Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for June 10, 2019

Biden flip-flops, the race tightens in Iowa, Bennet and Gillibrand qualify for the debates, de Blasio and Messam earn Iowa goose eggs, and Swalwell continues his All Cringe All The Time Campaign. It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

Polls

  • Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa Poll: Biden 24, Sanders 16, Warren 15, Buttigieg 14, Harris 7, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 2. Biden has come back to the pack some, and that’s the best showing for Warren and Buttigieg I’ve seen in any poll. Also: “Two candidates — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Miramar, Florida, Mayor Wayne Messam — were not listed by a single poll respondent as either first or second choice for president.”
  • The Economist/YouGov (page 95): Biden 27, Sanders 16, Warren 11, Buttigieg 9, Harris 8, Booker 2, De Blasio 2, O’Rourke 2, Bullock 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Hickenlooper 1, Klobuchar 1, Yang 1. 2% for De Blasio is 2% more than I (or just about anybody else) ever thought he would get. Nobody knows nothin’.
  • Reuters/IPSOS: Biden 31, Sanders 14, Warren 9, Harris 6, Buttigieg 5, O’Rourke 3.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets. They now have Buttigieg up over Sanders.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • “60% Of Voters Find Democratic Field Of Presidential Candidates ‘Underwhelming.'”
  • All the plans floated by various Democratic candidates will cost taxpayers trillions:

    The Democratic presidential contenders are ready to break the bank with expensive policy proposals that would add trillions of dollars to the deficit if enacted.

    The 2020 hopefuls are angling to one-up each other with big policy ideas that would overhaul the U.S. health care system, address climate change and provide free college tuition or erase student debt.

    Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Global Climate Mobilization” plan, hailed by environmental activists as the gold standard, would cost the U.S. government $3 trillion over the next decade.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (Mass.) proposal to eliminate tuition at public colleges and erase existing student debt carries a $1.25 trillion price tag.

    And Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) “Medicare for All” bill, co-sponsored by four other 2020 Democrats, would require $32 trillion in government spending, according to one study.

  • Most of the contenders (not including Biden or Sanders) appeared on the same stage in Iowa, with Warren and Booker marshelling the most supporters at the event.
  • The no-hopers are already whining about the third debate threshold.
  • Jim Geraghty says they should stop whining:

    Some Democratic presidential campaigns are like the protagonist in an M. Night Shyamalan movie: They’re dead already, they just don’t know it. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say they were never really alive.

    The first Democratic presidential primary debates will be held in two weeks. The threshold for participation is exceptionally low, particularly for any candidate who announced near the beginning of the year: Either reach just 1 percent in three surveys approved by the Democratic National Committee or have 65,000 or more donors that include 200 people from at least 20 states. If you think reaching that threshold is difficult, keep in mind, this limit has already been reached by Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, John Delaney, and Irving Schmidlap.

    (Okay, I threw Irving Schmidlap in there just to see if you were paying attention.)

    The latest polls show Schmidlap already running well ahead of Messam and Swalwell.

    If people wonder why complaints about fairness are so frequently ignored, it’s because of circumstances like this one. The DNC is being really generous, their thresholds are low, and if you can’t reach one percent — one percent! In either national or early primary state polls! — then no, you really don’t belong up there on that debate stage. You’re not supposed to run for president because you want a national reputation; you’re supposed to have a national reputation before you run for president. Presidential campaigns are not supposed to be publicity stunts or longer book tours. If you want to be the next commander in chief, I don’t want to year you whining about how hard all of this is. The job that you claim to be qualified for is going to have much tougher challenges than reaching one percent in a survey or attracting 130,000 donors.

    Cindy Adams snidely dismisses most of the field:

    A pen of donkeys will paw summer’s debate stage. Entrepreneur Yang figures his young grassroots fund-raising translates to a win. Lotsa luck. In BC, gladiators in Roman amphitheaters fought live animals. In 2020, Tiger Trump will swallow this creature like he’s granola.

    NYC’s savvy dude mayor, a “much-derided presidential candidate,” grabs attention — but, bleat the pros, “he’s running because he’s got no more day job.” Even Kevin Costner would nix playing him in a movie.

    Our only local woman to maybe break the gents barrier is Laurie Metcalf, who plays Hillary on B’way. Cutlery is out for struggling Kirsten Gillibrand, who once said she’s not around the state enough because she can’t be everywhere since she has children to raise. Now she’s around the country. So, pros ask, what’s with those kids?

    Former frontrunner Bernie Sanders’ base gets youngisher and whitisher. He’s sinking into the lavatory.

    Grampa Joe Boredom? Recalling his multiple heresies and zero accomplishments, the antis plan to make Bidenburgers out of him.

    Don’t book on Booker. Wall Street and Silicon Valley keep Cory funded but, despite showing African-Americans he’s their Medicine Man, he’s trailing.

    Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. Late start and zero name ID. While Montana made statehood 1889, the only other VIP from there was Gary Cooper. Also Dana Carvey.

    A chorus line of other whocares from whoknowswhere are also scratching around for whoknowswhy. They figure this eventually grabs them a book deal, speaking gig, bigtime p.r. or a free trip to Times Square.

    Supposedly 13 will be propped up for June 26’s debate: Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg, Beto, Booker, Kamala, Klobuchar, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard (who??), Jay Inslee, Marianne Williamson, Warren — and Yang — plus a partridge in a pear tree — with de Blasio and Gillibrand, still iffy.

    Beto O’Rourke. Do not bet-o on him. Waning in the polls. Anyway, who cares.

    Elizabeth Warren wows wonks with policy proposals and, for some reason, has a strong left-leaning organization in Iowa. But there’s also her “likability” — of which much there isn’t.

    Kamala Harris. Trailing. Main asset is strategic. If she does well in South Carolina, she might twinkle in home state California’s early primary.

    Buttigieg. Age 37. I mean, please. My pedicurist has a better shot. His college-educated white voters met the minimal polling threshold, but his résumé in public office is smaller than mine.

    Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. I mean, please. Paris Hilton has a better shot.

    If Hilton jumped in tomorrow, she’d be in the top eight easy…

  • 538 on what the candidates are saying and doing.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? “The Stacey Abrams Myth Becomes the Democratic Catechism.”

    The claims of voter suppression rest primarily on the fact that as Georgia secretary of state, Kemp enforced a statute passed by a Democratic-majority legislature and signed by a Democratic governor in 1997. It required the voting rolls to be periodically purged to remove names of voters who were dead, or who had moved away or were incarcerated. Under this law, 600,000 names of people who hadn’t voted in the last three elections were removed from the rolls in 2017 by Kemp’s office.

    Those who were removed got prior notification in the mail about the impending purge, and they were given a menu of options to retain their registration. Moreover, it took four years to complete the process by which a name was removed. The reason so many names were taken off in 2017 was that a lawsuit by the Georgia NAACP had delayed the routine enforcement of the law for years before the organization eventually lost in the U.S. Supreme Court.

    If you assume that most of the 600,000 were Democrats who were denied the right to vote — rather than voters who were deceased or who had moved or been jailed — that gives credibility to Abrams’s story. But there aren’t many people stepping forward since November 2018 to say they were wrongfully removed from the rolls, let alone the tens or hundreds of thousands necessary to substantiate Abrams’s claim that the election was stolen.

    The other argument that purportedly backs up the stolen-election claim is that lengthy lines caused by the closing of 212 precincts in the state since 2012 deterred Georgia voters from turning out. But Kemp had nothing to do with that, since all decisions on consolidating voting stations were made by county officials. Which means if there were fewer precincts and longer lines in Democratic-majority counties in Georgia, it was almost certainly due to the decisions made by local Democrats, not Kemp or a national GOP conspiracy.

    When examined soberly, Abrams’s claims evaporate. Kemp’s win was no landslide, but his 1.4 percent margin of victory didn’t even give her the right to demand a legal recount. Demographic changes may mean that Georgia is trending away from the red-state status it has had in the last decade, but Stacey Abrams lost because Republicans still can turn out majorities there even in years when the odds favor Democrats.

    But by continuing to swear to the lie that the election was stolen, Biden, Buttigieg, and every other Democrat who repeats that claim while paying court to Abrams and hoping to win African-American votes are poisoning the well of American democracy.

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. He met the polling criteria for the first debate. “Bennet appears to be the 21st Democratic candidate to qualify for the first debates under one of the criteria, according to an estimated count from The Hill. So far only 13 appear to have met both criteria.” Five takeaways from his CNN town hall. Sanders goes too far on Medicare for all, Bennet backs the Georgia abortion boycott, opposes impeachment, criticizes Trump’s Mexico tariffs, and makes vague noises about building a “bigger coalition.” Among who? Gun owners? Pro-life advocates? Coal miners? People who want to stop illegal aliens from crossing the border? I’m sure they’ll all be just itching to pull that (D) lever. “Bennet hires Iowa state director, a former Indiana congressional campaign manager,” one Brian Peters.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden started the week bucking the most sacred of Democratic Party orthodoxy by backing the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits, however imperfectly, federal funds being used for abortion. Naturally, Biden was forced to repent of his heresy days later due to pushback from other Democrats, including his own staff. National Review points out that Biden was never really pro-life:

    The last month has featured the former vice president switching his stance on Hyde no fewer than three times — he tried to explain away one of his U-turns by claiming he’d “misheard” the reporter’s question — before finally settling on opposition to it. He explained his final decision in a tweet that could just as easily have been written by an activist from NARAL.

    Biden’s rejection of his decades of support for Hyde betrays the reality: He was never actually pro-life. Though he has long had a reputation as “personally opposed” to abortion on religious grounds, his political actions have merited no such label. (Nor has he ever offered a sufficient explanation for why a man who believes, for whatever reason, that abortion kills innocent human beings ought to refrain from legislating that belief.)

    Joe Biden, plagiarist, take, what? Six? Seven? Ten? Back when Biden lied about marching for Civil Rights. After all these stumbled, other candidates are finally starting to attack him directly. “Joe Biden is a candidate of the oligarchy. Democratic primary voters will see through him.” More: “He is a consummate, long-time Washington insider, who has demonstrated in his long career that he often dances with the ones who brought him: wealthy donors and special interests.”

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He unveiled a stupid and unworkable housing subsidy idea. Cory Booker 2012: “Listen to me, the people dying in Chicago, the people dying in Newark are not being done with law-abiding gun owners. We do not need to go after the guns. A law-abiding, mentally stable American, that’s not America’s problem.” Now? Not so much.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Mr. Zero Percent protests too much. “The presidential campaign of Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is fundraising off claims that Republican forces fear his candidacy — even though the attacks are to damage him in a Senate run if, as expected, he drops out of the White House race.” Also: “Jon Tester endorses fellow Montana Democrat Steve Bullock for president.” Because that was his problem, not enough endorsements from Montana.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana and presidential hopeful, and his husband have over $130,000 in student loan debt, according to financial disclosures reviewed by the AP on Sunday. A campaign spokesperson would not tell AP whether the loans belong to Buttigieg, his husband, or both.” Hey, that means I get to recycle this from last week:

    (More on his net worth.) He’s also appearing at Indiana University next week.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He offered a “policing reform” proposal, because he evidently doesn’t understand what the word “federalism” means. And of course he clothes it in the usual “hands up/don’t shoot” lies and it’s filled with social justice warrior “police racist” talking points.
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. He flips reality on its head by insisting that antisemitism is a right-wing problem. “And so, to cope with the cognitive dissonance involved in Jews getting beaten up in deep blue New York, naturally he comforts himself with the belief that this is a right-wing problem. Somehow.” And that piece embeds this tweet:

    “The New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council announced Wednesday that it is endorsing de Blasio and will send members to campaign for him in early voting states including New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.” Bread, know thy butter…

  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. He reiterated his opposition to “Medicare for All” (indeed, he called it political suicide for Democrats), and said that Bernie Sanders “has no business being the nominee of the Democratic Party.” For telling these truths he got attacked by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:

    Then he challenged her to a debate. Good job! If you can reach those Democrats that don’t want Occasional Cortex to be the face of their party, you might start registering in polls…

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gabbard said that immigrants fighting for the U.S. military are rejected for citizenship at a higher rate than civilians, and, weirdly, that actually appears to be true. But the law was changed in 2016. People evidently lined up for blocks to see her in New York City:

    I thought “how can we tell that’s not an Apple store opening?” but I slowed down the video and, yes, at least one person is in a Tusli t-shirt.

  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She secured a spot in the first debate. “Over the weekend, we crossed 65,000 donors to our campaign—guaranteeing our spot at the first debates.” Really? Just now? A sitting senator from America’s fourth-most popular state, and it took her that long to cross the threshold. She unleashed a plan to legalize marijuana, which is possibly the first smart move she’s made in this campaign. (And how come pot-friendly governors Hickenlooper and Inslee aren’t making the devil’s lettuce issues in their campaigns?) “Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Boneless Wonder.” Sample: “Kirsten Gillibrand announced on National Public Radio that the Church is wrong about abortion, homosexuality and the male priesthood.” But other than that, she’s totally Catholic…
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. He paid $5,000 for Florida ethics violations.
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gravel now has six fulltime staffers, and 538 is now tracking his campaign. (Once again, I’m a trendsetter.) Speaking of 538, they do “How Mike Gravel Could Win The 2020 Democratic Primary” for the lulz:

    Many things, most of them unlikely, would have to transpire for former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel to win the Democratic nomination for president.

    A few possibilities: All the other candidates drop out, and no successful write-in campaign is waged. A capricious President Trump orders a catastrophic invasion of another nation, lending massive credibility to Gravel’s perennial anti-war stance (he helped put the Pentagon Papers into the public record). The Democratic primary electorate all of a sudden decides that it would prefer an octogenarian candidate to the current septuagenarian front-runners. (Gravel is 89 years of age; meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is a youthful 77 years old, and Joe Biden is a spring chicken, at 76.)

    He just racked up his biggest endorsement yet: the guy who threw a shoe at Bush43.

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Kamala Harris seems to have invented a stock nonanswer for any question… and I think you can tell she doesn’t believe she can get away with it.” She bragged on her record as a prosecutor, which rather suggests she has no notable accomplishments as California Attorney General or U.S. Senator.
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. He unveiled a plan for rural communities, which suggests he’s looking past the primary to the general election, which may not be the optimal strategy for someone currently topping out at 1%.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. His campaign is shaking its tiny fist at the DNC’s decision not to hold a climate change debate. The other Inslee news this week could be assembled from a book of Madlibs where the only words entered in every blank are “climate change.” (Example: “Inslee: Build U.S. foreign policy around climate crisis.”)
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She was on Face the Nation. Scanning. Vikings. I can win in red states. And then a lot of DNC-approved abortion pandering.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. That “zero people picked him or de Blasio” poll news is in fact the only Messam news I could locate this week. There’s an absence of evidence on his campaign, but there is evidence of absence…
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s not making the first debate. “Massachusetts congressman and 2020 presidential candidate Seth Moulton expressed opposition for the Hyde Amendment by comparing federally-funded abortions to funding the U.S. troops.” There’s not a facepalm big enough…
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s all in on Iowa. “O’Rourke is also running a much more traditional Iowa campaign with a strong presence on the ground, probably only eclipsed by Elizabeth Warren’s efforts.” Heh: “Let’s hear it for the blank slate!” Unclear on the concept:

    He also released voting rights proposals that are mostly bad or ineffectual ideas, but does include term limits for senators and representatives.

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. He wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment and impeach President Trump. Remember when Ryan ran to Nancy Pelosi’s right as a moderate alternative for speaker? It’s strange how all those “moderate” positions magically disappear when running nationally…
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a long profile in Time, of the “Does Bernie need to change” sort, with a heaping side-order of campaign trail color reporting.

    Sanders has changed the debate in great measure because he has never really changed himself. His consistency is the selling point—his mantras against billionaires stealing the American Dream, the system being rigged, working people needing to form a movement to take power back. And yet he is now running against nearly two dozen competitors, many of whom have chipped away at his distinctiveness by emulating his stances, and just being Bernie may not get the job done. Sanders is solidly in second place behind Biden in national and state polls. And while the movement he built in 2016 has proven durable, there are few signs that it’s growing. Between March and May, according to a national survey by Monmouth University, Sanders’ support dropped from 25% of likely Democratic votes to 15%, as several rivals increased their share.

    There is a feeling in Sanders’ orbit that he will, in certain ways, have to evolve if he wants to do more than change the conversation. Tell his story more. Navigate the shoals of racial and gender politics with greater awareness of contemporary expectations and his own blind spots. Overcome his self-image of being a solitary outsider—alone, unheard, disrespected—­and cultivate allies. “It’s one thing to talk to your 20% to 25% who are your core believers, but we’ve got to work on persuading people into the fold,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, told me. “And that’s why it takes, I believe, a continual evolution of the message, freshening up the message and also sharing more about him.”

    See, Bernie just isn’t touchy-feely enough for today’s modern Democratic Party pieties:

    After a few of these town halls, Sanders’ own stoicism makes more sense. He begins to seem almost a secular priest: People come to him with stories of despair, and he lifts their pain up into the air, to a place where it is no longer personal but something civic. He gives them the language and information to know it isn’t their fault. His speeches are like that hug in Good Will Hunting. It’s not your fault; it’s not your fault. The system did this. Big corporations did this. A bought-and-paid-for government did this. He connects their pain to the pain of others, and in the process that pain is remade, almost transubstantiated, into a sweeping case against a corrupt system. The priest, in this metaphor, doesn’t reveal himself because his job is to float above his own feelings, own needs, own desire to be liked. His job is to make space for, make sense of and make use of your pain.

    This covenant with his supporters is his great achievement. No rival for the Democratic nomination has anything quite like it. Even Steve Bannon, the right-wing populist who ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, admires it. Sanders’ agenda is “a hodgepodge of these half-baked socialist ideas that we’ve seen haven’t worked,” Bannon told me in his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, sitting in front of a painting on which the words Follow your dreams were written above a monkey sitting on a Coca-Cola box. But, he said, “Bernie has done a tremendous job of galvanizing a segment that hasn’t gone away. I mean, he has a real movement.”

    Building a following fueled by pain and personal hardship is an especially big accomplishment for a candidate who is himself so emotionally inaccessible, reluctant to share more than the barest glimpses of his own history and inner life. “Not me. Us.” is his 2020 campaign slogan, and he means it. “Almost to a tee, what defines a politician is they love to tell their story,” Shakir told me. “He has absolutely zero inclination to do that. He abhors it.”

    Sanders seems to believe the public doesn’t have a right to know him more intimately—­even though there is abundant evidence that the essential character traits of our Presidents eventually shape all our lives: Bill Clinton’s appetites; George W. Bush’s certitude; Barack Obama’s instinct to hire bankers; Donald Trump’s narcissism. In our first interview, on a bench in the Des Moines airport, I asked Sanders a simple question: How did he first experience the idea that people blame themselves for systemic problems? “Well, before we get to me,” he said, “what the political revolution is about is the millions of people beginning to stand up …”

    Many of Sanders’ advisers are eager for the Senator to get more personal.

    And, of course, there’s the Old White Man issue for a party so blatantly racist aware of race as the Democratic Party circa 2019:

    With Trump in the White House, Democrats cannot ignore Macomb. But there are other votes that need to be courted. Minorities and women, and black women especially, are the lifeblood of the modern Democratic Party—and for them, Sanders’ way of diluting the truth about Trump voters can be troubling.

    The dilemma came to a head an hour later. We got off the bus at Detroit’s Sweet Potato Sensations, a bakery famous for its sweet-potato pies ($14 for a 9-in.). The audience was almost entirely African-American women. Sanders stood among them and took questions. A woman named Janis Hazel rose. She said she used to work for Representative John Conyers, a long-serving former House member from Michigan. Conyers (with Hazel’s assistance) had long ago proposed a bill mandating a commission to study how reparations for descendants of slavery might be undertaken in the U.S. Hazel asked Sanders whether he backed the idea, which Conyers had reintroduced each session until he resigned in 2017 over allegations of sexual harassment.

    Before she could finish, Sanders cut her off, undermining the proposal by reminding people that it is merely for a “study.” She tried to complete the question, and again Sanders jumped in. “Well, I’ve said that if the Congress passes the bill, I will sign it. It is a study.” He pivoted. “You know Jim Clyburn from South Carolina? Clyburn has a bill which I like. He calls it ‘10-20-30.’” The plan calls for 10% of all funds from certain federal programs to go to distressed communities to rebuild those communities.

    Afterward, Hazel told me she felt Sanders avoided her question. As it is, he had only recently come around to his tepid support for studying reparations. And his irritation at being pinned down on the issue was revealing. The dismissal of a mere “study” suggested an unfamiliarity with what advocates for reparations seek: a program so sweeping it would be impossible to administer without years of forethought.

    The interaction also called into question Sanders’ ability to navigate the complex social terrain that is the Democratic electorate in 2019. A room full of black women who didn’t seem bought into the Sanders agenda were trying to figure out, as all voters are, if he got them. There were a thousand ways in that moment to say, “Yes, I back reparations” or even, “No, I don’t, and here’s why,” and still convey your grasp of what lay beneath the question—­the desire to be seen and reassured that your community wouldn’t be forgotten. But Sanders didn’t do that.

    The Democrat who emerges to take on Trump in 2020 will have to compete for those Reagan Democrats and those black women, two tribes living in different worlds, a short distance apart on I-94. An issue like reparations is a perfect example of how difficult this can be; pleasing Detroit may hurt you a few exits to the north.

    In presidential elections past, the tension between what Macomb wanted and what Detroit wanted tended to be resolved in Macomb’s favor. But 2020 seems unlikely to repeat that history. It is being called the “woke primary” by people on the Republican side, because of the early pressure on candidates to take positions on questions of race and gender and identity—questions that matter to people other than white working-class men. The high maternal mortality rate for black women. Transgender rights. The question of when physical contact between men and women ­escalates from friendly to predatory. The problem of combating hate crimes.

    The woke primary is a challenge for Sanders. In part because he is an old-style leftist whose overriding lens is class, not identity. In part because woke culture often craves the kind of gesture­making to which he’s allergic. And in part because Sanders seems to struggle with the expectation that a 77-year-old white guy needs to learn, evolve and prove that he “gets it,” even if he was at Dr. King’s march.

    It seems a little early for this: “Is Bernie Sanders Finished? Democrats like him. They just show no signs of wanting to vote for him this time around.”

    That said: I think it’s starting to sink in that Senator Bernie Sanders is right at the fringes of plausibility. At best.That’s what I’m seeing from the mainstream media, some liberal bloggers and sophisticated polling analysis. Recent Iowa polls show Sanders at about 15%, essentially in a three-person race for second place with Senator Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. That’s for a candidate who won half the vote there in 2016.And while Sanders is faring somewhat better nationally, that’s mainly because almost all the other candidates remain unknown to voters. As Nate Silver points out, only about 8% of Democrats say they’re definitely supporting Sanders. In other words, it’s entirely plausible that Sanders could fail to reach the delegate threshold in Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina (and possibly New Hampshire).

    I’m no Sanders fan, but all that is based on a bad poll or two and nothing else, which is pretty much meaningless at this point. He’s being more aggressive in South Carolina than he was in 2016. He also scolded Walmart.

  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: In. Twitter. Facebook. His “applause line” fell absolutely flat at that big Iowa event. Wonder Cringe Powers Activate!

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Her slow but steady rise continues, and she appears to be eating into Sanders’ base. “Senator Warren’s ‘economic patriotism’ consists of calling the bosses at the Fortune 500 a**holes and then writing them a check for tens of billions of dollars. I suspect the gentlemen in pinstripes will find a way to endure the insult.” With all her plans, does Warren have a plan to deal with Mitch McConnell? “If I’m still the majority leader of the Senate, think of me as the Grim Reaper…None of that stuff is going to pass. None of it.” Also, her campaign unionized.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Speaking of “all in on Iowa,” she moved to Des Moines. A bold move, but one when Chris Dodd did the same thing in 2007, it netted him 2% of the Iowa vote and zero delegates. Here are some excerpts from a Williamson speech that are half warmed-over “Democrats good, Trump bad” talking points and half something else:

    Too often the Democrats have been the party that stands for the right thing, but still cozies up to the forces that do the wrong thing, thinking that that’s okay because once we get in power we will do the right thing, and then we naively think that that doesn’t smell to people, that the putrid stench of that more complicated corruption will not be wafting into the nostrils of the average voter.

    In other words, too many Democrats are half-truth tellers, ladies and gentlemen, and Donald Trump will eat the half-truth tellers alive.

    She also talks about Trump using persuasion in a way that sounds like a funhouse mirror distortion of Scott Adams’ explanations of Trump’s techniques: “Trump has spoken to a very dark and primal place within the human psyche, a place of fear that becomes like an emotional knot in people’s brains and this knot cannot be unraveled by mere intellectual or rationalistic argument for I assure you the part of the brain that rationally analyzes an issue is not the part of the brain that decides who to vote for.”

    I’ll give her this: She’s different.

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Random man runs for President:

    In November 2017, Yang registered his presidential bid with the Federal Election Commission. In April 2018, he published a book titled, “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future.” “We are in the third inning of the greatest technological and economic shift in human history,” Yang often says, arguing that job losses in swing states propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. To survive the invasion of intelligent machines, Yang argues, America needs an economic and social overhaul, which would be spurred by a government-sponsored universal payment of $1,000 a month to every American adult. Or, in the language of nerd: Yang is an underdog hero rising up to fight the robots and save humanity. His weapon: allowance for grown-ups.

    Yang now leads thousand-person rallies on the regular. Fans wave signs that say “MATH” to support the self-proclaimed candidate of numbers and data — the guy who wants to Make America Think Harder. “I’m going to be the first president in history to use PowerPoint in the State of the Union,” Yang announced to a crowd in Seattle in early May. “How do you feel about that?” Cheers. “Yeah, break out the PowerPoint chant! No — don’t do it —”

    Too late. Fists were already pumping in the air, demonstrating the demagogic potential of Microsoft Office Suite.

    “Yes, this is the nerdiest presidential campaign in history,” a triumphant Yang shouted. “We did it!”

    Another improbable thing Yang has done: catapulted himself, an entrepreneur with few claims to fame and no political experience, into the Democratic presidential conversation. After a viral campaign seeking $1 donations, Yang earned a place in the upcoming primary debates by accruing 65,000 individual donors two months ahead of the deadline. (He celebrated with a cartoon GIF of himself doing the robot amid cascading dollar bills.) CNN hosted a Yang town hall event in April. By the end of May, the polling average at RealClearPolitics showed Yang with 1 percent of the vote — which is small, yes, but puts him ahead of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), who has 0.4 percent, and not far behind such established politicians as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), who has 1.8 percent, and former Cabinet secretary Julián Castro, who has 1.2 percent.

    Conservative columnist Matthew Walther has characterized Yang as “Ross Perot for millennials” — “a soft reboot of the Texan businessman’s maverick populist wonkery.” Yang, too, is an improvisational outsider with an out-of-nowhere campaign. But he is also the product of so many colliding forces in contemporary America that comparisons to anyone who came before him are kind of useless. Yang’s ascent from anonymity has been instantaneous in a way that can only exist in the age of social media. (His fans, who call themselves the Yang Gang, sometimes Photoshop him into robot-fighting scenes from science fiction.) His staff credits podcasts for building Yang’s die-hard base almost overnight. Digital media shapes Yang’s worldview and his self-presentation; his website’s prodigious policy section could be recast as a Facebook-friendly listicle, something like “108 Big Ideas That Could Save America Right Now.” (Yes, he really has 108 policy proposals. At least, he did as of press time; the number changes frequently.) His tone blends irony and earnestness in the manner of late-night political comedy. And the source of Yang’s relentless focus — universal basic income — is, at the moment, popular in future-minded circles that take cues from the likes of Pierre Omidyar, Richard Branson and Elon Musk. Yang’s campaign belongs to a mode of popular American discourse that did not exist 20, 10 or even five years ago: He is an emblem of the everyman thinkers of the Internet age.

    Despite meeting both of the debate criteria, somehow MSNBC keeps leaving him off their charts. He doesn’t want to break up big tech.

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, or for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running (and I’ve even gone back and put in names that were mentioned as possibilities for running that I’ve dropped, just for the sake of completeness):

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • 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.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • 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
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    I should really find some outlet to pay me to do these updates. PJ Media? Townhall? Daily Caller? Washington Examiner? Daily Wire? Breibart? Who pays the most?

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    2 Responses to “Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for June 10, 2019”

    1. Howard says:

      That 538 chart is fascinating, and its follow up. I enjoyed this quip further down that thread:

      “The difference between liberals and cannibals? Cannibals eat only their enemies.” — LBJ

    2. Howard says:

      Also, her campaign unionized.

      Linky no workie. Please edit. 8-)

      [Fixed. – LP]

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