Biden is up big, Bennet is In, Beto is down and de Blasio is about to unite all of America together in ridicule against him. Plus the raw sex appeal of Walter Mondale. It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!
Polls
In a Harvard-Harris poll, Biden leads his Democratic opponents by a whopping 30 points. Biden 44, Sanders 14, Harris 9, Warren 5, Buttigieg 4, O’Rourke 3, Booker 3. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Quinnipiac: Biden 38, Warren 12, Sanders 11, Buttigieg 10, Harris 8, O’Rourke 5. First poll I’ve seen Warren edge Sanders. Maybe all that “free everything for everybody” pandering is paying off for her…
Election betting markets. Warren (5.7%) is now up over Yang (5.3%) who is now up over O’Rourke (5.1%).
The Eight Tiers In This Race
People usually sort candidates into “First Tier, Second Tier, Third Tier,” but that’s not applicable to a race this crowded:
Right now Biden is alone in the first tier, and…
Sanders is alone in the second.
The third tier is Warren, Buttigieg and Harris all bunched up together (Warren is enjoying a little bounce, Buttigieg’s bounce faded as soon as Biden joined, and Harris is just barely hanging on as the media-boosted SJW darling).
O’Rouke has probably free-fallen alone into the fourth tier, his telegenic hype long over and people scratching their heads as to why people ever thought he was exciting when not running against Ted Cruz.
The fifth tier consists of Booker and Klobucher, who seem to be running competent, unexciting campaigns awaiting their turn to catch fire in a hype cycle.
The sixth tier is Interesting Weirdos, lead by a rising Yang and a hasn’t-showed-us-anything-yet Williamson. Let’s also stick Gabbard here, since she generates tons of buzz only because the Democratic base seems to actively hate her, and she seems to have more followers than the lower tiers.
The seventh tier is Dead in the Water, people who have resumes that suggest they should be credible Presidential candidates (mostly senators and governors), but somehow aren’t: Castro, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Inslee, and probably the newly-joined Bennet.
The eighth and lowest tier (sorry Dante) is Wasting Our Time, including all the representatives other than Gabbard: Moulton, Ryan, Swalwell, Delany, Messam. Maybe one could break out, but I rather doubt it.
Pundits, etc.
How much a candidate’s announcement coverage boosts them in polls. Caveat: They relied on cable news coverage, which leaves out a lot of things, like legacy MSM outlets slathering fawning coverage on Harris like ketchup on french fries.
“If you have an appetite for schadenfreude, one of the pleasures of the ongoing 2020 Democratic primary will be watching once-highly-touted politicians realize just how limited their appeal is, as they struggle to reach 5 percent in a crowded field.” Special mention of Castro, Gabbard and Gillibrand.
Stephen Green on electability. “If the economy is still booming in November 2020, maybe none of this year’s massive crop of Dems is electable. Maybe they’re all Mondales, albeit with far less of Walt’s raw sexual magnetism.”
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? She’s not running for the senate. Maybe she’s regretting turning down that Biden VP trial balloon. She also got a voter suppression pander from O’Rourke.
Actor Alec Baldwin: Probably not. Still nothing since that now four-week old tweet. But his estimated net worth is $85 million, and he was “a political science major at George Washington University (where he ran for student body president and lost).” Baldwin could probably talk himself into a run if he really wanted to…
Update: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. “Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., announced he will run in the Democratic primary to seek his party’s nomination to go up against President Trump in the 2020 election.” More: “Bennet has built a reputation as a bipartisan, policy-focused senator on Capitol Hill, trending toward the center of the Democratic spectrum. He opposes a single-payer health care system, instead hoping to expand Obamacare.” Oh yeah, that’s just what the Democratic base in crying out for: bipartisanship. Data point: The guy’s a U.S. senator, and I have exactly one entry for him before I started doing the Clown Car update, and that was just a mention in the 2016 election. If you stuck guns to the heads of Democratic voters and said “Pick Michael Bennet out of these photos of all 21 declared Democratic Presidential candidates or die,” then you just killed a greater percentage of Democratic voters than Thanos.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. “A $1.5 billion sweetheart deal Hunter Biden’s private equity firm secured from the state-owned Bank of China is ‘looming on the horizon’ as a potential line of attack against his father’s 2020 presidential campaign, according to Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen.” It’s going to be fun hearing Democrats claim that random contacts by low-level staffers constituted collusion with Russia for Trump, but that $1.5 billion from China to the Vice President’s son was just no big deal. Why Biden is not Jeb Bush. Four of these points I agree with, but the fifth (“unlike Jeb, who was weakened by the presence of his one-time protege Marco Rubio in the field, Biden has no immediate competitor in his primary ‘lane'”) is probably untrue, as Buttigieg, Moulton, Hickenlooper, Ryan and Bennet could all plausibly fill the “white moderate” lane. He appeared on ABC’s The View, where he promised to be less creepy. Biden picked up a very early endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters, another example of his strong play for union support. He appeals to forgotten blue collar Democrats. Flashback: In 1998, Joe Biden said Anita Hill was lying. (Right the first time.) Biden the liar. Speaking of which, the Washington Post gave him four Pinocchios for stating that the Trump tax cuts applied only to the rich. Biden’s campaign may be a well-oiled machine. Biden himself? Not so much:
How far will the left wing of the Democratic Party go to drag Biden? Here’s a Newsweek piece dinging him for opposing forced busing in 1974. Here’s a hint: everyone hated forced busing. “We’re going to take your daughter and ship her across town to a school in the ghetto because that’s a whole hell of a lot easier than spending more money to improve ghetto schools or take on teachers unions.” Democrats gave up on forced busing because it was a horrible idea that didn’t actually address the problem and they didn’t want be wiped out in elections.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Maybe? I didn’t think he was going to run if Biden got in, but what the hell is this? It came up as an ad when I Googled “Michael Bloomberg President.” That sure as hell looks like the website of someone who is thinking of running for President. Upgraded from “Probably not” after I stumbled across it.
Update: Montana Governor Steve Bullock: All But In. “Montana Gov. Steve Bullock will announce his bid for the presidency in two weeks, MTN News has learned — adding to the 20 Democrats already running for the 2020 nomination to challenge President Trump.” Upgrade over Leaning Toward In.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Julian Castro hits 65,000-donor threshold to secure spot in first presidential debate.” That’s probably a great relief to him. He’s making a play for Nevada, which falls right after New Hampshire and has a large Hispanic population. That’s a strategically sound decision, and even if it fails, it can’t fail worse than anything else he’s tried…
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out. But she says the 2016 election was “stolen” from her.
Update: New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: All But In. “It’s Now A Clown Bus: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Expected To Announce 2020 Run Next Week.” De Blasio unites all of America in contempt against him. “76 percent of New Yorkers say he shouldn’t run. Politico New York surveyed 30-odd members of Team de Blasio, and all but two said it was a bad idea, with one calling it ‘fucking insane.'” Also this: “He may have a shot if every Democratic candidate is caught sending racy selfies to minors.” Upgrade from Leaning Toward In.
According to the DNC, the max number of candidates participating will be a total of twenty even if all 21 announced candidates qualify as it threatens to eliminate candidates who had already made the cut – so much for “transparent, fair and inclusive.” Ten will appear on June 26 with the next ten on June 27th and selection will be determined by drawing lots. Conceivably, the Main Show of Bernie and Biden may occur on June 26th, or they may be split, appearing on two different nights. In any case, it may be difficult for the public to determine a clear ‘winner’ by virtue of candidate separation from the total field.
Snip.
Given her almost totally hostile reception by every MSM outlet who deigned to interview her, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has experienced, as an opponent of regime change wars, more bad manners and outright personal antagonism than any other candidate. While Gabbard easily qualified for the debates via the $65,000 requirement and continues to attract SRO audiences in NH, Iowa, California and elsewhere, yet until the newest CNN poll, she failed to register any % of public support. Something here does not compute given the ‘favored’ polls past history of favoritism. If the Dems continue to put a brick wall around her, Jill Stein has already opened the Green Party door as a more welcoming venue for a Tulsi candidacy. The Dems, who tend to be unprincipled and vindictive, better be careful what they wish for.
Caveat: Counterpunch, so grains of salt time. On the other hand, the author can smell the stench of the Russiagate corpse, so maybe actual clues are involved here…
Senator Kamala Harris was supposed to be a frontrunner. According to the rules of “the invisible primary,” in which donors and party activists coalesce around their chosen nominees, sending signals about candidate quality that primary voters, more often that not, eventually validate, Harris seemed to check all the boxes of a frontrunner. Her campaign team is full of veterans of the campaign of the last Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. She led the large donor fundraising race, with most of her big donors also being former donors to Clinton. Seth Masket, a political scientist and expert on the party system, conducted an informal poll last December of precisely the sort of party activists who are said to decide these things, and a healthy majority leaned toward supporting Harris. And in FiveThirtyEight’s weighted listing of endorsements, Harris ranked second among the declared candidates, losing out only to Senator Cory Booker (before Joe Biden formally entered the race last week).
Judging by all available polling, though, Harris is not even close to the frontrunner. (And Cory Booker’s campaign seems to be utterly foundering, suggesting that counting up endorsements may not be the best way to measure the viability of a candidate from a state, like New Jersey, with a powerful, old-fashioned party machine.) Most national polls put her in a distant third or fourth place, frequently trailing South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a relative neophyte who was polling at basically zero a month ago.
This doesn’t render “the invisible primary” obsolete as an explanatory factor. The seemingly overnight rise of Buttigieg is in fact evidence of the concept’s durability: People have heard of him, and tell pollsters they support him, because his press is managed by Lis Smith, a well-connected Democratic operative who formerly worked for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and Politico’s big donor analysis shows he is extremely popular among former Obama and Clinton bundlers. The energy around Mayor Pete is partly a reflection of the political press translating its knowledge of his advisers’ records and his popularity with the donor class into stories about his candidacy that create a sort of aura of “viability.” The new frontrunner, the former vice president, has, as you’d expect, even more institutional support behind him, especially among Democratic mega-donors and longtime elected officials.
So, what has, thus far (there is a lot of election left to go), prevented Harris’s campaign from breaking out? And for that matter, how is Elizabeth Warren receiving so much glowing press for her transformative policy agenda, but still polling just as poorly as Harris?
As the horserace quants at FiveThirtyEight explained, both are victims of the Democratic electorate’s fixation on “electability.” Polling broadly shows Democratic voters thinking Joe Biden has the best chance at winning the general election. That is exactly what Biden would like everyone to think, and that belief practically constitutes the sole argument for his candidacy.
Wait, primary voters focus on electability? Do tell. The New Republic writer is pouting because he wanted Harris. That’s why he says “‘Electability’ is a crock of shit,” because he wants hard-left candidates and the majority of Democratic primary voters aren’t having any. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) There’s a ton of “Oh yeah, she went after AG Barr! She’s my hero!” schoolgirl crush media pieces I’m omitting here, since the default setting on Harris coverage is “Fawning.”
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Climate Change Guy offers a pie-in-the-sky “carbon neutral by 2030” that also promises to destroy the coal industry. I guess he figures “Hey, everyone else is offering impossible bullshit! Why not me?”
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. She too unveiled a mental health plan. Funny how people who hang out with Democrats all the time naturally assume that large numbers of Americans are crazy…
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. He visited all four early primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina) and got a WGBH profile. “Moulton is a centrist among more aggressively liberal candidates. The progressive base fawns over Bernie Sanders’s calls for economic revolution, and Elizabeth Warren’s lengthening list of plans, but it’s unclear that the majority of primary voters, let alone general-election voters, will opt for radically upending an economy that seems to be humming along pretty well.”
California Representative Eric Swalwell: In. Twitter. Facebook. He appeared on Face the Nation, and spent his time nattering about the Russian Collusion Fantasy, which is far too precious for liberals to give up on despite being complete bunk.
The bill made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt, a legal change that credit card companies and many major retailers had championed for years. The bill passed Congress with large majorities, but most Democratic senators, including Barack Obama, voted no. Biden voted yes and was widely seen at the time as one of the bill’s major Democratic champions.
So far, her efforts haven’t yet translated into much success. Despite her Hollywood connections, she managed to raise just $1.5 million as of the end of the first quarter — not chump change, but it does put her toward the bottom of the list of serious contenders. Nor has she yet managed to clear the 65,000-donor threshold that would qualify her to participate in the first two Democratic primary debates, although according to her campaign website, she’s about 90 percent of the way there.
And although her books have sold 3 million copies, her name recognition is among the lowest in the field. In a national poll conducted by Change Research in mid-April, 66 percent of likely Democratic voters had never heard of her; the same was true of 53 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers in an early-April Monmouth poll of Iowa. Candidates with low name recognition can still have a shot at the nomination if they’re backed by a decent percentage of the people who have heard of them, but Williamson gets almost no support in horse-race surveys: She has gotten 0 percent support in 27 of the 35 polls in our database that have asked about her. And she is unlikely to become better known as long as cable news networks and newspapers continue to cover her far less often than the candidates with more traditional credentials.
She visited Iowa, where she spoke to about 60 people, and Nevada, where she got interviewed by Politics Now, where it looks like they’re using cameras and a set from 1979.
Another one of those sneaky May elections is upon us. In particular:
Cedar Park – City Council
Eanes ISD – Board of Trustees, Bond
Georgetown – Mayor, City Council
Georgetown ISD – Board of Trustees
Hutto – Mayor, City Council
Hutto – ISD – Board of Trustees, Bond
Leander – City Council
Lakeway – Mayor, City Council
Pflugerville ISD – Board of Trustees
Round Rock – City Council
Taylor – City Council
Village of Briarcliff – Mayor, Aldermen
Village of Webberville – Sales Tax Proposition
In fact, none of those elections applies to me, so I can’t offer you any advice on who or what to vote for or against (though if I did live in Pflugerville ISD, I would definitely vote against the union organizer), but I did want to make you aware of them.
Check your local League of Women Voter guides/media/etc. to see if there’s an election you weren’t aware of today. These things have a way of sneaking up on you…
Old and Busted: “Trump is guilty of treason!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of collusion!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of obstruction!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of something! Release the report!” (Report released.) “Ummm…Barr’s summary was slightly off on one point! Impeach!” Trump Derangement Syndrome is a helluva drug…
Checkmate. How President Trump’s legal team outfoxed Mueller.” From the newly resurrected Human Events, this is a detailed legal analysis of how a memo written by William Barr before he became Attorney General laid the groundwork for curtailed Robert Mueller using an overly-expansive definition of “obstruction.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016.” You know, a spy. Here’s a handy decoder for the “covering for Democrats” speak:
"level of alarm inside the F.B.I." = "Level of alarm in the Clinton campaign/Obama White House" "politically sensitive operation" = Spying on Trump "under extraordinary circumstances." = "The possibility Trump might win"@nytimes =Democratic operatives with bylines.
Alabama State Rep. John Rogers (D) on abortion: “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later” pic.twitter.com/dxPg6X759h
Facebook banned Milo Yannopoulos, Alex Jones and Louis Farrakhan for “extremism,” and the Washington Post headline initially called them all “far right” before a ton of criticism forced them to correct the headline. Because Louis Farrakhan is so well-known for palling around with conservatives. (Facebook is a private entity and can do what it wants, but I don’t want any of those people banned. Let them speak and let people debate their ideas/lunacy/etc. or not as they feel).
Even CNN is starting to get a clue:
CNN Poll: Trump’s approval rating on economy “is the highest number we’ve ever seen.” pic.twitter.com/sLjjW4Jd0p
The members of the Flint, Michigan City Council sound like real winners.
“Norwegian fisherman have discovered a beluga whale wearing a tight harness with a camera attachment – sparking speculation the animal belongs to the Russian Navy.” I wouldn’t be surprised, especially since we have our own dolphin program… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Lance Morrow reviews Robert Caro’s Working. “If I were teaching journalism or nonfiction writing, especially the writing of history and biography, I would build a course around Caro, with Working as my primary text and scenes from his Johnson books as case studies.”
In the “trouble in places you may not have heard of” department, clashes broke out on the African nation of Benin (between Nigeria and Togo on the Ivory Coast) when the ruling party held a parliamentary election from which opposition parties were excluded.
Dispatches from Social Justice Warrior land: “Trinity College professor tweets ‘whiteness is terrorism,’ refers to Barack and Michelle Obama as ‘white kneegrows.’”
Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicated, Emperor Naruhito mounting the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, marking the end of the Heisei era and inaugurating the Reiwa era.
Actor James Woods is still in the Twitter Gulag:
This is the tweet that got @RealJamesWoods suspended. It references a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. And we all know how controversial and offensive RWE’s work is…🙄🙄🙄 pic.twitter.com/8k9k1zSqpV
Unhappy meals. Now if only every one came with mopping teenage Goth girl figurines…
“‘Mortal Kombat’ Introduces Brutal New Fatality Where Your Character Just States An Opposing Viewpoint…One character says, ‘There are only two genders,’ and his opponent instantly melts into nothing, being unable to handle the opposing viewpoint. Another character suggests that capitalism isn’t all bad, and his opponent’s head instantly falls off.”
A crew member aboard a cruise ship used by the Church of Scientology tested positive for measles, causing the vessel’s occupants to be quarantined in the Caribbean since Monday, a report said.
The vessel and its roughly 300 passengers and crew members have been stuck on the “Freewinds” ship in the Caribbean port of St. Lucia after the confirmed case of the highly contagious disease, according to NBC News.
The infected female patient has been isolated and is in stable condition, according to St. Lucia’s chief medical officer Dr. Marlene Fredericks-James.
St. Lucia Coast Guard Sgt. Victor Theodore confirmed to the network that the cruise ship was the same as the one listed on the Church of Scientology’s website.
The ship is described on the church’s website as being used as a floating “religious retreat ministering the most advanced level of spiritual counseling in the Scientology religion.”
What most people reading this story might not know is that Freewinds isn’t just a Scientology ship, it’s the Scientology ship. “The Freewinds is the exclusive training center for OT VIII (Operating Thetan Level 8), the highest level of Scientology and the last of the published OT levels. Members of the Church of Scientology who have reached the highest levels must receive their training on the Freewinds, as the Church does not deliver this service anywhere else.”
It’s also the likely current location of the Church of Scientology’s infamous “Sea Org” that formed the command and control nexus of the church while founder L. Ron Hubbard was alive, under which some of the Scientology’s most shocking human rights abuses were committed, including the mysterious death of Susan Meister.
The Sea Organization is the actual nexus that controls the scientology empire. Sea Organization personnel are authorized to take over and control scientology organizations and to demote personnel, move bank accounts and run the corporation as if the SO personnel were employees or representatives of that corporation but they are not.
Snip.
Crew were put into a chain-locker as punishment. A chain-locker is “a dark hole where the anchor chains are stored; cold, wet and rats,” to quote one ex-Sea Org officer. A crew member that was put on ethics could spend up to two weeks in the tiny hole. Former Scientologists who served as crew together with Hubbard in the early years remember a five years old deaf and mute child being locked up in the chain-locker. Hubbard said she was not to leave the chain locker until she completed the formula by writing her name. Another witness claims that a three-year-old was once put in the locker.
In 2011, The New Yorker published an expose of Scientology that accused the Church of using child labor on the ship.
Oh, and the people who work on the Sea Org ship have to sign a billion year contract.
I am very far indeed from the heart of Scientology leadership, but by all accounts Sea Org still exists, and Freewinds is the only cruise liner still used by Scientology. Maybe St. Lucia authorities can use the quarantine to determine just what else might be going down on Freewinds…
(There’s a lot more on Scientology’s lunacy at the Operation Clambake site.)
What better celebration of Victims of Communism Day than open revolt against an oppressive socialist government?
Interim President Juan Guaido has called for a military revolt against socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, supported by the United States and numerous other non-scumbag nations. Naturally, the scumbag nations are supporting Maduro. “According to Secretary Pompeo, Maduro was preparing to flee to Cuba until the Russians persuaded him to stay put.”
Showing the usual restraint of socialist dictators, Venezuelan troops loyal to Maduro have been running over protestors with armored vehicles:
Former Democratic state legislative leader Stacey Abrams will not challenge Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) next year, a blow to Democrats who hoped to make inroads in a state Republicans have controlled for nearly two decades.
In a video posted to Twitter, Abrams said she didn’t believe serving in the Senate would be the best use of her desire to serve the public.
“I will not be a candidate for the United States Senate,” Abrams said. “The fights to be waged require a deep commitment to the job, and I do not see the U.S. Senate as the best role for me in this battle for our nation’s future.”
Abrams met with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to tell him of her decision on Monday, a source confirmed to The Hill.
Yeah, Chuckles is on a real losing streak recruiting senate candidates.
Let’s recap the supposed top-tier recruits who were impervious to Schumer’s “power of persuasion” this cycle:
Tom Vilsack in IA ❌ John Hickenlooper in CO❌ Steve Bullock in MT❌ Stacey Abrams in GA❌ Beto O’Rourke in TX❌ Josh Stein in NC❌ Crisanta Duran in CO❌
What next for Abrams? Widespread speculation is she’ll either run for President or Governor. Erick Erickson thinks both:
Stacey Abrams, suffering from spiking unpopularity for her willful refusal to accept defeat in 2018, has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate in 2020. This makes a ton of sense.
Abrams wants to fundraise and running for the Senate would distract from that. Her real goal is a rematch against Brian Kemp in 2022.
If Abrams ran for the Senate, she would either win or lose. If she won, that suggests there’d have been a huge Democrat wave and Democrat presidential victory. Historically, that’d cause an emboldened response from the GOP in the off year election, putting Abrams at a disadvantage against Kemp and raising questions about why she won’t complete a Seante term.
If Abrams lost against David Perdue, she would no longer be seen as the natural nominee against Kemp in 2022 and other Democrats who’ve waited their turn would fight her for the nomination.
Instead, Abrams can now run for President as a single issue candidate focused on voting rights. No one will hold that sort of loss against her. That will allow her to raise her national profile and fundraising efforts for a 2022 re-match.
This makes a certain amount of sense. But Abrams may be looking at Kamala Harris’ faltering campaign and think she can do better in the same “lane.” She has her own fundraising donor list from her unsuccessful gubernatorial run (albeit not as impressive as Beto O’Rourke’s record-breaking donor list from his unsuccessful run), a fake issue to run on (“voter suppression”), and her own slavish national cult following.
My own estimate is there’s about a 60% chance Abrams jumps into the presidential race.
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.
