Posts Tagged ‘South Carolina’

LinkSwarm for March 26, 2021

Friday, March 26th, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Slow Joe slows the economy and holds a press conference, global trade founders on a single choke-point, and Democrats behave badly (a LinkSwarm evergreen). Plus a load of Archer memes.

  • “Slow” evidently applies not only to Slow Joe Biden’s mental speed, but also to the effect he’s having on the economy. “Americans’ Income Collapsed By Most On Record In February,” falling 7.1%.

  • Slow Joe finally held a press conference. It didn’t go well. “President Joe Biden struggled through his first official press conference on Thursday, pausing frequently to check his notes on the podium and occasionally losing his train of thought as if distracted by the voices echoing madly in his geriatric brain.”
  • Tucker Carlson also reviewed Biden’s “slow and painful” performance:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Only five months too late, Georgia finally passes bill to fight election fraud.
  • Lockdowns kill:

    Now that the 2020 figures have been properly tallied, there’s still no convincing evidence that strict lockdowns reduced the death toll from Covid-19. But one effect is clear: more deaths from other causes, especially among the young and middle-aged, minorities, and the less affluent.

    The best gauge of the pandemic’s impact is what statisticians call “excess mortality,” which compares the overall number of deaths with the total in previous years. That measure rose among older Americans because of Covid-19, but it rose at an even sharper rate among people aged 15 to 54, and most of those excess deaths were not attributed to the virus.

    Some of those deaths could be undetected Covid-19 cases, and some could be unrelated to the pandemic or the lockdowns. But preliminary reports point to some obvious lockdown-related factors. There was a sharp decline in visits to emergency rooms and an increase in fatal heart attacks due to failure to receive prompt treatment. Many fewer people were screened for cancer. Social isolation contributed to excess deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s.

    Researchers predicted that the social and economic upheaval would lead to tens of thousands of “deaths of despair” from drug overdoses, alcoholism, and suicide. As unemployment surged and mental-health and substance-abuse treatment programs were interrupted, the reported levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts increased dramatically, as did alcohol sales and fatal drug overdoses. The number of people killed last year in motor-vehicle accidents in the United States rose to the highest level in more than a decade, even though Americans did significantly less driving than in 2019. It was the steepest annual increase in the fatality rate per mile traveled in nearly a century, apparently due to more substance abuse and more high-speed driving on empty roads.

    The number of excess deaths not involving Covid-19 has been especially high in U.S. counties with more low-income households and minority residents, who were disproportionately affected by lockdowns. Nearly 40 percent of workers in low-income households lost their jobs during the spring, triple the rate in high-income households. Minority-owned small businesses suffered more, too. During the spring, when it was estimated that 22 percent of all small businesses closed, 32 percent of Hispanic owners and 41 percent of black owners shut down. Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School, summarized the impact: “Lockdowns have protected the laptop class of young low-risk journalists, scientists, teachers, politicians and lawyers, while throwing children, the working class and high-risk older people under the bus.”

    The deadly impact of lockdowns will grow in future years, due to the lasting economic and educational consequences. The United States will experience more than 1 million excess deaths in the United States during the next two decades as a result of the massive “unemployment shock” last year, according to a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins and Duke, who analyzed the effects of past recessions on mortality. Other researchers, noting how educational levels affect income and life expectancy, have projected that the “learning loss” from school closures will ultimately cost this generation of students more years of life than have been lost by all the victims of the coronavirus.

    After the pandemic began in March, the number of excess deaths in the United States rose for all American adults. During the summer, as the pandemic eased, the rate of excess mortality declined among older Americans but remained unusually high among young adults. When statisticians at the Centers for Disease Control totaled the excess deaths for age groups through the end of September, they reported that the sharpest change—an increase of 26.5 percent—occurred among Americans aged 25 to 44.

    That trend persisted through fall, and most of the excess deaths among younger people were not linked to the coronavirus, as researchers from the University of Illinois found by analyzing excess deaths from March through the end of November. Among Americans aged 15 to 54, there were roughly 56,000 excess deaths, of which about 22,000 involved Covid-19, leaving 34,000 from other causes. The Canadian government also reported especially high mortality among Canadians under 45: nearly 1,700 excess deaths from May through November, with only 50 of those deaths attributed to Covid-19.

  • The Suez Canal is completely blocked due to a giant container ship having run aground. “Each day the canal is blocked, it halts about $9.6 billion of traffic through the world’s most important shipping lane.”
  • Kurt Schlichter on Noem’s tranny pander:

    Noem has – perhaps had – a future as a conservative conservative, and her utterly insane unforced error last week has hugely damaged her prospects. There are lessons here, people.

    What did she do? She vetoed a bill defending women athletes from the insanity of letting men dominate them, a “style and form” veto, and then offered the most weaksauce weasel word explanation imaginable. Here tweet thread trying to explain it was lame; her appearance on Tucker was condescending gibberish. Watching it, woke cons started out disappointed with her and ended up infuriated at her. Here’s the irony – Kristi Noem stepped on her Ted Lieu in the context for a transexual policy issue.

    It was really quite remarkable how amateurish and totally unnecessary it all was, but we’ve been seeing a lot of this lately. Recently, Greg Abbot decided to label all of Gab’s users “anti-Semites” because…well, who knows? It’s one of those things that you do that ticks off the base while the liberals continue to hate you. Good plan.

    On the plus side, it lets us disqualify the weakhearts now.

    It’s unclear who told Noem this was a great idea, but that person ought to be exiled to one of those other Dakotas. It’s 2021 and there are Republican consultants who still think the base is dumb. SMDH. The base is not dumb. The base is based. And we’re not going to be fooled with painful tweet threads and interviews about how 2 + 2 = 5 and how we need to not fight because it might make our enemies angry with us or – horrors! – cost us something to make a stand. Noem decided that instead of holding strong on an issue that conservatives care about, she would not merely rollover to the tech/Chamber of Commerce lib axis but also attempt to talk us into thinking this was just a routine administrative decision and that she is totally behind us 100 percent.

    Except she isn’t.

    We’re not stupid. Is she? Because if she thinks that conservatives, the cheated-on spouses of American politics, are not hyper-vigilant to any sign of betrayal then she’s too dumb to be our prezzy. We’ve been shafted too many times, and she is hallucinating if she thinks anyone will get a pass – including her. One of the most basic things we expect GOP politicians to do is protect our girls from getting clobbered by boys pretending to be girls. This is not one of those fringe issues where we’re, “Yeah, okay, sometimes you gotta compromise.” This is foundational.

  • Bristol is Britain’s Portland:

    Some of the rioters in Bristol last night were dressed in black bloc as they set dumpsters on fire to block streets and used barricades as battering rams to attack police. They also came armed with explosive mortar fireworks, a favorite projectile weapon among antifa to disorientate, deafen, blind and injure cops.

    Though the protest-turned-riot was ostensibly organized to oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which would allow police to impose more conditions on protests and increase penalties for those convicted of vandalizing statues, among other things, the demonstration had all the hallmarks of a far-left gathering.

    The ‘Kill the Bill’ protest was promoted by the Bristol chapters of a Black Lives Matter-style group, Extinction Rebellion and Momentum, the hard-left wing within the Labour party. Unsurprisingly, British antifa groups also encouraged their comrades to support the violence.

    ‘Be careful about sharing footage with people’s faces who aren’t wearing masks,’ warned one antifa group. ‘Solidarity with all the comrades out there in Bristol fighting the bill and facing hard repression,’ tweeted Brighton Antifascists. ‘Spread the fire,’ they urged. And the fire spread.

    Hundreds of protesters had gathered earlier in the city center carrying hammer and sickle flags, symbols of anarchist-communism, and signs against racism and fascism. The most frequent message spray-painted on vehicles and buildings at the riot? Antifa’s adopted slogan of ‘ACAB’ — all cops are bastards.

    I recently visited Bristol. I noticed immediately that the leftist student politics of the University of Bristol and other colleges seemed to define the city’s wider political culture. That is, Bristol is a left-wing political monoculture, much like Portland.

  • Speaking of which: “The Dream of the ’90s Died in Portland“:

    Around the turn of the century, Portland was the new belle on the block, not despoiled like San Francisco or in bed with high tech like Seattle. Oregon was not known nationally for much more than Nike and pinot noir and former Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, but maybe (with the exception of Packwood) that was OK. Maybe the city could debut as a fresh canvas, eco-friendly and affordable, a place to achieve your achievable dreams.

    A lot of people were willing to take the chance, including my family. We moved from Los Angeles to Portland in 2004, and for a while, everything seemed on the up. The city in 2009 was, according to The Wall Street Journal, attracting “college-educated, single people between the ages of 25 and 39 at a higher rate than most other cities in the country.” New residents built the city they wanted to live in: farm-to-table restaurants and 40 million brewpubs and too many bike paths and aggressively progressive politics. When then–Illinois Sen. Barack Obama swung through on the campaign trail in 2008, more than 75,000 people lined Portland’s waterfront to see him.

    Portland had entered the national stage. Was it a little bit goofy, a little bit twee? Sure, but also energetic in the way a young city can be, with people cutting what seemed to be genuinely new paths. Would the dudes slinging Korean barbecue out of an old R.V. take it brick-and-mortar? Who knew? Who cared? The dynamism of what-could-be hung in the very air.

    Snip.

    Portland’s leadership seemed likewise unserious. Democratic Mayor Sam Adams had to fly home from Obama’s first inauguration to face charges of having had a sexual liaison with an underage legislative intern with the readymade name of Beau Breedlove, and in 2019 he was accused by his former executive assistant of sexual harassment. In 2015, Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned amid allegations of influence peddling by his fiancé.

    “It’s not a well-governed city. It’s not a well-governed state. Portland has basically had three failed mayors in a row,” says T.B., who previously held a high-ranking position in state government and who asked not to be identified by name. “Tom Potter was a former police chief who became mayor. He was totally hapless. Sam Adams was hyperkinetic, one thing after another and scandalous and so totally ineffective. And then Charlie Hales—I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but he also served one term; they all did. And now you have Ted [Wheeler], who I think has had three police chiefs since taking office. There’s certainly political instability at the municipal level, to say the least.”

    Out of instability, good things nevertheless grew—including Portlandia. The comedy series debuted in 2010 and served up the city at its most parodic, with real-life Mayor Sam Adams playing a bumbling mayoral assistant and restaurant diners demanding the life story of the chicken they were about to eat.

    The show riffed on slacktivism and five-hour yoga classes and men whose only “safe space” was Reddit. It was often genuinely funny. Who didn’t like to laugh at themselves?

    Snip.

    Young people had come here to achieve those achievable dreams. What was taking so long? Why did they have to live three, four people to a house, when just a few years ago rent was affordable? When my husband told baristas at the cafés he owned that, no, he couldn’t raise the starting wage to $12 an hour—this was in 2014—seeing as they also received tips and health insurance, the response was a general chilling, an “us against them” ethos that seemed to seep into the city. Activists became more vocal, denouncing businesses they saw as anti-LGBTQ. The city’s most active queer center was called out in 2015 for being too “white-centric.” And in 2016, students at Reed College formed RAR (Reedies Against Racism) and staged a protest against the 1978 Saturday Night Live skit “King Tut,” claiming Steve Martin’s portrayal of the Egyptian pharaoh was racist. “The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface,” a student told the student newspaper.

    The anger seemed free-floating; it was gathering momentum, was becoming an identity in itself.

    When Donald Trump won the presidency, Portlanders’ anger catalyzed into a manic animus that took the form of compulsive marching and letter writing and CNN watching and the schadenfreude-tinged hope that Mike Flynn/Stormy Daniels/the Russia scandal would sweep the president out of office any day now. In this way, Portland was not different from other heavily Democratic U.S. cities.

    Snip.

    But there was a problem: Trump was both far away and a master of eliding responsibility. Without the satisfaction of seeing their enemy downed, people grew antsy. Someone needed to take the blame for stagnant wages, and rising rents, and what some saw as the misallocation of social and emotional resources. And so, in a preview of the protests that would come to roil Portland following the death of George Floyd, those who considered themselves more finely calibrated toward injustice than the rest of us took matters into their own hands.

    “You probably remember there was massive rioting in the Pearl District the day after Donald Trump was elected. Millions of dollars of damage were inflicted,” says journalist Michael Totten. “How many people in the Pearl District voted for Donald Trump? It’s probably not even 1 percent. Who on earth are these people who declare war on a place where nobody voted for Donald Trump? That’s not how people in a democratic society are supposed to behave. You don’t go trash neighborhoods with the opposing political party in a healthy democracy, but they didn’t even do that. They declared war on the city as a whole.”

    If there was zeal in using one’s power thus, crude as it was, there was also a mandate: If good citizens needed to fight racism, why not start at home? The food world, which arguably more than any industry had put Portland on the cultural map, was the first target. Andy Ricker, whose restaurant Pok Pok was the only place the late Pulitzer Prize–winning food writer Jonathan Gold wanted me to take him when he visited Portland in the early 2010s, was called out for making Thai food while not being Thai. Two young women closed their burrito cart within days of opening it after they received multiple death threats for making homemade tortillas despite not being Latinas. The local press, which had once lauded such people and places, now published lists of business owners “wantonly cooking the food of other countries, arguably at the expense of people from those very cultures.”

    So much for ALL being welcome. People instead seemed to be asking: Are you with us or against us?

    Then details of the riots and assaults. If anything, author Nancy Rommelmann is far too even-handed with antifa’s crimes, and fails to note that their antics preceded Donald Trump’s election by quite a while.

  • Another week, another investigation of Baltimore Democratic politicians. “Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby and State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, subpoenaing her campaign and the couple’s business records.” You may remember Marilyn Mosby from such hits as “How Soros-Backed Leftwing DAs Refuse To Enforce The Law.” The family that grifts together… (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Displacement. “Blue checkmarks are mourning bad careers in a broken industry”:

    Displacement is a psychological defense mechanism in which a person redirects a negative emotion from its original source to a less threatening recipient. A classic example of the defense is displaced aggression. If a person is angry but cannot direct their anger toward the source without consequences, they might “take out” their anger on a person or thing that poses less of a risk.

    Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

    Things are bad, folks:

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “Secret Service Investigated Bizarre Gun Incident Involving Hunter Biden in 2018.”

    The U.S. Secret Service reportedly got involved in a bizarre incident back in 2018 involving Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, and Hallie Biden, who was married to the late Beau Biden.

    According to the report, on October 23, 2018, Hallie Biden, who became romantically involved with Hunter sometime after Beau’s death, found Hunter’s .38 revolver in his pickup truck, which was parked at her house, then took the gun to a nearby grocery store and threw it away in a trash can behind the building. Upon returning to retrieve the gun from the trash, the Bidens discovered it was no longer there, reports Politico.

    Delaware police investigated, concerned that the grocery store’s proximity to the local high school might mean the missing gun could be used in a crime. But then, Politico notes, a “curious thing happened.”

    Two sources, one with direct knowledge of the incident, say Secret Service agents allegedly approached Ron Palmieri, the owner of the gun store where Hunter bought the firearm, in order to retrieve the paperwork involving the sale.

    The owner of the store refused, suspecting the Secret Service officers intended to get rid of any evidence of Hunter’s ownership of the gun in the event the gun would be involved in a crime.

    Honestly, it’s probably not even the tenth weirdest and/or most corrupt thing Hunter Biden has been involved in… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, Democratic Party operative and coronavirus expert impersonator.
  • “GOP senators blast filibuster racism charge, ask why Dems used it to block Tim Scott’s police reform bill.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Someone is trying to torpedo the historic Abraham Peace Accords between Israel and various Arab states. Namely the Biden Administration:

    Media reports on March 18 revealed that the United Arab Emirates has suspended its plans for an Abraham Accords summit in Abu Dhabi with Israel, the United States, and other Arab signatories to the historic peace agreements brokered by the Donald Trump administration. Supposedly, the Emiratis are angry with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for using the UAE’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Zayed as a “prop in his election campaign.”

    In fact, as the theme of “election interference” should make clear (the UAE doesn’t have elections), and as has been substantiated by Israeli reporting, the source of the upset isn’t in Abu Dhabi but in Washington. In other words, the Biden administration is interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by strong-arming the Emiratis into publicly distancing themselves from Bibi.

    Next week Israel will hold its fourth election in a little more than two years, so in effect Netanyahu has been campaigning for more than 24 months—including in August when he and MBZ signed the agreement. Should the Emiratis have shunned the deal since Netanyahu, like any Israeli prime minister, would invariably present his accomplishment to voters? What about sending an ambassador to Israel, as it did at the beginning of March? What about investing $10 billion, as MBZ told Netanyahu he would? So how does a photo op with the prime minister glad-handing the crown prince of Abu Dhabi on his home turf cross the line?

    Plainly, the Obama-Biden team doesn’t care about interfering in Israeli elections or else Barack Obama’s State Department wouldn’t have funneled money to an NGO that campaigned against Netanyahu in 2015. Nor do Arab royals sitting atop petro-kingdoms have much theoretical or practical reason to worry about appearing to back one candidate against another. Smaller powers like the UAE make alliances not with factions but with states—and all parties in Israel support the Abraham Accords. Israel’s strategic class, its political, military, and intelligence echelons, as well as Israeli voters consider relations with Gulf Cooperation Council members a strategic boon. It is difficult to imagine any circumstances short of war under which an Israeli prime minister would think it politically wise to abandon a normalization agreement with any Arab state, never mind a major oil producer.

    No, “election interference” is a staple of American political discourse. More particularly it is the rhetoric through which the Democratic Party now pushes information operations, like the Russiagate conspiracy theory holding that Russia interfered with the 2016 vote to put Trump in the White House. News of the canceled visit by the Israeli prime minister was eagerly pushed in the press and on social media by Obama’s Israel point man Dan Shapiro through his proprietary Israel wing of the echo chamber.

    But there’s a bigger play here than interfering in Israeli politics by denying Bibi a preelection photo op with Israel’s peace partners in the Gulf. Their larger goal is to weaken or dismantle the Abraham Accords, which by assembling a treaty structure that binds Israel together with the Gulf states structurally interferes with the administration’s stated goal of realigning the United States with Iran—and therefore against Israel and the Gulf—by reentering Obama’s nuclear deal.

    But isn’t peace in the Middle East the collective dream of the Beltway policy establishment, left and right? Trump, love or hate him, got Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan as well as the UAE to normalize relations with Israel, the first peace agreements with the Jewish state since Jordan signed in 1994—and Biden said he wanted to build on the Abraham Accords. But as it turns out, “peace” has a very particular meaning for American policymakers. For the Middle East hands in the Biden administration, what matters most is completing the project many of these Obama alumni helped initiate while serving under Biden’s former boss—realignment with Iran.

    Trump didn’t just withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which undergirded Obama’s realignment strategy, he also designed a strategic architecture to counter Iranian influence—the Abraham Accords. To bind Israel and the Arab Gulf states, the Trump White House had to bracket the issue that previously kept these traditional American allies apart—the Palestinians. That alone earned Trump the wrath of Washington’s wise men.

  • Speaking of Israel, they had yet another inconclusive election, the fourth since 2019.
  • “Yale Psychiatrist Who Declared Trump Mentally Unfit Has Been Fired, and She’s Suing.” Funny how that happened when Bandy Lee broke the Goldwater Rule. I would break out an appropriately tiny violin, but I’m afraid my atomic force microscope is being recalibrated…
  • Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-Round Rock) wants to force every school system to hire social justice warrior “diversity, equity, and inclusion officers.”
  • Down at the state level, some black Democratic office holders oppose the radical transsexual agenda as well:

    South Carolina State Rep. Cezar McKnight (D) has represented his district for six years. It’s heavily Democratic, and two-thirds African American — two demographics that people don’t typically associate with social conservative causes. But the threat of transgenderism to our kids isn’t just a conservative concern, McKnight insists. “Black Democrats tend to be more conservative than white progressives,” McKnight told an AP reporter. They’re very much on board with the idea that children should not be pressed to permanently mutilate their bodies over gender confusion that is almost always temporary.

    That’s why McKnight felt comfortable introducing a bill that would ban minors from pursuing transgender treatments or transitioning until they’re old enough to vote. “I would not have ever put this bill forward if I didn’t think the people in my district wouldn’t be receptive, and they are. Pastors, young parents, older parents, they all tell me the same thing: if you want to do this, wait until you’re 18.” A member of the Legislative Black Caucus, he says he’s received “an outpouring of support from his constituents, “who have told him that, while they don’t necessarily oppose this type of procedure on its face, they think that it’s one that should only be made when a person has reached adulthood.”

  • Andrew “Granny Killer” Cuomo’s book on how he bravely spread the Wuhan coronavirus in New York nursing homes has reportedly garnered a seven figure advance from the Crown Publishing Group. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Target: Since you keep burning and looting our stores, I guess Minneapolis doesn’t really need a Target.
  • 55 people explain their woke breaking point.
  • I previously missed Benjamin Chen’s New York City hit and run rampage in a $700,000 Gemballa Mirage GT supercar:

    Open and shut case? Well, evidently not for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. They just dropped all charges against Chen. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Warner Brothers to abandon HBO Max experiment, and will stick to theatrical release for major films starting in 2022.
  • Spanish porn star charged with murder in photographer’s toad-venom death.” The sort of headline that makes a New York Post headline writer say “God, I love my work!” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Heh:

  • Jessica Walter, RIP. She was one of the all-time best crazy female stalkers in Play Misty for Me and was legendary as Mallory Archer:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Media Now Claims Shooter Was Factually Arab, But Morally White.”
    

  • I Cooked a Chicken by Slapping It.”
  • Feel-good dog story:

    (Hat tip: PolitiBunny.)

  • Old song, new video:

  • Paxton’s Supreme Court Gambit

    Wednesday, December 9th, 2020

    Multiple lawsuits over election fraud are preceding through the courts and appeal process. One of the most important is a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton yesterday against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin seeking to have their state legislatures appoint electors due to widespread election fraud in those states:

    The filing, first reported by Joel Pollak at Breitbart, is under a procedure where the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in suits between states. That means the lawsuit does not need to be filed in District Court, then work its way through the normal appeals process.

    The lawsuit is in the form of a Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint. (The Brief in support of the Motion appears starting at page 50 of the pdf. A more complete pdf. with all filings, including the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and a Temporary Restraining Order is available here starting at pg. 111)

    The relief sought is a delay of the December 14 statutory deadline for electors to vote, arguing that the Supreme Court has the power to delay that deadline since “[t]he only date that is mandated under the Constitution … is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX.” The purpose of the delay would be for state legislatures to consider appointing the electors given the unreliability in the way the elections were handled.

    This is in line with some commenters here suggesting that January 20 is the only real Constitutional deadline.

    I’m not sufficiently familiar with this procedure to opine right now on whether it is proper procedurally…

    You and me both!

    …but if it works it puts the election squarely in the hands of the Supreme Court. There is no guarantee that if the issue were put to the legislators in these states that they would select Trump electors in the face of certified vote counts showing Biden the winner.

    More on the lawsuit:

    The suit alleges a variety of different constitutional violations in each state, all relating to the loosening of mail-ballot processing rules. Some of the changes were implemented by state and local election officials using the Chinese coronavirus as a pretext; others pre-date the presidential election and COVID.

    Texas argues the impact of the rules’ changes was the same in each of these battleground states, saying election officials “flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”

    The requested remedy is the same, as well: toss out all mail-ballot votes and the presidential election results for all four states, which currently show Joe Biden receiving more votes than President Donald Trump.

    To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed.

    “Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together,” Paxton said in a press statement. “Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections.”

    “Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election,” he added. “We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”

    My fear is that the very novelty of this lawsuit will work against it. I’m not sure any state has ever filed to alter election results from other states, or that the Supreme Court would grant standing in the lawsuit. But by making it a state suing another state, it makes it a clear Supreme Court case under Article III of the Constitution.

    Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is also supporting the lawsuit:

    As is Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

    Indeed, seven states have joined the lawsuit: Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, and South Dakota. It’s quite possible that more have joined by the time you read this.

    With the lawsuit to invalidate Pennsylvania’s certification thrown out, the Texas lawsuit may be the best chance to get the Supreme Court to look at the massive election fraud that occurred in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

    Edited to Add: Missouri signs onto the lawsuit.

    Special Election Day LinkSwarm

    Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to a special Election Day LinkSwarm!

  • Late breaking polls have Trump up in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democrats are freaking out about Pennsylvania.
  • Which is why Democrats may try to steal the state through vote fraud.
  • Biden-Harris goes full Godwin.
  • People are evidently worried that “mostly peaceful protestors” will burn parts of the country down.
  • Trump is doing better with blacks and Hispanics than four years ago:

    In 2016, Donald Trump got a lower share of the white vote than the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and white turnout was stagnant as compared to 2012. Trump was able to win nonetheless because he got a higher share of Black and Hispanic voters than his predecessor — up roughly 3 percentage points with African Americans and 2 percentage points with Hispanics — helping tilt pivotal races in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania toward Trump.

    That is, it was minorities, not whites, who proved more decisive for Trump’s victory.

    Going into Election Day in 2020, Trump seems poised to do even better with minority voters. His gains in the polling have been highly consistent and broad-based among Blacks and Hispanics — with male voters and female voters, the young and the old, educated and uneducated. Overall, Trump is polling about 10 percentage points higher with African Americans than he did in 2016, and 14 percentage points higher with Hispanics.

    It may be that many minority voters simply do not view some of his controversial comments and policies as racist. Too often, scholars try to test whether something is racist by looking exclusively at whether the rhetoric or proposals they disagree with resonate with whites. They frequently don’t even bother to test whether they might appeal to minorities, as well.

    Yet when they do, the results tend to be surprising. For instance, one recent study presented white, Black and Hispanic voters with messages the researchers considered to be racial “dog whistles,” or coded language that signals commitment to white supremacy. It turned out that the messages resonated just as strongly with Blacks as they did with whites. Hispanics responded even more warmly to the rhetoric about crime and immigration than other racial groups.

  • It seems that everyone in the country except polling companies expect a big Trump victory today:

  • In South Carolina, Jaime Harrison is this year’s Beto O’Rourke. “Harrison has raised, and spent, more than any other Senate candidate in U.S. history — ‘as of Oct. 14, Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison had raised more than $108 million and spent more than $105 million in his quest to unseat U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’ with another $13 million in outside spending hitting Graham.” And he’s still behind Graham in the polls.
  • Biden wants to disarm working class gun owners.
  • “Hillary Clinton, who thinks the Electoral College should be eliminated, will be an Electoral College elector for this election.”
  • Now go vote, if you haven’t already!

  • Williamson County Voting Locations.
  • Travis County Voting Locations.
  • Also, I intend to be live-blogging/live-tweeting election returns starting about 7 PM tonight. Tune in for what promises to be a host of ridiculous typos.

    LinkSwarm for October 9, 2020

    Friday, October 9th, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s topics include Texas, voting fraud, and Texas voting fraud.

  • Potentially the biggest story of the week is President Donald Trump authorizing the release of all documents relating to the Russian Collusion Hoax and Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in unredacted form. We were already getting a steady trickle of those declassified. Let’s see if this turns it into a flood.
  • Borepatch thinks the election is over. “The only thing that the Democrats had going for them was the lockdown. The breathless hyping of the ‘rona was intended to fan the flames of fear which would justify further lockdown and economic devastation. They then blamed Trump for all this, while the media shamelessly covered for them. That’s all gone now.”
  • How dare Trump recover?

    A keening wail of lamentation rings out across the land at Mr. Trump’s possible, dastardly recovery. How dare he! — to paraphrase Saint Greta Thunberg. 209,000 other Americans died, and not him! What vile and unholy devices got him out of a sure death sentence? No doubt Democratic Party astrologasters and consulting augurers will be searching for clues among the orbiting planets and the spilled organs of sacrificed chickens in the days to come. Perhaps Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) can snare a few of the president’s attending physicians into his House Intel Committee and rev up another impeachment for going against doctors’ orders. Wouldn’t that be a delectable counter to the looming confirmation process for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement next door in the Senate this month?

  • “Media Criticizes Trump For Downplaying Virus Threat By Not Dying.” “Every hour that he lives is another hour that the severity of this virus is undermined!”
  • “Party That Wants To Run Your Healthcare Roots For Political Opponent To Die.”
  • Anti-Trumpers and their festival of hatred:

    Some of the worst things about it is the element of transformation of the formerly mild-mannered and kindly into founts of seething malevolence.

    It’s deeply unsettling to see the rage come over a person, as I recently did when looking into the eyes of a previously genial acquaintance who was shrieking with rage at me, her eyes narrowed with what looked like hatred.

    People don’t like what threatens them, especially if they have no immediate factual answer to some of the evidence presented to them. What’s left to them is to explode—which this person did, ultimately getting into her car and peeling off with tires screeching. I would guess, although I don’t know, and I’m certainly not about to ask, that she and plenty of other people I know might be rejoicing, openly or secretly, in Trump’s diagnosis.

    Are they “possessed?” Is this “demonic?” I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I tend to think in psychological terms because these people are, for the most part, not inherently evil. They are filled with self-righteousness, and they have been whipped up into a fever pitch by an MSM and Democratic Party bent on doing so for political reasons. This is no accident.

  • This week’s #BlackLifeMatters riots come to you from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Kurt Schlichter on dangerous talk from stupid people:

    Wishing that your opponent dies of a disease is pretty bad, but some go beyond the passive voice when hoping for our deaths. They seek to do it. Exhibit A is tech overlord Dick Costolo, a former Twitter CEO apparently, who tweeted on September 30th, “Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll happily provide video commentary.” So Dick, which by coincidence also happens to also be your name, you want to play horsey, huh?

    I guess casually cheering the murder of political opponents gets you some guffaws from your pals in Palo Alto cafes. But those of us who have ventured outside of the carefully constructed (and costly, in terms of sweat and blood) safe space that is the United States, and who get that the natural state of man is not driving Teslas and sipping bespoke Napa Chardonnay in prosperous, secure enclaves with one’s liberal cronies, know better. People who cheerlead political murder tend to be people who will support political murder given the chance to make it happen.

    One challenge for the dilettantes of death is to find the people who would actually commit political murder for them, but money and institutional inertia make that possible. As we have seen, woke zillionaires can fund their own lil’ revolutionaries. They are the ones behind Antifa, and if Donald Trump is reelected, we will likely see the DoJ (once Trump rids himself of the worse than useless FBI Director Christopher Wray, who never met self-serving establishment narrative he didn’t eagerly hump like a horny dog rubbing on the nearest leg) forced by Bill Barr to concede that this is an Astroturfed RICO conspiracy paid for by rich leftists. Yet, Antifa is not a combat organization (unless you are one person surrounded by a dozen of these brownshirts) but an information operation asset.

    But the Dicks of the elite are spoiled and soft and while this all seems like fun and games to them, with somebody else doing the murdering, they don’t realize that history holds that the status quo doesn’t remain in effect for everyone else when one group decides to alter it to its advantage. That is the plan – the establishment, outraged at the people who held them accountable for their legacy of failure, incompetence, and corruption by electing Donald Trump and a Republican Senate, intend to alter the status quo to ensure that this outrage never happens again. They intend to add states to increase their leverage. They intend to change voting laws to allow cheating and impose “campaign finance laws” that will be enforced against your candidates but not against establishment candidates to ensure there are no more troublesome populist alternatives. They intend, using tech companies and big corporations, to impose thought control and punish dissenters by cutting them off from access to the routine modes of living in this society – social media, banking, transportation, education. They intend to pass laws to disarm you so the ultimate failsafe of freedom is negated. And they intend to pack the Supreme Court to ensure they can’t be stopped by that pesky Constitution.

    But they will expect you to remain static and to respect and obey as if nothing has changed. You must be loyal to the institutions that betrayed you because…well, that’s unclear. Perhaps they hope you’ll just keep going along as if nothing is different out of habit, or from fear of losing what little they have left to you.

    Yet, the notion that Americans will wake up one morning, see that they are no longer free, shrug, obediently line up to turn in their Remingtons and Mossbergs and reconcile themselves to serfdom is not in the cards.

    Read the whole thing.

  • “Medical experts: Lockdowns do more harm than good.” You don’t say.
  • More studies find face masks ineffective against the Wuhan coronavirus than found them effective. I suspect that N95 masks might well be effective, but not this ‘wear any damn thing” Virus Theater we’re stuck in.
  • Arizona’s Republican governor Doug Ducey puts the kibosh on last-minute Democratic attempts to force through online voting.
  • SCOTUS to DC District Court: No, you can’t rewrite South Carolina voting laws a month before the election just to give Democrats a better chance to win. Not yours.
  • Carrollton mayoral candidate arrested on 109 counts of mail ballot braud. For the Texas geography challenged, Carrollton is part of the Greater Dallas Metroplex.

    Authorities arrested a North Texas candidate on dozens of felony voter fraud charges after catching him red-handed with a box of mail-in ballots belonging to local voters.

    Carrollton mayoral candidate Zul Mirza Mohamed was charged Wednesday with 109 felonies for fraudulently requesting and obtaining mail-in ballots he alleged were for nursing home residents.

    According to a press release from Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree, his office was tipped off to the possible mail-ballot harvesting scheme on September 23 by the Denton County Elections Office.

    Multiple mail ballots had been requested on behalf of Carrollton residents to be sent to a post office box in Lewisville, which purportedly belonged to a nursing home facility. Investigators contacted the voters and found they had not made the ballot requests.

    Investigators also learned the post office box was obtained using a fake Texas driver’s license and fake student ID from the University of North Texas, and they began surveilling the post office.

    On October 7, investigators saw the suspect pick up a box of requested mail-in ballots and take them back to his residence in Carrollton. Officers obtained a search warrant for Mohamed’s home and inside found the fake driver’s license and box of ballots—several of which had been opened.

  • What it’s like to be a cop in the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter era:

    I’m a police officer in a major American city. Many of you reading this have seen a movie or TV show set in this city. Some of you have vacationed here. We have a big problem with poverty, unemployment, people scamming the welfare system, drugs, and violent crime.

    Honestly, though, who I am and where I work isn’t important—what I stand for is. I show up every day I’m scheduled to work, on time, and I work. I don’t hang out at the station, I handle calls for service and I constantly back up other officers. I quickly progressed to different specialized units and, over time, even began to help out at the academy and became a Field Training Officer.

    But after a couple of high-profile incidents where suspects wound up dead, we were essentially told to stop pursuing the bad guys: Too much liability for the city. So, if a violent felon who shot someone last week is spotted and you know it’s him? Depending on the ranking officer working, you’re most likely not going to be allowed to go get him.

    Snip.

    Call someone out on being a worthless lazy officer? Is that worthless lazy officer a lieutenant’s mistress?! You just earned yourself a transfer to night watch in some outpost no one wants to work.

    In every major city there’s a punishment assignment. Everyone who’s ever been a city cop knows this to be true.

    After a while, that same lazy officer who’s been sitting in that same lieutenant’s lap, or who’s never really done anything noteworthy, except maybe they went to the right school or are in the right clique, they now have time on the job and they take the sergeants test. They pass and, if your department doesn’t go straight down the list, they’re now a supervisor! Newer officers have no idea they’re working for someone who’s telling them someone else’s war stories or making themselves seem more important than they really were in the situation.

    Roll call training is all about administrative work and checking boxes off for monthly audits. We barely talk about that stolen silver SUV that is absolutely raping us nightly with auto burglaries. Oh, and since our policies are out there for anyone to read (including the bad guys) in the “interest of transparency,” they know we can’t pursue them for a property crime once they blow the red light at the intersection after we light them up and they flee. Never mind the fact that that stolen SUV is occupied by a wanted felon for armed robber in possession of a stolen AK-47. It’s just a property crime, right? No big deal. If they t-bone a family of four and kill someone, the fleeing felon isn’t at fault. I am.

    Snip.

    You have mayors bowing to the political pressure from a small, very vocal, minority that wants to defund (read: abolish, in many cases) the police.

    Some mayors have made it known to their department brass they’d rather endure the optics of Revolutionary Communists (read: ANTIFA/BLM) rioting, looting, and burning their cities down, than have their police officers be seen wading into the fray with riot batons in hand.

    You realize that if cities abolish police departments, gated communities are going to hire private police forces, made up of nearly all ex-police from the agency that just disbanded (see Minneapolis when that happens) and ex-military guys. The city won’t have oversight and their rules and regulations are going to be way more relaxed. Less area to patrol and a large pay raise? Less crime? Sign me up!

    Major media outlets constantly fan the flames of civil unrest nationwide. In a race to be first with many stories, they finish last in credibility. The initial tragedy de jour is front-page news, leading all newscasts in prime time. Meanwhile, the retraction or exoneration of the officer is buried. No apologies from the likes of Shaun King, MSNBC, CNN, or Al Sharpton. They’ve all already moved on to the next rage-bait.

    Who gives a f— if some honest hard-working cop had his or her life ruined and is in financial shambles because they got a no-win call dropped in their lap, right? All cops are bastards, anyway. Black Lives only seem to matter when cops are involved in the death, justified or not, of a black person.

    Every single week, in many major cities all across this country, murders within the black community occur — oftentimes with stolen firearms. I’ve lost count of the bodies (mostly black, never in my case shot by police) I’ve stood over. Sometimes at night when I’m trying to fall asleep I hear the blood-curdling screams of family members (mostly mothers) who rush to the scene and are held back at the police tape.

    So, in a knee-jerk reaction to a high-profile incident, in an effort to placate a mob, there is talk of not only defunding the police but abolishing them. Do you know what that leads to nationwide? Cops like me are not being proactive. At all. Because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

    Read he whole thing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • New York Times editorial writer is shocked, shocked to find left wing anarchists burning down America. (Hat tip: Vikingpundit.)
  • Real antifa group or an amazing parody of same? The answer may shock you!
  • Hamas: Hell yes, we’re getting missiles from Iran.
  • Seven of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s own aides have accused him of “improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses” in relation to Austin investor Nate Paul.
  • Former Paxton assistant and current United State congressman Chip Roy called on Paxton to resign, which is not a good sign.
  • Lockdowns are the new global warming.
  • Boeing moving all 787 production from Washington State to South Carolina. How’s that hard left Democratic governance working out for you?
  • Speaking of Democratic governance, Baltimore’s next mayor is complaining about Donald Trump when he should be complaining about his fellow Democrats:

    Baltimore is no more “unjust” now than it was before its murder rate soared half a decade ago. What has changed is that Baltimore is less policed than it was back then. And that’s thanks to the policies and pronouncement of its pathetic Democrat mayors and other leading pols.

    It seems clear that Brandon Scott will continue in their tradition. Thus, it seems equally clear that Baltimore will remain exhibit A when informed people talk about the breakdown in law and order under the watch (if you can call it that) of Democratic mayors.

  • Today’s Democratic politician receiving a felony indictment comes to you from Rochester, New York, where Democratic Mayor Lovey Warren was indicted on felony campaign finance fraud charges. “At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Democrat Party official arrested for allegedly pulling knife on ‘Women for Trump.'” “The communications director for the Democrat Party of Washington County, Oregon [Clayton John Callahan], was arrested after allegedly pulling a knife on female Trump supporters at an outdoor event hosted by the Oregon Women for Trump.”
  • “Texas Partisan Index: Rating Senate Districts From Most Republican to Most Democratic.”
  • European Union slaps tariffs on Chinese, Indonesian and Taiwanese steel for price dumping.
  • ESPN got woke, and now it’s going broke, or at least laying off between 300 and 700 employees. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Fake investor con artist hauls in a cool $30 million.
  • All the media Trump-bashing just makes people like President Trump more.
  • Truth:

  • Interesting Twitter thread on how Google, Facebook and Amazon all straight-up lied to the Australian government about anticompetitive practices.

    Worth reading the whole thing.

  • The Red Headed Libertarian notes that the MSM seems to intentionally conflate anarchists with legal militias, and offers a brief history lesson:

  • OK, I laughed:

  • Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 2, 2020

    Monday, March 2nd, 2020

    Biden’s back, Bernie’s coronation is postponed, Buttigieg and Steyer are Out, Bloomberg sucks up to China, Super Tuesday looms, and Biden seeks help from the Holy Roman Empire. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Delegates
    Right now the delegate count stands at:

    1. Bernie Sanders 58
    2. Joe Biden 50
    3. Pete Buttigieg 26
    4. Elizabeth Warren 8
    5. Amy Klobuchar 7

    Polls

    Omitting anything older than Sunday:

  • Emerson College (Texas): Sanders 31, Biden 26, Bloomberg 16, Warren 14, Buttigieg 5, Klobuchar 4, Gabbard 3, Steyer 2.
  • Emerson College (California): Sanders 38, Biden 21, Warren 16, Bloomberg 11, Buttigieg 7, Klobuchar 5, Steyer 2, Gabbard 1.
  • USA Today (California): Sanders 35, Bloomberg 16, Biden 14, Warren 12, Buttigieg 8, Klobuchar 5, Steyer 3, Gabbard 3.
  • CBS (Texas): Sanders 30, Biden 26, Warren 17, Bloomberg 13, Klobuchar 6, Buttigieg 6, Steyer 1, Gabbard 0.
  • Dallas Morning News (Texas): Sanders 29, Bloomberg 21, Biden 19, Warren 10, Buttigieg 8, Klobuchar 4, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1.
  • East Carolina University (North Carolina): Biden 29, Sanders 25, Bloomberg 14, Warren 11, Klobuchar 5, Buttigieg 4, Gabbard 1. Evidently both the Carolinas love them some Biden…
  • Boston Globe (Massachusetts): Sanders 24.2, Warren 22.2, Bloomberg 13, Buttigieg 12.4, Biden 11, Klobuchar 5, Steyer 2.4, Gabbard .8.
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets. Biden back above 30% this morning.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Sanders is cracking the Democratic Party the way Trump cracked the Republican Party in 2016:

    But from a broader perspective, the emergence of Sanders as the Democratic frontrunner mirrors the rise of Trump and the crackup of the Republican Party in 2016, and for many of the same reasons. In both cases, a significant swath of each party’s voter base rejected the party establishment after years of being pandered to or ignored altogether.

    Populism cuts both ways, right and left, and the impending takeover of the Democratic Party by a left-wing populist should have been anticipated by party leaders four years ago—and maybe it would have been, if they hadn’t been busy gloating over the GOP’s apparent misfortune of being taken over by Trump.

    But Trump’s triumph was a necessary corrective to a party that had lost its way. When Trump cinched the nomination in 2016, it was the end of the Republican Party as we knew it. Gone was the mild-mannered GOP of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner. Gone were the empty platitudes, repeated ad nauseum for decades, about comprehensive immigration reform and defunding Planned Parenthood. Gone was the slavish devotion to global free trade deals regardless of the toll it took on American workers. Gone, too, was the subtle deference toward the liberal media that belied the Republican establishment’s ambivalence about the issues rank-and-file Republicans really cared about.

    Trump swept all of that away. Before he went to war with Democrats and the media, his candidacy was an all-out assault on the Republican establishment, which had drifted so far from its base that GOP leaders didn’t take him seriously until it was too late. They couldn’t see what he saw: Republican voters—and not a few independents and moderate Democrats—were tired of being ignored by their leaders, whom they had grown to despise. Trump was able to topple the edifice of the GOP because he saw it was rotten underneath.

    Now, Sanders is poised to do the same to the Democratic Party. The media is aware of this, but only vaguely, tending to frame Sanders’s rise as a contest between a radically leftist base and a more moderate Democratic electorate at large. That’s one reason the press has so quickly glommed on to the candidacy of Bloomberg, treating him as a viable contender for the nomination and a real rival to Sanders.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • It’s your weekly “Democrats are freaking over having Sanders at the top of the ticket” piece:

    “If [Sanders] is the nominee, we lose,” said one Democrat.

    That lawmaker indicated that a Sanders primary win would cost Democrats their state in the fall. The lawmaker suggested that many voters could leave the top of the ticket blank. Two other vulnerable Democrats indicated that a Sanders nomination would almost certainly cede their states to President Trump, to say nothing of the impact on races down the ballot for Democratic House and Senate candidates. One Democrat said they would try to hyper-focus on local issues to serve as a counterbalance. But the lawmaker conceded it’s hard to compete with the Sanders narrative and the reverberations of impeachment.

  • A counterpoint from Andrew Malcolm: Beware of wishing for Bernie to be the nominee:

    Here’s what’s dangerous about enjoying Bernie’s early success and Dems’ early troubles: Most people say he can’t win and he’ll hand four more years to the other party. Many of those people include the alleged elites of his own party.

    Sanders has a cadre of hardcore nobodies who feel alienated from both parties, especially the establishment types who inhabit the once uninhabitable swamp that Maryland so generously donated to the new nation back in 1790.

    Those cadres, many of them young, ignorant and inspired, get excited at the mere mention of the name of the man who’s lived off taxpayers virtually his entire career and still managed to acquire three homes.

    He’s grumpy, often angry but he is what he is, an authentic, angry grump. His disciples pack the rallies to the rafters or the farthest street corner, cheer everything he says, especially the angry stuff.

    The candidate talks about implementing a most ambitious program of reforms that no one thinks can get through Congress. Many fellow party officeholders are already running for fear he’ll drag them down to defeat.

    Any of this sound familiar? It’s a parallel phenomenon to the Trump Train of 2015-16. A rich guy from Queens (Bernie is a Brooklyn native) who instinctively tapped into the anger and frustrations of millions of overlooked Americans he has nothing in common with and harnessed that power to a surprise upset ticket into the White House.

    The parallel is, of course, imperfect. Sanders is older, Jewish, no friend of Israel. He doesn’t know from tax cuts. There’s hardly anyone safe from the many trillions in new taxes the lifelong politician promises.

    There’s a very long way to go in this process. But winning has a way of adorning anyone with campaign credibility and more admirers. You can smell it already.

  • Joe Scarborough says “Hey, you broads should totally drop out so we can beat Bernie.”
  • Gmail seems to block an awful lot of mail from Presidential mailing lists. “We signed up to receive emails from Donaldjtrump.com but didn’t receive any.” 🤔
  • Heh:

  • Charlie Kirk has some thoughts:

  • “Russians Declare Election Too Chaotic For Them To Successfully Interfere.” “‘In our wildest ambitions, we never would have tried to get a straight out Communist to win the nomination in a major U.S. party,’ Putin said. ‘I don’t know how we’re supposed to interfere and add to that.’ Putin hung his head sadly. ‘It’s like people don’t even need a Russia anymore.'”
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 examines the Biden South Carolina win, offering hypotheses ranging from “Dead Cat Bounce” to he’s the only one standing between Bernie and the nomination. His South Carolina win scrambles the race:

    Joe Biden thumped all the competition in South Carolina. The scale of his victory there scrambles the Democratic race. And Biden’s victory takes more steam out of the candidacies of Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. But it is not easy to imagine Biden having the stamina to take on Sanders in a long race.

    The result should worry Democrats who wanted unity. There had been some evidence in the polls that black voters were warming up to Sanders. They did not do so in sufficient numbers in South Carolina to begin making Sanders into a consensus candidate.

    Can Biden sustain the momentum? It’s hard to imagine that he can. This is a Saturday-night victory just days before Super Tuesday. Biden cannot mount much new campaign organization in the upcoming states or process any surge of donations into a surge of advertising. If Sanders wins the preponderance of delegates available next Tuesday, then Biden will just be another non-Sanders candidate, like Pete Buttigieg, who was given a strong look by a particular subset of voters within the Democratic Party. Meanwhile Sanders continues to put points on the board.

    Biden’s biggest difficulty is the media. Biden is now depending on an avalanche of earned media gushing about his “comeback” in the race in South Carolina. But, unlike John McCain in 2008, Biden is a candidate uniquely disliked and distrusted by the liberal media apparatus that would provide him such a narrative. They are very likely not to give it to him.

    Although much has been made about the continuing importance of black voters and black turnout to Democratic general-election victories, I expect to see stories in the next 48 hours about the unique nature of South Carolina’s Democratic electorate. There may be an undercurrent of internal Democratic class warfare in these accounts, emphasizing that South Carolina’s Democrats are much less educated, less Latino, and less progressive than the party as a whole. Sandersistas will emphasize that Sanders polls better with blacks in the North.

    Biden’s victory raises serious questions about the role that liberal-leaning media play in the Democratic process. Black voters overwhelmingly rejected the liberal-media-approved alternatives to Bernie — Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. That media class has been whispering about Biden’s unfitness for office.

    Hey, give some credit to those of us in the Vast right Wing Conspiracy: We’ve been shouting about Biden’s unfitness for office! He works with dead people. Hey, Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping, they’re both Chinese leaders with Xs in their name. More worrying is the fact that there were two different Chinese leaders between the two that Biden’s mind skipped right over. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) What?

    What words ordinary people associate with Hunter Biden: corruption, Ukraine, sleaze, cocaine, strippers. What word New York Times associates with Hunter Biden: “art”:

    “Biden Wishes Some Country, Any Country, Would Try To Influence Election For Him.” “Seriously, anyone! Prussia! Czechoslovakia! The Holy Roman Empire! They’re still around, right?”

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He said that bankers are his “peeps” and that the left is ready to set up guillotines.

    “Anytime we’ve had this before, society blows up and they do set up the guillotines and the guillotines don’t have to be chop your head off. They could be confiscatory taxes, they could be seizing the endowments of uh, educational institutions and um, philanthropic organizations, all of which those proposals are out there. You know, you’re going to have to do something about this income inequality and a lot of it comes from zero interest rates.”

    Moneybags isn’t necessarily wrong. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Bloomberg’s China Network:

    The business of the New York City billionaire (yes, another one) gets significant revenue from its financial and data services in China. He is deeply enmeshed with that country’s business and government networks, and it shows.

    Snip.

    If Bloomberg wins, he would arguably be the most pro-China president since an avalanche of such presidents following Richard Nixon, who fatefully opened the American economy to the country in 1972….loomberg generally ignores China’s growing military and diplomatic power, instead focusing his claims on how benefit can be derived from China’s growing economy. In a 2008 Newsweek article, he wrote that a “growing Chinese economy is good for America”. He continued, “we have a stake in working together to solve common problems, rather than trying to browbeat or intimidate the other into action.”

    Here he broadcasts China’s “win-win” rhetoric against “zero-sum” thinking. But in his many comments on China, Bloomberg does not adequately address the zero-sum thinking of China’s own leaders who argue that the Chinese autocratic system is superior to liberal democracy. Neither does he adequately address how China’s growing economy fuels its global military power projection, or the ongoing praxis of Maoist ideology that lauds the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as growing from the barrel of a gun.

    (Caveat: Really not wild about how this website’s bandwidth-and-gimmick heavy idea of webdesign.) (Hat tip: Instapundit.) “Bloomberg’s $400 million bet looks increasingly likely to flop as he lags in Super Tuesday states.” But he’s not out of it yet:

    The sub-tweeters and thumb-twitchers are writing Michael Bloomberg’s political obituary after his admittedly less than thrilling turn in Las Vegas, but the pundits were always coming not to praise him, but to bury him. Who does this rich amateur think he is? What year does this out-of-touch oligarch think we’re in, 2016?

    The elites of the Democratic party and their baggage train in the media have, like an earlier elite in search of a restoration, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They remember only the humiliation of Trump’s victory in 2016. They refuse to consider the reasons for their repudiation by the voters, or the arrogance that led Hillary Clinton and her team to assume that the Blue Wall was theirs by hereditary right. And they refuse to accept another lesson of 2016: it’s still possible to fix a party conference, but the party no longer controls the primaries and the debates.

    Remember how Democrats and Republicans alike mocked Donald Trump for even entering the Republican nomination race? Remember how the pontificators decreed that Trump’s lack of political experience disbarred him from the high office of crashing the biggest economy in the world, as the professional politicians managed to do in 2007 and 2008?

    Snip.

    The truth is, Bloomberg is in the Democratic nomination race for as long as he wants to be. The longer he stays in the race, the greater the amount of money he’ll spread around. The more he spends, the more the party managers and the senators and the governors and, though they’re far too high-minded to admit it, the media will come to see his candidacy as a fact that’s going to go the distance, and a reality to which the smart money should accommodate itself in case Bloomberg’s candidacy becomes a payday.

    Bloomberg understands the lessons of 2016 because, like Donald Trump, he understood them long before and was prepared to act accordingly. Trump and Bloomberg know what the rest of the Democratic field know but, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, lack the integrity to say. The politicians of America are for sale to their highest donor.

    Bloomberg also shares with Trump a businessman’s awareness of the price of morals and the cost of moralizing. Elizabeth Warren affected outrage about Bloomberg’s alleged jokes about ‘horse-faced lesbians’ and transvestites, but Trump has already proven that these attitudes, fatal though they may be in the politically correct kingdom of the campus, are an inverse form of recommendation: the kind of candidate who refuses to bow to the puritans might also be the kind of president who could refuse the bribes of the donors.

    Heeeeeere’s Bloomy!

  • Update: South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: Dropped out. Twitter. Facebook. Dropped out last night, so no in-depth analysis from me this week. 538 thinks this actually hurts Sanders:

    At first glance, this might seem counterintuitive. How does a candidate dropping out increase the likelihood of no majority? Shouldn’t it clear the field up and make it easier to achieve a majority?

    The key is in how the Democrats’ delegate math works. The rules require candidates to receive at least 15 percent of the vote, typically, to win delegates statewide or at the district-level.

    Buttigieg was projected to get under 15 percent in the vast majority of states and districts on Super Tuesday. Thus, his votes were essentially wasted. Redistributing his votes to other candidates will help them to meet the 15 percent threshold, however. In particular, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg were both close to the 15 percent line in many states or districts. So even an extra percentage point or two would help them get over that line in more places. For instance, both Bloomberg and Warren were projected to finish with an average of 14 percent of the vote in California before Buttigieg’s dropout. Now, they’re forecasted for 16 percent instead.

    Biden was also projected to finish under 15 percent in some states and districts — so Buttigieg’s dropout helps him out also in a few places. Biden went from a projected 14 percent of the vote to 16 percent in Minnesota, for example.

    Conversely, Sanders was already projected to get 15 percent almost everywhere. So although he will pick up a few Buttigieg voters, they don’t necessarily translate to more delegates.

    Beyond mere imitation:

    “Scandal: Buttigieg Forced To Drop Out After Being Outed As A White Male.”

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? Everybody who wanted a Hillary Clinton podcast, raise your hand. (pause) OK, that’s Ben Rhodes, Huma Abedin, and Bill Clinton (gets her out of the house). Also: “We Need to Talk About Hillary Clinton’s Disturbing Harvey Weinstein Ties.”
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. While others are campaiging, she’s surfing. At this point I don’t think it makes any measurable difference…
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She might not even win her home state on Super Tuesday, but she’ll probably pick up delegates there. Has a speech interrupted by #BlackLivesMatter, so evidently George Soros and company are still paying those idiots. Editorial on the case for Klobuchar, which is all narrowcasting on mental health and addiction.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. A look at Bernie’s record:

    Sanders gained steady employment for the first time when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., by ten votes in 1981, at the head of a coalition of leftist civic-action groups against a five-term Democrat who was tacitly endorsed by the Republicans as well. Sanders accused him of being a patronage-tainted stooge of local developers. As mayor, Sanders balanced the municipal budget, attracted a minor-league baseball team (it was called the Vermont Reds not because of Sanders, but because it was a farm team of the Cincinnati Reds). He was a pioneer in community-trust housing, sued to reduce local cable-television rates, and championed an imaginative multi-use redevelopment plan for the city’s Lake Champlain waterfront; his slogan was “Burlington is not for sale.” He worked well with all groups (except some developers) and showed no signs of the authoritarianism of the doctrinaire Left, though he admired some of their most odious exemplars, such as Fidel Castro, whom he unsuccessfully tried to visit. He was reelected three times as a declared socialist, with his vote inching up above 55 percent in 1987, and he had another try at the governor’s chair in 1986, but got only 14 percent of the vote. By this time Sanders was already focused on national government and had invited leftist professor and eminent linguist Noam Chomsky to give a speech in 1985 denouncing American foreign policy. He retired as mayor in 1989 and became a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 1989 and at Hamilton College in 1991.

    In 1988, Sanders ran again as an independent for statewide office, as congressman at large for Vermont, and gained 38 percent of the vote, double the vote for the Democratic candidate, and within three points of the winner, Republican Peter Smith. Two years later, he ran again as an independent, but without a Democrat in the race, and this time he entered Congress, aged 50, as a Democratic-left independent fusion candidate. He served eight consecutive terms as a congressman and then in 2006 won the first of three terms (so far) as U.S. senator. It was unjust for Michael Bloomberg to suggest that Sanders was a Communist, as he does believe in free elections. He has stuck to his platform and doggedly fought out his career at the polls through 20 elections between 1972 and 2018, 16 of them statewide, albeit in a small state. It is correct, but unsurprising given that he sat as a socialist in the Senate, to say that he has introduced 364 bills as a senator, of which only three have passed, and two of them were to name post offices.

    Bernie Sanders believes in mobilizing the less advantaged 50.1 percent of the voters in America, as in Vermont and in Burlington, by promising them a sufficient share of the wealth and status of the upper 49.9 percent of society, while assuaging any reservations about confiscating the wealth and income of others by denouncing the system and representing such redistribution as fairness. He wants an environmental revolution, no doubt to reduce pollution as a side benefit, but more importantly as a planet-saving cover for his assault on capitalism and his acquisition of the votes of the relatively disadvantaged. He is making a direct appeal to a majority of Americans by promising them economic benefits wrenched from the hands of the greedy 49.9 percent, or benignly showered upon them by a kindly state, as if the state got its money from anyone but its constituents.

    Sanders keeps saying he’ll attract new voters. New York Times: Yeah, not so much. Here are 55 facts about Bernie Sanders. Nothing says “reasonable centrist” like hanging a Soviet flag in your office. Also: “Throughout his adult life he has denigrated Democrats, calling the party ‘ideologically bankrupt.'” Even Sweden’s Democratic Socialists find Bernie Sanders too far left. More media double standards:

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Man of the people:

    WaPo: “Wow, Bernie sure loves him some communist dictators. Who knew?” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) “Hey there, Mr. SuperDelegate! How do you feel about Bernie as the nominee?” “Aw, HELLS NO!” Bernie bros show up in the middle of the night with bullhorns outside the homes of DNC members Wow, that’s sure to bring them over to your side! There’s at least one outlet that’s all the way in the tank for Bernie: The Onion. Thou Shalt Not Make Funny Of Thy Holy Socialist.

  • Update: Billionaire Tom Steyer: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 29, 2020. The shade of John Connally can rest a little easier tonight: No longer is his spending $11 million to garner one delegate the most embarrassing waste of money in presidential campaign history. Through January 1, Steyer spent $253,718,074 to get zero delegates. Steyer’s campaign never made any sense:

    Even relative to the other longshots, Tom Steyer, who dropped out of the race on Saturday night after a disappointing finish in the South Carolina primary, was a longshot. Nor was it entirely clear why he was running.

    Steyer, a billionaire from his previous career as a hedge fund manager, spent the years before his presidential run pushing two causes in particular: efforts to mitigate climate change and the impeachment of President Trump. But Steyer’s presidential campaign wasn’t particularly focused on either issue — or anything else. He embraced some more liberal ideas (a wealth tax) and opposed others (Medicare for All). He cast himself as a populist while also emphasizing his business experience. He touted his electability and his commitment to fighting climate change, but not in ways that were particularly unique compared to the other candidates.

    Steyer’s broader electoral strategy, skipping Iowa and New Hampshire while using his fortune to pump ads into states later in the calendar that the other candidates were not focused on yet, was fairly novel at first. And it halfway worked. According to our polling averages, Steyer eked just into the double digits in Nevada and South Carolina. He finished with 5 percent of county convention delegates in Nevada and 11 percent of the vote in South Carolina. That’s more than a lot of candidates managed.

    But it’s not good. And in national polls, Steyer’s support never escaped the low single digits.

    That’s why I always cheered on Steyer’s campaign: The money he spent on it was money he couldn’t spend against Republicans in races where it might have helped viable Democratic candidates win.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren has flip-flopped, fibbed, and pandered her way out of the race:

    Warren was clearly the favorite candidate of academics and journalists — the intelligentsia. Why? Because she was the quintessential “front row” candidate, to borrow a term from author and photographer Chris Arnade. The image of her campaign will be her on a debate stage, hand raised, ready with an answer — but losing support roughly every minute she speaks.

    After her dismal showing in South Carolina, there is no chance of Warren becoming the electoral alternative to Bernie Sanders. The first three states tried Pete Buttigieg in that role. South Carolina resoundingly chose Joe Biden. Her campaign fell between two stools: the young, somewhat nervous Left, and an older, aspirational center.

    Her campaign persona had a funny way of playing to each. To the Left, she offered her ambition: her plans to end private health insurance, institute a wealth tax, make day care universal and free. Her promise was to give them security. To the center, she gave her ability to do homework. Every issue had an elaborate plan. Every plan was drawn up in dollars and cents. Sometimes the figures weren’t quite right. To them, she offered her competence and attention to detail.

    Well, sort of. Her Medicare for All plan would send the federal budget into a new stratosphere, and she didn’t even include the cost of her plan to cover illegal aliens as well. Not to mention that her proposal includes tax increases that are unconstitutional and politically infeasible.

    Both she and Gabbard are evidently flying to Michigan before either knows how badly they lost on Super Tuesday.

  • Out of the Running

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

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Dropped out February 12, 2020)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
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    South Carolina: Biden Wins First Primary…Ever

    Sunday, March 1st, 2020

    Onetime frontrunner Joe Biden has now won his first primary. Biden won with 48.4% of the votes, with Bernie Sanders getting 19.9%, the only two above the 15% threshold for delegates. Biden is predicted to get 34 delegates, and Bernie Sanders 11. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how delegates are earned at the state, congressional district, and state convention level.

    Biden’s victory means we might actually have a real race rather than a Sanders coronation.

    Tom Steyer placed third with 11.3% and withdrew from the race. More on his spectacular flameout in the Clown Car Update tomorrow.

    Pete Buttigieg placed fourth with 8.2%, Elizabeth Warren fifth with 7.1%, Amy Klobuchar sixth with 3.1% and Tulsi Gabbard coming up the rear with 1.4%. Michael Bloomberg wasn’t on the ballot in South Carolina, but he will be on the ballot in most (all?) Super Tuesday states.

    People may not realize is that this isn’t just Joe Biden’s first primary victory of 2020, it’s his first presidential primary victory anywhere, ever.

    Biden withdrew from the 1988 presidential race after admitting that he plagiarized a speech from UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock, which is rather like a UK politician plagiarizing Walter Mondale. That incident brought other cases of Biden plagiarism to light.

    In 2008, Biden withdrew after finishing fifth in Iowa. (After eight years as Obama’s Vice President, he would improve his Iowa caucuses finish all the way to fourth this year.)

    Fortunately for Biden, Sanders wasn’t able to appeal to black Democratic voters nearly as well as white voters. In fact, black voters favored Biden four to one over Sanders in South Carolina. Indeed, according to the Washington Post, Biden won the following groups in South Carolina by six percentage points or more:

  • Ages 65 and older:+52
  • Black:+44
  • Oppose changing to single government health plan:+43
  • Attend religious services weekly:+41
  • Top issue: Race relations:+40
  • Democrats:+36
  • Prefer candidate who can beat Donald Trump:+35
  • Military:+35
  • Ages 45 to 64:+35
  • Decided in last few days:+32
  • Economic system needs minor changes:+32
  • Women:+32
  • Decided before the last few days:+31
  • Top issue: Health care:+28
  • Attend religious services occasionally:+28
  • No college degree:+28
  • College graduates:+28
  • Economic system needs overhaul:+27
  • Not military:+27
  • Men:+24
  • Top issue: Climate change:+23
  • Top issue: Income inequality:+22
  • Prefer candidate who agrees with you on issues:+19
  • Somewhat liberal:+19
  • Support changing to single government health plan:+15
  • Very liberal:+13
  • Independents or something else:+12
  • White:+10
  • Wow, how does Bernie lose the socialized medicine and “very liberal” vote? By contrast, the only two groups he won were 17-29 year olds and those who never go to church.

    Now the same media figure who penned “Biden is doomed” pieces are now penning “Biden comeback juggernaut” pieces. But there’s a lot of the race still to run. Biden has the chance to rack up a lot of southern state delegates on Super Tuesday, but Sanders likely cleans up in California, Maine, his native Vermont, Utah, and possibly Colorado and Oklahoma (both of which he won in 2016), while Warren still has a chance to get a “favorite daughter” victory in Massachusetts, and even otherwise-hopeless Klobuchar might get a few delegates in her native Minnesota. Bloomberg’s saturation money bombing campaign is likely to produce some delegates, but where? Buttigieg might pick up a few California delegates, but otherwise I don’t see where he can even sniff a victory on Super Tuesday; if Biden’s viable, then he isn’t.

    A brokered convention is still very much in play.

    Stay tuned…

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for February 24, 2020

    Monday, February 24th, 2020

    Bernie’s the frontrunner, Bloomberg battered over fat broads and horse-faced lesbians, more slams against #NeverTrump, plus a gratuitous Slashdot joke. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Delegates
    They’re still not through counting in Nevada, but right now the delegate count stands at:

    1. Sanders 34
    2. Buttigieg 23
    3. Joe Biden 8
    4. Elizabeth Warren 8
    5. Amy Klobuchar 7

    Polls

    Omitting anything older than Sunday:

  • CBS News: Sanders 28, Warren 19, Biden 17, Bloomberg 13, Buttigieg 10, Klobuchar 5, Steyer 2, Gabbard 1. 10,000 registered voters should be enough, but I don’t buy Warren in second place.
  • CBS News (South Carolina): Biden 28, Sanders 23, Steyer 18, Warren 12, Buttigieg 10, Klobuchar 4, Gabbard 1.
  • Minneapolis Star Tribune (Minnesota): Klobuchar 29, Sanders 23, Warren 11, Biden 8, Bloomberg 3, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1.
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison battleground states: Michigan: Sanders 25, Biden 16, Bloomberg 13, Warren 13, Buttigieg 11, Klobuchar 8.
  • Pennsylvania: Sanders 25, Biden 20, Bloomberg 19, Buttigieg 12, Warren 9, Klobuchar 5.
  • Wisconsin: Sanders 30, Biden 13, Bloomberg 13, Warren 12, Buttigieg 12, Klobuchar 9.
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets. 52.5% Bernie, 18.9% Bloomberg, 7.5% Buttigieg, 5.8% Biden.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Full blown panic among the Democratic establishment as Sanders takes a firm lead:

    “In 30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with so much doom and gloom,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way after Sanders’ win in Nevada.

    Bennett said moderates firmly believe a Sanders primary win would seal Donald Trump’s reelection. “It’s this incredible sense that we’re hurtling to the abyss. I also think we could lose the House. And if we do, there would be absolutely no way to stop [Trump]. Today is the most depressed I’ve ever been in politics.”

    A renewed sense of urgency washed over establishment Democrats, who fear it’s quickly becoming too late to stop Sanders.

    Biden supporters moved to persuade the party to coalesce around him as the best hope of blunting Sanders’ momentum. A super PAC for Biden renewed discussions with jittery donors who had frozen their financial support for the former vice president as they awaited signs of whether billionaire Mike Bloomberg would emerge as the strongest moderate candidate, according to two donors with knowledge of the talks.

    Among the pitches from pro-Biden forces to donors: Bloomberg could not overcome past policies that alienated minorities, most prominently the stop-and-frisk policing tactic he embraced as New York City mayor. They argued that if Bloomberg stays in the race, Sanders will clean up on Super Tuesday, then it’s game over.

    “For the establishment, I think it’s Joe or bust,” said Simon Rosenberg, New Democrat Network president, who served as a senior strategist for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018.

  • Welcome to the Bernie and Bloomberg show:

    Good heavens. The Democratic presidential primary just took a giant leap beyond pass-the-popcorn stage. (We were doing that from the moment Beto O’Rourke learned the media wasn’t willing to treat him like he had magical powers anymore because he wasn’t running against Ted Cruz.) We were at hit-record on-your-DVRs when it became clear on Iowa caucus night that no one was going to win. No, the Democratic presidential primary has reached a point few of us outside it ever thought it would reach: They’re having a conversation they actually need to have.

    Mike Bloomberg’s campaign just unveiled a web ad making the obvious point that almost everyone else in the Democratic Party would prefer to ignore: There’s a thuggish mentality to Bernie Sanders’s online supporters. After Sanders charged that Bloomberg didn’t have the kind of energy that would be needed to defeat Trump, Bloomberg came back with an ad pointing out that Sanders supporters regularly tweet and offer memes with comments such as “vote Bernie or bad things will happen.” Supporters of Bloomberg are “going on lists.” The 53-second Bloomberg ad calls out Sanders for a seemingly disingenuous or powerless and pointless call for “civil discourse” while his grassroots supporters speak as if they can’t wait to get started on the liquidation of the Kulaks after Election Day.

    Throughout his career, Sanders talked about the value of bread lines in Socialist countries, cheered on the Marxist Sandinistas, honeymooned in the Soviet Union, praised Communist China’s progress in “addressing extreme poverty,” talked about his admiration for Fidel Castro, warmly welcomed the Irish Republican Army, saluted Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan regime, and almost never criticized Nicholas Maduro.

    And now he’s got a lot a slew of people who want to volunteer to serve as his personal KGB and NVKD.

    For a guy who keeps insisting he only wants non-authoritarian socialism, Bernie Sanders has gone out of his way to praise authoritarian socialists. As Jeff Blehar pointed out: “Why honeymoon in Moscow when you can just as easily visit Stockholm instead? C’mon now.” It’s not like Westerners didn’t know about the secret police and show trials and forced labor and the Holomodor and gulags and being sent to Siberia. Praising the Soviet system meant, at minimum, excusing all of that, if not de facto justifying it.

    Meanwhile, the New York Times — that allegedly always failing New York Times — pulls back the curtain on the Bloomberg campaign and reveals that some of the biggest and most influential activist groups on the Left just averted their eyes when it came to Bloomberg, because either they wanted or had grown dependent upon his generous contributions.

    In the fall of 2018, Emily’s List had a dilemma. With congressional elections approaching and the Supreme Court confirmation battle over Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh underway, the Democratic women’s group was hosting a major fund-raising luncheon in New York. Among the scheduled headline speakers was Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor, who had donated nearly $6 million to Emily’s List over the years.

    Days before the event, Mr. Bloomberg made blunt comments in an interview with The New York Times, expressing skepticism about the #MeToo movement and questioning sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose, the disgraced news anchor. Senior Emily’s List officials seriously debated withdrawing Mr. Bloomberg’s invitation, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    In the end, the group concluded it could not risk alienating Mr. Bloomberg.

    Remember, kids, bias in law enforcement is bad, unless it’s happening in the jurisdiction of a wealthy donor, and then it — presto-change-o! — turns into something not important enough to mention

  • Robert Stacy McCain on how “experts” who were horribly wrong are still trying to predict how the race will unfold:

    One of the most amazing things about American journalism is the continued employment of political pundits whose penchant for failure would disqualify them from being hired in any other field. All the experts who were wrong about the 2016 election are now confidently making predictions about the 2020 election, as if their credibility were undiminished by their previous mistakes.

    Max Boot bashing snipped. Aw, who am I kidding? Bring it!

    Last week, for example, ex-Republican pundit Max Boot — panicked by the sudden meltdown of Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, which he had failed to anticipate — issued a desperate appeal to prevent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. “Please, Democrats, do the smart thing and coalesce quickly around one of the three moderates — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, or Michael Bloomberg — who are still standing after the first two contests,” Boot begged on Twitter in the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, adding, “The future of our democracy may depend on it.”

    Really? Is “our democracy” in such dire peril that it can only be preserved by one of the three Democrats whom Max Boot has named? Or is it rather the case, as I suspect, that Boot is chiefly concerned about rescuing his own damaged reputation? Boot has squandered his credibility by betting on losing horses for nearly two decades. During the Bush era, Boot left the Wall Street Journal to join the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and was among the most sanguine cheerleaders for the Iraq War, failing to anticipate the brutal terrorist insurgency that ultimately destroyed the neoconservative fantasy of turning Mesopotamia into a Western-style liberal democracy.

    It would be difficult to list everything Max Boot has been wrong about over the years, and perhaps it’s easier to just say “everything,” but certainly the Yale-educated CFR senior fellow is not alone in his propensity for false prophecy. He was part of the Never Trump crowd that tried to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2016 GOP nomination and then, confident that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump, yelled “all in,” shoving their entire pile of chips onto a losing bet.

    Any experienced poker player can perhaps sympathize with the plight of Never Trump Republicans; I once went all-in with a full house and lost when the other guy turned over four of a kind. But I’ve never claimed to be an “expert” on poker, the way Boot and his cohort assert their expertise about politics and policy. The whole crowd — including former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Bush-era campaign operative Rick Wilson, and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, to name a few — simply could not believe that Trump might actually be elected, and they have never forgiven him (or the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for him) for proving them wrong. None of Trump’s policy successes — crushing ISIS, promoting a robust economy, appointing two conservative Supreme Court justices and numerous other federal judges, and more — can ever redeem him in the eyes of the self-appointed political “experts” whose credibility is further diminished every time Trump wins again.

    Having lost any ability to influence Republicans, the Never Trump crowd has now begun offering advice to Democrats, and it’s tempting to hope Democrats will listen to these “experts.” If Max Boot has always been wrong about everything, then what should we conclude about his claim that “the smart thing” for Democrats would be to nominate a moderate candidate to oppose Trump in November?

  • Highlights of the Nevada debate, mainly the times the knives went in deepest.
  • Warren, Biden and Buttigieg dangerously close to going broke. Apart from Bernie and the billionaires, the Democratic presidential field is hurting for cash.”

    Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren each started the month scraping perilously close to the bottom of their campaign bank accounts, posing an existential threat to their candidacies as the Democratic primary goes national.

    They’re up against well-funded machines threatening to dominate the Democratic race: Bernie Sanders, whose recent rise in the polls has come during a major spending streak fueled by his online donors, and billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose fortune has vaulted him into the middle of the campaign to take on President Donald Trump.

    While Sanders started February with nearly $17 million in the bank, according to campaign finance disclosures filed Thursday night, his next closest rival (nonbillionaire class) was Biden, at $7.1 million. Warren was closest to the red, with just $2.3 million left in her account, while Buttigieg ($6.6 million) and Klobuchar ($2.9 million) were in between.

    The cash crunch comes at a critical time in the race, with nearly one-third of the delegates available in the primary up for grabs on Super Tuesday on March 3 — and only a handful of candidates able to marshal resources to advertise to voters in those 14 states. It’s why super PACs, demonized at the beginning of the 2020 primary, are suddenly jumping in to assist most Democratic candidates, and it’s why the campaigns are now making ever more urgent pleas for financial help.

  • Democrats are dying from exposure:

    The Democrat Party has turned hard left. By doing so, the party has unintentionally exposed itself.

    Ambiguity and obfuscation are the Democrats’ stock in trade. They distort words, and they abuse the English language. They use words and phrases that sound good but are impossible to define — for example, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, climate change, and sustainability.

    Such deception is crucial for the party’s survival. But the deception has become harder to sustain.

    More than anyone else, Donald Trump is responsible for exposing the Democrats. They detest him and his achievements so much that their judgment has been annihilated. With new clarity, their reactions say far more about themselves than him. He is causing them to take leave of their sanity.

    They hate Trump so much that they can’t celebrate his accomplishments. They even demeaned the killing of an evil and savage terrorist, Qassem Soleimani. But their insane hatred has put them in a bind.

    Donald Trump has set up camp inside their brains. They should not have let him do that. They will live to regret it.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “Democrats Take Gamble That America Is Finally Ready For A Rich, White President.”
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. He actually won delegates in Nevada, so he’s got that going for him. Remember how Biden was the “electable” one? Without that imaginary halo, black voters may not stick around. Another Biden senior moment. “Struggling Biden Campaign Now Offering One Month Of Free AOL For Rally Attendance.”
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. The reviews of Bloomberg’s debate performance are not good. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) More on Bloomberg’s debate awfulness, including these comments from departed-candidate-now-CNN-commentator Andrew Yang:

    I think three things happened to Mike tonight. Number one, he just found out he’d make the debate yesterday. There were two times when I wasn’t sure I was going to make the debate and my team got me together to prepare. And you’re really not sure if you’re preparing because you’re not sure if you’re going to be in the debate. So Mike, even though he was I’m sure getting coached and prepared, he’s like, “I don’t know if I’m going to be in this debate.” And so, I don’t think he was coached hard enough.

    Number two, he was clearly instructed to keep his cool no matter what. But that ended up presenting as lethargic and uninterested for a big chunk of the debate. And the third most telling thing is that if I’m his team, you know he’s going to get a stop and frisk question, like a gender discrimination or mistreatment question. So, you coach him and you have him give you 60, 75-second answers over and over again until he can do it in his sleep. And the fact that he did not have those answers at his fingertips lets me know categorically he was not properly prepared for this debate.

    I watched 185 Mike Bloomberg Ads.” May God have mercy on his soul.

    Over the course of the past two weeks I sat down and attempted to watch every single ad and ad-adjacent piece of video content that the Bloomberg campaign has released on its official YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter account. (I only dipped my toes into Instagram, because I had to draw the line somewhere.) Then, after rejecting a few for redundancy, I ranked them from best to worst, based solely on my own idiosyncratic criteria. (I surely missed some, and I stopped trying to find new ones a few days ago, for sanity’s sake.) Why did I do this? Because I wanted to mainline the means by which a late primary entrant with unimaginable sums of money has become a possible Democratic frontrunner.

    Here’s what I learned: For one thing, that watching nearly 200 campaign ads in a short period is sort of like being brainwashed, which I suppose is the goal of all advertising. At this point, I wouldn’t say I’m aboard the Bloomberg train, but I think I would feel a little less uncomfortable buying a ticket. Many of the ads are very good. Many more of them are not. The quality of any individual ad, though, is ultimately less important than the breadth of the entire corpus. It’s not that Bloomberg doesn’t have some good ideas—he does—or that he would not be a more competent executive than our current president. The point is that the campaign’s goal is to very quickly achieve messaging saturation in lieu of the monthslong ground game Bloomberg didn’t bother to run. I hate to say it, but it’s working!

    Being from a slate writer, it’s not at all surprising that the ones he likes best are all of the “Orange Man Bad!” variety. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Tried of all the Bloomberg bashing? Me neither.

    What a catastrophe Wednesday night was for Mike Bloomberg. The New York plutocrat was kicked in the teeth by Elizabeth Warren in the first minutes — she denounced him as a Trump-like “arrogant billionaire” who called women “horse-faced lesbians” — and never made it back to his feet.

    Bloomberg stood in mute fury as his $400 million campaign investment went up in smoke. His contempt for democracy and sense of entitlement surpass even Donald Trump, who at least likes crowds — Bloomberg’s joyless imperiousness makes Trump seem like Robin Williams.

    That Bloomberg has been touted as a potential Democratic Party savior across the top ranks of politics and media is an extraordinary indictment of that group of people.

    Some endorsements were straight cash transactions, in which politicians who owe their careers to Bloomberg’s largess repaid him with whatever compliments they could muster. How much does a man who radiates impatience with the idea of having to pretend to equal status with anyone have to spend to get someone to say something nice?

    California Congressman Harley Rouda called him a “legendary businessman”: Bloomie gave her more than $4 million. New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill got more than $2 million from Bloomberg’s Independence USA Super PAC, and in return the Navy vet said Bloomberg embodies “the integrity we need.”

    Georgia’s Lucy McBath, a member of the congressional black caucus, got $4 million from Bloomberg PACs, and she endorsed him just as an audio clip was coming out of the ex-mayor talking about putting black men up “against the wall” in stop-and-frisk. News accounts of the endorsement frequently left out the financial ties.

    That’s fine. If you give a politician $2 million or $4 million, it must be expected that he or she will say you approximate a human being.

    But how does New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman excuse writing “Paging Michael Bloomberg”? (Well, Bloomberg philanthropies donated to Planet Word, “the museum my wife is building,” says Friedman, so there’s that.) How about Jonathan Chait at New York, who wrote, “Winning the election is starting to look hard. How about buying it instead?” Or John Ellis in The Washington Post, who declared Bloomberg the “dream candidate”?

    These pundits clung to a triumvirate of delusions: Bloomberg “gets things done,” he’s more electable than a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren because he can spend unlimited amounts, and he has the “toughness” to take on Trump.

    Far from showing “toughness,” Bloomberg on Wednesday wilted under attacks from his five Democratic opponents.

    Snip.

    Trump has clear authoritarian tendencies and has wrapped his hands around autocrats, but for all the fretting about him perhaps not leaving office in 2020 if voted out, it’s Bloomberg who has already tossed term limits aside, and it’s Bloomberg who is openly trying to buy an election. There is zero evidence he will be any less of a threat to democracy or an agent for rapacious corporate interests than Trump.

    Even assuming one could cross into believing that Bloomberg is somehow less revolting or dangerous than the current president — I don’t, but let’s say — Wednesday exploded the idea that he would have a superior chance at beating him than Sanders or a conventional, non-plutocrat politician like Warren or Pete Buttigieg. Bloomberg was a total zero charisma-wise, had trouble thinking on his feet, and failed to find even one issue where he sounded confident and convincing. His only distinguishing characteristic is his money, and fuck his money.

    William Jacobson agrees he had a bad night, but disagrees that he’s done as a candidate.

    Bloomberg’s reason to be in this contest is to be the last non-Bernie non-Warren candidate standing. Biden doesn’t have it in him. While he had some good lines, he was a sideshow and a sad figure. If anyone is done after last night, it’s Amy Klobuchar. Her performance was whiny and weak — please Mayor Pete and Elizabeth, stop criticizing me!

    Bloomberg didn’t help himself last night, but I don’t see that he ended his campaign provided he’s still willing to finance it.

    “When Bloomberg News’s Reporting on China Was Challenged, Bloomberg Tried to Ruin Me for Speaking Out.”

    I am one of the many women Mike Bloomberg’s company tried to silence through nondisclosure agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg.

    But my story shows the lengths that the Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP, is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its lawyers threatened to devastate my family financially if I didn’t sign an NDA silencing me about how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of Chinese Communist Party leaders. It was only when I hired Edward Snowden’s lawyers in Hong Kong that Bloomberg LP eventually called off their hounds after many attempts to intimidate me.

    In 2012, I was working toward a Ph.D. in sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and my husband, Michael Forsythe, was a lead writer on a Bloomberg News article about the vast accumulation of wealth by relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping, part of an award-winning “Revolution to Riches” series about Chinese leaders.

    Soon after Bloomberg published the article on Xi’s family wealth in June 2012, my husband received death threats conveyed by a woman who told him she represented a relative of Xi. The woman conveying the threats specifically mentioned the danger to our whole family; our two children were 6 and 8 years old at the time. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos reports a similar encounter in his award-winning book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China,” when the same woman told Osnos’s wife: “He [Forsythe] and his family can’t stay in China. It’s no longer safe,” she said. “Something will happen. It will look like an accident. Nobody will know what happened. He’ll just be found dead.”

    Snip.

    My husband had been working for many months on another investigative report for Bloomberg about financial ties between one of China’s richest men, Wang Jianlin, and the families of senior Communist Party officials, including relatives of Xi. Bloomberg editors had thus far backed the story. A Bloomberg managing editor, Jonathan Kaufman, said in an email in late September 2013, “I am in awe of the way you tracked down and deciphered the financial holdings and the players. … It’s a real revelation. Looking forward to pushing it up the line,” according to an account published by the Financial Times.

    Then Bloomberg killed the story at the last minute, and the company fired my husband in November after comments by Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matt Winkler were leaked. “If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,” Winkler reportedly said on a company call.

    Mike Bloomberg, then New York City mayor and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, was asked on November 12, 2013, about reports that his company had self-censored out of fear of offending the Chinese government and he dismissed the question.

    “Nobody thinks that we’re wusses and not willing to stand up and write stories that are of interest to the public and that are factually correct,” Bloomberg told a press conference.

    Yet, days after Bloomberg made those comments to reporters in New York, Bloomberg lawyers in Hong Kong threatened to devastate my family financially by forcing us to repay the company for our relocation fees to Hong Kong from Beijing and the advance on my husband’s salary that we took out, leave us with no health insurance or income, and take me to court if I did not sign a nondisclosure agreement — even though I had never been a Bloomberg employee.

    Snip.

    On December 20, they sent a letter to my husband demanding that I sign a nondisclosure agreement. If I didn’t agree, we might owe the company thousands of dollars. I might even have had to pay Bloomberg’s legal bills. The thought of Bloomberg possibly ruining our family financially if I didn’t give in to their threats made me sick, but I was also infuriated that they had kept us in harm’s way after we received threats, forbidden me from speaking publicly about the death threats we received in Beijing, and now were trying to take away my freedom of speech forever.

    It was only when I hired Snowden’s lawyers in Hong Kong — Albert Ho and Jonathan Man offered me a low rate because it was a “good cause” — that Bloomberg finally backed off. In the meantime, they had sent me several more threatening letters. One letter from Mayer Brown JSM on January 8, 2014, spelled out that “by virtue of the knowledge that she retains (in her head) of our client’s [Bloomberg’s] Confidential Information she has an ongoing duty of confidentiality to our client.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.) Vox writer falls in line with the amazing new “Gosh, billionaires are actually great and awesome!” consensus among Democrats. More Bloomberg quotes: “Black And Latino Males Don’t Know How To Behave In The Workplace.” Sure, we could give that some context to make it sound less racist, but we also know that courtesy is never extended to someone with an (R) after their name.

    Bloomy slams Bernie bros:

    Ann Althouse was not impressed with Bloomberg in the debate. “He’s dull and he looks like death.” Bloomberg racks up three congressional endorsements: “Reps. Nita Lowey of New York, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Pete Aguilar of California.” Daily Caller laughably calls them “major” endorsements, but Aguilar is the only one I already had a tag for. “After Taking Brutal Beating In Debate, Bloomberg Rushed To Tiny Hospital In Tiny Ambulance.” “He’s recovering nicely in a matchbox.” “We are all individuals!”

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “South Bend Residents Have a Message for America: Don’t Elect Pete Buttigieg.”

    Another West Side resident, Cornish Miller, 62, said of Buttigieg, “Rating him 1 to 10, I’d give him a 2.”

    “Buttigieg talked about all the improvements he made, but he hardly made a dent,” said Miller, who works for a military supply company.

    “The West Side is the most neglected part of town. The street I live on is the only street around here that has lights. That’s because we’re a gateway to Notre Dame.”

    Not coming in second place, Mayo Pete thinks the results must be wrong and wants Nevada Democrats to count votes again until he’s on top:

    Pete Buttigieg’s campaign is claiming there are inconsistencies in the reported results in Nevada, as the former South Bend, Ind., mayor tries to claw his way to second place in Saturday’s caucuses.

    In a letter sent to Nevada Democratic Party Chairman William McCurdy II and obtained by POLITICO, Buttigieg’s campaign is calling for the state party to publicly release a tranche of data and recalculate some precincts, a call the state party largely rebuffed.

    “In light of material irregularities pertaining to the process of integrating early votes into the in-person precinct caucus results, we request that you” release early and in-person votes, correct “errors identified by presidential campaigns” and “explain anomalies in the data,” Buttigieg’s national ballot access and delegate director Michael Gaffney wrote in the letter sent late Saturday.

    Buttigieg’s campaign is not challenging Bernie Sanders’ runaway win in the state. Instead, the Buttigieg camp is pointing to the battle further down the standings.

    “Given how close the race is between second and third place, we ask that you take these steps before releasing any final data,” Gaffney wrote.

    Those “close second” finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire already seem like ancient news…

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But: “Ex-Bill Clinton adviser: Bloomberg and Hillary cooking up ‘scheme’ for her to become Democratic nominee.” Not buying it, but enjoy another week in the clown car, Grandma Death.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Why I’m voting for Tulsi Gabbard.” Enjoy that tiny little breadcrumb, Gabbard fans. Campaigned in Colorado. Campaigned in Utah.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s mired in single digits but the few news stories I’m finding focued on her are like “Watch Amy Klobuchar’s full speech after Nevada caucus defeat” (No), “Video: Senator Amy Klobuchar speaks with the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board” (No), and “President Amy Klobuchar: Here’s what it would mean for California” (Yes, we know weed is legal there.) Ah, this promises some blue-on-blue action: “How Amy Klobuchar’s Signature Bill Became a Disaster for Her Own Party.” Alas, no, it’s just another “she treats her staff like shit” piece, this time by throwing them under the bus for some technical abortion language in a bill the writer doesn’t bother to detail.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 confirms it: BSD is dying Sanders is the frontrunner. “His chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates are up 6 points, to 46 percent.” “Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucus; MSNBC, #NeverTrump Hardest Hit“:

    This is a decisive victory for Sanders, who more than doubled Biden’s total, and a major setback for Warren and Klobuchar, both of whom needed to show some kind of momentum to keep their campaigns viable. While it is possible that Biden could still bounce back with a win next Saturday in the South Carolina primary, even the most enthusiastic supporters of Warren and Klobuchar must see they now have no path to the nomination. Their money is running out, whereas Buttigieg (who at least got a narrow win in Iowa) could continue if he does well on Super Tuesday. Unless two or three of the non-Sanders candidates drops out before Super Tuesday, however, there will still be multiple candidates splitting the “Anybody But Bernie” vote with billionaire Mike Bloomberg, and that means Sanders could emerge with an insurmountable delegate lead after March 3. And this means . . . panic time!

    James Carville and Chris Matthrews meltdown bits snipped.

    Why are the MSNBC talking heads so despondent? Because they are convinced that if Democrats nominate Sanders, they’ll alienate middle-class moderate voters and thereby guarantee Trump’s re-election. I wish I believed this as much as they do, but can we trust the conventional wisdom dispensed by cable-news “experts”? These are the same people who thought Trump could never win the GOP nomination, and then believed Hillary Clinton could easily defeat Trump, so when they start predicting future political events, my hunch is they’re wrong again.

    Glenn Reynolds seems to share my concern: “You can assume that Trump would crush Bernie, and you’re probably right. But any major-party nominee, however lame, has a nonzero chance of becoming President, and that’s bad when we’re talking about a commie.”

    As much as I want to believe Trump would score a slam-dunk victory over Sanders in November, I’m disturbed by the fact that MSNBC talking-heads have the same opinion. Maybe I’m just being a worry-wart about this, though. In an all-out battle between a socialist Democrat and a capitalist Republican, Trump wins — if the American people are still the American people. If Bernie were to win, we might as well call ourselves “Southern Canada.” Meanwhile, Bill Kristol and the cruise-ship contingent of #NeverTrump ex-Republicans have reached a fatal reckoning; having committed to 100% opposition to Trump, they must now find a way to make the “principled conservative” argument for Bernie Sanders. They didn’t have much credibility left to lose, but once you sell your soul to Pierre Omidyar, you must pay that debt in full.

    Heh:

    Bloomy connects on a blow against Sanders:

    More tweets:

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s qualified for the next debate…which is tomorrow. Steyer’s spending is cutting into Biden’s black support. “The economy sucks! Who are you going to believe, me, or those lying statistics?”
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. In a shocking and completely unexpected turnabout, Warren now says that SuperPAC money is just fine and dandy! She calls Bloomberg “ a big threat — not a tall one, but a big one.” I’m sure the media that’s Margaret Dumonted an endless stream of “Well I never!”s over Trump tweets will quickly chastise Warren for this vicious personal attack.

    🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗 🦗

  • Out of the Running

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

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Dropped out February 12, 2020)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 11, 2020. One of the more interesting and least pandering of the candidates, Yang ran much better than anyone (myself included) expected, but never broke out of single digits. He gets an exit interview in the New York Times. Might run for New York City mayor. It would be nearly impossible for him to do a worse job than Di Blasio…
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for February 17, 2020

    Monday, February 17th, 2020

    Bloomberg channels Barney, Yang, Bennet and Patrick are Out, enjoy the Buttigieg Platitude Generator, Bernie bros break out the blacklist for Bloomberg hires, and Mayor Pete has a fake Nigerian problem. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    The Nevada caucus looms, but not until Saturday.

    There are now six candidates left in the race with a theoretical chance to earn the nomination (Sanders Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Biden, and Warren), plus Gabbard and Steyer. I don’t see Warren getting any traction, but I do see the DNC working desperately behind the scenes to make sure she keeps siphoning votes away from Sanders…

    Delegates
    After New Hampshire, the actual delegate count stands at:

    1. Buttigieg 22
    2. Sanders 21
    3. Elizabeth Warren 8
    4. Amy Klobuchar 7
    5. Joe Biden 6

    It’s a neat trick, Buttigieg leading the delegate count after coming in second in the first two states…

    Polls

  • Las Vegas Review Journal (Nevada): Sanders 25, Biden 18, Warren 13, Steyer 11, Buttigieg 10, Klobuchar 10.
  • East Carolina University (South Carolina): Biden 28, Sanders 20, Steyer 14, Buttigieg 8, Klobuchar 7, Warren 7, Bloomberg 6, Gabbard 1.
  • Texas Tribune/University of Texas (Texas): Sanders 24, Biden 22, Warren 15, Bloomberg 10, Buttigieg 7, Yang 6, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 2.
  • WBS-TV (Georgia): Biden 32.1, Sanders 14.2, Bloomberg 14, Buttigieg 4.9, Warren 3.7, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 1.5, Gabbard .8.
  • St. Pete Polls (Florida): Bloomberg 27.3, Biden 25.9, Buttigieg 10.5, Sanders 10.4, Klobuchar 8.6, Steyer 1.3. First state with a poll lead for Bloomberg. Sample size of 3,047, which should be excellent for a state poll.
  • High Point (North Carolina) (likely voters): Biden 24, Sanders 20, Bloomberg 16, Warren 11, Buttigieg 8, Steyer 4, Yang 3, Klobuchar 3, Gabbard 2.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 198): Sanders 22, Biden 18, Warren 15, Bloomberg 12, Klobuchar 7, Gabbard 4, Yang 2, Steyer 1.
  • Monmouth: Sanders 26, Biden 16, Buttigieg 13, Warren 13, Bloomberg 11, Klobuchar 6, Yang 4, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1.
  • Morning Consult: Sanders 25, Biden 22, Bloomberg 17, Buttigieg 11, Warren 11, Yang 4, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 1.
  • Talk Business/Hendrix College: Bloomberg 19.6, Biden 18.5, Sanders 16.4, Buttigieg 15.5, Warren 8.9, Klobuchar 4.8, Yang 2.
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • 538 is now predicting that it’s slightly more likely that no one will win a majority of delegates.

    A brokered convention would be a lot of fun to watch but devastating for Democrats. The chances of Bernie Sanders coming out on top in a brokered convention seem slim to me—and if Bernie goes into the convention with the most delegates but doesn’t leave the convention as the nominee, Bernie supporters are going to be livid. Whoever the candidate is, if the Democrats have to wait until mid-July to know for sure who their nominee is going be, it puts their party at a significant disadvantage.

  • “Majority of Americans would vote against socialist candidate for president.” Ruh-Roh, Rernie! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The problem for Democrats is that Sanders leads, but most Democrats are voting against him:

    While the far-left or more liberal candidates — including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — collectively earned 35 percent of the New Hampshire vote, the center-left and more moderate candidates — including Biden, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) — collectively earned more than one-half of the vote, with 53 percent between the three of them.

    Indeed, while Sanders may have eked out a victory, a majority of the New Hampshire voters aligned with the moderate bloc of the party.

    This discrepancy poses a serious problem for Democrats as the primary season continues. In order to build a broad-based coalition of voters to defeat Trump, there needs to be an understanding within the party that the message will be inclusive, will encourage unity and will eventually focus on supporting the nominee.

  • Where everybody stands on everything.
  • There are no moderates, only Zuul. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Master Troll Trump at work.
  • “Trashing America as racist won’t help Democrats beat Trump.”
  • No bounce for anyone out of New Hampshire?
  • Stephen Green drunkblogged the New Hampshire primaries.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Update: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 11, 2020, after a dismal rounding-error showing in New Hampshire. Not really seeing any post mortem pieces out there, but here’s a piece on his last few days on the campaign trail. The most interesting part is finding out his New Hampshire office is in the same building as Buttigieg and Steyer’s state offices. He’s perhaps the most forgettable politician making a serious run for President this century. If you stuck a gun to the head of each Democratic Party voter and demanded they pick Bennet out of a list of candidates, 99% of those people would be dead.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. South Carolina or bust? The Bidenberg may still be leaking hydrogen, but I think he stays in until Super Tuesday. Cracks in the firewall? He blames his poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire on being outspent. Well, does he think that’s going to get any better with Bloomberg in the race? The benefits of being Joe Biden’s brother:

    It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

    These transactions illuminate the well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers — one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals.

    Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside his outreach to black voters.

    A meeting with nearly 80 black pastors in Detroit. A speech before a black Democratic organization in Montgomery. A rally at a historically black university. A tour of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church. An early voting kickoff at an African American museum. All in the past two weeks.

    While Mike Bloomberg’s rivals battled it out in majority-white Iowa and New Hampshire, the billionaire presidential candidate aggressively courted the black voters critical to any Democrat’s chance of winning of the nomination. The effort, backed by millions of dollars in ads, has taken him across Southern states that vote on March 3, from Montgomery, Alabama, and this week Raleigh, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, states where African American voters can decide a Democratic primary.

    His pitch is one of electability and competence — hoping to capitalize on black Democrats’ hunger to oust President Donald Trump. But as he courts black voters he’ll also have to reconcile his own record as mayor of New York and past remarks on criminal justice.

    Bloomberg’s outreach aims squarely at former Vice President Joe Biden, who is banking on loyal black voters to resuscitate his bid after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    “Who can beat Donald Trump? That’s what people care about,” said former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who is among the black leaders endorsing Bloomberg. Nutter says Bloomberg’s record of accomplishments outweighs the damage of flawed policing.

    Bloomberg has no doubt been helped by his limitless financial resources and his strategy to focus on states conducting primaries on Super Tuesday. One of the world’s richest men thanks to a net worth of roughly $60 billion, Bloomberg has spent more than $300 million of his own money on advertising, including spots on black radio stations, a Super Bowl ad that featured an African American mother who lost her son to gun violence and a national ad touting his work with President Barack Obama on gun legislation and a teen jobs program.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) “The Complete List of Everything Banned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Is Bloomberg the common enemy?

    The Democratic presidential candidates raced on Sunday to make the most of their final weekend day before the Nevada caucuses, selling their messages and tearing into their opponents.

    But the rival they focused on most intently was one who isn’t even competing in the state.

    “I got news for Mr. Bloomberg,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said at an event in Carson City, Nev., taking aim at the former New York City mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, within five minutes of opening his remarks. “The American people are sick and tired of billionaires buying elections.”

    In a rarity, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. echoed his progressive counterpart. “Sixty billion dollars can buy you a lot of advertising, but it can’t erase your record,” he said of Mr. Bloomberg in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired on Sunday.

    Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another moderate, had similar thoughts. “I’m here getting votes,” Ms. Klobuchar said in an interview on Sunday. “It’s not something where I can just — what would be the word — transport in a bunch of ads.” She called on Mr. Bloomberg to “go on the shows that every other candidate goes on, on the Sunday shows and the like.”

    She added: “I don’t think I’m going to beat him on the airwaves, but I can beat him on the debate stage.” At a forum on Sunday focused on infrastructure, Ms. Klobuchar, who won the endorsement of The Las Vegas Sun last week, mentioned Mr. Bloomberg early on, referring to President Trump’s comments about his height as she stood to speak. “I am the only candidate that is 5-foot-4,” she joked. “I want that out there now.”

    The fixation on Mr. Bloomberg, the free-spending multibillionaire, reflected his rising prominence in the Democratic race, even though he is skipping the first four nominating contests and focusing on the 14 Super Tuesday states that will vote on March 3.

    As early voting continued in Nevada on Sunday, some of the criticism seemed to be sticking.

    “Bloomberg just has bad connotations that come along with him,” Leah Garwood said as she waited in line with her husband on Sunday in Las Vegas for roughly 45 minutes to vote for a different billionaire, Tom Steyer of California. “It’s just at the back of my mind. It makes me uncomfortable, uneasy.”

    Don’t believe it; Most of the people backing Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar (i.e., the Corrupt Wing) would choose Bloomberg over Sanders without hesitation. The meme machine. Bloomy can buy memes, but can he buy good memes? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Tolerant Bernie Bros want to Blacklist Bloomberg staffers:

    (Tweet has since been deleted, but there’s plenty of reference to it on Twitter.) Are you an old person with cancer? Bloomberg just wants to let you die:

    He also thinks that any idiot can be a farmer. Bloomberg, the Big Purple Dinosaur:

    Don’t worry: It gets worse:

    (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Master of the Platitude:

    Pete Buttigieg really speaks in platitudes a lot. Last night brought, “[You’re] ready to vote for a politics defined by how many we call in, instead of by who we push out . . . So many of you chose to meet a new era of challenge with a new generation of leadership . . . A fresh outlook is what makes new beginnings possible. It is how we build a new majority . . . The answers, they lie in a vision that brings Americans together not only in the knowledge of what we must stand against, but in the confidence of knowing what we are for.”

    Plus a handy link to the Mayor Pete Platitude Generator:

    Why gays think he’s not gay enough.

    Buttigieg is the ultimate candidate of the country’s post-2016 trauma. He is not a woman. He is not a socialist. He is decidedly not a revolutionary. He does not make big, sweeping promises, except one: that nothing much will change, only Donald Trump won’t be President. “What I like about Mayor Pete is that he is not a strong ideologue,” Tod Sedgwick, a volunteer who had gone to New Hampshire to canvass for Buttigieg, told me. Sedgwick, who is seventy-one and the former U.S. Ambassador to the Slovak Republic, was canvassing with his girlfriend, Christina Brown, a seventy-three-year-old community activist from Louisville, Kentucky. Sedgwick lives in Washington, D.C.

    Left out of this reassuring portrait is the fact he’s embraced most of the crazy ideas floated by his fellow candidates this year, and that his father is a hardcore Marxist scholar of Antonio Gramsci. Top Buttigieg advisor Lis Smith has a fake Nigerian burner account named Chinedu that’s a huge Mayor Pete fan. Because of course a Nigerian is going to be a huge fan of a gay Midwestern American politician. If Lis Smith’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she was carrying out an affair with disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer while working for him.

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? Drudge floated a trial balloon suggesting Bloomberg would tap her as his veep pick. Which presents the tiny problem that it violates Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution, since both are from New York. Plus:

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says U.S. military should scale back overseas operations. She blames a total media blackout for her faltering campaign. Eh, she has a point, the Democratic Media Complex does hate her, but her failure to break through that barrier is on her. I mean, if you’re a youngish, attractive woman, how do you lose the Outsider Excitement Race to a 79-year old socialist?
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says that Obama was just too much of an immigration hawk for deporting non-felon illegal aliens, part of her desperate, unconvincing hispandering for Nevada votes, along with saying that English should not be the national language. Gets endorsed by the Houston Chronicle. Thirty years ago that would have meant something. Enjoy her one stump joke:

    “What Klobuchar’s Tater Tot Recipe Says About Her Candidacy.” File that one under “attempted humor”…

  • Update: Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 12, 2020.

    Patrick focused his campaign entirely on New Hampshire, hoping the familiarity of a neighboring state would help boost his chances in the race. He offered what aides felt was a unique message in a field that ultimately boiled down largely to career politicians with little executive or private sector experience: that he had the track record as governor and through years of business experience to deliver on Democratic priorities like fighting climate change and reforming health care.

    You would think the failure of several other governors to run viable campaigns might have deterred him, but no. Patrick got into the race in November, made no impression whatsoever, and sank without a trace. Mike Gravel and Wayne Messam had more compelling reasons to run…

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Democrats fear Sanders could cost them the House. “‘Doomsday Scenario’: Washington Moves To Crush The Sanders Revolution“:

    We have previously discussed the efforts of the Democratic establishment and some in the media to (again) derail the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, including the raw bias against Sanders shown by CNN reporter Abby Phillip in a prior presidential debate. Now, with Sanders’ victory in New Hampshire and rising polls, figures from both politics and media are putting on a full-court press to stop Sanders. Everyone from James Carville to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are sounding alarms over Sanders. His victory last night was called the “doomsday scenario” by a Democratic Super PAC. The most shocking was MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd who used a quote form a columnist to compare Sanders supporters to Nazi brown-shirted thugs. It is a technique used before by Todd who reads letters or quotes from others to preserve the patina of neutrality like his recent attack on Trump supporters.

    Longtime Texas Democrats fear Sanders getting the nomination.

    “There is overall uncertainty which is growing. The real fear for Texas D’s remains Sanders,” Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist who has worked with both Democrats and Republicans, said of a Sanders ticket. “’We’d be fucked’ — that’s what they’re saying. The drain at the top goes down to the bottom.”

    Texas may not be a presidential battleground, but a wave of GOP retirements in Congress, shifting demographics and Donald Trump’s lightning-rod presidency offer Democrats a shot at real power after two decades of Republican dominance. And to insiders like Miller, plans to nationalize the health care and electricity sectors will spook voters and weigh down local Democrats who are trying to thread a needle in this still deeply conservative state.

    “Sure you can see my medical records! And by ‘sure’ I mean ‘no way.'” Topless PETA protestors interupt his speech.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He and Klobuchar can’t name the President of Mexico. Steyer is spending a lot of time on the ground in Nevada and South Carolina.
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Warren campaign continues its controlled flight into terrain:

    Elizabeth Warren’s straggling campaign is cutting ad buys worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in key early states after bruising losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.

    The retrenchment follows a dismal fourth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, down from third place in Iowa.

    “We were hoping for a better result in New Hampshire,” Warren’s campaign conceded in an email to supporters Wednesday. “It hurts to care so much, work so hard, and still fall a little short.”

    The campaign has cut more than $300,000 worth of ads in Nevada and South Carolina, according to two advertising trackers. The Massachusetts U.S. senator appears to be shifting her focus to Maine, with ad buys worth tens of thousands of dollars there on Wednesday, according to FCC filings.

    Her New Hampshire finish behind U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has also raised concerns about whether Warren can sustain the national organizing effort her campaign is relying on for success on Super Tuesday on March 3.

    “She put her eggs in a New Hampshire basket. That was the right thing to do, but it didn’t pan out,” said Democratic strategist Scott Ferson. “She’s entering a period of darkness and belt tightening and hard choices about options.”…

    Warren’s much-lauded ground game has now failed her twice, making it harder to generate the millions of dollars needed to sustain her massive operation, strategists say. Warren entered 2020 with $13.7 million in the bank and raised more than $5 million after Iowa. But her campaign also spent $12 million more than it took in at the end of 2019, FEC reports show.

    Maybe Warren had a great ground game, and she just sucks too hard as a candidate to take advantage of it… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Update: Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 11, 2020. One of the more interesting and least pandering of the candidates, Yang ran much better than anyone (myself included) expected, but never broke out of single digits. He gets an exit interview in the New York Times. Might run for New York City mayor. It would be nearly impossible for him to do a worse job than Di Blasio…
  • 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. Gonna be hard to run for the White House when you’re facing up to 42 years in the big house.
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for February 3, 2020 (IOWA CAUCUSES TODAY!)

    Monday, February 3rd, 2020

    It begins!

    The Iowa Caucuses are finally here today, Bernie panic wracks the DNC, a key poll mysteriously vanishes, Delaney drops Out, and one Biden staffer provides handy voter appreciation. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    A special shout-out to longtime readers who have been with me on this journay since January of last year. What a long, strange trip it’s been!

    Polls

  • Emerson (Iowa): Sanders 28, Biden 21, Buttigieg 15, Warren 14, Klobuchar 11, Yang 5, Steyer 4, Gabbard 1, Bennet 1, Patrick 0.
  • CBS: Biden 25, Sanders 25, Buttigieg 21, Warren 16, Klobuchar 5.
  • Civiqs (Iowa): Sanders 28, Warren 21, Buttigieg 15, Biden 15, Klobuchar 8, Yang 5, Steyer 2, Gabbard 2. Hard left lean and sample size of 615.
  • Post and Courier (South Carolina): Biden 25, Sanders 20, Steyer 18, Warren 11, Buttigieg 7, Gabbard 3, Yang 3, Klobuchar 2. Bad news for Biden from his “firewall” state, as Steyer is making inroads into the black vote.
  • New York Times (Iowa): Sanders 25, Buttigieg 18, Biden 17, Warren 15, Klobuchar 8, Steyer 3, Yang 3.
  • Emerson (Iowa): Sanders 30, Biden 21, Klobuchar 13, Warren 11, Buttigieg 10, Steyer 5, Yang 5, Gabbard 5, Delaney 1, Patrick 0, Bennet 0.
  • USA Today/Suffolk (Iowa): Biden 25, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 18, Warren 13, Klobuchar 6.
  • Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University (New Hampshire): Sanders 29, Biden 22, Warren 16, Buttigieg 10, Klobuchar 5.
  • American Research Group (New Hampshire): Sanders 28, Biden 13, Buttigieg 12, Warren 11, Gabbard 8, Klobuchar 7, Yang 5, Patrick 2, Steyer 2, Bloomberg (write-in) 2, Bennet 1. Sample size of 600.
  • Berkeley IGS (California): Sanders 26, Warren 20, Biden 15, Buttigieg 7, Bloomberg 5, Yang 4, Steyer 2.
  • Salt Lake City Tribune (Utah): Sanders 27, Warren 14, Biden 12, Bloomberg 10, Buttigieg 5, Yang 5, Klobuchar 3, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1. Tiny poll sample size of 132. You would think this was unrepresentative, but Bernie crushed Hillary in Utah in 2016, winning 79% of the vote. I think Utah has moved to a primary system this year (and one run by the state, not by the political parties).
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets. Sanders leads Biden by 8 points here as well, Bloomberg is third, and Hillary Clinton is favored over Buttigieg, Yang or Klobuchar (in that order).
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Steyer and Bloomberg dropped $340 million in Q4.

    Democrat presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer spent a combined $340 million in the final quarter of 2019, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data released on Friday.

    Both billionaire candidates far outspent their Democrat rivals, according to the FEC. Former New York City Mayor Bloomberg, whose campaign is almost entirely self-funded, spent more than $188 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 and ended the fundraising period with $12 million cash available.

    Steyer, a California businessman, spent approximately $153 million in the fourth quarter and ended it with $5.4 million cash available.

    The figures from the FEC show that both billionaire Democrats spent more money on their campaigns than the top four Democrat contenders combined.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spent slightly over $50 million in the fourth quarter, while former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg spent $34 million.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spent $33.7 million while former Vice President Joe Biden spent more than $23.3 million during the fourth quarter.

  • The DNC hates Sanders so much they’re actually talking about changing the rules back so superdelegates can screw him:

    A small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a brokered convention.

    In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

    “I do believe we should re-open the rules. I hear it from others as well,” one DNC member said in a text message last week to William Owen, a DNC member from Tennessee who does not support re-opening the rules.

    Owen, who declined to identify the member, said the member added in a text that “It would be hard though. We could force a meeting or on the floor.”

    Even proponents of the change acknowledge it is all but certain not to gain enough support to move past these initial conversations. But the talks reveal the extent of angst that many establishment Democrats are feeling on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

    Sanders is surging and Joe Biden has maintained his lead nationally, but at least three other candidates are widely seen as viable. The cluster raises the specter of a convention requiring a second ballot.

    If Sanders wins the Iowa caucuses on Monday and continues to gain momentum, it is possible he could arrive at the convention with the most delegates — but without enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. It is also possible that he and Elizabeth Warren, a fellow progressive, could arrive at the convention in second and third place, but with more delegates combined than the frontrunner.

    If, on the second ballot, superdelegates were to throw their support to someone else, tipping the scales, many moderate Democrats fear the upheaval that would cause could weaken the eventual nominee.

  • Democratic insiders enter the Danger Panic Zone over Sanders. “Democrats have valid reasons to be concerned. Bernie Sanders may play well to the Ocasio-Cortez wing of their party. Still, it’s hard to picture voters abandoning the booming Trump economy for the radical changes Bernie is proposing in a general election.”
  • Michael Brendan Dougherty thinks its going to come down to Biden and Bernie:

    I’d bet on the field to narrow to these two for two reasons.

    First, there’s a tendency for the top-polling candidates going into Iowa to overperform in the final results, because the caucusing process ultimately forces supporters of low-performing candidates to cast their votes for stronger ones. Second, the possibility of Bernie’s winning may drive a stampede toward Biden or vice versa.

    The emergence of a head-to-head race between Biden and Sanders would immediately clarify the choices for Democrats.

    One septuagenarian — Sanders — has recently suffered a heart attack. The other septuagenarian — Biden — frequently seems to have senior moments in the middle of his sentences. A race between these two could eliminate age as a relevant dynamic, leaving clear questions of electability and ideology on the table.

    And what then? On one side there is Biden, the more moderate Democrat who scares nobody by design — he’s framed his entire campaign as a return to normalcy — but doesn’t excite progressive activists. On the other side there is Sanders, whose has argued in recent debates that he is electable because he has the backing of a large, young, grassroots movement whose enthusiasm will become contagious. The viability of one could drive the viability of the other.

    After many pointless hours debating the ins and outs of Platonic health-care reforms that will never be implemented and many pointless minutes worrying about personality, a Biden–Sanders clash would focus the race on the only questions that really matter to Democrats: Should the party move to the left or to the center?

  • How should other candidate stop Bernie? I don’t know, maybe by actually attacking him? Too bad none of them have tried that.

    Still, there is reason to believe that an attack on Sanders’ resistance to math would contain his rise. The Democratic Party has plenty of moderates who get nervous about overpromising and overreaching. Even Sanders’ best national poll, a 3-point lead within the margin of error in a CNN survey last week, shows the combined support of him and Warren to be 3 points less than the combined support of the four leading moderates: Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg. If Sanders can be shown to be unwilling to grapple with the finer points of policymaking, that would likely hamper his ability to forge a coalition beyond his initial democratic-socialist base, which would in turn prevent him from securing the nomination.

    But a bigger shadow lurks over the Democratic field: the ghost of the Republican presidential campaign of 2016, when the candidates (like Jeb Bush) who attacked the outsider with the intense fan base lived to regret it. If you attack Sanders, and his democratic socialist platform, as mathematically challenged, you are not just attacking Sanders. You are attacking democratic socialism itself. And if you’re in a party with a young wave of democratic socialists as its newest and most unpredictable force, you risk disaster.

    No one can say with certainty how many Sanders supporters would abandon the Democratic nominee if he lost the nomination. But we do know that his supporters are, on average, less loyal to the Democratic Party than voters who prefer other candidates. The Economist’s data guru G. Elliott Morris reported, based on two months of his operation’s polling toward the end of last year, that 87 percent of Sanders supporters would stick with the Democrats if he wasn’t the nominee. That’s a lot, but more than 90 percent of Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren supporters said they would vote for the Democrats this fall, no matter what. And just a few percentage points, if even that, could decide the presidency.

  • A look at why the frontrunners aren’t attacking others in their “lane”:

    The relative tameness of this year’s race also stems from the candidates’ overlapping set of assumptions about how the primary will play out after Iowa. Biden’s camp is convinced that if the former vice president can’t win Iowa—and they are not sure he can if turnout is high—a Sanders win would be the best outcome for him. The reason, according to interviews with top Biden advisers, is that they believe Sanders has a ceiling on his support that will impede his ability to clinch the nomination. They believe that a victory for Warren, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar would pose a greater threat—a win for the latter two would also represent a meteor strike on the moderate voters Biden is relying upon.

    The trio of Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are lagging behind Sanders and Biden, but they are betting that Iowa and the New Hampshire primary after that will not winnow the field as quickly as in the past. Instead, all three campaigns generally believe that the heightened media attention on the race, and the rise of online fundraising, will allow them to survive regardless of whether they win, or even finish in the top tier, in the first two states. “The idea that this is going to fit into the same mold as every other campaign you have covered in the past … is inaccurate,” Michael Halle, a senior adviser for Buttigieg told reporters this weekend.

    But Iowa’s stakes may be higher than the candidates’ cautious strategy would seem to indicate. [Jeff] Link is one of several Democratic strategists who thinks that all of the campaigns are underestimating how powerfully the Iowa results may reshape the rest of the race. He believes the risks for the others are especially great if Sanders wins, because a victory here would likely further turbocharge the senator’s fundraising operation, which is already swamping those of his rivals. “There’s a kind of lack of urgency between Warren and Biden and Buttigieg and Klobuchar,” Link said. “Anyone who thinks it’s okay to let Sanders win anything is miscalculating.”

  • More on the fear of a Bernie Planet:

  • Dan “Baseball Crank” McLaughlin looks at the Democratic primary calendar:

    Barring a last-minute surge in Iowa by Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesotan who has banked her whole campaign on her neighboring state, this is a four-horse race that increasingly looks like it could quickly become a two-horse race between Biden and Bernie Sanders. But funny things can happen at the last minute in Iowa. The most stunning late surge was in the 2012 Republican caucus, when Rick Santorum won after being in sixth place and single digits in the polling averages as late as a week before the vote.

    In December 1975, a month before Jimmy Carter won the Iowa caucus with 27 percent of the vote, a nationwide Gallup poll showed Hubert Humphrey in first place at 30 percent, George Wallace at 20 percent, Henry “Scoop” Jackson at 10 percent, and Birch Bayh at 5 percent. Some 29 percent of Democrats said they would back Ted Kennedy if he ran. Carter wasn’t even on the radar. Carter was in better shape in the Des Moines Register’s Iowa polling, but his victory still totally overturned the race. National poll leaders in January lost the Democratic nomination in 2008, 2004, 1992, 1988, and 1972. Polling has gotten more sophisticated since then, but large fields and sequential primaries make it a lot less reliable than general-election polling.

    Iowa is particularly unsettled in this year’s Democratic race because of the way the 15 percent threshold interacts with the caucus process. Unlike the 2016 Republican race, and even many past Democratic primaries, there are no winner-take-all Democratic primaries this year. Various states have different ways of dividing up delegates — some statewide, some on a district-by-district basis — but many have a 15 percent or similar threshold that prevents minor candidates from gathering any delegates. And Iowa’s caucus rules have a particular wrinkle: In each individual polling place, after the original votes are counted, all the candidates below 15 percent are eliminated and their supporters must switch to one of the remaining candidates (or band together to make one of the under-15% candidates viable) if they want their votes counted. That means that even a candidate who wins the statewide popular vote may be effectively wiped off the ballot in some polling stations. Second choices could decide Iowa.

    Go over and read it for a long, detailed, and hard-to-summarize breakdown of the race. “After South Carolina, the calendar and the map are new, and they could make this race less predictable than in years past. Buckle up.”

  • It’s going to be hard for Democrats to win the White House without Pennsylvania, so maybe they shouldn’t have promised to put hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians out of work with a fracking ban.
  • A look at how the race got where it is today:

    Take your mind back there. Miami. June 2019. Two nights, 20 candidates. A portrait of the Democratic Party in miniature assembled onstage, mics on, ready to debate.

    They are U.S. senators and House members, governors and a mayor, a refreshingly human economic futurist and a self-help guru best known as Oprah’s spiritual adviser. They are young and old, black and white and Asian and brown, wealthy and in debt, gay and straight, war veterans, hailing from all parts of the country. They are, as Democratic chairman Tom Perez proudly points out, “the most diverse field in our nation’s history.”

    Feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

    There was a sense of possibility and optimism on that stage. Fast forward six months. The leading Democratic candidates are all white. Three are men, and three are older than 70. Meanwhile two old white billionaires are buying their way into contention by spending hundreds of millions of their personal fortunes. At this point four years ago, the top candidates for the Republican nomination were more diverse than the Democratic frontrunners today. Many politicians hailed as the Future of The Party — Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto O’Rourke — are gone, exiting the race before a single vote was cast.

    Reasons: Trump is inside their heads driving them crazy, the DNC rules ostensibly designed to make the contest fairer backfired spectacularly, and the press sucks. Left out is the fact that all the dropped out candidates sucked to various degrees as well…

  • President Trump slams Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Sanders at Iowa rally. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • 538 does a district by district breakdown in Iowa.
  • Behold the totally fair and in-no-way-biased coverage of the Warren-and-Klobuchar-endorsing New York Times:

  • Unverified rumor thus far:

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Still all in on New Hampshire. So we have to wait until at least February 11 to bid goodbye to him.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s betting on Catholics in Iowa. How many of those haven’t been completed alienated by the Democratic Party by now? Amalgamated Transit Union backs Biden, after backing Bernie in 2016. Just how much muscle organized labor still has left remains to be seen. Sanders supporters arrested for trespassing at Biden’s Iowa HQ. (Hat tip: TheDonald.win, which appears to be where the Reddit group went after they got siloed in the isolation tank.) Score this one for Joe:

    Panders to Obama voters by suggesting Michelle as veep pick. Hunter Biden magnanimously agrees to actually heed a judge’s order and pay child support. Now enjoy some scurrilous, unfounded gossip that’s still completely hilarious:

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bloomberg dropped $200,114,049.18 on his own campaign. The DNC changed the debate rules to make it easier for Moneybags Bloomberg to qualify:

    The Democratic National Committee eliminated Friday a fundraising requirement to qualify for the February debate in Las Vegas, potentially paving the way for former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to make the stage for the first time.

    Under the new criteria, candidates can meet either a delegates threshold or a polling threshold to qualify for the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas, just three days before the Nevada caucuses.

    Specifically, candidates must have been allocated at least one pledged delegate at the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary.

    Candidates can also qualify by reaching 10 percent support in at least four national polls or surveys of South Carolina and Nevada released between Jan. 15 and Feb. 18.

    Alternatively, a candidate can qualify for the debate by reaching 12 percent support in two sanctioned national or early-state surveys.

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Slipping Buttigieg under heavy pressure to finish strong in Iowa.” Yeah, if he doesn’t at least place, with his money and organizational advantages, I don’t think he has a prayer; Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg can all solider on without Top Two finishes in either Iowa or New Hampshire; Buttigieg can’t. He already has five town halls scheduled in New Hampshire. Was on This Week, along with Yang. He doesn’t think there’s any room for pro-life Democrats in the party. (Hat tip: Mike Huckabee.) Not just pandering, but really stupid and ineffective pandering:

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But why won’t she shut up? Is she angling for a veep spot? Does she not realize how much of the Democratic base actively hates her? “Hillary’s ego blinds her to the fact that nobody in either party wants to hear from her, and the fact that criticizing Bernie just reminds his supporters that the Democratic machine is out to get him.” She refused Tulsi Gabbard’s process servers. I was unaware you could even do that. Are we a nation of laws or a ruling nomenklatura?
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: Dropped Out January 31, 2020. I mean, why not wait three days until the Iowa caucuses give you an excuse to bow out anyway? Did he hit a self-imposed spending limit? Did he have no staffers left? Did the campaign office space lease agreement run out in January? Could he not book the Dubuque Pizza Hut banquet room for the “victory” party Tuesday night? This is like getting 100 yards from the end of a marathon, and then going “Yeah, screw it, I’m done.”

    In fact, most Democratic voters didn’t even know who Delaney was. In a recent average of national polls that asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the candidates, less than 40 percent of Democrats knew enough about Delaney to have an opinion of him. (This was also true of other long shot candidates like Sen. Michael Bennet and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.)

    Delaney did have millions at his disposal to self-fund his bid, which probably helped him stay in the race longer than some other also-rans, but unlike billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and billionaire activist Tom Steyer, his ample cash reserves didn’t help him make headway in the race. But like Bloomberg, he was running as a moderate candidate. In fact, Delaney’s attempt to contrast himself with the progressives in the field during the second Democratic debate in July maybe gave him his one big “moment” in the race. It ultimately didn’t help his poll numbers, but in that debate he got a lot of airtime attacking the Medicare-for-all health care plans of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, illustrating a major division between the moderate and progressive “lanes” of the Democratic Party.

    Delaney was probably the least likely of all Democratic candidates to destroy America’s economy. No wonder he never had a chance…

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. So why did CNN snub her? Other than the fact they’re total garbage? She campaigned in New Hampshire.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s on the rise in Iowa.

    A late surge for a candidate in Iowa wouldn’t be unprecedented either. Some notable past shifts include the 2004 Democratic race, in which John Kerry and John Edwards ended up capturing 38 and 32 percent of the vote, respectively, after polling at 24 and 19 percent going into the caucuses. And then, of course, there is the 2012 GOP contest, when Rick Santorum made a remarkably late push and actually won the caucuses with around 25 percent support despite polling at 13 percent going into caucus night.

    I don’t think she can win or place, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see her pick up delegates, and to do better than Warren and/or Buttigieg. She campaigned in Iowa and said she was going to campaign in New Hampshire no matter what. Doesn’t think Sanders should lead the ticket. (Hat tip: CutJibNews on Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Focusing on New Hampshire and South Carolina. Lasting longer than Cory Booker is no achievement if you can’t best his 3%…
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bernie’s brand is left but not woke:

    Sanders is a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot. Class relations are foundational; everything else is epiphenomenal. Sanders may have outgrown the revolutionary socialism of his youth. He seems to think in terms of ameliorating bourgeois hegemony rather than overthrowing it. He is not necessarily hostile to transgender claims. He has co-sponsored the current version of the Equality Act, which includes transgender people in the classes to be provided equal public accommodation and to be protected from job discrimination. But Sanders certainly does seem to think that such concerns are secondary. Compare and contrast the answers that he and Elizabeth Warren gave at the December 19 Democratic debate in Los Angeles.

    Yamiche Alcindor of PBS asked:

    Senator Sanders, at least 22 transgender people were killed in the United States this year, [most] of them transgender women of color. Each of you has said you would push for the passage of the Equality Act, a comprehensive LGBTQ civil-rights bill. But if elected, what more would you do to stop violence against transgender people?

    Sanders’s answer quickly pivoted away from the cultural to the material.

    We need moral leadership in the White House. We need a president who will do everything humanly possible to end all forms of discrimination against the transgender community, against the African American community, against the Latino community, and against all minorities in this country.

    But above and beyond providing the moral leadership of trying to bring our people together, what we also need for the transgender community is to make sure that health care is available to every person in this country, regardless of their sexual orientation or their needs.

    And that is why I strongly support and have helped lead the effort for a Medicare for All single-payer program, which will provide comprehensive health care to all people, including, certainly, the transgender community.

    The question went next to Warren. She plunged directly into the question of identity.

    The transgender community has been marginalized in every way possible. And one thing that the president of the United States can do is lift up attention, lift up their voices, lift up their lives.

    Here’s a promise I make. I will go to the Rose Garden once every year to read the names of transgender women, of people of color, who have been killed in the past year. I will make sure that we read their names so that as a nation we are forced to address the particular vulnerability on homelessness. I will change the rules now that put people in prison based on their birth sex identification rather than their current identification. I will do everything I can to make sure that we are an America that leaves no one behind.

    Sanders checked a box of support for the identity issue, then returned to regular programming. For Warren, the identity issue was the regular programming.

    Bernie Sanders is a fragile candidate. He has never fought a race in which he had to face serious personal scrutiny. None of his Democratic rivals is subjecting him to such scrutiny in 2020. Hillary Clinton refrained from scrutinizing Sanders in 2016. It did not happen, either, in his many races in Vermont. A Politico profile in 2015 by Michael Kruse argued that Sanders had benefited from “an unwritten compact between Sanders, his supporters, and local reporters who have steered clear” of writing about Sanders’s personal history “rather than risk lectures about the twisted priorities of the press.”

    The Trump campaign will not steer clear. It will hit him with everything it’s got. It will depict him as a Communist in the grip of twisted sexual fantasies, a useless career politician who oversaw a culture of sexual harassment in his 2016 campaign. Through 2019, Donald Trump and his proxies hailed Sanders as a true voice of the people, thwarted by the evil machinations of the Hillary Clinton machine. They will not pause for a minute before pivoting in 2020 to attack him as a seething stew of toxic masculinity whose vicious online followers martyred the Democratic Party’s first female presidential nominee.

    “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Hillary Clinton says in a forthcoming documentary. She stood by those words in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last week. At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this past weekend, Clinton told Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, that Sanders—alone among the Democratic aspirants in 2020—had refused to meet with her. If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, you will hear Clinton’s negative assessment of him repeated so often by pro-Trump talkers that you will almost think Clinton is Trump’s running mate.

    Trump will terrorize the suburban moderates with the threat that Sanders will confiscate their health insurance and stock holdings, if not their homes. Trump accused Democrats of pro-ayatollah sympathies for noticing that his story about the killing of Qassem Soleimani was full of holes. [Should have put a “David Frum Warning” beforehand. -LP] In 1980, Sanders joined a left-wing party whose presidential candidate condemned “anti-Iranian hysteria around the U.S. hostages” being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, suggesting that “many of them are simply spies … or people assigned to protect the spies,” as Ronald Radosh reported in The Daily Beast. Imagine what Trump and his team will do with that.

    The members of the team around Sanders are experts in Democratic Party factional infighting. Few have dealt with people who do not play by the rules of the mainstream Democratic Party. They have always been the rule breakers, the people who got inside the other team’s decision cycle. They have been the Minutemen fighting the Redcoats, picking off the other side’s regulars from behind trees and fences. Now they are about to experience what happens when a militia faces off on an open field against a ruthless modern army with cluster bombs and napalm. They will be shredded and torched.

    Bernie’s human shield of Millennials:

    A specter is haunting centrist Democrats — the specter of a Bernie Sanders nomination. As the democratic socialist has taken the lead in Iowa and New Hampshire, and narrowed Joe Biden’s advantage in national polls, the high clerics of Clintonism have begun calling for a (political) counterrevolution.

    “People need to start taking Bernie pretty seriously — there is a really substantial risk of him becoming unstoppable if he wins these early states by large numbers,” Matt Bennett, vice-president of the centrist think tank Third Way, told the Washington Post this week. Bennett went on to chastise his fellow moderates for getting anxious instead of organized, lamenting, “It’s not like our phone is ringing from people saying, ‘Let’s do something.’ ”

    Third Way has been flooding influential Iowa Democrats’ in-boxes with memos on Sanders’s general-election liabilities and seeding similar stories in the mainstream press. Meanwhile, the Democratic Majority for Israel super-PAC is warning Iowans that a vote for a septuagenarian socialist with a heart condition is, in effect, a vote for four more years of President Trump. But a broad-based, deep-pocketed “Anyone But Sanders” push has yet to take shape. Allies of Michael Bloomberg have indicated that the billionaire’s burgeoning campaign will transform itself into such an entity, if necessary. If Biden suffers damage in the early states, the last thing he’ll need is for Bloomberg, an alternative anti-left candidate, to ramp up his (already gargantuan) ad spending, and likely eat into Uncle Joe’s margins on Super Tuesday. But by the time Iowa and New Hampshire are in the books, it may already be too late

    Snip.

    Even if one accepts Third Way’s memo as gospel, the hazards of mounting a massive “Anyone But Sanders” campaign still outweigh the benefits.

    The reason for this is simple: Democrats will need high turnout among young, left-leaning voters in November, and Bernie Sanders is overwhelmingly popular with such voters.

    The age gap between the support bases of the two leading Democratic candidates is unprecedented in scale. According to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Bernie Sanders boasts the support of 53 percent of Democratic voters under 35 nationwide, while Joe Biden lays claim to just 3 percent. That poll’s margin of error is 3.4 percentage points — which means that the percentage of younger voters who support the Democratic Party’s current front-runner could, technically, round down to zero. In other national surveys, age polarization among Democratic primary voters tends to be a bit less severe. But in virtually all of them, Biden’s support among the young is historically low for a front-running candidate, while Sanders’s popularity with the contingent is exceptionally high.

    It will be hard enough for Biden to mobilize younger voters after beating Sanders in a relatively friendly primary fight, free of conspicuous interference from Establishment forces. If Uncle Joe has to win millennial and Gen-Z hearts and minds — after riding to the nomination on the back of a wall-to-wall anti-Bernie ad blitz from Third Way and friends — his task may be impossible. Although Sanders’s 2016 backers did not sit out (or defect) during the general election in aberrantly high numbers, the age gap between Biden and Bernie backers this year is even larger than the one that prevailed between Clinton and the Vermont senator four years ago. One recent Emerson College poll found that only 53 percent of Sanders’s current supporters plan to vote for the Democratic nominee in November, no matter who that person turns out to be.

    Eh, I don’t find this argument entirely persuasive. Young voters are notoriously bad at actually showing up at the polls. What they gain in youth votes they lose in the “not voting for crazy socialists” vote. Besides, we should realize that the DNC was going to go all in to screw Bernie no matter what anyway… (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Would Trump-Sanders 2020 be a replay of Nixon McGovern 1972?

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Steyer raised $156,640,495.93 in Q4, though only a million of that came from other people. He’s up to third in South Carolina, which speaks to the power of money. He’s so horrible a candidate that buying his way into vague contention is an actual achievement…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren’s tranny pander is pure cringe. Even Bill Maher slammed her for it. Shoe0nHead slams Warren the snake. (Shoe used to stan for Tulsi, but now stans for Bernie.) Ted Cruz said her impeachment shenanigans helped insure President Trumps’ acquittal.

    Ms. Warren’s question during Thursday’s session sought to impugn the credibility of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. by saying his credibility was on the line in the impeachment trial.

    Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican, said the question seemed desired to boost Ms. Warren’s struggling presidential campaign, but its immediate effect was to irk key GOP senators who realized Democrat’s‘ strategy to prolong the trial was centered on trying to drag the chief justice ever deeper into the action.

    “Elizabeth Warren helped defeat the impeachment of the president of the United States,” Mr. Cruz said late Friday on a new episode of his podcast “The Verdict.”

    “That stunt helped deliver the votes of Lisa and Lamar.”

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Transcript of an Andrew Yang speech in Iowa. There are actual interesting nuggets of truth in here.

    So I went to our leaders in D.C. and I asked them, “What are we going to do to help our people manage this time – this transition?” And what do you think the folks in D.C. said to me when I said, “What are we going to do?” The three big responses I got from the folks in D.C. were these: No. 1: “We cannot talk about this”; No. 2: “We should study this further”; and No. 3: “We must educate and retrain all Americans for the jobs of the future.” How many of you have ever heard something like that?

    But I’m a numbers guy and I looked at the studies. So I said to the folks who said we’re going to educate and retrain everyone, I said: “Hey, do you want to know what the effectiveness rate of government-funded retraining programs were for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs?”

    You all want to guess what those effectiveness rates were? So, I’m anchoring you very low, so you know it’s low, but you also know it’s low because you’re human beings and you know what other human beings are like, and if you had 1,000 manufacturing workers walk out of the factory that closed, they don’t all say, “Alright, I’m ready for my coding skills training.” And they don’t go in being like, “Oh, this is what I wanted to do the whole time!” And six weeks later they aren’t being like, “Time to get hired by I.B.M.” I mean, we know that’s ridiculous.

    The real-life success rates of those government-funded retraining programs were between 0 and 15 percent. Almost half of the workers who lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry in the Midwest never worked again. We then saw surges in suicides and drug overdoses in those communities because half of them filed for disability and they did not find new work. When I said this to the folks in D.C., they said, “Well I guess we’ll get better at the retraining programs then.” And then they went back to their lunch.

    Watching Yang tour Iowa.

    The centerpiece of Andrew Yang’s final push in Iowa is a 17-day-bus tour: Bouncing around rural Iowa, hitting three to five towns a day, instilling the fear of automation and the hope of a large monthly check from the government in would-be caucus-goers.

    The route of the tour is an indication of the campaign’s strategy to try to nibble around the edges, popping up in areas that aren’t as delegate-rich but that other candidates aren’t paying as close attention to. The expectations for Yang are so low, his advisers know, that he just needs to surprise.

    Meat of piece snipped. Near the end:

    Publicly, Yang tells Iowans he’s ready to “win in Iowa,” but behind the scenes his campaign is under no illusions. They feel confident their rural strategy can yield a fifth-place finish and give them enough to move on to New Hampshire with their heads held high.

    Gets endorsed by the Lowell Sun. I don’t think newspaper endorsements move the needle, but endorsing someone outside the ostensible frontrunners is unusual. (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.) This is a pretty good get for your phone bank:

    Why Yang won’t win the nomination, and why he might be formidable if he did, in one tweet:

  • Out of the Running

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

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. But! There was actually a report floated that he was considering getting in, that he actually had to come out and deny. Maybe, like Hillary, he’s secretly hoping to be called on at a brokered convention. Even better: Why not both? CLINTON-KERRY 2020: BECAUSE WE REALLY REALLY HATE YOU
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 20, 2020

    Monday, January 20th, 2020

    Booker drops Out, Warren and Sanders feud, Steyer money-bombs his way to contention, Bennet idles at 500 milliMondales, and Patrick hits a new high of 1%. Plus a gratuitous shot at Franklin Pierce. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

    Too damn many polls this time around.

  • Fox News (South Carolina): Biden 36, Steyer 15, Sanders 14, Warren 10, Buttigieg 4, Bloomberg 2, Yang 2, Booker 2. Steyer at 15% is eye-opening. That money-bombing must really be making a difference.
  • Survey USA: Biden 32, Sanders 21, Warren 14, Buttigieg 9, Bloomberg 9, Yang 4, Steyer 3, Klobuchar 2, Gabbard 2.
  • Emerson (New Hampshire): Sanders 23, Buttigieg 18, Biden 14, Warren 14, Klobuchar 10, Yang 6, Gabbard 5, Steyer 4, Delany 1, Patrick 0, Bennet 0. Sample size of 657, which strikes me as pretty good for a state that size. That’s the highest Klobuchar has ever polled in New Hampshire.
  • Ipsos/Reuters: Sanders 20, Biden 19, Warren 12, Bloomberg 9, Buttigieg 6. Sample size of 681.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 114): Biden 27, Sanders 20, Warren 19, Buttigieg 7, Bloomberg 5, Yang 3, Klobuchar 3, Gabbard 2, Booker 2, Steyer 1.
  • Survey USA (California): Biden 30, Sanders 20 Warren 20, Buttigieg 8, Bloomberg 6, Yang 4, Steyer 4, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2. For a sample size of 535, these numbers seem suspiciously round…
  • Florida Atlantic University (Florida): Biden 41.5, Sanders 15.5, Warren 9.7, Bloomberg 6.8, Klobuchar 6.1, Yang 5.1, Booker 3.1, Steyer 2.1.
  • Marquette (Wisconsin): Biden 23, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 15, Warren 14, Yang 6, Bloomberg 6, Klobuchar 4, Booker 1, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1, Patrick 0.
  • USA Today/Suffolk (Nevada): Biden 19.4, Sanders 17.6, Warren 10.6, Buttigieg 8.2, Yang 4.4, Klobuchar 3.6, Booker 2.2, Gabbard 1.2, Delany 1.
  • PPP (North Carolina): Biden 31, Sanders 18, Warren 15, Bloomberg 8, Buttigieg 6, Yang 5, Klobuchar 3, Booker 1.
  • The Hill/Harris X: Biden 29, Sanders 19, Warren 11, Bloomberg 7, Buttigieg 4, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3.
  • Morning Consult: Biden 29, Sanders 23, Warren 14, Bloomberg 8, Buttigieg 8, Yang 5, Steyer 4, Klobuchar 3, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Bennet 1, Delaney 1, Patrick 0.
  • Monmouth (Iowa): Biden 24, Sanders 18, Buttigieg 17, Warren 15, Booker 4, Steyer 4, Yang 3, Gabbard 2. Samples size of 405.
  • Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University (New Hampshire) (page 25): Biden 26, Sanders 22, Warren 18, Buttigieg 7, Bloomberg 4, Gabbard 4, Klobuchar 2, Yang 2, Steyer 2, Booker 1. I also want to note that Franklin Pierce is one of the worst Presidents in American history, signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act with uncommon zeal…
  • PPIC (California): Sanders 27, Biden 24, Warren 23, Buttigieg 6, Klobuchar 4, Yang 3, Bloomberg 1.
  • Quinnipiac: Biden 25, Sanders 19, Warren 16, Buttigieg 8, Bloomberg 6, Yang 5, Klobuchar 4, Booker 1, Gabbard 1, Bennet 1, Steyer 1, Patrick 1. 1% for Deval Patrick! A new high!
  • IBD/TIPP: Biden 26, Warren 20, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 9, Bloomberg 7. (National sample size of 333.)
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • “The Woke Primary Is Over and Everyone Lost:”

    In the run-up to tonight’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa, the last such contest before primary voting begins, one of the big storylines is about who won’t be among the half-dozen candidates on stage.

    “This debate is so white, it’s not allowed to bring the potato salad,” cracked Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher. “The smallest, whitest one yet,” concurred Politico.

    With Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) exiting the race Monday, and both Andrew Yang and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) failing to meet the qualification thresholds, the resulting lineup is not just pale, it’s ancient—the three highest-polling of the six debaters would each be the oldest president ever sworn into office. A fourth, Tom Steyer, is a hedge fund billionaire who literally bought his way to the podium, after an entire season in which Democrats debated whether billionaires should even exist. (An even older white billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, currently sits fifth in national polls but is not bothering with early primary/caucus states.)

    So you can see why the younger, more progressive voices who punch above their weight in Democratic political discourse would be dismayed. “Bad for democracy,” pronounced Salon’s David Daley. “The system they have designed has suppressed the most loyal base of the Democratic Party,” charged Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson in The Washington Post. “Anyone with an understanding of civil rights law understands how the rules can be set up to benefit some communities. The Democratic Party should look at the impact of these rules and question the results.”

    That is certainly one theory. But I would suggest at least considering another. Cory Booker was one of five Gen X candidates (only one white male among them) who came into the race with ideologically mixed pedigrees—including not a small amount of what progressives would deride as “neoliberal” policy positions on deficits, trade, and education—but then competed with varying levels of believability on being the most woke, before eventually collapsing.

    First Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.), then Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.), Julián Castro, and now Booker all made the affirmative choice to either tack heavily left on economics or just downplay their past heresies in favor of talking up issues such as slavery reparations, Medicare for all illegal immigrants, and the racism/sexism of President Donald Trump. The abject failure of this approach is one of the greater underexplored storylines of the 2020 presidential nominating season.

    Eleven months ago, this group accounted for about one-quarter of voter support in national polls: Around 12 percent for Harris, 6 percent for O’Rourke, 5 percent for Booker, and 1 percent each for Castro and Gillibrand. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who would eventually vault herself up to near-frontrunner status, was then just a face in this crowd: 7 percent. Democrats were making similar murmurs of pride about their energetic and historically diverse field that you heard among Republicans in the first half of 2015.

    What happened next? While Warren went on a white-paper spree of policy “plans” for every economic and regulatory issue under the sun, the Gen X Five engaged in more identity-politics emoting than a campus struggle session, only with less sincerity. O’Rourke agonized publicly about his ancestors owning slaves. Harris the cop tried gruesomely to rebrand herself as a hip Jamaican pot smoker. Gillibrand spent valuable debate-stage time talking about the need to educate people about her white privilege. Booker pushed for reparations and policed Joe Biden’s language, while Castro was busy shaking his damn head that all these leftward lurches didn’t go nearly left enough.

    The late-night comedy skits wrote themselves. And by August, Warren was outpolling all five whippersnappers combined.

    It’s not that the more successful septuagenarian progressives shied away from calling Trump a racist—far from it. But voters did not have to guess about what got the northeastern senators up early every morning: It’s the economic policy, stupid. What, exactly, was Kirsten Gillibrand’s selling proposition? Why were O’Rourke and Booker (at least until the last of the latter’s debates) running away from much of the stuff that made them interesting in the first place?

    What makes their choice that much more curious is the persistent math of this race: The progressive bloc in the 2020 Democratic field has persistently lagged the centrists by about 10 percentage points. The RealClearPolitics running national averages for Biden (27.4 percent), Pete Buttigieg (7.8 percent), Bloomberg (6.2), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (3.0) (D–Minn.) combine for 44.4 percent; Sanders (18.8 percent) + Warren (16.8) + Steyer (2.2) = 37.8. Instead of using their ideological dexterity to compete against a very old-looking frontrunner for the scared-of-socialists vote, the Gen Xers chased whatever progressive crumbs hadn’t already been hoovered by two strong candidates.

  • “All the talk in the Democratic presidential race these last few days has been ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!’ But all the action says “Biden! Biden! Biden!‘”

    While the chattering classes are wetting themselves over a single poll, party bigwigs are coalescing around Biden.

    I reported to you last week that Barack Obama and his former lieutenants “worry that Sanders is crazy enough to win the Dem nomination, but too crazy to win the general election.” The only thing Team Obama doesn’t have is a plan to actually stop him.

    But maybe Nancy Pelosi does….

    By delaying this thing from December and into the kickoff of the primary season, Pelosi has sucked much of the oxygen out of the room for challengers to Biden’s frontrunner status. The rest of the establishment appears to be lining up behind Biden as well. John Kerry — about as Establishment as it gets, and an early Biden backer — just blasted Sanders for “distorting” Biden’s record on Iraq. Democratic Congressman Colin Allred just became the tenth member of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse Biden. Biden also just scored endorsements from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, and Iowa Rep. Finkenauer, whose district encompasses the kind of blue-collar voters the eventual Dem nominee will need to win back from Trump in November.

  • Indeed, Pelosi may have timed the impeachment farce to help Biden and Buttigieg and hurt Warren and Sanders…and to help keep her Speaker’s gavel by shafting the hard left.
  • Six reasons a brokered convention is more likely than you think:
    1. The superdelegates do not get to vote in the first round this year unless a candidate has a majority. Unlike 2016 when they all went to Hillary, this year they don’t vote until round 2 unless it is already decided.
    2. California is now part of Super Tuesday. In 2016, the California primary was held on June 7. This year, the survivor bias bandwagon effect will be significantly reduced and possibly eliminated.
    3. Following NH there will be two debates, and likely 4 candidates minimum at each. Currently there are six.
    4. This will likely not be a two-way races headed into Super-Tuesday. Elizabeth Warren may have little overall chance, but she does have a chance of getting 15% in many states.
    5. Progressive Split: Bernie Sanders are battling each other for the Progressives. Bernie will get most of this vote, but Warren will likely have enough money to stay in until the end if she wants.
    6. Bloomberg and Steyer may target a couple of states hard: Texas, Colorado perhaps? They may each pull 15% in a couple of them.
  • Graphical representation of Bloomberg and Steyer’s saturation money bombing campaign. Across the nation, TV station ad executives are toasting them from the behinds the wheels of their new Mercedes. (interestingly, Steyer seems to be throwing more money into cable TV ads than Bloomberg. Seems to be working in South Carolina.)
  • Nate Silver wargames the Warren-Sanders spat.

    More nuanced analyses of the Sanders-Warren conflict suggest that maintaining a nonaggression pact would be mutually beneficial because otherwise Biden could run away with the nomination. But the word “mutually” is debatable. I’d argue nonaggression toward Warren is pretty clearly in the best interest of Sanders, who was in the stronger position than Warren heading into the debate and who would probably prefer to focus on Biden. But it’s probably not beneficial to Warren. Any scenario that doesn’t involve Warren winning Iowa will leave her in a fairly rough position — and winning Iowa means beating Sanders there.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Candidates can qualify for the next Democratic debate by winning a single delegate in Iowa.
  • Lots of polling meta-analysis from 538.
  • The Downer Party.
  • DNC chair Tom Perez says they set the bar low due to diversity, and it wasn’t his fault that the Affirmative Action candidates couldn’t even clear that. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • The Warren/Sanders hatred has reached the petty controversies phase.

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. The pratfall candidate:

    Michael Bennet is polling in 10th place. He hasn’t made a debate stage since July and won’t disclose how much money he raised last quarter.

    And he can be awkward on the stump: In one 45-minute stretch at a recent town hall, Bennet swung his hands so wildly while making a point that he hit a woman in the leg, he tripped over a stool holding his water, and he nearly tangled himself in a microphone cord while trying to take off his sport coat.

    Yet a small number of New Hampshire’s voters and political elites have found themselves drawn to his message, demeanor and experience, hoping almost despite themselves that Bennet could be the ultimate dark horse primary candidate.

    Even his supporters admit there’s no clear path to winning the nomination.

    He won’t recuse himself from the impeachment farce. Enjoy a “wait, is he still running?” piece. His elevator pitch to New Hampshire. It’s really quite amazing how boring he can be in less-than-50-second doses. Either he has a cold or he naturally idles at 500 milliMondales.

  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. A good week for Biden?

    Joe Biden (almost certainly) had a better week than you did. Over the past seven days, the ramblin’ septuagenarian has seen his two top rivals for the Democratic nomination focus their fire on each other, his poll numbers in Iowa jump, his final debate before the the Hawkeye State’s caucus go off without hitch (or, at least, with no more than the normal number of hitches), and his former boss do his campaign a big favor.

    The Democratic front-runner was already doing perfectly fine last Friday. But his campaign still faced the looming threat of Tuesday night’s oratorical smackdown in Des Moines. At the last two debates, Biden’s top rivals had largely held their fire, ostensibly calculating that it was better to avoid going negative on the former vice-president if at all possible; maybe the old man would find a way to beat himself. But now, with Biden’s lead in national polls sturdy as ever — and Tuesday’s debate, his adversaries’ last, best chance to bloody him before the first ballots are cast — surely Uncle Joe was going to take some fire.

    After all, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had both previewed new, anti-Biden attack lines in the run-up to the event. The Vermont senator began sewing his many substantive critiques of Biden into a larger narrative challenging the front-runner’s electability. Warren, meanwhile, released a bankruptcy reform plan that was clearly intended to function as a jumping-off point for a searing indictment of Biden’s work on the 2005 bankruptcy reform bill — a piece of legislation that had privileged credit companies over consumers to such an egregious extent, it had radicalized a humble legal academic who had once considered herself a conservative.

    And then, Warren learned that the Sanders campaign was (somewhat gently) challenging her electability in a call script. And then CNN reported on a private conversation Sander and Warren had apparently had. And then the rest is (disputed, incredibly stupid) history. On Tuesday night, both Warren and Sanders seem to have become too preoccupied with their feud to properly execute their hits on Biden.

    How the Biden family got rich through his connections:

    Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine from the earliest days when he served as finance chair of Joe’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained quite close. After Joe joined the U.S. Senate, he would bring his brother James along on congressional delegation trips to places like Ireland, Rome and Africa.

    When Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the White House, securing invitations to such important functions as a state dinner in 2011 and the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president.

    Consider the case of HillStone International, a subsidiary of the huge construction management firm, Hill International. The president of HillStone International was Kevin Justice, who grew up in Delaware and was a longtime Biden family friend. On November 4, 2010, according to White House visitors’ logs, Justice visited the White House and met with Biden adviser Michele Smith in the Office of the Vice President.

    Less than three weeks later, HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president. James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but that did not seem to matter to HillStone. His bio on the company’s website noted his “40 years of experience dealing with principals in business, political, legal and financial circles across the nation and internationally…”

    James Biden was joining HillStone just as the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. It was part of a $35 billion, 500,000-unit project deal won by TRAC Development, a South Korean company. HillStone also received a $22 million U.S. federal government contract to manage a construction project for the State Department.

    David Richter, son of the parent company’s founder, was not shy in explaining HillStone’s success in securing government contracts. It really helps, he told investors at a private meeting, to have “the brother of the vice president as a partner,” according to someone who was there.

    The Iraq project was massive, perhaps the single most lucrative project for the firm ever. In 2012, Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business reported that HillStone officials expected the project to “generate $1.5 billion in revenues over the next three years.” That amounted to more than three times the revenue the company produced in 2011.

    A group of minority partners, including James Biden, stood to split about $735 million. “There’s plenty of money for everyone if this project goes through,” said one company official.

    The deal was all set, but HillStone made a crucial error. In 2013, the firm was forced to back out of the contract because of a series of problems, including a lack of experience by Hill and TRAC Development, its South Korean associate firm. But HillStone continued doing significant contract work in the embattled country, including a six-year contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

    James Biden remained with Hill International, which accumulated contracts from the federal government for dozens of projects, including projects in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mozambique, and elsewhere.

    Let’s snip Hunter, just because we’ve been plowing that ground the way Hunter knocks up random women.

    It would be a dream for any new company to announce their launch in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    StartUp Health is an investment consultancy based out of New York City, and in June 2011 the company barely had a website. The firm was the brainchild of three siblings from Philadelphia. Steven Krein is CEO and co-founder, while his brother, Dr. Howard Krein, serves as chief medical officer. Sister Bari serves as the firm’s chief strategy officer. A friend named Unity Stoakes is a co-founder and serves as president.

    StartUp Health was barely up and running when, in June 2011, two of the company’s executives were ushered into the Oval Office of the White House. They met with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

    The following day the new company would be featured at a large health care tech conference being run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and StartUp Health executives became regular visitors to the White House, attending events in 2011, 2014 and 2015.

    How did StartUp Health gain access to the highest levels of power in Washington? There was nothing particularly unique about the company, but for this:

    The chief medical officer of StartUp Health, Howard Krein, is married to Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, Ashley.

    “I happened to be talking to my father-in-law that day and I mentioned Steve and Unity were down there [in Washington, D.C.],” recalled Howard Krein. “He knew about StartUp Health and was a big fan of it. He asked for Steve’s number and said, ‘I have to get them up here to talk with Barack.’ The Secret Service came and got Steve and Unity and brought them to the Oval Office.”

    StartUp Health offers to provide new companies technical and relationship advice in exchange for a stake in the business. Demonstrating and highlighting the fact that you can score a meeting with the president of the United States certainly helps prove a strategic company asset: high-level contacts.

    Vice President Joe Biden continued to help Krein promote his company at several appearances through his last months in the White House, including one in January 2017, where he made a surprise showing at the StartUp Health Festival in San Francisco. The corporate event, open only to StartUp Health members, enabled the 250 people in attendance to chat in a closed session with the vice president.

    Plus info on Frank Biden and Valerie Biden Owens. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Bill Maher thinks that the impeachment farce is a threat to Biden if he and Hunter have to testify. “If this gets to a trial and they call Biden and his son, trust me, Biden and his son and Ukraine will be the bigger scandal.” This doesn’t sound like the sort of headline that will play to Biden’s base: “Joe Biden Has Advocated Cutting Social Security for 40 Years”:

    Biden has been advocating for cuts to Social Security for roughly 40 years.

    And after a Republican wave swept Congress in 1994, Biden’s support for cutting Social Security, and his general advocacy for budget austerity, made him a leading combatant in the centrist-wing battle against the party’s retreating liberals in the 1980s and ’90s.

    “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he told the Senate in 1995. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” (A freeze would have reduced the amount that would be paid out, cutting the program’s benefit.)

    While I’m personally in favor of real entitlement reform, I doubt the average Biden backer is willing to dispassionately contemplate the issue. The danger of nominating the default nominee. Biden opposes legal marijuana.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a second extension on his personal financial filing information, which means Democrats won’t get a look at them until after Super Tuesday. Had a rally at a San Antonio restaurant. All of 45 people attended. Even with Judge Judy! Never mind all that #NeverTrump talk of how moderate Bloomy is, he just pandered to the Social Justice Warrior set. Because that just worked so well for every single candidate that’s dropped out of the race so far. Speaking of pandering, he promised to throw $70 billion at poor black neighborhoods, because there’s another strategy that has such an outstanding record of success. President Donald Trump slammed Bloomberg over dissing church shooting hero Jack Wilson. Bloomberg is very upset that law-abiding citizens are allowed to remain armed. He promises to spend (Dr. Evil)Two BILLION Dollars!(/Doctor Evil) to defeat Trump. How could he possibly fail? Well, take a lot at the sort of thing his social media team is cranking out:

  • Update: New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: Dropped Out. Booker was far from the worst of the bunch, but Kimberley Strassel notes that he suffered from a common malady among them: woke politics.

    To paraphrase Santayana, Democrats who refuse to acknowledge Hillary Clinton’s failures in the 2016 election were always doomed to repeat them. Why is their primary field littered with the failed bids of woke candidates? Why is #WarrenIsASnake trending on Twitter? Because identity politics remains a political loser.

    That’s the takeaway from the rapidly narrowing Democratic field, and smart liberals warned of it after 2016. Mark Lilla, writing in the New York Times, faulted Mrs. Clinton for molding her campaign around “the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, LGBT and women voters at every stop.” Successful politics, he noted, is always rooted in visions of “shared destiny.”

    Progressives heaped scorn on Mr. Lilla—one compared him to David Duke—and doubled down on identity politics. Nearly every flashpoint in this Democratic race has centered on racism, sexism or classism. Nearly every practitioner of that factionalist strategy has exited the race.

    Mr. Lilla is surely open to apologies.

    Bonchie at RedState:

    Booker’s campaign was always doomed. He’s comparable to Julian Castro in his penchant for never finding something not worth pandering over. After initially positioning himself as a moderate much of his career, including doing some across the aisles projects as both the Mayor of New Jersey and a Senator, Booker fell into the same trap everyone not named Joe Biden has fallen into, namely selling out the majority moderate Democrat voting base to please the woke scolds. For example, Booker was for school choice before he was against it.

    He was also just not very likable. Perhaps not as much as Elizabeth Warren, but he always seemed to be straining to score points and that’s never a good look. It presents a front of desperation and Booker certainly was that most of his campaign.

    “Cory Booker Moved To Tears During Participation Trophy Acceptance Speech.”

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Been a bad month for “Mayor Pete.” His momentum stalled, his poll numbers declined, and his “all in on Iowa and New Hampshire” strategy isn’t looking like a winning bet. Plus there’s that likability problem:

    Buttigieg is still 17 months younger than Macaulay Culkin of “Home Alone” fame, an attentive reader notes. After all these years, that is a gap that shows no sign of narrowing. On the other hand, he is now a full three years older than Mozart—another prodigy, but who never served one term as mayor of South Bend, Ind., much less two—was at the time of his death.

    As early middle age inches into view, Buttigieg is welcoming a new year filled with dazzling possibilities. He’s bunched in the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. But he’s also experiencing a change in the weather that must be uncomfortable for someone who has known since early boyhood that he is very smart and that the Big People invariably find him impressive.

    The very traits that usually impress—his fluency in political language; go-getter’s résumé; intense ambition carried in the vessel of a calm, well-mannered persona— are increasingly being greeted with skepticism and even derision. Notably, this is coming from his peers.

    “Buttigieg hate is tightly concentrated among the young,” a writer at the Atlantic observed. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left,” read a headline in POLITICO Magazine. “Swing Voter Really Relates to Buttigieg’s Complete Lack of Conviction,” said a headline in The Onion. For months, the satirical site has been vicious toward him in ways that evoke the wisecracking cool kids at the back of the class mocking the preening overachiever in the front row.

    The Buttigieg backlash, by my lights, flows from origins that are less ideological than psychological. I noticed it some time ago with some—certainly not all—younger journalistic colleagues in particular. He torques them in ways that seem personal.

    They are well-acquainted with the Buttigieg type. They find his patter and polish annoying. They regard his career to date—Harvard, Oxford, McKinsey, the mayoralty—as a facile exercise in box-checking: A Portrait of the Bullshit Artist as a Young Man.

    Above all, they wonder why the artifice and calculation that seem obvious to them are somehow lost on others.

    These Buttigieg skeptics, in my experience, typically overlook another possibility: His admirers aren’t oblivious to the fact that he’s partly B.S.-ing. It just doesn’t much bother them. I’ll go a step further: Viewed in the right light, his teacher’s-pet glibness and implacable careerism are desirable traits.

    He gets interviewed by the New York Times editorial board. I don’t even like the guy, but they way they’ve interspersed links to refute his answers inside his actual answers, literally mid-sentence in some cases, strikes me as a shoddy hit piece. Want to refute him? Fine, but your reply links after his answers. But let the man speak. His campaign canceled a fundraising event at a gay bar over a stripper pole.

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? So I’m all ready to move Grandma Death down into the also-rans when word drops that a new documentary about her is coming to Hulu.

  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says socialism is a terrible idea. Gets three questions with the New York Times. “I think Democrats win when we run on real solutions, not impossible promises. When we run on things that are workable, not fairy-tale economics.” His poll standing suggests otherwise.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Calls for ending the war on drugs. Good for her. What you missed with Gabbard off the debate stage:

    1. This entire debate might go on without anyone pledging to end “failed regime-change wars,” a refrain Gabbard has popularized on the campaign trail thus far. Her saying it in every answer is a bit of a meme at this point, but it’s also of crucial importance. In a time when we have troops engaged in nearly 150 countries and have spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of lives in failed Middle East wars, it’s a message too crucial to overlook.

    2. Gabbard’s willingness to buck the party establishment and call out Democrats on their flaws will be missed. From endorsing Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016 to taking on Kamala Harris’s draconian criminal justice record, any mealy-mouthed, weak criticisms we see from the candidates will probably not come anywhere close to the truth bombs Gabbard has regularly dropped.

    Plus “The party of identity politics will feature an all-white field.”

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She gets a werid co-endorsement (along with Warren) from the New York Times; since the hard left are the only people that still read the Times any more, maybe it will have some effect on voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, but I remain skeptical. Amy sure loves her some big pharma money.(Hat tip: Instapundit.) Five take-aways from her debate appearance. (Actually, the headline is “The five moments that defined Amy Klobuchar’s Iowa debate performance,” which is horribly pretentious twaddle.) New Hampshire state rep Michael Pedersen defects from Warren to Klobuchar. (Hat tip: CutJibNews at Ace of Spades HQ.) Quad City Times backs Klobuchar after backing Sanders in 2016.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets the New York Times interview thing, at a much lower level of hostility than Buttigieg.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. The coordinated CNN/Warren attack on on Sanders backfired, making many on the left realize (possibly for the first time) what garbage our media is. (Why they didn’t learn this from the DNC and CNN coordinating to feed Hillary Clinton debate questions is a mystery.) More Democrats are worried that dastardly Sanders might actually be trying to win again by going after Biden’s weaknesses. Why can’t he have the good grace to lie down and let Biden walk over him on his way to the coronation? Sanders campaign locks down Twitter accounts and locks the doors and shuts off the lights of their field office, in the wake of Project Veritas video revelations. Vulnerable House Democrats are worried that nominating Sanders could cost them their jobs. Here’s a piece that suggests Sanders default mode is stoking outrage. Warren supporter whines that Bernie Bros are mean to him on Twitter; weirdly enough, the name “Steve Scalise” never pops up in either of those pieces…
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. The $100 million man. Gets the New York Times interview thing; hope you like endless nattering about climate change. He proposed a tax cut, to be paid for by an unconstitutional wealth tax, and by rolling back the Trump tax cuts (because it’s intolerable that they’ve been successful). Steyer’s Carolinas push has him picking up some black support there:

    Johnnie Cordero, chairman of the Democratic Black Caucus of South Carolina, and South Carolina state representative Jerry Govan, chairman of the Black Legislative Caucus, are throwing their support behind the billionaire candidate, Steyer’s campaign told The Root exclusively. The former president of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s African American Caucus, Linda Wilkins-Daniels, is also endorsing Steyer.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Everything about Warren is a lie:

    Her backstory, famously, is fake. During a time when elite universities like Harvard were under incredible pressure to hire non-white faculty to their law schools, Elizabeth Warren registered as a Cherokee. Eventually she concocted an almost-certainly-false story about anti–Native American prejudice from her father’s parents. Warren plagiarized her contribution to a book of Native American home recipes, Pow Wow Chow, from a French cookbook. Harvard bragged about its hiring of Warren and advertised her as an addition to its diversity, though reporting in recent years has attempted to obscure whether this was a help to her.

    Warren’s political persona is entirely false. She claims to be a populist, but her form of social democracy is a kind of class warfare for millionaires and affluent liberals against billionaires and the petit bourgeois entrepreneurs who vote Republican. Her student-debt and free-college plans are absolute boons to the doctors, lawyers, and academics — the affluent wage-earners — who are her chief constituency. Meanwhile, her tax reforms go after not only billionaires but the small entrepreneurs: the guys who own a car wash, or a garbage-disposal service, and tend to vote Republican. Her consumer-protection reforms have hampered and destroyed local banks, and rewarded the bad-actor mega-banks she claims daily to oppose.

    “Warren pointed out her defeat of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) in 2012 in an attempt to show she’s electable. This means she is ‘the only person who will be on the debate stage who has beaten a popular Republican incumbent Republican any time in the last 25 years.'” So her claim to beating electable is that she beat a Republican in Massachusetts in an Obama wave year. That’s like bragging that you beat your cousins at pickup basketball without mentioning that Michael Jordan was on your team. Speaking of stupid things she said, she also claimed she was the only one in the race with executive experience. “Warren Rejects Peace Pipe Offered By Sanders.” OK, I laughed:

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. How Yang would handle a recession. Want an analysis of Yang’s policies from the Washington Post editorial board? Me neither, but here it is.
  • Out of the Running

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

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin.
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020.)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
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