Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for May 13, 2019

Biden’s still up big, O’Rourke’s freefall continues, Yang threatens to PowerPoint the nation, and get ready for the Gravalanche! It’s the latest Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

Polls

  • Post and Courier-Change Research South Carolina: Biden 46, Sanders 15, Harris 10, Buttigieg 8, Warren 8. Booker 4, O’Rourke 2, Yang 2, Abrams 1.
  • Monmouth New Hampshire: Biden 36, Sanders 18, Buttigieg 9, Warren 8, Harris 6, O’Rourke 2, Klobuchar 2, Booker 2, Hickenlooper 1, Ryan 1, Yang 1.
  • Morning Consult: Biden 40, Sanders 19, Warren 8, Harris 7, Buttigieg 6, O’Rourke 5, Booker 3, Klobuchar 2, everyone else 1 or less.
  • This is going to throw a crimp into Harris and Booker’s plans:

  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • 18 of the declared Democratic nominees for President have met the minimum threshold to appear in the first debate, either by garnering donations from 65,000 individuals or scoring at least 1% in three or more polls: Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Warren, O’Roruke, Yang, Biden, Booker, Castro, Gabbard, Klobuchard (both), Delaney, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Ryan, Swalwell (polls), and Marianne Williamson (donations). (Hat tip: BruceTheGay.)
  • Jim Geraghty notes that Biden is running away with the race and upending lots of assumptions:

    Late yesterday afternoon I raised the possibility that the hype surrounding Pete Buttigieg is peaking. He’s back to modest single digits in most national polls after a quick rise and very few African-Americans are attending his events, even in places such as Orangeburg, S.C. Young, well-educated, ambitious, and articulate, Buttigieg may well be a boutique candidate who mostly appeals to one important but not quite decisive demographic: the kinds of people who end up covering the Democratic presidential primary for major news organizations.

    Since formally announcing his presidential run, Joe Biden has enjoyed leads in national polls of 21, 32, 30, 26, and 24 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders. Perhaps this will turn out to be a short-term bump, but the people currently preferring Biden probably feel like they know him well. He’s a familiar and liked face amidst a crowd of strangers.

    Biden doesn’t need the formal endorsement of Barack Obama because he’s already received the clearest de-facto endorsement imaginable: Obama wanted Biden in the Oval Office if he ever died or was incapacitated. Obama effectively made his 2020 presidential endorsement in the summer of 2008.

    And if Biden does become the 2020 Democratic nominee . . . the ramifications will be hilarious. After all the talk of the most diverse group of candidates in American history, and for all the identity-politics obsession gripping the party, the Democratic nominee would be a (very) old, straight, white male. Post-Obama Democratic politics would not be focused on a Generation X or Millennial figure, but (sigh) yet another Baby Boomer.

    Also: “For all of the talk of the Democrats’ move towards socialism, the nominee would be a figure from the party’s establishment, who’s done the bidding of Delaware’s banking industry and credit-card companies for most of his career.”

  • Nobody wants to be a senator.
  • Big city mayors behold the Buttigieg boomlet.
  • 538 on what the candidates are saying and doing.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? Still says she’s looking. Thanks, that clears up everything…
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out.
  • Actor Alec Baldwin: Probably not. No news on a presidential run, but he does deride “flyover country” in an interview. Though he’s got this right: “When you hear specific left-leaning Democratic candidates and progressive candidates talking about these buffet tables they want to set up of public policy without one word about how they’re going to pay for it. That’s what’s going to kill them.”
  • Update: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a fawning op-ed in The Hill:

    He is a very thoughtful and pragmatic liberal who works well with colleagues on both sides. He has held important posts in state and local government and the executive branch. In 2010 he was one of the few Democrats from a competitive state to stave off the Republican Tea party surge. He likely would win a general election and — better than most others — navigate the almost impossibly polarized environment in Washington.

    Snip.

    He lacks the lengthy experience, contacts and warmth of Joe Biden; the new generational appeal of Pete Buttigieg or Beto O’Rourke; the ideological passion of Bernie Sanders — and if it’s the year of the woman, the gender of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

    Way to sell us on him! He also hit the trail in Iowa.

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Jonathan Chait on how Biden is proving activists and pundits wrong:

    The poor guy has disregarded all the advice and decided to run anyway. And initial polling has revealed that a large number of Democrats have not left Biden behind at all. He begins the race leading his closest competitors, including early front-runner Bernie Sanders, by as much as 30 points. Perhaps it was the party’s intelligentsia, not Biden, that was out of touch with the modern Democratic electorate.

    The conclusion that Biden could not lead the post-Obama Democratic Party is the product of misplaced assumptions about the speed of its transformation. Yes, the party has moved left, but not nearly as far or as fast as everybody seemed to believe. Counterintuitively, House Democrats’ triumph in the midterms may have pushed their center of gravity to the right: The 40 seats Democrats gained were overwhelmingly located in moderate or Republican-leaning districts.

    Biden’s apparent resurrection from relic to runaway front-runner has illustrated a chasm between perception and reality. The triumph of the left is somewhere between a movement ahead of its time and a bubble that has just popped.

    Biden wants to raise your taxes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Washington Post headline breathlessly tells us “Trouble is brewing in Joe Biden’s presidential campaign,” but it’s just microwaved ancient Anita Hill leftovers again. A parody website is outranking Biden’s official site. He brought in $700,000 at a Hollywood fundraiser.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Probably not.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He criticized Warren’s calls to break up Facebook. “We do not need a president that is going to use their own personal beliefs and tell you which companies we should break up. We need a president that’s going to enforce antitrust laws in this country.”
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Doesn’t sound like it.
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Out.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: All But In. Says a big announcement is “coming soon.”
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Pete Buttigieg Thinks God Is a Democrat Because God Doesn’t Pick Sides.”

    He also campaigned in Las Vegas.

  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Out.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. His staff unionized. Decoding Castro’s vibe in Massachusetts: “This guy is class, this guy is smart, this guy is funny, this guy is a politician….Castro is young, energetic and exudes a positivity and kindness. I liked him.” If this piece were a supermarket product, it would be I Can’t Believe It’s Not Content.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out. But Ann Althouse says never say never. “It’s a joke until it happens. DJT was a joke until it happened. The funniest thing may be the most likely thing.”
  • New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: All But In. Random New Yorkers are actually going up to him in the street and yelling at him not to run.
  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Delaney slammed “half-baked socialist policies” from some of the other candidates and declared himself the most moderate candidate in the field. The fact that he’s probably right on both will not change his ranking near the very bottom of the race.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She get’s an extensive profile and interview with Glenn Greenwald:

    By mid-2016, Gabbard committed the ultimate party heresy: She very publicly resigned from her position as Democratic National Committee vice chair at the peak of the primary battle to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders after months of internally accusing DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of corruptly violating the DNC’s duty of neutrality by favoring Hillary Clinton. Her accusation was later vindicated through emails published by WikiLeaks, Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s own “rigging” accusation, and current DNC Chair Donna Brazile’s book, which caused Gabbard to publicly repeat her allegations of the DNC’s “unethical rigging” of the primary in favor of Clinton.

    Gabbard has compiled a record on domestic policy questions that places her squarely within the left populist wing of the party — from advocating Medicare for All, a national $15 an hour minimum wage, various free college programs, and even participating in anti-pipeline Standing Rock protests in North Dakota. Yet her aggressive criticisms of the pieties of the bipartisan foreign policy community — particularly her harsh criticism of regime change operations from Iraq and Libya, to Syria and Venezuela, and her warnings about escalating tensions with Russia and China and the dangers of a “new Cold War” — have further cemented her status as party outsider and heretic from the perspective of Washington Democratic insiders.

    She also says the mainstream media is ignoring her. Well, they are when they’re not attacking her…

  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Out.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. CNN gives her one of those a day in the life of a candidate story, the sort where we’re supposed to find her morning workout routine charming rather than annoying, and which would be pretty fawning if it didn’t bring up the fact she’s sucking so hard:

    But there is a harsh irony to this upbeat attitude: Gillibrand’s campaign, despite the joy, has gone nowhere since she announced earlier this year. The senator’s polls are sagging — a recent Monmouth University poll found her with less than 1% in New Hampshire, she has yet to hit the fundraising threshold outlined by the Democratic National Committee — a mark that a series of lesser known candidates have met, and people coming to her events have begun to worry she is being engulfed by the massive field of Democrats.

    She also predicted that there will only be three 2020 Democratic presidential candidates standing by next year’s Iowa caucuses.” 1. No. 2. If so, she won’t be among them, and 3. It’s like an old sixties rocker saying “The three greatest bands of the 60s were The Beatles, the Stones, and [inserts the name of his own obscure band here].” She’s fallen below the Andrew Yang Line and can’t get up.

  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. Still no sign of a run, be he did get ripped by a donor for leaving $3 million in the bank in his 2018 Florida gubernatorial race. Things that make you go “Hmmmm.”
  • Addition: Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: In. Twitter. Facebook. After dismissing him as a joke campaign a month ago, I have come to the reluctantly conclusion that I need to include the 88 year-old gadfly in this roundup. Not because I think he can win, but because his campaign chances and activities look no less serious than those of Messam or Delaney. At 77,100 Twitter followers, he has more than Messam, Delany, Ryan, or Inslee. His pitch is geared toward the hard anti-war left, even more so than Gabbard or Sanders:

    Whether this gives him enough traction to make the debates remains to be seen, but at this point I like his chances better than Messam’s for meeting that threshold. On the other hand, he says he’d love a Sanders-Gabbard ticket.

    “The goal of a Gravel 2020 campaign would not be to win, but instead to draw attention to the central issues that Sen. Gravel has focused on over the previous decades,” a draft version of his campaign plan indicates, adding “the ultimate goal would be to gain media attention and then endorse either Rep. Gabbard or Sen. Bernie Sanders before the Iowa caucuses.”

    Watch the video at that link. Despite having a self-described “Senior Moment” in remembering Gabbard’s name, Gravel still sounds reasonably sharp, and like he’s actually telling it like he thinks it is. He can’t win, but he could actually make a little noise running an “screw it I’m just telling the truth and campaigning entirely on YouTube” effort…

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. That Geraghty piece notes that Harris, being a liberal from California running on ending tax cuts and eliminating health insurance, might not play well in the Midwest. Said she would have voted against NAFTA. Senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus are pitching a Biden-Harris “dream ticket,” which sort of suggests they’ve already given up on her winning the nomination on her own.
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. Kevin D. Williamson:

    Hickenlooper apparently means to put himself in the “moderate” lane to the extent that doing so is comparable with creating trillions of dollars in new taxes and benefits. I would not bet very much on the efficacy of that strategy, especially for a candidate who checks all the wrong demographic boxes for the 2020 Democratic primary.

  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Out.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. “With new polling at 0 percent, can anyone stop Jay Inslee? Yes. Literally anyone.” “It’s almost like running a campaign exclusively on climate change isn’t a good idea.” To prove that point, Inslee put out this ad:

    It’s like someone went “Nothing can be more cringe-inducing than Beto’s televised teeth cleaning,” and Inslee went “Hold my beer.”

  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. Klobuchar’s Fox News town hall dominated ratings in that timeslot.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Out.
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Out.
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Interviewed over U.S. policy in the Middle East by Jewish News Syndicate. It’s mostly “How many times can I repeat the phrase ‘Two State Solution?'” Not impressing me.
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Business Insider profile. “Even after weeks of polling, we’re really not near the sample size of Seth Moulton’s name recognition where we’d be confident interpreting his performance and drawing conclusions about a viable candidacy.” OK, then. Moving on…
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama: Out.
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda: Out.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Failing up, the O’Rourke way:

    For O’Rourke, the phenomenon on display in [his losing senate] race—failure without negative effects, and with perhaps even some kind of personal boost—is a feature of his life and career. That biography is marked as much by meandering, missteps and moments of melancholic searching as by résumé-boosting victories and honors. A graduate of an eastern prep school and an Ivy League rower and English major, the only son of a gregarious attorney and glad-handing pol and the proprietor of an upscale furniture store, the beneficiary of his family’s expansive social, business and political contacts, O’Rourke has ambled past a pair of arrests, designed websites for El Paso’s who’s who, launched short-lived publishing projects, self-term-limited his largely unremarkable tenure on Capitol Hill, shunned the advice of pollsters and consultants and penned overwrought, solipsistic Medium missives, enjoying the latitude afforded by the cushion of an upper-middle-class upbringing that is only amplified by his marriage to the daughter of one of the region’s richest men.

    (Hat tip: Erick Erickson, who notes “I know nothing of Kruse’s record and/or past infatuations or lack thereof with O’Rourke, but it is just hilarious watching various members of the Circle of Jerks that make up the political press pass the story around this morning. These people have been humping Beto O’Rourke’s leg for the past two years.”) “Beto O’Rourke is polling worse than ever.” “Looking at places, though, undersells O’Rourke’s media troubles. This past week, Biden’s name was mentioned 20 times as often on cable news as O’Rourke’s. The week before it was 22 times as often. And it’s not just less media: The stories seem to be more negative on O’Rourke than they once were.” He comes out against the right to work for non-union members. Get’s a profile from a college girlfriend that makes him sound really, really…boring.

  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Out.
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an Independent profile:

    Ryan, a Catholic who is married to a schoolteacher and lives with their three children, has moderated his position on two issues of particular interests to Democrats. He was opposed to abortion until 2015, and he previously received an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which indicated his votes were in line with the gun lobbying group’s agenda. Following the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting in which 58 people were killed, he donated $20,000 that his campaign received from the NRA to groups supporting gun control.

    Well what do you know! A moderate pro-life, pro-gun Democratic magically becomes pro-abortion and anti-gun when running for national office! What are the odds?

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. What’s the matter with Bernie? For one thing, Biden is clobbering him:

    Sanders had planned to pose as the quiet front-runner. The Democratic establishment might not be ready to anoint a populist insurrectionist, but Sanders, like Trump with the Republican base in 2016, thought that he had what the party’s voters wanted. Democratic operatives and veteran consultants whispered to anyone that would listen that Sanders, who had retained a permanent campaign infrastructure after coming up short in 2016, held a critical advantage in Democratic politics: the best ground game. The formula that supplied and maintained Barack Obama’s power had been mailing lists, volunteers, data, and pounding the pavement. Our Revolution, Sanders’s arm, was the heir to Organizing for America, the Obama mothership, and Sanders, like Obama, was awash in cash.

    But Sanders’s campaign underestimated Biden out of the gate. And this time, Sanders’s Achilles heel appears to be even more exposed than it was to Clinton. African Americans are the lynchpin of any Democratic strategy, but so far, black Southern Democrats seem to like the idea of Barack Obama’s lieutenant as president, even if Obama himself doesn’t feel so warm about it. Last time round, South Carolina was Stalingrad for Sanders. It didn’t finish him off, but it lost him the war. Right now, it’s déjà vu all over again for the senator from Vermont.

    On the trail with Bernie. See how many references to the 1960s you can spot. Frank Luntz thinks Sanders will win the race. I think he’s mistaking the Democratic Twitter base for the Democratic voting base.

  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Out.
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: In. Twitter. Facebook. Dumbass compared the Russian Collusion Fantasy to Pearl Harbor. I know we’ll always remember the heroic moment when Doris Miller manned the Twittercades to fight back wave after devastating wave of Russian meme attacks…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. She attended a town hall in Cincinnati and unveiled a plan (of course) to combat the opioid crisis in West Virginia.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She reached the donation threshold to participate in the debates. She campaigned in Detroit.
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Yang is drawing some surprisingly large crowds.” He gets a PBS profile, which includes this nugget: “If elected, Yang promises to be the first president to use a PowerPoint during the State of the Union.” DEATH TO THE HERETIC!
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