Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Voters cast ballots in less than three months, and the Democratic primary is still crowded with little guys. Roughly a half-dozen candidates in the very bottom tier of the Democratic presidential primary are soldiering on, hoping that even after months of campaigning without catching fire that there’s still a chance. Their resolve reflects, in part, some Democrats’ insistence that the lineup of top contenders is deeply flawed and the race is primed for some late twists and turns.

“I truly believe that that person is as likely to be someone polling at 1% today as it is to be the people that are leading in the race today,” Bennet told reporters after filing his paperwork. “Stranger things have happened than that.”

Candidates like Bennet have some reason for optimism. Polls show many Democratic voters, even in early-voting states, have not made up their minds. In Iowa, the first state to weigh in, the front of the pack is crowded, another sign of ambiguity, some argue. Worries about the strength of the front-runners prompted Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, to move toward a bid, threatening to expand the field just as the party thought it would be winnowing.

Some higher-profile aspirants, including New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand or former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, weren’t able to stick it out, after months of poor polling and lackluster fundraising. Some middle-tier candidates, meanwhile, have had to scale back their operations. California Sen. Kamala Harris pulled staff from New Hampshire this past week, while former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro cut positions there and in early-voting South Carolina.

But Bennet and others seemed to have prepared for a long, very slow burn. Bennet and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock never expected to raise much money and built small-scale operations that could carry them until the first part of February, when Iowa and then New Hampshire vote.

“Everybody goes up and down, and what I need to be is organizing and catching fire as voting starts,” said Bullock, another candidate mired in the bottom tier who has announced an initial $500,000 advertising campaign in Iowa.

Bennet and Bullock stand out in the crowded bottom tier as two well-regarded moderate politicians who got into the race late — in May — and appear to have the same strategy: wait for former Vice President Joe Biden’s support to collapse and hope they’re the best centrist standing. A Bloomberg bid would immediately add another contender — and millions of dollars — to the competition on that front, though the former mayor’s team says he will likely stay out of early states.

Other perennial 1% polling candidates have plans that are far less clear. They include spiritualist and best-selling author Marianne Williamson, who moved from Los Angeles to Iowa for the race; former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, who just concluded a walk across New Hampshire to attempt to draw attention to his campaign; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, a wealthy businessman who is self-funding much of his race.

Delaney explained his continued campaign with a “why not?” rationale. After millions spent and countless hours of time, “it just seems kind of crazy for me to get out before the caucus,” he said.

Aides and allies to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among other liberals, perceive the eleventh-hour campaign launched last week by Patrick — and the prospect of an impending Bloomberg 2020 bid — as an attempt to crush an ascendant left wing that would expand government more than any other Democratic president in decades.

In their view, Patrick and Bloomberg are stalking horses for moderate Democrats, high-dollar contributors and bundlers desperate to halt the momentum of the economic populists at the top of the polls — and regain control of the party levers.

It’s no minor intra-party spat in an election where all wings of the Democratic Party will need to be working in concert to beat Trump.

They’re not wrong, but note that the word “unelectable” is strangely missing from the piece. Finally, an actual excuse for using a silly image:

Name the Democrat who is super-excited to have Michael Bloomberg barge into the Dem primaries like some nutty ex-girlfriend who gave you crabs popping in at your wedding. Where is the groundswell of support behind this pint-sized presidential aspirant? Perhaps the Democratic consultants who didn’t sign up with one of the other goofy candidates are happy. The micro-zillionaire may not have charisma or a vision or actual human support, but he’s got endless bucks to squander on electoral parasites.

So, those jerks will love him getting in. And so will us Republicans – Trump already has a nickname laid upon the numismatic gnome, “Little Michael.”

Real talk: the guy is delusional. Can you hear the excitement about the Verne Troyer of American politics bubbling over in the Midwest where this election’s going to be won?”

“Hey Lou, good news. That Bloomberg guy is in the race. I’ve been lookin’ for a miniature Manhattan finance snob who wants to ban Cokes, take our deer rifles, and who makes the New York Times happy.”

“Yeah Phil, I’m sure getting tired of all this great economic good news and my kids not coming home in boxes from Whocaresistan.”

“We need a guy who’s thinks he’s smarter and better than us and isn’t afraid to tell us how to live our lives!”

Snip.

Bloomberg is the kind of pursed-lipped, uptight scold the Normals are saluting with a single digit. You get the distinct impression that he spends a lot of his time being very, very upset that we are choosing to live our lives without his approval, and that it grates on him. Electing him president would be like electing your kindergarten teacher POTUS, if your kindergarten teacher was tiny, 77, and jetted away for every weekend to Bermuda in her Gulfstream after lecturing you on how you can’t have chocolate because of global warming.

Snip.

But that’s okay, because his ego trip is going to cause amazing, glorious disruption within the Democratic race and help Donald Trump immeasurably. Blue on blue is the best kind of conflict, and this uncivil war is going to send popcorn sales through the roof. I know I’ll be gobbling it down, while sipping a Big Gulp just to tick him off.

Do you think Joe Biden, who now occupies the “fake moderate” lane Bloomberg wants to run in, will just go quietly? It was Gropey’s age-fueled decline, magnified by his snortunate son Hoover’s coke-fueled Slavic shenanigans, that made the creepy veep vulnerable. But Joe won’t stagger away quietly. He’ll stagger away loudly, incoherently, and bloodily. Joe may be utterly confused – “Whaddya mean the Blue Man Group is running against me?” – but those around him, those investing in his success, those planning to actually control things should the American people be dumb enough to elect the empty figurehead, are not going to just throw in the towel.

It’s not like Bloomberg has a lot of love out there in Dem land, or in Republican land, or in any land. He wants to claim the centrist slot, but the Dems are in no mood for puny moderation. And we Republicans are not fooled by Lil’ Duce. He’s a liberal schoolmarm just like the rest, except his business acumen won’t let him support the trillions in giveaways Chief Sitting Bolshevik and the rest are touting. He knows their numbers are literally insane, and he’ll say so, but just because you can count doesn’t make you moderate.

He faces a Democratic Party iceberg:

Bloomberg sees another gap, this one in the Democratic presidential field, where no center-left candidate dominates. Both Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg have obvious weaknesses and Amy Klobuchar has all but disappeared. Bloomberg is right in saying the whole field is weak, most candidates are too far left to win in November, and the center lane is not too crowded. He’s also right in saying that President Trump is vulnerable despite the strong economy. And he’s right in thinking that his age is no barrier. At 77, he is still energetic and sharp enough to do the job.

Where Bloomberg is wrong is thinking he can captivate a Democratic base that has moved sharply left since Barack Obama left office. He’s wrong, too, if he thinks policies that worked in New York City will appeal to contemporary Democrats.

Bloomberg’s problem is not that primary voters hate his notorious tax on Slurpees or his strong stance against guns. They like them. Party activists don’t drink Big Gulps; they sip fair-trade coffee and craft beer. They don’t drive pickup trucks with gun racks. Au contraire. They think restrictions on gun sales are long overdue and will reduce urban crime. They adore government policies crafted by experienced professionals, not gasbag populists. Some remember Bloomberg’s New York as a very competently run city, one that became cleaner, safer, and more prosperous during his tenure (2002-2013). So far, so good.

The problem is that Bloomberg made the city safer by cracking down on petty criminals (“broken windows” policing) and frisking lots of people to lessen gun violence. Those policies, begun under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and continued under Bloomberg, worked well—but they made enemies, especially in poor, minority neighborhoods. Today, those policies are despised by party activists, especially African Americans.

Being strong on crime is the surest way to alienate today’s Democratic primary voters. The same black politicians who backed tough laws during the crack cocaine epidemic now reject them and blame their passage on white racists. (That’s why Joe Biden, who voted for these bills, now apologizes for them.) Actually, black politicians were among their strongest advocates. Back then, they had plenty of support from minority voters living in communities ravaged by crack and the gangs that sold it.

Those days are gone. The politicians who previously supported such policies now revile “mass incarceration” and the “prison-industrial complex.” For them, Black Lives Matter means no more intrusive policing, no more arrests for “broken windows” or jumping turnstiles, no more street stops to frisk for illegal weapons.

Gone, too, are the days when reform-minded Democrats supported charter schools, as Mayor Bloomberg did. Teacher unions have waged war on them in Democratic cities across the country.

This shift in attitudes means Bloomberg can tell primary voters he made New York more livable, but he cannot tell them how. His successful policies are now politically toxic, at least among Democrats. They are major obstacles to winning black support, an essential element in the party’s coalition. Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete face their own obstacles with this vital constituency, where they badly lag Barack Obama’s vice president.

Bloomberg’s second problem is yet another one that would be a huge asset in a sane world. He is the very embodiment of an American economic success story. He is immensely rich, and he made it all himself. Republicans love that kind of story. Democrats once did, too. No more. It doesn’t matter that Bloomberg made his riches honestly by adding value to the economy. He didn’t throw poor people out of work, run sweatshops, mine coal, or slaughter cuddly animals. It hardly matters that he’s given away billions to charity. What matters is that he is not embarrassed by his riches, that he made them in the financial sector, and that he opposes the activists’ anti-growth policies, such as the Green New Deal. For the socialist wing of the party, those are the indelible marks of Cain. The hard left will never back him, even if he wins the nomination. Some might hold their noses and vote for him in the general election, but his nomination would rip the party apart.

Bloomberg faces other problems, too. He is the opposite of charismatic. He lacks a national, grassroots organization. His money can buy consultants and advertisements, but it cannot coax volunteers to ring doorbells.

“History Says Bloomberg 2020 Would Be a Sure Loser“:

If Bloomberg is concerned about the rise of Elizabeth Warren, the Thompson campaign should prompt him to think very hard about the ramifications of getting into the 2020 race. By splitting the moderate vote with Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, a Bloomberg candidacy might wind up delivering key states to Warren or Bernie Sanders.

Granted, none of the other latecomers has brought a fleet of Brinks trucks into a campaign. And the sheer volatility of primaries, along with the unpredictability of politics, warns against putting too much stock in history. Still, if Bloomberg or anyone else is seriously thinking of launching a campaign, it’s worth remembering that when it comes to a presidential run, the last has never been first.

It’s not that Bloomberg doesn’t suck, it’s just that everone else sucks so much harder:

Now that Bloomberg has hinted that he might get into the race, he must be considering how he’ll defend his record as mayor to an increasingly left-leaning Democratic voter. Though conservatives often deride Bloomberg for his nanny-state initiatives, like wanting to ban “big gulp” sugary drinks, a considerable part of what the Wall Street tycoon accomplished in New York—from carrying on Rudy Giuliani’s essential policing initiatives to knocking down barriers to real estate development and encouraging the rich to come to New York because “that’s where the revenue comes [from]”—will be far more noxious to the progressive voter than Biden’s policy transgressions. How Bloomberg defends himself will be significant because we’re entering a phase in which moderate, pro-business Democrats (and he was always a Democrat, even when he ran as a Republican) like him are disappearing from the political landscape of America’s big cities, to be replaced by progressives whose views on everything—especially public order—appear to be regressions to the disastrous urban policies of the 1960s and 1970s. The disorder rising in places like San Francisco and Seattle suggests what the fruits of such policies will be.

Bloomberg will supposedly make a decision before Thanksgiving, which means next week have even more turkey than usual…

BOSTON GLOBE: I think that I get the premise of the campaign. You have someone highly educated, very energetic, inspiring on the stump, has some executive experience, with a beautiful, bald head —

CORY BOOKER: Thank you for finally stating the truth!

GLOBE: Oh, well I am talking about Deval Patrick.

BOOKER: [Laughter] Touché! Touché! Another reporter did that to me, like a mayor, Rhodes Scholar, and thank you, thank you. “Oh no, I am talking about Mayor Pete.’’

Points for being a good sport…

The Democratic nomination remains very much up for grabs, but a big question hanging over Buttigieg’s head is whether he can make sufficient inroads with African-American primary voters to capture the nomination.

Black voters make up about a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate, but two thirds of South Carolina primary voters are black, and Buttigieg remains stuck in the single digits in the Palmetto State. A Monmouth poll of South Carolina conducted after the October Democratic debate, where Buttigieg went toe-to-toe with Elizabeth Warren and won, pegged the mayor’s support at 3 percent, while a Change Research poll conducted at the same time showed Buttigieg at 9 percent.

Buttigieg’s weakness in South Carolina is partly a function of the fact that Joe Biden, former vice president to America’s first black president, retains a commanding lead among black voters. But Buttigieg’s weakness is also partly a function of his sexual orientation, as David Catanese reported in The State last month: “Internal focus groups conducted by Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign this summer reveal a possible reason why he is struggling with African-American voters: some see his sexuality as a problem.”

“I’ll go ahead and say it,” one African-American man said in a focus group. “I don’t like the fact that he threw out there that he lives with his husband.”

Buttigieg pitches a plan for black Americans. Unfortunately, he used a stock photograph of black Kenyans in an ad promoting the plan. Oops. Double-oops: Names of supporters of the plan (but not necessarily Buttigieg) appearing in a Buttigieg ad.

Gabbard doesn’t have a ton of supporters: She’s averaging 1 to 2 percent in national surveys and 2 to 4 percent in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But she’s managed to meet the higher polling thresholds for debate qualification, so her support has grown at least a little bit — and what’s more, a chunk of it seems to be exclusively considering backing Gabbard. Back in October FiveThirtyEight partnered with Ipsos to dig into candidate support before and after the fourth Democratic debate. Our survey found that 13 percent of Gabbard’s supporters said they were only considering voting for her, a larger share than all Democratic candidates other than former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom have more support overall.

So what do we know about Gabbard’s base? For one thing, it’s overwhelmingly male —according to The Economist’s polling with YouGov, her support among men is in the mid-single digits, while her support among women is practically nonexistent.

This trend is evident in other recent polls as well. Last week’s Quinnipiac poll of Iowa found Gabbard at 5 percent among men and 1 percent among women, and Quinnipiac’s new survey of New Hampshire found her at 9 percent among men and 4 percent among women. A late October national poll from Suffolk University found her at 6 percent among men and 2 percent among women.

Her predominantly male support shows up in other ways, too. An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found that only 24 percent of Gabbard’s itemized contributions had come from female donors,1 the smallest percentage of any candidate in the race. And while she doesn’t lead on the prediction markets, which tend to skew heavily young and male, as of publication, bettors do give her a slightly better chance of winning the Democratic nomination than Sen. Kamala Harris on PredictIt, though still not better than internet favorite Andrew Yang.

Gabbard’s supporters are also likely to fall outside of traditional Democratic circles. Her supporters, for instance, are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016, hold conservative views or identify as Republican compared to voters backing the other candidates. An early November poll from The Economist/YouGov found that 24 percent of Democratic primary voters who voted for Trump in 2016 backed Gabbard. By comparison, 12 percent of these voters backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 11 percent backed Biden and 10 percent backed Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Primary voters who identified as conservative also overwhelmingly backed Gabbard in that poll (16 percent) — only Biden and Harris enjoyed more support from this group (27 percent and 17 percent, respectively).

All reasons for woke Democrats to hate her even more…

… many privately expressed the view that Harris should begin seriously considering leaving the race to avoid total embarrassment in the state’s early March primary. Her continued weakness in the presidential contest could even have a more damaging effect, several said — encouraging a primary challenger in 2022, when Harris is up for reelection.

“I don’t think she can last until California,’’ says Garry South, a veteran strategist who has advised [CA Governor Gavin] Newsom and former presidential candidate Joe Lieberman. “I don’t wish her ill, but she’s got a decision to make: you limp in here and get killed in your home state, and it damages your reputation nationally. Or you pull out before the primary like Jerry Brown did in 1980 … and you at least avoid the spectacle of being decisively rejected.”

[…]

Interviews with a half-dozen veteran Democratic campaign insiders at the convention who spoke on condition of anonymity — many out of fear of angering a sitting senator — echoed South’s view.

Harris has qualified for both the November and December Democratic debates, so it’s highly unlikely she’ll drop out before then unless she just no longer has the campaign resources to go on.

Klobuchar’s rise in Minnesota politics is attributable in good part to her father’s prominence as a sports reporter and daily columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune. By the time she jumped into electoral politics everybody knew the name Klobuchar.

In Minnesota politics Klobuchar has led a charmed life, but so have a few other DFL politicians who lacked the advantage of a widely known name. Her popularity among Minnesota voters is not a credit to us. From my perspective, the most notable fact about Senator Klobuchar is what a phony she is.

She is not nice. She is not funny. She is not a moderate. She is not an accomplished legislator. She is an incredibly boring speaker.

Democrats, as I wrote earlier this week, have a somewhat unorthodox set of front-runners — at least when compared to past nominees. Joe Biden is on the old side (76). Pete Buttigieg is on the young side (37). Elizabeth Warren is very liberal. And Bernie Sanders is both very liberal and old (78). The last two Democrats to win a general election — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — were 40-somethings who ran on somewhat safe ideological platforms.

Patrick, meanwhile, is 63 years old — not young, exactly, but not in his upper 70s either. He served two terms as Massachusetts governor. He’s liberal, but unlikely to push more controversial liberal policies such as Medicare for All or more drastic ones such as a wealth tax. I assume that Patrick, who is friendly with Obama, is himself wary of the current Democratic field and its lack of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama style figure, and that his circle includes a lot of Democratic Party operatives and donors who see this void and encouraged him to run. (Or at least didn’t discourage him.)

You might think that Patrick’s logical path is to compete with Biden for black voters, and with Warren and Sanders for New Hampshire voters (all three come from neighboring states). And sure, it would help Patrick if he can peel off some of Warren’s well-educated liberal voters, particularly in New Hampshire. And to win the nomination, he will probably have to close the big lead that Biden has with African-Americans. But I think the real opening for Patrick is essentially to replace Pete Buttigieg as the candidate for voters who want a charismatic, optimistic, left-but-not-that-left candidate. Patrick, I think, is betting that there’s a “Goldilocks” opportunity for him — “Buttigieg but older,” or “Biden but younger” — a candidate who is viewed as both safe on policy and safe on electability grounds by Democratic establishment types and voters who just want a somewhat generic Democratic candidate that they are confident will win the general election.

After all, in his rise in Massachusetts politics, Patrick was not that reliant on black support — the Bay State has a fairly small black population (9 percent). Instead, he won a competitive 2006 Democratic primary for governor by emerging as preferred candidate among the state’s white, educated, activist class.

On paper, Patrick seems fairly similar to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — charismatic, black, left-but-not-that-left. But he has two potential advantages over them. First, Patrick has a last-mover advantage — he’s seen how the other candidates have ran and can begin his candidacy to take advantage of perceived weaknesses. As a new candidate, voters might also give him a fresh look in a way that perhaps the two senators haven’t been able to get. But more importantly, Booker and Harris both spent the first half of the year trying to win some of the more liberal voters, who are likely now with Warren and Sanders. That may have made Harris, in particular, appear as though she was trying to be all things to all people. Patrick can now enter the race knowing that he is trying to win Democrats who self-identify as “moderate” and “somewhat liberal,” basically conceding the most liberal voters to Warren and Sanders.

Patrick currently works at Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Democrats spent 2012 criticizing because Mitt Romney had long worked there. That looked like a huge liability this time last year, when Patrick flirted with but ultimately ruled out a run. Back then, it seemed like the party’s left was ascendant and Patrick’s Bain work would be a deal-breaker. Now, I expect Patrick to be more unapologetic about his work, essentially leaning into the idea that he is more moderate and pro-capitalism than Warren or Sanders.

It all sounds pretty good on paper, right? You can almost see why Patrick decided to launch such a late, long-shot bid.

There is a potential problem, though: I’m not sure voters really want Buttigieg-but-older or Biden-but-younger. Whatever the Democratic elites think, Democratic voters like the current field, as I noted above. That makes me think that people in Iowa, where the South Bend mayor is surging, are not looking for Buttigieg-but-older. They’re probably well aware of how old Buttigieg is — he talks about it all the time! Biden, meanwhile, has led in national polls most of the year and has solid leads in Nevada and South Carolina — it’s possible many voters view his age and related experience as a feature not a bug. Patrick will be a fresh candidate and perhaps have a more honed message, but in the end may register with actual voters not much differently than Booker or Harris or any of the other lower-tier candidates, black or non-black.

(Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

Matt Taibbi is not impressed with the rationale for a Patrick candidacy:

Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts and newly-resigned executive of Mitt Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital, has entered the Democratic primary race, which is shaping up to be the biggest ensemble-disaster comedy since Cannonball Run.

Patrick’s entry comes after news that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put himself on the ballot in Alabama and Arkansas. It also comes amid word from Hillary Clinton that “many, many, many” people are urging her to run in 2020, and whispers in the press that an “anxious Democratic establishment” has been praying for alternate candidacies in a year that had already seen an astonishing 26 different people jump in the race.

A piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago suggested Democratic insiders, going through a “Maalox moment” as they contemplated possible failure in next year’s general election season, were fantasizing about “white knight” campaigns by Clinton, Patrick, John Kerry, Michelle Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder (!), or Ohio’s Sherrod Brown.

The story described “concern” that “party elites” have about the existing field:

With doubts rising about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s ability to finance a multistate primary campaign, persistent questions about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s viability in the general election and skepticism that Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Ind., can broaden his appeal beyond white voters, Democratic leaders are engaging in a familiar rite: fretting about who is in the race…

LOL at the non-mention of Bernie Sanders in that passage. If Bernie wins the nomination, “Buttigieg Finishes Encouraging Fourth” is going to be your A1 Times headline.

Snip.

People like Bloomberg and Patrick seem to believe in the existence of a massive electoral “middle” that wants 15-point plans and meritocratic slogans instead of action. As befits brilliant political strategists, they also seem hyper-concerned about the feelings of the country’s least numerous demographic, the extremely rich. A consistent theme is fear (often described in papers like the Times as “concern”) that the rhetoric of Warren and Sanders might unduly upset wealthy folk.

Snip.

From Donald Trump to Sanders to Warren, the politicians attracting the biggest and most enthusiastic responses in recent years have run on furious, throw-the-bums-out themes, for the logical reason that bums by now clearly need throwing out.

Snip.

You can’t capture the widespread discontent over these issues if you’re running on a message that the donor class doesn’t deserve censure for helping create these messes. It’s worse if you actually worked — as Patrick did — for a company like Ameriquest, a poster child for the practices that caused the 2008 financial crisis: using aggressive and/or predatory tactics to push homeowners into new subprime mortgages or mortgage refis, fueling the disastrous financial bubble.

If we count Bloomberg, Patrick marks the 28th person to run in the 2020 Democratic race. Pundits from the start have hyped a succession of politicians with similar/familiar political profiles, from Beto O’Rourke to Kamala Harris to Buttigieg to Amy Klobuchar to John Delaney, and all have failed to capture public sentiment, for the incredibly obvious reason that voters have tuned out this kind of politician.

They’ve heard it all before. Every time a long-serving establishment Democrat gets up and offers paeans to “hope” and “unity” and “economic mobility,” all voters hear is blah, blah, blah. They’re not looking for what FiveThirtyEight.com calls a “Goldilocks solution,” i.e. “Buttigieg, but older,” or “Biden, but younger” (or, more to the point in the case of this Bain Capital executive, “Mitt Romney, but black”); they’re looking for something actually different from what they’ve seen before.

The party’s insiders would have better luck finding a winning general election candidate if they randomly plucked an auto mechanic from Lansing, Michigan, or a nail salon owner from Vegas, or any of a thousand schoolteachers who could use the six months of better-paid work, than they would backing yet another in the seemingly endless parade of corporate-friendly “Goldilocks solutions.” That’s assuming they can’t see past themselves long enough to at least pretend they can support someone with wide support bases like Sanders or Warren.

And the dirt-drop begins: “In 2014, Patrick fired the head of the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board in part because she questioned why [Patrick’s ex-brother-in-law Bernard] Sigh wasn’t required to register for a 1993 spousal rape conviction.”

Our military is excellent in many regards, but it is insufficient in its readiness to meet all the threats of the 21st century and needs to be truly transformed. You can see this in the U.S. commander of the Pacific’s comment that China now commands the Western Pacific. In the face of a rising China, along with authoritarian regimes from Brazil to the Philippines to Turkey to Russia, and the constant presence of belligerent non-state actors, we need to reform our military to deal with asymmetrical threats.

Shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YA!!! ;) pic.twitter.com/9nCTJBnQdo

— disillusioned73 (@dRwOOD73) November 15, 2019

She’s staffing up in Texas:

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is expanding her staff in Texas, giving her easily the biggest organization devoted to the state of any primary campaign.

In an announcement first shared with The Texas Tribune, her campaign named six senior staffers Friday morning who will work under its previously announced state director, Jenn Longoria. The staff for now will be spread across offices in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth.

The campaign also announced it will hire full-time organizers in north, central, east and south Texas.

The Texas team, according to the campaign, “will focus on traditional, digital and data-driven voter contact and dedicated outreach to communities of color across the Lone Star State.” The delegate-rich Texas primary is on March 3, or Super Tuesday.

Here are the senior staffers that Warren’s campaign announced Friday morning, starting with where they will be based:

• San Antonio area: Matthew Baiza, deputy organizing director. Baiza was the 2019 campaign manager for San Antonio City Councilwoman Ana Sandoval and an organizer for Gina Ortiz Jones’ 2018 bid for the 23rd Congressional District.
• Austin area: Sissi Yado, organizing director. Yado most recently worked as senior field manager for the Human Rights Campaign in Texas and previously was training manager for the Florida Democratic Party.
• Austin area: Michael Maher, operations and training director. Maher has worked for Battleground Texas in a number of roles, including 2018 programs director and 2016-2019 operations and finance manager.
• Austin area: Beth Kloser, data director. Kloser was managing director of Battleground Texas from 2015-2018 and a regional organizer for Wendy Davis’ 2014 gubernatorial run.
• Dallas area: Jess Moore Matthews, mobilization director. Matthews most recently served as chief content officer for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and previously was digital director for de Blasio’s 2020 presidential campaign.
• Houston area: Andre Wagner, community organizing director. Wagner is a former staffer for state Sen. Carol Alvarado of Houston and Houston City Councilman Dwight Boykins whose campaign experience includes organizing for Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 U.S. Senate bid.

Yes, Battleground Texas, Wendy Davis and Bill de Blasio alums, that’s your surefire ticket to success in Texas…

Its time to respond with #YangBlackoutDonations.. Money is the only language that they seem to understand.

Throw another dollar or 5 in the #YangMediaBlackout swear jar. pic.twitter.com/32re4yWlmA

— Liberty Smurf ☂️ (@LibertySmurf) November 17, 2019

“Andrew Yang and Dominique Wilkins shoot hoops, talk election.” Being a semiserious presidential candidate has its perks…