Bernie Sanders' - and Democrats' - Conundrum

Bernie Sanders has promised a political revolution and claimed that he will bring out massive numbers of new and younger voters.  Yesterday, the majority of Democrats said while they want change, especially in terms of health care - and to see Trump defeated - they do not want Sanders' revolution.  Likewise, while voter turn out was seemingly up, Sanders did not have the major turn out of new/young voters that his campaign has promised.  To be honest, I have qualms about both Sanders and Joe Biden and wish there was a strong moderate/progressive to be the Democrat standard bearer.  At this point, that person doesn't exist and alas as is too often the case in politics, one has to choose the better of two lack luster candidates.  Not voting is not an option as the 2016 stay-at-home vote showed by in effect electing Donald Trump. I do not see Biden engendering high levels of enthusiasm - he can only hope hatred of Trump (which is very real) will be enough to supercharge turnout in November.  If things continue as seemingly now headed, Sanders voters will have to decide whether they want to stay home and reelect Trump - whose agenda is the antithesis of what they claim to support - or hold their nose and vote for Biden if that is what the choice comes down to.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the situation.  A second in the New York Times looks at the failure of the new/youth vote to materialize at the level Sanders needed.  First, excerpts from the Post: 

On Super Tuesday, voters across 14 states collectively delivered an emphatic message on the single biggest day of the primary season. They don’t want a revolution. They just want to oust Donald Trump.

In all 12 states where exit polls were conducted, early results showed that majorities said finding a candidate who can beat Trump is more important than having one who agrees with them on major issues. And overwhelmingly they said that man is Biden — by 2 to 1 in some cases.

This hunger to beat Trump led to a remarkable night for Biden and for what Sanders derides as the Democratic “establishment” — and an unexpected reality check for the Sanders revolution.

Democrats on Tuesday rescued themselves from a repeat of what happened to Republicans in 2016, when a populist outsider vanquished a cluttered field and no “establishment” candidate had a clean shot at Trump.

But now they have a different predicament. Democrats find themselves in a bit of a rerun of the Sanders-Clinton race of 2016. Whatever happens in the rest of the primary season, Sanders will have substantial support — and a large number of delegates. If he loses to Biden and doesn’t embrace the Democratic ticket, his supporters might stay home in November, handing victory to Trump.

But while Sanders retains enough power to bring down the party, it’s a lot less clear after Tuesday that he has enough power to lead it. Far from bringing new blood into the Democratic primaries, it appeared that in some places turnout was particularly high in places where he did poorly. As usual, Sanders did well among the very liberal, Biden among moderates. The young voted by a lopsided margin for Sanders, while older voters turned out for Biden.

Those divisions won’t disappear anytime soon, which is all the more reason for Democrats to focus on the one thing they all agree on: beating Trump. The voters just made clear they believe Biden is the one to do that.

As for the younger vote surge that seemingly did not happen, here are highlights from a column in the Times:

[T]he demographics of people who actually vote are almost always different from the demographics of people who can vote. That’s where their analysis raises concerns about Sanders’s chances. According to Broockman and Kalla’s figures, Sanders loses a significant number of swing votes to Trump, but he makes up for them in support from young people who say they won’t vote, or will vote third party, unless Sanders is the nominee. On the surface, these Bernie-or-bust voters might seem like an argument for Sanders. After all, Sanders partisans sometimes insist that Democrats have no choice but to nominate their candidate because they’ll stay home otherwise, a sneering imitation of traditional centrist demands for progressive compromise. But if Broockman and Kalla are right, by nominating Sanders, Democrats would be trading some of the electorate’s most reliable voters for some of its least. To prevail, Democrats would need unheard-of rates of youth turnout. That doesn’t necessarily mean Sanders would be a worse candidate than Joe Biden, given all of Biden’s baggage. It does mean polls might be underestimating how hard it will be for Sanders to beat Trump. About 37 percent of Democrats and independents under 35 voted in 2016. According to Broockman and Kalla’s figures, Sanders would need to get that figure up to 48 percent. By comparison, Broockman told me, in 2008, Barack Obama raised black turnout by about five percentage points. Broockman said that if either Warren or Sanders is on the ballot, more Republicans will likely be motivated to go to the polls in response. “When parties nominate candidates further from the center, it actually inspires the other party to turn out,” he told me.

[T]he 2018 elections saw the highest midterm turnout in over a century, yet most of Democrats’ improved performance “came not from fresh turnout of left-of-center voters, who typically skip midterms, but rather from people who cast votes” in the last two national elections and “switched from Republican in 2016 to Democratic in 2018.”

The primaries have yet to demonstrate that Sanders can generate the hugely expanded turnout his campaign is promising.

Dave Wasserman, an editor at The Cook Political Report, tweeted that most of the Democrats’ turnout bump was attributable to moderate Republicans “crossing over from ’16 G.O.P. primary — not heightened progressive/Sanders base enthusiasm.” South Carolina saw record turnout, but it benefited Biden, not Sanders. College-educated white women, for example, helped flip the House in 2018. They favor Biden over Trump by double digits, but Sanders by only two points. Sanders, however, seems to see little need to reach out to them. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times editorial board in December, Sanders said he didn’t believe the way to win against Trump “is to just speak to Republican women in the suburbs.” Instead, he said, “The key to this election is, can we get millions of young people who have never voted before into the political process, many working people who understand that Trump is a fraud, can we get them voting?” Even if the answer is yes, it probably won’t be enough. If he’s going to be the nominee, the rest of us can only hope his campaign has a Plan B.

Younger voters have the most to gain or lose based on who is elected - Trump is a nightmare for improvement on the issues they care about most - yet the reality is that for reasons I do not comprehend, they continue to fail to vote in the strength needed if they want to further the policies they claim to support. So far, Sanders seems to not have found the magic needed to change their habit of voting in tepid numbers. 

Biden Easily wins Virginia Democratic Primary

The exiting of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar from the 2020 Democrat primary contest and their pledge of support to Joe Biden in an effort to blunt Bernie Sanders' campaign prospects seems to have worked in Virginia.  While Virginia is moving to solid blue state status, it remains a moderate Democrat state where socialism even when coupled with the term democratic does not hold strong appeal as evidenced by Biden's 20 point lead over Sanders with almost all precincts reporting. Sanders supporters claim that Sanders represents "the majority" yet his winning of only 23% of the vote argues otherwise. Only in Sanders world does 23% trump - no pun intended - the other 67% of the voters.  Sanders' inability to win even half of the Democrat vote in Virginia (even in Northern Virginia) does not bode well for his ability to win in the key Mid-West states that will likely determine who wins the Electoral College in November.  It is a reality that Sanders - who like Trump only sees what he wants to see - and his base refuse to face.  Disturbingly, Sanders will no doubt claim his drubbing in Virginia was due to a conspiracy - imagined in Sanders' mind - of billionaires, the Democrat "establishment" and CEO's.  Anybody but the 67% of voters who voted for someone else. A piece in the Washington Post looks at Biden's win in Virginia.  Here are highlights (note how some Trump supporters voted for Sanders):

RICHMOND — Former vice president Joe Biden easily won Virginia's Democratic primary Tuesday, according to unofficial early returns, with exit polling suggesting that voters mostly chose the candidate they thought had the best chance of defeating President Trump.

With most of the vote counted, Biden was far ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Biden stands to gain many of the 99 delegates up for grabs in the increasingly blue state, according to unofficial returns.

In interviews with voters around Virginia, Biden emerged as a consensus pick only late in the game. Many said they settled on him after their preferred candidates dropped out. Others didn't decide until they stood in the voting booth.

But most shared one goal: "I want to get Trump out of office by all means necessary," said Josephine Stewart, 66, a cook for Richmond public schools who opted for Biden.

Virginia is still deciding its shade of blue. On Tuesday, that uncertainty followed voters to the polls, which closed at 7 p.m. with official returns expected soon after.
 In early exit polling by Edison Media Research, over half of Virginia Democratic primary voters said they would rather see the party nominate a candidate who can beat Trump, compared with about 4 in 10 who said they’d prefer a candidate who agrees with them on major issues.

About half gave Biden the best chance of winning in November, while roughly 2 in 10 said Sanders is best-positioned to beat Trump.

Across the state, polling places reported turnout slightly higher than usual. Absentee voting was up; Virginians cast nearly 54,700 votes in advance of Tuesday’s primary, up from just over 26,000 in 2016, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. At Yorkshire Elementary School in Manassas, Tim York cheerfully announced that he, too, chose Sanders in the open primary — in hopes of helping Trump get reelected in November.

“He’s the weakest candidate,” York, 39, said of Sanders, predicting that the senator’s calls for Medicare-for-all and free college tuition would turn off moderate voters. “I think the president has a good chance, regardless, but especially against Bernie.”

Concern that Sanders is vulnerable to Trump drove many voters to settle on Biden as the safer bet. In Henrico, Kate Giska, a 39-year-old small business owner and political independent, came to vote with her 7-year-old son. “My son’s name is Bernie, but we don’t think that Bernie is our candidate,” she said, describing Sanders as “just too extreme, just like Trump is a little too extreme. We’re kind of, like, in the middle, just, like, status quo, just get along.”

She voted for Biden, someone she thinks has appeal for “the middle voter, a candidate that can attract the masses.”

Virginia’s establishment Democrats have come out hard for Biden in the past few days. Former governor Terry McAuliffe led the charge, pumping up crowds and rallying other leaders, including Sen. Tim Kaine, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and Del. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico), head of the legislature’s Black Caucus. The question playing out Tuesday was whether that grass-roots enthusiasm is broad enough for Sanders to win.

Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University, said he saw a similar phenomenon in Virginia in 2017: In the gubernatorial primary, former congressman Tom Perriello made a hard push for the Democratic nomination over then-Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. Perriello ran to the left, tapping into a Sanders-like populism that brought him fervent support at rallies throughout the state.

But Northam wound up beating Perriello by a wide margin, with voters seeming to reward the more middle-of-the road, establishment candidate. Northam then easily defeated Republican opponent Ed Gillespie.

“Bernie may have a ceiling in Virginia,” Kidd said, because establishment Democrats still outnumber the young liberals.

My fear is that Sanders has a low ceiling in every moderate state, including the crucial Mid-West states.

Why Trump Has a Huge Advantage With Low-Information Voters

Numerous news stories have reported on how Donald Trump's speeches at rallies and elsewhere are delivered on a 4th grade level of speech and vocabulary. For Trump, this is probably a good thing given the nature of his core base of support: non-college educated whites and evangelicals, the least educated of any Christian denominations in America. Add to this reality the fact that many of Trump's low information voters are easily engaged by racism and/or right wing Christian extremism and otherwise either pay little attention to the news media or rely on the propaganda of Fox News as their sole source of information, distorted as it may be. In short, Trump's tactics - and even his lies - work with his base. Democrats on the other hand have a different problem given the much more diverse nature of that party's base.  On the one hand you have highly educated individuals who follow politics daily (I confess to being a member of this group) and on the other, there are vast numbers of less educated/engaged Democrats, some of whom pay little attention to politics which they view as "confusing" or as not delivering to them.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at this issue and the challenge Democrat candidates have in motivating and energizing the party' low information.  I definitely feel for candidates that need to find a means to connect with this segment of the party base.Here are story excepts: 

A little over a week ago, after the Trump administration killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, the opinion-havers of Twitter were doing what they do best: arguing about something most people don’t care about. The debate at hand involved Elizabeth Warren’s shifting public statements on Soleimani’s killing.. . . . After a whole day of Warren mockery on Twitter, Dave Weigel, a reporter from the Washington Post, threw a brushback pitch at two colleagues from the National Journal and ABC News. “Guys, get out of the beltway for a weekend. Most people had to google Soleimani on Friday,” he wrote.

Weigel, who has spent more time in airports over the last decade than most political journalists, was echoing a critique long held by Avis Preferred press corps against their desk jockey friends in Washington and New York: that the stories and micro-scandals that obsess political and media insiders—often played out in episodic fashion on Twitter—matter little to voters who are too busy and too well-adjusted to follow every nanosecond of the political news cycle. It’s hard to overstate how salient this discontinuity will be in the current election year.

Donald Trump, despite his deep personal insecurities and lust for elite validation—and, indeed, his own use of Twitter—has derived much of his political success by ignoring Washington finger-waggers and connecting with the more primal instincts of his supporters, in whatever televised or digital corner of the media he can, with or without the good graces of the national press and savvy insiders. . . . . . one of the biggest splits in American politics is simply between those who follow politics closely and those who do not.

It’s a split that maps, if not perfectly, onto the gap that emerged between college and non-college educated voters in 2016. The latter set are often low-information voters who view politicians and media with contempt, deciding to sit elections out. Trump has exploited them to powerful effect. [Trump]The president has made politics about culture—not just policy.

None of the above can be said for Democrats, who care habitually about the good graces of the national press, and who don’t see politics as a subspecies of the entertainment business. Democrats happen to believe in facts and institutions—and yes, they would like a cable contract when the campaign is over, thank you very much. But to Trump’s great advantage, the mainstream press is where many of the fights for the Democratic nomination are being waged: on cable news, on Twitter, and in the prestige media.

“In many ways, 2020 is the Cable News Primary. MSNBC and CNN are the biggest pipelines into voters’ living rooms.” The problem for Democrats is that those media spaces are, today more than ever, islands unto themselves. Cable may be a good way to reach highly engaged Democratic primary voters, but the reality is that television news is watched by only a tiny fraction of Americans. During the first five days of the much-hyped impeachment hearings, only about 4% of the American population tuned in to watch some part of the testimony on TV. Twitter, the other opinion-shaper preferred by Democrats, is younger, more educated, and more liberal than the country as a whole, and only 10% of its users create 80% of its content, according to Pew Research.

Topics like wine caves, pay-fors, court packing, white privilege, and Iowa’s role in the nomination process have become topics of profound consequence in the race. The political media blob tumbles forward every day on the assumption that people are aware of these story lines and characters, that voters are tuning in, when many probably can’t tell you what channel this thing is on. The assumption should be that they are not.

Even in Iowa, where caucusgoers have a front-row seat to the race and defeating Trump is top of mind for Democrats, the minutiae of Washington rarely pops up at campaign events. “It’s health care, prescription drug costs, teacher pay, climate change,” said Caroline Cummings, a political reporter for KGAN in Cedar Rapids. . . . Americans might be obsessed with Trump, but they really aren’t obsessed with politics.

Not since Barack Obama have Democrats had a figure compelling enough to overwhelm the informational divides in our culture, to appear on all screens at all times and capture the attention of people who don’t usually follow politics: black people, Hispanics, young people, low-income voters, and people who just think politics sucks. Democrats need them. But at this stage of the race—still early, yes—Democrats aren’t even close to grabbing the hearts and minds or even the eyeballs of the drop-off voters who stayed home on Election Day in 2016. In fact, it’s worse: Many of those voters can’t even tell you who is actually running for president. This doesn’t mean voters are dumb. It means they’re normal—and that Democrats have serious work to do to reach them.

In each of the three low-information groups, Favreau asked voters to say the first word that came to mind when he said “Democratic Party.” Almost everyone repeated a handful of the same names—Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, and __Bill Clinton __—along with known Republican Condoleezza Rice for some reason . . . . Most of the voters said they were generally aligned with the Democratic Party on issues—especially the idea of reducing health care costs and expanding access—but that they also associated the Democratic Party with infighting, taxes, socialism, ineptitude, and “too many candidates.” Only Obama’s name elicited warm reactions among everyone.

But even as they universally expressed displeasure with Trump, including the people who voted for him in Milwaukee but flipped in 2018, almost every participant told Favreau they wouldn’t yet commit to voting for the Democratic nominee in 2020. Some said it depends on who the nominee is. Others were open to voting for a third-party candidate instead of the Democrat. “None of them really like Trump, but they don’t have much love for Democratic politicians, Republican politicians, and especially the media, which they don’t trust at all,” Favreau said.

A theme that surfaced again and again, not just about Democrats but about politics generally, was that the whole process is confusing, tedious, and off-putting—and that news organizations and social media do little to make sense of it. “I don’t understand it. I haven’t even watched the news. I just turn it off and go do something else,” said Angela from Philadelphia, a Medicaid-dependent mother of an autistic child who said she was raised Democrat but no longer follows elections closely, despite voting in 2018.

In Philadelphia the voters associated Biden with “crime bill,” “too old,” and “not fired up.” . . . . Sanders, too, was described as “too old” in all three cities, though many of the responses were, if not on message, at least message-adjacent. The Miami group associated Sanders with “crazy hair,” “grinny,” “free college,” and “wants to give away too many things for free.” The Philadelphia group said “your crazy uncle,” “health care,” “questionable health,” and “passionate hand talker.”

Focus groups are not polls, but they do add important texture to the horse race and pressure-test assumptions embedded in the national conversation. The Wilderness focus groups offer a glimpse into the behavior and opinions of those voters you don’t often read about, the self-identified Democrats who “don’t know enough” or have “no opinion” about the candidates. If you scrolled through excited corners of progressive Twitter last week, for instance, you’d think that Julián Castro’s endorsement of Warren was a major moment, giving her a stamp of approval from a former Obama administration official and the lone Hispanic figure in the 2020 race. But an Economist–YouGov poll from December showed that fully 35% of Democrats, and 39% of Hispanics, didn’t even know who Castro was. Another national Quinnipiac poll from December showed that 36% of Democrats didn’t know enough about Buttigieg to have an opinion, and a whopping 49% of Democrats didn’t know enough about Klobuchar. These are names on the tip of every political reporter’s tongue, the marquee actors in America’s national pageant, yet vast swaths of Democrats haven’t given them a passing thought.

[T]he views of these lesser-engaged Democrats are complex and don’t fall neatly into the ideological buckets often discussed in the media. They mostly liked the idea of Medicare for All, but also doubted how the government could possibly pay for it. They brought up a wide variety of issues as their top concerns—poverty, opioids, prison reform, Medicaid, college affordability, guns, LGBTQ rights, drug prices, taxes—but few could say what the federal government had done to help. “No one could remember the last thing the government had actually done to improve their lives, except one woman in Miami who brought up the Affordable Care Act,” Favreau said.

[F]or many of the people in Favreau’s focus groups, politics isn’t real life, either. The eventual Democratic nominee, he said, is duty-bound to fix that. He pointed to an interview with former Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, also airing on this season of The Wilderness: “What I think we all have to hold to, is that our ambitions have to be met with our capacity to deliver,” Abrams told him. “Because for the people who are the most easily dissuaded from participation, it’s when you promise them the moon and can‘t deliver a single grain of sand.”

Why Biden's Iraq War Vote Still Matter

The architects of both the Vietnam War and the Iraq War - the two greatest disasters in American foreign policy - and members of Congress who supported the fiascoes at the time that it mattered, largely avoided any consequences and accountability for their bad judgment, if not outright deliberate lies in the case of the Bush/Cheney regime and its acolytes. The same can not be said Americans - and Vietnamese and Iraqis - who lost their lives or suffered horrific physical and mental wounds or American taxpayers who had their tax dollars squandered and misspent while America's infrastructure crumbled.   Fast forward to the 2020 presidential race and I know two thing: (i) the Trump/Pence regime is continuing the same sort of lies that lead to the Vietnam and Iraq disasters, and (ii) I will vote for any Democrat running against Donald Trump.  In choosing a Democrat to oppose Trump, a piece in New York Magazine makes the case that Joe Biden's horrifically wrong support for the Iraq War should have consequences in the 2020 Democrat primary process.  Here are article highlights:

By 2011, U.S. forces had occupied Iraq for eight years. But if the press remembered, it didn’t show. The war accounted for a mere 1 percent of all news coverage throughout all of 2010, the Pew Research Center reported. Nearly a decade later, little has changed. The U.S. is still in Iraq, a fact that remains almost entirely absent from the news. When the press does cover the aftermath of the invasion, its attention is fickle, moved only by events like the rise of ISIS or Donald Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. The architects of the war continue their careers undisrupted by consequence, ensconced in public office and think tanks and the odd university post. But the impunity that shields them doesn’t look quite as impenetrable as it once did. Iraq may be out of the news, but it’s haunting Joe Biden in ways the former vice-president did not appear to anticipate.

Last week, Biden told an Iowa voter he didn’t support the invasion of Iraq at the time of its launch. He opposed it, he said, “from the very moment” George W. Bush announced it, and he told the president as much “right after” it began, CNN reported. But that’s not true, as CNN itself had previously documented. Biden not only voted for the war, in public he supported it with relative enthusiasm, telling an audience at the Brookings Institution in 2003 that “it was the right vote then and would be a correct vote today.”

Biden has since admitted it was a “mistake” to trust the Bush administration to wage war. But as a candidate for president in 2020, he occupies a difficult position. His most threatening competitors for the nomination — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, depending on the poll of the day — either voted against the war, or weren’t in a position to do so. On Iraq, Biden stands alone, and the Sanders campaign is determined to make sure that history matters.

In a statement quoted by Politico, senior Sanders campaign advisor Jeff Weaver said Biden, as a senator, “made explicitly clear” that he supported the war. Weaver added, “It is appalling that after 18 years, Joe Biden still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the Iraq War, the worst foreign-policy blunder in modern American history.”

The Sanders campaign is right on the substance of its accusation. On a moral basis, Biden’s early position on the war is of profound importance. Even the more hawkish pundits usually concede that the invasion of Iraq proved a catastrophe. But the war was doomed to fail; it was flawed, fatally, from its conception. Biden’s mistake and his subsequent failure to reckon with it should cast doubt on his foreign-policy judgment.

Years after the senators cast their fateful votes, it may not even be possible to accurately calculate the total number of Iraqis and Americans whose deaths can be blamed on the decision to invade. At a minimum, the total is in the tens of thousands, and Trump’s destabilizing foreign policy may lead to further bloodshed in the region. Biden’s support for the war wasn’t just a bloodless political miscalculation but a moral failure with fatal consequences.

In the aggregate, Americans appear divided on whether it was even a mistake: 48 percent told the Pew Research Center in 2018 that the invasion was wrong. Military veterans, meanwhile, are more likely to say the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t worth fighting. By contrast, health care is still a greater priority for most voters. A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday found that 27 percent of voters who are Democratic or lean Democratic rank the issue as their top concern when choosing a candidate to support.

The public may not be calling for a reckoning on Iraq, but one is due nonetheless. The Trump presidency only amplifies a truth that should have been obvious to Democrats a long time ago: America’s foreign policy needs to be dramatically reset. If Biden won’t consistently tell the truth about his record, he undermines his own credibility on one of the most crucial issues a president can directly control.

Biden clearly hopes his role in recent history makes the case for his presidency. His Iraq revisionism suggests his past should disqualify him instead.

Biden's Disastrous Iraq War Vote Comes Back to Haunt Him

Anyone who is honest will concede that the Iraq War was one of the worse disasters ever undertaken by the USA since at least the Vietnam War debacle.  And there were plenty of reasons to not believe the Bush/Cheney lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  Cheney in particular was obsessed with going to war and ultimately through his Halliburton stock holdings made a fortune as Americans died and trillions of dollars were squandered. Yet, Joe Biden voted for war in Iraq, displaying an enormous error in judgment.  Now, as Trump/Pence seem obsessed with repeating the Iraq disaster in Iran, Biden's error in his vote is coming back to haunt him.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the possible reckoning facing Biden which suggests that experience that consists of bad decisions is not a plus on the campaign trail.  Here are article highlights:  

Sanders, who in 2002 was Vermont’s sole congressman, delivered an impassioned speech against authorizing Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein and then voted no. The ruinous Iraq war that followed—and in some ways continues to unfold—made a strong case that Sanders was right. In 2016, he used Hillary Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq war to help mount a surprisingly strong primary bid. Now the killing of Soleimani, and the prospect of widening military action against Iran, have given Sanders an opening, one month before the Iowa caucuses, to hammer at a pillar of Biden’s 2020 rationale: that the former vice president’s vaunted record of experience is in fact malarkey because Biden has too often made the wrong call on big issues.

“We’re in this moment on Iraq where that fundamental flaw—I don’t want to get too soft here—that fundamental error in judgment by Joe Biden and many other establishment politicians has continued to remind people of what a disastrous mistake that 2002 vote was,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, told me shortly after the Soleimani news broke. “Bernie Sanders has a proven record of fighting for the right thing at the right time—on the first instance, not on the second, third, fourth, or fifth try, as the case might be with Joe Biden. So yes, you’re going to hear a lot more about his Iraq vote from us.”

The debate around Trump needing authorization to conduct further tit-for-tat with Iran could become a fault line in the primary,” said Brian Fallon, who was a top strategist for Clinton in 2016. “On the left, even insisting on congressional authorization is going to be viewed as, It’s okay to go to war with Iran, you just want Trump to do it the right way. Similar to when people were pussyfooting around on impeachment. Anything less than full-throated opposition to escalation with Iran will be seen as going down the same path as in 2002, and mark you as being part of the Democratic old guard.”

Biden will be facing increasing criticism over his Iraq vote from his Democratic rivals, and not just Sanders. “He supported the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime, which was the decision to invade Iraq,” Pete Buttigieg told an Iowa television interviewer. Next week the South Bend mayor will have the chance to say that to Biden’s face, onstage in Des Moines during the final Democratic debate before the Iowa caucuses. If Sanders doesn’t beat him to the punch, that is.

“Bernie has raised his concerns with Biden’s vote for the Iraq war in at least three debates prior,” Shakir said, “as a matter of distinction between not only their records, but their judgment. It’s nice that people can calibrate and get things right over time. Even better is getting it right the first time.”

For months Biden has largely stayed above the Democratic fray, keeping his focus on Trump. With the Iowa endgame shaping up as a tight five-way scramble, Biden may no longer have the luxury of leaving the sharpest words to his surrogates.

Obama Tells Democrats to Relax and Embrace Political Reality

As an earlier post noted today, Barrack Obama cautioned Democrats to not lose touch with political reality of what the American public opinion supports.  He also reminded Democrats that the lead up to his 2008 nomination had been "robust" and bruising.  While not naming them, Obama appeared to be taking shots at Bernie Sanders and their followers who live in a bubble and are out of touch with main stream Americans who want improvements and change, but not a revolution and turning health care upside down.  This comes on the election of moderate Democrats win in Louisiana and Kentucky.  The message - which Nancy Pelosi has echoed - is that a centrist candidate is more likely to see electoral success in 2020.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Obama's comments.  Here are highlights:

[O]n Friday evening, he [Obama] climbed onto a stage in a basement ballroom in Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel and asked his party’s liberal elite to chill out a bit.

“We have a field of very accomplished, very serious, and passionate, and smart people who have a history of public service, and whoever emerges from the primary process, I will work my tail off to make sure they are the next president,” he told the room of a few hundred of the party’s biggest donors and top strategists, gathered for a conference of the Democracy Alliance group.

Obama signaled for the first time a willingness to try and modulate his party’s debate — in this case to a less frantic tenor. “To those who get stressed about robust primaries,” he added, fully embodying this new slightly exasperated adult-in-the-room role, “I just have to remind you: I had a very robust primary.”

Yet Obama’s remarks were not only aimed at the donors and chatterers. He had a sterner-than-usual warning for the campaigns, too. While over the last year-plus he has been sparing in weighing in on individual primary flash points, here he cast himself as understanding but concerned emissary to what he perceives as political reality. “This is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement,” he said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.” In Obama’s telling, Americans are conservative, not in ideology, but in temperament.

Voters, including Democrats, are not driven by the same views that are reflected on certain left-leaning Twitter feeds, or the activist wing of our party,” he warned. “And that’s not a criticism to the activist wing — their job is to poke and prod and text and inspire and motivate. But the candidate’s job, whoever that ends up being, is to get elected.”

It’s a vision that clashes with some on his party’s left, most obviously including supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And while he dismissed the debate between persuading voters and energizing base Democrats as “a false division,” he explained that he’d been thinking about how the candidates have been talking about him on the trail. “I think it is important for candidates to push past what I was able to achieve as president.

“I think it is very important to all the candidates who are running, at every level, to pay some attention to where voters actually are, and how they think about their lives. And I don’t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal, and as soon as they hear a bold enough proposal that’s going to activate them. Because you know what? It turns out people are cautious, because they don’t have a margin for error.” Onstage, Obama stuck to most of his personal Trump-era rules: He didn’t mention the president, or the news of the day — in this case the impeachment hearings. He didn’t mention any of the presidential candidates by name, either. But his remarks, delivered onstage next to Stacey Abrams, painted the clearest picture yet of Obama’s view of the primary, and of the direction of his party in the Trump era. And his timing sent as much of a message to the operatives in the room, and the candidates in the race, as his words.

Why Pete Buttigieg Isn't Going Away

Republicans have one advantage over Democrats: their base is far less diverse and is united by its racism and religious extremism - plus a dose of severe greed among a significant portion of the wealthy. Democrats in contrast have a diverse base that often agrees on little with some elements easily manipulated and played for fools by Republicans and right wing religious leaders who cherry pick bible passages to induce low information voters (especially black voters) to either (i) vote for candidates that will further the GOP's white supremacist agenda, or (ii) stay home from the polls in a funk and by default cast a vote for anti-black Republicans.  A case in point: a recent Facebook exchange where a black male said he could never vote for Buttigieg since he is gay implying he'd stay home and allow white supremacist champion Donald Trump to be re-elected if it came down to that choice.  Talk about acting against one's own best interest.  Of course, this same individual demands that gays support his civil rights. This is but one example of the divisions within the Democrat base.

Where the Democrat nomination ultimately goes remains unknown, but one thing appears clear for now: Buttigieg is not going away any time soon.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the next phase of Buttigieg's unlikely campaign.  Here are highlights:

We’ve reached an odd moment in an odd Democratic-primary race. With less than 100 days until the Iowa caucuses, former Vice President Joe Biden is struggling to hang on to his lead in the polls and is short on cash. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is making some people nervous that she’ll be Hillary Clinton and George McGovern rolled into one, and that nominating her means throwing the election to Donald Trump. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is recovering from a heart attack, and some observers believe that he has reached his ceiling of support. And while many voters keep saying they haven’t made up their minds yet, 14 other candidates are trying to convince voters and themselves there’s still a way to pull it off.

And then there’s Buttigieg. Several top Democratic officials who are not backing any candidate, as well as some operatives who are, have told me in the past two weeks that there’s a spot for him, but that the nominee can’t be him. They say the same things: He’s too young, too inexperienced, and unable to draw support from African American voters. They worry about the question that keeps coming up in focus groups and that reporters are beginning to ask: whether he’s struggling to win people over because he’s gay.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, last weekend, I asked people at a Buttigieg town hall whether they thought he was ready to do the job. “Have you ever listened to him speak? He’s got brains, he’s got class, he’s got poise,” Chuck McKinney, a retired carpenter who’d driven in from Lake Lure, North Carolina, told me.

This is the point in the 2008 race when Barack Obama began an ascent that never stopped. He broke out at the Iowa Democratic Party dinner in November 2007.

Buttigieg’s campaign has leaned into the Obama comparisons for a while. On Wednesday, his team sent an email to supporters from Larry Grisolano, a consultant who worked for Obama and has been on Buttigieg’s campaign since the summer: “Pete’s campaign this year is rekindling the same excitement I felt at this time in 2007,” he wrote.

And notice how Buttigieg delivers his big finale on the stump these days: “I know hope went out of style,” Buttigieg said in Rock Hill on Saturday. He asked the crowd: “Do you have a sense of hope to bring about change for our republic?”

He’s a young veteran and a polyglot from the Midwest talking about a record of accountable local government. He is strangely fit for this political moment, but he’s also fitting himself for it constantly.

But the core brilliance of Buttigieg’s campaign is making the carefully planned seem nonchalant, like he’s ambling when in fact he’s in the middle of a plié. Every sentence is precisely arranged, the words weighted, playing off ideas like faith and security and freedom. Operatives on other campaigns grumble that he’s a construction, a “celebrity” who wows reporters looking for the hot new thing, but it’s working.

When I asked how his whopping total of 19,506 votes between two mayoral races could actually win a presidential election, he called that “an exquisitely Washington mind-set.” When asked whether he’s the epitome of white, male privilege, he turns it back with, “When it comes to identity, I am very mindful of the privileges that go with being white and being male. I also have the experience of belonging to a category of people in America that would have been assumed to be effectively ineligible for the presidency.”

[T]here’s the latest line that he appears so eager to push, he hit it twice at the October Democratic debate and has repeated it at nearly every recent public appearance: “I want you to picture what it’s going to be like, what it’s actually going to feel like in this country, the first day the sun comes up after Donald Trump has been president,” he said on the debate stage in Ohio. “It starts out feeling like a happy thought; this particular brand of chaos and corruption will be over. But really think about where we’ll be: vulnerable, even more torn apart by politics than we are right now.”

All the more reason not to go with Buttigieg, his doubters say. . . . Aha! Buttigieg says: Now is his time. Now more than ever, in fact.

“Look, they blew everything up, which means that there is a chance to build something new and better on the rubble,” Buttigieg said. “I mean, not to over-dramatize it, but I think about areas where buildings have been destroyed in the world, and then architecture of a new kind flourishes.”

He was an intelligence officer stationed in Afghanistan; he rarely ventured outside the wire, and mostly guarded transports when he did. “My vehicle, to my knowledge, was never targeted,” Buttigieg said, already preparing to turn it into the point he’s making. “So I don’t go around acting like I was out in the Korangal Valley. I’m somebody who did my part. But I think it’s an important contrast to draw with somebody who avoided doing his part when it was his turn.”

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg has not-so-subtly presented himself as a Biden alternative. Sitting in a coffee shop in Concord, New Hampshire, in April, Buttigieg told me he didn’t think going deep on policy was a priority. He brought up an economic-development plan he wrote when first running for mayor that he said maybe a dozen people actually read. In September, he released his “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan, which has a policy paper behind it, but is basically appealing wordplay to get a message to people who will never read the whole thing, which is most people: “I’m not for eliminating private plans,” he said, “so I’m glad that we found a way in a headline to explain it.”

“He’s got workable ideas,” says Sherre Kearn, who works for the state government in Columbia, South Carolina, and had driven up to Rock Hill to hold a big Buttigieg sign last weekend. She says she voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries because of his focus on health care, but now she’s backing Buttigieg because she thinks he’s talking about practical solutions to health care.

Buttigieg has been accused mostly by Sanders and Warren supporters of tacking to the center in the past few weeks, with accusations that he came in bold when there was nothing to lose but now wants to come across as acceptable when winning is theoretically in sight.

He had $22 million on hand at the end of September, and the money keeps coming in, but he’s still a long way from first place, and always has been. And many political veterans believe that if somehow Buttigieg does make it to a two-way race with Warren, he won’t make it further than that, given his inability to attract the African American voters that would really make him the Biden alternative, given that they have been his backstop.

Buttigieg makes this next point because it’s self-serving, but it also happens to be true: Each of the four Democratic presidents since World War II (not counting the two who took over for dead men) were young and inexperienced: John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama. Candidates who get called “presidential,” Republican or Democrat, tend not to become president at all.

Trump has already made an issue of Buttigieg looking young enough to get carded, and never having done much. Buttigieg welcomes that.

“He might make it about age and experience, but fundamentally, that’s an argument about judgment and wisdom,” Buttigieg said. “And I think in a judgment and wisdom contest, this president’s on pretty shaky ground.”

He has another line he uses often, about how if there aren’t the kind of big changes he says his presidency would bring about, then the American experiment could unravel.
How close to the brink does he think we are?  “Closer than we think,” he said.

Biden Confronts a Growing Threat: Pete Buttigieg

Like many former Republicans who have become Democrats by default - being an Independent leaves one with no ability to influence party politics and/or candidate selection - to me the most important aspect of 2020 is seeing Trump removed from office either through impeachment (not likely give the morally bankrupt Senate Republicans) or electoral defeat.  Thus, the overriding concern becomes one of which Democrat primary candidate can inspire voters and get them to turn out and vote Democrat.  Some friends want Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to be the standard bearer, while I fear they are too liberal and could cause another Electoral College victory for Trump even as they won the popular vote. Others want Joe Biden who is seemingly popular with black voters but but totally uninspiring to younger voters. Then there's Pete Buttigieg, the other somewhat moderate Democrat who has a message of the need for generational change in leadership yet has in the view of some the albatross of being gay hanging over him - polls show 36% would never vote for him, yet this is probably the same 36% that would vote for Trump even if he molested a woman on video. Yet, in Iowa, Buttigieg seems to be rising.  Here are excepts from a piece in Politico: 

Joe Biden dropped to fourth place in Iowa, according to a new poll released Friday, his worst showing to date in the pivotal early state.  A few hours later, at the largest gathering to date for any 2020 event, it was clear why.

While Biden delivered a solid performance on stage before a crowd of 13,500 Democrats at the state party’s Liberty & Justice dinner, he was overshadowed and outshined by the candidate who just passed him in the polls — Pete Buttigieg.

At the massive state party event known for its catalytic effect on campaigns — it’s widely remembered as a turning point for Barack Obama’s Iowa fortunes in 2007 — Buttigieg captured the audience’s imagination, articulating a case for generational change.

“I didn’t just come here to end the era of Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said to a roaring crowd of supporters. “I’m here to launch the era that must come next.”

The South Bend, Ind., mayor’s speech offered an insight into his recent surge here, and why he is threatening to eclipse the former vice president in a state where Biden has been steadily losing ground since summer.

Ann Selzer, who heads the respected Iowa Poll, said her most recent poll showed 75 percent of those surveyed wanted a nominee who could inspire new voters to show up.

“Something I think is rather telling is those who want someone who represents a new generation of leadership,” Selzer said, noting that 57 percent of potential caucus-goers wanted new leadership versus 28 percent who wanted someone who had a long history of serving in government. “Who is that if it’s not Joe Biden?”

According to the New York Times/Siena College poll that placed Biden in fourth place in Iowa, the former vice president was showing little appeal among younger voters — only 2 percent of those under 45 years old said they planned to caucus for him.

Buttigieg, by contrast, has muscled his way into contention in the first-in-the-nation caucus state by steadily building crowds and rapidly expanding his presence in the state. In the last month alone, Buttigieg has doubled his staff presence while opening 20 offices across Iowa.

[T]he Indiana mayor is also swamping his opponents in digital advertising, something that’s been hard to miss in Iowa.

“I cannot overstate how many Buttigieg ads I see,” said Sinovic, pointing to data showing Buttigieg’s national digital spending numbers surpassing Biden almost five-to-one. “It’s just a massive outspending right now.”

Through his spending and organizing efforts, Buttigieg has managed to reshape the top tier into a 4-way contest that also includes Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

“You might expect that a frontrunner is going to lose some ground as other candidates become more visible,” said Selzer. “It’s not just that there’s not enough numbers to go around. It’s that he’s not wearing well. It’s the trend, it’s the decline.”

For her part, Warren, who had perhaps the largest display of support in the Wells Fargo Arena, seemed to take a swipe at Biden, with whom she had tangled earlier Friday after he criticized her plans to fund Medicare for All. “If the most we can promise is business as usual after Donald Trump then Democrats will lose,” Warren said. “Fear and complacency does not win elections. Hope and courage wins elections.”

Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa governor and ex-Dept. of Agriculture secretary, shrugged off Warren and Buttigieg’s rising poll numbers in the state, saying neither have truly been tested just yet.

“She hasn’t had a worst day yet — none of these campaigns have except for Vice President Biden,” said Vilsack, who served with Biden in the Obama administration and hosted a house party for him in July. “And the thing about Biden is he’s still standing. The question is will the rest of them still be standing after they’ve taken a punch? We’ll see.”

I continue to have a bad gut feeling that Biden is not the strongest candidate that some would have one believe. 

LA Times: Undoing the Great Mistake of 2016

In a reasoned main editorial The Los Angeles Times makes the case of why it is absolutely essential that Donald Trump be defeated in 2020 if he manages to avoid removal from office via impeachment thanks to Senate Republicans who have sold their souls to Trump and/or are as morally depraved as he is.  In the tussle to win the Democrat nomination, too many candidates seem to forget that "Medicare for All" and other policy pitches and differences pale in comparison to the most important goal: defeating Trump and hopefully many Republicans along with him.  Here in Virginia, in 16 days Virginians can fire the opening salvo in this repudiation of Trump and everything that he and the Republican Party have come to represent: open racism, religious extremism driven by hate, not the gospels, and, of course greed and envy.  Greed on the part of the wealthy and envy on the part of those who blame others for their poor life choices (including voting for Republicans who have consistently worked against their base's economic best interests and, of course the embrace of ignorance).  In its editorial, the LA Times is too kind to Trump voters, in my view, and says they were "hoodwinked" rather than face the reality that race, religious extremism, and greed and envy were the real motivations behind their votes.   That said, here are editorial highlights:

As the 2020 election approaches, the United States is deeply and bitterly polarized, shaken by acts of random and not-so-random violence, with wages still rising too slowly, income inequality continuing to increase and the American Dream feeling more and more out of reach for too many people. Despite low unemployment and a frothy stock market, voters feel a deep anxiety about the future and a dark anger at the political system.

With just a year to go before election day, global alliances are fraying as the U.S. turns inward. The culture wars are raging on campus and off. For only the fourth time in American history, a U.S. president is being investigated by the U.S. House of Representatives with an eye toward impeachment. Immigrants are being demonized and detained . . . .

Flitting above this chaotic landscape — fomenting, provoking, preening, spewing, tweeting, blustering and bullying — is President Donald Trump, the worst, most dangerous president in modern history.

All presidential elections are uniquely consequential, but a good case can be made that the next one is the most important of our lives. The time has come to undo the great mistake of 2016 and drive Trump out of office at the ballot box. It is time to pull our country out of the illiberal abyss into which it is sinking and put it on a path toward reason and fairness and empathy and constructive engagement with the world.

Voters need to keep their eyes on the prize: defeating Trump state by state, issue by issue, vote by vote in November of next year.

But stopping him is not going to be nearly as easy as common sense says it ought to be. The country is profoundly riven: More than 60 million Americans consciously chose this [narcissistic demagogue]  president over his opponent four years ago. And many voters remain entranced — hoodwinked, in our view — by his blunt, cocky, overpromising style. He may be coddling dictators, selling off the planet to oil, gas and mining interests, cynically stirring racial resentment and animosity toward immigrants, and provoking an angry trade war with a rising China, but his base remains steadily, stubbornly supportive.

Trump is temperamentally unsuited to be president . . . . Lies, threats and empty promises are his weapons of choice; enemies are mocked and belittled while the dumbly obedient are rewarded. Ignorant and incurious, unmoved by reasoned argument, contemptuous of laws and institutions, Trump is in thrall to exactly the special interests you would expect, he is schooled at the university of Fox News, he is on a constant search for adulation and short-term advantage. He must be defeated in November 2020.

[O]n two issues, we hope the [Democrat] candidates will agree: first, that the top priority has to be defeating the incumbent, who is too irresponsible to be allowed another term; and second, that his defeat is only a first step. Even before Trump was elected, the country was divided and the old system wasn’t working. Political paralysis was already on the rise well before November 2016 . . . Anyone who is not convinced of that should just remember the name Merrick Garland.

In this series we will seek to answer some basic questions: What is our brief against President Trump and why is it so important that he be defeated? . . . We’ll begin to look at some of the policy issues arising in the race, we’ll examine the battle between progressives and moderates, and we’ll consider the importance of race and racism in the election. For Californians in particular, whose policies are especially loathed by this president and who have so often felt the brunt of his disdain, this election is supremely important.

Now is no time to watch from the sidelines. Voters must become engaged, learn the issues, choose sides, speak out. Removing Donald Trump from office in November 2020 is absolutely essential — and yet it is by no means a sure thing. So do not sit this one out. Join in, and make America America again.

Trump must be defeated and/or removed from office by any means necessary.  Hopefully, the lazy and indifferent who stayed home and failed to vote in 2016 will not repeat their mistake and will make sure they go to the polls and cast their vote against Trump and Republicans in general.

Pete Buttigieg - The Underdog to Watch?

With health issues having temporarily sidelined Bernie Sanders - and made many much more worried about his advanced age - and Joe Biden's embroilment in the Ukraine scandal and heating up impeachment inquiry, it is a reminder that one never knows what can happen in long drawn out political campaigns.  Things happen to people and issues can surge to the forefront that no one contemplated just weeks earlier.  A piece in Politico looks at the change in the 2020 election dynamics that would unfold if Donald Trump were to be impeached and Mike Pence not go down with Trump - somewhat of a open question given Pence's apparent deep participation in the shakedown of Ukraine. Suddenly, things that seemed certain would be in great flux.  In this context, a column in the Washington Post suggests that Pete Buttigieg might yet be the candidate to watch.  Here are column highlights (in the interests of full disclosure, yes, I have given to his campaign):

Going into early primaries as the front-runner has its drawbacks. Should the surging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) fail to win Iowa or New Hampshire, her current success will make later results disappointing. Past success in a state also raises expectations perilously high. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won more than 49 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses in 2016; his RealClearPolitics average in Iowa polls is now 12 percent, less than a point ahead of South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

What should happen, say, if Buttigieg comes in third in Iowa, ahead of one of the current three front-runners? That’s a real possibility, and one reason that a betting person wanting to put money on an underdog might pick Buttigieg.

Buttigieg has a number of factors in his favor.

First, he is a proven fundraiser (taking in more than $19 million in the third quarter).

Second, he attracted big crowds and extremely positive coverage on his Iowa road trip. 

Third, he is doing what every other non-Biden candidate has failed to do: He is standing firm in the center left. He’s not promising single-payer health care nor confiscatory gun policies.

Fourth, he is smart and succinct enough in a debate to make trouble for the far-left candidates, thereby boosting his profile as one of the most adept combatants from the center-left.

Fifth, his military service helps his electability argument. It not only gives him some national security credibility but also helps him to take President Trump down more than a few pegs; he can contrast his own service with Trump’s fortuitous “bone spurs” that got him out of serving in Vietnam.

Finally, he is the most genuinely middle-class candidate among the top contenders. No millions from book sales, speeches, consulting gigs or past Senate fund-raising (to slide over into the presidential campaign fund).
 The conventional wisdom has been that Biden has to collapse before someone can move up in the not-too-far-left category of candidates. However, Biden might not disintegrate, and in fact, the loyalty of African Americans suggests that he will maintain a solid base of support at least until the early primaries. However, it is entirely possible that Buttigieg, without attacking Biden (in fact, he has smartly defended Biden against Trump’s scurrilous attacks), can impress debate-watchers and early state caucus and primary voters to pull him even with better-known candidates who should be able to clobber a mayor of a medium-size Midwestern city.

The wildcard in all of this is impeachment and Trump scandals. The mere possibility that Trump might not be the nominee is arguably enough to prompt primary voters to reexamine what it means to be electable. Moreover, as we trek down a path even more exhausting, terrifying and exasperating than the three years that proceeded it, with the circle of wrongdoers expanding well beyond the president, there is something to be said for someone who does not want to start a revolution, but rather, recover from the Trump ordeal. Someone preternaturally calm, logical and self-effacing might provide a welcome contrast to the Republican carnival.

In sum, as improbable as it might seem, next to Warren (who’s running a near-perfect campaign) Buttigieg might have the most effective campaign operation and message. It has been good enough to lift the mayor of South Bend into the top four candidates in the race.