Rock Bottom

So many black men have died at the hands of the police that I can't comment on it anymore than to say it's wrong and it shouldn't happen, because I can't find anything more eloquent and verbose to offer than that.  But the Minneapolis case of George Floyd - which sparked a riot that led to fires in Minneapolis - requires me to comment here.  When are the police going to get it?  You dehumanize black men, you dehumanize Americans . . . and America.   

And this is all happening in the backdrop of the United States having passed the number of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths.  We've sunk to a new all-time low. 

And what is the guy in the White House Donald J. Trump, doing?  Stoking the embers of resentment, calling the demonstrators "thugs" (the arsonists were outsiders having little to do with the protests) and demanding that they be shot, hoping to tilt Minnesota into the Republican column this fall with his divisive "law and order" rhetoric,", which Nixon used in 1968, a year after the Newark riot.  (New Jersey would go Republican in a presidential election six consecutive times beginning in 1968.)

And something else happened in Minneapolis that must have warmed Trump's heart - a CNN reporter was arrested while covering the riot.  (He has since been released.)

Joe Biden is expected to address the Minnesota Democratic convention tomorrow. This could be a, if not the, defining moment of hi presidential campaign  He will have the opportunity to call for calm, reach out to black voters in a meaningful way, and show more empathy and maturity than Trump all at once - if he balances his comments right - more vividly than in his most recent TV interviews.

However, he can forget about choosing Amy Klobuchar as his running mate.  It turns out that Officer Derick Chauvin, the fired policeman in the center of the Floyd killing, had had numerous complaints against him in the early 2000s, when Klobuchar was Hennepin County attorney (Hennepin County includes Minneapolis).  Klobuchar failed to prosecute Chauvin in another incident where he shot a suspect to death.  Her vice presidential hopes just burned to the ground with those buildings.

Game Changers!

Of all the Democratic presidential candidates who might have gotten out of the 2020 campaign before or as a result of Super Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg was the least likely candidate, in my estimation, to do so.  But that's exactly what he did this past Sunday night.

Mayor Pete suspended his campaign when it became apparent that he could not win a cross-section of Democratic primary voters after having failed to get much if any traction in the South Carolina primary, where blacks are the majority of the Democratic Party.  He put party and country before his own personal ambition, choosing instead to make it easier for the moderate faction of the party to get behind someone who can win.  Buttigieg has endorsed Joe Biden.

It must be embarrassing for former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley to see all three of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates he singled out for being the future of the party fall by the wayside - first Eric Swalwell, then Beto O'Rourke, whom O'Malley supported (Beto is backing Biden now too!), and now Buttigieg, whom O'Malley backed for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017.  But Buttigieg may be the best hope for the party in 2028 and beyond.  You might want to take note that he is 38, the same age in 2020 that Franklin Roosevelt was in 1920 when he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee (Roosevelt was born in January 1882; Buttigieg was born in January 1982).  FDR did as 1920 Democratic presidential nominee James Cox's running mate what Buttigieg has already done as a presidential candidate - make connections, show loyalty to the party, run hard, and do favors to be owed for in the future.  The difference is that Roosevelt did it purely for personal ambition; he knew the party had no chance against the 1920 Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge Republican ticket.  Mayor Pete has been campaigning not just for himself but to help defeat Donald Trump, and by withdrawing, he's made it clear that he can put personal ambition aside and concentrate on the main objective the party has - to defeat Trump.  In other words, he's taking one for the team.

Mayor Pete's exit is indeed a game changer.  It will likely have an impact on today's primaries and caucuses, though it's not quite certain who will benefit.  Some people may even vote for Buttigieg anyway, because his name is on the ballot.  Every vote he does get will be an affirmation of his staying power in the party.

But wait! There's more! Amy Klobuchar also dropped out, and she too endorsed Biden.  All of a sudden, Joe Biden looks like the winner he wasn't only last week, with Michael Bloomberg the only threat to Biden's effort to dominate the center-left lane against Bernie Sanders in the progressive lane.  Bloomberg is on the ballot for the first time today in the states voting for Super Tuesday.  It remains to be seen whether he can parlay his spending into real votes.  But with the rest of the moderates in the party coalescing Biden's improbably successful campaign, it's likely to come down to a two-man race between Biden and Sanders.  Things just changed a whole lot.  

New Hampshire Fallout

Remember when I said that before the New Hampshire primary that Joe Biden would make it through?

Well, everyone seems to think that he's through.

Biden's biggest accomplishment Tuesday night was not that he finished respectably in New Hampshire (he didn't), but that, unlike in 1988 and in 2008, he made it that far.  Alas, he only got 8 percent of the vote and came in fifth overall.  I don't want to say that he's finished, although Susan Page of USA Today - who anointed Hillary Clinton "the inevitable one" - does, and I'm sorry, Madame Page, you don't get to write Joe Biden off just yet.  Not until South Carolinians vote in their primary on Leap Day, at least.

As expected, neighboring senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary, and his victory was written off by some pundits because he got only 26 percent of the vote.  Well, sure considering that he had ten opponents this time and not one.  (Now he has seven opponents; Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick withdrew, in that order.)  But what's noteworthy is that Sanders united the Democratic Party's liberal wing behind him and froze out neighboring senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been running a substance-filled, empathy-charged voter-friendly campaign.  She's Aunt Liz to Biden's Uncle Joe.   But she finished barely ahead of Uncle Joe, and she's as much in the wilderness as he is. 

The big story here is that Biden hoped to be helped by Sanders and Warren splitting the party's liberal wing, but instead, Biden, second-place finisher Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar split the so-called moderate vote, wining a majority of cotes in New Hampshire but denying the party's less radical wing the opportunity to coalesce around someone who can overcome Sanders and win a first-ballot nomination at the convention, which would ensure a united Democratic front against Trump.   Buttigieg, who split 18 of New Hampshire's 24 delegates evenly with Sanders, has the momentum to put up a fight in Nevada and beyond, while Klobuchar has the money coming in but not the organization. 

The wild card in all this is Michael Bloomberg, who is beginning to pick up black support from Biden but could find that momentum of support, thanks to newly leaked audio clip of his defense of the "stop and frisk" policy he pushed on young black men due to possibly flawed studies showing that their demographic is the most likely one to commit crimes, arrested.  Bloomberg is pushing everything he did as mayor of New York for black people as his argument for his candidacy, and he's gotten some leading black politicians, such as Brooklyn congressman Gregory Meeks and Columbia (South Carolina) mayor Steven Benjamin, in his corner.  But "stop and frisk" could still be a deal breaker for some - for white folks like Michael Moore, it already is. I'll have more on this topic later.

All of this means is that, despite the withdrawal of three presidential candidates and a winnowing of the field down to a reasonable eight, the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign seems as confused as ever at a time when it's never been more crucial for them to get more clarity.

We could be in serious trouble . . .. :-O

Girl Of the North Country

Who can turn the whole world on with her smile?

Maybe it's Amy Klobuchar, and if it is, maybe someone knows it.  And, if it is, she should know it.

As of now, the senior senator from Minnesota has a good chance to be the first female President because, first of all, she's a woman, and second of all, she's from the Upper Midwest.  She's a nice lady, and she comes across as a political Mary Richards the same way Minneapolis anchorman Rod Grams - who served one term (1995-2001) in the U.S. Senate seat Klobuchar currently holds - reminded voters of Ted Baxter.  (I'm not making that up; Grams, a conservative Republican, was a total idiot.)  Simply put, she embodies Midwestern nice.

So far, that's her biggest advantage.  On the issues, also comes across as Midwestern bland.  She supports universal health care but doesn't want to completely endorse Medicare for all, and she supports doing something about climate change but only tacitly acknowledge the Green New Deal, calling it "aspirational."  (The Green New Deal as proposed has since shown some flaws and cracks in its basic structure, and despite support for its goals, support for the program per se is soft.)  She's basically a boilerplate Democrat.

In general, I find Klobuchar to be dull but inoffensive, and when you consider the fact that Donald Trump is neither of those things, that could be an asset.  Her only pitfall is her apparent reputation for being a horrible boss to work with; her alleged penchant for running roughshod over her staff suggests that may be less like Mary Richards and more like Miranda Priestley.  But, yeah, sure, I'd vote for her.  I darn her with faint praise, yes, but as always, I haven't found anyone I can get behind unreservedly.  I didn't expect Klobuchar to be the one any more than I expected Beto O'Rourke to be - I'm still underwhelmed by him, though not as much as I'm underwhelmed by John Delaney.  As for Klobuchar, who knows?  She may make it after all.

And she sure knows how to handle the snow.