observes, gummed up the works of government and reduced swathes of the public to destitution, dependency and desperation. Being a modern Hawaiian rather than a 19th-century Bavarian, the voice of her inner authoritarian is as soft as the lining of her wetsuit. Still, it speaks quite clearly.

    Like Gandhi and George Harrison, who were also promoted beyond their competence, Gabbard is influenced by a strange medley of self-help and pop-Hinduism. Hence Gandhi’s George Bernard Shaw routine in a dhoti, or George Harrison’s deeply spiritual objections to capital gains in ‘Taxman’. Hence too the paradoxes of Gabbard the soldier-pacifist who supports our troops but dog-whistles about the ‘war machine’; who smilingly shares apocalyptic visions of government failure and corruption from her lush Hawaiian garden; and who supports human rights but never says a harsh word about Bashar al-Assad.

    It was squalid of Hillary Clinton to imply that Putin’s people were manipulating Gabbard as a ‘Russian asset’. In a season of universal political folly, every candidate is an asset to any rival power. No Russian or Chinese meddler has messed with the American system as successfully as a chorus of millionaires threatening war overseas and further legislation on public bathrooms at home. The blend of petty managerialism at home and delusional universalism abroad is a winning combination –– winning, that is, for Putin and Xi.

    That blend also happens to be the recipe of religious cults like the one in which Gabbard was raised, and whose members she appointed to her campaign staff. This crankish background shapes the attitudes which make Gabbard a Democratic misfit, like hostility to homosexuality, gay marriage and Islam, fondness for Narendra Modi’s Hindu revivalism. Even the attitudes which might endear her to the Democratic left, her metapolitically mixed feelings about the Jews, have been a core feature of spiritual revolution from Blavatsky to Nietzsche, Gandhi to John Lennon.

    More an arch hit piece than actual analysis. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Snit fit: “On Friday, the campaign of presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced the senator will skip a forum on criminal justice reform in South Carolina this weekend. Her reason for that decision was the equivalent of an adult woman throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum. She is angry that the organization holding the weekend forum honored President Trump with an award Friday.”
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Klobuchar is finally having her moment:

    “Right here in New Hampshire, last weekend,” Klobuchar said, “we were at a meet-and-greet, and everyone had these little stickers on: ‘I’m a Supreme Court voter.’ ‘I’m a climate-change voter.’ And there was one guy that had no sticker on at all. And he came up and whispered in my ear — true story — ‘I’m a Trump voter. I don’t want anyone to know. But I’m not voting for him again.’ If we want to win big, we have to build this coalition.”

    The enthusiastic reception in Nashua for Klobuchar’s message of cross-party appeal capped a 12-day stretch that has been the best to date for the Minnesota Democrat’s campaign for president. Now all Klobuchar needs is to do even better. And time is running short for a candidate who still distantly trails the race’s front-runners.

    For months, Klobuchar struggled for attention in a huge field of rivals. But, following a widely praised performance at the Oct. 15 Democratic debate, she’s seen a spike in fundraising and national press coverage. In her most aggressive showing yet, she prodded several other candidates about some of their more hard-to-deliver promises, especially Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on her support for Medicare for All.

    “We’re feeling a lot of momentum since the debate,” Klobuchar said in a live TV interview later Friday night from outside a Democratic Party banquet in a Manchester restaurant.

    In the days following the debate, Klobuchar tallied 3% in separate national polls. That’s far below candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but it was enough to qualify her for next month’s Democratic debate in Georgia.

    She wants free community college, but not four year colleges, which is unlikely to win over the “Free free free!” Twitter crowd.

  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. It’s Hitler all the way down. He’s still clueless when it comes to guns. He’s stopped visiting Iowa, evidently under the delusion he’s a national candidate.
  • Update: Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: Dropped Out. Twitter. Facebook. He left the race October 24.

    On Thursday, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan dropped out of the race to focus on his reelection bid in the House. On the surface, the congressman’s electoral pitch as a moderate, blue-collar Democrat from the traditional swing state of Ohio had a fair bit of potential, too. But unlike South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg or even Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Ryan failed to attract enough support to carve out some sort of lane for himself in the primary.

    Some of Ryan’s struggles came down to the nature of the field and his relatively low profile coming into the race. As a House member, Ryan might have started out at a disadvantage compared to some candidates who held or had held higher offices. If Ryan had been, say, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown — who opted not to run for president — things might have gone differently. Even after six or so months of campaigning, Ryan wasn’t that well known. Only about half of Democrats had an opinion about him back in late August, and recent polling suggests that he wasn’t becoming better known, either. Of course, if former Vice President Joe Biden hadn’t gotten into the race, it’s possible that some moderate Democrats would have considered Ryan as an alternative. In the end, Ryan wasn’t even able to attract the very low threshold of support necessary — 2 percent in four qualifying polls and 130,000 unique donors — to qualify for the third and fourth debates (he wasn’t on track to make the fifth debate, either).

    Ryan’s lack of financial resources also factored into his campaign’s difficulties and eventual demise. In the second quarter of 2019, he raised roughly $900,000, which would have been a great fundraising haul for his House race but was woefully inadequate for a presidential candidate (and the second-lowest amount of any “major” presidential candidate at the time, per FiveThirtyEight’s criteria). And in the third quarter he fared even worse, bringing in only $425,000 with just $160,000 in the bank. Although Ryan could theoretically have stayed in the race for months to come — Ohio law permits someone to run for president and the House at the same time — it’s tough to maintain a presidential campaign if you have virtually no money, so Ryan’s poor fundraising was probably the nail in his campaign’s coffin.

    What Ryan’s lack of traction show the woke left’s control of the party:

    Even if Ryan’s candidacy fades to the insignificance of a footnote in the story of the 2020 presidential election, the fact that Ryan was so thoroughly ignored and dismissed by the rest of his party is indeed significant.

    Here’s a guy who doesn’t just represent the demographic that Democrats lost to Trump in 2016, he embodies it: a 40-something white guy from the Youngstown area who hunts, hates China’s guts because he thinks it steals jobs, and supports natural gas plants because they create union jobs. He wanted a gradual approach to Medicare for All, thinks you can’t pay for health care for illegal immigrants while Americans pay for their own, and when people started complaining about tax breaks to lure Amazon’s headquarters, he declared, “I would love to have Amazon’s HQ2 in northeast Ohio. We need the jobs . . . We need the free enterprise system. If we’re going to try to compete with China, if we’re going to try to innovate our way to reduce carbon in the United States, we need the innovation and entrepreneurship of the free market, we can’t be hostile to business.”

    Trumble County, Ohio, voted for Trump, 51 percent to 45 percent, over Hillary Clinton. When reporters want to talk to blue-collar union members who voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump, they go to Trumble County. About 45,000 people in Ryan’s congressional district voted for both him and Trump in 2016.

    Tim Ryan was probably the least wealthy Democrat running for president; according to financial disclosure forms required of members of Congress, his net worth ranged from just under $65,000 to $48,998. He’s a populist who’s done his research, noting in speeches that eighty percent of venture capital goes to three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts. (The most recent figures I can find suggest 82 percent goes to four, which includes Texas.) He could echo Trump’s rhetoric sometimes — “We collectively should be helping the people who have gotten screwed for the last 30 years, and not apologize for it.”

    To the extent Ryan got any attention in this race, it was as an ambassador from the rural Midwest, trying to explain his strange and alien culture to the rest of the party: “I think Donald Trump is a complete slimeball, but he doesn’t want to take my job, or take my health insurance. My friends work at GM, in the building and construction trade. These are the guys I drink beer with. I know ‘em. These positions [the rest of the Democrats] are taking are untenable with the vast majority of them.”

    Around here, the usual suspects who read the headline but not the rest of the article will scoff that Ryan sounds like a Republican and should run in that primary. Never mind that Ryan is completely pro-choice, denounced the Trump administration’s treatment of children crossing the border, and changed his mind on universal background checks and lost his ‘A’ rating from the NRA. He wanted to ban states from enacting Right-to-Work laws and Janus v. AFSCME. (There goes any hope of a National Review endorsement.) His September 24 statement on impeachment consisted of two sentences: “President Trump is a mobster. We must impeach.” Heck, the guy wrote a book on yoga. He’s voted with the Trump administration position 18 percent of the time. If Tim Ryan isn’t considered a “real” Democrat, it means the criteria for being a Democrat is now set entirely by the Woke Twitter crowd.

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Another member of The Squad, Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, endorses Sanders. “Bernie Sanders tells student to respect police officer “so that you don’t get shot in the back of the head.” Gee, it seems like Bernie understands communism after all!
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. “OSSIPEE — Joe Sestak, the long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful and former congressman who walked across the width of New Hampshire, met with the Sun on Wednesday night at a local McDonald’s to outline his plans to take on China and make the United States united again.” With this picture:

    To tell you the truth, I’m starting to dig the Dadist vibe of Sestak’s anti-campaign…

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Why Tom Steyer’s Spending $100 Million to Run for President.” Why is Variety interviewing presidential candidates?
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Get ready for $4.2 Trillion in new taxes to support Warren’s spending spree:

    Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything. Some of those plans are expensive. With Warren emerging as a front-runner in the Democratic presidential contest, Yahoo Finance tallied the cost of her plans.

    Altogether, the Massachusetts senator’s agenda would require $4.2 trillion per year in new federal spending, and a like amount in new taxes, if she paid for everything without issuing new debt. The federal government currently spends about $4.4 trillion per year, so Warren’s plans would nearly double federal spending.

    The Treasury takes in about $3.4 trillion in tax revenue each year, so if Warren levied new taxes to pay for everything, federal taxation would rise by 124%. She could pay for some of her plans by issuing new debt instead of raising taxes, but with annual deficits close to $1 trillion already, that might be unwise.

    The biggest chunk of new spending in Warren’s agenda, by far, would be Medicare for all, the single-payer health plan she would impose to replace all private insurance. Warren explains how she would pay for all of her plans—except this one. With fellow Democratic candidates pressing her for details, Warren says she’ll provide financing options for Medicare for all soon.

    A single-payer plan covering every American would cost about $3.4 trillion per year, according to the Urban Institute and other analysts. Again: that’s equal to all federal tax revenue in 2019.

    Why aren’t more Democrats endorsing Warren?

    So a big part of the story here may be less about Warren and more about the large Democratic field and the lack of a clear front-runner, just as it was with Republicans in 2016. The big field, in particular, creates incentives for elected officials to remain neutral for as long as possible.

    “For the faction of elected Democrats who want the party to move to the left, the fact that both Warren and Sanders are in the race and polling in the double digits makes it tough — and somewhat politically risky — to publicly choose between them at this point in the process,” David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College and co-author of “Asymmetric Politics,” said.

    Or take members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “At this stage,” Hopkins said, “with Harris, Booker, and [Julián] Castro in the race and many of their constituents backing Biden, these members have other considerations besides candidate ideology — both in terms of their own personal objectives and their political incentives. Again, a wait-and-see strategy seems much safer.”

    Democrats may also be gun-shy after the outcome of the 2016 election. Hans Noel, a scholar at Georgetown University and co-author of “The Party Decides,” said of party elites: “They controlled the process, and they lost.”

    Also:

    Warren has two obvious problems with party elites. First, there is the perception among some of them that her left-wing stands, such as Medicare for All, are too risky for the general election and decrease the party’s chances of defeating President Trump. For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not outright endorsed Biden or specifically declared that she does not support Warren, but Pelosi has argued that the party needs to have a big, sweeping electoral victory in 2020, and that such a win requires more moderate policies, likefocusing on improving Obamacare instead of pursuing Medicare for All. Those are sentiments decidedly on the side of Biden and Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg and against Warren and Sanders.

    Secondly, electoral considerations aside, there is a center-left wing of the Democratic Party that fundamentally disagrees with Warren’s more leftward positions. It’s hard to imagine some of these figures endorsing Warren before she has effectively already won the nomination. (That fits with Shor’s findings — Warren’s endorsers at the state legislative level are more liberal than the endorsers of any of the other candidates.)

    These problems are not unique to Warren. Sanders was perceived as too far to the left by many Democratic elites in 2016; he got very few endorsements back then and is not getting many this cycle, either. (Sen. Amy Klobuchar actually leads Sanders in endorsement points.)

    Warren also has a third challenge with party elites that is less obvious. The Massachusetts senator clashed with senior aides to President Obama for much of his tenure in the White House. She, like Sanders, isn’t quite in line with the party’s establishment. A Warren administration would probably be less likely to hire former Clinton (Bill and Hillary) and Obama aides in key posts than, say, a Biden, Booker or Harris one. So people connected with the party establishment (like many DNC members) may be fine with Warren but prefer other candidates for more self-interested reasons.

    It’s all about the Benjamins. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Kevin Williamson says that Warren wants to shear the rich:

    Jeremy Corbyn has a kindred spirit in the United States currently running for the Democratic presidential nomination — two of them, in fact: Senator Bernie Sanders, an antediluvian Brooklyn red who literally honeymooned in the old Soviet Union as dissidents were being shipped off to the gulags, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the counterfeit Cherokee princess who holds forth on “accountability” from her comfortable sinecure at Harvard Law, which once put her forward as the first “woman of color” on its faculty. The wretched old socialist from Vermont is making a good scrappy show of it — and I sincerely wish Senator Sanders the very best of health after his recent cardiac episodes — and, the times being what they are, apparently anybody can be elected president of these wobbly United States. But Warren — in spite of being a plastic banana of titanic phoniness, an ass of exceptional asininity, an intellectual mediocrity, and a terrible campaigner on top of it all — seems the more likely threat. Sanders, who cannot resist that old Soviet liquidate-the-kulaks-as-a-class rhetoric, insists that “billionaires should not exist.” Warren has a ghastly imbecilic plan for that.

    Snip.

    The most extreme of those is renouncing U.S. citizenship in favor of securing legal domicile in some more wealth-friendly jurisdiction. There was a boomlet of that during the Obama years, reaching a record in 2016. But it is a very small number: 5,411 in 2016, down to the numerically ironic 1,099 in 2018. Some of those former U.S. citizens renounce for reasons that have at least something to do with tax, but these decisions usually are complex and involve many factors. Tina Turner, who has been a resident of Switzerland for decades, “relinquished” her U.S. citizenship (which under U.S. law is slightly different from “renouncing” it) a few years after becoming a Swiss national. Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Singapore just before the firm went public. Filmmaker John Huston died an Irishman. A common pattern is that of actor Jet Li and businessman Ted Arison, each having been born abroad (China and Israel, respectively), become a naturalized U.S. citizen, and then renounced that citizenship later in life (Li is a citizen of Singapore, while Arison returned to Israel). Uncle Stupid imposes an “exit tax” on those who are leaving, in essence collecting whatever capital-gains tax would be due on the renouncer’s assets if they had been sold the day before renouncing. There is also a fee of $2,350, because somebody has to pay the parasites to audit your portfolio, and it’s going to be you.

    But this is not good enough for Elizabeth Warren, who proposes to build a financial Berlin Wall to keep the rich guys in. That’s a little bit funny: Billionaires are awful, evil, wicked, and should not exist — but God help them if they try to grant Bernie Sanders his dearest wish and skedaddle. Singapore doesn’t think billionaires should not exist. Neither does Sweden. Neither does Switzerland. Neither does Italy. Why not let those horrible pinstriped social diseases just go where they are wanted?

    Because this is not about revenue. This is about revenge.

    Warren’s proposal would see the federal government expropriating 40 percent of the wealth of any American who decided to emigrate, provided that American has enough money to make it worth worrying about. And that number is not as high as you might expect: The current law ensnares those whose average income in the five-year period before renunciation was $162,000 or more, meaning that there are a lot of high-school principals who would need Washington’s permission to split.

    It is difficult to accept the proposition that in a free society the freedoms enjoyed do not include the freedom to leave. The right of exit is the great discipliner of social, romantic, and business relationships, and it is essential to the relationship between citizen and state, too: Ask all our of new neighbors lately arrived from Venezuela. They did not come to Houston for the weather.

    Walls have ideological purposes. The infamous one in Berlin was, officially, the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the “anti-fascist protection wall.” Senator Warren’s wall is, in theory, about “inequality.” But that is really hardly plausible as a rationale. “Inequality” simply refers to the financial distance between x and y, and reducing that inequality would be as effectively achieved by improving incomes and savings at the lower end as by reducing incomes and diminishing savings elsewhere. But that’s a rather trickier proposition than sticking a gun in somebody’s face and saying, “Hand it over.” Which is, of course, what Elizabeth Warren proposes to do.

    For what? Some trivial sum in federal tax revenue? No — for the joy of it. For the pleasure of exercising power. For vindictiveness. Elizabeth Warren’s Berlin Wall will not make one poor person in the United States any better off. It might make Elizabeth Warren better off, but she’s far from poor.

    Snip.

    Elizabeth Warren, like Donald Trump, wants to build a wall. The idea behind Trump’s is keeping certain foreigners out, while the idea behind Warren’s is locking Americans in, penning them in order that they may be shorn and milked as though they were livestock, which is more or less how Warren thinks of them.

    The Warren hype has gotten away from the facts on the ground.

    The media love Elizabeth Warren. She’s everything they want in a candidate. Someone to whisper sweet nothings into their ears and make them feel really smart. She’s got plans, the right amount of shrill in her voice, and is just focus grouped enough to get them excited.

    This love affair has led to an incredible amount of hype surrounding the Massachusetts Senator, who’s only accomplishment appears to be supporting an unconstitutional agency in the CFPB. It’s gotten to the point where she is routinely described as the presumptive front-runner. To be fair, I’ve bagged on Joe Biden to the benefit of Elizabeth Warren a bit in the past few months as well. I mean, he’s Joe Biden.

    Following the most recent debate though, where Warren stumbled repeatedly when pressed about raising middle class taxes, we are seeing some problems emerge.

    For starters, she’s still nowhere near the national front-runner.

    CNN poll snipped.

    Not only is Warren behind by double digits, Biden is enjoying his biggest lead since April, a time when it was all but assumed he’d be the nominee. There are other polls as well showing bad news for Warren. Emerson released their latest offering and she’s 6 points behind Biden. Worse, she’s 4 points behind Sanders, who just suffered a heart attack a month ago.

    In fact, in the last seven polls published, six of them have Warren down by at least 6 points. The only poll which continues to show her close is YouGov, which has held an incredible house effect for Warren throughout the primaries. You can view all these results at RCP here.

    But perhaps she’s leading in the early states? In New Hampshire, yes, but that’s to be expected. In Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, and California, she’s behind Biden still. If Biden wins two of those four states, he’ll enter the southern primaries all but guaranteed to clean up, leaving Warren no real path.

    George Soros gives Warren the thumbs-up seal of approval.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says she’s not dropping out, even after missing the debate:

    Supported by its friends and sponsors in the corporate media, the Democratic National Committee has sought to narrow the field of presidential candidates at the very moment when it should be opening up. Placing a political straitjacket on our primary system, controlling the process via money and ridiculous rules, the party is risking disaster.

    The establishment’s paternalistic insistence that, in essence, “it’s time to shut this thing down” — making sure only its preordained category of people, discussing its preordained category of topics, is placed before the American people for consideration as contenders for the nomination to run against President Trump — has created a false, inauthentic piece of high school theater posing as the Democratic debates.

    Last night’s debate was a lot of things, but it was not exciting. It contained no magic. If anything, it reduced some very nice people to behavior their mothers probably raised them not to engage in. Which woman who claims feminist ideals can be the nastiest to another woman? Which young person can show the greatest arrogance toward those with decades of experience under their belts? Which intelligent person can best reduce a complicated topic to pabulum for the masses?

    Oh, this is brilliant, guys. Apparently, the strategy is to engage the American people by showing them the worst of who we are.

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Yang Gang vs. Team Bearnie:

    The outsider entrepreneur who refuses to wear a tie at the Democratic debates is attracting some of the same people as the outsider senator who spurns brushing his hair for rallies. Fifty-seven percent of Yang’s potential supporters are considering Sanders, according to a recent Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight poll. The mutual interest works in the other direction, too: 16 percent of Sanders’ potential voters are eyeing Yang.

    Though Sanders and Yang differ in significant ways, they’re both running anti-establishment campaigns that speak to an electorate frustrated with the status quo, wary of Democratic insiders, and looking for economic help. For Sanders, their overlapping bases may give him a small boost if Yang drops out of the race down the road or if he works to woo the so-called #YangGang.

    But it’s also a potential threat to Sanders even if Yang continues polling in the single digits. If Yang shaves off a few percentage points from Sanders’ voting bloc, particularly in early-primary states such as New Hampshire, that could turn a second- or third-place finish into something worse.

    Yang wants molten salt Thorium reactors on the grid by 2027. But lots of technical and industrial challenges remain to be overcome.

  • 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
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for October 21, 2109

    Monday, October 21st, 2019

    Biden’s going broke, Clinton accuses Gabbard of being a Russian agent, Angry Amy came to play, Tom Steyer’s the Make-A-Wish candidate, and Messam pulls in a whole $5 in Q3 campaign contributions. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Q3 Fundraising

    Updated numbers from candidate filings. One name jumps from the bottom to the top of the list, thinks to a big check from himself:

    1. Tom Steyer: $49,645,132.
    2. Bernie Sanders: $25.3 million.
    3. Elizabeth Warren: $24.6 million.
    4. Pete Buttigieg: $19.1 million.
    5. Joe Biden: $15.2 million.
    6. Kamala Harris: $11.6 million.
    7. Andrew Yang: $10 million.
    8. Cory Booker: $6 million.
    9. Amy Klobuchar: $4.8 million.
    10. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: $4,482,284.
    11. Julian Castro: $3,497,251.
    12. Tulsi Gabbard: $3,032,158.
    13. Marianne Williamson: $3 million.
    14. Steve Bullock: $2.3 million.
    15. Michael Bennet: $2.1 million.
    16. John Delaney: $868,452.
    17. Tim Ryan: $425,731.
    18. Joe Sestak: $374,196.
    19. Wayne Messam: $5.
  • Steyer only comes out on top because he donated $47,597,697 of his own money to his campaign, as against $2,047,433 from other contributors.
  • Delany did not kick any of his own money in this time around, which indicates that he’s either thinking of hanging it up or just coasting to Iowa before packing it in.
  • Messam: SIC. See below.
  • I should go back and link to early actual Q3 FEC documents for early reporters for the sake of formatting consistancy, but I don’t have time right now.
  • Polls

  • USA Today/Suffolk (Iowa): Biden 18, Warren 17, Buttigieg 13, Sanders 8, Steyer 3.
  • Morning Consult/Politico: Biden 31, Warren 21, Sanders 18, Harris 7, Buttigieg 6, Yang 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 2, Steyer 2, Bennet 1, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Ryan 1, Williamson 1.
  • Emerson (Iowa): Biden 23, Warren 23, Buttigieg 16, Sanders 13, Yang 5, Bullock 4, Booker 3, Steyer 2, Gabbard 2, Harris 2, Klobuchar 1, Williamson 1, Bennet 1. It appears that Buttigieg’s huge fundraising haul is starting to bring results from pouring organizational money into Iowa. And this is the first poll I can recall Bullock registering support above background noise.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 142): Warren 28, Biden 25, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 6, Harris 5, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Booker 2, O’Rourke 2, Bennet 1, Delaney 1, Steyer 1.
  • PPP (Maine): Warren 31, Biden 19, Sanders 12, Buttigieg 9, Harris 4, Yang 3, Booker 2, Castro 1, O’Rourke 1.
  • Siena (new York: Biden 21, Warren 21, Sanders 16, Harris 4, Buttigieg 4, Yang 3, Booker 1, O’Rourke 1, Klobuchar 1.
  • Quinnipiac: Warren 32, Biden 28, Sanders 10, Buttigieg 7, Harris 3, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, O’Rourke 2, Booker 1, Castro 1, Bennet 1, Steyer 1.
  • Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald (New Hampshire) (page 30): Warren 24.6, Biden 23.9, Sanders 21.6, Buttigieg 9, Harris 4.5, Klobuchar 2.4, Booker 1.9, Steyer 1.2, Gabbard 0.5, Castro 0.2, O’Rourke 0.0.
  • East Carolina State (North Carolina): Biden 29, Sanders 19, Warren 17, Yang 9, Harris 8, Buttigieg 4, O’Rourke 4. Klobuchar 3, Booker 1, Castro 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

    Lots of post-debate analysis.

  • Who spoke the longest?

  • Nice piece on Q3 fundraising by 538. You can click on the graphics and see where each candidate got the majority of their funding from.
  • Instapundit thinks Biden was one of the debate winners:

    Joe Biden: He’s old, but he looked energetic and spoke clearly. He made a few errors — who’s “clipping coupons” in “the stock market?” But in general, he was forceful and seemed knowledgeable. In particular, he nailed Sen. Elizabeth Warren on how her health care plan would increase taxes on the middle class. And he was surprisingly sensible in dismissing “court-packing” schemes. His final remarks were a bit over the top, but after three hours I’d probably have been raving, too.

    Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: When she challenged her colleagues who wanted to “end endless wars” but who were also criticizing President Trump from withdrawing troops from Syria, she didn’t back down, and blasted the New York Times and a CNN contributor for calling her a “Russian asset” for criticizing what she called the “regime change war” in Syria. She then challenged Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who says we shouldn’t have troops in the Middle East at all, on the issue. On this and other issues, she was firm, clear, and was willing to buck the herd. And in her closing remarks, quoting Lincoln, she said “I don’t see deplorables, I see fellow Americans.”

    Mayor Pete Buttigieg: He made mincemeat of Beto O’Rourke, who dodged a question from Anderson Cooper on how he would enforce a ban on assault weapons. Beto was left looking flustered and trying to claim that Mayor Pete was insensitive to victims of violence, which was a bad look for him.

    Bernie Sanders: A guy who can have a heart attack and come back a few weeks later, yelling louder than anyone else for three hours, is winning. He was asked about his health, and he answered loudly, and then charmingly thanked his post-attack well-wishers. And he scored on Biden with his remarks about bipartisan support for the Iraq war.

    Losers: O’Rourke, Warren, Castro (“Several times I forgot he was even on the stage for 30 minutes or more.”) and Steyer.

  • Jim Geraghty liked Klobuchar and Buttigieg:

    Notice that Buttigieg is at 12 percent in Iowa in the RealClearPolitics average, and 8.7 percent in New Hampshire. That may not sound like much, but nobody else outside of the big three is anywhere near double digits anywhere. The South Bend mayor’s rise is Exhibit A of counterevidence when other candidates whine that the process is rigged in favor of well-known candidates who have been in politics forever.

    Yeah, but I’m convinced Buttigieg had big money recruiting and backing him before he ever got into the race.

    Klobuchar had, until last night, been a strong contender for the biggest “why is she running?” status. She wasn’t the biggest centrist or the most progressive, she’s from a state that might, theoretically, be competitive this cycle but isn’t most cycles and up until last night, “Minnesota Nice” appeared to be a synonym for boring. What does Klobuchar do well? It turns out she can politely but firmly poke holes in Warren’s arguments, making the Massachusetts senator’s high-dudgeon “you’re attacking me because I’m the only one standing up for the people” schtick sound overwrought and ridiculous.

    “At least Bernie’s being honest here and saying how he’s going to pay for this and that taxes are going to go up. And I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but you have not said that, and I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we’re going to send the invoice.”

    “I appreciate Elizabeth’s work. But, again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done.”

    “I want to give a reality check here to Elizabeth, because no one on this stage wants to protect billionaires. Not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires.”

    What we saw last night — particularly in the one-on-one concern-off held by Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke on gun violence — is that progressive Democrats get really used to being able to play the “I care about people, and you don’t” card against their opponents, and they’re really shocked and indignant when their own style of criticism is turned against them. You get the feeling that Buttigieg really sees O’Rourke as a political dilettante, play-acting at leadership having never had that much executive responsibility in office.

  • Joe Cunningham at Redstate has his own list of winners and losers:

    Winners: Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders

    Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, was seemingly everyone’s target. Biden targeted her. Kamala Harris targeted her. Tulsi Gabbard and others seemed to think that she was the candidate to beat during the debate, and so they tried. However, none of the blows really stuck. She also had some help from the producers of the debate, covering for Warren against an attack from Gabbard in particular. Her ability to withstand the attacks helped her image a bit, and she is definitely going to come out at least breaking even here.

    Pete Buttigieg stood out more than I think people expected. His shot at Beto O’Rourke knocked the Texas Democrat out. He scrapped with Warren and didn’t come across as foolish as others did. He appears now to be vying for the very base that Joe Biden has, and he looked very good doing it. If Biden falters, right now it’s not difficult to see those voters moving to Buttigieg.

    Bernie Sanders was very Bernie Sanders, and that did not hurt him. In fact, a little added sympathy from his heart issues late last week helped him perhaps dodge some attacks from the others on the stage. Nothing really stood out, but like Warren and Biden, “not losing” a debate with their level of support and backing them is as good as a win IF no one else stands out. And… no one did.

    The Losers: Joe Biden, Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris

    Joe Biden was, once again, seemingly left alone for the most part. Up until the end of the debate, he wasn’t really hit too hard, and even after the divisions over Medicare For All, Biden’s record in the Senate and as Vice President, and a rather chauvinist attempt to take credit for Elizabeth Warren’s time as head of the consumer finance agency she touted as a major accomplishment, Biden still stood tall. The problem is that all of this happened to Biden as an afterthought. Everyone was focused on Warren. Everyone was worried about Sanders’ health. Everyone was looking for Buttigieg and others to step up. And no one really cared how well Biden did. That is a bad thing for him.

    Beto O’Rourke has a glass jaw, and everyone knows it now. When Pete Buttigieg landed a full-on blow, saying “I don’t need a lesson in courage from you,” it was pretty much over for the furriest Democratic candidate. Beto came off as weak and, when not talking about guns, he frankly appeared to lack the backbone necessary to advocate as equally for his other unconstitutional pursuits. If he doesn’t fold this week, then he’s even more foolish than we knew.

    Plus this: “What on God’s green earth is Tom Steyer even doing here? He exists on this debate stage solely to make people wish he didn’t. There is no reason for him here. He’s not even a good distraction from the other candidates. He’s just… there.”

  • They debated breaking up big tech. And the hill Kamala Harris died on was…Trump’s Twitter account.
  • Why aren’t more candidates dropping out?

    There are seven other active candidates legitimate enough to make major media lists who will not be on the stage — and are very unlikely to meet the tougher criteria for the November and subsequent debates — who are nonetheless still in the field….Messam hasn’t even made some lists and has been on others because, well, he’s an elected official, not some random schmo claiming to run for president to advertise his dry-cleaning business or whatever. The city of which he is mayor, Miramar, Florida, is actually larger that Pete Buttigieg’s South Bend. But he hasn’t come within a mile of a debate stage. Nor has former congressman and retired admiral Joe Sestak, who has been in the race since June but hasn’t made much of an impression.

    There are five others, though, who did make the June and July debates, but none since then, and haven’t dropped out. Of these, author and self-help guru Marianne Williamson has shown some grassroots fundraising chops (she met the donor threshold for tonight’s debate, but only had one qualifying poll); she raised a non-negligible $3.1 million in the third quarter, double her second-quarter haul. There are two barely surviving candidates with fine résumés and theoretical paths to the nomination if Joe Biden ever crashed and burned: the self-styled moderates Colorado senator Michael Bennet and Montana governor Steve Bullock. Congressman John Delaney is kind of sui generis: His personal wealth makes fundraising for anything other than debate qualification largely unnecessary, but he’s been in the race longer than anyone and had one debate (in July) in which he got lots of exposure — yet still is in nowheresville in terms of measurable support. He’s said he’ll stay in until Iowa no matter what.

    When Ohio congressman Tim Ryan suspended his campaign in the wake of the Dayton shootings in August, a lot of people figured he’d be formally out of the race before long. But he hasn’t dropped out, technically, though he’s simultaneously running a House reelection campaign.

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. In his day job as a senator (you know, the one he’s keeping), he reintroduced a bill to ban congresscritters from becoming lobbyists. Good for him.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden or bust for big money donors?

    The Democratic Party’s most powerful donors are running out of options in the presidential race. Their warhorse Joe Biden is stumbling, while the other corporate-minded candidates lag far behind. For party elites, with less than four months to go before voting starts in caucuses and primaries, 2020 looks like Biden or bust.

    A key problem for the Democratic establishment is that the “electability” argument is vaporizing in the political heat. Biden’s shaky performances on the campaign trail during the last few months have undermined the notion that he’s the best bet to defeat Donald Trump. The latest polling matchups say that Biden and his two strong rivals for the nomination, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, would each hypothetically beat Trump by around 10 points.

    As such realities sink in, the focus is turning to where the party’s entrenched power brokers don’t want it to go — the actual merits of the candidates in terms of political history, independence from big-money special interests, and longtime commitment to positions now favored by most Democrats.

    With the electability claim diminished, Biden faces a steep climb on the merits of his record and current policy stances. The looming crisis for the Biden forces is reflected in the fact that his top campaign operatives have already publicly conceded he could lose the first two nomination contests, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

    And in an era when small donations from the grassroots are adding up to big financial hauls, Biden is so uninspiring that he’s losing the money race by a wide margin. Despite his relentless harvesting of big checks from hedge-fund managers, rich CEOs and the like, Biden’s campaign raised a total of only about $15 million in the last quarter, compared to around $25 million that Sanders and Warren each received. The New York Times noted that the duo’s fundraising totals are markers for “the collective enthusiasm in the party for progressive candidates pushing messages of sweeping change.”

    But Biden continues to greatly benefit from the orientations of corporate media outlets that loudly echo the concerns of corporate Democrats (often called “moderates” or “centrists”) and their kindred spirits in realms like Wall Street. Rarely inclined to dispel the longstanding myth of “Lunch Bucket Joe,” reporting has been sparse on his legislative legacy in service to such industries as credit-card companies, banks and the healthcare business.

    Media affection for Biden is matched by the biases of corporate media that — for many years — have routinely spun coverage of Sanders in negative ways, amplifying the messages from people at the helm of huge corporations. Recent months have seen no letup of anti-Bernie salvos, with Sanders as a kind of “heat shield” for Warren, catching the vast majority of the left-baiting attacks that would otherwise be aimed at her. Yet, as Warren’s campaign gains momentum, she is becoming more of a prime target for wealthy sectors and their media echo chambers.

    I haven’t seen much criticism of Warren from the MSM; mainly it’s been non-stop tongue bathes, at least since Harris faded. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Biden’s campaign blew $924,000 on private jets. That’s one out of every 16 bucks his campaign raised. Also, his warchest is down to $8.9 million. More on those implications:

    Biden raised $15.7 million last quarter, spent $17.7 million and has about $9 million in the bank, according to the reports. In other words, for every $1 the campaign raised, it spent $1.12. If he continues to spend his third-quarter average of roughly $196,120 a day and continues to raise $174,904 each day, he can grind out until Election Day. But his future finances get ugly if he wants to build beyond the current footprint.

    That rate of spending leaves Biden with a campaign nest egg smaller than Bernie Sanders ($33.7 million), Warren ($25.7 million), Pete Buttigieg ($23.4 million) and Kamala Harris ($10.6 million).

    Biden also has a stupid gun control plan, including a restoration of the cosmetic “assault weapon” ban of 1994 and a “voluntary” gun buyback. (Hat tip: John Richardson.)

  • Update: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Thinking of Running After All? Remember how Bloomberg said he wasn’t going to run? Guess what?

    Mike Bloomberg is still considering a 2020 run — if Joe Biden’s campaign implodes, according to a new report.

    The CNBC report comes just days after The Post revealed that TV’s “Judge Judy” said the billionaire would be a “perfect presidential candidate.”

    The former mayor in March announced he would not run for president because he believed it would be difficult for him to prevail in a Democratic primary. He also saw former Vice President Biden as a viable moderate voice.

    But a CNBC report Monday claims Bloomberg is reconsidering after seeing Biden stumble and lose ground to Elizabeth Warren.

    Get ready for Steyer 2: Billionaire Bugaloo.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Forbes reviews his tax plans:

    Color me confused. In one breath, Booker has promised to repeal the [2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] for the highest-earning individuals, a move that would return the top rate to 39.6%. There is, of course, the 3.8% net investment tax, meaning the top rate on interest or passive business income would reach 43.4%.

    But in another breath, Booker promises to tax capital gains and dividends at ordinary rates, and states that the top rate on capital gains would become 40.8%, which would seem to indicate that the top rate on ordinary income will not increase from 37% to 39.6%.

    In any event, a top rate of 41 – 44% — should that be where Booker lands — will pale in comparison to the top rate of 70%(!) proposed by both Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris.

  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. He was fundraising in Chicago, along with Booker and Buttigieg.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Progressives: “Don’t you dare attack Queen Liz!The Anti-Fun Party: “Pete Buttigieg Criticizes Chappelle’s Latest Special, Even Though He Has Not Seen It.” Gets a Fox News interview. Krystal Ball (who is evidently a real person and not a Thomas Pynchon chracter), dissents from the post-debate Buttigieg lovefest:

    Pete was praised for launching the same dumb Medicare for All attack that we’ve heard from someone or another at every debate and for obliging the CNN moderators by continuing the grudge match with Beto O’Rourke that no one wanted or asked for.

    But maybe my favorite take was from Van Jones, who described the desire for everyone to have health care the way every other developed country does as “wokenomics,” and then went on to outright predict the field would narrow to Warren and Pete!

    Pistol Pete versus Warren the selfie queen. There is no doubt that this would be the dream matchup of every post-grad holding, Harvard envying, McKinsey-adjacent pundit in the land. Just imagine the plans and the civility and the erudition. No word on what would have happened to Bernie and his 1.4 million donors and 33 million dollars in the bank to say nothing of his working-class supporters. Or for that matter where the older black voters who have solidly supported Biden would have magically vanished to.

    Guys, I think we have enough evidence to officially declare that the media has decided to pull mayor Pete off the gurney and resuscitate his failing presidential run.

    The Harvard-bashing is tasty, but this is a stupid take. Buttigieg has been raising money hand-over-fist and rising in the polls before the debate, so in no way is his campaign “failing.”

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a profile in The Stanford Daily, the school newspaper for the college he and his twin brother attended. It’s a fawning profile for a campaign where such things are now few and far between.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But see the entry for Tulsi Gabbard below. And I get an excuse to embed this:

  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. On a tour of Iowa.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Hillary Clinton accused Gabbard of being groomed by the Russians to run a third party campaign.

    Appearing on Obama campaign manager David Plouffe’s podcast, Clinton made a number of claims regarding Russian meddling in U.S. elections, including that Gabbard’s substantial social-media support relies on Russian bots. Gabbard was the most-searched candidate after the first and second Democratic debates.

    “I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said on the podcast. “She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”

    Although Clinton did not explicitly mention Gabbard’s name, when asked if the accusation was leveled at the Hawaii Congresswoman, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said “If the nesting doll fits.”

    Result:

    Notice how quickly CNN cut off Gabbard when she challenged Elizabeth Warren. “Even among the other frontrunners, Warren got almost a full 10 minutes extra vs. Biden and Sanders. That’s pretty remarkable given how absolutely boring and uncharismatic she is. But there’s a simple reason she got so much extra time. The moderators were favoring her big time.”

    No wonder Clinton hates her…

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris can’t answer a simple question. “Kamala Harris seems to lack any instinct for leadership.” And her campaign just keeps doing stupid stuff. Campaigned in Aiken, South Carolina.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Angry Amy Came to Play:

    A confessed bird murderer who presided over a Senate office that former staffers described as “controlled by fear, anger, and shame,” Klobuchar (D., Minn.) traded her inside voice for her shouty voice, and lit into her Democratic opponents, accusing them of trying to deceive the American people with lies.

    De facto frontrunner Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) bore the brunt of Amy’s rage, especially when it came to the issue of health care and Warren’s refusal to admit that middle class taxes will go up under her proposed “Medicare for All” plan.

    “I’m sorry, Elizabeth … I think we owe it to the American people to tell them where we’re going to send the invoice,” Klobuchar seethed. “I believe the best and boldest idea here is to not trash Obamacare, but to do exactly what Barack Obama wanted to do from the beginning, and that’s have a public option.”

    Klobuchar was just getting started, accusing Warren of wanting to kick 150 million people off of their preferred health insurance plans by forcing them to enroll in Medicare.

    “And I’m tired of hearing whenever I say these things, ‘Oh, it’s Republican talking points,'” Klobuchar fumed. “You are making Republican talking points right now in this room … I think there is a better way that is bold, that will cover more people, and it’s the one we should get behind.”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) Gets a Dave Wiegel profile in the Washington Post:

    Klobuchar, who struggled for attention in the Democratic primary, says this week’s debate helped her catch on at exactly the right time. Her town halls are crowded, with staffers running to get more chairs to pack breweries or event centers. She leads the field in local endorsements, especially state legislators, “with more to come,” she says. She kicked off her bus tour with the support of Andy McKean, a Republican state legislator who bolted his party six months ago and who pronounced Klobuchar the kind of Democrat who could unite America again.

    “If you want to peak in this race,” she said after a stop in Waterloo, “you want to peak now, instead of six months before [the caucuses].”

    A few other candidates still draw larger crowds, but Klobuchar is going for a particular kind of caucus-goer: the loyal Democrat who wants to win back those mysterious Trump voters. In interviews around the events, Klobuchar-curious voters tended to list her alongside South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.); and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as the candidates who could have the longest reach, because they were not seen as too left-wing. Craig Hinderaker, a 71-year-old farmer who saw Klobuchar in Panora (population 1,069), said he’d committed to her months earlier after becoming convinced that she had centrist appeal and real campaign skills.

    “Biden was my top choice, but he’s been dropping,” Hinderaker said. “Just too many errors.”

    Klobuchar, who began running TV and digital ads in Iowa only this month, had methodically introduced herself to the state as the electable, relatable neighbor who Republicans had already learned to love. On the campaign’s official bingo cards, there are squares for “bio diesel plant” and “breakfast pizza,” as well as the more evasive “bridge that crosses over the river of our divide.” Her stump speeches and town hall answers are peppered with references to Republican colleagues — “Lindsey Graham, who took up my bill with John McCain,” or “James Lankford, a very conservative senator from Oklahoma” — who have helped her pass bills. Without mentioning Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), she describes the sort of Democrats she says wouldn’t win in 2020.

    “People don’t really want the loudest voice in the room,” Klobuchar said in Mason City. “They want a tough voice in the room, which I think I showed I could do in the debate. They want someone that’s going to tell them the truth — look them in the eye and tell them the truth — and not make promises that they can’t keep. They want someone who understands that there’s a difference between a plan and a pipe dream, and that not everything can be free.”

    Also got a CBS News piece.

  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Wayne Messam brought in $5 in campaign contributions in Q3. Not $5 million. Not $500,000. Not $5,000. $5. Plus a timeline of his failing campaign. He says the $5 was a mistake, but I’m going to use this opportunity to move him down to the also-rans for the next clown car update.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Still says he’s coming for your guns. Law enforcement officials are not about to carry out O’Rourke’s crazy gun confiscation scheme. “Backtracking on his claim earlier this month that religious organizations should be taxed if they did not perform gay marriage, O’Rourke said churches and other religious nonprofits should maintain their tax-exempt status, but that they should be legally obliged not to discriminate against gay and transgender people.” He panders to the far left and then walks it back without rhyme or reason. Not sure anyone has a reason to pretend to care about him anymore. Every time you think you’ve reached the depth of O’Rourke cringe, there’s always deeper cringe:

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a mini-profile in the Washington Post; it’s less informative than his Wikipedia entry or campaign site. His presidential fundraising is sucking wind. Surprise! So is his House reelection campaign!
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Trying to get back in the groove after his heart attack:

    Bernie Sanders, just weeks after a heart attack took him off the presidential campaign trail, renewing questions about his age and health, roared back last week with a strong debate performance and the disclosure of a quarterly fundraising haul that vanquished all of his Democratic competitors.

    But the 78-year old Vermont senator, whose powerful oratory and progressive message on income inequality lifted him to serious contention in the 2016 Democratic contest against Hillary Clinton, is less formidable this time, with polls in early states and beyond showing his status as a top-tier candidate at risk.

    From the challenge posed by fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren to staff clashes and poor strategic communication, Sanders has struggled to compete in a larger field and a new political environment. His health scare added another major challenge.

    Other than Tuesday’s televised debate in Ohio, Sanders has been largely off the trail since his heart attack Oct. 1. He held his first major campaign event since his hospitalization on Saturday, when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Sanders at a New York City rally to endorse his candidacy.

    An estimated 26,000 people showed up for that rally, which was slightly larger than a New York City crowd Warren drew last month. Did the heart attack recharge his campaign?

    For months, Sanders’s campaign was largely listless. Sanders still had a devoted following, though most polls suggested what was obvious on the ground: Fans were drifting to other candidates, most obviously Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. At events in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond, I heard the same comments from longtime Sanders supporters: They still loved him and were grateful for how he’d jolted Democratic politics to the left, but he was too old to be president, and it was time for someone else to step up. The heart attack seemed like a macabre metaphor for the state of Sanders’s campaign.

    But contrarianism runs deep in the senator from Vermont—a 2016 campaign aide once described one of Sanders’s main animating principles to me as: “Fuck me? No, fuck you!” With his comeback, Sanders seems to be saying just that—not only to any detractors ready to write him off, but to the organ pumping inside his own chest.

    And his supporters have responded.

    “I kind of thought [his heart attack] was the end of the campaign, but the boost has been significant, and I’m encouraged by it,” said Quinn Miller, a 33-year-old city-government worker wearing a blue Unidos con Bernie T-shirt.

    “It got everyone rallied,” said Erik Pye, a 45-year-old Army veteran and store owner from Brooklyn. “It gave everyone a sense of urgency.”

    The incident seems to have made serious again all the Sanders supporters who’d recently wandered off, I observed to 28-year-old Elizabeth Johnson, who’d traveled from Rhode Island with her boyfriend. “Serious,” she joked, “as a heart attack.”

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Fox News profile on his walk across New Hampshire. “It’s a non-traditional journey. Sestak will often stop down and jump into the support vehicle to attend an event or make a campaign stop or two before heading back to the spot where he stopped his trip, so he can resume his journey. And each evening he returns to a home in southern New Hampshire, where he stays with friends.” He actually seems to be walking alone for significant portions of the trip. A candidate’s time is a campaign’s most precious resource. The fact that he’s spending it plodding alone and mostly ignored is the perfect metaphor for the Sestak 2020 campaign.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. America, meet Tom Steyer:

    When billionaire Tom Steyer is up on the debate stage tonight and several serious-minded senators and governors are not, viewers can fairly ask what the heck is going on. Other Democratic candidates have explicitly accused Steyer of buying his way onto the debate stage. Per the Sacramento Bee: “In an email to supporters, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke said Steyer has ‘succeeded in buying his way up there.’ New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker wrote to supporters in a fundraising email that Steyer’s ‘ability to spend millions of his personal wealth has helped him gain in the polls like no one else in this race.’”

    Steyer has spent $20 million on television ads — boosting his name ID and poll support above that oh-so-high 2 percent threshold — and he’s collected donations from more than 165,000 individuals.

    Tonight, many Americans will get their first look at Tom Steyer, and while there’s always the chance he surprises us, the odds are good that by the end of the night, viewers at home will wonder if he won his spot on the debate stage in some sort of auction or perhaps through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. If Tom Steyer did not exist, cynical conservatives would have to invent him as the embodiment of hilariously self-absorbed, hypocritical elitists who believe in wildly impractical happy-talk theories and who have only the vaguest notion of what the U.S. Constitution says.

    Steyer is a billionaire hedge-fund manager who told the New York Times that he doesn’t think of himself as rich. At his hedge fund, Steyer helped “wealthy investors move their money through an offshore company to help shield their gains from U.S. taxes.” Back in 2005, he invested $34 million in Corrections Corporation of America, “which runs migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” Steyer says he regrets that past investment.

    He’s an ardent environmentalist and climate-change activist who made part of his fortune in coal development projects. He has spent tens of millions of dollars on political ads because he wants to “get corporate money out of politics.” It’s unclear if he has other controversial investments, because he “declined to go into detail about significant segments of his investment portfolio, citing confidentiality agreements that bar him from publicly disclosing the underlying assets in which he is invested.” (Steyer believes President Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution because “has directly profited from dealing with foreign governments through his businesses in the U.S. and around the globe.”)

    In January, he declared that he would be “dedicating 100 percent of my time, money and effort to one cause: working for Mister Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. I am not running for president at this time. Instead I am strengthening my commitment to Need to Impeach in 2019.” But by July — well before House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of impeachment proceedings — he changed his mind and decided to run.

    “Tom Steyer Calls for Impeachment Inquiry to Be Made Public.” I think this may be the first issue Steyer and I agree on.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Suburban Democratic white women are not sold on Warren:

    “But she would never get elected,” says Lowry. “There is no chance.”

    “Why do you say that?” says White, a former navy officer with a PhD in health policy.

    “All the people who voted for Trump are scared to death of socialism,” she says. Warren’s policies are far too left-leaning to appeal to most Americans, Lowry says. Living in this area, she adds, she understands the importance of selecting a moderate.

    When pundits question Trump’s support among women, he will often allude to the “hidden” suburban women voting block that backed him in 2016.

    Democrats should worry that Warren is the frontrunner:

    Warren was taken to task during the debate for evading basic questions about how she would pay for her signature Medicare-for-all health-care plan, and how she would implement her controversial—and constitutionally dubious—wealth tax. For a candidate who brags about having a policy plan for everything, it didn’t look good.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar called Warren’s health-care plan a “pipe dream” and offered her a “reality check” on her wealth tax, attacks that were echoed and reinforced by the other candidates throughout the night. When Mayor Pete Buttigieg asked Warren, “yes or no,” whether her Medicare-for-all plan would raise taxes on the middle class, Warren hemmed and hawed, talked about her “principles,” and evaded giving a yes or no answer.

    Buttigieg and others seized on this, calling into question Warren’s trustworthiness. When Sen. Bernie Sanders jumped in to explain that his universal health-care plan would increase taxes, Klobuchar and Buttigieg noted that at least Sanders was being honest and straightforward about his plan. Through it all, Warren seemed defensive and taken aback that her fellow candidates were coming after her like this.

    The reason all this should concern Democrats is that if Warren can’t handle pointed questions about basic aspects of her major policy proposals in a primary debate, how is she going to weather the storms of the general election? If she can’t bring herself to admit that Medicare-for-all will mean higher taxes for everyone, which it certainly will, how will general election voters already skeptical of Washington be persuaded to trust her?

    Trump won a crowed GOP primary in 2016 in part by saying things no other candidate was willing to say and putting himself forward as an honest outsider who tells it like it is. If Democrats want to put someone up against Trump who can beat him at this game, their candidate had better have a credible answer for how he or she will pay for a $32 trillion program that’s steadily losing support. The most recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found just 51 percent now support Medicare-for-all, a two-point drop from last month and a five-point drop since April, even as the share of those who oppose it is growing.

    Questions about how Democrats plan to pay for these things are only going to intensify as we approach the general election, and as more Americans realize that they’ll certainly have to pay higher taxes for socialized health care and college, such policies will likely continue to lose support.

    Floats the idea of ending aid to Israel over West Bank settlements.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. It’s been too long since Williamson got one of those weirdly glowing profiles, so here’s one from her old ministry stomping grounds: “Soul on Fire: Marianne Williamson brings explosion of love to Encinitas town hall event.” (I saw Explosion of Love open for The String Cheese Incident at SXSW.) Williamson hits Clinton over the Gabbard smear: “The Democratic establishment has got to stop smearing women it finds inconvenient! The character assassination of women who don’t toe the party line will backfire. Stay strong @TulsiGabbard . You deserve respect and you have mine.” Also objecting to Clinton’s comments was…
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. He says Gabbard “deserves much more respect” than Clinton gave her. “She literally just got back from serving our country abroad.” The Yang campaign is now treated seriously enough that we’re actually starting to see some hit pieces. First up: Slate: “Andrew Yang Is Full of It.” There follows a somewhat tedious and misguided discussion of automation vs. trade deals are responsible for the decline in manufacturing jobs. (Both are more wrong than right; union contracts and policies and the structure of tax laws probably had bigger effects than either.) “Andrew Yang, Snake Oil Salesman:

    Not only has he exceeded expectations for his polling and fundraising, not only has he developed a cult following, not only has he got people talking about his signature idea, the universal basic income, he actually has other candidates expressing openness to it.

    It’s too bad that Yang’s idea is a foolish response to a non-problem. Worse, Yang is trying to persuade people to fear and oppose something that we need more of and that is a key to economic progress and higher wages — namely, automation.

    It is through technological innovation that workers become more productive — i.e., can create more with less — and society becomes richer.

    To hear Yang tell it, robots are on the verge of ripping an irreparable hole in the American job market. He’s particularly alarmed by the potential advent of autonomous vehicles. According to Yang, “All you need is self-driving cars to destabilize society.” He predicts that in a few years, “we’re going to have a million truck drivers out of work,” and “all hell breaks loose.”

    Not to put too fine a point on it, Yang’s fear of automation in general and self-driving cars in particular is completely insane.

    It can’t be that the only thing holding our society together is the fact that cars and trucks must be operated by people. If innovations in transportation were really the enemy, we would have been done in long ago by the advent of canals, then railroads, then automobiles and highways.

    At a practical level, Yang’s assumption that autonomous vehicles are going to wipe out all trucking jobs, and relatively soon, is unsupported. If progress has been made toward self-driving cars, we’ve learned that the jump to full autonomy is a vast one that will take many years to achieve. There will be time for the sector and people employed in it to adjust.

    He outraised Buttigieg and Harris among big tech (which in this case means Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft).

  • 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, or who declared then dropped out:

  • 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)
  • 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
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for October 14, 2019

    Monday, October 14th, 2019

    Biden and Warren tie in Iowa, another debate looms, Harris continues to plummet, LBGTCrazy, indestructible Bernie is back on his feet, Yang is the new Ron Paul, and Beto is coming after your church. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Q3 Fundraising

    Only two new listings, in bold.

    1. Bernie Sanders: $25.3 million.
    2. Elizabeth Warren: $24.6 million.
    3. Pete Buttigieg: $19.1 million.
    4. Joe Biden: $15.2 million.
    5. Kamala Harris: $11.6 million.
    6. Andrew Yang: $10 million.
    7. Cory Booker: $6 million.
    8. Amy Klobuchar: $4.8 million.
    9. Marianne Williamson: $3 million.
    10. Steve Bullock: $2.3 million.
    11. Michael Bennet: $2.1 million.
    12. Tom Steyer: $2 million.

    The Steyer amount is how much he raised; we’ll have to wait until his FEC form is posted to see how much of his own money he tossed in.

    Polls

  • CBS/YouGov (Iowa): Biden 22, Warren 22, Sanders 21, Buttigieg 14, Harris 5, Steyer 3, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Bennet 1, Gabbard 1, Williamson 1, Ryan 1. I think that’s the first time Warren has tied Biden in Iowa, but it’s essentially a three-way tie for the top. That’s also a really good showing for Buttigieg: Maybe all that money is finally have an effect.
  • CBS/YouGov (New Hampshire): Warren 32, Biden 24, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 7, Yang 5, Harris 4, Steyer 4, Klobuchar 2, Gabbard 2, Booker 1, O’Rourke 1, Ryan 1.
  • CBS/YouGov (South Carolina): Biden 43, Warren 18, Sanders 16, Harris 7, Buttigieg 4, Booker 3, Steyer 2, O’Rourke 1, Klobuchar 1, Yang 1, Williamson 1, Ryan 1, Bennet 1.
  • Fox News: Biden 32, Warren 22, Sanders 17, Harris 5, Buttigieg 4, O’Rourke 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Bennet 1, Castro 1, Gabbard 1, Gabbard 1, Ryan 1, Steyer 1, Williamson 1.
  • PPP (North Carolina): Biden 29, Warren 22, Buttigieg 9, Sanders 6, Yang 3, Harris 3, Booker 2, O’Rourke 1, Castro 1.
  • Quinnipiac: Warren 29, Biden 26, Sanders 16, Buttigieg 4, Yang 3, Harris 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 1, Castro 1, Ryan 1, Bennet 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Democrats had another interminable town hall focused on LGBTQMOUSE issues, and the winner was President Donald Trump.

    While the event was called the “Equality Town Hall,” representation was not exactly equal. The vast majority of the questions concerned, and were asked by, gay men and trans women. There was one token bisexual and one token nonbinary person permitted to ask a question, but I’m not sure the word “lesbian” was uttered once. They did, thank goddess, let butch comic Julie Goldman ask Kamala Harris about the most lesbian issue of all: homeless cats children. But it really should have been called the CNN Gay and Trans Women of Color Town Hall since a few letters of “LGBTQ” were basically ignored.

    As for the substance of the debate, the candidates were asked varying versions of five different questions: Will you make the Red Cross take blood from gay men? How will you make PrEP cheaper for gay men? What are you going to do about hate crimes and the “epidemic of violence against trans women of color”? What are you going to do about trans people in the military? And, are you going to pass the Equality Act? Everyone gave basically the same answers, which are as follows: Yes; force insurance to cover it; enforce hate crime laws through the Department of Justice; welcome them; and yes. If they wanted to distinguish themselves on matters of policy, asking questions everyone agrees on was not the way to do it.

    The all distinguished themselves by proving how far they were willing to bend over to bow to tranny madness.

  • It’s debate week.
  • The fifth debate will be in Georgia on November 20. Wait, weren’t Democrats boycotting Georgia over abortion?
  • Ballotpedia offers a roundup. The 12(!) presidential candidates on a debate stage at one time beats the Republican record of 11.
  • All the Democrats want to do is cut up the pie; none of them are talking about how to expand it.
  • Shockingly, the party of Hillary Clinton sucks at cybersecurity. The irony here is that Williamson’s campaign gets higher cybersecurity ratings than Yang’s…
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Unveils a housing plan. Because what’s more loved than public housing?
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden received $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma Group, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada member Andriy Derkach said citing investigation materials.” “Joe Biden’s Family Has Been Getting Rich off His Political Career for Decades.” At lot of familiar stuff, but also this:

    In 1973, one year after Joe Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29, James Biden opened the nightclub Seasons Change with what Politico, referencing contemporaneous local reporting in Delaware, called “unusually generous bank loans.” When James ran into trouble, Joe, as a senator, later complained that the bank shouldn’t have loaned James the money. “What I’d like to know,” Biden told the News Journal in 1977, “is how the guy in charge of loans let it get this far.” The paper investigated, and sources at the bank said that the loan was made because James was Joe’s brother.

    James, in the ’90s, founded Lion Hall Group, which lobbied for Mississippi trial lawyers involved in tobacco litigation. According to Curtis Wilkie’s book “The Fall of the House of Zeus,” the trial lawyers wanted James Biden’s help pushing Joe Biden on tobacco legislation.

    Also:

    In November 2010, James Biden joined a construction firm. Seven months later, that firm that would go on to win a $1.5 billion contract building homes in Iraq.

    The company’s founder, Irvin Richter, told Fox Business Network that having James on board helped. “Listen, his name helps him get in the door, but it doesn’t help him get business,” he said. “People who have important names tend to get in the door easier but it doesn’t mean success. If he had the name Obama, he would get in the door easier.”

    Quiet panic in the Biden camp. Hunter Biden is resigning from a Chinese private equity company (because that’s a perfectly normal position for a crack user who happens to be the son of a former American vice president), but where is he? Joe Biden joins the chorus of Democrats calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, because of course he did.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. All in on Iowa. Which is a change.

    He returned to Iowa this week for a four-day swing, his longest trip through the Hawkeye State since a May RV tour that was also four days.

    But in between those May and October swings, Booker made just six trips to Iowa, where he spent nine days campaigning and attending events for members of the public or organizations or that were open to press, according to a CBS News analysis. During that same stretch, only former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, who entered the race in July, and Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam, who has been to Iowa once, spent fewer days publicly campaigning in Iowa.

  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Man not in the debates declares that the nomination won’t be won in debates.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Pushes back on O’Rourke’s plan to strip tax exempt status from churches. “That means going to war not only with churches, but I would think with mosques and a lot of organizations that may not have the same view of various religious principles that I do. But also because of the separation of church and state are acknowledged as nonprofits in this country.” He’s against socialized medicine. Gets a Hollywood Reporter profile. Why is Hollywood Reporter covering presidential candidates?
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Evidently the best news he had this week was about someone playing him on Saturday Night Live. Neither he nor O’Rourke have released their Q3 fundraising numbers, which is usually a bad sign.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Maybe? She’s on a book tour, but members of the Permanent Clinton Crony Circus say it’s only that. But: “‘A lot of people are talking to her, which isn’t helpful,’ another person close to Clinton told CNN. ‘They get into her head because she so dislikes Donald Trump that she can’t see straight.'” Well, someone so easily deranged sure sounds like who you would want in the White House…
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Still not dropping out. “Delaney: I wouldn’t allow VP’s family members to sit on foreign boards.” It’s easy to talk about how virtuous you’ll be in the office you’ll never hold. He hopes that endless grinding pays off with epic loot drops his presidential campaign.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s threatening to boycott the debate, which would be a gutsy move, but I’m not sure a smart one. Gabbard polling around 2% hasn’t stopped the New York Times from publishing a hit piece on her:

    Among her fellow Democrats, Representative Tulsi Gabbard has struggled to make headway as a presidential candidate, barely cracking the 2 percent mark in the polls needed to qualify for Tuesday night’s debate. She is now injecting a bit of chaos into her own party’s primary race, threatening to boycott that debate to protest what she sees as a “rigging” of the 2020 election. That’s left some Democrats wondering what, exactly, she is up to in the race, while others worry about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media.

    Perhaps strangest of all is the unusual array of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of her.

    On podcasts and online videos, in interviews and Twitter feeds, alt-right internet stars, white nationalists, libertarian activists and some of the biggest boosters of Mr. Trump heap praise on Ms. Gabbard. They like the Hawaiian congresswoman’s isolationist foreign policy views. They like her support for drug decriminalization. They like what she sees as censorship by big technology platforms.

    Then there is 4chan, the notoriously toxic online message board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semites fawn over Ms. Gabbard, calling her “Mommy” and praising her willingness to criticize Israel. In April, the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, took credit for Ms. Gabbard’s qualification for the first two Democratic primary debates.

    Brian Levin, the head of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, said Ms. Gabbard had “the seal of approval” within white nationalist circles. “If people have that isolationist worldview, there is one candidate that could best express them on each side: Gabbard on the Democratic side and Trump on the Republican side,” Mr. Levin said.

    Ms. Gabbard has disavowed some of her most hateful supporters, castigating the news media for giving “any oxygen at all” to the endorsement she won from the white nationalist leader David Duke. But her frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show have buoyed her support in right-wing circles.

    Both Ms. Gabbard and her campaign refused requests for comment about her support in right-wing circles or threat to boycott the debate.

    In the bold new world of the New York Times, even a Hindu of Samoan extraction gets to be a “white nationalist” for 15 minutes! Even by lazy smear job standards its a lazy smear job. Gabbard rightfully slammed it as bullshit. Gets a Reason interview with John Stossel. You might think she would approve of Trump’s withdrawal of troops from northern Syria. She doesn’t.

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 has a dead woman walking postmortem. The list four reasons her campaign hasn’t taken off (Biden and Warren’s strength, not her year, etc.), but this one rings the most true:

    3. Harris has not run a good campaign

    This theory takes the Harris surge in July more seriously — it was real and represented a real opportunity for the California senator. Her campaign simply squandered it.

    Harris’s campaign launch speech was widely praised, and she was strong in the first debate. But she has not had a strategy of keeping herself in the news, the way Warren’s policy rollouts and liberal stances did earlier in the year. And Harris hasn’t built a clear brand and rationale for her candidacy along the lines of Buttigieg’s (“I’m young”), Biden’s (“I can beat Trump”), or Sanders and Warren (“I will take on the wealthy”).

    I think this lack of clarity about the rationale for her candidacy — beyond appealing to a broad coalition of Democrats — has led to some of Harris’s stumbles. Her months-long waffling on Medicare for All likely stemmed from a desire to appease both the party’s left-wing (which favors MFA) and the center-left wing (which opposes MFA). But this field may be too big for anyone to straddle the left and center-left — and perhaps health care is an issue where you can’t equivocate. Similarly, while Harris attacked Biden’s past opposition to aggressive school integration plans, she was hesitant to offer much of a proposal of her own on that issue. It seemed like Harris wanted to use that issue to nod at her racial liberalism but wasn’t prepared to commit to a big school integration plan, which might be controversial.

    538 can’t state the obvious, unspoken rationale for her campaign: black people would vote for her because of her skin color. Evidence suggests not.

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Klobuchar takes shots at health and education plans supported by Sanders and Warren.” Good for her. If only she had more money, she’d be well-positioned if Biden stumbles and Democrats look for an alternative to the socialist justice wokeoff. But she doesn’t.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. The only news this week is him doing the job he actually holds rather than running for the one he’ll never have.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Will he miss the November debates?

    Although the failed senatorial candidate hit the donor threshold long ago, he’s failed to secure the qualifying polls he needs. In fact, the qualifying and non-qualifying national polls alike have seen O’Rourke sink like a stone. His RealClearPolitics polling average stands at 2.3%, half a point behind Andrew Yang. Yang, by the way, needs just one more poll to become the eighth candidate to secure a spot on the November stage.

    Theoretically, O’Rourke could go Steyer’s route and divert all of his efforts to early state polling, but it’s unlikely that a new field office or Instagram live is going to save him. O’Rourke claims he raised more money this past quarter than the $3.6 million he raked in from April through June, but with Yang posting $10 million and Bernie Sanders topping the fundraising with more than $25.3 million, the top six candidates in the race have absorbed the bulk of the cash. Steyer can self-fund his vanity project, but O’Rourke probably can’t without help from his billionaire father-in-law.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.) Bow to gay marriage or have your church’s tax exempt status revoked, comrade. “What Beto O’Rourke said last night is a perfect example of why many orthodox Christians who despise Donald Trump will vote for him anyway. The survival of our institutions depends on keeping the Democrats out of the White House (and Congress) for as long as we can.”

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Ohio democrat will not be part of Ohio democratic presidential debate.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Post-heart attack and stents, the tough old bird is already up and doing interviews. But he is scaling back his campaign schedule. Accuses Warren of “being a capitalist in her bones.” Another “Lie down and let Elizabeth Warren walk over you” piece.
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s crossing New Hampshire.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. How he bought his way onto the debate stage.

    Steyer has spent an estimated $19 million on TV ads. The next-closest Democrat was Kirsten Gillibrand, who spent $1.1 million, according to an analysis by the FiveThirtyEight website. More than 70% of all ads from Democrats running for president on TV right now were purchased by his campaign. His digital buys are also high — at least $10 million since he entered the race in July.

    Steyer’s ascent to his first debate has drawn criticism from some competitors who say it proves the Democratic National Committee’s qualifying requirements are too easily bought.

    “His ability to spend millions of his personal wealth has helped him gain in the polls like no one else,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said in an email seeking donations.

    Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who didn’t make the debate, said the rules “have allowed a billionaire to bankroll his way onto the debate stage, while governors and senators with decades of public service experience have been forced out of the race.”

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Elizabeth Warren Is Jussie Smollett:

    Elizabeth Warren has a moving story about being fired from a teaching job because she was pregnant, a story that perfectly complements her political narrative that she is the tribune and champion of those who have been treated unfairly by the powerful. Joe Biden has a moving — and horrifying — story about his wife and daughter being killed by a drunk driver, a story that similarly could not have been designed more perfectly to bolster his political image as a man who can be counted on to soldier on in the face of adversity.

    Of course, neither story is true.

    Are we still caring about that sort of thing?

    Elizabeth Warren has long pretended to be a person of color — a “woman of color,” the Harvard law faculty called her. (That color is Pantone 11-0602.) What Senator Warren has in common with Jussie Smollett turns out to have nothing to do with skin tone. Smollett, you’ll recall, regaled the nation with the story of a couple of violent, Trump-loving, MAGA-hat-wearing white supremacists who just happened to be cruising a gay neighborhood in Chicago on the coldest night of the year, who also just happened to be fans of Empire, who also just happened to have some rope at hand. Who happened, as it turns out, to be a couple of Nigerian brothers and colleagues of Smollett’s.

    Fiction, yes. Deployed, as we are always told when these lies are exposed as lies, in the service of a larger truth, a truth of which such habitual and irredeemable liars as Warren, Biden, Smollett — and Lena Dunham, and the so-called journalists of Rolling Stone, and the perpetrators of a thousand phony campus hate-crime hoaxes — are the appointed apostles.

    “Does anybody seriously believe it was not as everyday as sunrise that employers made pregnant women leave their jobs 50 years ago?” CNBC’s John Harwood demanded in defense of Warren. Perhaps it has not occurred to Harwood, who purports to be a journalist of a kind, that the relevant question is not whether this sort of thing happened in the past to a great many women but whether this particular thing actually happened to this woman, which does not seem to be the case: The minutes of the local school-board meeting quite clearly document that Warren was offered a contract for further employment, which she declined. She was forthright in her account of the episode at earlier points in her life. She seems to have suddenly remembered the discrimination sometime between when she began advertising herself to the Ivy League as a Cherokee and the day when the Cherokee finally shamed her into knocking it off.

    Was her “viral moment” a setup? Speaking of tranny madness, Elizabeth Warren wants men in women’s prisons, as long as they’re claiming to be women. What could possibly go wrong?

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a WGN interview.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. I was going to make the point that Yang was the Democratic Ron Paul after his impressive haul, only to find that others have already beaten me to the punch:

    Long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang isn’t afraid to take a position on, well, anything. Browse through his campaign website, and you’ll see not just that he believes in universal basic income – the policy proposal for which he’s best known – but also that he wants to mandate the payment of NCAA athletes, to crack down on spam phone calls, and to secure $6 billion to revitalize dying shopping malls.

    Many of his policy positions are tied to causes with little prominence in the mainstream but a devoted following on the internet, like his recent stance against childhood circumcision, the domain of an online community that refer to themselves as ‘intactivists.’

    Anti-circumcision? Let the interminable flamewar begin!

    Yang’s has a digital savviness – a longtime tech entrepreneur, he most recently founded and helmed a nonprofit called Venture For America – and a willingness to traverse the turf of Reddit and 4chan (as well as Joe Rogan’s podcast, which he appeared on roughly before his online following started to really take off). He has duly earned himself a following that refers to themselves as the #YangGang. And it would be an understatement to call them enthusiastic. They propelled Yang’s improbable candidacy to a threshold of 65,000 individual donations, which the Democratic party designated as the requirement to be included in the party’s first televised debate.

    Many Yang fans say he’s the first candidate they’ve been excited about in a while, if ever. The Yang for President subreddit is lively, energized, and packed with ‘dank memes.’ Some have pointed to Yang’s popularity in corners of the internet that are best known for their early and fervent support of Donald Trump in 2016, or to followers of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the same year.

    But comparing the #YangGang phenomenon to Trump or Sanders supporters isn’t quite accurate. Donald Trump was an international celebrity before he ran for office. Sanders is a somewhat closer parallel, but at the same time he was a sitting senator, and was additionally able to tap into an obvious demographic of disgruntled leftist voters who didn’t want to put another person whose last name was Clinton into office.

    The most obvious parallel in recent American presidential politics is more likely Ron Paul’s candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2008, when he was an oddball Texas congressman whose anti-tax stance and opposition to the war in Iraq managed to build him a following of ‘techies, hippies, tax haters, and war protesters’ that largely congregated on the internet. ‘In recent months,’ Mother Jones magazine related in late 2007, ‘he was sought out on the blog search engine Technorati more often than anyone except a Puerto Rican singer with a sex tape on the loose.’ (Side note: Remember Technorati?) Paul’s candidacy arguably didn’t succeed because he was too unorthodox, but if Donald Trump’s win has taught us anything, it’s that American political media now has the infrastructure in place for unorthodoxy to succeed. No longer do people need to stand on a highway overpass with a handmade sign that says ‘GOOGLE RON PAUL’ to get the word out. The fringe can now pull the mainstream along for the ride.

    Even the Washington Post is impressed with his fundraising haul:

    The only truly interesting data point from the latest batch of fundraising figures was Andrew Yang’s haul of more than $10 million. Yang has always been a long shot for the nomination, and this influx of cash doesn’t change that fact. But, as others have noted, it makes him look more like the Ron Paul of this cycle: someone with a signature idea (universal basic income for Yang, the gold standard for Paul), an uncommon political outlook (libertarianism for Paul, postliberalism for Yang), a devoted base of oddball followers, and the ability to rake in surprising amounts of cash.

    Paul obviously never won the Republican nomination and the GOP never had a libertarian moment. But Paul’s dovishness and penchant for conspiracy theories became part of the GOP mainstream as Trump ascended to the nomination and the White House. Yang’s fundraising numbers suggest that some part of his approach and platform resonated deeply within a segment of the Democratic Party. So even if Yang loses, which he almost assuredly will, Yang-ism may survive to exert an unexpected influence in the future.

    Reuters now calls him a mainstream contender:

    “You all heard at some point there’s an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month,” the 44-year-old New York Democrat said to laughter and cheers inside a packed union hall this month in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    Then he turned serious: “We’re in an era of economic change, and we need to think differently.”

    That way of thinking has propelled Yang, the Ivy League-educated son of Taiwanese immigrants who would be the country’s first Asian-American president, from what many considered to be an entertaining diversion to a mainstream contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

    Now Yang’s campaign, which began in 2017 but has seen its fortunes rise sharply in recent months, is rushing to catch up with rivals.

    He stands near 3% in the latest public opinion polls, putting him in sixth place in the 19-candidate field ahead of numerous sitting lawmakers. His $10 million fundraising haul in the third quarter was the sixth-most among Democrats and more than triple his total for the second quarter.

    Most importantly, he continues to inspire a fervent following known as the Yang Gang, supporters who wear blue “MATH” hats – a tribute to Yang’s devotion to data that has since become an acronym for “Make America Think Harder” – and revel in his “nerdy” campaign.

  • 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, or who declared then dropped out:

  • 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 Senate 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)
  • 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
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for October 7, 2019

    Monday, October 7th, 2019

    Ukraine revelations are pummeling the Biden campaign, furthering his slump, Q3 fundraising numbers drop, Yang rises, and rumors fly that Grandma Death is about to escape from her crypt yet again. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Q3 Fundraising

    It’s that time again! Fundraising totals came gushing out of the campaigns last week:

    1. Bernie Sanders: $25.3 million.
    2. Elizabeth Warren: $24.6 million.
    3. Pete Buttigieg: $19.1 million.
    4. Joe Biden: $15.2 million.
    5. Kamala Harris: $11.6 million.
    6. Andrew Yang: $10 million.
    7. Cory Booker: $6 million.
    8. Marianne Williamson: $3 million.
    9. Steve Bullock: $2.3 million.
    10. Michael Bennet: $2.1 million.

    Those are good numbers for Yang, bad numbers for Harris, and terrible numbers for Biden. As the presumed front-runner and DNC insider candidate, Biden should be rolling in donor dough. He’s not. And he had two-and-a-half months to raise money before the whole Ukraine thing really broke open. This suggests serious organizational impairment by the Biden campaign, or that Biden himself is simply phoning it in.

    Sanders topped the list, but everything hings on how well, and how quickly, he comes back from his heart attack. Warren is in line with expectation: The bump from beating Biden has to be tempered with the disappointment of losing to Sanders. More than half of the media seems ready to anoint Warren The Chosen One, but her performance isn’t yet justifying it yet.

    As for Yang, between this and his rising poll numbers, there’s no reason to treat him as any less serious a candidate than Harris.

    Polls

  • Fox News (South Carolina): Biden 41, Warren 12, Sanders 10, Harris 4, Steyer 4, Booker 3, Buttigieg 2, Ryan 1, Williamson 1, Yang 1. Has Steyer been making ad buys in South Carolina?
  • Fox News (Wisconsin): Biden 28, Warren 22, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 7, Harris 5. Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Bullock 1, Gabbard 1, O’Rourke 1.
  • PPIC (California): Warren 23, Biden 22, Sanders 21, Harris 8, Buttigieg 6, Yang 3, Booker 2, Castro 2, Klobuchar 1, O’Rourke 1, Steyer 1.
  • Emerson (Ohio): Biden 29, Warren 27, Sanders 21, Harris 7, Buttigieg 5, Yang 3, O’Rourke 2, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Bullock 1. Sample size of 353. Klobuchar, Sestak, Steyer, Castro and Messam all got zero votes.
  • Monmouth: Warren 28, Biden 25, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 5, Harris 5, Williamson 2, Yang 2, Booker 1, Castro 1, Klobuchar 1, O’Rourke 1, Steyer 1.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 167): Warren 25, Biden 22, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 7, Harris 5, Yang 3, O’Rourke 3, Bennet 2, Gabbard 2, Booker 2, Klobuchar 1, Castro 1, Steyer 1.
  • Saint Anselm College (New Hampshire): Warren 25, Biden 24, Sanders 11, Buttigieg 10, Harris 5, Gabbard 3, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 2, Yang 2, Booker 1. Sample size of 423. Castro received zero votes.
  • Morning Consult/Politico: Biden 32, Warren 21, Sanders 19, Harris 6, Buttigieg 5, Booker 3, O’Rourke 3, Yang 3, Bennet 1, Bullock 1, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Klobuchar 1, Ryan 1, Steyer 1, Williamson 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • DNC tightens the debate requirements again.

    Candidates will need to clear 3 percent in four DNC-approved polls, up from the 2 percent required to qualify for the September and October debates. But the committee also created an additional early-state path to qualify: garnering 5 percent in two approved polls conducted in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.

    Additionally, candidates now need to receive donations from 165,000 unique donors — up from 130,000 from the September and October debates — with 600 unique donors in 20 different states, territories or the District of Columbia.

  • Uncertainty leads the field:

    The top fundraiser in the Democratic presidential field was hospitalized for a heart attack, the longtime polling leader and his son sit at the center of an impeachment inquiry, and the one candidate with clear momentum faces persistent doubts among some party leaders that she is too liberal to win the general election.

    With breathtaking speed, the events of the past two weeks have created huge uncertainty for the candidates who have dominated the Democratic nomination race, shaking a party desperate to defeat President Trump next year and deeply fearful of any misstep that risks reelecting a president many Democrats see as dangerously unfit for office.

    Concerns have risen in recent days that the potential Democratic slate has been weakened by events largely out of the candidates’ control. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) promised a speedy return to the campaign trail after leaving the hospital Friday, but it was unclear whether the 78-year-old would be able to replicate his previously frenetic travel schedule. Former vice president Joe Biden, who has spent most of the race as the leader in the polls, has faced daily attacks from Trump over largely unfounded allegations about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings, highlighting a potential vulnerability for the candidate many saw as the best hope for beating Trump.

    Snip.

    But they point to several worrying factors, including questions about whether Biden is equipped to mount an effective defense against Trump’s attacks and whether the surging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would alienate moderate voters and donors if she were the nominee. Some fear that Sanders’s health problems put a spotlight on the advanced age of the top contenders, all of whom are in their 70s. Others expressed skepticism that any Democrat would be able to compete against Trump’s unmatched ability to shift the public’s focus.

  • Warren overtakes Biden in poll of college students. Caveat: It’s an online polls with 586 respondents, so my working assumption is it’s garbage.
  • Speaking of online polls of college students, this one has it Sanders 30, Warren 26, Yang 10 and Biden 9.
  • Forbes writer argues that it’s a six man race: Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg and Yang.
  • “Dems Worried If Impeachment Fails They’ll Have To Nominate Electable Candidate.”
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Launches ads attacking “Medicare for All.” It’s open question to whether the majority of the Democratic Party’s total voting membership (as opposed to the hard left activist base) supports fully socialized medicine and destroying private health insurance. If Biden falters, Bennet and Bullock would be two candidates with a good shot to pick up his moderate voters. Well, that is, assuming they can get past Buttigieg’s giant spiked walls of money…
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Giuliani Hits Bidens With New $3 Million “Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus” Money Laundering Accusation.” “Five Times Hunter Biden’s Business Dealings Presented a Conflict of Interest for Joe Biden. Including this, which we might not have covered heretofore: “Hunter Biden was on MBNA’s payroll while Joe Biden was writing bankruptcy reform legislation.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) Andrew Stein: “Joe Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine and those of his son must be investigated, and the time has come for him to drop out of the presidential race.” Get past the requisite New York Times “orange man bad” talking points and this piece shows a Biden campaign struggling to frame an effective response on the Ukraine attacks:

    For Mr. Biden’s campaign, no attack could have been more difficult to deal with than one involving the candidate’s son.

    Mr. Biden nearly did not run for president because of the effect it would have on his family — and particularly on Hunter Biden and his children, according to multiple advisers to the former vice president. Hunter Biden has struggled for years with substance addiction and had recently gone through a very public divorce from his first wife.

    In separate interviews, Mr. Coons and his fellow senator from Delaware, Tom Carper, both said they had warned Mr. Biden that the president would target his family.

    “He expected his family to be attacked,” Mr. Carper said, adding that Mr. Biden assured him he was braced for “the onslaught.’’

    Mr. Biden’s family, including his son, encouraged him to enter the race, knowing the attacks were inevitable. But as Anita Dunn, one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers, put it: “When it happens, it still feels pretty lousy.”

    The Biden campaign has attempted to handle the candidate’s son with great sensitivity. Mr. Biden made clear at the outset that Hunter, a lawyer who had long advised his father on his campaigns, should not be made to feel excluded, people who spoke with him said. One adviser to Mr. Biden recently telephoned his son to solicit advice on the upcoming debate in Ohio.

    But to most of Mr. Biden’s aides, Hunter Biden has been a spectral presence. He is living in Los Angeles and stayed away from Mr. Biden’s campaign launch in Philadelphia. Hunter Biden quietly attended the last two debates and appeared with his new wife, Melissa Cohen, at a July fund-raiser in Pasadena, Calif.

    Still, Mr. Biden’s advisers are aware that Hunter Biden carries political vulnerabilities. His business career has intersected repeatedly with his father’s political power, through roles he had held in banking, lobbying and international finance. Working for a Ukrainian energy company beginning in 2014, he was paid as much as $50,000 a month while his father was vice president, and some of Mr. Biden’s admirers worry that, while Mr. Trump’s accusations are without merit, voters may view Hunter Biden’s actions as problematic.

    “Without merit.” “Problematic.” You can always count on the press to put lipstick on a Democrats’ pig. More on Hunter Biden:

    There’s an old saying about addiction. The man takes a drink (or a sniff), then the drink takes a drink, until the drink takes the man. It will take the bystanders, too, if they let it. Addiction is ravenous. But there was always someone in Joe Biden’s life to help him out with Hunter. It’s heartwarming when family and friends swoop in to care for the boys while Daddy serves the people of Delaware. But little boys have little needs, while big boys have bigger needs.

    Soon enough, directionless Hunter has a six-figure job at a bank run by Biden supporters. When Hunter grows bored, there’s another lucrative job under the tutelage of a former Biden staffer. When Hunter wants a house he can’t afford, he receives a loan for 110 percent of the purchase price. And when he goes bust, another friendly banker mops up the damage.

    Then his brother Beau contracts fatal brain cancer, and the last wobbly wheels come off Hunter Biden’s fragile self. At this point, the New Yorker piece becomes a gonzo nightmare — much of it narrated by Hunter himself — of hallucinations, a car abandoned in the desert, maxed-out credit cards, a crack pipe, a strip club and a brandished gun.

    If, as the magazine headline put it, Hunter Biden now jeopardizes his father’s campaign, the article makes clear Joe Biden feels a share of the blame. Yet, by the time the senator was vice president, the folks still willing to help Hunter were of a sketchier variety. There was a Chinese businessman who, Hunter said, left him a large diamond as a nice-to-meet-you gift. And a Ukrainian oligarch who hired Hunter at a princely sum to do nothing much. (Neither the firm nor Hunter Biden identified any specific contribution he made). Joe Biden’s response, according to his son, was: “I hope you know what you are doing.”

    Hope! What family of an addict hasn’t fallen back to that last trench? Denial, they say, is not just a river in Egypt.

    The story of that golf outing with Hunter’s Ukrainian paymasters Joe Biden lied about. And just in case you missed this from Friday’s LinkSwarm:

    And don’t look now, but there’s more Rudy going after Hunter coming down the pike: “We haven’t even talked about Romania yet.” Evidently 38% of Biden’s Q2 fundraising came from just 2,800 people.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. His $6 million is enough to keep him in the game, but not enough to make any headway in closing with the frontrunners, but both Biden and Harris flaming out (a definite possibility at this point) would open a couple of those hypothetical “lanes” for him. Booker calls on TV stations to not air Trump ad attacking Biden over Ukraine.” More grist for the idea he’s running for VP.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. $2.3 million is enough to keep the lights on, but very little more. Speaking of fundraising, he wants to ban fundraising during the first half of any elected official’s term. Given how this disadvantages incumbents, I don’t see the idea making any headway…
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Buttigieg conendrum continues: He’s raising money like a topline candidate, but his poll numbers still don’t reflect it. Gets a fawning profile in The New Republic:

    Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old gay mayor of a small Indiana city (South Bend) half the size of Des Moines, is acing the listening test. His words, even in a stump speech, tend to be more thoughtful and more surprising than the standard political applause lines of his rivals. Elizabeth Warren often elicits cheers, Joe Biden gets the occasional affectionate chuckle, but Buttigieg summons up a different reaction. I first noticed it while seeing him at a Des Moines house party on a sparkling Saturday morning in June. As with Obama in 2006, members of the audience leaned forward to listen to Buttigieg speak rather than sitting back to applaud politely. What struck me at the time was that Buttigieg was pulling off this listening trick even though he lacked the national political profile that Obama boasted back in 2006, from his electrifying speech to the 2004 Democratic convention.

    It’s all pretty unconvincing. “Mayor Pete Is Starting to Annoy Almost Everyone Else in the 2020 Race.” Caveat: The Daily Beast, so take with several grains of salt.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro Presidential Campaigns Continue to Flounder.”

    Right now, the pair are each below 2.5 percent in the RealClearPolitics averages, with O’Rourke at 2.2 and Castro at 1.4 percent respectively. Even businessman Andrew Yang has eclipsed the pair.

    In Texas, O’Rourke has held a slight hold on second place for months — 10 points behind Biden and slightly ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — until the recent Quinnipiac poll, which showed Warren had moved ahead of O’Rourke and put him in third place in his home state.

    Meanwhile, while Castro is outperforming his national poll numbers in Texas, he has failed to hit higher than 4 percent in any Texas polls taken thus far.

    Castro praises Cesar Chavez, calling him a hero and ignoring the fact he was passionately opposed to illegal immigration.

  • Update: Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Following Sanders’ heart attack, the Intertubes are rife with rumors that Grandma Death is going to jump into the race, so I moved her up here from the also-rans. Also, she just passed Buttigieg in election betting odds, and is in third place there behind Warren and Biden. Here’s a recent piece speculating on Clinton entering the race, but it’s from a Norwegian-owned site that used to focus on cryptocurrency, so caveat lictor.
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. He’s not in the debates…again. Now it’s just a question of how much of John Delaney’s money does John Delaney want to spend to kept pretending that John Delaney is running for President.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She made the next debate. “The Hawaii congresswoman’s debate performances haven’t done much to break her out of the asterisk category, but boy, can she dissect an opponent’s record in a devastating fashion. You could argue that Gabbard more than anyone else triggered the slide of Kamala Harris since the second debate.” If Sanders drops out, could Gabbard pick up some of his supporters? I’ve noticed some overlap there, but I doubt she could pick up enough to be even remotely viable.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Kamala Harris Is Burning Down“:

    Out of all the Democratic candidates, there is perhaps none more inauthentic and grating as Kamala Harris. To be fair, she doesn’t have the shrillness of Hillary Clinton, but she has every other bad quality in spades. She can’t hold a consistent position, she’ll do anything for support, and everything she says sounds like it was focus grouped. None of those things are good descriptors to be attached to one’s campaign.

    After being fluffed as the presumptive front runner following the first debate (which I called a sucker’s bet at the time), Tulsi Gabbard kneecapped Harris in the second debate and she has never recovered. Since then, it’s been a steady stream of desperation from her campaign….Her campaign is hemorrhaging cash, the donors have dried up, and she’s old news to the media.

    But now things are getting even worse. Her campaign is literally breaking down. The upper levels of her campaign staff are being changed up and she’s bringing over people from the Senate side to try to rescue her.

    More on that:

    California Sen. Kamala Harris plans to restructure her struggling presidential campaign, sources with knowledge of the staffing plans tell CNN.

    The changes represent the clearest sign to date that Harris, who has seen her poll numbers consistently fall over the last three months, feels changes are needed to jumpstart her presidential bid and streamline an operation that one source said has been been bogged down by bureaucratic hurdles.

    Harris will elevate Rohini Kosoglu, her Senate chief of staff, and senior adviser Laphonza Butler into senior leadership positions within the campaign, the sources said, splitting responsibilities for the day to day management of the operation.

    Juan Rodriguez will remain Harris’ campaign manager, but the addition of Kosoglu and elevation of Butler shifts some of the longtime Harris aide’s responsibilities to different staffers.

    Adding more cooks to the slop kitchen won’t help. The problem with the Kalama Harris campaign is Kamala Harris. Heh: “Kamala Harris Undergoes Heart Surgery After Seeing Positive Reception For Sanders.” Heh 2:

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Dings Biden: “Klobuchar Would Not Be Comfortable With VP’s Child On Board of Foreign Company.” Dodges impeachment question.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets interviewed by WMUR (along with Tim Ryan), where he offers up some education/STEM/entrepreneurial platitudes. Also worried that self-driving cars will result in unemployment for Uber and Lyft drivers. Wouldn’t they theoretically make money off their self-driving cars?

  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets some audience pushback on guns and illegal aliens. Goes after Buttigieg on guns, because there’s nothing quite so exciting as the ninth place guy launching an attack on the fourth place guy. Had a rally in Phoenix, which is odd, since Arizona’s primary isn’t until March 17.
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says he’s in it until the end. And a silly food challenge story.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. I assume you noticed his heart attack last week. Pre-heart attack analysis: “Bernie Sanders Is in Trouble“:

    With just four months until the first-in-the-nation caucuses, Sanders is in trouble. As he delivered his populist gospel to large crowds of camouflage-clad high schoolers, liberal arts college students, and trade union members across Iowa last week, a problematic narrative was hardening around him: His campaign is in disarray and Elizabeth Warren has eclipsed him as the progressive standard-bearer of the primary. He’s sunk to third place nationally, behind Warren and Joe Biden, and some polls of early nomination states show him barely clinging to double digits. He’s shaken up his staffs in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s lost the endorsement of the Working Families Party, a left-wing group that backed him in 2016, to Warren.

    Dismissed out of the gate in 2016 as a nonfactor against Hillary Clinton — only to single-handedly shift the Democratic Party’s ideological center of gravity — Sanders is quite familiar with being left for dead. His top brass’ official line is that pundits and political elites are writing him off because they have no clue what’s happening at kitchen tables and picket lines across America. Sanders and his team have argued some polls that are bad for him are out of whack and several polls that are good for him are ignored by the media.

    Meanwhile, his aides say, Sanders remains a fundraising and organizing juggernaut. In its classic big-big-big-numbers style, the campaign announced this month that it had both contacted 1 million voters in Iowa and received donations from 1 million people throughout the United States — a milestone he reached faster than any Democratic presidential candidate in history.

    Pre-heart attack counterpoint:

    For a guy who’s supposed to be slowly fading into the second tier, Bernie Sanders had a good third quarter of fundraising, announcing this morning that his campaign raised $25 million in the past three months. (One wrinkle: Sanders’ campaign did not specify how much cash on hand he has left.)

    The upshot is that Bernie Sanders will probably have enough financial resources to stay in the presidential race as long has he likes, all the way to the Democratic convention in Milwaukee if he wants. As of this morning, he’s still a respectable third nationally in the RealClearPolitics average nationally (17.8 percent), third in Iowa (12 percent), third in New Hampshire (18.8 percent), second in Nevada (21.7 percent), and third in South Carolina (15 percent, and Elizabeth Warren is at 15.7 percent). And fairly or not, a lot of Democratic race-watchers see Joe Biden’s campaign as a ticking time-bomb with a gaffe-prone candidate and the Hunter Biden stuff now getting more play.

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. WBUR profile.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He qualified for the November debate. Lefty-site-that-pretends they’re not a lefty site Cal Matters offers up an extensive profile of Steyer’s political activities:

    From an early age, Tom Steyer has hopscotched from one rarified sphere of American prestige and privilege to the next. His resume starts at the Upper East Side of New York’s The Buckley School, a private K-9 that educated Franklin Roosevelt and a young Donald Trump. Next stop was Phillips Exeter, the patrician New Hampshire boarding academy. Then Yale, where Steyer studied economics, played soccer and graduated at the top of his class. A brief stint at Morgan Stanley, a business degree at Stanford and a job at Goldman Sachs rounded out Steyer’s gilded early resume.

    And that was before he became a billionaire.

    In San Francisco, Steyer teamed up with the banjo-playing financier Warren Hellman and started a hedge fund. It would eventually be named Farallon Capital and grow from $15 million to more than $20 billion investing diversely: corporate mergers, distressed Asian banks, pharmaceutical companies.

    Today Forbes estimates Steyer’s net worth at $1.6 billion. But Farallon’s past investments in coal mines, private prison companies and aquifer-pumping land deals may not jibe with Democratic voters. Neither might Steyer himself — a white guy from high finance.

    “The whole issue of income inequality has become a fairly major talking point with Democrats,” said Garry South, a California political strategist. “Why would you think that a billionaire is the best person to deal with income inequality? It’s sort of a contradiction in terms.”

    Steyer is a bit of a contradiction himself. In the mold of Warren Buffet, he is famously restrained in his spending habits (to a point). His sartorial style could be described as “Boomer dad”: He regularly wears the same tartan tie and a colorful beaded belt he bought on a trip to Kenya. He flies commercial, for environmental reasons. Speaking to CalMatters over the phone from Iowa, he recalls meeting a “slick-as-could-be” energy lobbyist a few years back who was wearing a “$5,000 suit.” As if Steyer couldn’t drop ten times that on a new outfit every morning for the rest of his life.

    Snip.

    In 2010, he co-chaired the committee to defeat a repeal of the state’s cap-and-trade emissions reduction program, putting $5 million into the effort. He struck Dan Logue, a former Republican Assemblyman who sponsored the measure and debated Steyer that year, as a true believer “committed to the cause.”

    In 2012, Steyer ratcheted up his financial involvement, spending $30 million on a ballot measure to close a tax loophole, effectively raising rates on businesses with out-of-state facilities. In 2016, he spent millions more on an unsuccessful bid to overturn the death penalty, and successful initiatives to raise cigarette taxes and reduce sentences for non-violent crimes.

    Steyer’s early focus on voter-initiated policy change runs through into his presidential campaign. He’s proposing to give voters the power to directly make federal law twice each year.

    Snip.

    Many California voters may not know who Steyer is, but California politicians do.

    He’s spent the past decade putting massive sums of cash toward supporting progressive candidates and boosting voter registration.

    Starting in 2013, Steyer began throwing his considerable financial weight behind individual candidates across the country through NextGen Climate Action Committee, a super PAC he started to help make climate change a winning issue for progressives.

    In the lead-up to both the 2014 and 2016 elections, Steyer’s family firm, Fahr LLC, was the biggest contributor of publicly disclosed political cash of any organization in the country. (Fahr, his middle name, was his mother’s maiden name.) In 2018, Fahr slipped to second place. So far in the 2020 cycle, the Steyers are back in the top spot.

    That largesse has endeared him to some Democrats.

    “I know the difference between talkers and doers and Steyer is a doer,” said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member from California.

    “Some candidates can come and be the main speaker at a dinner and that’s nice. But if you can write big checks…,” he said, trailing off.

    The piece notes he’s sometimes “not been a team player”…but only in the sense that he backs farther left challengers against Democratic incumbents. Picked up a state rep endorsement in South Carolina. “Steyer’s campaign says state Rep. Jerry Govan has signed on as a senior adviser. Govan is chairman of South Carolina’s Legislative Black Caucus.”

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Let no one say she’s not pandering to left-wing interest groups hard enough, as she came out for eliminating right-to-work laws. Democrats couldn’t even implement card check when they had the White House, House and Senate, what makes her think she can pass a big labor pander a hundred times more radical? Or that a nation full of non-unionized employees would ever elect her? Union membership has been declining for decades, down to some 6.5% of private sector jobs. Most states are right-to-work states. Does Warren really think “vote for me and I’ll force you to join a union” is a winning campaign slogan? Once again, Warren maneuvers to win the primary at the cost of winning the election. Well well well: “Elizabeth Warren Fires National Organizing Director Over ‘Inappropriate Behavior.'” “Over the past two weeks, senior campaign leadership received multiple complaints regarding inappropriate behavior by Rich McDaniel.” He “was also Hillary Clinton’s primary states regional director.” Should we assume McDaniel: A.) Tried to get jiggy with new recruits, B.) Forced all new hires to eat a bug, or C.) Proclaimed his love of Nickleback*? She keeps ducking admitting that she’s going to hike your taxes until your eyes bleed. She also got caught lying about being fired for getting pregnant. Indeed, “lying” seems to be the theme of Warren’s entire career. Dissecting all of her pie-in-the-sky promises:

    From stem to stern, the senator from Massachusetts has marketed herself as the candidate with everything thought out. For every problem facing our nation, her slogan says she “has a plan for that.” Warren is running on a myriad of big government programs including Medicare for all, student loan debt cancellation, and free college tuition. Her plan to pay for these promises includes a wealth tax of 2 percent on fortunes above $50 million and 3 percent on fortunes above $1 billion.

    To many voters, her plans sound attractive, and her years in academia lend to her pitch. She is articulate and crafty enough to crib off Sanders, while arguing that she just wants capitalism with a human face. In reality, however, the former Harvard professor is hoping you will not do the math yourself when it comes to her grandiose pitch. Almost every element of her plans would drive discourse to the left, while weakening our political and economic systems to make it susceptible to crony capitalism.

    Even the centerpiece of the Warren campaign platform is obviously unworkable. A wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million is touted as the key funding mechanism for a plethora of new programs. But European nations have attempted numerous such wealth taxes, and none have been successful. Since 1990, the number of European states with such a levy has fallen from a dozen to three, including otherwise low tax Switzerland. Between 2000 and 2012, the burdensome wealth tax in France caused 42,000 millionaires to flee the country. The nation ultimately scrapped the impost in 2018.

    While a wealth tax in the United States is likely unconstitutional to begin with, it is certainly unenforceable in the way that Warren desires.

    Snip.

    But perhaps the biggest problem with the Warren wealth tax plan is that it is estimated to bring in an average of less than $3 trillion over the following decade, which would provide less than 10 percent of the total cost of her Medicare for all plan. Warren will not state the obvious that in order to pay for any of her policy proposals, it would require a massive tax increase on the middle class.

    Even worse, Warren proposes a frightening Office of United States Corporations through her Accountable Capitalism Act. Under the plan, workers must represent 40 percent of corporate boards of companies worth more than $1 billion. It also institutes strict controls on political spending and requires a corporate charter approved by the federal government. This idea is Orwellian. After all, the idea of government control of private industry is among the textbook definitions of fascism and its concept of corporatism. That means charters to do business could be revoked by Washington.

    A short list of all the taxes Warren has proposed. “Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren endorsed a Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) policy proposal that includes taxpayer-funded welfare benefits for illegal immigrants.” Wargaming what happens if Warren beats Biden in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s all church-of-what’s-happening-now speculation, but they do note Howard Dean’s flameout.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Williamson doesn’t want to be your crystal space witch: “I’ve never had a crystal, I’ve never written about crystals. I’ve never talked about crystals. I’ve never had a crystal onstage with me.” How much is Williamson worth? Evidently $1.5 million.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Andrew Yang Shouldn’t Retreat from His Past Success in Revitalizing Depressed Cities“:

    As Peter Beinart has trenchantly observed in The Atlantic, formerly moderate Generation X Democratic candidates Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have chosen to turn their backs on policies they once championed. Booker no longer talks up his successful expansion of charter schools as mayor of Newark, while Harris has run away from her common-sense decision, as San Francisco district attorney, to enforce truancy laws as a means to get the attention of parents of disadvantaged students. But there’s another Gen X candidate, unmentioned by Beinart, who’s run away from past successes: Andrew Yang.

    While he promotes government-led efforts to redistribute income, Yang has been silent about his own groundbreaking efforts to help declining cities — not through government, but through civil society. In 2011, after a successful career as corporate lawyer and business-school test-prep entrepreneur, Yang founded Venture for America (VFA). Modeled on Teach for America, VFA aimed to attract applicants from elite colleges to work as paid interns at start-up companies in poor cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, and Baltimore. Its funding came entirely from philanthropists, most importantly Detroit’s Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans. Like Dan Markowits, the author of the new The Meritocracy Trap, Yang saw the best and brightest as having “too limited a vision of what career success looks like,” and got to work fixing the problem.

    Today, VFA is still in operation, with fellowships in 14 different cities around the country. The organization has supported more than 1,000 fellows, working in business incubators and often going on to found start-ups of their own. It says that 51 percent of them continue to live in the cities where their fellowship was based, and they’ve been involved in starting 129 new companies.

    Bringing graduates of some 300 colleges to cities that ambitious young people have long been fleeing is nothing to sneeze at. It’s a record of success that gives Yang, if he’d only use it, a ready-made, positive message on the stump: Talented people can start new businesses, help power established ones, and in the process, make cities thrive. This message is all the more powerful when juxtaposed with generations of failed local, state, and federal policies based on the idea that subsidies to attract business are the best way of rejuvenating cities in decline.

    Indeed, what is striking about Yang’s Venture for America is its fundamental separation from those failed government policies and from government itself.

    I suspect that’s the very reason he doesn’t talk about it to Democrats. He blasted China for blasting the Houston Rockets for Daryl Morey posting a pro-Hong Kong tweet, which has engendered big controversy, because the Rockets have a lot of business deals in China thanks to the Yao Ming era. But Morey (and Yang) was right the first time. Funny how CNN and MSNBC just keeps leaving Yang out of infographics:

  • 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, or who declared then dropped out:

  • 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 Senate 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)
  • 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
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    *I was only vaguely aware of Nickleback in their heyday, and only became aware of them after all the memes talking about how much they sucked. Now that I’ve been forced to listen to “Photograph” to keep up with current events, eh, I don’t hate it. Solid piece of nostalgic pop rock. Honestly, what strikes me most is how the chorus of a song from 2005 sounds exactly like every “hot country” song circa 2014