Monmouth from April 23rd: Biden 27, Sanders 20, Buttigieg 8, Harris 8, Warren 6, O’Rourke 4. “California Sen. Kamala Harris has 8% support, off just slightly from 10% in March and 11% in January.” But she can’t be thrilled at that trendline…
UNH New Hampshire poll. Sanders 30, Biden 18, Buttigieg 15, Warren 5, Harris 4, Booker 3, O’Rourke 3, Klobucher 2, Yang 2, Ryan 2. That’s as high as I’ve seen Buttigieg.
Emerson Texas poll: Biden 23, O’Rourke 22, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 8, Warren 7, Castro 4, Yang 3, Harris 3, Klobucher 3. That’s an abysmal showing for Castro in his home state, and Harris should be doing better just off urban voters from Houston and the Metroplex. Indeed, Harris is down in every poll here.
Election betting markets. Yang is polling better at 4.9% for the Dem nomination than Warren at 4.7%. One wonders which Bulwerk-backer has Marco Rubio 2020 at 0.5%…
Old white guy? Joe Biden has hair plugs that are older than the median Democratic primary voter. Sanders and Biden are a year apart — and both of them are older than Trump. Creaky? Creepy stuff in his history? Dusty northeastern union-hall politics? Check all those boxes. Worst: Sanders and Biden, though they are miles apart in rhetoric, are in many ways a couple of outmoded Teddy Kennedy liberals in a party that wants nothing to do with dinosaurs of that particular species.
Snip.
The old-white-guy thing isn’t working out too well for Sanders. In Houston earlier this week for a cracked festival of progressive inanity called “She the People,” Sanders got read the old-white-guy riot act: Pressed about racial issues, Comrade Muppet started to launch into yet another retelling of the fact that he marched with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 — but the crowd shut him down, hooting and laughing at him. “We know!” someone shouted. They’d heard it all before. Sanders, visibly flummoxed, went on to talk up the fact that he’d supported Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, and the room responded with, approximately, “Jesse Who?”
The Reverend Jackson’s is a name to conjure with no more.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s entry into the 2020 presidential primary sets the stage for another knock-down, drag-out fight between the establishment wing of the party and the ascendant left, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Snip.
The 2016 primary contest left liberals fuming at what they viewed as establishment interference in the race, underscored by the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails that showed favoritism toward Clinton.
And some mainstream Democrats are unnerved by what they view as a group of left-wing interlopers, online brawlers and sore losers trying to take over the party.
The same fight played out in 2017, when party officials elected Tom Perez to be the next DNC chairman. Perez, who was backed by Biden, narrowly defeated Sanders’s preferred candidate, former Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.). That race similarly cut along establishment and grass-roots lines.
Snip.
But many centrist Democrats are just as worried about how the left will approach the primary contest.
They’re frustrated by Sanders’s steadfast refusal to officially join the Democratic Party and worried by what they view as his team of political assassins. And they wonder whether Sanders’s supporters will accept the outcome of the primary and turn out to vote for the nominee in the general election if Sanders falls short again.
“There is a ‘Bernie-or-bust’ coalition, and they have no allegiance to the party,” said the Democratic strategist. “They don’t care about campaign infrastructure or winning up and down the ballot. They’re just concerned about bullshit litmus tests and defending their guy no matter what and pretending that everyone else is a member of the big bad establishment.”
Actor Alec Baldwin: Probably not. Still no news since his three week old tweet.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning toward a run. He’s been very quiet since his cancer surgery. Hard to blame him…
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. See last week’s post for his announcement video. Naturally, there’s tons of Biden news to wade through:
He raised $6.3 million within 24 hours of announcing, the most of any of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, but not a “blow you away” number. “Biden’s campaign announced Friday that 96,926 donors contributed, with an average online donation of $41. His campaign also noted that 97% of his online donations were under $200.”
Biden has long since been close to lobbyists. Biden’s presidential campaign is currently being coordinated by his former chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, who was himself a lobbyist. In the past, Ricchetti’s role with Biden’s vice presidential office sidestepped the Obama administration’s ban on employing lobbyists: Ricchetti received a special waiver to take his role with Biden.
Thursday’s fundraiser will be rife with lobbyists — but not those registered in the federal system.
The Biden for President host committee includes Kenneth Jarin, a lobbyist with Ballard Spahr who is registered to work on behalf of toll road operator Conduent and several health care interests. Jarin is a major donor to both parties and has given to political action committees controlled by former Republican House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner.
Another host of the Biden fundraiser is Alan Kessler, another lobbyist who works with the firm Duane Morris. Kessler is registered to lobby in Pennsylvania for American Airlines and the global information tech firm Unisys Corporation, among other clients.
Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, another host of the event, is a senior adviser to the local lobbying operation at Dentons, a law firm with a vast government affairs operation. Nutter is also on the board of Conduent.
In another election, at another time, the late entrance of a well-funded candidate leading in the polls might send convulsions through the primary field.
But Joe Biden’s arrival into the 2020 race has not had that effect. No Democratic rival appears doomed. No one’s fundraising seems in danger of drying up. Instead, in joining the race, the former vice president has laid bare how unsettled the entire 20-candidate contest remains — and how many in the party don’t believe the 76-year-old Biden is prepared for the rigors of a modern campaign, or the demands of a party transformed.
What, you mean the other candidates didn’t immediately start rending their garments and proclaiming “Woe is me! All is lost!”? Do tell…
Carpe Donktum nails Biden on the “very fine people” lie:
I’ve written previously on how the Democratic Party is more moderate and older than you probably think it is. About 50% of Democratic voters call themselves moderate or conservative, which is about the same percentage that are at least 50 years old. Most Democratic candidates running this year don’t seem to recognize that fact.
We’ve seen a Democratic field in which the candidates seem to be falling over each other to move further left, where the youngest Democrats are.
Biden, meanwhile, is sitting all alone in his base. In a Monmouth University poll released earlier this week, he had a 19-point advantage over his nearest competitor with Democrats who called themselves moderate or conservative. He was up by 18 points among those who were at least 50 years old. A Quinnipiac University poll released last month (that had Biden in a similar overall position) gave him even bigger advantages with more moderate and older voters.
Now, Biden does trail with the youngest and very liberal Democrats. But they make up a minority of the party, and Biden’s competitors are splitting that vote.
R. S. McCain thinks that Biden’s 29% is his peak. I’m not so sure. I think there are a substantial portion of people who vote in Democratic primaries that haven’t swallowed the SJW line, and will show up at the polls for Biden.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Get’s a New York profile. Actually talks about meeting with Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Jared Kushner, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, as both Mayor of Newark and a Senator. “I value comity, I value finding common ground.” He posted 10 years of tax returns. “When I said we should crash the Booker campaign event, I didn’t mean literally!”
Montana Governor Steve Bullock: Maybe. The Montana legislative session has already ended, and he had a closed event in Butte. But: “You know, the Legislature just left town, they left 300 bills on my desk, so I have quite a bit of work to do to sort the rest of that out, and haven’t made any decisions what I’d do after I get to serve governor.” Slight downgrade.
But another part of Buttigieg’s appeal rests on the fact that during and after the McKinsey stint, he did two very un-meritocratty things: First, he joined the Navy Reserve and was briefly deployed to Afghanistan, and then he moved back to the small, de-industrialized Midwestern city of his youth, not to join his parents in its academic enclave, but to run for mayor of South Bend and attempt to save a piece of the heartland from stagnation and decline.
These unusual steps away from elite self-segregation inform the way he sometimes seems to want to run for president: As a bridge-builder between the heartland and the coasts, as the Ivy League guy who takes Trump voters seriously as something more than just “deplorables,” as the first gay president who, like Nixon going to China, might be able to call a truce in the post-Obergefell culture wars and convince cultural liberals that they don’t need to bring every evangelical florist or Catholic adoption agency to heel.
But this bridge-building possibility coexists with another theory of Buttigieg, in which his unusual trajectory back homeward, far from a rejection of the meritocratic mentality, is actually just a clever meritocrat’s “hack” of the system of ascent — an advertisement for his own seriousness that, having served its purpose, can now be abandoned while he tries to vault insanely high, to return not only to Washington but to the Oval Office (or at least the Naval Observatory or a cabinet office).
This is the reading offered by Buttigieg’s pungent left-wing critics: I especially recommend a long takedown of the young mayor’s memoir by Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs, and a shorter critique by a scion of the Studebaker family (Studebakers being the cars whose manufacture once built South Bend’s blue-collar prosperity).
These anti-Buttigiegians look at his mayoral record and see a politician who never really escaped the mentality of Harvard and McKinsey, whose big idea for the city involved bulldozing poor people’s houses and encouraging internet companies to move in — a “creative class” theory of urban renewal that didn’t supply the jobs that working-class South Benders need.
Here’s that Current Affirs takedown of Buttigieg’s memoir Douthat mentions. Current Affaris is both progressive and uber-smarmy, so read it only if you want a hard-lefty hit-piece. But I’ve got to admit that the author’s deep reading of Buttigieg’s own extremely lengthy index entry for himself in his own memoir (“CrossFit phase of, 133”) has some definite zing to it.
Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Presidential hopeful John Delaney wants you to unfollow Trump on Twitter.” See, I would think if you have some 19,800 Twitter followers, you wouldn’t want to draw attention to that fact by telling people to stop following the guy who has just under 60 million…
It’s clear that Gillibrand has made women and “women’s issues” a focus of her campaign, and it is clearly reflected in her fundraising. More than half of all the individual donations to her campaign during the first fundraising cycle of 2020 were from women. That’s more than any other 2020 contender can say. She is prioritizing issues like national paid family leave, access to abortion and birth control, improving public education, and stopping sexual harassment and abuse. But is that a winning strategy?
Maybe her hot pink campaign logo and website splashed with the word “BRAVE” all over are a little too on the nose. Maybe constantly describing herself as a “young mom” is a label that just isn’t doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe women voters don’t liked to be courted simply because of their sex. Or maybe, she’s just too much like Hillary Clinton.
Ouch!
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. But there is this: “Andrew Gillum Agrees To Pay $5,000 Fine In Ethics Case Settlement.”
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a New York Times profile. “In its 191-year history, the Democratic Party has never nominated a presidential candidate from west of the Central time zone.” I doubt that’s the tidbit I would have led with. Also “He got all these lefty programs through but supports fracking.” He had a brain freeze and forgot what GDP stands for.
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. “Klobuchar hails Anita Hill as an inspiration,” because of course she does. Genuflecting to St. Anita is a required ritual on the left again, mainly as a way for “woke” candidates to bash Biden for the Clarence Thomas confirmation. But one wonders how much a confirmation hearing that occurred more than a quarter-century ago will mean to an electorate that doesn’t remember Jesse Jackson…
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Last week’s Clown Car Update noted reports that Messam had missed payroll for campaign staffers. This week: “The two-term mayor’s campaign staffers have scattered from the nest after Messam missed payroll, first reported by The Miami New Times. Reports from the road say rallies have been sparsely attended. Now, Messam is mum, referring people to his legal counsel.” Also this: “There was speculation that Messam has his eyes set on the seat of Congressman Alcee Hastings, 82, who is reportedly going through treatment for pancreatic cancer.”
Democratic congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA), an Iraq war veteran who announced his candidacy for president early this week, wants you to know that presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who are trying to push America towards more progressive policies are bad for our country, and he’s running to save us.
“We can’t go too far left or we will lose middle America.”
It seems like Moulton is competing with Biden, Buttigieg and Delaney for the “non-crazy” Democratic Party vote. Whether this is a viable strategy remains to be seen. I have my doubts. But I was mildly surprised to see that Moulton has 138,000 Twitter followers, which is more than any of the other representatives running save Gabbard. Of course, that says less about how well Moulton is running than how badly Swalwell, Delaney and Ryan are…
Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Got a KVUE interview: “I want to change the conversation. I’ve listened to some of these political shows and we’re not even talking about the real issues in the campaign. I think first and foremost, we need an industrial policy that actually lifts middle-class wages.”
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside Bernie’s army: “On Saturday, the campaign launched a nationwide organizing program with nearly 5,000 house parties in every state throughout the country, demonstrating a show of force for his volunteer network and an opportunity to mobilize supporters in a primary contest that could remain close through the early voting states and beyond.” He’s also building out Our Revolution as a “shadow campaign” in the Midwest. “Bernie Sanders Can Win, But He Isn’t Polling Like A Favorite,” which compares Sanders’ numbers to candidates with similar numbers in previous cycles from Jeb! in 2016 all the way back to Hubert Humphrey in 1972. “Three of these candidates [Romney 2012, Obama 2008, McCain 2008] won their nominations; the other 12 lost.”
Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Probably Out. But he did attract a sarcastic Trump tweet:
Weirdo Tom Steyer, who didn’t have the “guts” or money to run for President, is still trying to remain relevant by putting himself on ads begging for impeachment. He doesn’t mention the fact that mine is perhaps the most successful first 2 year presidency in history & NO C OR O!
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. “A Guide to Elizabeth Warren’s (Many) 2020 Policy Proposals.” How Warren is threatening Bernie’s left flank. Op-Ed: “Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are bad for the Democrats.” “Both represent the purist liberal wing of their party, a faction that has failed to elect a single president since the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. And with only one out of four Americans calling themselves liberals in the last election, the notion that a doctrinaire left-winger can win in 2020 is an exercise in self-delusion.” Warren was evidently well-received at an SEIU shindig that Sanders skipped.
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Report on a Yang rally in Los Angeles, complete with comparison to cult bad film The Room. “He is the hyper-enthusiastic high school teacher and his supporters are the jocks, goths, and potheads who never knew school could be so fun.” He also campaigned in Iowa.
Twitter does rounding, and counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them.
Buttigieg is the biggest riser in both absolute and percentage terms, doubling his followers and leapfrogging Klobucher, but he’s still behind O’Rourke. He should crack one million this week.
Save Buttigieg, no one below one million followers is on track to have one million followers by the Iowa caucuses.
Warren is the second biggest riser in April, up 130,000, which doesn’t jib with the narrative that her campaign has been underwhelming and policy-heavy.
Williamson does not seem to be gaining followers, and her vast Twitter readership doesn’t seem to be showing up in polls.
Harris also did well, and should soon pass Williamson, but she’s not on track to pass Biden before Iowa.
Thus far Biden hasn’t gotten much of a bump from formally entering the race.
Booker’s Twitter strength is not showing up in polling.
Castro, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Swalwell, Inslee, Delaney, Ryan and Messam are all below Yang, and none seem to be on a trajectory to catch him.
Of course, it’s possible that one of the longshots could catch fire, and race up the charts. Buttigieg started as a longshot and is now right in the thick of it. Compared to expectations, Yang is doing very well, but so far not well enough to be an actual contender.
And watch tomorrow for the regular Clown Car update.
Back in 2016, one of the knocks on then-candidate Donald Trump was that he was soft on Second Amendment rights, having backed the Clinton “assault weapons” ban in the 1990s. However, Trump’s views clearly evolved, as 18 years ago he stated he was against a handgun ban (“Democrats want to confiscate all guns, which is a dumb idea because only the law-abiding citizens would turn in their guns and the bad guys would be the only ones left armed.”), and Hillary Clinton was so bad on the Second Amendment that it was easy for the NRA to endorse him.
It was a speech full of red meat, and ranged considerably beyond the Second Amendment to border control, crime, sanctuary cities, and the deep state.
A few excerpts:
Every day of my administration, we are taking power out of Washington, D.C. and returning it to the American people, where it belongs. (Applause.) And you see it now better than ever, with all of the resignations of all of the bad apples. They’re bad apples. They tried for a coup; didn’t work out so well. (Applause.) And I didn’t need a gun for that one, did I? (Laughter.)
All was taking place at the highest levels in Washington, D.C. You’ve been watching, you’ve been seeing. You’ve been looking at things that you wouldn’t have believed possible in our country. Corruption at the highest level — a disgrace. Spying, surveillance, trying for an overthrow. And we caught them. We caught them. (Applause.) Who would have thought in our country?
Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns. You better get out there and vote. You better get out there and vote. It seems like it’s a long ways away. It’s not.
Democrats want to disarm law-abiding Americans while allowing criminal aliens to operate with impunity. But that will never happen as long as I’m your President. Not even close. (Applause.) I promise to defend the Second Amendment rights of every American, and I always will. I’ll never let you down. (Applause.) Never let you down. I haven’t so far, and I won’t. Because as the famous saying goes, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Very simple. (Applause.)
As we protect gun rights for law-abiding citizens, we are also getting guns out of the hands of violent criminals.
When I took office two years ago, one of my highest priorities was to reduce violent crime. In the two years before my inauguration, the murder rate had increased by more than 20 percent, and the United States had experienced the largest increase in violent crime in over 25 years.
For this reason, my administration resurrected Project Safe Neighborhoods, bringing together prosecutors, police, sheriffs, and citizens groups to put the most dangerous offenders behind bars.
We funded 200 new violent crime prosecutors. We charged a record number of criminal offenders. And last year, we prosecuted the most violent criminals ever in our history.
And now, violent crime is way down. Murders in America’s largest cities dropped by 6 percent between 2017 and 2018. But I do have to ask you: What the hell is going on in Chicago? What is going on? (Applause.) We could solve that problem. We would’ve been down even a lot more. And it’s not a tough problem to solve. You got to let law enforcement do what they have to do. They’ll solve the problem very quickly. Very quickly. (Applause.)
We don’t think enough about the victims. They’re too worried about the people that cause the crime. It’s got to stop. That thought process is no good.
The number of police officers shot and killed in the line of duty last year, I’m so happy to report, is down 21 percent compared to the year before. (Applause.) And that was the year before I took office.
President Trump also announced he was withdrawing America from the UN Arms Trade Treaty:
in the last administration, President Obama signed the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. And in his waning days in office, he sent the treaty to the Senate to begin the ratification process.
This treaty threatened your subjugate — and you know exactly what’s going on here — your rights and your constitutional and international rules and restrictions and regulations.
Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. (Applause.) We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom. And that is why my administration will never ratify the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. I hope you’re happy. (Applause.)
I’m impressed; I didn’t think too many of you would really know what it is. You what it is? A big, big factor. But I see a couple of very happy faces from the NRA over there.
And I am officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided agreement. We’re taking our signature back. (Applause.) The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty. (Applause.)
President Trump also brought up several people who used guns to defend their lives against bad guys, including Sutherland Springs hero Stephen Willeford.
NRA members had doubts about Donald Trump’s commitment to the Second Amendment when he announced he was running for President. I don’t see any having those doubts anymore.
Now, it’s not really fair to imply that the Never Trumpers hate Trump solely because he’s vulgar and crude – or, as normal people see it, unwilling to meekly take the guff the Never Trumpers’ country club class pals dish out like a proper gentleman should. They do find him aesthetically displeasing, but it also gnaws at them because every time he stands up to the garbage Democrats, the garbage press, or the garbage jerks and pervs of Hollywood, his refusal to knuckle-under reminds Team Fail that they don’t have the stones to do the same. He shames their cowardly weakness.
It’s clear, in retrospect, that George W. Bush’s supine acceptance of the abuse the elite heaped upon him was not because he was too classy and too decent to respond in kind. Since Obama left office and he rediscovered his vocal cords, Bush has had zero problem trashing Trump and Trump supporters who, like many of us, stood by Bush in the ’00s while Bush was treading water in a sea of mediocrity. No, it’s clear that W was afraid to fight back against fellow members of the ruling class. He cared about being part of the club. Not The Donald. Trump, by fighting, demonstrates that the establishment GOPers are weak. And it eats at them.
But besides providing a manly contrast to their own gimp-like submission to the leftist establishment, Trump infuriates the Never Trumpers for another reason. He’s kicked them out of their comfy sinecures. One of Trump’s magical powers is to make his enemies reveal their own grift complicity, and boy, have they ever. As a result, while once the mandarins of Conservative, Inc., traded on their insider influence and privilege, under Trump they are outsiders. Copies of the Weekly Standard used to be all over the Bush White House. Now, if its inept crew had not slammed it into an iceberg, you would be lucky to find a few pages at the bottom of Barron’s pet iguana’s cage.
Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and all the rest are nobodies, relegated to occasionally joining CNN panels and fighting with Ana Navarro over the doughnuts in the green room. Where’s Bob Corker now? Jeff Flake hasn’t even got an MSNBC gig; I think last week he was the dude who offered to supersize my order.
it is not the abstract logic of liberalism that is flawed, but rather the attempt to apply it to fallible humans. Like communism, liberalism conflicts with immutable human characteristics. However, unlike communism, certain kinds of liberalism (the industrial liberalism of the 1900s, for example) work because they are moderated by the material conditions of society. But as those moderating conditions are obliterated by technology, the problems of post-industrial liberalism have become clearer. The ultimate problem is this: Humans desire unfettered freedom, but need the discipline that constraint provides. Without such discipline, they risk slumping into an empty and unsatisfying hedonism that is ruinous to communities and to society more broadly.
Those who are intelligent and self-controlled often create their own constraints and can therefore thrive in post-industrial societies that are radically unlike the societies in which humans evolved. Those who are less intelligent or self-controlled, however, often fail to create successful constraints and therefore suffer when once powerful cultural guardrails (such as religion, strict norms, civic groups, and so on) are destroyed by accelerating innovation and secularism. The result is a growing cultural and economic gap between segments of the population which, when coupled with the declining outcomes for a once thriving middle class, fuels growing bitterness and discontent. Combine this with a trend toward cosmopolitanism that increases ethnic and religious diversity and therefore potential sources of faction and conflict, and liberalism’s immediate prospects look bleak.
The authors also posit technological change as one of the biggest drivers of challenge to the old liberal order.
Hauling out boxes of “Healthy Holly” books and documents, dozens of federal law enforcement agents Thursday struck homes, businesses and government buildings across Baltimore as an investigation into Mayor Catherine Pugh’s business dealings widened.
FBI agents and IRS officials executed search warrants at her City Hall office, Pugh’s two houses, and offices of the mayor’s allies, as the growing scandal consumed the city’s attention, generated national headlines and provoked fresh calls for the embattled Democratic mayor’s resignation.
Snip.
Dave Fitz, an FBI spokesman, confirmed that agents from the Baltimore FBI office and the Washington IRS office searched at least six addresses. The U.S. attorney’s office confirmed the location of a seventh search. The actions were the first confirmation that federal authorities, as well as state officials, were investigating the mayor’s activities.
Snip.
Shortly after the raids began, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on Pugh, who has taken a paid leave of absence as mayor, to resign. The Republican governor had asked the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor on April 1 to investigate Pugh’s sales of her self-published “Healthy Holly” children’s book series to the University of Maryland Medical System while she was on its unpaid board of directors.
“Today, agents for the FBI and the IRS executed search warrants at the mayor’s homes and offices,” Hogan said. “Now, more than ever, Baltimore city needs strong and responsible leadership. Mayor Pugh has lost the public trust. She is clearly not fit to lead. For the good of the city, Mayor Pugh must resign.”
When a raid involves both the FBI and the IRS, usually that’s a bad sign.
At times appearing unfazed by the severity of his circumstances, Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina was guided into a Pharr courtroom Thursday morning after he and his wife surrendered themselves to law enforcement to face multiple election fraud charges. The scene was notably different from when Molina entered a state of the city address just one year ago, shadowboxing and wielding a championship belt.
Now, allegations from a Texas Attorney General’s office investigation into the city’s 2017 municipal election have cast Molina as allegedly cheating his way into the mayoral seat by having people who live outside of the city vote for him.
An hour after he turned himself in at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Edinburg office, Molina stood before Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Jaime “Jerry” Muñoz, who presides out of Pharr, and was charged with two counts of illegal voting and one count of engaging in organized election fraud — second- and first-degree felonies, respectively.
Molina, 40, was then escorted to Hidalgo County jail where he was quickly booked in and out on a combined $20,000 cash surety bond, and promptly headed to a city workshop to discuss the future of a city golf course.
It was business as usual for a mayor who has faced scrutiny since he unseated Edinburg’s longtime mayor, Richard Garcia, in November 2017 by 1,240 votes. Such scrutiny has only increased over the past year as the AG’s office arrested more than a dozen people on illegal voting charges tied to the election.
And the voting fraud, sadly, seems business as usual in both the Rio Grande Valley in general and Hidalgo County specifically… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
You know what was fake news? Most of the Russiagate story. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.
He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”
Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!
In March of 2017, in one of the first of what would become a mountain of mafia-hierarchy-style “Trump-Russia contacts” graphics in major newspapers, the Washington Post described an email Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sent to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. They called it “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government.”
The report shows the whole episode was a joke. In order to further the Trump Tower project-that-never-was, Cohen literally cold-emailed the Kremlin. More than that, he entered the email incorrectly, so the letter initially didn’t even arrive. When he finally fixed the mistake, Peskov didn’t answer back.
That was “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government”!
As outlined in his initial mandate, Mueller explored “any links” between the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. His conclusion spoke directly to the question of whether there was any kind of quid pro quo between the two sides:
“The investigation examined whether these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the Campaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future.”
In other words, all those fancy org charts were meaningless. Because there was no conspiracy, all those “walls are closing in” reports — and there were a ton of them — were wrong. We were told we’d hit “turning point” after “turning point” leading to the “the beginning of the end,” with Trump certain, soon, to either resign in shame, Nixon-style, or be impeached.
The “RNC platform” change story was a canard, according to Mueller. The exchanges Trump figures had with ambassador Sergei Kislyak were “brief, public, and non-substantive.” The conversations Jeff Sessions had with Kislyak at the convention didn’t “include any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.” Mueller added “investigators did not establish that [Carter] Page conspired with the Russian government.”
There was no blackmail, no secret bribe from Rosneft, no five-year cultivation plan, no evidence of any kind of any relationship that ever existed between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Michael Cohen “never traveled to Prague.”
The whole Steele dossier appears to have been bunk, with even Bob Woodward now saying the “highly questionable” document “needs to be investigated.” The Times similarly is reporting, two-plus years late, that “people familiar” with Steele’s work began to have “misgivings about [the report’s] reliability arose not long after the document became public.”
Reporters are going to insist all they did was accurately report the developments of a real investigation. They didn’t imply vast criminality that wasn’t there, or hoodwink audiences into thinking a Watergate-style ending was just around the corner, or routinely blow meaningless episodes like the Sessions-Kislyak meeting out of proportion, or regularly smear people who not only weren’t part of a conspiracy but had no connection to anything (see here for an example).
They’ll also claim they didn’t spend years openly rooting for indictment and impeachment via wish-casted predictions disguised as reporting and commentary, or denouncing people who doubted the conspiracy as spies and Putin apologists, or clearing their broadcast panels and op-ed pages of skeptics while giving big stages to craven conspiracy-spinners like Malcolm Nance and Luke Harding.
Mark Steyn notes that between the Notre Dame fire and the bombing of Christian churches in Sri Lanka, our journalists have reached new levels in truth avoidance:
It used to be said that ninety per cent of news is announcing Lord Jones is dead to people who were entirely unaware that Lord Jones was ever alive. Now the trick is to announce Lord Jones is dead and ensure that people remain entirely unaware of why he is no longer alive. One senses that a line was crossed in yesterday’s coverage. As one of our Oz Steyn Club members, Kate Smyth, put it, the media have advanced from dhimmitude to full-blown taqiyya.
The lights are going out on the most basic of journalistic instincts: Who, what, when, where, why. All are subordinate to the Narrative – or Official Lie. All day yesterday and into today, if you had glanced at the telly, switched on the radio or surfed the big news sites of the Internet, you would have thought the Tamil Tigers were back “with a vengeance”, as The Economist put it – even though with one exception (the 1990 police massacre) the death toll was higher than any individual attack the Tigers had ever pulled off.
This seems like big news: “The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a U.S. surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone calls and text messages.”
Interesting thread on Gregory Craig, Obama’s White House Counsel who was recently indicted for crimes in his Ukraine work with Paul Manafort, and also Ted kennedy’s top foreign policy guy back when he was secretly asking for the Soviets to help him against Reagan.
“The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.”
Russia launches world’s largest submarine. “The six hundred foot long submarine displaces more water than a World War I battleship and can dive to a depth of 1,700 feet.” More: “The nuclear-powered Belgorod is neither an attack submarine nor a ballistic missile sub. A special mission submarine, Belgorod will be a mothership to other undersea vessels. The sub can carry a payload on its back, behind the sail, or a Losharik class mini-submarine that attaches and detaches to the bottom of the hull.”
M. J. Hegar, the Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. John Carter for the Texas 31st congressional district last year, announced that she’s running against John Cornyn. If she couldn’t take Carter in the Betomania midterm of 2018, she stands approximately no chance against Cornyn in the Presidential year of 2020.
“Sarah Wickline Hull was 20 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.”
According to the affidavit in support of the complaint and arrest warrant, which was unsealed today, Claiborne began working as an Office Management Specialist for the Department of State in 1999. She has served overseas at a number of posts, including embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China. As a condition of her employment, Claiborne maintains a Top Secret security clearance. Claiborne also is required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency.
Despite such a requirement, the affidavit alleges, Claiborne failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), even though these agents provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years. According to the affidavit, the gifts and benefits included cash wired to Claiborne’s USAA account, an Apple iPhone and laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, and a monthly stipend. Some of these gifts and benefits were provided directly to Claiborne, the affidavit alleges, while others were provided through a co-conspirator.
Notable is how cheaply her allegiance was bought: “Claiborne noted in her journal that she could “Generate 20k in 1 year” working with one of the PRC agents, who, shortly after wiring $2,480 to Claiborne.”
Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander reportedly defects. “Brigadier General Ali Nasiri, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Protection Bureau, is said to have fled to the West after a fallout with the representative of the Supreme Leader in the IRGC….General Nasiri was said to have fled with hundreds of classified documents, which could be of great value to the United States.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Bail Project is an unprecedented effort to combat mass incarceration at the front end of the system…We pay bail for people in need, reuniting families and restoring the presumption of innocence.” Like Samuel Scott. “Just hours after a nonprofit group posted bail for a man accused of assaulting his wife, the suspect went to the woman’s home and brutally murdered her.”
It’s interesting that Biden is going all in on referencing Charlottesville, presumably to make a play for the Social Justice Warrior vote, which is going to be difficult with Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, etc. in the race. Also, how does Biden expect the “good people on both sides” lie to have any legs when it’s been so thoroughly debunked? Or is it merely virtue signaling to the hard SJW left that “No, this old white guy is totally OK to vote for?” Plus it was almost two years ago, which is an eon in Internet time. I’ve never doubted Biden’s ability to pander, I just wonder why he’d think this would be an effective pander.
Otherwise his announcement video is full of anodyne, uplifting pablum.
It will be interesting to see what sort of fundraising haul Biden’s announcement triggers. My guess is that he’s going to out-raise Bernie Sanders 2-1 in Q2, and a $50 million haul isn’t out of the question, as a lot of big money Democratic backers have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Biden to enter the race.
Some reaction tweets:
Sad! @JoeBiden commences his presidential run with a scurrilous, totally disproven lie. Pres Trump did NOT call neo-Nazis or other racists “fine people.” In fact, he explicitly condemned them, here’s the proof & transcript:https://t.co/LNFIrCVu6phttps://t.co/hxmJd7LoRN
Two minutes into his official candidacy for president, human gaffe machine #Biden praised a slave owner, endorsed Antifa, and spread the most damaging race hoax in American history. #Biden2020
Creepy Sleepy Uncle Joe Biden lied in his first campaign video. he lied about Charlottesville in the same way the media has brainwashed people to believe President Donald trump said what he did not say. This is what he said. pic.twitter.com/CaSRdZvIvy
Joe Biden citing President Trump comments on Charlottesville why he's entering presidential race: "I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime." Other "threats" in Biden's lifetime WWII Korean War Vietnam War Iraq War Flu Pandemic 1968 Aids Pandemic
On foreign policy, Biden was: for the “Nuclear Freeze” (a truly terrible idea favored by the left in the 80’s)” against the first Iraq war, for the second Iraq war, and advice against the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. (“Mr. President, my suggestion is: don’t go”).
I was getting ready to do my “Biden is in” post when this news dropped:
Former Williamson County District Attorney Jana Duty was found dead Wednesday in South Texas, Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell confirmed to the American-Statesman on Thursday.
Local authorities and Texas Rangers are investigating Duty’s death, but do not suspect foul play, Gravell said.
“We are heartbroken for her family, her kids and her grandkids,” he said.
Duty served two terms as county attorney before defeating longtime incumbent John Bradley to become district attorney in 2013. She was defeated in the 2016 Republican primary by current district attorney Shawn Dick.
Duty was at times controversial, and served a short time in jail on a contempt of court charge in 2016.
Rockport police say they responded to a call Wednesday morning of a deceased person in a condo complex on the Rockport Country Club. No other details were immediately available.
Duty was a bad DA who had serious professional and ethical lapses, had trouble working with other Wilco officials, was defeated in the 2016 Republican primary by Shawn Dick, and had a lawsuit filed to remove her from office for various transgressions, including not coming into work. In hindsight this suggests that Duty may have been struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness. Maybe if she had resigned from the high pressure post she was so clearly unsuited for, she would have been able to get the help she so obviously needed.
No one expects the unexpected return of the Clinton Corruption Update! Surprise is one of our chief weapons…
With the Mueller document clearing away the cobwebs of the Russian collusion fantasy, we can finally focus on the other half of the scandularity. There’s news on the Clinton Corruption front, namely the recovery of still more Hillary emails:
Judicial Watch announced today that a senior FBI official admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President. The FBI also admitted nearly 49,000 Clinton server emails were reviewed as result of a search warrant for her material on the laptop of Anthony Weiner.
E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, made the disclosure to Judicial Watch as part of court-ordered discovery into the Clinton email issue.
U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as Priestap, to be deposed or answer writer questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Priestap was asked by Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Hillary Clinton, her former staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained.” Priestap responded with the following non-exhaustive list:
Bryan Pagliano
Cheryl Mills
Executive Office of the President [Emphasis added]
Heather Samuelson
Jacob Sullivan
Justin Cooper
United States Department of State
United States Secret Service
Williams & Connolly LLP
Who knew that so many people enjoyed Hillary’s recipes and yoga tips?
Priestap, is serving as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and helped oversee both the Clinton email and the 2016 presidential campaign investigations. Priestap testified in a separate lawsuit that Clinton was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.
“This astonishing confirmation, made under oath by the FBI, shows that the Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people.” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “No wonder Hillary Clinton has thus far skated – Barack Obama is implicated in her email scheme.”
Dan Backer, a campaign-finance lawyer and attorney-of-record in the lawsuit, explained the underlying law in an article for Investor’s Business Daily: Under federal law, “an individual donor can contribute $2,700 to any candidate, $10,000 to any state party committee, and (during the 2016 cycle) $33,400 to a national party’s main account. These groups can all get together and take a single check from a donor for the sum of those contribution limits—it’s legal because the donor cannot exceed the base limit for any one recipient. And state parties can make unlimited transfer to their national party.”
This legal loophole allows “bundlers” to raise large sums of money from wealthy donors—more than $400,000 at a time—filtering the funds to the national committees. Democrats and Republicans alike exploit this tactic. But once the money reaches the national committees, other limits apply.
Suspecting the DNC had exceeded those limits, a client of Backer’s, the Committee to Defend the President, began reviewing FEC filings to determine whether there was excessive coordination between the DNC and Clinton. What Backer discovered, as he explained in an interview, was much worse. There was “extensive evidence in the Democrats’ own FEC reports, when coupled with their own public statements that demonstrated massive straw man contributions papered through the state parties, to the DNC, and then directly to Clinton’s campaign—in clear violation of federal campaign-finance law.”
That’s the same Dan Backer who runs a number of scam PACs. Nice to see him doing something useful for a change, but you still shouldn’t contribute to any of his PACs.
Break out the tiny violins: “The Clinton Foundation saw contributions dry up approximately 90% over a three-year period between 2014 and 2017.”
“Ukraine’s top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country’s law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.”
“Russia’s GRU military intelligence service used fraudulent emails to gain access to large amounts of sensitive emails and documents that were then disseminated via covert GRU websites during the 2016 presidential election campaign influence operation, according to the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.” The GRU evidently used spearphising to penetrate the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The piece details the methods. This section was one of the most heavily redacted in the Mueller report. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
It only took two and a half years, but even the New York Times has finally figured out that the Steele Dossier was complete and utter garbage. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“U.S. Spends $90 Million to Help a few Dozen Afghan Women Get Jobs.” Guess who was involved?
The U.S. government has blown almost $90 million on a doomed project to help Afghan women enter the workforce with a big chunk of the money going to a Clinton-aligned “development” company that reaped big bucks from Uncle Sam while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The cash flows through the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which is charged with providing global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. In this case USAID allocated $216 million to supposedly help tens of thousands of Afghan women get jobs and gain promotions over five years. Known as “Promoting Gender Equity in National Priority Programs,” the endeavor was launched in 2014 and tens of millions of dollars later it’s proven to be a major failure…Of interesting note is that one of the biggest contracts went to a company, Chemonics International, with close ties to the Clintons.
Here’s an unlikely bombshell from almost a year ago: “Putin Claims U.S. Intelligence Agents Funneled $400 Million To Clinton Campaign.” Given the source and how little we’ve heard about this claim since, I have to assume there was nothing to it.
In the Before Time, the Long Long Ago (which, in this case, is October of 2016), Alan Dershowitz was almost universally hailed as a leading legal mind. A Harvard professor and staunch advocate of due process and constitutional rights, Dershowitz was a frequent guest on CNN. That is, until they replaced him with creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti as their go-to legal guy.
“CNN, which used to have me on all the time, on Anderson Cooper, on Cuomo, on Lemon, as an analyst, as a centrist analyst, they decided no, no, it is okay to have extreme Trump supporters, because people just use them as a stick figure exhibits,” Dershowitz said. “What they didn’t want was a centrist liberal that went against their narrative.”
It’s obvious that CNN didn’t want actual sober legal analysis of constitutional rights and designated presidential powers harshing their Trump Derangement Syndrome buzz. Which is why they chose a guy now under multiple felony indictments over a respected legal scholar who was telling them the truth rather than what they wanted to hear.
No wonder Dershowitz gives the media a failing grade for their Mueller Report coverage. “I think we’re seeing an elimination of the distinction between the editorial page and the news page in some of the leading media in the country. It’s a shame. Walter Cronkite could not get a job in the media today.”
Most of the announced Democrats seem to have qualified for the first debates, with the possible exceptions of Williamson, Messam, and the two representatives (Tim Ryan and Eric Swalwell) who entered the race late in Q1.
Ads on sites like Facebook and Google were the top expenditure for multiple campaigns. Why? In part because the nature of running for president is changing. And in part because the Democratic Party has made having 65,000 donors a gateway to the first primary debates, so campaigns are fishing for new donors online.
Mr. Sanders spent $1.5 million on digital ads. Ms. Harris spent $1 million. And Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, plowed more than half of everything he spent into online ads: $450,000.
Warren’s hefty burn rate:
Ms. Warren, who entered the race on New Year’s Eve, raised $6 million and spent the most of any Democratic candidate in the first quarter. Her $5.2 million amounts to a big and risky bet that early investment and organizing in the states that will begin the nominating contest — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — will pay dividends next year.
Ms. Warren’s report showed more than 160 people on payroll — nearly double that of Mr. Sanders, even as he raised three times as much as her. Ms. Harris, the No. 2 fund-raiser, had 44 people on staff. Ms. Warren spent nearly $1.9 million on salaries, payroll taxes and insurance in the first quarter.
Ms. Warren also transferred $10.4 million from her Senate account, giving her a financial cushion. But such a transfer happens only once.
The Hill sorts them into winners and losers. Winners: Buttigieg, Sanders, Trump, Harris, O’Rourke. Losers: Warren, Gillibrand, Delaney.
Headline: “Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson, Bernie Sanders are the 2020 candidates standing out to our readers.” Body: “And while we got overwhelming messages from the Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard camps (in that order).” Man, even USA Today headline writers have it in for Gabbard…
Joe Biden is running. The former vice president will make his candidacy official with a video announcement next Wednesday, according to people familiar with the discussions who have been told about them by top aides.
Seriously, he’s actually made a decision. It’s taken two years of back-and-forth, it’ll be his third (or, depending on how you count, seventh) try for the White House, and many people thought he wouldn’t do it, but the biggest factor reshaping the 2020 Democratic-primary field is locking into place.
He wants this. He really wants this. He’s wanted this since he was first elected to the Senate, in 1972, and he’s decided that he isn’t too old, isn’t too out of sync with the current energy in the Democratic Party, and certainly wasn’t going to be chased out by the women who accused him of making them feel uncomfortable or demeaned because of how he’d touched them.
Biden’s campaign will, at its core, argue that the response to Donald Trump requires an experienced, calm hand to help America take a deep breath and figure out a way to get back on track. First, however, the man who would become the oldest president in American history needs to get through a primary—one that’s already tracking 18 other candidates, including six senators, two governors, a charismatic Texan wannabe senator, a geek-cool Indiana mayor with an impossible-to-pronounce name, and a guy no one had ever heard of who’s already scored a spot on the debate stage by becoming a mock obsession in weird corners of the internet by talking about universal basic income and robots.
The primary, Biden believes, will be easier than some might think: He sees a clear path down the middle of the party, especially with Bernie Sanders occupying a solid 20 percent of the progressive base, and most of the other candidates fighting for the rest. And the announcement comes at a moment when many in the party have become anxious about Sanders’s strength, with some beginning to wonder whether Biden might be the only sure counterweight to stop him from getting the nomination.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Probably Not. No new news, and the original speculation was he wouldn’t run if Biden did. Downgrade from Maybe, but he has enough FU money that you never know…
Why has Harris got a better start than Booker? The answer is in the demography of the Democratic primary electorate and the importance of women in the party. The strength of black women was clearly illustrated in the results of the recent mayoral race in Chicago where the two finalists were both black women.
The CNN research indicates the Democratic primary electorate has changed significantly since 2008. Black and female voters made up a larger share of the Democratic primary electorate in 2016 than they did in 2008. Unfortunately for Booker that gives the advantage to Harris.
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s garnered ex-Obama and Clinton backers, including Steve Elmendorf, Laurie David, Robert Pohlad, Jill Goldman, John Phillips, and Orin Kramer. “Unlike much of the Democratic primary field, Buttigieg has not fully distanced himself from big money donors.” You don’t say. A Washington Post piece offers three points of historical comparison for Buttigieg:
Several past candidates come to mind in trying to assess the Buttigieg phenomenon. One is Barack Obama. Another is former senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. A third is former Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt. All had their moments. All were the subject of favorable and sometimes gushing media coverage. Only Obama went on to become both his party’s nominee and president of the United States.
The tiny problem with this analysis is that Buttigieg can’t be Obama because he doesn’t have a century of white guilt behind his candidacy…
Once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party — he was the first Latino to give a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention — he has been outshined in the ever-expanding field by brighter stars and nonstars alike. While he has many fans in his hometown, San Antonio, where he once served as mayor, he is not well known on the national stage. And with the sudden rise of the former El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke, Mr. Castro is not even the most well-known candidate in his own state.
Lots of “this should be his moment because immigration” blather snipped.
Some Democrats believe that Mr. Castro’s moment has, if anything, already passed — that his best shot at national success occurred after he gave his electrifying speech at the 2012 convention. Some wonder whether he is too quiet, too inexperienced and too careful to compete in such a crowded, high-powered primary field.
While Mr. Castro tries to brush off the inevitable comparisons to Mr. O’Rourke, whose challenge to Senator Ted Cruz last year turned him into a national celebrity, the attention drawn by Mr. O’Rourke — who speaks fluent Spanish, and whose hometown is on the border with Mexico — has cast something of a shadow over Mr. Castro’s candidacy.
When he left Washington at the end of the Obama administration, Mr. Castro returned to Texas but resisted entreaties to run for statewide office. He finished writing a book, did some teaching and spent time with his family, but some Texas Democrats believe he missed an opportunity to advance his career and gain the kind of political profile that could have fortified his presidential run.
Because Mr. Castro never ran for statewide office, he has not built up a big email list of supporters, and he still has not met the 65,000-donor threshold to qualify for the first Democratic primary debates. In the first three months of the year, he raised only $1.1 million (though his campaign said it had raised over half a million more by mid-April).
Theta’s the real takeaway here, but 538 says he’s in the debates thanks to cracking 1% in three polls.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out.
It may be hard to believe now, but for a New York minute it seemed that Bill de Blasio was going to be the champion of an insurgent left. Progressive activists and commentators hailed de Blasio’s landslide victory in New York’s 2013 mayoral election as a sign of an encouraging new direction for the Democratic Party. His unabashedly liberal campaign—which centered on income inequality, or what de Blasio poetically termed a “tale of two cities”—prefigured the unrest that would shake the party, culminating in Bernie Sanders’s unlikely challenge to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary.
Many unfulfilled, NYC-specific campaign promises snipped.
Yet as de Blasio weighs entering the 2020 race, the prospect of a President de Blasio has been met with widespread derision. The New Republic’s Alex Shephard termed his interest in the presidency an “embarrassing quest for national fame,” while the mayor’s own allies (anonymously) told Politico that his flirtation with a presidential run was “fucking insane.” De Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, has said the “timing is not exactly right” for him to launch a campaign. The New York Times, which seems to take gleeful pleasure in dinging de Blasio for everything from calling errant snow days to ostentatiously hanging around Iowa, recently noted that Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has generated far more presidential buzz than the mayor of the country’s biggest city. Even in his hometown, there seems to be only one person who thinks a de Blasio presidential campaign would be anything other than a joke: de Blasio himself.
How did he fall so far? De Blasio does, after all, have a robust record of actual accomplishments under his belt, which is more than what can be said for, say, Beto O’Rourke. He was once the favorite of grassroots groups and leftist elites alike. Perhaps the left soured on him because he is a singularly ham-handed politician, who possesses all the native charm of a Howard Schultz, the billionaire Starbucks founder who is trying to win the presidency one sanctimonious tweet at a time. Perhaps de Blasio has never been as progressive as his early cheerleaders made him out to be; he might simply be an opportunist who saw, early on, the way the wind was blowing and adjusted accordingly. Or maybe the Democrats, unnerved by the disaster of the last election and fearing another Trump victory in 2020, have started to prefer candidates who are all promise and no baggage.
Read on for more bashing of other candidates, but since the words “corrupt crapweasel” never appear, I don’t think the author has quite hit the nail on the head…
By the numbers, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s bid for president is foundering.
Support for her candidacy has hovered around 1 percent in national polling of Democrats.
Contributions to her campaign in its first three months totaled just under $3 million.
And viewers of her CNN town hall on April 9 numbered 491,000, rating worse than nine of the 10 forums before hers.
Hell, she’s struggling to stay in the middle tier. She also transferred $10 million from her 2018 senate campaign.
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. But he did call for President Trump’s impeachment, which is a very “I might just run so I better pander to the hard left” move.
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. Here’s a piece on his connections to fracking and “David Bernhardt, the new [Trump Administration] secretary of the Interior responsible for opening public lands to industry development.”
The Inslee strategy was to grow his numbers as Beto O’Rourke began to fade (which is already happening), move into the second tier with Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, and eventually fight his way into the Final Four. But why isn’t he breaking into the second tier?
Three reasons. First, Inslee is a white, older, male with a wonderful wife and pedestrian liberal views. Yes, Bernie Sanders is an even older white married man, but he has been a socialist and an outsider for years. In short, he’s authentic, the real deal for people who want an outsider who will challenge the power structure in both political parties. In years past, Jay’s personal bio would have been reassuring. This year it’s boring.
Second, climate change is an important issue, but to help Jay Inslee it needs to be the issue. It guarantees media coverage, young volunteers and green money, but others are crowding his turf, preventing him from owning it outright. And there is an issue that is more important: being a genuine outsider. The three candidates with the most momentum, Bernie Sanders in Tier 1, Pete Buttigieg in Tier 2 and Andrew Yang in Tier 3 are completely outside the political vineyards, where Jay Inslee has been happily toiling for 30 years.
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
Update: Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Out. “Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Wednesday he will forgo a 2020 presidential bid and instead focus on boosting Democrats in Virginia’s legislative elections later this year.” A mild surprise after all the “he wants to get in” buzz. Maybe he doesn’t see room to run with Biden getting in. And maybe it provides grist for R. S. McCain’s “Buttigieg as designated Clinton stalking horse” theory.
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
Rep. Seth Moulton announced Monday that he is running for president, vowing to engage young people and military veterans and becoming the third Massachusetts politician to throw a hat into the 2020 ring.
An Iraq veteran who led an unsuccessful effort to oust Nancy Pelosi from the House leadership last year, the 40-year-old Moulton has said he plans to run a campaign focused on national security and defense issues, which his campaign argues will make him a foil to President Donald Trump. Moulton was elected to Congress in 2014, after he upset former Democratic Rep. John Tierney in a primary fight. The Salem lawmaker is serving his third term.
“Engaging young people and military veterans” sounds less like a plan than a demographic excuse to run, as there won’t be enough of either voting in the primaries to secure the nomination. And “national security and defense issues” go over in the Democratic base about as well as tofu at a BBQ cookoff. He’s also securing office space and staffing up. Upgrade over Maybe.
Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. However, that NYT fundraising piece notes that “Nearly $300,000 of his first-day haul was actually general-election funds raised above the limit that he can spend in the primary contest.” Two top staffers leave his campaign. O’Rourke is wrong about America’s success being founded on slavery. Heh: “Michael Moore crashed Democratic presidential primary candidate Beto O’Rourke’s rally in Arlington, Virginia, but the crowd quickly turned on the left-wing documentary filmmaker.” Carlson Tucker says that O’Rourke’s campaign is dead:
I suspect that pronouncement is premature. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. He doesn’t back impeachment. He’s in Iowa, but not setting the world on fire: “Ryan’s audiences were small and quaint. At a brewery in Burlington, 15 people showed up. A sandwich shop in Fort Madison and a restaurant in Mount Pleasant had even smaller crowds. Most of the people were white and easily older than 50.” They note even Tulsi Gabbard drew 30…
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Reason profile, which included this nugget: “‘I’ve looked at the numbers…” Yang said repeatedly at a rally in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening, eliciting loud cheers from supporters who fervently waved signs that said ‘MATH.'” I was told…
In all the Mueller Report reverberations, you may have missed news from across the pond that UKIP founder Nigel Farage just started an new political party:
That Britain, whose voters chose to leave the EU in 2016, will partake in the European Parliament elections next month is frankly absurd. Britain was supposed to have left the bloc already (Brexit day was scheduled for March 31, was extended to mid-April, and was extended again to October 31). And elected British MEPs — presuming that Brexit still happens — would have to vacate their seats almost immediately.
This is yet another source of voter frustration. And Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader, has seized it as an opportunity to gain support for his “Brexit party,” launched April 12. According to a YouGov poll, the Brexit party is leading with 27 percent of the vote. Labour is at 22 percent and the Conservatives are trailing behind at 15 percent.
This is bad news for the Conservative party who are — at least ostensibly — the Brexit party. Around 70 percent of Conservative constituencies voted Leave in the 2017 election, and it has been the task of the Conservative government for the past two years to deliver this result. But they haven’t. Failure after failure, broken promise after broken promise; an entirely self-inflicted crisis of trust is upon them, and the gulf between Parliament and ordinary voters is ever widening. The worry now is that the Tories might bleed Euro-skeptics to Farage’s single-issue party.
This is also a concern for the Labour party since 60 percent of its constituencies also voted Leave. So far, the Labour party has gotten away with a deliberately ambiguous line on Brexit. But in future elections, they’ll need to step up.
Lord Glasman said the Brexit Party would “capture the rage of people who feel like their democratic vote had been disregarded”.
Issuing the warning at a panel organised by Labour Leave, he urged the party not to “sneer” at people who voted to quit the bloc.
Support for Brexit in working class areas was “robust and not moving”, he believed.
“People see this clearly for what it is which is a refusal of the ruling class to accept their vote,” said the peer.
“If Labour can’t lead the democratic possibility of this then people will swing to the right.
If both Labour and Tories see the Brexit Party as a threat, there’s an easy way to get rid of it: Keep their promise to voters, respect the results of the referendum, and withdraw the UK from the EU. It’s the endless dishonest shirking of the inevitable that’s driving voter contempt of Britain’s ruling class. Brexit and be done with it, or face the prospect of being replaced.
