2020: The Two Year Long Election

[AmazonGrace]

But if the minority in power doesn't listen to the needs of the many how is it any better?

[mamallama]

My problem with the argument that the electoral college protects the rights of the minority is that states themselves are an artificial concept.  Any given citizen of a western state is no less represented in this country and they are more likely to belong to a non-minority ethnic and religious group.  So I think, in practice, the electoral college has served to prop up the ever shrinking white Christian hold on the control of our government.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[AmericanRose]

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/joe-biden-isnt-the-answer-for-president-in-2020.html

I never heard of Joe Biden until Obama became President in 2009, but this article disappoints me.

[GreyhoundFan]

If Biden was the party's nominee, I would vote for him. He is not my first choice. Actually, he's not my fifth choice. I still despise him from the Clarence Thomas hearings, where he basically threw Anita Hill to the wolves. I realize people can change and grow, but I don't think he understands how much women of my generation were furious about it and how much we remember.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

I've been following Rick Wilson on twitter and on The Daily Beast for quite awhile now.  He's a hard-core Republican conservative Never-Trumper who has lost faith in the current iteration of the Republican party but isn't about to declare as an independent.  He wrote, and I've read, Everything Trump Touches Dies.  He's a wickedly funny wordsmith and he has perfect pitch when brutally skewering Trump and Associates.  He's been an incredibly successful Republican media consultant and has made ads that Democrats hated and got Republican candidates elected. 

He's written an article about what the Dems need to be doing now to beat Trump in 2020 and I think it's important to heed his advice. See what you think: 

How Democrats are losing 2020, already: Trump must not win reelection, but the candidates lining up to beat him are giving a good chance

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Boosted by Pence, Graham plays up his loyalty to Trump as he seeks a fourth term"

Spoiler

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) kicked off his reelection campaign here over the weekend by having Vice President Pence — perhaps President Trump’s most loyal ally — underscore his own loyalty to the president.

“I have watched him stand in solidarity with President Trump and our administration,” Pence said Saturday at a beachfront hotel.

Earlier, Graham assured the more than 700 attendees — many of them wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats — that his “number one” priority is Trump’s reelection.

“I’m going to be a good ally to this president and be his partner,” he said.

Twenty months before voters head to the polls, Graham is starting his campaign for a fourth Senate term early — and doing everything he can to link himself to the president.

For Graham, the full embrace of Trump is, in part, an effort to stave off primary challengers, particularly someone who could be tempted to run against him as a Trump-style insurgent.

It is also a sign that Graham wants to energize Trump’s core voters in this traditionally red state, as Democrats try to build on their recent gains. Democrats scored a victory in November in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District — a district won by Trump by more than 13 points in 2016.

Jaime Harrison, the first black chairman of the state Democratic Party and a former aide to Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), is exploring a Senate run and has been encouraged by national party leaders. Harrison’s campaign would likely attract significant attention from the Democratic presidential primary contenders making frequent stops in South Carolina, an early voting state.

“Lindsey understands that this is not a slam dunk for him,” Harrison said in an interview Sunday. “The refrain these days is: What’s happened to Lindsey? He’s won in the past with a coalition of country club Republicans, independents and some moderate or conservative Democrats. But he’s lost some of those middle-of-the-road voters.”

As Pence’s motorcade winded through small towns, with Graham riding along, it was greeted by small crowds waving American flags. There were scattered groups of protesters, too, holding posters urging Attorney General William P. Barr to release special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s complete report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and Trump’s conduct.

But before Graham turns to the general election, he is focused on shoring up his Republican support — and locking down his party’s nomination.

While Graham is close with Trump and a regular golf partner to the president, he was a once sharp-tongued critic. He also has a long history of irritating conservatives with his independent streak and his attempts to pass bipartisan immigration legislation with his friend John McCain, the late senator from Arizona.

In 2014, Graham faced six lesser-known Republican challengers in his Senate primary race but ultimately won comfortably in a year where the tea party movement failed to score many upsets.

By enlisting Pence for his campaign’s launch — and promising his supporters this weekend that Trump will come to stump for him later this year — Graham is aiming to scare off any potential rivals.

A Winthrop University poll released in March showed Graham with 74 percent approval rating among state Republicans — up from 51 percent a year ago.

The crowd for Graham at the Embassy Suites in Myrtle Beach was a microcosm of Trump’s events in the South: Older and white, veering from Republicans in navy blazers to activists in T-shirts.

Even their soundtracks aligned: Graham’s campaign played “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, followed by a soaring opera song — a playlist similar to the one at Trump’s arena rallies.

Later Saturday, Pence and Graham flew together on Air Force Two to Greenville, S.C., joined by Gov. Henry McMaster (R-S.C.), another avowed Trump ally, to speak at a Baptist church in the area.

It went unmentioned, but Greenville is the political base of businessman and Marine veteran John Warren, who has mused about a possible bid against Graham. Warren won 46 percent of the vote last year in a much-watched Republican gubernatorial primary runoff election against McMaster.

To fend off Warren — who built a competitive campaign and railed against the governor as an insider — McMaster eventually had Trump hold a rally for him on the eve of the runoff. Trump personalized the contest and warned his voters to not give “Donald Trump a humiliating defeat.”

Warren has gone quiet about a 2020 Senate run as Graham has coupled his political identity with Trump, but he pointedly told a conservative outlet last year that the state has only one conservative senator — Sen. Tim Scott (R) — making him the most formidable of any looming foils.

After thanking the swaying, green-robed choir at Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Graham acknowledged Saturday that “me and the president didn’t get started on the best foot.”

Still, Graham joked, “I found common ground with President Trump: I like him and he likes him. It seems to be working out for the both of us.”

In a nod to South Carolina’s influential evangelical Christian community and Pence’s standing with them, Graham showered praise on Pence, saying he “reflects who we are in South Carolina as well as anyone I’ve met in politics” and “walks in the shadow of a gracious and living God.”

Pence, far more formal in his delivery than the wisecracking senator, told the churchgoers that Graham was a powerful ally for Trump in Washington — a “tremendous partner” in bolstering the U.S. relationship with Israel and in confirming conservatives appointed to the federal courts.

“Now he is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Pence said approvingly, as the crowd applauded.

Pence added, “America will never forget the force of the words of Senator Graham during the Kavanaugh hearings” — a reference to Graham’s charged remarks last year during the hearings for Justice Brett M. Kavanugh, who was facing accusations of sexual assault and was defended by Graham.

Graham has since made a snapshot of him and Kavanaugh his profile picture on Twitter, yet another reminder to Trump enthusiasts that he has been in the political trenches with the president on the biggest battles — and remains there — regardless of the past.

“If you’re going to beat us, you better get up early, you better stay late and you better pack a punch,” Graham said at the church.

Harrison, however, contends Graham’s unwavering loyalty to Trump may help him ahead of a primary race, but eventually be a burden.

“The winds of change are blowing,” Harrison said. “Lindsey has forgotten about South Carolina and is spending too much time on Fox News talking with Sean Hannity. He should go get a contract instead.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I know this may not be popular as there are Bernie fans on FJ, but this is an interesting op-ed: "Bernie Sanders has emerged as the Donald Trump of the left"

Spoiler

In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Hence, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s emergence as the Donald Trump of the left.

Fundraising and polls show that many Democrats think the best answer to an angry old white guy with crazy hair, New York accent and flair for demagoguery is, well, another angry old white guy with crazy hair, New York accent and flair for demagoguery. It’s not difficult to picture a scenario in which Bernie captures the Democratic presidential nomination with the same formula that worked for Trump with Republicans in 2016.

On paper, the independent from Vermont doesn’t make sense: Democrats are a party of youth, and he’s 77; they are majority-female, and he’s a man; they represent the emerging multicultural America, and he is white. Statistically, he is the worst option against Trump: An NBC News poll this week found that there are more voters with concerns about Sanders (58 percent) than there are for former vice president Joe Biden (48 percent), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (53 percent), Sen. Kamala D. Harris or former representative Beto O’Rourke (41 percent each).

Yet Sanders has both money and movement. His campaign on Tuesday announced a haul of $18.2 million in the first quarter from 525,000 individual contributors. The other major populist, early favorite Warren (Mass.), has floundered in both money and popularity. And undeclared front-runner Biden now looks vulnerable to accusations he inappropriately touched women, kicked off by a prominent Sanders 2016 backer who served on the board of the Sanders political group.

Meanwhile, Sanders himself remains untouchable, in a Trumpian way. Claims of mistreatment by male staffers from women who worked on his 2016 campaign? Yawn. His resistance to releasing his tax returns? Whatever. The idea that Democrats need a unifying figure to lure disaffected Trump voters in key states? Never mind.

Sanders isn’t Trump in the race-baiting, lender-cheating, fact-avoiding, porn-actress-paying, Putin-loving sense. But their styles are similar: shouting and unsmiling, anti-establishment and anti-media, absolutely convinced of their own correctness, attacking boogeymen (the “1 percent” and CEOs in Sanders’s case, instead of immigrants and minorities), offering impractical promises with vague details, lacking nuance and nostalgic for the past.

Sanders’s supporters hope he’ll fight Trump’s fire with fire, refusing to be conciliatory (the way Biden and O’Rourke are), or to be goaded by Trump the way Warren was into taking a DNA test. Maybe answering belligerence with belligerence will work; Trump-era predictions are worthless. Either way, the support for Sanders shows that the angry, unbending politics of Trumpism are bigger than Trump.

I spent Monday at a cattle call for eight Democratic presidential candidates hosted by labor unions, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and other progressive groups. Sanders was easily the least charismatic, hoisting his trousers by the waist, tugging at his socks, hunching over the lectern, sitting stiffly and awkwardly greeting questioners. But the reception among liberal activists, which had ranged from tepid (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand) to enthusiastic (Warren) was, for Sanders, rapturous. “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” they chanted, standing when he appeared and when he finished. In between, they applauded a routine full of Trumpian flourishes.

He simplified and blamed: “The crisis that we are facing today is not complicated. . . . We have a government that ignores the needs of the working people . . . yet works overtime for wealthy campaign contributors and the 1 percent.” He mocked those who questioned ideas such as Medicare-for-all (“the establishment went crazy, media went nuts, still is”), and he celebrated his prescience. He channeled rage at the “vulgarity” of a “grotesque” and “corrupt” system, the “absolute hypocrisy” of Republicans, corporations that “lie” and billionaires who “buy elections.” Of the wealthy, he said, “Many of them are bandits,” and he said if Republicans “don’t have the guts to participate in a free and fair election, they should get the hell out of politics.”

Like Trump, he railed against companies moving jobs to China or Mexico, and he harked back to simpler times: “Forty, 50 years ago, it was possible for one worker to work 40 hours a week and earn enough money to take care of the whole family.”

It’s less hateful, perhaps, to blame billionaires than immigrants or certain “globalists” for America’s troubles, but the scapegoating is similar. So is Sanders’s “socialist” label (worn as defiantly as Trump wears the isolationist “America First”), and his Democratic credentials are as suspect as Trump’s Republican bona fides were. Most Republicans opposed Trump, but the large field of candidates prevented a clean matchup.

A similar crowd could likewise prevent Democrats from presenting a clear alternative to Sanders’s tempting — if Trumpian — message that a nefarious elite is to blame for America’s problems. Universal health care, higher education and child care are within reach, Sanders said to cheers, if only “we stand up and tell this 1 percent that we will no longer tolerate their greed.” In real life, it’s not so simple. But in our new politics, maybe it is.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Setting the stage to cry election fraud if he loses

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[TuringMachine]

Quote

“Let me flat-out say: Any one of the candidates who has announced that she or he is running or is thinking of running would be a better President of the United States than the present occupant of the White House. No question.”

I mean, that's like the lowest of bars.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

25 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

I mean, that's like the lowest of bars.

Yes. We deserve better that someone just actively not trying to harm us like our current President is now.

[SassyPants]

Release your damn tax returns!

[Penny]

If we get a hold of his taxes, he will say it is fake and that he is the richest man ever. 

[fraurosena]

True. But political parties should also have a message for young people. One they can relate to and believe in. One they will get out and vote for. Because if politics is just so much blah-blah by old white men, then they won't come out to vote, no matter how much you want them to.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "Things Stacey Abrams and Pete Buttigieg get that most other pols don’t"

Spoiler

Stacey Abrams is an African American woman, of “sturdy build” she says, from the South who barely lost the Georgia governor’s race, has made voting rights her passion and knocked it out of the ballpark in her response to this year’s State of the Union. Pete Buttigieg is a white, gay man of slight build from the Midwest who’s spent eight years as mayor of South Bend, Ind., a mid-sized city, served in the military and is a genuine intellectual. They couldn’t be more different, right?

Not exactly. Both are quite progressive but do well in red states and both have made a giant impression on the media and among those voters who know who they are. What’s the secret of their success? I’d argue they have important ingredients rarely found in a single politician.

First, both are crazy-smart. She’s a Yale Law School grad, he’s a Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar. They don’t simply have credentials, however. They have nimble, curious minds and are voracious readers. That makes them interesting to listen to and makes them sound somehow different, more serious than traditional politicians who rely on buzzwords and catchphrases.

Second, while quite young (he is 37, she is 45) they can be almost eerily calm and composed. They speak with deliberation and don’t stumble over words, fill in gaps with a series of ahs and uh-huhs. They rarely raise their voices yet command the room.

Third, they are very still when speaking. No arm gestures, no fidgeting, no nervous habits. That also helps convey a sense of command and purposefulness.

Fourth, they present progressive ideas as common sense solutions without inflammatory language and labels. They explain what voters need (e.g. Abrams on broadband and health care in rural areas, Buttigieg on economic development.) If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) aims to define himself as a socialist, they embrace humane capitalism, and thereby don’t scare away more conservative voters.

Both talk about faith as a motivating force for their public lives. Abrams ran this ad in her Georgia race:

Buttigieg likewise explained his grounding in faith in an interview with columnist Kirsten Powers. “When I think about where most of Scripture points me, it is toward defending the poor, and the immigrant, and the stranger, and the prisoner, and the outcast, and those who are left behind by the way society works,” he said. "And what we have now is this exaltation of wealth and power, almost for its own sake, that in my reading of Scripture couldn’t be more contrary to the message of Christianity. So I think it’s really important to carry a message (to the public), knitting together a lot of groups that have already been on this path for some time, but giving them more visibility in the public sphere.”

In short they talk about faith without rancor, without parochialism and without boasting. One knows this is part of who they are.

Finally, both clearly identify inequality, in particular the wage and wealth gap that afflicts African Americans. They say this not to call out racists but to explain why when we invest in education or health care or housing we need to act “intentionally” to undo a history of discrimination, as Buttigieg said on Thursday at the National Action Network. “The idea that a rising tide lifts all boats just isn’t true. Not when some of those boats are still roped down on the ocean floor," he said. His solutions are additive however not a plan to pit one group against another. "

On Morning Joe, Abrams explained identity means “I see you. I see the barriers to your success”:

Whether or not you agree with the substance of what Buttigieg and Abrams are saying, they sure don’t sound like everyone else. Maybe less is more -- fewer histrionics, less hollering, less anger.

 

[fraurosena]

Feel the burn, Pence!

No need to pout because you feel left out; there's some for you too, presidunce.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

This is a prettig good article laying out what the Dems need to do, and more importantly, why they need to.

I can’t quote as I’m on my phone, but I heartily recommend you read it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump shared a campaign video with ‘Dark Knight Rises’ music. Warner Bros. yanked it from Twitter."

Spoiler

On Tuesday afternoon, President Trump previewed some of the themes of his upcoming reelection campaign, sharing a two-minute video on Twitter that pitched 2020 as a battle of summer blockbuster proportions.

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote in his tweet sharing the clip.

As orchestral music thunders in the scene’s opening seconds, footage of Washington monuments and government buildings is interspersed with shots of former president Barack Obama. “First they ignore you,” text against a black background reads. “Then they laugh at you. Then they call you racist.” The footage shows the Clintons and comedians Rosie O’Donnell and Amy Schumer. Then, as the soundtrack swells, the footage switches to images of Trump and crowds at his rallies.

“Your vote,” the screen reads, “proved them all wrong.”

By late Tuesday night, Trump’s tweet featuring the clip had racked up nearly 90,000 likes and 29,000 retweets. But a few hours later, early on Wednesday, the video was blocked on major sites like Twitter and YouTube. “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner,” the clip now reads on Twitter.

As BuzzFeed News first pointed out, the dramatic music groaning alongside the two-minute film is lifted from “The Dark Knight Rises,” the 2012 capstone to director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale. The song from composer Hans Zimmer’s score is called “Why Do We Fall?”

Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, was not happy.

“The use of Warner Bros.’ score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized,” a spokesman told BuzzFeed News. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”

The clip is not an official campaign product, but rather the work of a Trump fan who uploaded the video late last week to r/The_Donald, a subreddit on Reddit that is a meme-clogged online playground for Trump fans, alt-right trolls and conspiracy-mongers.

It’s not the first time the president has dipped into controversial online backwaters for his memes. Trump regularly fires off content to his nearly 60 million Twitter followers, regardless of origin.

During the 2016 election, then-candidate Trump retweeted a post criticizing Hillary Clinton that featured an image resembling the Star of David. The image had originally surfaced on the online messaging board 8chan, which features neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic content, according to Time. Trump later deleted the tweet.

In July 2017, Trump tweeted out a meme of himself body-slamming a CNN logo. The image was the product of a Reddit user who was later also tied to racist and anti-Semitic memes, according to Politico.

Last month, the president shared a tweet featuring a boy being patted down by an agent with the Transportation Security Administration. As The Washington Post reported, that clip had originally been shared by a QAnon conspiracy theorist.

The video shared Tuesday night was apparently first posted on r/The_Donald last Friday by Reddit user knock-nevisTDF. According to the YouTube version of the account (which is also now deactivated), it was produced by MateyProductions.

That YouTube account features a handful of pro-Trump productions. Many, such as “President Donald Trump, How you like him now? Tribute” and “Kavanaugh vs the Democrats,” feature a similar mix of news footage, skyline shots of D.C. and clips of Trump in action at rallies.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video. An email sent to an address associated with MateyProductions was not returned early Wednesday.

On Reddit, the user who claimed he had created the video soundtracked by the Batman music fielded congratulations from other r/The_Donald posters.

“Thanks to all the patriots on here, it blew up!,” the user wrote. “You could imagine my shock today when I was told he tweeted it! . . . My dad has his tweet printed so I can frame it haha.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Pete Buttigieg stole Beto O’Rourke’s mojo"

Spoiler

Beto O’Rourke was supposed to be the hero. So who’s this other guy making all the headlines?

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and usurper of O’Rourke’s role as Democratic media darling, has a few things in common with the man he has displaced. They’re both relatively young, relatively good-looking totally white guys from parts of America that the Democrats could stand to win over. They’re progressive to a point, but they’re not ideologues. And they love the same book. Sort of.

O’Rourke, a former representative from Texas, has said several times that not only has he read and reread “The Odyssey,” but he even named his first-born son Ulysses — because, as O’Rourke declared in perhaps the most eye-rollingly masculine statement made on the stump so far, he “didn’t have the balls to name him Odysseus.”

Buttigieg, on the other hand, doesn’t have any kids with his husband, Chasten. If he did, though, Ulysses might be his top pick, “balls” be damned. The Harvard grad, Rhodes scholar and Navy veteran (it’s impossible to weigh in on Buttigieg, it turns out, without reproducing his résumé) has told interviewers that James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece is “the basis" for his politics.

It’s not so surprising that these two men seeking the highest office in the land have chosen a Homeric epic to undergird their own myth-making. But the differences between the original "Odyssey" and its 20th-century interpretation say something about the differences between O’Rourke and Buttigieg as candidates, too — and they may help explain how the latter has gotten his edge, however long it lasts.

First there’s O’Rourke, who said of the presidential race to Vanity Fair, “Man, I’m just born to be in it.” He likes “The Odyssey,” and he likes Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey,” which spells out a theory of heroic narrative O’Rourke plainly believes he can match. A man — and, yes, it’s a man — strikes out to achieve something, and though he suffers, he prevails. That man is special, and by using his specialness, he can deliver wonders to the unanointed.

“Every word was pulled out of me,” O’Rourke said of an early speech during his Senate campaign last year against Ted Cruz. “Like, by some greater force.”

O’Rourke, like Odysseus, has drifted to and fro, amassing adventures before finding his way home. His rocker road-tripping then and his countrywide pre-campaigning now are all about the self-discovery necessary to lead others.

There are, of course, more complicated ways to read “The Odyssey.” But Betomania has never been about being complicated: It has been about charisma, about how hopping up on countertops is a suitable substitute for the sort of wonkery that can tend to turn voters off.

In “Ulysses,” on the other hand, complication is key. Joyce both mimics and mocks the heroic narrative — chronicling his protagonist’s travels to the outhouse instead of across wine-dark seas. Odysseus is traded out for Leopold Bloom, who is more or less a loser in the way all of us are more or less losers, and a hero in the way all of us are heroes. The novel aims to capture the fullness of humanity not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary.

Buttigieg claims that this interest in the everyday is at the core of his politics, too. He wants Democrats to be “talking in terms that are nearer to the ground, really explaining what we mean in terms of everyday lived experience. . . . And that’s how good political narrative works.” There’s that word: narrative. This time, though, stereotypical heroism is left out of it. O’Rourke lived-streamed himself getting his teeth cleaned. Buttigieg live-streamed himself filling in a South Bend pothole.

Buttigieg-mania isn’t really a thing, and that’s not only because it’s a mouthful: It’s because Buttigieg is appealing not for being larger than life, but for being regular-sized. That’s refreshing in an era where, as Buttigieg himself pointed out, one nominee in the last presidential election put “I’m with her” on campaign buttons and the other was Donald Trump. Refreshing, too, is Buttigieg’s insistence on Democrats developing a “vocabulary” that redefines high-level values such as “freedom,” as well as his focus on reshaping democracy with a larger Supreme Court and an end to the electoral college. Joyce used modern literary methods to capture modern problems; Buttigieg is trying to do the same thing in politics.

There’s something else about “Ulysses,” though. It’s big and bold, but it’s also a pastiche of centuries of English literature. It’s a riff, in other words, on what we’ve done before. The orientation to everyday detail that seems to define Buttigieg could be as radical as Joyce, or it could tend to perpetuate the status quo that the insurgency on the left and those blue-collar voters alike want to leave behind. His desire to reclaim faith and community for the left could be a foray into the future, or it could end up calling Americans back to the past. Until we really see his policy positions — and we haven’t, yet — it’s impossible to know for sure.

Heroism is obviously alluring; if it weren’t, we’d all have stopped reading “The Odyssey” a long time ago. There’s something striking, if a bit silly, about seeing O’Rourke standing astride those countertops like he’s conquering the country cafe by cafe. It’s also possible that someone who aspires to face the most me-oriented politician of all in the general election needs a certain oomph. The question about O’Rourke is whether his personal questing is too much. The question about Buttigieg is whether the everyday version of the epic is enough to get voters to say “yes.”