A Tale of Two Ex-Candidates

Bernie Sanders has been putting his money where his mouth is.  After withdrawing as a presidential candidate form the Democratic primaries,  Sanders has sent out a fundraising letter for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), an organization he did not have a good relationship with back in 2016.  But with Hillary Clinton gone and a different chairman running the DNC this time, Sanders should be more comfortable doing the DNC's bidding.  And he's happy to do it; he's helping his friend Joe Biden in his presidential bid, and he's doing it also to stop Donald Trump. 

"My campaign for president may be over, but our struggle continues," Sanders' letter says.  "That struggle begins with defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history, but it does not end there. I will also be doing everything in my power to elect strong progressives at every level of government.  That is why I am about to ask you to join me by making a donation to the Democratic Unity Fund today."

Sanders is doing this to urge his supporters to vote for Biden, which, despite all the grumblings from Bernie bros, should be easier to do than get them to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  He's made good on his promise of supporting the eventual nominee, an he's stepping up to the plate.

Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg, who gave a one-time donation of $18 million to the DNC and also gave the Democrats offices from his now-defunct campaign in states that Trump won in 2016, is turning his attention to the coronavirus. He is donating $10 million to help New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to not only test more people for the virus but also pursue contact tracing so the three states can trace the virus back to original carriers and try to get everything under control so more places in the three states should open.  He should be doing this in all fifty states . . . no, he shouldn't, because the federal government should be doing that.  On the other hand, if Bloomberg pays for contact tracing for the whole country, that would, in a de facto sense, make him President a job he wanted, while Trump continues to dither.  

Bloomberg may still have plans to help Joe Biden in the coming fall campaign that he hasn't publicized yet, and he is rumored to be planning to share information with the Biden campaign.  We'll see about that.

What a Difference a Week Makes

I didn't want to comment on the Super Tuesday Democratic presidential vote until now because, not only did I have a lot of other things I wanted to get off my plate, I wanted to wait and see how the results of Tuesday's voting would unfold.  

And after four days, I never thought it would unfold like this!

A week and change ago, Joe Biden was looking at either a possible loss or merely a narrow win in the South Carolina primary, and when he got the big win he needed, pundits - oh, those silly pundits! - doubted that he wouldn't get a bounce quickly enough to fare well in the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses just three days after.  When the dust settled, four of his opponents said farewell to the campaign and withdrew as candidates, all but one of them backing Biden.  And while Bernie Sanders is still in the campaign, the polls and the trends indicate that running against Biden will not be as easy for him as running against Hillary Clinton in 2016.  

For one thing, Sanders has to persuade voters why his massive spending proposals make sense at a time when the deficit is skyrocketing and he has no foundation to build them on, thanks to Trump's dismantling of the Obama legacy.  Also, a lot of people who voted for Sanders didn't so much vote for him as vote against Hillary Clinton.  Biden is likely to get more votes simply because more people like him.  Another thing is that Sanders has a problem getting more people to back him.  He should have spent the past several weeks expanding his base and giving skeptical centrist voters reasons to follow him instead of Biden, but he apparently couldn't think of any.  His supporters, though, did give people tons of reasons not to vote for Joe Biden.  Bernie may not have enough people willing to vote for him just because they dislike Biden as passionately as his base does, but for anyone who doesn't like either one of them, there's always Tulsi Gabbard. :-D 

Unless you give Sanders points for being Jewish, Tulsi Gabbard is the last example of diversity in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign. She's a woman, she's a Hindu, and she's part Samoan.  But she has no chance of wining the nomination and everyone in America knows it.  She's made too many controversial foreign-policy statements, and her domestic-policy positions seem redundant in light of Sanders' campaign.  The departure of Elizabeth Warren has led women to bemoan the failure of any of the female Democratic candidates to become the party's nominee and lament that the United States won't have a female President in 2021.  Some have have blamed misogyny for the failure of the female candidates' campaigns in this cycle.  

Ladies?  At the risk of sounding like I'm "mansplaining" here, let's review.  It's not Amy Klobuchar's fault or Elizabeth Warren's fault that they won't be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.  Klobuchar got a lot of momentum, but her failure to capitalize on it had less to do with her campaign abilities than a lamebrained primary/caucus calendar that constrained her.  Neither she nor Warren had the support in South Carolina they needed to go forward.  Warren, the only female candidate to make it to Super Tuesday, only competed in eighteen states.  She might have been a contender at the convention or even won enough delegates for a majority beforehand if the other thirty-two states got to weigh in in a national primary.    I would have voted for either Klobuchar or Warren in November if one of them been nominated.  Despite the underlying fear of a repeat of 2016 - a female presidential nominee losing to Trump - we have to remember that Hillary Clinton was a more polarizing figure than either Klobuchar or Warren, yet she won the popular vote.  Warren would have been a perfect candidate to take on Trump.  Look what she did to Michael Bloomberg.

And that was the really big surprise of the past week.  Bloomberg had the money and the organization, but, as pundits didn't quite figure out until he got out, he didn't have the love and the devotion from voters. Heck, even Martin O'Malley in 2016 had all that!  Bloomberg based his campaign on the idea that the center-left wing of the Democratic Party would abandon Biden, and he calculated that he could fill the gap.  It was all calculation and no passion.  Good grief, people were taking paying jobs with his campaign and actually spent their free time canvassing for someone else, as reported in both the liberal magazine The Nation and the conservative National Review.  But, if you counted the number of Bloomberg supporters who volunteered their own time to the campaign, you'd likely have been disappointed.  

Warren may have gone, but she took Bloomberg down with her in the debates.  But she also did Biden a favor.  Now Mike is ready to help Joe win the White House and defeat Donald Trump by pulling out his wallet and spending lots of money on Biden's behalf.  And that may be Bloomberg's greatest achievement.

And now that the dust has settled, so have I.  Until next time . . . 

Biden His Time Again

I gotta tell ya, I thought Joe Biden was left for dead on the side of the road to the White House, and I was actually looking very hard at Michael Bloomberg for awhile, but the former Vice President seems to be picking up momentum at just the time he needs it.

South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, the highest-ranking black member of the House of Representatives, endorsed Biden publicly yesterday, and after struggling in the polls against Bernie Sanders and the insufferable Tom Steyer in the Palmetto State, Biden found himself leading in the South Carolina primary in a new Clemson University poll by eighteen points.  Despite a few gaffes in Tuesday's debate that could only be called Bidenesque - he grossly overstated the number of Americans killed since 2007 as a result of gun violence by tens of millions - he came across as confident, knowledgeable, and strong.  He demonstrated the indignation and outrage against the Trump administration that led him to campaign for the Presidency in 2020 in the first place.  If he wins big in South Carolina that could change everything about the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign.  If he loses big in South Carolina, that too could change everything about the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign.

Bloomberg did better in the debate, and he regained some of his footing in my opinion, but his mere existence continues to irk Elizabeth Warren and distracts from some of the more shocking statements made about Fidel Castro and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas coming from Bernie Sanders.  Sanders is proving to be something of a loose cannon that could fire a volley into the Democrats' own chances of winning the Presidency in November, and either Biden or Bloomberg will likely be in a better than position going against Sanders than Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar after Super Tuesday on March 3 depending on what happens on this rare Leap Day primary in South Carolina.  After seeing this debate, I feel a little better about the Democrats' chances of unseating Trump.

Until I see that the the Republican National Committee has twenty dollars for every one dollar the Democratic National Committee has.  That's where Bloomberg's money will come in handy, whether he's the party's presidential nominee of not.         

Viva Las Vegas?

Well - that was a shock!

Bernie Sanders won nearly half of the vote in the Nevada caucuses.  The good news for Joe Biden was that he came in second.  The bad news is that he came in a very distant second.  It was like when an American yacht won what became the America's Cup for the first time in 1851, and Queen Victoria, watching at the finish line, asked who was second, with someone telling her, "Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second."

Sanders won fair and square, forging a multi-racial and multi-generational coalition that showed greater strength than pundits previously realized.  He has proven that, despite his controversial policy proposals, he is more than willing and able to take on Donald Trump in November.  Maybe.

It's not over yet.  Michael Bloomberg may have stumbled badly in his first debate, but he has another chance tomorrow in the CBS debate ahead of the South Carolina primary on February 29, and he isn't even on the ballot until Super Tuesday on March 3.  Also, Biden could jump-start his faltering campaign with a decisive win in South Carolina, which is still possible.

(One thing that is not possible: Elizabeth Warren regaining her favorite-aunt image.  I noted that in the debate last week, she came across as the nasty aunt who says your model train set is a piece of junk and then says she's kidding - a real-life moment of mine by the way - but since she started making fun of Bloomberg's height, she comes across as something worse than a nasty aunt.  She's now like a mother-in-law.)   

One caveat to those who want to stop Sanders; the opera may not be over, but the fat lady is warming up.  I still have my doubts about Sanders as the Democratic nominee, but I have a lot of friends who think he can win.  At this point, I have only one thing to say in response to that and I'll say it again and again and again until November if Sanders wins the Democratic presidential nomination:

You'd better be right about this! 

Rolling Craps?

The bruising bloodbath that was the 2020 Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas this past Wednesday night may have helped Donald Trump more than any of the Democratic candidates, though, thanks to a few bright moments here and there - none of which involved Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar - I'm not quite ready to build my Kon-Tiki raft and set sail for Europe just yet.

The biggest winner of the debate was probably Bernie Sanders, who won by not losing.  He basically held his own and didn't make any poll-changing mistakes.  But among Democrats - Bernie Sanders is an independent - I would have to say that Joe Biden was the big winner, if only because he was poised, confident, and articulate - three qualities he hasn't been known for in this election cycle.  Also, he gave a shout-out to passenger rail.  What other candidate does that? 

And Elizabeth Warren?  Warren is believed to have won the night for a fiery performance fueled by righteous indignation against Michael Bloomberg, but the quality that always made her so endearing was missing.  Even at her most assertive in previous debates, Warren always came across as the favorite aunt who always bakes chocolate cake for family gatherings because she knows you like it; this past Wednesday night, she was more like the nasty aunt who says that your model train set is a piece of junk and then says she was only kidding.  Except that Aunt Liz wasn't kidding; she really laid into Bloomberg for his "stop and frisk" policy as mayor of New York City and went after him hard over reports of misogynistic practices at his company.  She wanted to prove how she could go hard against Trump, and she turned Bloomberg into a Trump stand-in.

Which brings me to the biggest loser of the night, Michael Bloomberg.  Being the target of withering attacks doesn't make you a martyr, especially when you come to a political debate expecting a policy discussion and find yourself at a shouting match.  And Bloomberg's record has demonstrated that he has a lot of baggage to shout about.  The millions of dollars he spent in carefully crafting an image of a benevolent CEO in his TV ads went down the drain, and he went from being a messiah to being a pariah as he demonstrated his inability to defend himself verbally when the moment isn't scripted.  He knew as soon as Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez changed the rules for qualifying for the debates, which was awhile ago, that he might qualify for this one.  He had ample time to prepare for the debate and knew what to expect; this was the best performance he could come up with?

To be fair, it was Bloomberg's first political debate in over a decade, and there's always next time, right?  Getting it right the second time may not be as good as the first time, but at least Bloomberg knows what not to do should he participate in the next debate on February 25.

But, the Democrat who made out the best wasn't on the stage.  He isn't even running for President.  He's practicing law in Baltimore and promoting a book on online media.

As far as I'm concerned, Martin O'Malley is the big winner because Democrats are left thinking about what could have been, if only they'd listened to those of us who were ready to rally for O'Malley.

All derogatory comments about the former Maryland governor will be deleted.

Gambling On Nevada

Joe Biden is gambling on Nevada to turn around his struggling presidential campaign.  Bernie Sanders is gambling on Nevada to propel him to true front-runner status.  And the Democratic National Committee is still gambling on Nevada to, unlike Iowa, get its caucuses right.

Yeah, about that . . .

Nevada has been having early voting in its caucuses, which is sort of contradictory to how a caucus system works - you have to go to a meeting and stick around for a few hours, with, I assume, refreshments provided.  There's been a lot of enthusiasm in the early voting, but it's led to a problem with how the votes are going to be tabulated district by district when the actual caucus meetings are held this coming Saturday.  The system that caucus organizers have to sort everything out may need some sorting out itself, and the process, while different from Iowa's, could be just as messy if not worse.  We might not know who comes in second in Nevada - because we all know Sanders is going to win, right? -  until the South Carolina primary is held a week later.    

After all of the crass mistakes the Democratic National Committee made in 2016, the folks at the DNC have vowed not to make the same old mistakes.  Now it appears they're making new ones,

Oh yeah, Mike Bloomberg qualifies for this evening's Democratic debate in the first multiracial state to hold a primary or a caucus this year.  And he will be on that debate stage.  Must-see TV!

Bloomberg's Chance

As Michael Bloomberg suddenly becomes a viable alternative to Joe Biden at a time when Biden is tanking and Bernie Sanders - who, as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, would be an American Jeremy Corbyn - is rising, questions about the former New York City mayor have surfaced, and he faces a triple whammy two weeks and change before Super Tuesday.  

Bloomberg still has to deal with the fallout from the "stop and frisk" policy toward young black men that he pursued as New York City mayor, his alleged defense of redlining, and newly released information about having made sexually suggestive comments about female employees before he became mayor of New York.  And since Bloomberg is quickly emerging as the one Democrat who could beat Donald Trump now that the Ukraine scandal has hurt Biden while leaving Trump unscathed, he has to go on a damage-control initiative that's less damage and more control.  Because when you have the opposite of that, you're Gary Hart.

Bloomberg has offered numerous explanations for policies he now says he regrets, saying that his "stop and frisk" policy followed demographic trends and insisting that what he meant when he said that the end of redlining caused the housing crisis was that predatory lenders lent money to people in low-income areas who couldn't possibly pay them back. As for these latest sexism charges, Bloomberg's supporters have pointed out that these charges are from the early nineties, and that he's changed his attitude toward women over time.  Fine.  So maybe Bloomberg ought to take part in the Democratic debates and offer an explanation and some damage control to establish himself for Super Tuesday.

Democratic activists are fuming over Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez's decision to change the campaign funding requirements and thus allow Bloomberg to take part in the February 19 Democratic presidential debate, assuming he meets the threshold in four nationwide polls.  Having qualified in three polls, Bloomberg should take the opportunity to participate in the debate if he qualifies in a fourth poll and make a sincere effort to put all of these controversies behind him.  It's all good and fine for him to go after Trump now, but he's not the nominee yet.

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

Off To the Races

I'm not assessing former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as a presidential candidate because I already did that in an earlier post this month - except to say that he hopes to do what Joe Biden (but also Michael Bennet and Steve Bullock) is trying to do, which is bring together the moderates, independents and suburban women who helped the Democrats win back the House of Representatives in 2018 to win.  Except that people are resenting Bloomberg for jumping in so late with the idea that he can buy the Democratic presidential nomination. Which might help Biden, who knows he has to earn it and is an ordinary guy without a lot of money.

And Biden needs all the help he can get.  His debate performance probably would have been judged more favorably by the pundits if he hadn't identified former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman in to be elected to the Senate, as the only black woman elected to the Senate when trumpeting her endorsement of his candidacy - with the second black woman elected to the Senate, Kamala Harris, standing a few feet away from him.  The last thing you want to do is diss a sista like that, especially when your whole candidacy depends on black support.  But that's better than all of the brothas and sistas dissing you.  Ask Pete Buttigieg.

But then, it's perfectly understandable that Biden would forget Harris' existence.  So have the voters.  At least Andrew Yang remembered Beto O'Rourke.

So where do I put everyone's chances in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign?  They all have a 50-50 chance, because I'm beginning to think that there will be a brokered convention.  Everyone is dismissing Bloomberg's strategy to run a national primary campaign - when, unlike France, there is no national primary - and skip the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina)  simply because it's never worked before.  Well, there's always a first time, isn't there?  I could say Bloomberg isn't going to win, but then in 2015 I said the same thing about Trump, and look how that turned out.  One caveat, though:  The New York mayor's office has long been a dead end for politicians ambitious for higher office, as Bill de Blasio, Rudolph Giuliani, and Fiorello La Guardia all found out when they sought or thought of seeking the Presidency and as Ed Koch found out when he ran for governor of New York State, while the New York State governorship proved to be the springboard for both Roosevelts to assume the Presidency.

Andrew Cuomo, you should have run for President.  Just don't bother running now.

Billion Dollar Babies

Tom Steyer has a billion dollars to spend on making this country a better place to live, but when his  anti-Trump impeachment campaign wasn't going anywhere, he decided to run for President after having ruled it out.

And then the impeachment inquiry happened anyway.

I won't dwell on Steyer's platform - the same Democratic talking points on education, the environment and tax fairness, plus a campaign to get big money out of politics (which he's spending big money on), because has has no chance of winning the White House.  But he did score a major victory by being instrumental in the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, and so, with the inquiry under way and promising certain impeachment, his usefulness has passed.  Go home, Tom - you've won.     

And as Steyer - now facing an embarrassing kerfuffle over a supporter of his who actually tried to buy endorsements for the candidate - Michael Bloomberg, who said he wasn't interested in running for President, is exploring a presidential run after all.

The former New York City mayor, unimpressed by the remaining Democratic presidential candidates and probably fearing a Warren nomination, is reportedly planning to run now, beginning with a filing in the presidential primary in . . . Alabama.  Leave it to a New Yorker to say, "If I can make it here, I can make it in Mobile!" But then, he may be on to something, because Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders can't make it in the nation's midsection, but now, neither can Joe Biden (relax, I'll get to him), if the polls are to be believed  - they're not, because Biden is entrenched in a statistical four-way with the other two and with Mayor Pete.  But believe this: Biden has given interviews to the press to turn things around for his campaign, but his efforts haven't satisfied anyone and he's still headed in the wrong direction.

Can you say "brokered convention," boys and girls?

Bloomberg has some solid policies on climate change, education and reproductive rights, but his billions leave him open to charges that he's trying to buy the White House.  Bernie bros will not be amused 

God knows how this is going to turn out.  Actually, God used to know, but even the Almighty Himself doesn't have a clue anymore.   

Liberate Wall Street?

The round-the-clock occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan is over. At one o'clock this morning, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the park cleared of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who had been camping out there for nearly two months, citing health and safety hazards that apparently hadn't existed in all the time the protesters were allowed to stay there. Bloomberg also said that the Occupy Wall Street protest can continue at the park - without the sleeping bags or tents. And if this privately-owned park is run like any public park, many of which close at dusk, no one is likely to be able to stay up in the park overnight.

The massive demonstration planned in New York for this Thursday (November 17) is likely to be the high watermark for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Without the park in Lower Manhattan as a focal point, and with authorities cracking down on overnight occupations elsewhere, the news media are likely to mostly ignore the movement going forward and move on to the scandals and celebrity tidbits that make up the bread and butter of American broadcast journalism. Sure, some protesters have called this merely the beginning of their movement. Yeah, I heard similar statements about causes that were pretty much forgotten in a couple of months. So please forgive me - no, really, please forgive me - if I sound like I think that the Occupy Wall Street movement has had its moment in the sun already. Because I do. Remember the renewed focus on the poor after Katrina? The communitarian spirit after 9/11? The rising numbers of women in Congress after the Clarence Thomas hearings? Get the picture?

I may be wrong, and I hope I am. But the Occupy Wall Street movement, which grew in part out of a dissatisfaction with government after the debt ceiling deal, can't possibly see the focus in Washington on deficit reduction to stave off automatic spending cuts by next Wednesday as a sign that anyone in Congress is listening to them. As for the 2012 elections, I wonder if there's going to be any momentum left by the time the Obama re-election campaign is in full force. You could tell from the energy of the Tea Party rallies long before November 2010 that the right was energized and in control of the debate. Right now, despite sympathy for and solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests, I'm not too sure that this movement has enough muscle or edge to muscle out and edge out the status quo. The Tea Party put figures like Pat Toomey and Rand Paul in the U.S. Senate; so far, there's little indication that people like Elizabeth Warren are going to benefit from the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Yeah, I hear a lot of optimism about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Much of it mirrors the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency in 2008. But then we got the Tea Party instead.