Posts Tagged ‘Louis Farrakhan’

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for July 22, 2019

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

The second debate field is set, Bernie Bernies Bernie, Beto plunders staff from even less successful campaigns, and Andrew Yang plots his conquest of Area 51.

It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

Polls

  • CBS/YouGov (early states): Biden 25, Warren 20, Harris 16, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 6, O’Rourke 4, Castro 2, Klobuchar 1, Booker 1, Yang 1, Steyer 1, Gabbard 1, Hickenlooper 1, Bullock 1. This is the summary, but dig deeper if you want individual numbers on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, California, and Texas (a little far out for “early,” but its inclusion explains why O’Rourke gives the illusion of viability here)
  • Economist/YouGov (page 119): Biden 23, Warren 15, Sanders 13, Harris 10, Buttigieg 7, Booker 3, de Blasio 2, O’Rourke 2, Bullock 1, Castro 1, Gabbard 1, Klobuchar 1, Steyer 1, Yang 1.
  • Quinnipiac (California): Harris 23, Biden 21, Sanders 18, Warren 16, Buttigieg 3, Yang 2, Booker 1, Castro 1, Inslee 1. 519 voters polled. I think this is the first poll where Harris beats Biden in her home state.
  • Politico/Morning Consult: Biden 32, Sanders 19, Warren 14, Harris 13, Buttigieg 5, O’Rourke 3, Yang 2, Booker 2, Bennet 1, Bullock 1, Castro 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Gillibrand 1, Hickenlooper 1, Klobuchar 1, Ryan 1.
  • Saint Anselm College (New Hampshire): Biden 20.8, Harris 17.5, Warren 16.7, Buttigieg 11.5, Sanders 9.9, Yang 4.9, Klobuchar 2.7, Williamson 1.5, Booker 1.2, Gabbard 1, Gillibrand 0.7, Inslee 0.3, O’Rourke 0.0. Sample size of 351.
  • CNN/University of New Hampshire (New Hampshire): Biden 24, Warren 19, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 10, Harris 9, Booker 2, O’Rourke 2, Gabbard 1, Williamson 1, Yang 1, Delaney 1, Gillibrand 1, Bennet 1. Sample size of 386. One notable detail further in: Under “Candidate With Best Chance to Win General Election,” Biden has increased his lead from 32% in February to 45% now. How’s that “Woke Off” working out for you, Democrats?
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Q2 Fundraising

    Finally got our gusher of FEC Q2 filings. Lots of new numbers this week:

    1. Pete Buttigieg: $24.8 million
    2. Joe Biden: $21.5 million
    3. Elizabeth Warren: $19.1 million
    4. Bernie Sanders: $18 million (plus $6 million transferred from “other accounts”)
    5. Kamala Harris: $12 million
    6. John Delaney: $8 million (includes $7.75 in campaign loans from Delaney himself; without those, he would be above only Messam and Gravel)
    7. Cory Booker: $4.5 million
    8. Beto O’Rourke: $3.6 million
    9. Jay Inslee: $3 million
    10. Amy Klobuchar: $2.9 million
    11. Andrew Yang: $2.8 million
    12. Michael Bennet: $2.8 million
    13. Kirsten Gillibrand: $2.8 million
    14. Julian Castro: $2.8 million
    15. Steve Bullock: $2 million
    16. Seth Moultson: $1.9 million
    17. John Hickenlooper: $1.2 million
    18. Bill de Blasio: $1.1 million.
    19. Tulsi Gabbard: $1.6 million.
    20. Marianne Williamson: $1.5 million.
    21. Tim Ryan: $895,000
    22. Mike Gravel: $209,000
    23. Wayne Messam: $50,000

    Steyer just jumped into the race, and Sestak’s campaign didn’t file his FEC organizing papers until July 1st, so no Q2 numbers for them.

    538 has a lot of analysis of the fundraising numbers, but not, alas, handy links straight to the actual Q2 reports for lazy efficient bloggers to use. Yang and Williamson have the highest burn rates in the field.

    For sake of comparison, President Donald Trump raised $105 million for his reelection campaign.

    Pundits, etc.

  • The line-ups for the second debate are set:
    • July 30: Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, Hickenlooper, Williamson, Bullock, Delaney, Ryan.
    • July 31: Biden, Harris, Booker, Castro, Yang, Inslee, Gabbard, Gillibrand, de Blasio, Bennet. If I were of a conspiratorial mindset, I’d say that CNN, deep in the tank for Harris, wants to give Harris another shot at Biden.

    Not making the cut: Moulton, Gravel and Messam (all of who also missed the second debate) and late entries Steyer and Sestak. I’m guessing all those but Steyer will miss the third debate, too… (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • Daniel Greenfield looks at Democratic fundraising details to see who the candidates actually represent:

    The 2020 race is all about touting the democracy of small donors with a 130,000 donor threshold for the third Democrat debate. But certain zip codes keep coming up for the top Democrat candidates. The 100XX zip codes of Manhattan, the 90XXX zip codes of Los Angeles, the 94XXX zip codes of San Francisco, the 98XXX zip codes of Seattle, the 20XXX zip codes of D.C. and the 02XXX zip codes of Boston.

    These are the core zip codes of the Democrat donor base. They are the pattern that recur in the campaign contributions lists of the top Democrats. And they explain the politics of the 2020 race.

    Providing free health care for illegal aliens at taxpayer expense may not be very popular nationwide, but is commonplace in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston. Gun control is a loser nationwide, but a sure thing in the big blue cities. Even proposals to take away private health plans, allow rapists and terrorists to vote from prison, and open the border pick up more support there.

    The 2020 Democrats aren’t speaking to Americans as a whole. Instead they’re addressing wealthy donors from 6 major cities, and some of their satellite areas, whose money they need to be able to buy teams, ads and consultants to help them win in places like New Hampshire and Iowa.

    New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles show up in the top 5 donor cities for most of the top 2020 candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg. Boston shows up in the top 10, not only for Bernie and Warren, but for Kamala and Buttigieg. Seattle appears in the top 10 for Bernie, Warren, and Buttigieg. Washington D.C. features in the top 10 for Bernie, Booker, Warren, Kamala, and Buttigieg. And the rest of America doesn’t really matter.

    Not if you’re a Democrat.

    The democracy of small donors is illusory not only by zip code, but by industry. Google isn’t the largest company in America, but, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, its employees show up on the top company contributor lists for Kamala, Sanders, Buttigieg, and, Warren. Despite Warren’s supposed threat to break up big dot coms and Sanders’ talk of going after big companies, Google employees were the top backers of both candidates.

    What do they know that we don’t?

    Alphabet, Google’s parent company, does employ a lot people, but its number of employees is a fraction of those employed by Home Depot, Kroger or Wal-Mart. What Google does have is an enormous concentration of wealth and power through its monopolistic control over search advertising. That power also gives its radical employees a disproportionate ability to shape the 2020 Democrat field.

    Despite Warren’s supposed threats to break up big tech, their employees are some of her biggest backers. Besides Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yelp employees are some of her major backers.

    Again, what do the millionaire employees of big tech know about Warren’s plans that we don’t?

    Microsoft employees show up on the donor leaderboards for Bernie, Kamala, Warren, and, Buttigieg. Amazon employees are a major donor group for Bernie and Buttigieg. Pinterest, which recently made headlines for the dot com’s aggressive censorship of pro-life views, appears on Buttigieg’s donor board. Apple employees are some of the major donors to Bernie, Warren, and Kamala.

    There’s no question that big tech cash is helping shape the 2020 Democrat field.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • How the various candidate are set in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Mr. Biden starts from behind organizationally. He entered the race at the end of April and began with a lighter public schedule than many of his opponents, allowing other earlier-launching campaigns to lock down experienced talent and build more visible volunteer operations first.

    In Iowa especially, the impatience with his efforts among some activists was palpable this month following Mr. Biden’s shaky debut in the first presidential debate.

    Snip.

    There is a “persistence picnic” slated for Toledo, Iowa, and a “policy potluck” in Cresco. There is a “pints-and-policy” house party scheduled in Des Moines, an evening of acrylic painting in Sioux City and a trivia night in Burlington.

    And that’s just a snapshot of the Warren team’s plans for Iowa on Thursday.

    “Her people are everywhere,” said Mr. Marquardt, the Madison County official, relaying a story he heard about a Warren campaign representative seeking to recruit supporters in a yoga class. He described her organizers as trying to embed themselves in communities across Iowa, rather than relying exclusively on traditional tactics like phone banking.

    In New Hampshire, said Judy Reardon, a veteran Democratic strategist, “They had a robust field staff early on and the field staff has been able to establish themselves in their areas.”

    The Warren campaign declined to divulge the exact number of staff members it has in Iowa and New Hampshire, except to say that there are more than 300 people, with 60 percent of those hires based in the first four states, but as of May she had around 50 staffers on the ground in Iowa.

    Snip.

    “Cory Booker’s campaign has been amazing in New Hampshire,” said [State Representative Kris] Schultz, who, like many voters in that state, is still considering a long list of candidates. “They have the A-team for sure.’’

    The challenge for Mr. Booker: Despite all of the retail politicking efforts — including 35 events in Iowa and more than 40 appearances in New Hampshire, his campaign said on Thursday — he is routinely mired in the polls at this early stage.

    Still, his team has been building for months on the ground, hoping to be well positioned to capitalize on any burst of momentum. He has about 30 staff members in New Hampshire, where his campaign has been engaging with voters since April; in Iowa, he has nearly 50 full-time employees along with more than 80 of his family members who live in the Des Moines area.

    Snip.

    Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Harris were slower to expand their teams in Iowa and New Hampshire than rivals like Ms. Warren and Mr. Booker.

    But activists say they are seeing increased activity from both of them.

    Ms. Harris is planning a five-day bus tour through Iowa for next month, where she has more than 65 staff members, her campaign said. In New Hampshire, they have 30.

    “They’re in the process of building up the ground organization here with all the fund-raising she’s had since the debate,” Ms. Sullivan, the former party chair, said.

    In April, Mr. Buttigieg had one employee in New Hampshire, and on May 1, he had four in Iowa. He now has 39 people on staff in New Hampshire. In Iowa, he has more than 50 full-time staff members, as well as 27 paid interns.

    Snip.

    The Sanders campaign does not take the typical route of prioritizing engagement with local party leaders.

    But while other candidates ruffle feathers if they are perceived as ignoring in-state gatekeepers, many activists are now reluctant to question Mr. Sanders’s method after he delivered a stronger-than-expected showing in 2016.

    “Four years ago, he didn’t seem to have much on the ground, much going on,” said Jan Bauer, the former Democratic chair of Story County, Iowa, and a longtime party activist. She is supporting Governor Steve Bullock of Montana, but has heard from several other campaigns.

    “But come caucus night, everyone discovered there was a lot going on here that was underground.”

    Mr. Sanders began his campaign holding big rallies that doubled as opportunities to sign up supporters, and his aides view events as a chance to recruit volunteers and sign them up for the campaign app.

    For example, Mr. Sanders did a multi-parade swing through Iowa on the Fourth of July, with his campaign giving out stickers and seeking to engage voters along the way (not everyone was receptive; one father insisted his daughter remove her Sanders sticker).

    In New Hampshire, which Mr. Sanders won by around 22 percentage points in 2016, he has a core of die-hard supporters that helps ensure an on-the-ground presence, despite slipping in the polls recently.

    “Bernie obviously has the lion’s share of his activists and volunteers with him from just four years ago,” said New Hampshire’s Democratic Party Chairman, Raymond Buckley. “It makes it pretty easy to build a solid foundation from.”

    His campaign did not respond to requests for information on how many employees it has in the early states, but it announced earlier this month that it had 45 staff members in New Hampshire.

  • CBS has a mock early delegate tracker based on polls in early states (again including Texas): Projected delegates are Biden 581, Warren 430, Sanders 249, Harris 173, O’Rourke 48 (all from Texas), and Klobuchar 13 (all from Minnesota).
  • Enjoy this quadrennial staple, “the race isn’t over yet” piece:

    I’m far from convinced that those are the five most likely to win, or that only five have a reasonable chance. I’m not sure that “usually” applies to this cycle, mainly because of the mix of candidates. Each of the leaders has significant vulnerabilities – and some of the contenders who haven’t fired in the polls yet have assets that could yet matter.

    Biden? I still think he’s a weaker version of Walter Mondale in 1984. Mondale won the nomination, of course, but it wasn’t easy. If Biden is somewhat weaker, he might not be able to withstand a serious rally from another candidate.

    Warren? For a candidate who has been doing well lately, the lack of endorsements both in Massachusetts and elsewhere – she hasn’t added a significant new one since May 12 – may suggest a real problem. Yes, President Donald Trump won despite outright opposition from most party actors, but support from the party has been important for a long time and it may still prove critical.

    Harris? She’s a solid possibility. But her post-debate bounce flattened out, leaving her fourth in the national polls. She’s also right on the edge of holding conventional qualifications for the job. Sure, Barack Obama won after four years in the Senate and Harris has more impressive pre-Senate experience, but not everyone turns out to be Barack Obama.

    Sanders? He’s still a factional candidate, and factional candidates rarely win nominations. It’s been true from early in the cycle that his polling numbers, adjusted for high name recognition, aren’t very impressive, and he’s lagging in endorsements.

    And then there’s Mayor Pete, who doesn’t have conventional qualifications and, despite a very impressive fundraising quarter, hasn’t really broken out in the polls or picked up impressive endorsements.

    99% of endorsements are meaningless, but the rest of the piece isn’t necessarily wrong.

  • Governors tank in election about Trump.” “Bullock, the Montana governor, got shut out of the first debate. Inslee, the Washington governor, hasn’t cracked 2 percent in a national poll. Colorado’s Hickenlooper has hit even harder times — his senior staffers urged him to drop out of the race last month.” Politco suggests that this is because Trump has sucked all of the oxygen out of the room and the congresscritters running get more media exposure by attacking Trump. I think Trump has less to do with it than the fact that all features variously high quantities of suckitude. If attacking Trump were the golden ticket, Swalwell would be at the top of the polls rather than dropped out…
  • Most likeable of the Democratic candidates? Would you believe Sanders? No, but that’s what Democrats told Gallup, at 72%. Biden came in second at 69%. As usual, de Blasio had the highest unfavorability rating, at 30%.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? She’s at that NAACP meeting this week, along several declared presidential candidates, Rashida Tlaib, Nancy Pelosi, and Shaun “Talcum X” King.
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an absolutely nothing book review in the New York Times. It’s a seven paragraph version of a competent but very dull college freshman’s five paragraph essay. He’s on a Slate podcast. Heh: “Michael Bennet Quietly Asks Aide If Polling At N/A Is Good Or Bad.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Jim Geraghty wonders if Biden is different enough from Hillary:

    Think about all of the factors that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. She was a figure who had been around a long time, among the best-known names in the party establishment. As a senator, she worked closely with her home state’s financial industry, leaving some liberal grassroots concluding she was a corporatist who was far too comfortable with big business. Critics asked how someone who had spent the past few decades in the public sector could so quickly become a multimillionaire, and contended that her family foundation had engaged in shady deals with foreign governments and foreign businesses. Some people couldn’t believe she wanted to charge University of Missouri at Kansas City a whopping $275,000 to give a speech at a luncheon.

    More progressive figures challenged her in the primary, and activists on the Left hit her hard for her punitive stances on crime in the 1990s, including describing young gang members as “super-predators.” She attempted to shore up her support among African Americans by emphasizing her close work with Barack Obama.

    “Joe Biden says ‘radicalization’ of young Democrats a myth: ‘This is not a generation of socialists.” I think he’s right in general. As for those voting in the 2020 Democratic primary, it’s a more open question. “How Joe Biden won friends in Hollywood by helping studios get their movies into China.” Nothing says “salt of the earth” quite like palling around with Communist Chinese bigwigs to increase the profits of Hollywood studio heads. “2020 Democrats Are Starting to Turn Obama’s Legacy Against Biden.”

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s at the San Diego Comic Con for some damn reason. Booker said he’d meet with Louis Farrakhan, then said he wouldn’t and he was “misquoted.” He visited New Hampshire. “Noticeably absent from his campaign has been a breakout moment. The 50-year-old former Rhodes Scholar is among the score of presidential contenders polling in low-single digits both nationally and in New Hampshire.”
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bullock is the only new face on the debate stage, replacing the dropped-out Swalwell. In a contrast to other Democrats, Bullock says that he would not offer free health care for illegal aliens. One wonders why it took him so long after the first debates to formulate this policy position.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “At least 40 top fundraisers to Obama’s 2012 reelection effort donated to Buttigieg’s campaign during the three-month period, helping to catapult the once little-known mayor to the top financial tier.” He blathered about white supremacy and hate groups. New Republic deletes Buttigieg gay sex piece mentioned last week. Cumulus radio deep sixes Buttigieg interview with Country radio host Blair Garner, supposedly over equal time concerns. (There’s a Soundcloud of the interview at the link.) He hired a former Goldman Sachs executive as national policy director. “Sonal Shah, now executive director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University, will be the campaign’s national policy director.” She was also director “Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation,” which seemed to focus on makework government jobs programs and letting liberals make boatloads of money as long as they mouthed the usual lefty pieties. Gets a fundraiser hosted by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He called for Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello to resign, though the reason cited was ‘massive protests” rather than “massive fraud.” The Hill contends that Castro is “carving a niche” for himself with a focus on immigration. Whistling past the graveyard. “In Iowa, Castro won 1 percent in a recent poll from USA Today and Suffolk University, behind nine other candidates, including former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.).” Gets a similar Washington Post puff piece from David Weigel.

    The surge, if that’s the word for it, has not put Castro anywhere near the front of the pack. Polling, which can be a lagging indicator of candidate strength, has not shown much growth. A Quinnipiac poll of California, conducted after the debates, found Castro winning just 2 percent of Latino voters. He substantially lags the poll leaders in fundraising and has 12 staff members working in Iowa, where other campaigns have dozens of people on the ground. Escaping the back of the Democratic pack is one thing; how does an escapee, like Castro, elbow into the first tier? No candidate who has polled in the single digits six months before the first caucuses has gone on to be the nominee.

    In Iowa, any answer starts with voters who aren’t comfortable with former vice president Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — for age reasons, mostly — and want a candidate who’d offer a night-and-day contrast with Trump. The people who showed up for Castro’s eastern Iowa swing often said they wanted a “fresh” candidate, that they had not heard much about Castro until the debates, and that they felt good hearing a candidate talk about taking in more refugees and immigrants. On Sunday night, after Castro spent an hour at a forum organized by the pro-immigration group Iowa WINS, some voters reminisced about how their state, under a Republican governor, took in thousands of refugees from the Vietnam War.

    Snip.

    Castro’s campaign has not, so far, stirred Latino organizations or endorsers, who want Trump gone but worry about allowing the president to run a nativist campaign on immigration. Cecilia Muñoz, who led President Barack Obama’s domestic policy council while Castro led the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told The Washington Post last week that Castro’s proposal to lower the criminal penalty for illegal border-crossing largely helps Trump.

    It’s an awful lot of hemming and hawing. Castro’s entire post-debate bump was going from 1% to maybe 2% on a good day.

  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Why Bill de Blasio is New York’s worst mayor in modern history.”

    You stayed away for last week’s blackout to remain in Iowa for your ridiculous presidential campaign. You didn’t show up for the Puerto Rican Day Parade or veterans’ D-Day ceremonies. In May, you blew off a memorial event for victims of toxic exposure to Ground Zero — and blamed your staff. You skipped a murdered cop’s vigil in 2017 so as not to interrupt your junket to Germany.

    You should learn from your City Hall predecessors. Some were great mayors, others lame. But they all knew the right public gestures to make when the chips were down, even though they might have needed to take a deep breath first.

    It takes quite a bit of effort to come out on the losing end of comparisons with Abe Beame and John Lindsay, “O’Rourke and de Blasio spar over ‘Medicare for All.'” Talk about midget wrestling…

  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Delaney’s staffers have asked him to not dropping out. He took a swipe at Biden for not having any “new ideas.”

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gabbard too called for Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello to resign and joined protests there. She raised negative $20 for her House campaign. “The absence of any fundraising or spending on her House race has left political observers with the impression that Gabbard may not return to Congress at all if her White House bid falls short.”
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. AP story on Gillibrand and her fellow 1%ers (Booker, O’Rourke, Inslee, Ryan) working to revive their moribund campaigns. I’m beginning to think it’s less a campaign at this point than an excuse to indulge in alcohol abuse…
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: Still In? Twitter. Facebook. Didn’t make the second debate field. Why he launched a no hope campaign. His Twitter timeline is taking shots at Delaney to drop out and suggesting people donate to Williamson. Hasn’t officially announced he’s dropping out, so he gets an entry for another week…
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Does Harris need a win before California to stay viable? She’s second or third in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but first in none of those states:

    One problem with an approach like Harris’s of building a consensus path to victory is that the candidate isn’t necessarily the first choice of any one group of voters. And this can be a problem in states in which the demographics are idiosyncratic, as they are in all four early-voting states.

    The electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, are probably a bit more liberal than Harris would like, helping candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren instead. And while South Carolina’s large black population could help Harris, it still looks like Joe Biden’s state to lose, provided he does well enough among African Americans while cleaning up among relatively conservative white Democrats who are also plentiful in the electorate there. Nevada? Well, I don’t know, Nevada is weird. (I love you, Nevada.) You probably want a candidate who does well among Hispanics, who has a good organization and who has the backing of organized labor. That could be Harris, but unions are mostly taking their time to make any endorsements.

    It’s true that finishing first doesn’t actually matter in terms of the Democrats’ delegate math. Unlike in the Republican primary, there are no winner-take-all states; instead, delegates are divided proportionately among candidates who receive at least 15 percent of the vote in a given state or congressional district. And Harris was at 15 percent or higher in several of the early-state polls I mentioned above, even though she didn’t lead in any of them.

    Winning can matter, though, in terms of momentum, which mostly takes the form of favorable media coverage. Although the post-Iowa bounce has faded in recent years — just ask Ted Cruz how much good winning Iowa did him in New Hampshire — a candidate who came from behind to win an early state or who is otherwise seen as expectations-defying could still get a pretty big boost. And if voters are still choosing among several candidates — say, Harris and Warren — they might jump on the bandwagon of whoever has performed well in these early states. No candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 has won a nomination while losing both Iowa and New Hampshire.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) “Hey, do you think you could have, like, policy proposals?” Harris: “Nah.” “Social Media Censors Angel Mom For Asking Kamala One Question About Illegal Immigration.” Blah blah blah Taylor Swift blah blah Harris fundraiser blah blah music manager Scotter Braun blah blah blah some damn feud.

  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Hickenlooper plows onward despite staff shakeup and fundraising issues.”

    Just two weeks after a major staff exodus from John Hickenlooper’s campaign — six key aides abruptly headed for the door on the heels of a debate performance where the former Colorado governor failed to dazzle — the former governor, despite fundraising and donor-number issues, is plowing straight ahead.

    Among those who left — his campaign manager, communications director, digital director, New Hampshire political director, national finance director and his deputy finance director — sources told ABC News aides sat Hickenlooper down after the Democratic National Committee announced requirements for the September debate to discuss with him other options.

    But, sources told ABC News, Hickenlooper was undeterred, adding staffers who’d stay the course.

    Man, how about that Democratic staffer loyalty? Of course, they’re not wrong…

  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Ha: “‘The View’ co-host awkwardly confuses John Hickenlooper with Jay Inslee during interview.” Honestly, I’m not entirely unsympathetic, but fake Republican Ana Navarro just isn’t too bright.

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Klobuchar in N.H.: To Beat Trump, Dems Need Positive Message and Some Humor.” She’s not wrong, but there’s precious little evidence she’s the one to provide it. Most of her money comes from Minnesota.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. He appeared on radio show The Breakfast Club. And that’s your morsel of Messam news for the week.
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Iowa Caucus First Impressions: Seth Moulton’s ideas are stronger than his campaign.” That’s a pretty low bar. Moulton couches it in Dem-acceptable language, but he’s right when he says that Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t a winning platform:

    Moulton is polling at the back of the pack seeking the Democratic nomination for president, and he didn’t make it on the stage for the first primary debate last month. But from his perspective, his party is overestimating its chances at beating Trump in 2020, Moulton said Thursday in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO reporters and editors.

    The Democratic front-runners are too focused on convincing Americans of Trump’s failings, Moulton said, and are not presenting a vision of the country that can win over people who supported the president in 2016.

    “I think a lot of Democrats think, ‘You know, these Trump voters, what we need to do is we just need to educate them, and we’re going to get it through their heads that this guy is a bad guy,’” Moulton said. “OK, Trump voters are not idiots. We don’t need to give America a moral education; they know that he’s an asshole. They get it. They’ve just baked that in.”

    “When we’re trying to win over Trump voters in the general election, we can’t go on this moral crusade because people are like, ‘Give me a break,’” he said. “What they’re really saying is, ‘I get it, I get this guy is immoral. I’m voting for him anyway because you don’t give me a better alternative.’”

    There’s a real arrogance among a lot of Democrats in thinking that all these people are stupid policy-wise and stupid moral-wise,” he said in an interview conducted as part of a recurring POLITICO series with 2020 candidates.

    The three-term Massachusetts congressman argued that he had a vision to take on Trump “in a way that doesn’t alienate his voters.” Moulton — who perhaps is best-known for helping lead a failed rebellion against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year — was deeply critical of the leftward drift of the party on everything from health care to immigration.

    “We have to have a pro-jobs, pro-growth kind of agenda, and not just a redistributive agenda,” he said.

    Substitute “flawed” for “immoral” and there’s very little about his analysis to disagree with.

  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Beto has no base:

    O’Rourke is probably competing for young voters more than for older ones, for white voters more than nonwhite ones, and for moderate voters more than for very liberal ones. (His voting record in Congress was fairly moderate, although the policy positions he’s staking out now are more of a mixed bag.) There are plenty of young voters, white voters and moderate voters in the Democratic electorate. But there aren’t that many who are young and white and moderate.

    According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 63 percent of voters in the 2016 Democratic primaries were white, 51 percent identified themselves as moderate or conservative, and 56 percent were born in 1965 or afterward, per the Pew Research Center. Multiply those numbers together, and you’d expect:

    63% * 51% * 56% = ~18%

    …about 18 percent of Democrats to be all three things at once. That’s enough to form a real base when you’re competing for a party nomination, especially when Democratic rules require you to win at least 15 percent of voters in a state or congressional district to secure convention delegates.

    But when you actually look at individual-level voter data, you find something different: Only 12 percent of Democratic primary voters are young and white and moderate. That’s far fewer voters to go around, especially when you’re also competing with, say, Pete Buttigieg for the same voters.

    I bet O’Rourke thinks of Hispanics as part of his base, but so far there’s precious little evidence the feelings are mutual. He didn’t let a weak fundraising quarter keep him from hiring more senior staffers:

    Nick Rathod, a Democratic operative who served as President Barack Obama’s liaison to state officials, has been hired as a senior national political adviser, a campaign spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO on Friday.

    Adnan Mohamed, who was deputy national political director for Rep. Seth Moulton’s presidential campaign, has been named national political director. Anna Korman, who worked with O’Rourke’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, at Precision Strategies, will be O’Rourke’s national data director. And Morgan Hill, who was research director on Richard Cordray’s gubernatorial campaign in Ohio last year, will be national research director.

    Lauren Hitt, who previously was communications director for former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign, has been hired as O’Rourke’s national director of rapid response.

    Hitt’s departure from Hickenlooper’s campaign follows the earlier defection of Hickenlooper’s former national finance director, Dan Sorenson, who also went to O’Rourke’s campaign.

    I can understand wanting to leave Hickenlooper’s campaign; jumping to O’Rourke’s doesn’t seem like much of an improvement. By the same token, the Hickenlooper campaign showed no sign of being such a well-oiled machine it deserved poaching. (Also, it’s amusing to go back through Hitt and Sorenson‘s Twitter timelines to see when they went from forwarding Hickenlooper posts to forwarding O’Rourke posts.) Finally, it seems like I’ve done more of this “senior staff hires” pieces on O’Rourke than any of the other candidates, and I wonder if his staff is top-heavy. Team O’Rourke says they have a plan for a comeback:

    O’Rourke is still drawing relatively large crowds in Iowa — some 125 at Sioux City and another 100-plus in Sioux Center this weekend — and his campaign just opened 11 new field offices in the state, where he’s well on his way to visiting all 99 counties.

    “Obviously we are going to need more resources for the national effort, but Iowa is a top priority for this campaign,” Norm Sterzenbach, the O’Rourke campaign Iowa director, said.

    The campaign also hopes to make a major play for delegate-rich Texas, which votes early in the primary process next year. The state hasn’t been polled in over a month, but O’Rourke was in second place behind former Vice President Joe Biden in early June.

    Eh. Minus Texas, “all in on Iowa” is every other longshot’s “plan,” and for most it’s like a losing-streak horse bettor counting on the last race’s trifecta to pull him out of a hole before the loan shark breaks his kneecaps.

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. “‘Mindful’ presidential candidate Tim Ryan gets the wellness vote.”

    Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan wants to be the presidential candidate who can appeal to “yoga moms” and blue-collar workers — and judging by his second-quarter fund-raising, he has a smattering of support from both.

    Mr. Ryan’s $890,000 haul positions him second-to-last among the 20 candidates who qualified for the first round of Democratic debates, leaving him little in the way of resources to sustain him in the race against a top tier of candidates who each raised over $10 million in the last three months.

    Mr. Ryan raised more than former Maryland Rep. John Delaney ($300,000) but less than New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ($1.1 million). He also raised less than spiritual author Marianne Williamson ($1.5 million), perhaps his closest competitor in the wellness space.

    Still, those who did contribute to the northeast Ohioan’s presidential campaign demonstrate the cross section of supporters making up his base.

    Among his most notable donors is New Age guru Deepak Chopra, who gave Mr. Ryan’s campaign $1,000. Mr. Chopra is listed on Mr. Ryan’s campaign finance report as an author at the Chopra Center in California, which didn’t respond to a request for comment. Another person associated with Mr. Chopra’s wellness empire gave $800.

    If you’re competing with Marianne Williamson for the Deepak Chopra vote, you’ve already lost.

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. There are few servings of schadenfreude quite so savory as Sanders suffering union troubles:

    The Vermont socialist senator made history by agreeing that his paid 2020 presidential campaign workers would be repped by a union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, with all earning $15 an hour. But now the union complains some employees are getting less.

    Worse, someone leaked the whole dispute to the Washington Post.

    Worse yet, Sanders’ response could be a violation of US labor law, all on its own.

    The union’s gripe centers on the fact that field organizers, the lowest-level workers, often put in 60 hours a week but get paid only for 40, since they’re on a flat salary. That drops their average minimum pay to less than $13 an hour.

    “Many field staffers are barely managing to survive financially, which is severely impacting our team’s productivity and morale,” the union said in a draft letter to campaign manager Faiz Shakir. “Some field organizers have already left the campaign as a result.”

    Ouch. So Sanders is down to march with McDonald’s employees demanding higher pay, and happy to slam Walmart execs for paying “starvation wages” — but the folks working for him are feeling “berned.”

    If you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane. Sanders might be losing his New Hampshire firewall:

    In 2016, no state was better for Sanders than New Hampshire. The independent senator won the first-in-the-nation primary with 60 percent of the vote. The 22-point win over Hillary Clinton — who had a decades-long relationship with New Hampshire — was the biggest victory margin in that state for a competitive Democratic primary in over a half century.

    In the years since, Sanders returned to the state often. He maintained a strong volunteer team and a local steering committee that met regularly. His son even ran for Congress in the state last year.

    But now, with a little more than six months to go until the 2020 New Hampshire primary, Sanders can no longer take the state for granted. He has gone from being the unquestioned front-runner to second place — and sliding.

    Snip.

    “His campaign supporters felt they had New Hampshire in the bag and they could run this national campaign and dare others to catch up, but here they are in the summer and they are suddenly tumbling in what should be their best early state,” said Wayne Lesperance, a political science professor at New England College in Henniker, N.H. “And if he doesn’t win here, where can he actually go after that?”

    “MSNBC legal analyst Mimi Rocah said that 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders ‘makes my skin crawl‘ and that he’s not a “pro-woman candidate” on the network Sunday morning.” Caveat: She’s in the tank for Warren.

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an interview in Merion West, which describes itself as “a journal of the hard center.” Asked to name the greatest threat to American national security, he said:

    China. For four reasons. The first is because of climate change. If we shut down all Western oil companies today, that’s only ten percent of all natural gas and oil that’s being produced for fossil fuel in the entire world. So much of is by China and Russia, and China, in particular, has 1,600 coal burning facilities it is building globally in the next decade. Number one, it’s because of climate change—that is the biggest. And I tell people, by the way, just a side note—I have said climate change is a great and catastrophic threat, but we can only be 15% in reduction in greenhouse emissions, even if we zero us out. The 85% is over there, and China is the biggest polluter of them all.

    And the second greatest threat is China; the second reason is through its Belt and Road initiative. Or predatory loans—it is actually enslaving nations through these loans. Djibouti had to give China a port for its Navy. Right there, a first base in Africa [for China]. Greece had to give up its political voice and block the European Union’s unanimity needed to stop a condemnation of the terrible human rights record for the Muslim Uighur citizens of China. And so Xi is a new illiberal world order where might makes right, and the Prime Minister of Malaysia said it’s a new colonial power. And in this Belt and Road initiative, it is exporting its old coal mines and factories and building them there with Chinese labor. It is a very illiberal and unjust world order. That’s why, John, our retreat from the world today, from home, thinking somehow we can become great again behind walls so dangerous to the American dream—we are hurting what we could be in the world.

    The third reason is our national corporations have exported, outsourced not just jobs, but our national security to China. By having their technical supply chains, the high tech products being in China—75% of all mobile phones are constructed there, and 90% of all computers are there—you might’ve seen that the Mac Pro of Apple was just shut down a few weeks ago, and it’s being outsourced over there. What happens, as you may know, if you have an Android phone, everything you say, all the data on it is surreptitiously sent back to China. Because it’s with Chinese software. Motherboards that go into servers for Apple and Amazon, the Navy cruisers and CIA drones, were embedded with microchips being sent here. So we have our national corporations outsourcing to China. So that’s the third reason—we have a national security threat, through their ability to begin to identify, follow, and know everything for commercial and intelligence purposes.

    But the greatest, the number four threat, within the cyberspace world is the 5G network. Because of the Belt and Road initiative, we must find out about the digital Silk Road. And each of these countries are now enslaved, so to speak, by the Belt and Road initiative to also have this 5G network that China is leading the world on. With Huawei and other companies. Whoever builds it, owns it—it will revolutionize economies and warfare. Because no longer do you need to hack—what China does now, with $300 billion per year—everything that will go through, a piece of equipment that they build, and we don’t build it—after we sold Lucent, only three companies in the world build it. They have eyes on everything. So if you put a virtual business meeting on there, with trade secrets, they’ll just listen in. They don’t have to hack, it just goes right through this piece of gear. Number two is they’re able to, without having to hack, through the same pipeline take down critical infrastructure during high speed tensions. So that is why, we must understand that China, it is now one world. We’re damaged by climate change, and it will come no matter what we do by ourselves here. Number two, changes to our way of life by China will happen no matter what we do alone. And third, damage to us by corporations outsourcing our national security to China will happen no matter what we do by ourselves. So we must convene the world once again. Go back to those institutions, like the World Trade Organization, the detective organizations that set the rules for technology. And convene the world to make sure that together, we ensure, like we did in the Cold War, like in making sure that extreme poverty—went from in 1945 with 80% of the world’s population to 8% today—we can confront and mitigate and eventually end the damage to us from what they’re doing. By forcing them, by everyone being united to follow the rules of the road. Of justice.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a New York Times interview:

    If Mr. Trump ran as the billionaire of the people, appealing to working-class Republicans and swing voters, Mr. Steyer is a very California billionaire: a denim shirt, a tan, and a hip activist wife.

    And since he announced his run, his wealth has been the story, as he jockeys to be seen as a radical for change.

    “Should we put a limit on what Beyoncé makes?” he asked a reporter for the Guardian.

    Billionaire doesn’t appear to be a great brand among a Democratic base calling for single-payer health care. Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg decided not to run when he figured that out, and the campaign for Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, fizzled.

    Onstage, Mr. Steyer, a soft-spoken man with sandy blond hair, fielded questions.

    “Why? Why have you decided to run for president, Tom,” the moderator and venue owner Manny Yekutiel, 29, asked, kicking the evening off.

    Mr. Steyer said he believes he is the only person willing to fight Mr. Trump.

    “I am more than willing to take this fight on if no one else will,” Mr. Steyer said. “And I don’t see anyone else who sees it’s a very simple fight. It’s hard. But it’s not complicated.”

    Oh yes, there’s a rare commodity among Democrats: being “willing to fight Trump.” It’s a like a NASCAR competitor saying he’s the only one that wants to drive really fast. “Tom Steyer is the poster child for liberal hypocrisy.”

    Steyer’s alleged goal is to be the “outsider” in the race, ready to “break the corrupt stranglehold that corporations have on our government” and “return power to the American people.” The enemy, Steyer claims, is “corrupt corporate power,” with a bit of climate change sprinkled in. The liberal mega-donor has long fancied himself as an environmental activist, donating more than $100 million to Democratic candidates who agree with him on the issue.

    Yet, even a cursory glance at Steyer’s background exposes a Democrat more corporate than community organizer. In 1986, Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management, which has grown into one of America’s largest hedge funds. As of last year, Farallon managed over $25 billion worth of assets: roughly the equivalent of Iceland’s entire economic output. Steyer’s net worth is pegged at $1.6 billion.

    I guess “corporate power” is only corrupting when it’s the other guy.

    Dig deeper, and the stench of hypocrisy only grows. Beginning in the 1980s, Steyer made his name (and much of his money) investing in coal, natural gas, and oil.

    “Big donor Steyer’s presidential run could deny millions to other Democratic races.” Much like all that money sucked up by O’Rourke’s senate run.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. The competition between Warren and Harris:

    As they rise to the top of 2020 Democratic presidential field, Harris and Warren are increasingly in direct competition for many of the same voters and donors, according to polls and fundraising data, with each drawing support from the party’s more affluent, college-educated wing — particularly women.

    The overlap between their supporters might be a surprise, especially for Warren, who is usually portrayed as being in direct competition with fellow liberal stalwart Bernie Sanders. But Warren’s strongest support so far has come from the same group of voters that is critical to Harris’ path to the nomination.

    “A lot of people handicapped the race with Warren competing for voters in the Bernie wing of the party,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton campaign aide. “And it turns out that a lot of Clinton voters like Warren too, and she’s competing for voters in both lanes.

    “And that lane definitely puts her in competition with Harris for some of those center-left college-educated women,” Fallon added. “Both of them have higher ceilings than others with those voters.”

    Recent polls have underscored just how much support Warren and Harris each receive from white, college-educated voters — and how much room to grow they still have with this group.

    In polling results shared with McClatchy, Quinnipiac University found that 24 percent of white, college-educated voters backed Warren earlier this month, compared to 21 percent for Harris.

    Joe Biden placed third among those voters at 18 percent, despite having the top overall standing in the poll.

    Like the Democratic Party in general, Harris and Warren are fighting over a small piece of the pie that they think is the whole pie. She gets a fawning Atlantic profile:

    The crowds tell at least part of the story. Despite leading almost every poll, Biden has struggled with turnout: At one stop I was at last month, in Ottumwa, Iowa, the campaign had reserved a 664-seat theater and was excited when about 250 people showed up. Meanwhile, Warren drew more than 850 people on a recent Monday afternoon in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which was prime Bernie Sanders territory in 2016. Three days later, 1,500 people packed a Milwaukee high-school gym late into a Thursday night to see Warren, cheering and laughing along with her through a town hall. She walked out to “9 to 5.” She stood in front of an oversize American flag. She finished to “Respect.”

    Nowhere does it say how a woman without Obama’s charisma can forge a movement the way Obama did. Warren goes after private equity. “Her new scheme is a far-reaching broadside against an entire industry that invests half a trillion dollars each year in American businesses.” Because how dare rich people build new businesses and hire people instead of building a bigger yacht? She says the economy is doomed, doomed unless congress adopts her laundry list of policy proposals. “Most of Warren’s proposals to head off the crisis are policies she has called for recently on the campaign trail such as forgiving over $600 billion in student loan debt, enacting her “Green Manufacturing Plan”, strengthening unions, providing universal child care and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.” Translation: You’re going to lose this race unless you strap this boat anchor to your car. Peter Thiel says that Warren is the only Democrat talking economics rather than identity politics.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Williamson asked white people to offer ‘prayer of apology.'” How about “No”? Does “No” work for you? Gets an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Finally, a meeting of the minds! It talks about her being roommates with Laura Dern.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “‘I Came From the Internet‘: Inside Andrew Yang’s Wild Ride.”

    A year and a half later, Yang, 44, is still introducing himself. But many of the people who have heard of him, who took in his interview with Fear Factor-host-turned-podcasting-king Joe Rogan or browsed his website’s absurdly long and eclectic list of policy positions, have come away intrigued and, in some cases, enamored. Over a span of months, Yang has ascended from sideshow to a Top 10 candidate in several recent polls. Morning Consult’s latest survey of Democratic primary voters ranked him seventh, tied with Senator Cory Booker; the candidates who trail Yang in that poll have more than 150 years of combined experience in elected office. Yang qualified for the first two Democratic National Committee debates in June and July well before the deadline; he has more Twitter followers than half of the Democratic field; and despite a disappointing performance at the Miami debate (he spoke the least of all 20 candidates), he’s blown past the threshold of 130,000 unique donors for the third and fourth debates this fall.

    Yang’s pitch goes like this: Donald Trump got elected because we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, leading to economic insecurity, a declining quality of life, and a sense of desperation felt by millions of Americans who gave voice to that desperation by voting for the political equivalent of a human wrecking ball. And what automation did to manufacturing, he argues, it will soon do to trucking, call centers, fast food, and retail. “We’re in the third inning of the greatest economic and technological transformation in the history of our country,” he likes to say.

    Yang’s flagship plan to deal with this transformation, his Big Idea, is a universal basic income. He calls it the Freedom Dividend. (He picked the name because it tested better with conservatives than UBI did.) It’s $1,000 a month, no strings attached, for every American over the age of 18. What this new, multitrillion-dollar program would mean for the existing social safety net — well, Yang hasn’t entirely worked that out yet. But he’s quick to note that the concept of a guaranteed income has been around for centuries, with many famous proponents. (Thomas Paine! MLK! Richard Nixon!) And the appeal of a simple, catchy solution to problems as complex as the rise of robots and AI is obvious. “If you’ve heard anything about me, you’ve heard this: There’s an Asian man running for president that wants to give everyone a thousand dollars a month!” he says at the fish fry. “All three of those things are dead true, South Carolina!”

    I recently embedded for three weeks with Yang’s freewheeling campaign, traveling with him in New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., and South Carolina. He invited me to ride around with him and his lean (but growing) team, sit in on private meetings, and hang out with him in the green room at the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. (Reader, the snack spread was incredible.) I sought out Yang for the same reason so many others have, namely, to answer the question: Who is this guy?

    But my curiosity was threaded with a sense of guilt: The last time a fringe candidate came along and started to gain traction, I dismissed him as a fluke and a fraud. That candidate was Donald Trump. This time, I figured I might learn something if I looked to the margins. Is Andrew Yang right about the robot apocalypse? Is he a teller of big truths that other candidates won’t touch or just the latest in a long line of TED-talking, techno-futurists scaring people about the End of Work? What does his popularity, however fleeting, tell us about American voters?

    Joe Rogan stuff and some stupid “alt-right” accusation slinging snipped.

    THE OBVIOUS NEXT question was whether Yang could translate his online support, all those “Yangstas,” as they call themselves, into something tangible. If he held rallies, would anyone come? If he asked for volunteers, would anyone sign up?

    A series of big-city speeches in April and May, dubbed the Humanity First tour, settled those questions. Two thousand people showed up to see him at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, followed by 3,000 in Los Angeles, and 4,000 in Seattle. For the tour’s final stop, 2,500 people turned out in the pouring rain at New York City’s Washington Square Park. These crowd sizes exceeded those of some of the senators and governors in the race. The mainstream media tuned in as well: Yang got requests to appear on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.

    I saw Yang for the first time in June on a swing through New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation primary. It was the middle of the afternoon on a rainy Thursday, but 60 or 70 people filled Crackskull’s cafe in the town of Newmarket to hear Yang speak. I overheard a barista say that former Obama cabinet secretary Julián Castro drew half as many people a few weeks earlier.

    On the stump, Yang oozes a kind of anti-charisma. Dressed in dark pants, a light-blue oxford shirt, no tie, and a navy blazer — call it venture-capital casual — he doesn’t try to charm or inspire or flatter. He peppers his speeches with bleak statistics and dire warnings. Like Trump, he talks about how Middle America is “disintegrating.” He refers to “my friends in Silicon Valley” a lot and to the technologies they’re devising that will put regular people out of work.

    Tech visionaries who stoke fears about the robot apocalypse are nothing new. But in the context of a presidential race, Yang is the only one making this argument, and he’s found an audience for it, judging by the crowds that followed him across New Hampshire. High school kids wore blue MATH hats — short for Make America Think Harder, another one of Yang’s Trump-trolling slogans. At Crackskull’s, Yang’s supporters had memorized Yang’s lines and knew what to say in the call-and-response sections of his stump speech.

    Snip. Still super vague on what happens to existing welfare programs after his guaranteed income scheme kicks in:

    Yang’s book The War on Normal People — copies of which were given out for free at nearly every campaign event I attended — lays out his views in greater detail but raises as many questions as it answers. He writes that the Freedom Dividend “would replace the vast majority of existing welfare programs.” When I ask him about this, he denies that the Freedom Dividend is a Trojan horse for shredding the social safety net. But he acknowledges that programs like food stamps, temporary assistance for needy families, and housing subsidies could shrink if recipients took the $1,000-a-month instead. “There’s no reason to think that you would end up eliminating them entirely,” he tells me. “It is the case that if enrollment were to go down by 30 percent, then over time the bureaucracy hopefully would adjust accordingly.”

    “Iowa Caucus First Impressions: Andrew Yang deserves more voter attention.” That’s from a meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board, so, eh. Promises to to declassify Area 51. Pfft! As if the reptoids would ever let him do that…

  • 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
  • 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 Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum
  • 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 (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    LinkSwarm for May 10, 2019

    Friday, May 10th, 2019

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas we’re enjoying intermittant torrential rains, which means that walking your dog after one is like breathing warm soup.

  • Obama took Hillary’s loss as a personal insult:

    Former President Barack Obama was unhappy with Hillary Clinton and her failed “soulless campaign” in 2016, saying he saw her loss as a “personal insult.”

    The new details come from a recently released update to New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker’s book Obama: The Call of History.

    The new edition, which includes Obama’s reaction to the 2016 election, said Obama compared himself to Michael Corleone, the titular character of “The Godfather.” Obama thought he “almost got out” of office untouched, like a mob boss avoiding a hit job.

    Obama found himself shocked by the election results, thinking before Nov. 8 there was “no way Americans would turn on him” and “[h]is legacy, he felt, was in safe hands.”

  • The Midwest’s broken blue wall:

    The president’s standing in the Midwest now is arguably stronger than when he nearly swept the region in 2016. Polling shows Trump’s job approval rating in the Midwest is in the mid-forties, and his overall favorability rating is highest in the Midwest. Trump’s approval rating in the region is roughly the same as Obama’s was during the same point in his presidency, according to Gallup tracking polls.

    The working class, the nearly 70 percent of Americans without a college degree who have been ignored and even ridiculed by both political parties, is flourishing. Five of the top ten cities enjoying the greatest job opportunities for lower-wage workers are in the Midwest. “A majority of the metro areas with the highest shares of opportunity employment are located in the Midwest . . . after adjusting for cost-of-living differences, median annual earnings tend to be relatively high in that region,” according to an April 2019 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    Finding enough workers “is a problem playing out in many parts of the Midwest, a region with lower unemployment and higher job-opening rates than the rest of the country,” according to an April 2018 Wall Street Journal report, citing hiring challenges by employers in Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Southwestern Ohio, solid Trump country, is in the midst of a warehousing boom. The construction industry is thriving nationwide, but the Midwest is leading the pack.

    The administration’s attempts to secure the southern border are gaining popularity in the Midwest. According to a recent Washington Postpoll, 40 percent of Midwesterners say Trump’s approach to illegal immigration will make them more likely to support him in 2020, compared to 36 percent who say they are less likely. Further, 83 percent of Midwesterners called the situation at the Mexican border a crisis or a serious problem. It will take some smooth convincing by the Democratic presidential candidate to not only disabuse Midwesterners of their views, but to assure them that open borders are best for families in Racine and Grand Rapids.

  • After the Mueller report, former FBI Director James Comey knows he’s in trouble:

    Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber, along with Barr’s promised examination, are completed, Comey’s mishandling of the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.

    Ideally, Barr’s examination will aggregate information that addresses three primary streams.

    The first will be whether the investigations into both presidential nominees and the Trump campaign were adequately, in Barr’s words, “predicated.” This means he will examine whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place.

    The Mueller report’s conclusions make this a fair question for the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Comey’s own pronouncement, that the Clinton email case was unprosecutable, makes it a fair question for that investigation.

    The second will be whether Comey’s team obeyed long-established investigative guidelines while conducting the investigations and, specifically, if there was sufficient, truthful justification to lawfully conduct electronic surveillance of an American citizen.

    The third will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what’s causing the 360-degree head spins.

    Oh, should we use the word “bombshell” or the phrase “the walls are closing on?”

  • Luke Rosiak is on the case of corruption in Flint, Michigan:

    The company Flint, Michigan, hired to replace lead water pipes had no experience with the work, according to a councilwoman and a contractor, despite that the city has received more than $600 million in state and federal aid for its water crisis.

    And the city ignored a model showing where lead pipes are and paid to dig up every yard, the vast majority of which had copper pipes, according to meeting minutes.

    The city also prohibited contractors from using an efficient method of digging holes known as hydrovac excavation, Flint Councilwoman Eva Worthing told The Daily Caller News Foundation. That leveled the playing field for a contractor, WT Stevens, with no experience or the appropriate equipment — and let it bill far more to taxpayers, she says. All of these factors, she adds, needlessly led to more waiting for anyone who actually has lead pipes.

    Huge amounts of aid dollars — including $100 million from the Environmental Protection Agency — have flowed to the small city of 90,000 residents to address lead in its water supply, even though it doesn’t have a chief financial officer and, until recently, its finance chair was a gun felon.

    The federal money “should be a good thing for the city,” Worthing told TheDCNF, “but given the mismanagement of the pipe replacement program, I am concerned that it’s not going to get used properly.”

    The city “chose to dig up yards that they knew were copper, and they decided to hand dig instead of hydrovac,” Worthing told TheDCNF. “That was because WT Stevens didn’t have the ability, and you get more money [digging by hand]. It costs $250 [to hydrovac] versus thousands” to dig a large hole without the equipment.

  • What part of No Collusion is hard to understand?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Democrat slips up, admits that “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this President, he will be reelected.”
  • Hey, remember when journalists reported on all the scandals among Virginia’s state leaders, until they noticed the (D)s after their names? “Northam, who largely won on anti-Trump anger, is now less popular than the president in the state.”
  • Alabama Democratic state representative John Rogers last week: “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later.” Rodgers this week: “I am now a candidate for United States Senate.” He’s primarying incumbent Democratic Senator Doug Jones, who only got in because of the Roy Moore fiasco.
  • Remember how sure all those economic “experts” were that Trump would tank the economy if he got elected? Good times, good times…
  • A lot of what you think you know about gun control in Australia, New Zealand and the UK is probably wrong.

    Recent data show that the U.K.’s gun control experiments are actually causing more harm than good. Like its Australian counterpart, which also implemented draconian gun control in the 1990s, negative criminal trends have started to surface since new gun control laws were enacted.

    Sexual assaults have seen an alarming rise from 1995 to 2006, specifically increasing by 76.5 percent according to Howard Nemerov’s book 400 Years of Gun Control. All the gun control in the world has not been able to save the U.K. from steadily increasing rates of violent crime.

  • The FBI’s New York office forms a squad dedicated to MS-13.
  • “The century-long relationship between American Jews and the nation’s elite universities has rotted away. Now is the time for all of the good people involved—students, parents, donors—to get out, and fast.”
  • Believe women…unless they’re raped by a homeless person. “Seattle’s activist class seems, then, to have more compassion for transient criminals than for the victims of their crimes.”
  • New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy raids fund for fallen firefighters.
  • Followup:

  • New York: No new pipelines. Gas company: OK, that means no more gas hookups for new buildings because we’re at capacity.
  • Leaked Trump Peace Plan? I’d sort of like President Trump to stay away from all peace plans, as they all seem to be asking for trouble. This one is interesting. It calls for a two state solution, some Egyptian facilities for Gaza, incorporating settlements into Israel, a lot of non-U.S. countries picking up the bill, and penalties for rejecting the deal. It make so much sense that Palestinians will surely reject it out of hand…
  • U.S. Seizes North Korean Freighter Violating U.N. Sanctions.”
  • More on China’s play for technological dominance: “Huawei Technologies, the spearhead of China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), isn’t a Chinese company, but an imperial juggernaut that crushes its competition and employs their intellectual resources. By 2013 it employed 40,000 foreigners–mostly in R&D– out of a workforce of 150,000.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The New York Times had a story in which they breathlessly told us that Trump lost a billion dollars in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You know, just like Trump himself told us in his book The Art of the Comeback. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “Facebook co-founder says Zuckerberg ‘not accountable,’ calls for government break up.” Better idea: Make all social media companies publish clear, defined reasons for suspending or banning users, and make the processes by which those decisions are made transparent. Nah, they’d never go for that, as that would keep them from arbitrarily banning conservatives… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Facebook Allows Terrorist Who Beheaded Canadian Tourist To Keep Account & Actively Post.” That would be Bhen Tatuh of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines. (Hat tip: Charlie Martin.)
  • Jim Goad says Facebook should leave Louis Farrakhan alone…because he’s hilarious. “This cat is one of the most accomplished mind-fuckers in American history, and I’m glad to call him a fellow citizen.”
  • “Facebook SWAT Team Arrests Man For Illegal Possession Of Conservative Views.”
  • “Man Whose Headless Body Was Found Floating in Fish Tank Was Murdered.” That’s some mighty fine forensic analysis there, Lou… (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
  • “Nation’s Politicians Mock Trump For Only Wasting A Mere Billion Dollars.”
  • “That’s not a knife!” (Unleashes Hellfire missile with 100 pounds worth of blades.) “Now that, that’s a knife!”
  • Entire New Orleans Times-Picayune staff laid off after paper sold to competitor. Among other things, they did that fine story on the homeless Super Bowl player.
  • Speaking of football: “XFL Reaches Deal With Fox, Disney To Broadcast Games.”
  • How a World War II field kitchen worked.
  • The return of the giant knotweed.
  • The 106 greatest crime films of all time, as ranked by Otto Penzler (still in progress).
  • “Is that an alligator in your pants, or are you just happy to see me.” Bonus: Florida Woman.
  • “Ilhan Omar Blasts Israel For Refusing Palestine’s Generous Gift Of Rockets.”
  • Moving The Extending Arms of Christ: This probably won’t mean anything to you unless you grew up in Houston, but there was a large, striking mosaic above the emergency room entrance on Houston Methodist Hospital that had to be moved to an interior atrium under construction due to the hospital’s expansion.
  • LinkSwarm for May 3, 2019

    Friday, May 3rd, 2019

    Lot’s of rage by Democrats in this week’s LinkSwarm over Attorney General William Barr over, well, something.

  • The U.S. economy added 263,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest since 1969.
  • Followup: Baltimore’s Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh resigns following FBI/IRS raids on home and workplace following the “Healthy Holly” bribery scandal. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Poll: Percentage of Democrats who see border ‘crisis’ jumps 17 points since January.”
  • Old and Busted: “Trump is guilty of treason!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of collusion!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of obstruction!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of something! Release the report!” (Report released.) “Ummm…Barr’s summary was slightly off on one point! Impeach!” Trump Derangement Syndrome is a helluva drug…
  • Indeed, they’re just pissed that Barr’s summary of the report was accurate, meaning the Democrats had three weeks they couldn’t lie about the report. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Checkmate. How President Trump’s legal team outfoxed Mueller.” From the newly resurrected Human Events, this is a detailed legal analysis of how a memo written by William Barr before he became Attorney General laid the groundwork for curtailed Robert Mueller using an overly-expansive definition of “obstruction.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti pleads not guilty to federal wire fraud and tax evasion charges. (Hat tip: Roger Simon.)
  • “F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016.” You know, a spy. Here’s a handy decoder for the “covering for Democrats” speak:

  • “Ukrainian embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016.”
  • More Democratic compassion:

  • Deputy shot in Caldwell County. However, unlike most cases, there are some really stupid decisions on both sides.
  • Facebook banned Milo Yannopoulos, Alex Jones and Louis Farrakhan for “extremism,” and the Washington Post headline initially called them all “far right” before a ton of criticism forced them to correct the headline. Because Louis Farrakhan is so well-known for palling around with conservatives. (Facebook is a private entity and can do what it wants, but I don’t want any of those people banned. Let them speak and let people debate their ideas/lunacy/etc. or not as they feel).
  • Even CNN is starting to get a clue:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Speaking of CNN: “CNN Poll: Overwhelming Majority Want Investigation into Obama DOJ Spying on Trump.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The members of the Flint, Michigan City Council sound like real winners.
  • “Norwegian fisherman have discovered a beluga whale wearing a tight harness with a camera attachment – sparking speculation the animal belongs to the Russian Navy.” I wouldn’t be surprised, especially since we have our own dolphin program… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The new “Supermajority” organization is just another stalking horse for Planned Parenthood.
  • “Israeli ambassador calls NYT ‘cesspool of hostility.'” Correct, though that’s really two more words than necessary…
  • The latest counterculture icon to be found guilty of WrongThink by Social Justice Warriors is (rolls dice)…cartoonist Robert Crumb.
  • “Covington kid sues NBC for $275 million.” Good. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Lance Morrow reviews Robert Caro’s Working. “If I were teaching journalism or nonfiction writing, especially the writing of history and biography, I would build a course around Caro, with Working as my primary text and scenes from his Johnson books as case studies.”
  • In the “trouble in places you may not have heard of” department, clashes broke out on the African nation of Benin (between Nigeria and Togo on the Ivory Coast) when the ruling party held a parliamentary election from which opposition parties were excluded.
  • Dispatches from Social Justice Warrior land: “Trinity College professor tweets ‘whiteness is terrorism,’ refers to Barack and Michelle Obama as ‘white kneegrows.’”
  • Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicated, Emperor Naruhito mounting the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, marking the end of the Heisei era and inaugurating the Reiwa era.
  • Actor James Woods is still in the Twitter Gulag:

  • Woman awakens after 27 year coma. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Unhappy meals. Now if only every one came with mopping teenage Goth girl figurines…
  • “‘Mortal Kombat’ Introduces Brutal New Fatality Where Your Character Just States An Opposing Viewpoint…One character says, ‘There are only two genders,’ and his opponent instantly melts into nothing, being unable to handle the opposing viewpoint. Another character suggests that capitalism isn’t all bad, and his opponent’s head instantly falls off.”
  • Legging it.
  • The Women’s March Racket

    Tuesday, December 11th, 2018

    The safest assumption about any spontaneous left-wing protest movement is that there’s nothing spontaneous about it. Be it Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or any of the Brady Bunch hydra heads, you’ll always find a small cadre of activists, backed by some of the same left-left funding network, involved.

    So it is with the Women’s March, with a nice side helping of antisemitism, as shown in this Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel piece in Tablet:

    According to several sources, it was there—in the first hours of the first meeting for what would become the Women’s March—that something happened that was so shameful to many of those who witnessed it, they chose to bury it like a family secret. Almost two years would pass before anyone present would speak about it.

    It was there that, as the women were opening up about their backgrounds and personal investments in creating a resistance movement to Trump, [Carmen Perez] and [Tamika] Mallory allegedly first asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade. These are canards popularized by The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam—“the bible of the new anti-Semitism,” according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., who noted in 1992: “Among significant sectors of the black community, this brief has become a credo of a new philosophy of black self-affirmation.”

    Snip.

    As its fame grew, so did the questions about the Women’s March’s origin story—including, at first privately within the inner circles of the organizations, questions pertaining to the possible anti-Jewish statement made at that very first meeting. And that wasn’t the only incident from the initial encounter that would have far-reaching consequences. Within a few months of the original marches, key figures who came from outside or stood apart from the inner circle of the Justice League, an initiative of The Gathering for Justice, left the organization. And many of those involved began questioning why it was that, among the many women of various backgrounds interested in being involved in the March’s earliest days, power had consolidated in the hands of leadership who all had previous ties to one another; who were all roughly the same age; who would praise a man who has argued that it’s women’s responsibility to dress modestly so as to avoid tempting men; and, at least in one case, who defended Bill Cosby as the victim of a conspiracy.

    The questions started to be more practical, as well. At some point during that very first meeting in Chelsea, Perez suggested that the Justice League’s parent entity, The Gathering for Justice—where she, Mallory, and Skolnik all had roles—set up a “fiscal sponsorship” over the Women’s March to handle its finances. A fiscal sponsorship is a common arrangement in the nonprofit sector that allows more established organizations to finance newer ventures as they get off the ground and find their own funding. In this case, though, the standard logic didn’t apply since the Women’s March would, from its inception, raise vastly more money than its sponsor ever had. Over time, new details of the Women’s March’s organizational structure have been dragged into public view that reveals complicated financial arrangements, confusing even to experts.

    Yet within no time, the March leaders would be named 2017 Women of the Year by Glamour magazine. There was a glossy book published with Condé Nast, a lucrative merchandise business selling branded Women’s March gear, and millions of dollars raised through individual donations and institutional funding from major organizations like Planned Parenthood and the powerful hospital workers union, 1199SEIU. Fortune magazine named Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Perez, and Bland to its list of the World’s Greatest Leaders, and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand—in explaining why these four were on Time magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People—wrote: “The Women’s March was the most inspiring and transformational moment I’ve ever witnessed in politics … and it happened because four extraordinary women—Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour—had the courage to take on something big, important and urgent, and never gave up.” In conclusion, the senator declared, “these women are the suffragists of our time.”

    But in fact, according to many involved in the January 2017 marches, Gillibrand’s description wasn’t just over the top; it undermined and erased the very people actually doing the work to create female-centric voting blocs throughout the country. “To be fair, the Women’s March on Washington—the one I was involved with at the time—had no real connection to the many marches that took place across the country and globally that month,” said Wruble, in an interview with Tablet. “Local leaders, often first-time organizers, spearheaded marches in their own communities. Many used the branding we put out as open source and helped to make the marches look unified—which was certainly advantageous in creating the sense of a singular, massive movement—but they were the ones who did the real work.”

    It’s a long, detailed article about how some of the original Women’s March organizers were quickly pushed out by people who “have been in bed with the Nation of Islam since day one.”

    Eric Hoffer once said “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” The Women’s March was born as a racket…

    LinkSwarm for February 2, 2018

    Friday, February 2nd, 2018

    Happy Groundhog Day! To celebrate, just imagine that I’ve already posted this same LinkSwarm nine times already.

    Supposedly the Nunes FISA abuse memo drops today. After that happens, I’ll no doubt have some thoughts…

  • Democratic Party freakouts over the memo seem to be reaching epic proportions.
  • “The Democratic party’s strategy for 2018 seems to revolve around reminding people how happy they are that Democrats aren’t in charge.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Recent rulings from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals are a major contributing factor in the sharp rise in the number of family units and unaccompanied minors that have made the trek from Central America to the United States’ southwest border in the last few months, according to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina is retiring.
  • As is Pennsylvania Democrat Robert Brady. Few people outside the state realize that Brady is the Democratic Party’s iron-fisted Philadelphia machine boss. I asked a Philly friend how corrupt Brady is: “Not as corrupt as Frank Rizzo, but pretty corrupt.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.
  • And even though that PhillyMag piece is from last year, it’s worth calling out this tidbit about Pennsylvania Democrats on its own:

    Since 2000, law enforcement officials have investigated no fewer than 32 Philadelphia Democrats. The allegations seem to get more debasing — more Robin Hood-in-reverse — every year. Seth Williams, the sitting district attorney, was indicted in March for allegedly stealing from his own mother and seeking thousands of dollars’ worth of bribes in exchange for making people’s legal problems go away. Chaka Fattah, the former 11-term Congressman, was sentenced in December to a decade in prison for using cash from taxpayers and a charity to pay back an illegal campaign loan. Leslie Acosta, the ex-state rep, pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiring to commit money laundering.

    Those are only the biggest and baddest examples of graft in the past year. The city’s traffic court was abolished altogether after nine judges were charged with ticket fixing in 2013. (Seven were later convicted on various charges.) In 2014, five state lawmakers — nearly a quarter of Philadelphia’s Harrisburg delegation — were accused of taking petty bribes; four have been convicted, some of lesser charges. The avalanche of indictments has left Philadelphians wondering whether their elected officials run for office to help anyone other than themselves.

  • Ace nails the SJW problem:

    It is the common practice of Social Justice Warriors to infiltrate organizations and hobbies in which they have little to no interest — videogames, comic books, sports, science-fiction awards organizations, all academic fields, etc. — for the sole purpose of seizing “key nodes and critical infrastructure,” as Diversity and Comics notes (echoing US military doctrine), in order to turn non-political pastimes into never-ending propaganda echo chambers — or destroy them outright, if they cannot be made to serve the regressive left’s propaganda mission.

    They’re deadly parasites for any organization that allows them to crawl inside their bodies.

    But these organizations let them in — hell, they actively seek them out — just so that social justice blogs and websites like The Mary Sue or Buzzfeed will give them the Social Justice Warrior Stamp of Approval.

    Trouble is, as Marvel Comics is finding out, Social Justice Warriors are not consumers of any of these products, and will not buy them even if they have been converted into full Social Justice Warrior propaganda outfits.

    These organizations are being infiltrated by Social Justice Warriors not because Social Justice Warriors like them or the cultural products they produce, but because Social Justice Warriors know that non- Social Justice Warriors enjoy these products, and thus these cultural artifacts must be seized and repurposed to serve leftist indoctrination ends or simply destroyed.

    If they cannot be remade to be useful indoctrination centers, then they must be destroyed, so that, at least, non-Social Justice Warriors will have one less enjoyable thing in their lives, and may be forced to seek Social Justice Warrior-controlled entertainments as an alternative.

  • What did the 2018 Women’s March produce? Trash. Lots and lots of trash.
  • “Chelsea” Manning is ineligible to run for office.
  • The MSM grapples with the truth about Sweden. (Hat tip: DirectorBlue.)
  • Republicans get more ObamaCare taxes delayed.
  • Sun Tzu predicted how President Trump would kick Democrats’ asses 2,500 years ago.
  • Obama paled around with Louis Farrakhan in 2005 and the media covered it up, because Democrat. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Fidel Castro’s eldest son commits suicide.
  • “Reclusive Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss — one of the Democrats’ biggest and most secretive donors — is currently under investigation for a 2011 sexual assault, as originally reported in a handwritten complaint by his former employee Jacqueline Long.”
  • Seattle lesbian awakes from woke:

    Herzog has awakened from “woke,” as it were, because she found herself attacked by her progressive comrades for Thoughtcrime. She has disagreed with transgender activists and defended Aziz Ansari, among other examples of her political incorrectness. Independent thinking by members of official victim groups — women, racial minorities, homosexuals — is dangerous to the Left because dissent undermines the identity-politics illusion of solidarity against the white heterosexual males who allegedly oppress everyone else. In the 21st century, belief in the pervasive evil of heterosexual white men has become the organizing principle of the Democrat Party, its raison d’être. To suggest to a Democrat in 2018 that perhaps this fathomless contempt for white males is misguided, or that not every member of an official victim group is suffering from oppression, is to commit a sort of political heresy, like denying the existence of witchcraft in 17th-century Salem.

    Democrats have become vendors of ethnic outrage, gender resentment and economic envy, with no other commodity to provide voters in the political marketplace. Because everyone inside the cult of social justice is fanatically devoted to this zero-sum-game mentality, there is a constant competition among Democrats to strike a “more progressive than thou” posture and, as Professor Reynolds says, “when sanctimony is your only coin, people will try to accumulate it.” Sooner or later, however, intelligent people wise up to the hustle. After the defeat of Hillary Clinton, many who had cast their lot with the party of victimhood may realize how badly they have been hoodwinked and bamboozled.

    Is it bad that I read the word “Seattle lesbian” and, even before I saw the picture, instantly thought “flannel”?

  • David Brooks wants new Americans because Original Recipe Americans, with our disgusting epidemic of improperly creased trousers, disappoint him so.
  • “Federal judge grants Texas request to block Obama-era restrictions on criminal background checks in hiring.”
  • Hitting your target at 1000 yards.
  • A SOTU tweet:

  • Another:

  • Bad hiring decisions:

  • Happy Groundhog Day! To celebrate, just imagine that I’ve already posted this same LinkSwarm nine times already.

    Clinton Corruption/Election Update for November 7, 2016

    Monday, November 7th, 2016

    The election is tomorrow, so let’s just combine the Clinton Corruption update with the election news update:

  • FBI punts again.
  • Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 million for Bill Clinton’s birthday while Hillary was head of the State Department, in violation of Department policy and Clinton’s own “ethics agreement,” and without Hillary informing the State Department. “While Qatar was obvious engaged in pay to play, what makes this instance even worse, is that Hillary and Bill were confident enough they could simply get away with it by never telling the State Department of the new influence money.”
  • Impending calamity for the Clintons:

    When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, pilfering over $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, and furniture as they cleared out, they claimed they were flat broke. Their net worth today is now in excess of $150 million, accumulated not by traditional means of work and investment, but rather by pay-for-play influence peddling through speeches and Clinton Foundation fundraising — with the tacit understanding that the Clintons would be in a position to return favors to donors after Hillary won the 2016 presidential election.

    The Clintons symbolize the institutionalization of corruption in Washington, which now permeates almost all the government agencies. Even the so-called independent Federal Reserve has been corrupted by politicians whose profligate deficit spending puts pressure on the Fed to maintain a zero-interest policy that artificially masks the real cost and risk of a growing unsustainable level of debt.

    For the better part of eight years of the Obama administration, polls have consistently shown that nearly 70% of Americans believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Separately, a recent MSNBC poll shows “liar” is the most common word that comes to mind when voters think of Hillary Clinton. Another recent NBC poll shows that only 11% think of Hillary as honest and trustworthy. Even if one doubts the accuracy of these polls, how is it possible for a majority to think the country can get on a better track by electing as the next U.S. President a liar who embodies the corrupt status quo?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Normal people don’t see Islamic State military oilfield gains as an “opportunity”. But Clinton cronies aren’t normal people.
  • Chelsea Clinton used the Clinton Foundation as her own personal piggy bank to pay for her wedding. “If true people (then) worth well into 8 figures used 501c3 $ to pay for a wedding.”
  • The mystery of the Clinton Foundation’s missing $20 million in Haiti relief funds. Money that came from Frank Giustra and Carlos Slim. Also involved: Jean Marc Villain, who oversaw the fund while going through his own bankruptcy, and who “violated state laws in 2001 when he did not file donation reports for the Haitian-American Political Caucus.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Hey Hillary? Think you could stop mentioning classified war information in emails from your illegal private server? KThxBye – John Podesta”
  • Clinton News Network gonna Clinton News Network.
  • Scott Adams shows you how to unhypnotize a Clinton supporter.
  • “Market Indicator Gives Trump An 86% Chance Of Winning The Election.”
  • Chris Wallace: “I think the media could not do a worse job than this year….It’s like watching a badly refereed basketball game where we’re seeing make-up calls and we’re seeing particularly print going – and I’m not a Trump defender at all – but going after Trump in ways that I think violate every canon of ethics for news reporting.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Bill Clinton tells donors borders are going to be porous “for a very long time.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Clinton advisor Jennifer Palmieri admits that some Clinton Foundation donors wanted pro quo for their quid. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Hillary’s coughing fit returns.
  • Sunday Trump held rallies in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Notice how neatly those stops align with Michael Moore’s contention that Trump will sweep the rust belt. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The fact that the Clinton campaign is panicing over Michigan, deploying both Bill Clinton and Obama there, also lend credence to the theory. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • False story alert: That story about a “murder suicide” of an FBI agent who leaked Clinton scandal info from the non-existent “Denver Guardian” is a hoax.
  • Noted without comment: “Farrakhan compares Hillary Clinton to Hitler.”
  • Nation of Islam Teams Up With Scientology to Form Voltron of Crazy Religions

    Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

    From The Blaze comes word that Louis Farrakhan has integrated Scientology teachings into the Nation of Islam.

    I’ll just wait a minute for that to sink in.

    It’s a real challenge to say which has the wackier theology (links in headers, which annoyingly still show up in black):

    Scientology

  • 75 million years ago, galactic Overlord Xenu sent hundred of billions of people to Earth in spaceships shaped like rocket-powered DC-8s where they were blown up in volcanoes with H-bombs.
  • Then Xenu hypnotized the souls (thetans) in soul cinemas brainwashing them with religious theology.
  • Now all the brainwashed soul-thetans are hanging around in clumps of thousands to real bodies.
  • If you pay Scientology lots of money, they can remove these thetans from your body using a galvanometer.
  • (Or, if you prefer a visual recap, you can go to about 11:30 into this South Park episode.)

    Oh, and they also keep people captives against their will as part of their “Sea Org,” and view anyone leaving Scientology as a traitor for whom it’s “fair game” to stalk and harass. And they sue people at the drop of a hat.

    Nation of Islam

  • Founder Wallace Fard Muhammad is the Mahdi (the messiah of Islamic eschatology).
  • Fard (who disappeared in 1934) is alive in Mecca today.
  • White people are devils created by the evil scientist Yakub 6,000 years ago in Greece.
  • God launched a giant spaceship from Japan in 1929.
  • Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad believed in segregation, negotiated with the Klu Klux Klan to buy farm land in the South, and was praised by American National Socialist Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell as “the Hitler of the black man.”
  • Elijah Muhammad didn’t die in 1975, but is alive on the spaceship now.
  • UFOs are smaller ships from the giant spaceship, and carry out God’s plans (and also carry bombs).
  • And that pretty much only scratches the surface of the crazy. I think I have to give the edge to Scientology for outright lunacy, but both are worthy contenders. And you can see the beginnings of compatibility from the space brothers angle. Not to mention the whole “both are completely bugfark insane” thing.

    As for what the team-up may mean politically: Who knows? But you might want to have some popcorn ready…