2020 Presidential Election 2: The Primaries are upon us

[Marmion]

^ According to this poll , Sanders would win against Trump by 7 points .  https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-trump-poll-election-2020-biden-bloomberg-1483423 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Marmion

[fraurosena]

10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

In October, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), at 78 the oldest Democrat in the field

This bothers me so much. He can't be an Independent AND a Democrat at the same time. 

What is he doing in the Democratic caucuses? I really don't get it. He LEFT the party after being burned in 2016. Why is he now suddenly accepted as a Democratic candidate?

[Rachel333]

I hope we don't have a chance to find out, and if we do I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think Sanders stands a chance against Trump. He's gone largely unattacked, and once the Republicans bring out all the opposition research -- his socialism, the creepy rape essay and other offensive writing about sexuality, his history of anti-American statements, the fact that he's nearly 80 and just had a heart attack, etc. -- I think it will not go well for him.

I also hate how he just promises all this stuff with no real plan to see it through. I mean, he said they'll get medicare for all passed by protesting against McConnell! As if McConnell is going to cave just because a bunch of people marched against him. And I have absolutely no confidence in him to work with other people (even other democrats) to get things done.

There really is a huge problem with Bernie supporters being incredibly nasty to anyone who expresses even slight disagreement with Sanders. They scoff at the idea that people wouldn't vote for Sanders because of them, but I think there are a lot of people like me who were incredibly turned off by his supporters, which made them more willing to look at the other negatives about Sanders. I also absolutely think he could do something to curtail his supporters' behavior (look at Pete's campaign, whose supporters act the polar opposite to Sanders's because of the "rules of the road" the campaign put out) , but he won't. If he wins it really, really concerns me that this behavior is going to become more and more normal on the left.

Also, it really irritates me that the Sanders camp pushed to keep the Iowa caucus because, as undemocratic as it is, Sanders did better with caucuses in 2016, but now that they lost Iowa they're complaining how unfair it is and smearing Pete terribly. If I had been able to caucus in Iowa I would have done so for Warren, but I'm really impressed at what Pete's campaign has done and I wish there was more appreciation of the historic significance of a gay man winning a state.

Basically, I'm a bundle of nerves about the primary today because I'm terrified of what's happening to the Democratic party.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trailer: Sanders may be on the verge of another New Hampshire win. Democrats aren't ready to get behind him."

Spoiler

RINDGE, N.H. — Bernie Sanders has been running for president a very long time. Long enough to get nostalgic.

“Four years ago, I came to New Hampshire and I had a series of proposals that the political establishment said was very radical, too extreme,” Sanders told a crowd at Franklin Pierce University on Monday. 

Many in the crowd hadn’t lived in the state back then. Many more had been too young to vote. They cheered along, applauding at the end of every sentence, as Sanders told them how he would overthrow the political order. The senator from Vermont was possibly on the verge of doing something moderate Democrats had been unable to prevent: winning the New Hampshire primary.

In the contest’s final hours, Sanders has minimized his own criticism of the party, pitching his campaign as a chance for the state to get things right and pick an electable candidate who will supercharge voter enthusiasm.

His Monday evening concert in Durham, Sanders said, would probably bring out the “largest turnout in the Democratic primary process.” His volunteers had knocked on one-fifth of all the doors in New Hampshire, sometimes putting a golf ball in a gloved hand, to make sure that people at home were listening.

But Sanders had already won New Hampshire once, by a 21-point landslide. Unlikely to beat him here, rival candidates and skeptical voters are still asking whether Sanders and his movement could be trusted to win a general election.

“He’s probably too progressive for me,” said Jacob Kirk, 59, who said had voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary and then cast another “anybody-but-Hillary” vote for Donald Trump. 

“He’s so negative,” said Kirk’s wife, Kim, also 59. “He comes off like an angry old man.” In the final days before the primary, they took time to check out former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, who now criticizes Sanders’s “revolutionary” approach to politics in his stump speech.

Like the other nine candidates still competing here, Sanders took advantage of the president’s party-crashing visit to Manchester, contrasting his agenda — Medicare-for-all, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage — with the Republicans. In Rindge, he didn’t even bother attacking rivals such as Buttigieg or Biden, who he'd warned would be weaker general-election candidates.

“Trump’s presence in New Hampshire is an opportunity to contrast Senator Sanders’s agenda against Trump’s record of division and betraying working families,” explained Jeff Weaver, a senior Sanders adviser. “It’s also an opportunity to highlight Senator Sanders’s unique strengths in a general-election matchup.”

Sanders's stump speech hardly differed from the one that he used on the way to winning the primary four years ago. In Rindge, it did not even go after the White House's new budget, which went back on a number of campaign promises by proposing cuts to Social Security and reduced spending on Medicaid. 

The nine other candidates fighting for New Hampshire have done only a little to raise expectations for Sanders. Biden has repeatedly pointed to Sanders's win number from 2016 as a standard, but only to argue that losing to him here would not affect his own battle plan for later states. Buttigieg reminds audiences that he started his own campaign with “no personal fortune and no national name recognition and no big email list,” to portray whatever he does in New Hampshire as an upset. Still, the Sanders campaign is ready for post-election spin and chatter about how running behind his 61 percent landslide from last time will be a show of weakness.

“The expectations are out of control,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said after Friday night's debate. “It’s a very different situation. It helps that we have some benchmarks to work on — how many people have supported this campaign, how many people could come back to this campaign. But the fact that there’s eight, nine other candidates out there who are splitting up the vote makes it a different race.”

If there's any stop-Sanders plan, it is likely to target the senator's supporters and question whether they could unify the Democrats in time to win an election. Sanders's campaign largely opted not to organize “visibilities” (the jargon for people showing up to wave signs and chant) at party events through most of 2019, making note of how his volunteers were too busy knocking on doors to waste time at a party event.

But Sanders forces were out at this past Saturday's party dinner and became the only Democratic faction to protest another candidate. When Buttigieg delivered his stock line, rejecting the idea “that you must either be for a revolution or you must be for the status quo,” a section of Sanders supporters with light-up signs chanted “Wall Street Pete! Wall Street Pete!” When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) took the stage, some in the crowd booed; she turned to them and offered a cheery, “Hi, Bernie people!”

Sanders's surrogates have also taken whacks at rival candidates when Sanders has pulled back. Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a campaign co-chair, has used some of her introductions of Sanders to attack Buttigieg's “wine cave” fundraisers with “Swarovski crystals,” an attack the campaign began using more than two months ago. 

Turner did not say that in Rindge, and the campaign brought out actress Cynthia Nixon, a new endorser who had backed Hillary Clinton in 2016, to tell her own conversion story without attacking any particular rival. It was a mistake, she said, to back away from a candidate you could get excited about and go for a candidate you could imagine someone else, someone who disagreed with you, voting for.

“That's a mirage in the desert,” Nixon said. “You found somebody who 'everybody' is going to go for, and what you're putting forward is somebody who nobody's going to bother to turn out for.”

Some in the room saw Sanders as the true unity candidate. Conor Hannon, a 23-year-old political science student, said he would vote for Sanders in the primary, then probably vote for the Green Party if another candidate won the nomination. 

“He's not loyal to the party, but when has the party ever been loyal to us?” Hannon said. “There's a basic reciprocity here.”

 

[nausicaa]

3 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

I hope we don't have a chance to find out, and if we do I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think Sanders stands a chance against Trump. He's gone largely unattacked, and once the Republicans bring out all the opposition research -- his socialism, the creepy rape essay and other offensive writing about sexuality, his history of anti-American statements, the fact that he's nearly 80 and just had a heart attack, etc. -- I think it will not go well for him.

I also hate how he just promises all this stuff with no real plan to see it through. I mean, he said they'll get medicare for all passed by protesting against McConnell! As if McConnell is going to cave just because a bunch of people marched against him. And I have absolutely no confidence in him to work with other people (even other democrats) to get things done.

Thank you so much for saying this. I don't understand how other Democrats don't see this. Is the ridiculousness of Trump blinding them to the reality of election strategy?

Bernie has done some really messed up stuff. He has still has not apologized for his praise of the Soviet Union and Cuba in the past. I don't know why he can't just say "I made a mistake. I was wrong and I'm sorry." 

He (and Warren) promise things that are basically impossible for the POTUS to do. I don't know if it's dishonesty, ignorance of the actual Constitution of our country, or a belief that, like Trump, they are above the Constitution. No matter the reason, it's not a good look. 

And no, those swing states ain't gonna swing for Bernie. He will alienate every moderate and certainly not bring over disenchanted Republicans. I'm mentally preparing for Trump to be re-elected. 

[Dandruff]

2 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Thank you so much for saying this. I don't understand how other Democrats don't see this. Is the ridiculousness of Trump blinding them to the reality of election strategy?

You've just echoed my thoughts...I feel the same way about Bernie and Warren and am baffled as to why it's not obvious to others.  I'm moderate, and would vote for either of them in a heartbeat over Trump, but agree that they (especially Bernie) would alienate many.  We really don't need another situation where swarms of people are either staying home or reluctantly voting for the candidate they think they hate less.  Trump won with that scenario.  It would be nice to have a candidate with realistic goals who doesn't viscerally piss off millions.

I like Buttigieg but believe there's enough anti-gay sentiment, especially in certain parts of the US, to keep him from winning.

Right now, my choice for a Democratic ticket would be Bloomberg/Klobuchar.  Very much subject to change - I need to watch and hear more - but that's where I'm currently at.  I had hopes for Biden and think very highly of him, but am no longer convinced that he can pull it off.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 minute ago, Dandruff said:

We really don't need another situation where swarms of people are either staying home or reluctantly voting for the candidate they think they hate less. 

The one candidate for whom I may have stayed home as I don't know if they'd have been worse than Trump (I know) dropped out.  Even then, I'd probably have powered through my sick feeling and voted anyway.

I'm pretty far left on social issues, but I do expect financial responsibility and plans where the math works...and someone who respects the limits of the office.  This governing by executive order is a slippery slope to ruling like a monarchy and just...no.

4 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I had hopes for Biden and think very highly of him, but am no longer convinced that he can pull it off

I did at the beginning but he lost me a long time ago.  Again - if he's on the ticket he's got my vote but definitely just by default.

[front hugs > duggs]

I really love Liz Warren, but I don't think America would vote for her over Trump, which saddens me. Not my personal beliefs at all, but I think Americans who are not as involved in politics on a day to day basis would liken her too much to Hilary, which would be a total turn off for many. While I lean more progressive, I would be okay with a Pete/Amy/Bloomburg run. For Pete or Bloomburg, I would love EW as their running mate. I'm not sure who I'd prefer for Amy, but I definitely don't think America is ready for an all female duo.

Disclaimer: Vote Blue No Matter WHO! Even if it's Biden or Sanders.... (please don't be Biden or Sanders....)

[HerNameIsBuffy]

5 minutes ago, front hugs > duggs said:

I really love Liz Warren, but I don't think America would vote for her over Trump, which saddens me. Not my personal beliefs at all, but I think Americans who are not as involved in politics on a day to day basis would liken her too much to Hilary, which would be a total turn off for many. While I lean more progressive, I would be okay with a Pete/Amy/Bloomburg run. For Pete or Bloomburg, I would love EW as their running mate. I'm not sure who I'd prefer for Amy, but I definitely don't think America is ready for an all female duo.

Disclaimer: Vote Blue No Matter WHO! Even if it's Biden or Sanders.... (please don't be Biden or Sanders....)

I like Warren despite her plans, not because of them.  I think she's realistic enough to know the whole shebang can't happen but could move us forward in the right direction.

 

[Rachel333]

57 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I like Warren despite her plans, not because of them.  I think she's realistic enough to know the whole shebang can't happen but could move us forward in the right direction.

 

That's pretty much how I feel too. Unlike Bernie, she has a history of actually getting things done. She also seems to take minority issues seriously instead of dismissing them as identity politics and focusing on class instead like Bernie tends to. (And no, a picture of him at a civil rights rally 50 years ago does not mean he's worked longer and harder for civil rights than the other candidates, as his supporters say. Mitch McConnell was at the same march; does that make him a civil rights hero too?) It's total bullshit that people don't like her when she presents an actual plan to achieve her stated goals, while Bernie doesn't even know what his plans will cost. I was also absolutely disgusted at how Bernie's supporters treated her last month.

I do think there's basically no chance of getting medicare for all passed right away, and I favor other plans. I hate the way that people have been saying that if you don't vote for Bernie then you don't care about people having healthcare. I think that making some steps would help people a whole lot more than trying and failing to go straight to medicare for all. I'm appalled by how many people there are who say they won't vote for anyone but Bernie. It's a minority of his supporters, thankfully, but there are a whole lot more of them than I'm comfortable with. It takes a lot of privilege to think that way, and I think they're the ones who are showing that they don't really care about other people who will be negatively affected by another four years of Trump.

I would also have a really hard time voting for Bloomberg, with his racism and history of sexual harassment suits.

I don't actually know who I am going to vote for, though. I'm in a state with a later primary, so the race will probably look a lot different by the time I vote.

[fraurosena]

Well. Not surprising for traitors who know they won't get re-elected without cheating.  By blocking foreign interference/anti-hacking measures, they've made it crystal clear they know there is/will be foreign interference and hacking of voting machines -- in their favour, of course.

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by fraurosena
clarity

[GreyhoundFan]

"Andrew Yang drops out of presidential race"

Spoiler

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Andrew Yang, a Democratic businessman who campaigned on giving every adult American a monthly check for $1,000, will end his campaign for president after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary.

“I am a numbers guy,” Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters at Manchester’s Puritan Backroom. “In most of these [upcoming] states, I’m not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign.”

Yang said he had not decided whether to endorse another candidate, though campaigns have reached out.

“If I become persuaded that there's a particular candidate that gives us a superior chance of beating Donald Trump, and I think it's important to make that opinion known, then I would consider it for sure,” Yang said. He also said he would be open to becoming another candidate’s running mate or joining a presidential Cabinet.

Yang launched his campaign in November 2017 and was soon dubbed a “longer-than-long-shot” by the New York Times. Yang would often invoke that same phrase with glee on the campaign trail, and on his merchandise, as he polled higher and raised more money than many better-known candidates.

“I’ve already outlasted a dozen governors, former governors and members of Congress,” Yang said at a Monday night rally in New Hampshire’s biggest city.

In his stump speech, Yang warned of the societal and economic changes automation would continue to bring to the United States. He proposed countering it by implementing universal basic income in the form of a $1,000-a-month “Freedom Dividend” for U.S. citizens.

His sometimes bleak message on the campaign trail was contrasted with his upbeat, irreverent style of campaigning: Yang once crowd-surfed at a candidate forum and sometimes challenged other celebrities to pickup basketball games. He half-danced onto just about every stage to the ’90s Mark Morrison R&B hit “Return of the Mack” and spawned a loyal following of supporters who dubbed themselves the “Yang Gang.”

They often showed up at his events wearing trademark “math” hats, a nod both to his self-described emphasis on facts and research and to the geek culture that surrounded his candidacy. “This is the nerdiest campaign in history,” Yang told The Washington Post last year.

Yang, whose parents immigrated from Taiwan, is the latest nonwhite candidate to exit what started as a historically diverse Democratic field. On debate stages and on the campaign trail, Yang — perhaps the highest-profile East Asian presidential candidate in U.S. history — frequently made comments that suggested he was “good at math” or hard-working because he was Asian, which critics said perpetuated model minority stereotypes.

Even after meeting with Asian American leaders, Yang defended his jokes about being Asian as his effort to reclaim those stereotypes.

After campaigning for more than two years, Yang finished a lackluster sixth place in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, earning about 1 percent of the state delegate equivalents there. Afterward, his campaign fired dozens of staff members, including some senior-level directors.

“Anyone with a crystal ball would have regarded Iowa as a bit of a sinkhole,” Yang said. “If we could do it over again, of course, we would not have sunk so much energy and time and resources in Iowa. We would have been fighting it out here in New Hampshire. And then we probably would have been on the air in Nevada or South Carolina.”

Before the most recent Democratic debate last week, Yang set an ambitious fundraising goal of $2 million and told his supporters that he would have to finish in the top four in the New Hampshire primary or it would be “extremely challenging” to continue competing.

“If we miss this fundraising goal and our target finish in New Hampshire, I don’t believe we can continue contending at the same level,” Yang wrote in a fundraising email. “It’s that simple.”

As it became clear that he would not break through in New Hampshire, Yang sometimes became wistful. He told CNN on Monday that the concept of a freedom dividend was “not going anywhere, and emphasized on Tuesday that he had forced a new idea into Democratic politics. He made that point with math.

“Now, 66 percent of Democrats support a universal basic income,” Yang said. “It’s got 72 percent of young people, aged 18 to 34.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

And another one: "Michael Bennet drops out of presidential race"

Spoiler

Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and former public school superintendent, is ending his campaign for the presidency, he said.

Bennet’s exit comes on the night of the New Hampshire primary, after he said he needed to finish in the top three or four to continue.

“I’ve got to do well here,” Bennet said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “I bet it all on New Hampshire.”

Bennet’s final push through New Hampshire included 50 town halls in the last 10 weeks leading up to the primary, a tour in which he touted himself, a moderate Democrat, as someone who could defeat President Trump.

Bennet, 55, entered the race last May, a decision he made after successfully undergoing surgery for prostate cancer. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008, he touted his track record of working with Republicans and winning elections in Colorado, a “purple state.”

Unlike some of his more liberal opponents, Bennet opposed Medicare-for-all, instead supporting keeping private insurance while allowing people to buy into a public option. He called for doing away with the electoral college but did not support adding justices to the Supreme Court.

In a crowded primary field, Bennet found it difficult to break through, though he outlasted several other candidates. At one point, he tried to use his steadiness as an advantage, suggesting he would be boring compared to Trump — and that that was a good thing.

“If you elect me president, I promise you won’t have to think about me for 2 weeks at a time,” Bennet tweeted last August, a message he later converted into a campaign ad. “... So you can go raise your kids and live your lives.”

Toward the end of his campaign, Bennet focused most of his time and resources on New Hampshire while his opponents were criss-crossing Iowa. For much of January, however, Bennet found himself stuck in Washington for Senate impeachment proceedings, unable to travel even to the Granite State to campaign.

He hung on through the Iowa caucuses, where he received zero percent of the state delegate equivalents and no national delegates.

Bennet was the second candidate to drop out Tuesday, after Andrew Yang earlier in the night announced the end of his presidential bid. Nine candidates remain in the hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination.

 

[JMarie]

I honestly don't care who becomes the Democrat candidate.  Anyone is better than Trump. Anyone will be an improvement.

[TuringMachine]

I don't think it matters who wins the nomination. It seems to me no matter who is on the ballot, anti trumpers are gonna vote for them, but Trump will still win. Everything sucks. 

[SassyPants]

Much like the voters in NH, my choice is fluid, depending on the day. I have exactly 3 weeks to make a decision. No matter, I will vote for whichever  candidate is on the ballot over Trump. Every single one of the candidates has a perceived flaw that might turnoff a voter, yet not a one of them is more vile, inexperienced or anti-democracy when compared to Trump. Of course last election I thought the same thing, and did not think that there was any plausible, legal way for Trump to be elected, so what do I know.

My first choice is Mayor Pete. I think Amy, Warren and Bernie better serve us by staying in the Senate!  If money was no object, Amy would likely have the best electability factor, I really like her as well.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

18 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

And another one: "Michael Bennet drops out of presidential race"

  Hide contents

Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator and former public school superintendent, is ending his campaign for the presidency, he said.

Bennet’s exit comes on the night of the New Hampshire primary, after he said he needed to finish in the top three or four to continue.

“I’ve got to do well here,” Bennet said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday. “I bet it all on New Hampshire.”

Bennet’s final push through New Hampshire included 50 town halls in the last 10 weeks leading up to the primary, a tour in which he touted himself, a moderate Democrat, as someone who could defeat President Trump.

Bennet, 55, entered the race last May, a decision he made after successfully undergoing surgery for prostate cancer. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008, he touted his track record of working with Republicans and winning elections in Colorado, a “purple state.”

Unlike some of his more liberal opponents, Bennet opposed Medicare-for-all, instead supporting keeping private insurance while allowing people to buy into a public option. He called for doing away with the electoral college but did not support adding justices to the Supreme Court.

In a crowded primary field, Bennet found it difficult to break through, though he outlasted several other candidates. At one point, he tried to use his steadiness as an advantage, suggesting he would be boring compared to Trump — and that that was a good thing.

“If you elect me president, I promise you won’t have to think about me for 2 weeks at a time,” Bennet tweeted last August, a message he later converted into a campaign ad. “... So you can go raise your kids and live your lives.”

Toward the end of his campaign, Bennet focused most of his time and resources on New Hampshire while his opponents were criss-crossing Iowa. For much of January, however, Bennet found himself stuck in Washington for Senate impeachment proceedings, unable to travel even to the Granite State to campaign.

He hung on through the Iowa caucuses, where he received zero percent of the state delegate equivalents and no national delegates.

Bennet was the second candidate to drop out Tuesday, after Andrew Yang earlier in the night announced the end of his presidential bid. Nine candidates remain in the hunt for the Democratic presidential nomination.

 

Wow - I had no idea he was still in it.

[Maggie Mae]

3 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Wow - I had no idea he was still in it.

I'm not entirely sure I ever knew he was in it at all. 

I've been ranking and reranking my candidates (and checking my voter registration daily, as per instructions by the AK Dems) in preparation for our first ranked-choice Primary.My first two choices are essentially tied, and I have two candidates that I won't vote for at all as of right now. 

[GreyhoundFan]

21 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Wow - I had no idea he was still in it.

I know, right? Apparently Gary Hart and James Carville were his biggest supporters.

Deval Patrick has also dropped out. Not that he gained any traction.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

25 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

I'm not entirely sure I ever knew he was in it at all. 

I've been ranking and reranking my candidates (and checking my voter registration daily, as per instructions by the AK Dems) in preparation for our first ranked-choice Primary.My first two choices are essentially tied, and I have two candidates that I won't vote for at all as of right now. 

I wish they were all ranked.  I have a co-worker who is a French citizen and he doesn't understand our process, especially the super delegates or electoral college and I don't blame him as they don't make sense to me, either.

I really like the ranked system.  

I am a dem by default as I hate the two party system, but I have a feeling they're going to fuck this up and I'm trying to prepare myself for 4 more years of Trump and for the re-election of those enablers in the Senate GOP.

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting perspective from George Will: "It’s looking like Democrats might have a chance to beat Trump after all"

Spoiler

After three failures as the Democratic presidential nominee (1896, 1900, 1908), Nebraska’s William Jennings Bryan, a populist teetotaler, told a story about a drunk who, after being hurled out of a club a third time, dusted himself off and said: “They can’t fool me. Those fellows don’t want me in there.” Joe Biden can sympathize.

He was already in his third Senate term when he sought the Democrats’ 1988 presidential nomination. His campaign expired before Iowa, in September 1987. In 2008, his campaign collapsed the night he received 0.9 percent of Iowa’s vote. He has never won anywhere outside Delaware, the nation’s 45th most populous state, which has not elected a Republican as congressman since 2008, as senator since 1994, or as governor since 1988.

In New Hampshire, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) finished fourth and closer to last than to third. This effectively ended one of the two candidacies that could have guaranteed President Trump’s reelection. The other, that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), probably reached its apogee Tuesday because the success of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who finished third but much closer to first than to fourth, demonstrated Democrats’ realism about how to defeat Trump at a time when 70 percent of voters self-identify as moderate or conservative.

Today’s nomination process has myriad defects but one manifest virtue: It provides ample time and small early venues for aspirants who, such as Klobuchar, start with more pluck than money, and less notoriety than seriousness. Sanders’s coming defeat might send some of his most dyspeptic supporters — those most like him — into hibernation or opposition. Pouting would be in character for true believers who are self-righteous and ideologically inebriated. But it would not necessarily be fatal to the Democratic Party, which has survived defections before. In 1948, South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond led the Dixiecrats’ rebellion on the right and Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt’s second vice president, led the Progressives’ departure from the left, yet FDR’s third vice president, then-President Harry S. Truman, won anyway.

Mike Bloomberg’s 30-second ads do not resemble the Federalist Papers but neither do they lower the intellectual tone set by the Democrats’ “debates” — and they have propelled him into contention. There is, however, some point at which such blast marketing has steeply diminishing effectiveness. Over the last five months of the 2016 campaign, in two hotly contested metropolitan areas in swing states, Las Vegas saw 20,471 presidential campaign ads and Columbus, Ohio, saw 15,658. Such media blitzkriegs become like wallpaper — there but not noticed.

Whether Bloomberg’s campaign succeeds or fails, the republic will benefit. If nominated, he might go on to fumigate the Oval Office, and the political scolds who lament “too much money in politics” will be ecstatic about what his spending accomplished. If, however, his “overwhelming” spending does not overwhelm, this will refute the scolds’ unempirical assertions about the irresistible power of money-bought advertising. In 1957, Ford Motor Co. put its enormous marketing power behind a new product, but the Edsel’s unhappy life lasted just 26 months.

In politics, too, the product itself matters more than the marketing of it. Bloomberg’s incurable anti-charisma makes him the equivalent of a no-nonsense sedan, an agreeable contrast with the gaudy chrome-and-tailfins of Trump, a human land yacht. Bloomberg’s demeanor is that of someone who knows how to smile but resists the inclination. There are, however, credible reports of a dry — arid, actually — Bloomberg witticism. Asked about a possible fall campaign between two billionaires, he replied: Who would be the second one?

Bloomberg has a knack for getting under Trump’s microscopically thin skin. His needling of Trump would augment the public stock of harmless pleasure, and could leave Trump wallowing waist-deep in his insecurities, a sight that members of his cult need to see and everyone else would enjoy seeing.

Among Democratic activists, a nascent ABB faction — Anybody But Bloomberg — is decrying New York’s “stop and frisk” anti-handgun police measures during his mayoralty, measures often applied to young minority males. This policy probably was more lamented by white liberals living in buildings with doormen than by minorities living in danger. Nevertheless, a party whose most fervid members consider “billionaire” an unanswerable epithet might flinch from nominating one of those who was last elected to office as a Republican.

So, a Bloomberg-Klobuchar ticket is less feasible, and probably would be less potent than, say, a Klobuchar-Deval Patrick (the African American former two-term governor of Massachusetts) ticket. So, after Tuesday, it is somewhat less likely that the Trump-Mike Pence ticket will repeat its Midwest victories or add Minnesota to them.

 

[anaandrade]

My ideal ticket would be Buttigieg/Klobuchar. I feel like they, representing an area of the country that is very moderate and has the big swing states, have an idea of what it takes to get those moderate voters and independents, and even disillusioned Republicans. It all depends on if they can get the votes from minorities in more diverse states. I am very liberal but I am also a realist. 

Any thoughts on the New Hampshire results? My main takeaway from the primaries in both states so far is that Biden and Warren are flopping. They might do better in the upcoming states, but not even getting double digits in NH is not a narrative you want going forward. These first states don't account for many delegates, but the results do make people who haven't voted yet look at the candidates that are doing well, which might help Pete Buttigieg the most going forward.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

11 minutes ago, anaandrade said:

My ideal ticket would be Buttigieg/Klobuchar. I feel like they, representing an area of the country that is very moderate and has the big swing states, have an idea of what it takes to get those moderate voters and independents, and even disillusioned Republicans. It all depends on if they can get the votes from minorities in more diverse states. I am very liberal but I am also a realist. 

Any thoughts on the New Hampshire results? My main takeaway from the primaries in both states so far is that Biden and Warren are flopping. They might do better in the upcoming states, but not even getting double digits in NH is not a narrative you want going forward. These first states don't account for many delegates, but the results do make people who haven't voted yet look at the candidates that are doing well, which might help Pete Buttigieg the most going forward.

I'm curious as to how well Buttigieg and Klobuchar will do in Illinois next month.  She's growing on me and she's got that quintessential Midwestern practicality that might play well here.   

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting perspective: "Is Pete Buttigieg Jimmy Carter 2.0?"

Spoiler

With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary now behind us, people who lived through the past may be experiencing a little deja vu. Forty-four years ago, at exactly the same point in the 1976 presidential election campaign, the nation seethed in the wake of presidential scandal. Republican incumbent Gerald Ford had not instigated the infamous Watergate fiasco, but he had pardoned the culprit, his predecessor Richard Nixon. It was a quid pro quo, many Democrats clamored, suggesting that Nixon had selected Ford for the vice presidency in the midst of the scandal only in exchange for his potential pardon.

Democrats, who had won big in the midterm congressional elections two years before, saw opportunity but were perilously divided. Their ideological and younger left wing battled the party’s more traditional moderates, while new faces focused on winning suburbanites entered the fray with a message of more efficient government and empowerment.

Much of the electorate was simply disgusted with it all, longing for a fresh face, someone new to Washington, someone to save the broken system. This yearning would catapult little-known former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, his relative inexperience almost a plus, to the White House. And the lessons from Carter’s campaign and presidency shed light on the quest of an almost eerily similar candidate today: former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Like Carter, the former long-shot mayor has emerged as one of the front-runners by winning Iowa and performing well on Tuesday in New Hampshire, finishing a close second. Like the former president, Buttigieg grew up in a middle-class household — Carter’s father was a prominent landowner and Buttigieg’s father a professor. Both served in the Navy, Carter having attended the U.S. Naval Academy and Buttigieg having served with the Naval Reserve in Afghanistan. When they declared their presidential ambitions, both were derided as too inexperienced and thus garnered little media attention.

In response, both demonstrated remarkable self-assurance and confidence, proposing an ambitious agenda early. Both welcomed the civil rights debates that their respective candidacies engendered. Carter had promoted desegregation in his governorship and even in his Southern Baptist Church, while Buttigieg championed gay and lesbian rights, even touting his marriage to a man. In response to ensuing questions and attacks, both cited their faith. In fact, both men made their religions central to their candidacies, Carter famously declaring himself a “born-again Christian” while Buttigieg proclaimed that his faith demanded LBGQT equality.

As they launched their presidential campaigns, both men confronted an energized Democratic electorate, anxious to repudiate the scandal-tarred Republicans. Both faced large Democratic fields initially crowded with accomplished candidates — 17 in 1976 and in 28 in 2020. Neither field, however, had a clear front-runner.

In 1976, Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh made the case that he was the “most electable” candidate, while Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris prescribed a strong economic populism. Liberals such as Arizona Rep. Morris Udall battled serious well-funded, more conservative alternatives, such as Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. And the campaign featured wild cards like California Gov. Jerry Brown and former Alabama governor George Wallace.

Today, all of those respective typologies and arguments are again present: former vice president Joe Biden has campaigned on electability, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders channel Harris’s populism, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar offer a moderate platform, while business executives Andrew Yang — who suspended his campaign after Tuesday’s primary — and Tom Steyer offer an eclectic approach similar to the wild-card candidacy of Brown.

Both Carter and Buttigieg found themselves between their party’s ideological factions, trying to appeal to both sides. Both touted themselves as moderate outsiders who could not only unite their party but clean up the mess in Washington. Each faced a challenge for this mantle, Carter battling the likes of Washington Sen. Henry Jackson and Buttigieg opposing candidates such as Klobuchar.

In 1976, few candidates fully grasped that early victories were so key to gaining media attention and momentum, the party only recently having replaced its old backroom, elder-dominated system with a more Democratic model. Idaho Sen. Frank Church, considered an early front-runner in 1976, did not campaign hard in Iowa, placing his faith in a firewall of later primaries. Today, it is Bloomberg who is eschewing the early states.

Carter, however, recognized that without much traditional clout or name recognition, his fate lay with surprise performances early, and he thus placed his money and energy in Iowa — the same strategy Buttigieg is wielding to great effect today.

After Iowa, with the order of the primaries different in 1976 than today, Carter proved adept at harnessing shifting political alliances as circumstances changed, working to win in New Hampshire to prove that he could win in the North and then focusing on delegate-heavy states such as Massachusetts and Florida. Using the troublesome segregationist and fellow Southerner Wallace as a foil, Carter cast himself as the best, pragmatic alternative to win nationally.

Heading toward Super Tuesday, where he must overcome weakness with African American voters, Buttigieg might find Carter’s strategy instructive. Needing to prove his national appeal to a more skeptical audience, he might paint Sanders and Warren as too radical, casting his strength in the early primaries as evidence of his national appeal to Americans across ideological lines. With at least some success on Super Tuesday, he could then focus on the candidates who remain standing in the most critical remaining states.

Of course, one can take such analogies too far. In 1976 the economy was suffering while today it booms, albeit unequally. Carter was much older than Buttigieg, and serving as a governor certainly prepares one better for the presidency than simply working as the mayor of a midsize city.

Still, at this early point in the 2020 election, one cannot help but wonder if the past is not prologue, if history will echo and launch a relatively inexperienced moderate outsider into the Oval Office. If it does, Buttigieg might again consider the fate of his predecessor.

Carter’s presidency proved to be rocky; he became one of only four elected 20th century presidents (along with William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover and George H.W. Bush) to be defeated in their reelection bids. Many in Congress perceived Carter as a bit preachy, looking down too much on the traditional folkways of Washington, unwilling to play the game. He needlessly antagonized power players on Capitol Hill by vetoing their pet projects. He staffed his White House with his Georgia advisers, who lacked the connections and knowledge so critical to success. These missteps made passing his agenda difficult and hindered Carter’s ability to address the problems plaguing the United States.

Carter’s ideological branding during the campaign created further trouble: both liberals and conservatives in the Democratic Party expected great things, only to be disappointed. Carter, most notably, angered religious conservatives who had seen much promise in his candidacy, as he was one of their own. But on issues such as abortion, sex education and gay and lesbian rights, as Carter sought middle ground, he provoked a growing backlash, in many ways launching today’s modern Religious Right.

Carter had his successes, but calm, rational compromise did not always sit well when people wanted dramatic change — and left him alienating just about everyone. It cost him dearly, prompting a damaging primary challenge from Sen. Ted Kennedy, and contributing to his 1980 defeat to Republican Ronald Reagan.

Buttigieg should learn from all of this. Trying to please all constituencies often pleases no one. Experience matters, and he should take the advice of more seasoned hands, appointing officials with longer Washington resumes should he win office. A man still in his relative youth should at least pretend to honor the septuagenarians down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Many Democratic constituencies today are angry in the wake of almost constant Trumpian outrages, ready to battle the Republican’s social conservative base. The country is arguably divided more than it was in 1976. If in the coming months Buttigieg replicates the surprising electoral success of Carter — a candidate with whom he apparently shares so much — he had had better heed the lessons from Carter’s presidency, or he, too, will risk political disaster.

 

[milkteeth]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Among Democratic activists, a nascent ABB faction — Anybody But Bloomberg — is decrying New York’s “stop and frisk” anti-handgun police measures during his mayoralty, measures often applied to young minority males. This policy probably was more lamented by white liberals living in buildings with doormen than by minorities living in danger. 

I'm sorry....is this writer seriously suggesting that being against "stop and frisk" is some sort of boutique issue that only starry eyed liberal dreamers care about? That Black and Latino communities living in New York City supported 'stop and frisk'? That white people in NYC were the only ones who were really bothered by it? This is 100% false and a COMPLETELY absurd statement. White people in NYC had the highest support for 'stop and frisk', the people who were most effected by it had the lowest.

Maybe, instead of listening to an old white Republican about what does and does not concern communities of color when it comes to presidential candidates....we should listen to an actual person of color?

From Charles M. Blow "The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg"

Spoiler

 

Let’s state some facts: Michael Ruben Bloomberg notoriously expanded stop-and-frisk in New York City to obscene proportions, violating the bodies and constitutional rights of mostly minority men and boys, and not only defended the policy, but mocked his detractors and bragged about it.

What Bloomberg did as mayor amounted to a police occupation of minority neighborhoods, a terroristic pressure campaign, with little evidence that it was accomplishing the goal of sustained, long-term crime reduction.

Nearly 90 percent of the people stopped were completely innocent. He knew that. They were the collateral damage in his crusade, black and brown bodies up against walls and down on the ground, groped in the middle of the city by strange men with guns, a vast expanse of human psychological wreckage about which he couldn’t care less.

A recording from a speech Bloomberg delivered at the Aspen Institute in 2015 underscores just how callous and cavalier he was in his thinking about this racist policy.

“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg said. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city.”

He goes on to say: “One of the unintended consequences is, people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana, they’re all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.”

Later he says, “The way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them against the wall and frisk them.”

So many things to dissect here.

First, Bloomberg didn’t see individual criminals, many of whom happened to be minorities; he saw a class of criminals who were minorities. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.” Many of these were children.

He was articulating an explicitly race-based policy.

He spoke nonchalantly about giving these young people criminal records for marijuana, ignoring the enormous harm these criminal records cause to individuals and whole communities. And a vast majority of those people and communities were minorities.

As Daniel Nichanian, editor of The Appeal, wrote this week on Twitter: “Each year of Bloomberg’s 12-year mayorship, at least 50 percent of the people arrested for marijuana were black. And at least 85 percent were nonwhite each year, usually much higher. That’s tens of thousands of people each year.”

And Bloomberg defended the practice by saying that the only way to get the guns out of the kids’ hands was to throw the kids against a wall. But nearly 90 percent of these young people were completely innocent. They had done absolutely nothing wrong, let alone possess a gun.

The Columbia Law School professor Jeffrey Fagan produced a report that became part of a class-action lawsuit against the city in 2010. It found that “seizures of weapons or contraband are extremely rare. Overall, guns are seized in less than 1 percent of all stops: 0.15 percent. … Contraband, which may include weapons but also includes drugs or stolen property, is seized in 1.75 percent of all stops.”

As Fagan wrote, “The N.Y.P.D. stop-and-frisk tactics produce rates of seizures of guns or other contraband that are no greater than would be produced simply by chance.”

Bloomberg didn’t care about any of this. He didn’t care about these innocent black and brown bodies. Somewhere in each barrel of good apples there was a bad one, and he was willing to spoil the whole batch to purge that rare bad one.

These minority boys were being hunted. Their neighborhoods were experiencing an occupation. Citizens wanted crime abatement, but they didn’t expect apartheid.

And yet in the same way that white people in New York City had turned away when Bloomberg was executing his racist policy, many Democrats — including some black ones — appear willing now to turn a blind eye to his past.

Bloomberg is blanketing the airwaves with slick ads and glamouring liberals into amnesia and acquiescence. These liberals are then openly gaming out scenarios in which Bloomberg is the last, best option.

They don’t recognize that Bloomberg is the master of this sort of emotional manipulation. During his 2001 campaign for mayor, he ran ads that The New York Times noted focused on old crime fears.

“The scenes, set to dramatic synthesizer music punctuated by sharp blasts of percussion, come from what could well be called ‘N.Y.P.D. Bloomberg,’” The Times reported. “They seem calibrated to throw fear into the hearts of the citizenry at the thought of crime mushrooming again in a post-Giuliani New York City.”

During a campaign debate that year, Bloomberg, a Republican at the time, was asked how prevalent he believed racial profiling was in the New York Police Department. His answer is fascinating to examine in retrospect. He said: “In terms of the actuality, it is probably a very small number of police officers. Most police officers in this city work very hard. They are not racist thugs.”

But then he turned them into just that, making them part of a citywide system of racial profiling. Even the police objected. When Bloomberg was finally forced last fall to apologize for stop-and-frisk so he could run for president, Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s Police Benevolent Association, issued a blistering statement:

“Mayor Bloomberg could have saved himself this apology if he had just listened to the police officers on the street. We said in the early 2000s that the quota-driven emphasis on street stops was polluting the relationship between cops and our communities. His administration’s misguided policy inspired an anti-police movement that has made cops the target of hatred and violence, and stripped away many of the tools we had used to keep New Yorkers safe.”

In 2012, after million of stops, Bloomberg stood up in a church in Brownsville, Brooklyn, among the neighborhoods hardest hit by the policy, and declared that racial profiling was banned in the Police Department. “We will not tolerate it,” he said.

That was a Donald Trump-level lie.

The next year a federal judge ruled that the way the city used stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional because it amounted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling.”

No amount of Democrats’ anti-Trump fear and panic will ever erase what Bloomberg did. Democrats have a field of fascinating candidates. Many have some crime and justice issues of their own, but nothing approaching the scale of Bloomberg’s racist policy.

If Democrats cast aside all of these candidates in favor of Bloomberg and his wealth, I fear they will be making it harder to defeat Trump in November.

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by milkteeth