As The Dust Settles . . .

The election of 2024 is a bit farther in the past now, enough to look more deeply into the causes of the Democrats' presidential loss than the superficial snap analyses could - analyses that many people, including myself, have made.  And the Democratic Party looks even more pathetic than in 2016, the last time Donald Trump defeated a female presidential candidate with a running mate named Tim.

Despite President Biden's best efforts to put a more progressive agenda forward, and despite some successes in that sphere, the Democrats have remained the party of corporate donors and political correctness, with an agenda more tuned toward businessmen like Mark Cuban and toward the idea that the best way to advance racial justice is to paint BLACK LIVES MATTER on city streets and rename streets for Martin Luther King, Jr.  ("Yo, when you're on Martin Luther King, you know you're in the worst part of town!" - Chris Rock)  The Democrats, in becoming the party of French wine and French cheese, have forsaken the working class, a population more likely to consume French toast and French fries.  Rather than advance the interests of a working class comprised of white, black, and Hispanic people, the Democrats pay lip service to working-class interests while pursuing niche issues that appeal to particular demographics - voting rights and reparations for black voters, immigration for Hispanic voters, etc.  Sometimes I have to ask myself if the Democratic policy toward child care is aimed less toward blue-collar moms who have jobs and more toward white-collar suburban families who have careers.

The problem isn't Joe Biden.  Heck, Bernie Sanders was one of his biggest allies, and without his help, Biden wouldn't have gotten as far as he did in pursuing an agenda that included infrastructure, the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices, the CHIPS Act, incentives for green energy, and pro-labor strike mediation.  The problem is with the rest of the party, be it Joe Manchin standing in the way of the Build Back Better program or Krysten Sinema blocking voting rights legislation.  The result was incremental rather than sweeping change.  Calling Biden the most activist Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson is an accurate assessment, but considering the track records of the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, the bar wasn't exactly set very high.   

Kamala Harris, in running to be Biden's successor, undoubtedly would have made the effort to continue the progress begun under Biden, but it would have continued to be measured in inches rather than miles.  (Certainly not in centimeters or kilometers; even the most rabid progressive activist would consider the metric system un-American.)  With Biden gone and Harris defeated, Sanders, looking at what's left, now knows that reforming the Democratic Party is likely a lost cause.  He's already said so, blaming Harris's loss to Trump on the party being captive to corporate interests and offering an agenda that does not mention policies like universal health care or a minimum wage increase.  

I agree.  And, it turns out, I agreed all along.  Remember, I cast my vote for Harris unenthusiastically, because, as I wrote here on the penultimate weekend before the election, I didn't expect much to change.  I reiterated that point two days before the election.  But change is exactly what people wanted, even if it meant going back to a former President who is a convicted felon, and that is what they ultimately voted for.  And Harris, for all of her political talents, may have contributed to her own electoral demise by saying she couldn't conceive of doing anything different than Biden in her own administration. 

And while it is true that many people voted for Trump because they couldn't stomach the idea of a black female President with a Jewish husband, many people who are not racist or sexist voted for Trump because they didn't see anything for them in the Democratic agenda.

With the election over and three House elections still to be called, the dust of the 2024 campaign is quietly settling.  But come January - or maybe even now, given Trump's lightning-speed Cabinet appointments - expect more dust to be stirred up.  

Not just by Trump, but by Sanders, who's talking about doing what progressives should have done in 2017 - starting a new party. 

Power Plays and Loose Ends

The past week showed how the great civilizations of Europe have long since gotten their acts together after three thousand years of history and how America is neither great nor civilized.  While Great Britain and the European Union have successfully finalized their separation, the United States Congress has torn itself asunder for no good reason other than for political power plays.  Trump was  pushing for more COVID stimulus money, something Democrats want (for which I give him credit) and he also pushed for a repeal of the regulation that protects Internet platforms - platforms like Twitter - from lawsuits against what their users - uses like Trump - post, along with a call for a voter-fraud investigation, neither of which Democrats want (which instantly cancels out that credit).  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (below) proceeded to put all of that into one bill, knowing that the Democrats wouldn't vote for it (and thus the stimulus money wouldn't pass, McConnell's preferred outcome) and knowing also that Democrats would go on record as having opposed more money for Americans in desperate need.  Democrats immediately called this out, letting McConnell and their constituents know that they would not be played, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders demanded (forcefully, but unsuccessfully) that the extra COVID stimulus money be voted on separately.  And after all that, the old Congress expired, as did the COVID extra-stimulus legislation. 

And meanwhile, the COVID vaccinations are going so slowly in the U.S. that we may be dealing with the bug for the rest of the decade - and it's only 2021.

McConnell also did this to allow Georgia's two Republican senators, David Perdue (currently in quarantine after being exposed to someone with COVID) and Kelly Loeffler, to vote for the extra money and thus improve their standing with voters in the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections being held tomorrow, but their respective Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have been vehement in calling out their duplicity, and they've been persistent in pushing the issue of fairness and decency at a time when Republican power plays are anything but that.  Heck, they might just pull it off and win tomorrow, giving the Democrats the Senate! 

It'll take awhile to count the votes in Georgia, though, and even if Ossoff and Warnock win, we can expect policies in 2021 to be a messy affair in which loose ends are left untied or tied very sloppily in the 117th Congress.

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.

Uncle Joe and Grandpa Bernie

Donald Trump's worst nightmare took a big step closer to becoming reality when Senator Bernie Sanders officially endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Sanders made his endorsement wholeheartedly, and with plenty of time to work things out between the two camps before the Democratic convention in August.  They underscored the importance of beating Trump with a joint appearance on Biden's YouTube channel this past Monday, as seen below.

Biden and Sanders agreed on the need to do much more in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and also agreed on the necessity to address persistent issues such as climate change, workers' rights, and college tuition assistance.  But Biden also said something that must have made Bernie bros wonder why he, not their hero, is going to be the nominee. Biden said that fundamental change was needed to transform this country.  Ironically, Biden had been considered the better choice because he advocated change within the system rather than changing the system as Sanders has advocated. The reason for his apparent change of heart is simple - the pandemic.  

Biden's approach to change wouldn't be anything like Sanders', though.  He still believes in using the system to shift policy and programs toward different constituencies rather than try to rebuild everything from scratch - which Republican hostility toward change makes impossible even in the most dire circumstances.  That's why many Sanders supporters are still reluctant to embrace Biden and why some of them are still dead set against the idea.  The persuadable ones have a list of demands for Biden on numerous issues, despite his incremental move toward the left, and it's Biden's responsibility - and grave concern - to accommodate Bernie bros as much as possible without alienating the more moderate supporters of his own campaign.  And the polls show that Trump, despite all of his foul-ups, bleeps and blunders, could still win re-election in the fall because the country, even in the worst pandemic in over a century, is still so bitterly divided.  

Biden has a lot more going for him in dealing with Sanders than Hillary Clinton had in 2016, as I've noted before.  They're good friends with each other, and they agree on the issues more than they disagree on them.  Most of their disagreements are on how to address the issue; those are disagreements that can easily be worked out over the next couple of months.  Hillary and Bernie rarely if ever agreed on anything in the 2016 campaign, and they had only a grudging respect for each other at best (but a common disrespect for Martin O'Malley, but I've already bitched about that).  And the fact that the Democrats now have to deal with the reality, not the idea, of "President Trump" (who's been attempting to push the constitutionally unfounded idea of total control over the states in re-opening the economy) should be enough of an impetus or Biden and Sanders to work together.  Also, they now have Barack Obama working with them, as he just endorsed Biden as well.

As indicated in the video posted here, Biden and Sanders have a long way to go to get to a place where their respective factions are united enough to take on Trump in the fall.  But they've made an excellent start.

Bye Bye Bernie

Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, and he urged his supporters to continue to vote for him in the remaining states with primaries (and by the way, New Jersey goes dead last again, with its primary rescheduled to July 7 thanks to that damn virus)  in order to accrue more delegates to the Democratic convention to have an impact on the platform.

But - and Sanders was clear about this - he wants to make sure that Joe Biden, as the sole remaining candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and thus the likely nominee, is elected in November because, apart from that damn virus, nothing is more important now than defeating Donald J. Trump.  Sanders hasn't officially endorsed Biden yet, but he will likely do so once the very last primary - again, that would be the New Jersey primary - is held.

Sanders said he lost the nomination but won the ideological battle.  That's about right.  Biden will almost certainly be the nominee, but he will also likely endorse several of Sanders' ideas, and he's already backed Sanders' college tuition reform proposals.  And even though Biden will have a hard time getting Bernie Bros to back him, he won't have an impossible task - not like Hillary Clinton did in 2016.  Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were not friendly with each other and they formed an uneasy alliance in their opposition to Trump. Sanders and Biden, by contrast, are good friends and they have a deep respect for each other.  Party unity won't be so difficult for the Democrats this time,. even though there will always be some Bernie bros who will never vote for Biden because, well, they literally hate him.     

And if they help Trump get elected, I will literally hate them.

Not to worry, though.  Bernie ought to be able to get them to do the right thing. Not him, bros - us.    

"We Will Get Through This?"

The coronavirus crisis has worsened under Trump's leadership but he's getting higher approval ratings for his handling of it.  While Trump gets to be on TV every day, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders can only hold sporadic streaming events - and Biden is still trying to work the kinks out of his home studio.  More and more people are dying and most of the remaining cases remain active.  A large number of Americans are under lockdown and essential services are under strain - particularity hospitals.  Trump wants to re-open the country in time for Easter despite warnings against that and the Postal Service may shut down completely by June.  There are over a thousand COVID-19 deaths  in America now.  Our spring has pretty much been ruined and the rest of the year doesn't look too great either.   And yet TV news personalities who are isolated in and broadcasting out of their own houses are telling us, "We will get through this!"            

Tulsi's Out

Last week, Tulsi Gabbard finally ended her impractical residential campaign.  What was as telling as who didn't get out is who Gabbard endorsed for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination upon her exit.

Gabbard, a darling of the far left, endorsed Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, which is an indication that she understands how crucial it is for her party and her country to unseat Donald Trump.  Even though Bernie Sanders remains resolutely in the 2020 presidential campaign despite the fact that he can't catch up to Biden's delegate count, Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, knows that now is not the time for a revolutionary, progressive political agenda; that can come later.  She knows in this time of a global pandemic and a need for steady leadership that we have to return to where we were before those two dual infections - COVID-19 and Trumpism - took over.  She's a patriot who put party and country over politics.  Her endorsement of Biden was her way of telling Bernie to take a hint.

In addition to being the last woman, the last person of color, and the last millennial in the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Gabbard, a Hawaii congresswoman, is the last candidate from the West.  So, unless Biden gets California's Kamala Harris to be his running mate (not entirely out of the question), the Democratic national ticket will once again have no candidate from the Western states.  Colorado's Gary Hart, the last Democratic presidential candidate from a Western state who had any realistic chance of winning (well, except maybe New Mexico's Bill Richardson), once said in 1987 that the West was the future of America . . . and in terms of Democratic presidential politics, it likely always will be.  Oh, well, maybe Hart, who turned 83 in November 2019, may still live to see a President from west of the Rockies.  Or maybe we can have an Elton John fan in the White House so we can have a President who's from rock of the Westies. ;-)        

Biden Versus Sanders

So how did what may be the last debate of the Democratic presidential primary season go?

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were able to have spirited debate with no spin, no filters, and, most important of all, no live audience.  Biden showed real strength in dealing with the coronavirus issue and mostly was able to keep his stammer under control.  He held his own against Bernie Sanders' strident attacks on his record, and he did a pretty good job of defending himself.  But he didn't go on the offense often enough, despite some fine points on issues such as climate change and women's issues, and in the times he did go on the offensive, he seemed to be too mannered.  Sanders made valid points on numerous issues, particularly on single-payer health care.  He was also very tenacious and did a great deal to solidify his base.  But he seemed too aggressive and less presidential than Biden, who took advantage of the coronavirus issue and used it as a prime example of why we need to fix things now and worry about great transformative change later, and Sanders was unable to convince me that we can handle radical change when incremental change is more urgently needed thanks to four years of Donald J. Trump.

In short, neither candidate scored a knockout punch.  But both of them came out standing tall.  The voters will have a say on this soon enough.

A Gracious and Polite Man Versus an Angry and Defiant Man

Joe Biden won most of the states selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention this past Tuesday, including the biggest state, Michigan.  Speaking in Philadelphia, Biden, with his wife Jill beside him, said that he wanted to extend a hand to the newer, more diverse generations coming up in the Democratic Party.  He complimented Bernie Sanders for his own presidential campaign and said he wanted to join Sanders supporters in the common goal of defeating Donald Trump. 

And I can count the number of Sanders supporters who were satisfied by Biden's gracious comments on zero fingers.

Yesterday, Sanders emerged to announce his plans for the short term.  Acknowledging his losses in Tuesday's primaries and caucuses, he sounded like he was prefacing a withdrawal announcement with a final show of resistance, in the style of Gary Hart ("I'm not a beaten man, but I am an angry and defiant man").  Well, Sanders let out his anger and defiance, stressing the need to defeat Trump in November and vowing to do what he could to defeat him, but he did not end his presidential candidacy.  Instead he declared that, while he was losing most of the primary elections and caucuses, he was winning the ideological campaign, as the increasing majority of Americans under 50 agreed with his positions on health care, the environment, and economic justice.  And he demanded that Biden answer the question as to what he, as a moderate who sees no reason to fundamentally change the structure of American democracy, what he was going to do about all that.

Sanders might as well have given Biden his briefing book for Sunday's debate - which Sanders says he looks forward to - for all of the advance questions he threw at him.

Well, then, good.  The debate between Biden and Sanders should be the best Democratic debate of the 2020 election cycle.  Not only will it be the first one-on-one debate between the two men, it will be held only with a moderator and possibly a panel, with no audience and no spin room for reporters because of the coronavirus.  That's a good thing.  It will be a classic debate like the old Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960, which also took place without an audience.  It will be a serious discussion between the center-left candidate and the progressive candidate as to where America should go into the 203rd decade of Christendom.  Mano a mano.  Biden versus Sanders.

Sorry, Tulsi.    

A Plea For Sanity

It looks like Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee-in waiting.  He's expected to win the Michigan primary today be a wide margin, though who knows if that's the case until it happens.

Already I see Bernie bros online attacking Biden as a tool of the Establishment and as an untrustworthy centrist who won't bring needed change to this country as President.  Some may be even thinking of going third party on him in November.  Bernie bros?  Please don't!  I'm not saying Biden will definitely be the nominee, and as a registered independent, I remain neutral in this primary election process, but if Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee, as it now seems likely, I urge you to vote for Biden in November because this time we really don't have a choice!  A third-party candidate will only help Trump, especially in swing states.  Yeah, I went third party in a safe state when the idea of "President Trump" was just that - an idea.  But now it's reality, not a reality show, and even Democratic-leaning voters in safe Democratic states can't take a chance on voting Green or whatever this time.  A second Trump term would be a disaster - especially with the coronavirus outbreak going on.  If we can't have a social democratic revolution at this time - and I still insist that, for now anyway, we can't -we should at least get back to normal.

Look, a Biden Presidency would not only help us do that, it would put back together the Obama legacy, which a more liberal successor to Biden can build upon like Bernie Sanders could have done had he been elected President in 2016. Sanders can't get much done as President if elected anyway; he may still have to deal with a Republican Senate and possibly moderate House Democrats to get anything done. He has not spent one ounce of energy to build consensus or expand his base. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but if he's not the nominee, it's a moot point. So if Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee, than dammit, don't go crazy - vote for him!

Oh yeah, and if Bernie Sanders is the nominee . . .

. . . I'll vote for him.

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 . . . 

The Fall of Chris Matthews

If Joe Biden is like a favorite uncle, then his fellow seventy-something Irish homey Chris Matthews comes across as a friendly uncle who isn't your favorite.  He proved that again on MSNBC this past Saturday night, and despite Matthews' penchant for saying stupid things over the years, this time he went too far.  Even farther than expressing gratitude for Hurricane Sandy occurring just before the 2012 election.

When it became obvious that Bernie Sanders was not only going to win the Nevada caucuses but win big - with at least 47 percent of the vote - Matthews expressed a fear that the Republicans would destroy Sanders with negative ads based on his record and past statements about socialism should he become the Democratic presidential nominee.   That was a legitimate observation, and Matthews should have stopped there, but he went on to say that it was "too late" for Biden or Bloomberg or anyone else to stop him and compared Sanders' Nevada victory over to Hitler's invasion of France.

"I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940," Matthews said, "and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over.' And Churchill says, 'How can that be? You've got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over.'"

So, Matthews not only rendered the Sanders campaign as being morally equivalent to the Third Reich, he equated Sanders - who has relatives who perished in the Holocaust - to Hitler.

It seems that the part of Matthews' brain that was affected by the bout of malaria he got when he was in the Peace Corps has finally atrophied completely. While I would expect similar comments from Chuck Todd, who's never been the sharpest tack in the toolbox (and he made such a comment, referring to Sanders supporters as "brown-shirts"), Matthews, a learned political expert, should have known better.  

But then, maybe he shouldn't have.  Mathews likes to talk up his Philadelphia roots and his middle-class background as proof that he has his ear to the realities of politics, but in fact he's a Washington insider who's been in his bubble so long that he can't breathe when he steps out of it.  Oh yeah, one other thing I can't resist mentioning - Matthews was reporting live from Las Vegas during the Nevada caucus coverage on an outdoor set  when a sudden thundershower drenched him. He was all wet.  And not just literally.

Matthews, as an Irish Catholic, has made a reputation out of lamenting and being embarrassed by conservative politicians of Irish descent for their idiocy.  As a descendant of the Philadelphia Irish, I am embarrassed by and am lamenting Chris Matthews.  Yeah, he apologized, but he's done that so much it hardly means anything anymore.

Matthews is 74.  It's time for him to retire.  Too bad Chuck Todd, at 47, still has many years ahead of him.    

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!

The Bernie Perplex

The 2020 Democratic presidential campaign is down to two candidates - Bernie Sanders and everyone else.

I should be for Sanders, because he supports single-payer health care, taxing the rich to the level they were taxed at back in the 1950s, and pushing a moon-shot-type program to move to renewable energy.  But I, like many others, fear he can't beat Trump  because he's too far to the left.  A lot of people are afraid that, as President,  he'd spend too much money on free amenities and give away the store.  But Sanders' supporters don't want to hear that.  They are as loyal to him as the MAGA crowd is to Trump, they nitpick to death every flaw of Sanders' opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination, and they go nuclear on anyone who doesn't like him.  Even Michael Jackson fans - the Islamic State of celebrity fandom - aren't as brutal to their idol's detractors.

The zealotry exuded by Bernie bros is getting pretty scary, but after what happened to Sanders in 2016, it's understandable. After all, he got screwed by Hillary Clinton supporters back then, but Hillbots screwed Martin O'Malley, too, and I'm doubly pissed off about that because Bernie bros disrespected and laughed off O'Malley as much as Hillbots did. We onetime O'Malley supporters, who did not in fact have meetings in a broom closet, are still smarting over that, and we have long memories and short fuses. We were angry at both camps, and we're not happy to see Bernie bros carrying on again like they did four years ago. It's worse than 2016.  I mean, how do you reason with guys who taunt Joe Biden by bringing a fake coffin to a Biden fundraiser?

Or those attacks on culinary workers in Nevada?

Okay, I'm going to conclude this blog entry from the perspective that it is unfair to paint Sanders supporters with a broad brush, and that not all Sanders supporters are jerks, and the Sanders supporters I know wouldn't do a thing like this.  So here it is:  Sanders currently leads Trump in head-to-head poll match-ups, he has momentum, and he's right on most of the issues.  And even though a comparison of his policies to Roosevelt's New Deal proposals in the 1932 presidential campaign is probably a nervous one at best, given that the economy in 2020 is far different than what it was in 1932, when one out of four people were unemployed but we still had a strong industrial base, I'll take at face value the idea that Bernie can defeat Trump in November as the Democratic presidential nominee, which is what my Sanders-supporter friends have been telling me.

Okay, my Sanders-supporter friends, I'll accept your arguments.  I'll accept the idea that Sanders, as the Democratic presidential nominees,  can defeat Trump.  But if he is the nominee, you'd better be right about this!      

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

Biden His Time

No doubt about it; the Democrats had an apocalyptic week.  Following Trump's State of the Union address, which went off without a hitch (always possible, given his penchant for riffing), Trump's approval rating went up to 49 percent - meaning he has more support than he did the day was elected to the White House - his approval rating on the economy surged to an inexplicable 63 percent, and Democrats suddenly looked very churlish by talking the economy down.  Meanwhile, the Senate acquitted Trump in his impeachment trial (with Mitt Romney being the only Republican to vote for his conviction), he's fired Alexander Vindman from the his national security staff for testifying against him in the impeachment inquiry hearings and he sacked EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland for the same thing.  The Democrats may soon feel his full fury; Nancy Pelosi is still reeling from criticism of her act of tearing up a copy of Trump's last speech, the Trump base has been shored up against them in advance of the election, and the party still - still - doesn't have a presidential front runner.

And then there's Joe Biden.

Between Senate investigations of him and his son proceeding and his fourth-place showing in Iowa, Biden looks like a dead man walking, a man who began the campaign season as the next President of the United States but now looks to end it - prematurely - as a relic of the past who was too cocky and too self-assured to realize that his sell-by date was up and that he ought to go gently into the good night before either Bernie bros or Trumpers push him headfirst into it.

Not so fast.  What we learned from Iowa and what we may yet learn from New Hampshire is that their first-in-the-nation status in the primary an caucus system is so antiquated that the "gut punch" Biden got in Iowa and may yet get in New Hampshire may not matter much.  Biden is on the edge of the cliff, but he's fighting his way back from it, as his aggressive stance in New Hampshire and in the ABC debate this past Friday would suggest, and he's counting on respectable finishes there and in Nevada before going on to South Carolina.  

Oh, I've seen and heard the snark against Biden from various pundits, but this all seems to be from the perspective of overpaid media personalities taking cheap shots against whoever happens to be down, and this time it's Biden.  Snark is just something every politician has has to deal with since Gary Hart made a fool of himself at a newspaper publisher's convention in the 1988 campaign and opened the floodgates for death by punditry. (The snark Beto O'Rourke ultimately got was a classic example of the media tearing down a figure they'd built up once they realized they should never have built him up in the first place.  If I may refer you to a critique of Beto from just before he quit the presidential campaign . . . ) 

Biden may be a lousy candidate, but he would make a better President than he is a candidate, and he knows that.  That's what keeps him going and makes him keep trying.  By his own admission, he isn't going to win in New Hampshire, but if he finishes a solid second or even third, he'll live to fight another day.  Two other days - Nevada on February 22 and South Carolina on Leap Day, February 29.    

Again, I'm not endorsing or supporting Biden and I will only vote for him if he is the Democratic presidential nominee.  And truth be told, it's looking less likely that that will happen.  Especially after Bernie Sanders and the now-ascendant Pete Buttigieg finished strongly in Iowa and look to capitalize on that momentum in New Hampshire.  But they'd better start worrying because pretty soon the campaign moves toward states where support for them is not is not as strong.  If Joe Biden can capitalize on that circumstance, he'll be in better shape.  If he can't, well, that's why Michael Bloomberg is waiting in the wings.

I'll look at Bloomberg later.

O'Malley Feels the Bern Again

Now that John Delaney has quit his presidential campaign (much to my relief), Martin O'Malley is set to regain his position as the most disrespected Democrat from Maryland.  He recently told the Guardian that he is fearful of Bernie Sanders' rapid rise in the campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and sees him as a threat to efforts to unseat Trump because he's too far to the left and is not even a member of the Democratic Party.  Further, he says, Sanders' record has some serious flaws that would make him an awkward Democratic standard bearer -like his past support of the National Rifle Association, for example.

"Bernie’s still being given a bit of a free pass by the national media," he said.  "I do not believe that he would be a strong candidate for our party in the fall. And, except for three months out of every four years, he’s not even of our party . . .  He's a man who never has accomplished anything in public office, who has, I believe, demonstrated his inability to forge a governing consensus, let alone hold a governing consensus. And I think he’d be an awful choice as our party’s nominee."

Needless to say, O'Malley's comments drew ire from Bernie bros, many of them going to Twitter to ridicule his failed 2016 presidential campaign and telling him in no uncertain terms what he could do with himself.  (Some of them even made fun of his name, saying it sounded like that of a cartoon character.)   Since I was in a bad mood at the time I noticed this, I responded to the O'Malley-haters with a few choice words of my own, and let me tell you, I was in an extremely bad mood, so I really unloaded on them!

And I don't blame O'Malley for picking this fight.  After all, the 2016 Sanders campaign showed as much disrespect for him as the Hillary Clinton campaign did - maybe even more disrespect - and Sanders' mere presence in the 2016 presidential nomination discombobulated him and destroyed whatever chance he had of challenging Hillary directly.  When Hillary attacked Sanders earlier this year, it was the churlish reaction of a bad loser.  When O'Malley does the same thing, it's righteous indignation born out of  of having had to run for the Presidency with  the deck stacked against him not only by the Democratic National Committee but by an independent who shouldn't have run for the party's nomination in the first place.

O'Malley proved as governor of Maryland that you don't have to destroy the system in order to deliver progressive results, but he never got a chance to make his case for working within the system.  And recent events have proven many in the Sanders camp to be intolerant, self-righteous, and smug.  I actually agree with a lot of Sanders is saying, but he's not going to win.  I once said that O'Malley's and Sanders' positions were mostly similar with only a difference in temperament, but it turns out that difference in temperament is far more significant than a difference of opinion.  As governor of Maryland, O'Malley probably found it easier to deal with Republicans in Annapolis than with someone of Sanders' ilk. 

O'Malley's doing fine, now, thank you, teaching, consulting, and promoting his book - more on online media than on mainstream TV news, which clearly wants nothing to do with him - but the activity could theoretically lead to bigger and better things. If either Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or Michael Bloomberg is elected President  in 2020, any one of whom will likely serve only one term due to age, O'Malley could run for President again in 2024, though it would be a stretch for him to try to regain elective office a decade after last holding it (unless he gets a Cabinet post in a post-Trump Democratic administration).  The possibility of a 2024 presidential election with the incumbent retiring, however, does provide an opportunity.  Sadly, with the way things are going, that incumbent could be Donald Trump. 

2016 All Over Again

With Bernie Sanders surging in the polls and possibly edging out Joe Biden at a crucial moment in the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, right on cue, is attacking Sanders in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about a new documentary abut her debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.  She says that nobody likes Sanders, no one ever tried to work with him in Congress, and he has a pattern of being misogynistic toward female presidential candidates by questioning their experience of electability.  For those reasons, she refused to promise to campaign for him if he is the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, despite the fact that he campaigned for her in the 2016 general election season.  She cited Sanders' alleged statement to Elizabeth Warren that a woman can't be elected President - even though he encouraged Warren to run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and only ran himself after she did not, and had once told young girls back in 1988 that he believed a woman could be elected President one day.  

Hillary, of course, chose to ignore all that.  She said that what Sanders is reported to have said to Warren is part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior.

"If it were a one-off, you might say, 'OK, fine.'" she said.  "But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me . . ..  I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a President who's going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we've seen from this current administration."

Really?  She got things done?  What did she get done? I honestly can't answer that question.  As for Bernie Sanders, he may caucus with the Democrats, but having an agenda more in tune with that of the Danish Parliament than the U.S. Congress has ensured that he's in a minority of one regarding most of his pet issues, such as free college tuition and Medicare for all.  Of course he hasn't gotten anything done in the House or in the Senate.  Though, Hillary and her handlers past and present - especially her past handlers, the political commentators on MSNBC identified as veterans of her 2016 presidential campaign - would be correct to point out that he couldn't get much done as President with a Congress unlikely to implement his agenda without strings attached.

I'll come right out and say it again:  Now is not the time to nominate someone as far to the left as Bernie Sanders because no one in Middle America is ready for a 180-degree turn to his agenda after four years of Donald Trump's reactionary administration.  As for Hillary's critique, it doesn't do anyone any favors, and it's more of a self-serving posture than a warning to Democrats that Sanders can't win.  It's simply Hillary wanting to rerun 2016 and nursing a grudge against everyone who voted against her and wanted nothing to do with her.  And since so many Bernie Sanders supporters - whom she painted with a broad brush and dismissed as mostly young male sexists who create the culture of the movement around the Vermont senator - find her so repugnant, this is only going to help Bernie rather than hurt him.  Hillary, please - shut the hell up and get off the goddamned stage!

I watch this Hillary-versus-Bernie fracas with utter disgust as a former Martin O'Malley supporter who, seeing the media become obsessed with the feud between the two, got pissed off every time they ignored or ridiculed my candidate.  I felt like the president of a neutral country during the Cold War watching the American President and the Soviet General Secretary going after each other and wanting to point out that both sides were equally ridiculous and unworthy of being taken seriously.  We had a third candidate that offered a choice of productive liberalism, an alternative to squishy moderation and radical change.  But you all laughed in my face.  So it doesn't matter to me whether Hillary or Bernie comes out ahead.  They should both be left behind.

And one final thing . . .