2020 Presidential Election 2: The Primaries are upon us

[GreyhoundFan]

"It might be time to take Bloomberg seriously"

Spoiler

Count on this: If Bernie Sanders manages to win the Iowa caucuses Monday and then storms into New Hampshire, where the Vermont senator already holds a commanding lead in virtually every poll, anxiety on Wall Street and among the Democratic donor class will quickly erupt into a full-fledged panic.

And yet I can think of one billionaire Democrat who would look at that scenario and think that, once again, fortune favors the rich.

His name is Mike Bloomberg. And even a few weeks ago, I’d have told you he was wasting his money.

Bloomberg’s entry into the Democratic primary field in November struck me as nonsensical. The plan was to skip the first four contests while buying up virtually all of the airtime in the larger Super Tuesday states, amassing a long list of endorsements from mayors and spreading a lot of money around to candidates and party organizations.

Then the former New York mayor would just lie in the tall grass and wait for the campaign to come to him.

A brilliant plan, except for a few minor details. First, at a moment of intense partisanship and rising wokeness, Democratic voters really weren’t clamoring for another New York billionaire whose best-known policy is “stop-and-frisk.”

Second, in terms of bang for the buck, TV ads and endorsements aren’t what they were 30 years ago. Sure, having people hear your name over and over again (pollsters call it “name ID”) can boost your standing, and Bloomberg has risen to 8 or 9 percent in national polls.

But as Rudolph W. Giuliani could have told you before he started talking like a man marooned on an island with his volleyball, that kind of notoriety tends to mean nothing once people actually start voting. (Believe it or not, Giuliani led all the national polls late in 2007 — and captured exactly zero Republican delegates.)

Third, those first few primaries generally create a momentum that overtakes whatever came before. The handful of candidates who emerge intact from the opening contests can count on nonstop media coverage and overstuffed gymnasiums; it’s hard to just show up and elbow your way in.

For all those reasons, I always thought Bloomberg was far better off taking his hundreds of millions of dollars and jumping in as an independent candidate after the primaries, when he could waltz into the debates, like Ross Perot in 1992, and remind people of how dysfunctional the two-party system really is.

But there’s one scenario — and probably only one — in which Bloomberg’s weird theory of how he wins could actually become plausible. And it no longer seems so remote.

Let’s say Sanders wins in Iowa and then cleans up in New Hampshire a week later — a twofer no Democrat has pulled off without going on to secure the nomination since the advent of the Iowa caucuses in the 1970s. And let’s say that leaves his main rivals for the nomination right now — former vice president Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg — either badly weakened of out of the race altogether.

In other words, let’s assume Sanders emerges from the first few weeks of voting looking very much like Donald Trump did at that point in 2016: solidly ahead and having vanquished his most formidable rivals.

Then, all of a sudden, the campaign becomes about a single question: Can anyone stop Sanders?

And there, on every state ballot and every cable show and popping up during every commercial break, is a guy with unlimited resources and eerie self-possession, reminding Democrats about his very real work combating climate change and the National Rifle Association. There on the debate stage is Bloomberg, having finally met the criteria that party Chairman Tom Perez relaxed last week, probably anticipating this very outcome.

Suddenly, it’s not a battle of pluralities, but a head-to-head matchup between two heavyweight candidates with wholly different governing ideologies. And at that point Bloomberg — backed by some powerful forces in the party, no doubt — can put to Democrats a very stark choice.

Do you choose socialism or capitalism? An ideologue or an executive? Are you really going to ask Americans to trade one extreme for the other, or do you want to offer them a certified, electable moderate?

I’m not saying Democrats would actually choose Bloomberg in that moment. As party affiliations grow weaker nationally, primary electorates grow ever more strident, as we saw in the Republican race four years ago. And there might not be enough money in the world for Bloomberg to buy his way into the good graces of African Americans, a crucial voting bloc.

What I do know is that Bloomberg has only one real path to becoming a serious contender this year. And if Sanders rolls though Iowa and New Hampshire, that path won’t be nearly as narrow as it once looked.

 

[milkteeth]

 

When activists asked the DNC to host a climate debate so that Americans could hear how each candidate planned to address the biggest existential crisis facing our planet the DNC said no, the rules are set. When Cory Booker asked them to change the rules so Americans could continue to hear diverse voices among their potential nominees, the DNC said no, we can't benefit any candidate. There should have been an asterisk by those statements saying "Unless you are a white male billionaire who plans to buy your way into the election and you are willing to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to us." 

 

 

[AmericanRose]

Looks like Democrats are setting themselves up to have people not voting out of disgust with the DNC again.

Which is exactly where we want to be, if we wanted another 4 years of Trump.

[front hugs > duggs]

I hate saying it, but the DNC is so corrupt. Didn't really have a thing for Bernie or Hilary in 2016, but what the DNC did to Bernie was horrible!

I hate that when I complain about Trump/GOP corruption, I have family that are quick to point out that "they are all the same" and that the Dems are just as corrupt. I know what the difference is, but I still hate that this exists at all.

[GreyhoundFan]

Of course the Repugs are spreading disinformation and other crap to confuse the situation in Iowa: "Conservatives push false claims of voter fraud on Twitter as Iowans prepare to caucus"

Spoiler

DES MOINES — The claims of voter fraud were false, proved untrue by public data and the state’s top election official.

That didn’t stop them from going viral, as right-wing activists took to Twitter over the weekend to spread specious allegations of trickery in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

The episode showcased the perils of conducting elections in the age of social media, where volume is more important than veracity.

The Iowa Democratic Party, in partnership with national Democratic officials, has labored to make the caucuses more transparent and to fend off the sort of confusion and conspiracy theories that marred the process in 2016. The Democratic National Committee has its own unit tracking viral disinformation and flagging falsehoods to campaigns, as well as to technology companies that have pledged to clean up their platforms after they were enlisted by Russian actors to boost Donald Trump in his campaign against Hillary Clinton.

But their efforts falter in the face of falsehoods pushed by users with massive online audiences, which social media platforms often refuse to remove, arguing they should not serve as the Web’s arbiters of truth. On Monday, Twitter affirmed its mostly hands-off approach, maintaining the false claims about Iowa’s voter rolls did not qualify as a form of voter suppression.

“The tweet you referenced is not in violation of our election integrity policy as it does not suppress voter turnout or mislead people about when, where, or how to vote," said spokeswoman Katie Rosborough.

The claims on the eve of the caucuses came from a pair conservative activists.

Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, wrote Sunday morning that “eight Iowa counties have more voter registrations than citizens old enough to register.”

That notion, based on a Judicial Watch report purporting to find similar irregularities in hundreds of counties across the country, is false, according to state officials and a Washington Post review of the most up-to-date data.

Of the eight Iowa counties listed by Judicial Watch, a single one — Lyon County — has more registered voters than adult residents, based on five-year estimates released by the Census Bureau in 2018. The estimates, however, do not account for population growth over the past two years. And the total number registered comprises active and inactive voters.

“Their data is flawed, and it’s unfortunate that they’ve chosen caucus day to put out this deeply flawed data,” said Kevin Hall, a spokesman for the Iowa secretary of state.

Flaws in the data did not stop other conservative activists from pushing the misleading conclusion. Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a group mobilizing young conservatives, followed up Sunday afternoon to proclaim that, “One day before the Iowa Caucus, it’s been revealed that EIGHT Iowa counties have more adults registered to vote than voting-aged adults living there.” He asked users to retweet to show their support for a national voter-identification law.

And retweet they did. By Monday, the two tweets together had more than 100,000 interactions, meaning retweets, likes and replies. Among the users amplifying the falsehood were Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, and Mimi Walters, a Republican former congresswoman from California. Analysis by VineSight, a group tracking online falsehoods, said that some of the amplification came from accounts exhibiting signs of automation and that few of the users appeared to be from Iowa.

Presented with figures that contradicted his findings, Fitton stood his ground.

“It’s all very interesting and curious, but the fact is our data shows eight counties over 100 percent,” the Judicial Watch president said in an interview.

Once the 2020 census is completed, he added, a clearer picture will emerge. “Things may have changed, and certainly things will get better or worse over the next two years, but that’s the data we’re relying on," he said, even though the data sources he cited undercut his assertions. He called his organization’s efforts to raise alarm about voter rolls a “public service.”

Turning Point USA declined to provide an on-the-record statement.

Early Monday, Iowa’s secretary of state, Republican Paul Pate, weighed in to debunk the allegation.

“False claim,” he wrote. “Here is a link to the actual county-by-county voter registration totals. They are updated monthly and available online for everyone to see.”

He included a link to his office’s website, as well as the hashtag #FakeNews.

Pate’s post gained virtually no amplification.

“The truth actually gets retweeted almost never, and the things that are the most inflammatory get the most play,” said Ann Ravel, the director of the Digital Deception project at MapLight, which tracks money in politics. She previously served on the Federal Election Commission.

Ravel accused tech companies of failing to grapple with what she says is a form of voter suppression. She said such tweets have the effect of casting doubt on the legitimacy of the political process.

“People do not have trust in institutions anymore,” she said. “This augments that.”

Top tech companies have maintained they are not “arbiters of truth,” in the words of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, adopting a hands-off approach to most speech, even outright lies. But the companies have sought to stake out a more aggressive approach to content considered to be voter suppression. Generally, Facebook, Google and Twitter prohibit users from misrepresenting how, when and where to vote, or from sharing posts, photos and videos designed to discourage people from turning out on Election Day.

Under Twitter’s rules, updated in April, the company also bans tweets that include “misleading claims about voting procedures or techniques which could dissuade voters from participating in an election.” Those who run afoul of its standards are locked out of their accounts until they delete their tweets and risk permanent suspension if they do not change their behavior.

 

[Marmion]

21 hours ago, milkteeth said:

 

When activists asked the DNC  to host a climate debate so that Americans could hear how each candidate planned to address the biggest existential crisis facing our planet the DNC said no, the rules are set. When Cory Booker asked them to change the rules so Americans could continue to hear diverse voices among their potential nominees, the DNC said no, we can't benefit any candidate. There should have been an asterisk by those statements saying "Unless you are a white male billionaire who plans to buy your way into the election and you are willing to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to us." 

 

 

That feeling you get when comedy and real life start to resemble each other .  

 

 

[fraurosena]

Soooo... did anyone follow the Iowa caucus debacle?

Does anyone know what happened with the app, and have some of the caucuses failed because of it? Or because of the weird rules that had weird changes? Or a combination of both? Or...?

@47of74 iirc you’re from Iowa, aren’t you? Can you tell us more?

[47of74]

Last night in a nutshell. 

 

The app didn’t work very well so they’re having to call in the results manually.  

I has something else I could’ve gone too instead of this clusterfuck. I think this is my last caucus.  I’m boycotting them going forward. 

[fraurosena]

This is an over an hour long interview with Rick Wilson about his new book. If you have the time to watch/listen  (I did it whilst doing some ironing ?) then I highly recommend it. I hope the Dems are watching; he has some seriously solid advice. That he's also funny is just an added bonus.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Dana Milbank: "Is Bernie Sanders really happening?"

Spoiler

Only hours remained before Democrats cast their ballots in Iowa, and the front-runner was a bundle of nerves.

As House impeachment managers made their closing arguments Monday, an intermittent clicking could be heard on the Senate floor. It was Sen. Bernie Sanders, biting his fingernails.

The independent democratic socialist from Vermont, favored to win the Iowa caucuses, started nibbling on his left thumbnail, then the index finger, then the middle. He repeated the process on his right hand, casting chewed-off pieces into the wastebasket under his desk.

Watching Sanders surge to the front of the pack in the race to take on President Trump, many Democrats are doing the same thing. Sanders is turning another presidential nominating contest into a nail-biter.

By coincidence, closing arguments in Trump’s impeachment trial fell on the opening day of the Democratic presidential primary season. I used the occasion to observe a key figure in both: From the first row of the gallery, I spent four hours studying the body language and interactions of the resurgent candidate the left believes is the one to end Trump’s reign.

Sanders was hard to miss: Suffering from a cold through much of the trial, he coughed and sneezed, blew his nose, cleared his throat, breathed heavily, puffed out his cheeks, gulped water and sucked on candies.

But beyond the upper-respiratory symptoms, I could see why Sanders alternately enthralls and alarms Democrats: He’s so unconventional a candidate that he’s downright bizarre.

Other senators hobnobbed. Sanders kept to himself, accepting a primary-day handshake or a pat on the back from a few colleagues but conversing with no one. When his neighbor, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), suffered a coughing fit, he was oblivious, finally noticing her struggle long after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) had attended to her.

Other senators sat at their desks, taking notes, reading or watching. Sanders tilted back in his chair, balanced on two of its legs, his wild white hair nearly in the water glass of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Sanders slouched in his seat, with his blue blazer bunched at his shoulders and his gray flannel trousers riding up above his belly button, leading him to tug frequently at lapels and waistband. A wad of crumpled tissues spilled from his hip pocket.

Sanders bounded onto the floor during the middle of the prayer. He spent most of the day as though he were struggling in the coach section: palms together in front of his face; chin pressed into hands; and hands resting on sternum, ears at desktop-level. He brushed his shoulders. He scratched his head, nose, chin, armpit. He grimaced. He pursed his lips.

“The president has done nothing wrong,” proclaimed the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. Sanders stuck a finger in his ear.

Lead House manager Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke of the “duplicity we saw during this trial” from Trump’s lawyers. Sanders plunged a tissue into his water glass and scrubbed a spot on his lapel.

Watching Sanders, I couldn’t help wondering: Is this really happening? Could Democrats really nominate this guy?

I’m making peace with the possibility. If Democratic primary voters, in their wisdom, decide that a 78-year-old curmudgeon who recently suffered a heart attack is their best candidate, that’s still worlds better than Trump. Maybe the old rules don’t apply in the Trump era; maybe Bernie’s passionate youth army can carry him over the finish line, and the voter in the middle won’t matter. Sanders is nothing if not authentic.

But at a time when so many crave a return to normalcy, Sanders is, other than Trump, about as abnormal a candidate as there is. Hillary Clinton’s claim that “nobody likes” Sanders isn’t far off. He has no endorsements from Senate colleagues other than fellow Vermonter Patrick Leahy. Of the 100 senators on the floor, he is, by conventional standards, the least “presidential” in the room.

During his lofty closing argument Monday afternoon, Schiff gave context to this low moment, when every last, frightened senator from the president’s party prepares to stand with a man who corruptly abused his office.

In the “sweep of history,” Schiff said, there are times when the world is “moved with a seemingly irresistible force in the direction of freedom” — and times such as now, when the pendulum swings "into a dark unknown. How much farther will it travel in its illiberal direction? How many freedoms will be extinguished before it turns back? We cannot say. But what we do here in this moment will affect its course.”

This is doubly true now, as Republicans force Trump’s preordained acquittal, and Democrats decide who will lead them against Trump.

“I hope and pray that we never have a president like Donald Trump in the Democratic Party,” Schiff told the Senate.

And I hope and pray that Democrats don’t blow their only chance to stop him.

 

[milkteeth]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Soooo... did anyone follow the Iowa caucus debacle?

Does anyone know what happened with the app, and have some of the caucuses failed because of it? Or because of the weird rules that had weird changes? Or a combination of both? Or...?

@47of74 iirc you’re from Iowa, aren’t you? Can you tell us more?

 

So it sounds like the absolute geniuses who brought you the Hilary 2016 campaign decided to make an app and sell it to the Iowa democrats. There were concerns about how it would work and the creators of the app decided that the people in charge of the Caucus didn't need any training on how to use the app. Now I know this might be hard to believe but the app crashed and burned on election night, and the Iowa dems decided that they didn't need anyone at the phones so people could call in the results instead.

Who needs Russia to interfere in our elections to sow chaos and mistrust when the Democratic Party will do the same through sheer incompetence?

 

Edited February 4, 2020 by milkteeth

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

From Dana Milbank: "Is Bernie Sanders really happening?"

  Hide contents

Only hours remained before Democrats cast their ballots in Iowa, and the front-runner was a bundle of nerves.

As House impeachment managers made their closing arguments Monday, an intermittent clicking could be heard on the Senate floor. It was Sen. Bernie Sanders, biting his fingernails.

The independent democratic socialist from Vermont, favored to win the Iowa caucuses, started nibbling on his left thumbnail, then the index finger, then the middle. He repeated the process on his right hand, casting chewed-off pieces into the wastebasket under his desk.

Watching Sanders surge to the front of the pack in the race to take on President Trump, many Democrats are doing the same thing. Sanders is turning another presidential nominating contest into a nail-biter.

By coincidence, closing arguments in Trump’s impeachment trial fell on the opening day of the Democratic presidential primary season. I used the occasion to observe a key figure in both: From the first row of the gallery, I spent four hours studying the body language and interactions of the resurgent candidate the left believes is the one to end Trump’s reign.

Sanders was hard to miss: Suffering from a cold through much of the trial, he coughed and sneezed, blew his nose, cleared his throat, breathed heavily, puffed out his cheeks, gulped water and sucked on candies.

But beyond the upper-respiratory symptoms, I could see why Sanders alternately enthralls and alarms Democrats: He’s so unconventional a candidate that he’s downright bizarre.

Other senators hobnobbed. Sanders kept to himself, accepting a primary-day handshake or a pat on the back from a few colleagues but conversing with no one. When his neighbor, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), suffered a coughing fit, he was oblivious, finally noticing her struggle long after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) had attended to her.

Other senators sat at their desks, taking notes, reading or watching. Sanders tilted back in his chair, balanced on two of its legs, his wild white hair nearly in the water glass of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Sanders slouched in his seat, with his blue blazer bunched at his shoulders and his gray flannel trousers riding up above his belly button, leading him to tug frequently at lapels and waistband. A wad of crumpled tissues spilled from his hip pocket.

Sanders bounded onto the floor during the middle of the prayer. He spent most of the day as though he were struggling in the coach section: palms together in front of his face; chin pressed into hands; and hands resting on sternum, ears at desktop-level. He brushed his shoulders. He scratched his head, nose, chin, armpit. He grimaced. He pursed his lips.

“The president has done nothing wrong,” proclaimed the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. Sanders stuck a finger in his ear.

Lead House manager Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke of the “duplicity we saw during this trial” from Trump’s lawyers. Sanders plunged a tissue into his water glass and scrubbed a spot on his lapel.

Watching Sanders, I couldn’t help wondering: Is this really happening? Could Democrats really nominate this guy?

I’m making peace with the possibility. If Democratic primary voters, in their wisdom, decide that a 78-year-old curmudgeon who recently suffered a heart attack is their best candidate, that’s still worlds better than Trump. Maybe the old rules don’t apply in the Trump era; maybe Bernie’s passionate youth army can carry him over the finish line, and the voter in the middle won’t matter. Sanders is nothing if not authentic.

But at a time when so many crave a return to normalcy, Sanders is, other than Trump, about as abnormal a candidate as there is. Hillary Clinton’s claim that “nobody likes” Sanders isn’t far off. He has no endorsements from Senate colleagues other than fellow Vermonter Patrick Leahy. Of the 100 senators on the floor, he is, by conventional standards, the least “presidential” in the room.

During his lofty closing argument Monday afternoon, Schiff gave context to this low moment, when every last, frightened senator from the president’s party prepares to stand with a man who corruptly abused his office.

In the “sweep of history,” Schiff said, there are times when the world is “moved with a seemingly irresistible force in the direction of freedom” — and times such as now, when the pendulum swings "into a dark unknown. How much farther will it travel in its illiberal direction? How many freedoms will be extinguished before it turns back? We cannot say. But what we do here in this moment will affect its course.”

This is doubly true now, as Republicans force Trump’s preordained acquittal, and Democrats decide who will lead them against Trump.

“I hope and pray that we never have a president like Donald Trump in the Democratic Party,” Schiff told the Senate.

And I hope and pray that Democrats don’t blow their only chance to stop him.

 

I doubt that the Dems will allow Sanders to be the candidate. Remember that 15% of Democratic superdelegates, who are not bound to vote with each state’s majority. Of course this is going to piss off a lot of voters, much like in 2016. I just want to give a shout out to all in America who do not want Trump for another 4 years, get out and vote. Do not play games or sit it out, unless you want what we have now to continue. Despite how bad the last 4 years have been, it could be so much worse. If you’re anti Having an uneducated In the process, bottom feeder in the Oval Office, get out and vote for the other viable candidate.

[candygirl200413]

So Robby Mook did not create the app. The app was created because a certain person wanted more transparency in caucusses which he performs well in (Bernie if you didn't know).

Source on the app: 

 

The app was not tested beforehand which would have ironed out some kinks. 

Link on the story about the app:

If anything, caucusses should be removed. They are not democratic, and place a major hindrance on: poor people (how to take off work?), disable people (how are they getting there, how can they stay for hours?), people will children (I know Senator Warren campaign pushed for childcare). But stop pushing the narrative that they are rigged from the DNC, how is that possible when you vote in person?!They have paper trials like come on.

[church_of_dog]

Back to the Rs for a moment -- what with all the Republicans saying that Trump's behavior, while (in their view) not rising to the level of warranting impeachment, is nevertheless inappropriate, why in the double toothpicks aren't other Rs deciding to oppose him in the election?  I know it's last minute but it still seems nearly any solid-but-human R could beat him in primaries?

[GreyhoundFan]

3 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

Back to the Rs for a moment -- what with all the Republicans saying that Trump's behavior, while (in their view) not rising to the level of warranting impeachment, is nevertheless inappropriate, why in the double toothpicks aren't other Rs deciding to oppose him in the election?  I know it's last minute but it still seems nearly any solid-but-human R could beat him in primaries?

William Weld and Joe Walsh are running, but the BT network got many red states to cancel their R primaries. Can't stand Walsh, but Weld seems well-respected in the old R party.

 

 

This is a great ad.

 

[fraurosena]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

William Weld and Joe Walsh are running, but the BT network got many red states to cancel their R primaries. Can't stand Walsh, but Weld seems well-respected in the old R party.

 

 

This is a great ad.

 

I'm not sure what I think of Mike Bloomberg buying the presidency. That is not democratic, now is it? 

However, I believe he would, by far and away, be better than Trump. Then again, that's not a high bar to pass; the dog shit I had to scrape from my shoe today would be better than Trump.

But I'd rather have a serious candidate, like Warren, or Klobuchar, or heck even Buttigieg, than a billionaire who's out to amuse himself by playing politics.

[fraurosena]

I saw that a couple of democrats won't be attending the state of the union. I hope those that do attend turn their backs on him as soon as he enters the room...

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

But I'd rather have a serious candidate, like Warren, or Klobuchar, or heck even Buttigieg, than a billionaire who's out to amuse himself by playing politics.

Warren is my first choice. Buttigieg and Klobuchar are close behind. I'm ambivalent about Bloomberg, but he has the money to go up against Twitler's backers and he gets under Twitler's skin, which is always a bonus. Unfortunately, Citizens United escalated the amount of money dumped into political campaigns.

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

William Weld and Joe Walsh are running, but the BT network got many red states to cancel their R primaries. Can't stand Walsh, but Weld seems well-respected in the old R party.

 

 

This is a great ad.

 

I love how Sharpiegate and Trump tossing paper towels to Puerto Ricans were included in the commercial.

I'm looking at the results of last night's caucus.  I don't know if Buttigieg is a strong enough candidate to defeat Trump.  Then again, I think there's a lot of people who would vote for a stalk 0f celery over Trump.

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

I love how Sharpiegate and Trump tossing paper towels to Puerto Ricans were included in the commercial.

I'm looking at the results of last night's caucus.  I don't know if Buttigieg is a strong enough candidate to defeat Trump.  Then again, I think there's a lot of people who would vote for a stalk 0f celery over Trump.

This just p*sses me off. How come the smart, sane, well rounded person with a plethora of experiences over a wide range of industries is never strong enough? I just hate how so often our “system” limits our choices to retreads or Plain ass idiots! Is our system going to force us to accept Biden as our candidate? 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Dems need to stop with the unforced errors: "It was a confusing night for Democrats on Monday. President Trump is smiling."

Spoiler

Monday’s precinct caucuses in Iowa could have provided a coming-out moment for the Democratic Party and its field of presidential candidates. Instead, the caucuses resulted in a night of chaos and confusion and, for one more day at least, provided an unexpected gift to President Trump.

Collectively, Democrats were floundering and at least partially in the dark as the candidates left Iowa and headed to New Hampshire for events ahead of next week’s primary. With no official results released by midday Tuesday, the campaign descended into competing claims about who did well and who did not as the candidates sought to game the system to their advantage.

The situation was ready-made for a president who thrives on chaos, who likes nothing more than to seize on the weaknesses of his opponents. Trump’s political style is to divide and conquer, which is how he won the presidency. He is now hoping to divide the Democrats as a way to disrupt the selection of his November rival and raise doubts about their readiness as a party.

For Trump, the failure of the system in Iowa allowed the spotlight to turn back to him without any of the Democrats being able to fully celebrate victory. The caucuses were one moment for Democrats to seize the headlines in a week that included Tuesday’s State of the Union address and Wednesday’s vote in the Senate, ending the impeachment process with an expected vote to acquit him on both articles approved by the House.

The president, feeling both exonerated and emboldened, will use the two events as moments of triumph and as a return to business as usual. Whatever history says about the impeachment of the president, and however the coming campaign treats him, the months since the impeachment proceedings began have been beneficial to him politically.

Support for his removal from office has ticked down slightly from where it was when the House began its inquiry. Additionally, Gallup reported Tuesday that the president’s job approval rating has risen to 49 percent, the highest of his presidency. Gallup’s numbers reflect not only a rise in his approval among Republicans, to 94 percent, but also among independents — five points higher than in early January and marking another high among those Americans.

Meanwhile, the Democratic candidates will be heading toward a debate Friday night in New Hampshire that could be as consequential as any of their encounters during the campaign. Whatever the final results from Iowa show, it was apparent from partial numbers and the internal analyses of competing campaigns that Democratic voters in Iowa remained fractured over their choice of a nominee, despite a year of campaigning.

Iowa sometimes produces genuine clarity through its caucus process, but this year something else happened. Candidates swarmed the state and found big crowds of voters there to see and hear them — a sign of the energy that helped Democrats take control of the House in the 2018 midterms and the determination to defeat the president in the general election.

With two dozen Democrats declaring their candidacies during 2019, Iowa seemed poised to become a more important testing ground than ever. But as the year moved from spring to summer and then to fall, another reality set in. No candidate was able to break away from the others. Iowa voters liked many of the candidates but seemed to love no one in particular.

Based on data shared by various campaigns — which is to say, partial and perhaps self-serving — it appeared probable that the eventual winner will have one of the lowest percentages of delegates of any previous winner. That’s not certain, given Iowa’s arcane rules for determining the winner, but five candidates left Iowa for New Hampshire determined to fight it out there in hopes of gaining an advantage.

From the way their campaigns were reacting, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) believed the results would be good for them. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who was fighting to break into the top four in Iowa, sounded upbeat as well when she left the state, but her status in the ranking was far from clear.

The campaign of former vice president Joe Biden was raising the most questions about the credibility of the state party’s counting process, challenging Iowa Democratic Party officials to be fully transparent. That was an indication that he and his advisers were not eager to see the final numbers and preferred to look to the next series of contests with Iowa’s results permanently in question.

Four years ago, Sanders finished in a near-tie with Hillary Clinton in Iowa, a moral victory at a minimum. He followed that by cruising to victory in New Hampshire, a result that established him as a serious threat rather than a gadfly and that extended the Democratic race for months.

In Iowa on Monday, Sanders’s campaign was claiming that he was leading based on its partial results. One notable thing from those results, however, was that Sanders gained virtually no ground during the realignment process, suggesting that he has hardcore support but is not the second choice of many other Democrats.

Overall turnout in Iowa appeared to have fallen far short of some predictions, below the record of 2008. That suggested that Sanders was unable to bring a whole group of new people into the process. If that’s the case, it would undermine one of the core arguments he has made — that he is the most electable Democrat.

Electability has been Biden’s principal argument in claiming to be at least a nominal front-runner. But only about a quarter of Iowa Democrats who said electability was most important backed him Monday. His events in Iowa were marked by smaller crowds and a persistent lack of enthusiasm around his candidacy. His advisers discounted those indicators, but the burden on him to prove quickly that he can rally the party will only increase.

Buttigieg was the most aggressive in claiming that he was victorious in Iowa, almost Trumpian in his own way. He, more than any of the candidates, needed a strong finish — ahead of Biden and in the top three at least. He is moving forward as if that’s what he got. Warren, who faced difficult months at the end of last year, sounded rejuvenated Tuesday, saying that the order of finish will favor her, Sanders and Buttigieg.

One other candidate who could be a beneficiary of the state of the race is former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is skipping the first four states while spending record amounts of money in the Super Tuesday states and beyond. His campaign announced Tuesday that it will double its advertising buys in key states.

Democrats can survive Monday’s mess in Iowa. The calendar moves swiftly from here, and the absence of clarity in Iowa will be overtaken by primaries and caucuses that, presumably, will run without incident.

Whether that produces an effective nominee by the end of March is the question that worries many strategists, who know that the president will take advantage of the time to run a general-election operation as their party is fighting internally. The president would like nothing better.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Lindsey Graham’s Iowa deception shows Trump’s corruption of GOP"

Spoiler

A few weeks ago, Steve Schmidt, the former GOP strategist who in 2018 publicly quit his party, attracted wide notice with a particularly brutal characterization of the evolution of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham. The Republican from South Carolina was once very close to late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), but Graham has now become one of the most despicable and dishonorable enablers of President Trump in the GOP.

As Schmidt explained it to Rolling Stone:

What he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.

Since then, Graham has quickly demonstrated to great effect just how dead-on this is. First, Graham said on Fox News that after acquitting Trump in his impeachment trial, Senate Republicans will investigate the activities in Ukraine of both former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

In so doing, Graham vowed that the GOP-controlled Senate will use its oversight authority to validate the entirely fabricated narrative about the Bidens that has been used to justify Trump’s own endlessly corrupt effort to extort Ukraine — which Republicans are set to acquit him for on Wednesday, even without hearing new witnesses or evidence.

And, of course, this is all about the 2020 election, as well: If Biden is the Democratic nominee, Senate Republicans will do everything they can to use their official capacities to validate Trump’s smearing of him.

Not to be outdone, Graham is back with a new pronouncement, this time about the disastrous meltdown in the counting of votes in the Iowa caucuses:

In spreading this conspiracy theory — that cancellation of the release of a pre-caucus Des Moines Register poll and the problems with the Iowa vote are part of a conspiracy to help Biden — Graham continues to play the pilot fish to predator Trump.

In tweeting this, Graham is being very faithful to what the Trump campaign believes are in its interests. As Yair Rosenberg shows in The Post, numerous Trump advisers and family members spread similar conspiracy theories about Iowa — including Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his campaign manager, Brad Parscale.

There are numerous reasons for doing this. First, as Parker Molloy suggests, if various candidates’ supporters suspect the election was rigged against them — a view that even some progressives are spreading, unfortunately — it could depress turnout in the general election.

Trump campaign officials have been known to overtly embrace such tactics. As Bloomberg’s Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg detailed, during the 2016 campaign, the Trump camp employed cynical, targeted messaging tactics to depress turnout among idealistic white liberals, African Americans and younger women.

But lurking beneath that calculation is an uglier reason: To put it simply, Trumpworld views the lack of confidence in our elections as a positive for him.

Trump himself sows this lack of confidence in every way he can. He lies nonstop about voter fraud — even setting up a commission to “prove” its existence that collapsed in a heap of buffoonish failure. The president regularly jokes that he’ll stay in office long beyond two terms; by election law scholar Rick Hasen’s count, he’s done this 27 times.

Hasen suggests that this fomenting of distrust could lay the groundwork for a scenario in which the 2020 election is extremely close and, because of counting delays, Trump could declare himself the winner before all the votes are tallied. Having constantly told his supporters elections are rigged against him — and them — Trump could then refuse to accept an eventual loss:

One of the most realistic scenarios, given Trump’s past remarks, is that the president and his supporters dig in if he’s ahead on election night, even if the race is not called and the later-counted ballots erase his victory. Trump’s 27 comments about staying in office beyond his constitutionally prescribed term offer little comfort that he would respect the rule of law in the event of a protracted election dispute.

Another insidious effect here might be that, by constantly “joking” about staying in office forever, Trump is simply trying to get people to give up on the very possibility of removing him through legitimate electoral processes, further demoralizing the opposition.

The mess in Iowa is an utter disaster, a self-inflicted one, and hopefully this ritual will now be put out of its misery. But it’s simply reprehensible for Trumpworld to try to capitalize on this for nefarious ends. Getting people to give up entirely on the very possibility of neutral or fair processes is a key feature of Trump’s ongoing degradations — one of the most wretched ones.

What’s notable is just how reflexive it’s becoming for Republicans such as Graham to feed these venal and depraved ends. There is zero sense of any obligation here to do what might be good for the country: If undermining confidence in our elections is good for Trump, Republicans such as Graham will seize any opportunity to do it — with gusto.

Corrupting everything in sight is seen to help Trump in all kinds of ways, and as such, if you help him do this, it will ingratiate you with him. That’s all Graham needs to know.

 

[Dandruff]

58 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Dems need to stop with the unforced errors: "It was a confusing night for Democrats on Monday. President Trump is smiling."

I'm disgusted with them.  The assumption that an inadequately tested app might screw things up royally apparently wasn't troubling the decisionmakers.  Delays, humiliation, and questions about whether votes were properly counted should, IMO, have been avoided at all costs.  What was so wrong with the tried and trusted methods?  Now Captain Bonespur can use the debacle to his advantage and, for once, I don't blame him.  With such an important election coming up I see no excuse for this being allowed to happen.  It'll be challenging enough to win without additional self-sabotage.  Screw this garbage and the idiocy that delivered it.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Dandruff

[Marmion]

17 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Soooo... did anyone follow the Iowa caucus debacle?

Does anyone know what happened with the app, and have some of the caucuses failed because of it? Or because of the weird rules that had weird changes? Or a combination of both? Or...?

@47of74

Reminds me of what had happened with the website of the Affordable Care Act .  { https://www.ibtimes.com/obamacare-website-failure-analysis-why-site-crashed-so-often-during-2013-launch-2097354 , https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2015/04/09/a-look-back-at-technical-issues-with-healthcare-gov/ } 

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, SassyPants said:

This just p*sses me off. How come the smart, sane, well rounded person with a plethora of experiences over a wide range of industries is never strong enough? I just hate how so often our “system” limits our choices to retreads or Plain ass idiots! Is our system going to force us to accept Biden as our candidate? 

I think it's at least partly because his political experience is as a mayor, not as a governor or in Congress.  And he's on the young side. But that's just my opinion.