Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Systrom’

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 6, 2020

Monday, January 6th, 2020

Castro drops Out, Williamson lays everybody off, Q4 fundraising numbers drop, Biden tells coal miners to start slinging code, Klobuchar talks UFOs, and a three way tie for first in Iowa. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

Q4 Fundraising

  1. Bernie Sanders: $34.5 million
  2. Pete Buttigieg: $24.7 million
  3. Joe Biden: $22.7 million
  4. Elizabeth Warren: $21.2 million
  5. Andrew Yang: $16.5 million
  6. Amy Klobuchar: $11.4
  7. Cory Booker: $6.6 million
  8. Tulsi Gabbard: $3.4 million

Some notes:

  • Those who expected Sanders to fade after his heart attack were badly mistaken. He has enough money to fight Biden all the way to the convention, and his broad small amount donor base can continue to raise money for him without hitting any campaign contribution limits.
  • Biden comes in third. Has any frontrunner ever trailed so badly in the money race? It suggests an inability to find the right people to fill staff roles.
  • Yang’s haul is hugely impressive, considering that no one (myself included) gave him any chance early on. He’s got enough funding to stay in through at least Super Tuesday, where he has a shot at picking up at least some of California’s 416 pledged delegates.
  • Though relegated to second place, Buttigieg continues to punch above his weight in fundraising.
  • No reports yet on how much cash Bloomberg and Steyer shoveled into their own campaigns this quarter.
  • Polls

  • CBS/YouGov (Iowa): Sanders 23, Biden 23, Buttigieg 23, Warren 16, Klobuchar 7. Yang 2, Steyer 2, Booker 2, Gabbard 1.
  • CBS/YouGov (New Hampshire): Sanders 27, Biden 25, Warren 18, Buttigieg 13, Klobuchar 7, Steyer 3, Booker 2, Yang 2, Gabbard 1.
  • Harvard/Harris X (page 134): Biden 30, Sanders 17, Warren 12, Bloomberg 7, Buttigieg 7, Yang 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Steyer 2, Castro 1, Gabbard 1, Messam 1 (really?), Delaney 1, Gillibrand 1.
  • Hill/Harris X: Biden 28, Sanders 16, Warren 11, Bloomberg 11, Buttigieg 6, Booker 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Castro 2. Delaney 2, Gabbard 2. Bloomberg at 11 ought to terrify the other candidates. But why is Sanders called out as “Bernie” on the chart, despite everyone else being referred to by their last name?
  • Economist/YouGov (page 165): Biden 29, Sanders 19, Warren 18, Buttigieg 8, Klobuchar 4, Bloomberg 3, Yang 3, Gabbard 3, Booker 2, Steyer 2, Castro 1.
  • Morning Consult: Biden 32, Sanders 21, Warren 14, Buttigieg 8, Bloomberg 6, Yang 4, Booker 3, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Bennet 1, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1.
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • “Bloomberg, Steyer Showing Money Can’t Buy Elections After Failed $200 Million Ad Blitz.”

    With an unprecedented advertising spending binge, billionaire presidential wannabees Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have launched themselves all the way to….the middle tier of the Democratic primary field.

    The two candidates have spent a combined $200 million on television ads—with Bloomberg accounting for about $120 million of that total since he jumped into the race less than a month ago. No other candidate in the field has spent more than $18 million on ads so far, Politico reports. Bloomberg spent more than that in the first week after entering the race in late November.

    Despite the advertising blitz, Bloomberg and Steyer are almost certainly wasting their money chasing political power. While it is foolish to rule out any electoral outcome in a world where Donald Trump is president, voters have responded to both Democratic billionaires with a resounding meh, and there seems to be little reason to think that will change [this] year, no matter how much money the two candidates pour into the race.

    There are two lessons here. First, Bloomberg and Steyer seem to be on an inadvertent crusade to prove that progressive fears about the influence of money in politics are largely unfounded.

    Secondly, the two billionaire candidates are providing a real-world lesson about opportunity costs by setting fire to their huge campaign war chests. They’ve got the means to change the world, but getting involved in politics isn’t the best way to do it.

  • Candidates dance around the Qassem Soleimani strike.
  • The Atlantic offers a cheat sheet that includes the also-rans and never-rans. Most interesting tidbit: “[Deval] Patrick’s estranged father played in the alien jazz great Sun Ra’s Arkestra.”
  • “Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang see huge Q4 fundraising surges.”
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bennet becomes a late entrant in the “everything for free!” derby by promising $6 trillion in phony baloney, pie-in-the-sky spending promises. It may not be too little, but it’s definitely too late. He’s hoping for a top three finish in New Hampshire. Don’t bet on it.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden tells coal miners to learn to code. Amazing how someone who has never mined coal or written code so confidently asserts that one who has done one job can easily do the other. “Biden touts himself as the embodiment of honesty while spreading a well-known lie. That’s an exquisite form of lying.” Speaking of indicting yourself:

    But no matter what Biden says, his poll numbers seem unsinkable. Another editorialist points out that Biden’s immunity to his many gaffes shows why he’ll win the nomination:

    It starts with the polls. Biden has been dominant. Since Real Clear Politics started its polling average in December 2018, Biden has led for all but one day. Sen. Elizabeth Warren eclipsed him by 0.2 percentage points on Oct. 2. She now trails him by 13 percent and is in third place, also trailing Sen. Bernie Sanders.

    This isn’t how many political pundits expected last year to go. They chalked up Biden’s pre-announcement lead to his high name ID. He was supposed to gaffe his way into an early exit. He wasn’t progressive enough for the liberal wing of the party either.

    What makes Biden’s durability look sustainable is that he hasn’t been a great candidate. Far from it. His debates have been cringeworthy. In July, he messed up the address of his campaign website. He made a bizarre reference to record players in September. In November, he forgot that Sen. Kamala Harris — who was on the stage with him — was a female, African-American senator.

    The campaign trail hasn’t been much better. During a September CNN town hall, his left eye filled with blood, presumably from a blood vessel bursting. He called New Hampshire “Vermont” during a summer visit. In August, he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” He appeared to mean “rich” not “white,” but that mistake could have ended another candidate’s campaign.

    Biden’s done a better job undercutting his own candidacy than any of his opponents ever could have — and his support has hardly budged.

    He keeps promising bipartisanship. I think Republicans all remember how “bipartisan” the Obama Administration was…

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s already spent $155 million on advertising. He’s in tied with Warren for third place in one poll, which I think says less about his strength than Warren’s weakness. He failed to file for the Nevada caucuses. Which is really stupid, because if there’s anything Nevada loves, it’s rich idiots willing to blow millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. There’s just no end to bad Bloomberg ideas:

    He answered a Military Times questionnaire. It’s full of “on the one hand, on the other” platitudes, though he does say he’ll negotiate with the Taliban, but also leave a small force in Afghanistan, which sounds like it amounts to “stay in and lose,” with a side plate of living tripwires. He did approve of the Suleimani strike.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Looks like he’s going to miss the January 14th debates, and he seems to have fallen below the ever-rising Andrew Yang Line. Basically another “failure to launch” piece. he also campaigned in South Carolina.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Billionaires backing Buttigieg. “Forty billionaires and their spouses have donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, according to an analysis of federal election filings, making the South Bend, Indiana mayor a favorite among America’s richest people.” That includes a surprisingly high number of hedge fund managers, as well as Google founder Eric Schmidt’s wife, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom’s wife, Square founder Jim McKelvey’s wife, David Geffen, Barry Diller, Netflix’ Reed Hastings, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Blackstone’s Jonathan Gray, the wife of casino video game mogul Jon Yarbrough, members of the Ziff family, the Pritzker family, the NFL Giant’s Tisch family, etc. etc. etc. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left.”

    As the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries draw near and South Bend’s boy wonder, Pete Buttigieg, seems buoyant in the all-important early-state polls, “Mayor Pete” has been perpetually dogged by a major issue: the youngest and most activated voters in his party all seem to—how to put this delicately?—hate his guts.

    Normally the first candidate of a generation can expect to ride a wave of youth enthusiasm, as John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton once did. For the 37-year-old Buttigieg, it’s been quite the opposite. The newly radicalized Teen Vogue invoked a cringeworthy class-warfare pun to declare his campaign a “Lesson in ‘Petey’ Bourgeois Politics.” Jacobin, tribune of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, has developed seemingly an entire vertical focused on slamming Mayor Pete. A writer for Out magazine, putting it in starker terms, tweeted that if he “had balls he’d run as the republican he is against trump in the primary.”

    Why is the enmity from young, left-wing activists toward Buttigieg so visceral? It’s true that they favor Bernie Sanders, but Buttigieg comes in for a type of loathing that surpasses even that they hold for Sanders’ older rivals, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.

    But those explanations are still too general to explain the fury inspired by a fourth-place presidential contender and Midwestern college-town mayor. And it’s not his ideology: The resentment he inspires runs much deeper than that earned by the Amy Klobuchars and Michael Bennets of the world—both of whom have more politically moderate tendencies than Buttigieg, who has, among other positions, argued for raising the minimum wage to $15, introducing a public health care option, expanding the size of the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. (Asked for comment for this article, a representative from the Buttigieg campaign told Politico that staffers are occasionally vexed by the cold reception to a platform that’s well to the left of any recent Democratic presidential nominee.)

    The unspoken truth about the furor Buttigieg arouses is that his success threatens a core belief of young progressives: that their ideology owns the future, and that the rise of millennials into Democratic politics is going to bring an inevitable demographic triumph for the party’s far left wing.

    Snip.

    It’s especially galling that the first millennial to take a serious run at the presidency is nothing like the left’s imagined savior. Buttigieg is a veteran, an outspoken Christian, a former McKinsey consultant, and, frankly, closer to Mitt Romney than Sanders or generational peer AOC in his aw shucks personal affect. In the eyes of radicalized young leftists, Buttigieg isn’t just an ideological foe, he’s worse than that: He’s a square.

    Snip.

    Buttigieg is a young professional with an elite pedigree who’s chosen to buy into the system as a reformer instead of attacking it as a revolutionary. To a certain class of left-wing thought leaders, he’s an unwelcome reminder of the squeaky-clean moderates with whom they once rubbed elbows. And quite possibly, his elite credentials may also be an unwelcome reminder of their own. The editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, for instance, isn’t just a random antagonist: He’s also a fellow Harvard alumnus.

    The educated young people leading the left have worked closely with these overachievers throughout their careers—often at the same elite institutions they deride, rightfully or not, as venal consensus factories. Such activists are baffled by their counterparts’ optimism and adherence to tradition in the face of the Trump era’s grimness and vulgarity.

    And, again, it seems many of their peers agree. Buttigieg does not enjoy considerable support among young people. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll of Iowa voters, he placed a distant third among 18-to-29-year-olds, behind Sanders and Warren. But he does appeal to a certain kind of young person, as now represented in the cultural imagination by the “High Hopes” dancers. And to the self-renouncing meritocrats who act as thought leaders to the young left, those people represent both a personal frustration and a political fear—that the institutions of tomorrow may yet be built by those with faith in yesterday’s ideals.

    The path to Washington may be clearer for them than their radical counterparts, even as more millennials age into political life. The youngest Democratic member of Congress is, of course, the 30-year-old AOC, who seems all but inevitable to succeed Sanders as the standard-bearer for democratic socialism in America. But if you look at the next 10 youngest Democrats in Congress, they include mostly moderates: the venture capitalist Josh Harder, the military veteran and Blue Dog Max Rose, and Conor Lamb, whose district lies deep in Pennsylvania’s Trump country.

    When it comes down to it, the hard left would rather seize control of the Democratic Party than win elections, and Buttigieg refuses to immanentize the eschaton. Another look inside those high dollar fundraisers:

    At an annual charity fund-raiser in October, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, shared a table with the designer Michael Kors and Pete Buttigieg, then the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who wore one of his trademark navy suits.

    The event was a benefit for God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit that began delivering meals to New Yorkers with AIDS in 1986 and has since expanded to serve other homebound people. On the second floor of Cipriani’s South Street location, guests bid for meals with the actor Neil Patrick Harris, watched the model Iman receive an award for her philanthropic efforts and heard a short speech from Mr. Buttigieg, who was also honored that evening. He said volunteers for the organization had offered sustenance “in substance and in soul.”

    Sitting at a table near the stage was the theater producer Jordan Roth, who back in April held an event for Mr. Buttigieg’s presidential campaign at his home in the West Village, at up to $2,800 per head. Nearby was the board chairman of God’s Love, Terrence Meck, who had co-hosted an event for Mr. Buttigieg in Provincetown, Mass., just after the July 4 holiday. (Tickets for that ran upward of $1,000 per person.)

    Snip.

    So it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr. Buttigieg’s dinners and fund-raisers — complete with cozy pictures on Instagram of Mr. Buttigieg standing beside high-net-worth bundlers — have turned into grist for his critics.

    Guests at a December fund-raiser for Mr. Buttigieg held at the New York home of Kevin Ryan, an internet entrepreneur behind Gilt Groupe and Business Insider, were greeted outside by protesters who banged pots and pans and called Mr. Buttigieg “Wall Street Pete.”

    The police arrived when a protester got inside. By that point, Mr. Buttigieg had left for Ms. Wintour’s West Village townhouse, where a campaign dinner was being held. Tickets cost up to $2,800 each and the actress Sienna Miller was among the attendees.

    Days later, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at a fund-raiser held inside a Napa Valley wine cave. Afterward, progressive activists reached deep into political crisis history to note that one of the hosts, Craig Hall, who is now the owner of Hall Wines in Rutherford, Calif., was a real estate developer involved in the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. Mr. Hall went to Jim Wright, then speaker of the House, for help when he was facing bankruptcy — and the cascade of events led to a bailout for Mr. Hall, a congressional ethics investigation and, ultimately, Mr. Wright’s resignation as speaker.

    Mr. Hall’s wife, Kathryn Walt Hall, co-hosted the Napa benefit. She was a prolific donor to President Bill Clinton and served as ambassador to Austria from 1997 to 2001.

    Snip.

    Prominent donors in Los Angeles argue that Mr. Buttigieg is also approaching celebrity fund-raising differently than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.

    While her campaign publicized the appearances of Katy Perry and Lena Dunham at events, he’s kept a lid on similar associations.

    The fund-raiser that Gwyneth Paltrow held on his behalf last May? The campaign declined to publicize it. Instead, Mr. Buttigieg spoke in front of cameras that evening during a $25 (and up) appearance at the Abbey — sort of a gay, West Hollywood equivalent of dining at Sylvia’s in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

    “He wasn’t doing a song and dance with Gwyneth on national television,” said Simon Halls, a prominent entertainment industry publicist who in July was scheduled to co-host a reception at the television producer Ryan Murphy’s home. (That event was canceled after a white police officer fatally shot a black man in South Bend; the reception has not been rescheduled.)

    An offer by the designer Tom Ford to dress Mr. Buttigieg during the course of the campaign? Declined.

    In July, Mr. Buttigieg appeared at the Provincetown fund-raiser Mr. Meck hosted with Bryan Rafanelli, an event planner whose clients have included the Clintons. Although tickets cost a minimum of $1,000, Mr. Meck said the event took place after a free, packed and publicized town hall event. As Mr. Meck told it, Mr. Buttigieg told him that he wanted to spend his time in Provincetown actually meeting people. Later in the summer, he hit the Hamptons to collect more money.

    Interesting approach. “I don’t want your star power, just your money.”

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: Dropped out January 2, 2020. “Castro failed to make the last two debates or even achieve 2% in the polls despite promising government handouts for basically everything. Along with Sen. Cory Booker, he whined to the DNC about unfair qualifications for the January primary debate. More than likely he would not have participated in that debate.” “Dropout Julian Castro’s insufferably woke presidential campaign won’t be missed“:

    Give Julian Castro some credit: In a crowded 2020 Democratic field originally featuring cringeworthy candidates such as Beto O’Rourke and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the former housing and urban development secretary still managed to run the most insufferably woke presidential campaign of this cycle.

    Thursday morning brought the official end of Castro’s campaign. But it never really got off the ground, and the candidate failed to qualify for the November debate, getting under 2% of the vote in polling averages. Outside of a few fringe Marxist professors and woke liberal activists, Castro’s campaign was so radical that even Democratic primary voters weren’t buying it.

    It’s not hard to see why. Castro’s only memorable contributions to the 2020 race are viral moments where he embarrassed himself.

    For one, there was his cringey decision to randomly pronounce certain words with a Spanish accent during Democratic debates, despite not actually being a native Spanish speaker. Then there was his call for completely decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and attacks on other, slightly less terrible Democrats who declined to endorse his radical proposal.

    Don’t forget the countless shudder-worthy instances where Castro pandered to the woke crowd with fact-free rants about “transgender women of color” being gunned down in the street in a supposed epidemic of anti-transgender hate crimes. Castro ignored the complete lack of evidence for this narrative, instead choosing to stir up bogus outrage for votes. His pandering even included a bizarre call for expanding abortion access to transgender women (aka biological males). Castro was also the first candidate to honor “International Pronouns Day” by putting his preferred pronouns, he and him, in his Twitter profile. This was, of course, a pure virtue-signal: Everyone already knew he was a man.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Esquire writer has a case of the sadz over his withdrawal. “Castro should have been viable all the way to the convention. (This is also true of Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris.) But the merciless criteria of polls and money worked against all three of them.” No, all three are out because all of them sucked in various ways, and all of them were terrible, inauthentic candidates spouting far-left bromides. Ace of Spades HQ: “He never stopped talking about giving trans women pap smears and abortions. Weird that he never connected with his presumptive Latino base.” 538’s postmortem talks about debate missteps but paints a picture of general suckage.

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? She accepted the role of Chancellor of Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Since it’s largely a ceremonial role, it doesn’t necessarily preclude yet another Presidential run. “Hillary Clinton Slams Trump For Not Taking A More ‘Hands-Off’ Approach To Embassy Attack.”
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. He visited Sioux City.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Giving up on Iowa? She just moved all her paid Iowa staffers to New Hampshire. I suspect she’s just shuffling ammo crates on the Lusitania. She’s selling “No War With Iran” T-shirts. “Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill slammed Democratic presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard after she criticized President Trump’s recent strike against” Qassem Suleimani. She surfs New Hampshire, because that’s a totally normal thing to do on New Year’s Day. “Hillary Clinton Accidentally Posts Condolences For Tulsi Gabbard’s Suicide One Day Early.”
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Her fundraising haul doubled her Q3 numbers, but there’s precious little evidence she’s threatening to move into the top tier. Says she’ll declassify UFO documents. Ha! As if the Grays and Reptoids would let her! And thanks to the UFO Chronicles for this image:

  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s hired eight New Hampshire staffers and made ad buys “in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina,” concentrating on New Hampshire ($100,000 in ads) and South Carolina ($60,000). Maybe that can boost him from 0% to 1% in the polls. He has a net worth between $3.2 million to $11 million.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Everything’s coming up Bernie, who leads fundraising, tops New Hampshire polls and is tied in Iowa. How Bernie hangs in:

    Whereas Joe Biden seems permanently diminished by his own verbal and intellectual confusion and by his son’s self-dealing, Bernie is getting stronger.

    He has raised the most money of all the Democratic candidates, by far — some $95 million in 2019 from 5 million donations — though the average contribution to Bernie is $18. He raised $34.5 million in the last quarter alone. He got 40,000 new donors on the last day of the year.

    When Mr. Sanders renounced bundlers and PACs it was said that he had unilaterally disarmed himself in the money race. Instead he is killing it.

    Mr. Sanders is also raising money in the 200 “pivot” counties Barack Obama carried in 2012 and Democrats lost to Donald Trump in the swing states in 2016.

    And he is not only acceptable to but well thought of by an astounding 75 percent of his party.

    Those are singular metrics.

    He is also the only candidate in a position to take either first or second in the first contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

    He polls as well as Mr. Biden in a direct matchup against Mr. Trump, though surely, as Mr. Sanders says, Donald Trump could eat Mr. Biden’s lunch on his votes in favor of NAFTA and the endless and futile Iraq War.

    The money race and the size of his crowds show that Bernie Sanders is connecting, just as they show Joe Biden is not. His resilience is no fluke.

    The people who “know” did not see this coming.

    Hey Bernie, where are your medical records? You know, the ones you promised to release? Comes out against vaping, then walks it back.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Hits donor threshold, hasn’t hit the polling threshold. “In addition to garnering the necessary number of voters, Democratic candidates need to reach 5 percent support in at least four DNC-approved polls, or at least 7 percent support in two single-state polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina. So far, Steyer is polling at 5 percent in two of the four polls conducted in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. On the ground with the Warren campaign in rural Iowa:

    Many Democratic presidential candidates, such as former vice president Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), have robust organizations. But among locals, Warren’s organization stands out.

    While the campaign has declined to release exact numbers, the Massachusetts senator is believed to have more than 100 field staff fanned out across the state, including some who have been on the ground for the better part of a year. Warren staffers have become deeply embedded, showing up at high school sports games, book clubs, bingo nights and potluck dinners dressed in the campaign’s signature liberty green attire. In Fairfield, Iowa, a family recently named their newborn goat Herb, after the Warren field organizer who has prolifically canvassed that town for months. In Mason City, an organizer who was in the hospital for emergency surgery used his recovery time to pitch the ER staff on Warren’s candidacy.

    The stories about Warren staffers in Iowa and how far they go to sell her candidacy regularly circulate among rival campaigns, eliciting both eye rolls but also grudging admiration. “It’s like, where did they find these kids?” marveled a longtime Iowa Democratic activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she endorsed another candidate in the race.

    Caveat: Every one of these borderline-admiring pieces on a female Democratic candidate’s organization (be it Warren, Harris, or Gillibrand) always seems to come from a female writer, and this one’s from Holly Bailey. Warren calls Suleimani a murderer, then backtracks due to pushback from the hate-America left. “Elizabeth Warren Opens Casino To Help Finance Campaign.”

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook.
    She laid off her entire campaign staff, which is hardly a sign of impending triumph. “Marianne Williamson, joined onstage by a large crystal.” Not the Babylon Bee… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Flush with cash, Yang wrestles with where to spend it.”

    Andrew Yang has more money than his campaign knows what to do with.

    He still can’t quite get accustomed to his surprising fundraising haul — Yang collected $16.5 million in the fourth quarter — or how to allocate it in the run-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.

    “We’re going to buy gold coins, and then put them in a vault, and then I’m going to go on top of the pile of gold coins and then wave my arms and legs up and down,” he joked in an interview.

    The reality is that his newfound campaign riches are creating internal tension about whether to beef up the Iowa operation or bet it all in New Hampshire.

    Yang’s strong focus has always been on New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state where he has spent more time than any of the top-tier candidates. The campaign sees it as ripe ground for him — Democratic voters relish their independent-streak and showed they were open to non-traditional candidates in the past, delivering Sen. Bernie Sanders a decisive win in the 2016 primary.

    Their goal, to date, has been to finish at the top of the second-tier in order to stay relevant after the early-voting states. Suddenly though, with money to play in Iowa as well, there is a vigorous debate about where to spend the cash and Yang’s other precious commodity — his time.

    “I think if we overperform expectations will have a very powerful narrative coming out of New Hampshire that people don’t expect us to be at the top four here,” Yang said after wrapping up the final of 14 events during a four-day trip here. “If we break the top four, I think people will see that we have a ton of energy behind us.”

    Yang’s $16.5 million — 65 percent more than the previous quarter — placed him fifth in terms of fundraising for the Democratic presidential candidates, about $4.7 million less than Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who came in fourth. He raised almost five times more than Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, another second-tier candidate who has invested so heavily in New Hampshire that she has all but moved here.

    Honestly, instead of Iowa, he should probably look to Super Tuesday and build out an organization in California and either North Carolina or Texas, all of which have significant concentrations of high tech industries, where workers seem somewhat more attuned to his issues. Texas has a bigger population, and thus is more delegate rich, and a bigger concentration of Asians, but the diverse markets are brutal for ad campaigns. On the other hand, a $5 million direct mail/TV/radio push in the Research Triangle in North Carolina might well make an impression. Ohio is going to screw him out of a place on the ballot due to a technical filing issue. Yang has pretty much the same reaction to Biden’s “Coal miners should learn to code” suggestion:

    Whatever he’s doing after the primaries, he’s not working as a bookie:

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin.
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
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