Library Additions: Two Books About Presidents

August 4th, 2019

Two more Half Price Books finds, both of about Texas Presidents, one by and signed by a Texas President:

  • Bush, George W. 41: A Portrait of My Father. Crown Publishers, 2014. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with a tiny bit of wrinkling at head and heel. Signed by George W. Bush. Political biography of George H. W. Bush. Bought for $7.99 at a Half Price Books in Austin. Like that signed copy of Decision Points, someone in the book receiving room was asleep at the switch…
  • Caro, Robert. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. Knopf, 2002. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with a slight bump to top front corner tip. The third in Caro’s monumental LBJ series. According to Caro, Johnson is the first Majority Leader to ever actually make the senate work. Of course, that’s not really its constitutional duty… Bought for $17.49 from Half Price Books in Austin.
  • Philomena Cunk on Climate Change

    August 3rd, 2019

    Like Jonathan Pie, Philomena Cunk is a fake British media personality, in this case the alter ego of comedienne Diane Morgan. Cunk comes in on the dim end of the celebrity stick, and in this episode she tackles climate change.

    LinkSwarm for August 2, 2019

    August 2nd, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! As mentioned previously, today starts an extremely busy week for me, so expect some light blogging ahead.

  • “Why Do Democrats Run All Of The Dangerous And Rodent Infested Cities?”

    Rep. Cummings, while being very obsessed with Russia, seems utterly bewildered with the idea that anyone could dare question why so many billions of federal dollars flow to places like West Baltimore when they are obviously doing no good.

    Look at other cities in similar dilapidation and there holds a unique truth: Democrats run them all.

    How long will sewage run down the streets of San Francisco? How long will St. Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore, continue to rotate as the nation’s most dangerous crime infested metros? And how long will federal dollars keep chasing bad money with new?

    Snip.

    According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report and as reported in the USA Today (from Feb 19, 2019), the top 10 most dangerous cities in America are run by Democrats.

    The overwhelming majority of them are also all governed by Democratic Governors. And the Congressional districts represented are also majority Democratic.

    Did I mention that each of them also has higher unemployment rates than the national average?

    In Baltimore, Democrats have run everything for more than four decades. Federal dollars have flowed in, and yet the stench, sight, and symbolism of it all—stinks.

  • El Chapo may be convicted, but the cartel wars continue:

    In the end, the forces that are driving these trends in Mexico are larger and more powerful than any individual, and there is very little that any one person can do to counter or control them. It is true that individuals such as Gulf cartel founder Juan Garcia Abrego and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the “godfather” of the Guadalajara cartel, were instrumental in altering the relationship between Mexican cartels and their Colombian counterparts. They succeeded in boosting the role of Mexican cartels from mere errand boys, who received a small cut of the Colombian cartels’ profits on cocaine smuggled through Mexico, to full partners that received an equal share of the profits. The vast profits that the cocaine trade brought to the Mexican cartels was a game changer. They provided the Mexican groups with vast quantities of cash to hire armies of hit men, arm them with military-grade weapons and bribe officials at every level of government. This vast wealth also allowed them to challenge — and in some places usurp — the government’s monopoly on force and governance as they pursued their campaign of “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) to either bribe or kill people in authority.

    Mexican cartels multiplied their profits by embracing the heroin trade, eventually coming to dominate the North American heroin market. They also ventured into the synthetic drug trade, as drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl brought them even larger profits than cocaine or heroin. Literally awash in money, many Mexican cartels struggled to launder and spend all the money they were making.

    Naturally, however, this vast fortune has come with consequences beyond just coming to the attention of authorities. Given the huge sums at stake, business partners and even family members have turned into sworn enemies as they fight over a greater share of the profits. And in addition to fighting over smuggling routes to external markets — which have grown to include Australia and Europe, in addition to the United States — they are also fighting bitterly for control of the sizable domestic Mexican retail drug market in places like Mexico City, Cancun, Tijuana and Juarez. Moreover, they are struggling to grab control of the lucrative petroleum theft racket, while also engaging in extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, human smuggling and other criminal activities.

    In the end, I believe that Balkanization will continue to impact even the larger and stronger cartels such as Sinaloa and the CJNG [Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, or just New Generation]. I anticipate additional rounds of Sinaloa infighting and while the CJNG had been largely immune from the trend, the emergence of the Nueva Plaza cartel, which is composed mostly of former CJNG members under the direction of Carlos “El Cholo” Enrique Sanchez Martinez and Erick “El 85” Valencia Salazar, has showed that it, too, is vulnerable to greed and infighting.

    Indeed, Gulf cartel leader Cardenas Guillen earned the nickname “El Mata Amigos” (the friend killer) for, unsurprisingly, turning on those close to him amid the greed-driven infighting. The amount of internecine conflict, however, has only grown since Cardenas Guillen’s 2003 arrest, as evidenced by recent murder trends, much of which stems from intracartel fighting, as well as battles among different groups.

  • The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is having a Social Jusstice Warrior diversity meltdown:

    Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) was set to make an unplanned trip to Washington from her district Monday amid an outcry from top black and Latino lawmakers over a lack of diversity in the campaign arm’s senior management ranks.

    Bustos’ sudden return to D.C., just days after Congress left for a six-week-long August recess, comes as aides and lawmakers are calling for systematic changes to the DCCC, the party’s main election organ.

    POLITICO reported last week that black and Hispanic lawmakers are furious with Bustos’ stewardship of the campaign arm. They say the upper echelon of the DCCC is bereft of diversity, and it is not doing enough to reach Latino voters and hire consultants of color. In addition, several of Bustos’ senior aides have left in the first six months of her tenure, including her chief of staff — a black woman — and her director of mail and polling director, both women.

    In the most dramatic move so far, Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Filemon Vela told POLITICO Sunday that Bustos should fire her top aide, DCCC executive director Allison Jaslow.

    “The DCCC is now in complete chaos,” the pair said in a statement to POLITICO. “The single most immediate action that Cheri Bustos can take to restore confidence in the organization and to promote diversity is to appoint a qualified person of color, of which there are many, as executive director at once. We find the silence of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on this issue to be deafening.”

    It’s lovely to see Democrats inflict the same “diversity” pain on themselves as they’ve tried to inflict on the rest of the country. The DCCC was already lagging badly behind Republican efforts, and a “diversity” witch hunt will only add to its problems.

  • It may be a bigger issue than you realize:

    The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ powerful campaign arm, has just abruptly purged half a dozen staffers. Why? Because they are white.

    It appears that no one had anything against these particular staffers … except for the color of their skin. Although roughly half the committee’s full-time staff (13 of 27) were nonwhite, this was not enough for some Democratic members of Congress. They complained DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois had brought in too many white staffers when she won the position. And they put enough pressure on her that she sacrificed her loyal staffers to the god of diversity.

    Even if all these staffers ended up with cushy lobbying jobs as a reward for their loyalty, this is still a lot more shocking than people perhaps realize.

    There are two possible interpretations of this mass-purge at the DCCC. Either a few Democrats are making a racial issue out of a patronage question, once again knifing each other under the cover of intersectionality, or Democrats are genuinely angry that half the staff at the DCCC are white. As often happens with the Democratic Left, it is difficult to tell just where the insincerity ends and the fanaticism begins.

    But either interpretation implies that this is not a party fit to govern.

  • “The biggest loser in Wednesday’s Detroit debate was sanity.”

    Here’s a quick cheat sheet. All the Democrats support policies that would raise taxes. They all support policies that would make the country poorer because less energy independent. Some want to give free college tuition to illegal immigrants, all want many more immigrants, legal or illegal. Most think Trump should be impeached. Some want to abolish private insurance, most want ‘Medicare for all.’ Gov. Inslee insisted that ‘it is time to give people adequate mental health care,’ a statement that won a round of applause. Judging from what was said from the platform tonight, I think he may be right.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Baltimore murder rate worse than Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, driving asylum surge.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The United States has officially withdrawn from the INF treaty. “The Russians have been flagrantly violating the treaty for years, and it doesn’t apply to China, which has massively built up its missile program, including intermediate-range systems.”
  • Speaking of China, don’t look now, but it looks like they’re about to Tiananmen Hong Kong.
  • Get woke, go broke: Remember Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” social justice warrior pandering commercial? “P&G reported a net loss of about $5.24 billion, or $2.12 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, due to an $8 billion non-cash writedown of Gillette.” Nothing says “woke” quite like destroying eight BILLION dollars of shareholder value…
  • Long, long, long article on Alan Deshowitz and his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. I remain pro-civil liberties and anti-kid-diddling. Most interesting tidbit: The raid on Epstein’s home produced “an expired passport that contained Epstein’s photograph alongside an assumed name, with the country of residency listed as Saudi Arabia.”
  • More on the subject: Derschowitz defends himself.
  • Campaign funds of the living dead!
  • Texas DPS implements soft decriminalization of marijuana:

    Texas’ largest law enforcement agency is moving away from arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses. It’s the latest development in the chaos that has surrounded pot prosecution after state lawmakers legalized hemp this year.

    As of July 10, all Texas Department of Public Safety officers have been instructed to issue a citation for people with a misdemeanor amount of the suspected drug — less than 4 ounces in possession cases — when possible, according to an interoffice memo obtained by The Texas Tribune. The citation requires a person to appear in court and face their criminal charges.

    Those issued a citation for misdemeanor charges still face the same penalties if convicted — up to a year in jail and fine of $4,000.

    I’d like to see actual decriminalization rather than selective enforcement, but you can argue that of all the laws DPS is required to enforce, enforcing marijuana prohibition (at least on adults) is a waste of time unless the driver is impaired.

  • “New York City Still Trying to Avoid A SCOTUS Fight Over Gun Law.” Because they know they’ll lose. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Australian expedition sent to Antarctica to celebrate the golden age of Australian antarctic exploration. Like many golden age Antarctic expeditions, it was filled with disaster. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Why Snopes fears The Babylon Bee and feels the need to “fact check” them.
  • Two superintendents enter Whataburger, one superintendent leaves.

  • “Adrian Peterson Reportedly Made Over $100 Million But Owes Millions in Debt.”
  • Congratulations to Dwight for ten years of blogging.
  • Happy birthday, Herman Melville.
  • Bronypocalypse now.
  • Will Hurd Not Running For Reelection

    August 1st, 2019

    Well this is going to make holding his seat significantly harder:

    After reflecting on how best to help our country address these challenges, I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.

    I left a job I loved in the CIA as an undercover officer to meet what I believed to be a need for new leadership in Congress on intelligence and national security matters. I wanted to help the Intelligence Community in a different way by bringing my knowledge and experience to Congress. I’m leaving the House of Representatives to help our country in a different way. I want to use my knowledge and experience to focus on these generational challenges in new ways. It was never my intention to stay in Congress forever, but I will stay involved in politics to grow a Republican Party that looks like America.

    As the only African American Republican in the House of Representatives and as a Congressman who represents a 71% Latino district, I’ve taken a conservative message to places that don’t often hear it. Folks in these communities believe in order to solve problems we should empower people not the government, help families move up the economic ladder through free markets not socialism and achieve and maintain peace by being nice with nice guys and tough with tough guys. These Republican ideals resonate with people who don’t think they identify with the Republican Party. Every American should feel they have a home in our party.

    While I have 17 months left in my term, I’m very proud of the last 55.

    In the Year of Beto in the only true swing district in Texas, Hurd, a black Republican moderate, won his seat over Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones by less than 1,000 votes. Holding the seat with Hurd would be tough but doable, but holding it without him will likely be a lot more difficult.

    Quick Gabbard vs. Harris Debate Roundup

    August 1st, 2019

    Eh, want to do a bit on the second Round Two debate?

    Not really. Without Marianne Williamson it doesn’t have as big a hook, and I should probably save something for the Clown Car update. Surely there’s something more interesting to talk about.

    (Checks news) Nope.

    (Checks Twitter) Nope.

    (Checks blogs) Hey, Instapundit has a lot of links…on the debates.

    OK, debates win by default!

    I’m not a Tulsi Gabbard fan, unlike some almost sane lefty types, but she seems to have made a big impression:

    Especially her takedown of Kamala Harris’ record as a prosecutor:

    How much of that is true? At least some of it seems to be.

    One need not be soft on crime to be outraged by prosecutor abuse of American civil liberties.

    More on the same theme:

    On paper, Kamala Harris is a really strong contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination. But last night, on the debate stage in Detroit, she demonstrated that as good as she is when she’s on the attack, she looks brittle, flustered, and flailing when other candidates attack her.

    Harris’s first move when attacked is to simply deny the accusation. Five times last night, Harris began a sentence with “the reality is. . . ,” and what follows from Harris rarely directly refutes the accusation; she usually emphasizes a slightly different point.

    Dana Bash asked Harris about the Biden campaign’s claim that her health care plan was “a have-it-every-which-way approach.” Harris’s responded, “the reality is that I have been spending time in this campaign listening to American families, listening to experts, listening to health care providers.” Listening to lots of people is nice, but that doesn’t really address whether the plan is an attempt to have it every which way.

    Biden then said that her plan would cost $3 trillion. She responded, “the reality is that our plan will bring health care to all Americans under a Medicare for All system.” That doesn’t address the cost issue. Biden went after her on the cost again, and Harris’s best defense was “the cost of doing nothing is far too expensive. Second, we are now paying $3 trillion a year for health care in America. Over the next 10 years, it’s probably going to be $6 trillion.” Harris was left arguing that we need to spend more in order to ensure that we don’t spend more.

    I don’t know if marijuana prosecutions and death row evidentiary decisions will be enough to derail Harris’s presidential campaign. But I do know that these sorts of examples are real complications to the image Harris wants to project, which is that of tough prosecutor who’s on the side of the typical Democratic presidential primary voter.

    Tulsi Gabbard — who seems to have a genuine animosity towards Harris — ate her Wheaties before this debate and just ripped Harris’s record as a prosecutor: “There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.” That generated applause from the crowd in the Fox Theater in Detroit.

    Gabbard continued: “She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep a bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

    The Harris response was to ignore all of the specific accusations: “I did the work of significantly reforming the criminal justice system of a state of 40 million people, which became a national model for the work that needs to be done. And I am proud of that work. And I am proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work of being in the position to use the power that I had to reform a system that is badly in need of reform.”

    Except Gabbard wasn’t giving a “fancy speech,” she was making specific accusations, and Gabbard had the facts on her side: on the marijuana prosecutions, on the laughing, on the blocking of the evidence, on the prison labor, and on the bail system. Rather than defend any of the specific decisions, Harris preferred to simply assert she had reformed the criminal justice system. Maybe she had, but not on the policies Gabbard listed.

    Gabbard smelled blood and repeated the accusation: “In the case of those who were on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to do so. (APPLAUSE) There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor owe — you owe them an apology.”

    Harris responded, “My entire career I have been opposed — personally opposed to the death penalty and that has never changed.” Again, notice how Harris answers a question that wasn’t asked. Gabbard didn’t say she supported the death penalty, she said she blocked evidence that ultimately exonerated an innocent man.

    But Harris then responded in the worst possible way: “I think you can judge people by when they are under fire and it’s not about some fancy opinion on a stage but when they’re in the position to actually make a decision, what do they do.”

    Yes, Harris dismissed the only Iraq War veteran on the stage as not knowing what it’s like “under fire.”

    Look, a lot of folks in the media world and high-level Democratic circles really like Kamala Harris. She presses a lot of their buttons: black, Indian, woman, daughter of immigrants, Howard University, powerful lawyer. She’s got the profile of the “good” politician that sinister powerful forces want to derail in an uncreative Hollywood thriller. And if Harris didn’t have a media protective bubble around her, she would be getting crucified for that you don’t know what it’s like under fire, you’re just making some fancy opinion on a stage counterattack.

    Boosting Gabbard’s case is the ridiculous overreaction of Democratic Media Complex types in screaming “Russian bot!” at Gabbard and her fans.

    I love the conspiracy theory that the Russian bots are so organized, effective and insidious that they have enough agents strewn in every state between Maine and California to effectively game Google’s IP-based stats system. “Boris, we must plant troll form in Boise to game Google Idaho stats! Get on it, comrade!”

    Evidently the Magic Eight Ball at DNC headquarters has only two settings these days: RACIST and RUSSIAN BOT, and the Russian Collusion Fantasy is going to continue clouding their judgment right up to the 2020 election.

    It’s creepy the way a set of Democratic Media Complex insiders seem outraged at any criticism of Harris. I used to worry about Harris being a strong candidate, and how ruthlessly social justice warrior types would scream “Racist!” at any criticism of her if she won the nomination, but the more I watch her, the more I think she’s a giant bowl of flavorless nothing.

    Marianne Williamson Dominates Second Debate

    July 31st, 2019

    That headline is not my contention (I didn’t watch the debate, for Reasons), but the consensus of people who did watch it. Jim Geraghty:

    A lot of us are laughing about Marianne Williamson, but there’s some of that same dynamic that drove Trump to the nomination in 2016. She’s a figure who’s famous for being connected to the entertainment world, who isn’t interested in policy details, and who emotes in a way that generates raucous applause from the audience. She’s the political candidate for people who aren’t that into politics. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed mentioned that a Marianne Williamson staffer told him, “when she visits the networks, reporters and producers sneer at her, but the makeup artists always cry when they meet her.”

    And her lack of interest in policy means she’s always talking about bigger, vaguer, more emotionally resonant themes in her own kooky way: “This is part of the dark underbelly of American society, the rainfall, the bigotry, and the entire conversation that we’re having here tonight, if you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” A chunk of the American people is going to find talk about “dark psychic force” as crystal-waving nonsense. Another chunk of the American people is going to hear Williamson and respond, “finally, a candidate is addressing the real problem.”

    John Podhoretz:

    Well, Tuesday night in Detroit, the veteran New Age motivational speaker Marianne Williamson hit it out of the park and brought the Democratic Party into the Nutcase Era.

    The key problem afflicting America, in Williamson’s view, is a “dark psychic force” that is weaving a racial divide. It is the cause of white nationalism. That racial divide is causing an “emotional imbalance” that is interfering with human thriving. And this betrays the purposes of the founding fathers, who brought America into being to allow us all to have “possibilities.”

    To most of us elitists, this either sounds wacko on its own terms or is dismissible as a semi-pagan illiterate translation of classic Christian thinking about the devil’s role in ordinary life. But we dismiss the power of this approach at our peril. These are key themes not only through American history, but also ideas that have played a significant role in the Age of Oprah.

    Williamson has been speaking in this way to gigantic audiences for close to 40 years, under the East Coast radar. And you know what? She’s really good at it. And she brought real feeling and passion to the most visceral issue for Democrats at the present moment. She essentially said that racism and white supremacy are nothing less than demonic and that saving America from their evil is a moral task.

    She dominated post-debate search results:

    She won a Drudge post-debate straw poll with 48%, though no idea of the methodology there.

    This bit was evidently the most-applauded speech of the night:

    That’s mostly the usual far-left Social Justice Warrior garbage the hard left pushes these days, but she says it better and with more conviction than all the other clowns.

    Robert Stacy McCain (who, like me, was early on covering the Williamson campaign):

    Here is the thing I keep reminding my conservative friends: You have to keep in mind that this is about Democratic primary voters, the kind of highly motivated hard-core leftists who will turn out on a snowy February night to participate in an Iowa precinct caucus. If you tell me that Marianne Williamson is “too crazy” to win, my answer is, “You’re telling me Elizabeth Warren is not crazy? Bernie Sanders is not crazy?”

    If candidates like Warren and Sanders now define what is “mainstream” for Democrats, there is no feasible limit on what is “mainstream,” and the only reason Marianne Williamson is considered a long-shot candidate is because the extremist left-wing fringe has become overcrowded.

    More tweets on Williamson:

    And another debate is up tonight…

    The Twitter Primary Revisited for July 2019

    July 30th, 2019

    As I did in previous months, here’s an update on the number of Twitter followers of the Democratic presidential candidates, updated since last month’s post-debate update. Tom Steyer has jumped into the race, but Eric Swalwell has jumped out, keeping the number of accounts tracked at 25.

    However, a big caveat: Twitter has screwed up my counts. They loped the last significant digit off accounts over 1 million followers, so 1.44 million became 1.4 million. This means that several contenders had their number of followers go down, but I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn from this, as it appears to be a statistical artifact. Likewise, those whose counts have gone up by less than 50,000 may just be enjoying an artificial bump due to a rounding error. Thus this month’s Twitter Primary is only accurate for showing positional differences between candidates, and for establishing a new baseline for future counts, not for showing accurate gain and loss counts.

    Conversely, Twitter seems to have added a significant digit for followers above 100,000 and below one million, so 733,000 became 733,400. This will also change gained and lost counts, though not by nearly as much.

    The following are all the declared Presidential candidates ranked in order of Twitter followers:

    1. Bernie Sanders: 9.4 million (up 50,000)
    2. Cory Booker: 4.3 million (up 20,000)
    3. Joe Biden: 3.6 million (down 10,000)
    4. Kamala Harris: 3 million (up 190,000)
    5. Elizabeth Warren: 2.9 million (up 170,000)
    6. Marianne Williamson: 2.7 million (up 30,000)
    7. Beto O’Rourke: 1.4 million (down 40,000)
    8. Kirsten Gillibrand: 1.4 million (down 30,000)
    9. Pete Buttigieg: 1.3 million (up 90,000)
    10. Amy Klobuchar: 732,900 (up 26,900)
    11. Andrew Yang: 539,600 (up 59,600)
    12. Tulsi Gabbard: 443,300 (up 62,300)
    13. Julian Castro: 332,500 (up 24,500)
    14. Tom Steyer: 241,400 (new)
    15. Steve Bullock: 178,600 (up 3,600)
    16. Bill de Blasio: 164,800 (up 2,800)
    17. John Hickenlooper: 151,000 (up 2,000)
    18. Seth Moulton: 146,800 (up 3,800)
    19. Mike Gravel: 126,300 (up 15,300)
    20. Jay Inslee: 76,500 (up 4,200)
    21. Michael Bennet: 28,700 (up 3,800)
    22. John Delaney: 27,800 (up 1,900)
    23. Tim Ryan: 26,600 (up 2,300)
    24. Joe Sestak: 11,800 (up 900)
    25. Wayne Messam: 8,090 (up 352)

    Removed from the last update: Eric Swalwell.

    For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 62.4 million followers, up 900,000 since the last roundup. The official presidential @POTUS account has 26.4 million, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap with Trump’s personal followers.

    A few notes:

  • Twitter does rounding (even apart from this month’s rounding changes), and counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them.
  • Due to the rounding issue, for the first time ever, we’ve see candidate follower counts going down, including frontrunner Biden, whose account went down 10,000 followers, with O’Rourke down 40,000 and Gillibrand down 30,000. Due to the rounding issue, I have to assume this is just statistical noise.
  • Harris and Warren have clearly kept some momentum since the debates, though the rounding makes unclear exactly how much.
  • By contrast, Castro’s momentum appears to have slowed.
  • Yang did well, but Gabbard did even better.
  • Bennet passes Delaney to get the World’s Tallest Midget trophy back.
  • With the debates this week, we can track changes against the new baseline (and hopefully Twitter won’t change their rounding again).

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for July 29, 2019

    July 29th, 2019

    The next debates loom, Gabbard sues Google, Moulton shoots people in a graveyard, billionaire Steyer begs for pennies, a lot of polls, and your periodic reminder that polls are useless.

    It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

    Also, consider this advanced notice that you’re not going to get nearly as lengthy a Clown Car Update next Monday, as Armadillocon and work-related duties are going to be soaking up an inordinate amount of my time late this week and early next.

    Polls

  • Morning Consult (Nevada): Biden 29, Sanders 23, Warren 11.5, Harris 12.5, Buttigieg 6, Booker 3, O’Rourke 3, Yang 3, Castro 2, Bullock 1, Klobuchar 1, Steyer 1, de Blasio 1, Ryan 1.
  • Fox News: Biden 33, Sanders 15, Warren 12, Harris 10, Buttigieg 5, Klobuchar 3, Yang 3, Booker 2, Hickenlooper 2, O’Rourke 2.
  • Monmouth (South Carolina): Biden 39, Harris 12, Sanders 10, Warren 9, Buttigieg 5, Booker 2, Steyer 2, Bennet 1, O’Rourke 1, Klobuchar 1. “Biden has widespread support among black voters (51%), a group that makes up more than 6-in-10 likely primary voters. His support among white voters (24%) is less than half that level. Among the top five candidates, two earn significantly higher support among white voters than black voters: Warren (21% white and 2% black) and Buttigieg (11% white and 1% black). The remaining candidates draw equal support from both groups: Harris (12% white and 12% black) and Sanders (10% white and 10% black).” Those are disasterous numbers for Harris and Booker, who were game-planning for a South Carolina boost.
  • Quinnipiac (Ohio): Biden 31, Sanders 14, Harris 14, Warren 13, Buttigieg 6, O’Rourke 1, Booker 1, Klobuchar 1, Castro 1, Gabbard 1, Yang 1, Ryan 1, Steyer 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • “Medicare For All Isn’t That Popular — Even Among Democrats.”
  • With the second round of debates looming this week, a whole lot of candidates seem to be angling for a “Kill Biden” strategy. Understandable, but not sufficient, and one wonders how many lines of attack will rehash the culture wars clashes of the last half century (crime, busing, etc.) that Democrats lost the first time around.
  • Your periodic useful reminder that polls this far out are useless:

    Exactly twelve years ago, on July 29, 2007, national opinion polls declared the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination to be one Rudolph Giuliani, the bombastic former New York City mayor. In second place, seven points back, was a retired Tennessee senator and actor, Fred Thompson. Languishing in third place, another five points behind, was the eventual G.O.P. nominee, John McCain. Over on the Democratic side, on the same date, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama by nearly thirteen points. Everyone knows how that turned out.

    Twenty Democratic candidates are set to debate in Detroit this week, as countless Democratic voters wonder, with knotted stomachs, whether anyone will emerge to defeat Donald Trump, in November, 2020. So what do the early polls tell us? I asked around and found an array of specialists firm in their beliefs that the polls are iffy. “These numbers are fun, but I wouldn’t put money on anything,” Lydia Saad, a senior Gallup research director, told me. “Historically, among Democrats, if you had to bet at this point, you’d do a better job betting against, than for, the front-runner.” Which can’t be good news for Joe Biden, who is ahead but who slipped after his shaky debate performance, last month.

    Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, didn’t mince words: “Right now, it’s just too bumpy. There are too many candidates. There’s too much back-and-forth. ‘Oh, the polling shows Joe Biden is the best candidate to win the election.’ And then, after the first debate, ‘Oh, Kamala Harris came up, and she can win.’ And all of it is just bullshit.” At this stage, he said, polls can offer indications of what might happen, but he wouldn’t take them to the bank. One problem is that so little is known about so many of the Democratic candidates. Another is that so few people are paying close attention. And then there is the fact that a Presidential campaign is a bruising, billion-dollar proving ground. No candidate sails to victory untested and unscathed.

  • “Inside the Democrats’ Podcast Presidential Primary, Where Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang Rule.” Biden comes in third, but evidently because he has his own podcast. Or maybe “had,” since the last one seems to be dated October 23, 2018. It seems to be just some guy (not Biden) reading political news stories. It’s super-boring.
  • CNN did a “power ranking” of the top 10 Democratic contenders where they ranked Harris second, because of course they did.
  • Washington Post‘s The Fix did one that’s even stupider, with Warren first, Harris second, and Biden sixth. Yang and Williamson aren’t on it, but Kirsten “dead in the water” Gillibrand is. It’s naked gamesmanship disguised as analysis.
  • Speaking of which, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog takes on the field. Most of it is pretty lame, but there was this: “Kristen is the candidate for everyone who would say, ‘I love Hillary Clinton but she’s just too likable.'”
  • Rolling Stone does the ranking thing as well, but it much more closely tracks polls, going Biden-Warren-Harris-Sanders-Buttigieg. Has Yang too low and Messam over Sestak down at the bottom of the list.
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? She told her usual voter suppression fairy tales to the NAACP, who I’m sure lapped it up. Eh. I’m going to give her two weeks to give any indication she’s running, and if not I’m going to move her to the “not running” list.
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Washington post interview. Wants to bring back the “Gang of Eight” illegal alien amnesty proposals, which is one reason you got president Trump in the first place. “Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet engage in satirical pre-debate Twitter feud.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a New York Times profile.

    The political calculation driving Biden’s campaign — and the main reason he has been assumed by many to be the most electable Democrat — is the belief that the Scranton native can win back enough of those voters to carry Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and deny Trump a second term. “The issues that are front and center now,” he told me, “are issues that have been in my wheelhouse for a long time,” citing what he said was his advocacy on behalf of the middle class. Some who voted for Trump, he went on, were starting to realize that Trump’s tax cuts were tailored for the wealthy and for corporations; to take note of his unceasing effort to dismantle Obamacare; to grasp that he was a false tribune of the forgotten man. “When the carnival comes through town the first time, and the guy with the shell and the pea game, and you lose — the second time they come around, you’re a little more ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, I saw what happened last time,’ ” he said. Trump voters might be unwilling to admit out loud to buyer’s remorse, he allowed. “They don’t want to turn to their buddy and say, ‘I’m taking off my Make America Great Again [hat].’ ” But Trump’s base, he argued, isn’t as solid as it appears: “Not all of them, but I think they’re persuadable, yes.”

    Biden and his advisers are convinced that the general election will mostly be a referendum on Trump and his fitness for office. “This is really about character and values as opposed to issues and ideology,” says Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist. He acknowledges that Hillary Clinton tried and failed to make Trump’s suitability the pivotal question of the 2016 election. The difference this time, he says, is that Trump is now president and has demonstrated his inadequacy. Biden made a similar point. “Even when he was running,” Biden told me, “I don’t think anybody thought he would be as bad as he is.”

    Orange man bad! Note that he’s not trying to run on “this lousy economy.” Biden loves him some ObamaCare. Huh: “Harris’s close friendship with Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, is giving an unusually personal tone to the growing rivalry between Biden and Harris (D-Calif.), which will be on display again at Wednesday’s debate.”

    Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown says he doesn’t think Biden will be the nominee, and makes noises about getting in himself, because if there’s anything this field needs, it’s one more guy running. (Also see the entry on Steyer below.)

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Plans to go after Biden in the debates. Also says he’s near the 130,000 donor threshold for the next round of debates. The Chicago Tribune says he’s foolish to go after Biden for the 1994 crime bill. “Americans were keenly aware of the growing danger, and they wanted something done about it — whatever it took to make them safer.” And a lot of people calling for harsher penalties were black Democratic politicians.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Elastigirl’s daughter wants you to consider Steve Bullock.

    “My name is Steve, and I work for the state.” That is not the voice of a Democrat who wants to do away with the private health insurance of more than half the population. It is the voice of a Democrat who would go on to expand Medicaid coverage — twice — in a blood red state with a Republican majority legislature, a Democrat committed to keeping rural hospitals open, which probably only matters to people who don’t plan their heart attacks two hours ahead.

    His is also not the voice of free college or canceling student debt. It is the voice of a Democrat who has shepherded several tuition freezes for residents at the state universities, thereby minimizing the need for loans in the first place. He also beefed up the Montana Registered Apprenticeship Program, a public-private partnership among the state and tribal colleges and more than 500 businesses whose graduates earn $20,000 more than the state average. In Montana, that’s a year’s mortgage, about three years of a kid’s tuition at one of the aforementioned state schools, 1,700 movie tickets — that’s a life.

    Does Mr. Bullock, with his modest but concrete progress in a state hostile to Democrats on issues all Democrats hold dear, sound boring compared to charismatic candidates promising revolutionary change? I don’t know. Is winning boring?

    Like some leftist Dr. Dolittle, Mr. Bullock has a talent for knowing how to talk Republicans into doing Democratic things (including voting for him). It resulted in his re-election in 2016 in a state President Trump won by over 20 points. His crafty approach involves good manners, logic and a willingness to compromise when he can (and veto when he won’t). He sees the good in Republicans because there is good to be seen: Several of the conservative legislators who voted to support the public universities attended them.

    Sounds like the sort of incremental approach the loudest voices in the Democratic base assure us is passe compared to radical change. He gets a Politico profile. “He thinks Democrats are not doing enough to win over voters who backed Obama and Trump.” Also slammed Warren’s claims of PAC purity. “Everybody can be pure if you transfer over $8 or 10 million from their Senate accounts directly.” Bullock also opposes impeachment.

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Has a plan for homesteading vacant property. Not necessarily a bad idea in abstract, but his plan actual sounds like what it will be is the fed airdrops money, the connected scoop up desirable property cheap, and after a year you’ll find that we’ve spent $500 million and created a new federal bureaucracy to actual give 37 homeless people homes. (It doesn’t say that, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it will actually amount to.) “South Bend Cops Warn of ‘Mass Exodus’ as Morale Plummets Over Buttigieg’s Mishandling of Shooting.” Lil Nas X: “No ‘Old Town Road for you!”
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Julian Castro Is ‘Hypercritical’ Of Trump Immigration Policies He Once Praised Under Obama.” imagine my shock. Joaquin is evil Spock.
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. He boldly proclaimed that Trump won’t be welcome back in New York after his presidency. Well, I guess Trump will just have to worry about that in 2025…
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. He proposed a plan for mandatory national service. A bold plan. Stupid and unpopular, but bold.

    (Found the oldest version of this meme to represent the age of the idea.) Now if he wanted to limit it to everyone receiving federal welfare payments, that I could get behind…

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gabbard sues Google for $50 million for suspending her campaign ads right after the Democratic debate she was in. That does sounds like a possibly illegal thing to do, especially if they were doing it to boost Harris. (Hat tip: Ryan Saavedra.) She broke with fellow Democratic candidates on decriminalizing illegal alien border crossings, saying it would lead to open borders. She also said Harris wasn’t qualified to be President.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She said that some unnamed rival Democrats don’t want women working outside the home. 🙄 (see also that “Kill Biden” bit, which spends a lot of time talking about Gillibrand as if she somehow still had a chance.) Polifact says she’s mostly lying about transaction taxes having no effect at all.
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: Still In? Twitter. Facebook. Gets an interview with KAZU. The former Alaska senator now lives in Seaside, California.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris’ post-debate bounce is fading, which you could have learned here, what, three weeks ago? Flip, meet flop. “Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., backtracked on her support for decriminalizing illegal border crossing, then immediately reversed course and said she was in favor of it.” If you like your insurance plan, you can suck it up while government moves you to socialized medicine, but she promises to let insurance companies run parts of it. New York Times wonders what she actually believes:

    For the fights she has promised to wage, Ms. Harris prizes two weapons above all: presidential decrees and federal dollars. They are the instruments of an impatient politician — a career prosecutor sensitive to how slow the machinery of government can move, and how unforgiving voters can be.

    Ms. Harris’s economic agenda involves trillions of dollars in new spending — exact estimates vary, but well over $3 trillion and perhaps more than $4 trillion — with much of it aimed at distributing cash to people in economic distress. Most of the spending takes the form of a refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income taxpayers.

    But it also includes hundreds of billions of dollars earmarked for specific purposes: raises for public schoolteachers, tax benefits for people who rent their homes and grants for minority home buyers. On Friday, Ms. Harris’s campaign announced a $75 billion initiative to invest in minority-owned businesses and historically black colleges.

    Snip.

    Of nearly a dozen major plans Ms. Harris has announced, about a third have also included a kind of a threat: that if Congress did not resolve an issue with sufficient haste, she would take narrower steps with unilateral presidential authority.

    Those steps, according to Ms. Harris’s campaign, would bestow new protections on undocumented immigrants, impose new limits on firearm sales, enable the manufacture of cheaper pharmaceuticals and require federal contractors to meet pay-equity standards for women. Together, these plans convey a stark skepticism that Congress can be counted upon to pass important laws — skepticism that other Democratic self-styled pragmatists, like Mr. Biden, do not share.

    The decrees she has drafted are a statement, too, of Ms. Harris’s confidence in her own authority as an executor of the law.

    That role, Ms. Harris said in the interview, “is my comfortable place.”

    Her pitch seems to be “put me in charge so I can spend all the money and rule by decree.”

  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Extraordinary Humbling of John Hickenlooper:

    All happy campaigns are alike; each flailing campaign flails in its own way. And Mr. Hickenlooper’s disappointment runs deeper than most of his peers’. It is easy to imagine him succeeding in a past cycle, as a popular, moderate two-term executive of a purple state, known for brokering deals on environmental issues and gun regulation. He has arrived instead at a moment of celebri-fied elections and simmering progressive opposition to Mr. Trump.

    Nowhere is the disconnect more visceral for a long shot than in the rented reception halls in early-voting states across the country. Eyes migrate to the carpet patterns. Campaign stickers sit unstuck. Volunteer sign-up sheets remain wrenchingly white. It is the difference between polite applause and spontaneous affection, abiding a handshake and demanding a selfie. It is the difference between a former governor and a future president.

    “I somehow don’t feel he’s got the punch,” said Rachel Rosenblum, 82, of Danbury, N.H., leaving the Hanover event a few minutes early.

    A woman nearby noticed the small gathering through a window and approached Ms. Rosenblum, curious to know who had reserved the space. “Is that a private event?” she asked.

    “No,” Ms. Rosenblum replied. “He wants to win the election.”

    Other indignities have been more public. Before the first Democratic debate in Miami, a security guard mistook Mr. Hickenlooper for a reporter. In an appearance on “The View” last week, a host, Ana Navarro, confused him with Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington. “All white people look alike, apparently,” a co-host, Joy Behar, said.

    It is a particularly humbling comedown for a man who, just a few years ago, garnered reasonably serious consideration to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate — and who retains outsize status in Colorado as the spindly brewpub owner who made it big.

    I imagine that we’ll get lots more “failure to launch” pieces between now and Iowa. He has a plan for rural broadband and development, that may well appeal to all six of the rural Democrats still left in the party.

  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Politico on his health care plans:

    In May, Inslee signed into law the nation’s first public option, set to go live next fall. Under the plan, the Inslee administration will contract with a private insurer to sell coverage on the state’s Affordable Care Act exchange. The state projects that premiums in the public plan will be 5 to 10 percent cheaper that alternatives because of capped payments to doctors and hospitals. That might not translate into a major enrollment boost, and it remains to be seen whether enough providers will participate in the plan.

    Inslee also signed legislation making Washington the first state to add a guaranteed long-term care benefit, addressing a growing challenge for an aging population. The law, which in concept is similar to Social Security, creates a payroll tax to offer a $100-per-day allowance for nursing home care, in-home assistance or another community-based option. It’s not enough to fully fund nursing home care, which can top $100,000 per year, but it may ease some financial pressure on families.

    So he favors plans structured like ObamaCare that will no doubt fail like ObamaCare. (See also: “death spiral.”) He has a New York Times op-ed on climate change, just in case you’re out of melatonin.

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. “The presidential campaign of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has been accused of delaying staff pay in order to boost the campaign’s cash-on-hand figures at reporting time.” That piece mentions a $55,000 a day burn rate. Since she brought in only $2.9 million in Q2, that burn rate is not sustainable, and that senate transfer money will only last so long. She has a “housing plan” described as “sweeping in scope but scant on details.” File it with Hickenlooper’s rural broadband plan…
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Not only is there no news for him, but I can’t even get his website to come up right now…
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Ambition Served Moulton Well In Combat, But Not Always In Politics.” It’s a weird title for what is actually an interesting profile:

    On his second combat tour in Iraq, 2nd Lt. Seth Moulton led his platoon in one of the most grueling battles of the war, at a cemetery in Najaf.

    “It was intense,” says Nick Henry, who served as a lance corporal under Moulton. “The thing we dealt with in the cemetery was a lot like Vietnam, almost. The insurgency would dig into the cemetery and they would pop out of little tunnels and holes. We would fight through them and then they would end up popping out of tunnels behind us, and we’d have to back up and re-clear, and basically it was 360 all the time.”

    Moulton served four tours of combat in Iraq. He’s called it the most influential experience of his life, one he refers to often in his presidential run.

    Interviews with those who served with Moulton in Iraq reveal that one quality that has sometimes gotten him in trouble in politics — his ambition — served him well in combat.

    Henry says half the men in their platoon saw combat for the first time in the battle of Najaf. He says Moulton was a “very intelligent” platoon commander, sometimes “a little too intelligent,” in the sense that he sometimes tried to implement tactics that were more advanced than entry-level Marines were capable of.

    Still, Henry says, everything was relatively well executed. He describes Moulton as always involved, with good command and control in a chaotic situation, someone who would lead from the front most of the time, and not overly controlling.

    Henry calls Moulton one of the better platoon commanders he had in five combat deployments.

    “He’s very sincere with his caring,” Henry says, and that came across most vitally when Moulton made sure his men were ready for combat. “He spent the time to come up with the plans and the training plan to make sure that we were prepared for anything that we came to, which is, in my personal belief, why our platoon was the most heavily relied on to execute missions during the battle of Najaf.”

    Snip.

    As measured by the Democratic National Committee, he’s not doing well. The DNC has barred him from two rounds of debates because he has yet to get the required number of financial donors or standing in the polls.

    “It’s the longest of long shots,” says Gergen, who believes Moulton has alienated some on the left, ironically because last year, he campaigned successfully to get young Democratic veterans elected to Congress, an effort Gergen says contributed to the Democrats taking back the House of Representatives.

    “The people who won were taking back districts that [President] Trump had won in many cases,” he says, “and so naturally, they have to be more mainstream than some of the progressives in the Democratic Party, and that makes Seth a target for some of the progressives, saying he’s too mainstream, he’s too close to the center.”

    The Iraq stuff is a whole lot more interesting than the political stuff. He’s for impeachment. He filed a digital privacy bill. “The Automatic Listening and Exploitation Act, or the ALEXA Act for short, would empower the Federal Trade Commission to seek immediate penalties if a smart device is found to have recorded user conversations without the device’s wake word being triggered… Moulton said that he would like to see his legislation spur a greater tech debate within the halls of Congress.” Uh…you’ve got a real issue there, Moulton, but the purpose of legislation is to make the laws of the land, not “spur debate.”

  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a failure to launch piece from Edward-Isaac Dovere, who seems to be making them a specialty:

    O’Rourke’s second-quarter fundraising total, announced two weeks ago, started to cement the sense of flop from polls that had him down to 1 or 2 percent, after being in third place when he announced in March he was running. He raised $3.6 million from April through June, meaning that after raising a blowout $6.1 million in his first 24 hours in the race, he picked up just $6.9 million in the three and a half months that followed. O’Rourke and his aides know how much is riding on the second debate next week, but they’re also struggling with what to do: He became a national name partly based on a viral video of him defending Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem. Re-creating that in a rapid-fire, multi-podium debate is pretty much impossible.

    Plus, he has to compete directly with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, whom he’ll share the stage with for the first time on Tuesday night. Both candidates are young white guys (O’Rourke is 46, Buttigieg 37), branding themselves as the bright, shiny future of the Democratic Party. Buttigieg’s explosion tracks with O’Rourke’s implosion. Any hopes O’Rourke has of rising again may depend on Buttigieg collapsing, which he shows no signs of doing; his polling has remained decent, and he raised $24.8 million for the second quarter, more than anyone else running.

    “What Beto O’Rourke’s Dad Taught Him About Losing.” Well, that’s knowledge that’s going to come in handy…

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Unveiled a manucaturing plan that also includes the $15 an hour minimum wage hike, which we already know is a job killer. “Two longtime Biden African American supporters in S. Carolina defect to Tim Ryan.” “Fletcher Smith and Brandon Brown, who played senior roles in Biden’s last presidential campaign in 2008” are the defectees. Given that the Biden 2008 Presidential campaign didn’t even survive long enough to get to South Carolina, it’s hard to see them as must-hire material…
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. President Trump wonders why he’s being called a racist for saying the same things about Baltimore in 2019 that Sanders aid in 2015. “No, Bernie! Scandinavia Is Not Socialist!”

    “Whatever you think about Sweden and what we did, you have to realize that we had a great society first,” Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian, filmmaker, and Cato Institute senior fellow, said in a recent lecture titled “No, Bernie! Scandinavia Is Not Socialist!”

    “We were incredibly wealthy, we trusted each other socially, there was a decent life for everybody. That’s what made it possible to experiment with socialism; then it began to undermine many of those preconditions,” Norberg said during the June 20 event hosted by The Fund for American Studies and the office of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

    “That’s the one thing that it’s important for people to get, because if they just look at Sweden and think, ‘Oh look, they’re socialist and seem to be doing quite all right,’ then they’ve sort of missed the point,” Norberg added.

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. He met with the Des Moines Register editorial board. Which isn’t actually news, but it’s the only scrap of Sestak info I could scavenge up this week.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. Many Democrats don’t seem to understand why Steyer is even running:

    Tom Steyer’s eleventh-hour presidential bid is confounding Democrats. And some party officials are ready for him to butt out.

    The billionaire environmental activist is antagonizing Democratic leaders, whacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi for going on August recess and criticizing House Democrats for not immediately impeaching the president.

    And as Steyer vows to spend as much as $100 million of his own money in the primary to boost his long-shot candidacy, Democrats are growing frustrated that he’ll only further clog the crowded campaign — particularly if he can buy his way onto the debate stage this fall.

    “It’s very difficult for me to see the path for Tom Steyer to be a credible candidate,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who has endorsed Pete Buttigieg. “So yes, I would rather that he spend his money taking back the Virginia House, the Virginia Senate and supporting people who can win.”

    “I wish he wouldn’t do it. Especially at this late date,” added Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who has endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. “Things are set except for those who are going to drop out.”

    Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio observed that Steyer is basically “another white guy in the race,” albeit a wealthy one who is “a major progressive player.” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia was mostly perplexed by the wealthy Californian’s entry when asked about it: “I kind of wonder why?”

    Evidently Senator Brown doesn’t realize that he’s also the other white meat. But notice how he automatically lapses into the racist identity politics framing that infects the Democratic Party today. Whatever happened to judging people on the content of their character? There’s a whole lot of reasons not to vote for Tom Steyer without mentioning the color of his skin. “How Democratic debate rules are forcing a billionaire to plead for pennies.”

    About one-fifth of Steyer’s TV spending is on the national airwaves, but the vast majority is concentrated in the four early caucus and primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Positive poll results specifically in those states could help Steyer qualify for the debate, so getting his face on television is of special strategic value there.

    He’s also spending a ton on Facebook ads.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Unveiled a plan to renegotiate trade deals. A small number of good transparency ideas attached to a giant boat anchor of liberal interest group ideas, including a “border carbon adjustment” tax. Her trade plans make Donald Trump sound like Adam Smith. Speaking of economics, she says we’re due for a recession, so she has that in common with Zero Hedge. But economists can’t agree, and the Fed is poised to drop rates, so who knows? Dem analyst for Warren says the race is between Warren and Harris. “Ignore that frontrunner behind the curtain!”
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She was on Face the Nation, where they asked her about, yes, Trump tweets. She understands that people make fun of her for love stuff. Says antidepressants may be overprescribed. She might be right there.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538: “How Weird Is Andrew Yang’s Tech Policy? Only About As Weird As America’s.”

    The Democratic Party has long considered itself the standard-bearer of scientific expertise, adopting an almost utopian vision of technological innovation since at least the Kennedy years, Vinsel said.

    Practically, this means that Democrats have made technology a bigger part of their image over the years. In the 1980s, for instance, “Atari Democrats” wore fancy watches and promoted Silicon Valley boosterism as an alternative to courting labor unions, said Marc Aidinoff, a history doctoral candidate at MIT who has also worked as a junior policy advisor to Joe Biden. That trend continued under Barack Obama, said Mary Ebeling, a professor of sociology at Drexel University. Obama’s technology advisors were heavily recruited from Silicon Valley and many returned there after serving in his administration. And now, it’s not just the Democratic Party pushing tech-based solutions, Vinsel said. At this point, the ideas of technological innovation and economic growth are so linked in the American mind that neither party can step away from tech as a common good without seeming like they are anti-growth.

    But Democrats’ tendency to seek solutions in technology for social problems has not always served them well. Ebeling is currently working on a project that explores how adopting electronic health records as part of the Affordable Care Act affected both patients and workers in the medical industry. The electronic records were pushed as a solution to deep-seated problems that weren’t really about technology — boosters promised they’d make healthcare cheaper and solve problems with patient access to consistent medical care. Instead, Ebeling is finding that we spent billions effectively favoring an industry that could never produce the returns it promised. “And lo and behold, by 2019, you have Kaiser Health News reporting on how much harm electronic health records have caused. Literally the death of patients because of medical errors,” she said.

    Says he’ll be running his campaign the entire way. Given slow but steady rise in the polls, I’d say certainly through Super Tuesday, and longer if it looks like Democrats are headed to a brokered convention, because why the hell not? “A recent Fox News poll had Yang ahead of Senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., former Colorado Gov. John Hickelnlooper, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas.”

  • Out of the Running

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

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (but see above)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Trump vs. Baltimore

    July 28th, 2019

    What President Donald Trump’s detractors don’t seem to realize (or refuse to realize) is his genius in instinctively identifying wide-open attacks avenues against the Democratic Party that previous Republicans were too scared to undertake for fear of being called racists. Trump simply doesn’t care what they say about him, since he’s such an accomplished rhetorical counterpuncher, and his latest target is calling out Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings over how horrible parts of Baltimore have become.

    The huge advantage Trump starts out with is bedrock truth, given that not only is Baltimore been a declining city with a high crime rate for a long time now, but that major TV networks have been driving this point home with shows like Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire.

    Keep in mind that Baltimore in general (and West Baltimore, which lies at the heart of Cummings’ district, specifically) have some of the highest crime rates in the country. Baltimore has record high murder rates and open air drug markets flourish in West Baltimore.

    Don’t forget that Baltimore is also the city that had a one hour documentary about its rat infestation. When you see how abandoned trash is left for weeks and the city refuses to pick it up, you can see why.

    How long has the city been ignoring West Baltimore? Here’s a video of an abandoned row home there. There’s a tree in the vacant lot between two row homes where another used to stand that’s now taller than the row home.

    As for Cummings enriching himself:

    A charity run by the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally, according to an IRS complaint filed by an ethics watchdog group.

    Cummings, 68, a Maryland Democrat, is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. His wife, Maya Rockeymoore, 48, is the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party and briefly ran in the state’s gubernatorial race last year. The couple married in 2008. Cummings was once heavily in debt — in part due to hefty child support payments to his first wife and two other women he had children with — but his financial situation has improved considerably over the past decade.

    Rockeymoore runs two entities, a nonprofit group called the Center for Global Policy Solutions and a for-profit consulting firm called Global Policy Solutions, LLC, whose operations appear to have overlapped, according to the IRS complaint filed by watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center on Monday. The complaint states that the arrangement may have been used to derive “illegal private benefit.”

    Global Policy Solutions received more than $6.2 million in grants between 2013 and 2016, according to tax records. Several of the nonprofit group’s financial backers — which included Google, J.P Morgan, and Prudential — have business interests before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Cummings has served as Democratic chairman of the committee since January and previously served as ranking member.

    The largest contributor to the nonprofit organization was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a company that is regulated by Cummings’ committee. The foundation, which gave a total of $5.5 million to Rockeymoore’s consulting firm and $5.2 million to her nonprofit group, ceased supporting her groups in 2017.

    Education? “Several Baltimore schools report 0 students proficient in math, reading.”

    It’s not like the Democratic Party hasn’t had ample opportunity to clean up Baltimore. The last Republican mayor of Baltimore left in 1967. Since Spiro Agnew resigned in 1969 to serve as Vice President, a Republicans has been governor of Maryland for just over eight years out of those fifty.

    So somehow it’s not racist to have government so dysfunctional that its residents have to to live with rats and garbage the government refuses to do anything about, but it is racist to have President Trump point it out.

    Democrats evidently believe that they can continue to continue running American cities into the ground and skimming off the patronage without black Americans finally declaring they’ve had enough. President Trump has calculated that the louder Democrats complain about what his statements on Baltimore (and by extension other dysfunctional Democrat one-party cities), the more black Americans will pay attention and realize he’s right.

    Trump Wins Supreme Court Border Wall Case

    July 27th, 2019

    Another victory for the Trump Administration’s border policy:

    It’s being called a “major victory” for President Trump by both the LA Times and Politico. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to hand Trump a win on border wall spending.

    President Donald Trump scored a major victory at the Supreme Court on Friday, as the justices lifted a lower court order blocking a key part of his plan to expand the border wall with Mexico.

    The Justice Department had asked the justices to stay a pair of rulings an Oakland-based federal judge issued in May and June blocking Trump’s plan to use about $2.5 billion in military construction funds for wall projects in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

    The Administration plans to build at least 100 miles of border barrier.

    A border wall is only the start of what’s needed to actually regain control of our borders. E-Verify, asylum law reform and beefed up border patrols are also key components, and we need to see more effort from the Trump Administration on these items. But actually building the promised wall is at least a start.