Anti-Trump Lincoln Project Catch Democrats’ Attention - and Donations

I left the Republican Party as a matter of conscience many years ago at this point, so I do understand that many one time Republicans have now reached that point, especially since the GOP embraced Donald Trump, the most immoral and unfit individual to ever occupy the White House. Thus, I applaud everyone who has abandoned the GOP when faced with the choice of morality and true patriotism versus immorality and the destruction of America's image in the world and ongoing harm to average Americans.  In the case of the Lincoln Project, these former Republicans have put their talents in action and have not only left the GOP but are in attack mode against Trump and now many of his Republican enablers.  The slick ads and go for the jugular nature of the Lincoln Projects ads has gotten the attention of Democrats some of whom - myself included - have donated to their anti-Trump mission. A piece at MSN.com looks at the Lincoln Project and its ambitious agenda, part of which includes driving Trump crazy (sorry, but Trump's misery is my pleasure).  Here are article highlights:

George Conway, a prominent conservative critic of President Trump and the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, had a wild theory that he could singlehandedly get Donald Trump to “trash” Jesus Christ.

His plan? Run an ad on cable news networks in Washington, D.C., that said, “‘Jesus says love thy neighbor, but Donald Trump doesn’t.”  “You could see Trump coming out and saying, ‘Well, Jesus never had to put up with the abuse I have!’” Conway joked in a recent podcast interview with the other founders of his super PAC.

It was out of this instinct to troll the president — and Conway’s knowledge that Trump, as an eager consumer of cable news, would be tantalizingly easy to reach — that the Lincoln Project was born. The super PAC, which was founded in December by Conway and prominent “NeverTrump” current and former Republican political strategists including Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, and Jennifer Horn, didn’t take long to hit its mark.

“They’re all LOSERS” Trump responded a little before 1 a.m. on Twitter in May after seeing one of the group’s ads unfavorably compare his coronavirus response to Ronald Reagan. “RINO losers … I BEAT THEM ALL!” he followed up the next day, using the acronym for Republicans In Name Only.

Now, Democrats have also begun paying attention to the Lincoln Project’s relentlessly negative election-year assault on [Trump] the president, and the way in which the super PAC rapidly creates ads that are designed to enrage and distract Trump and hyper-targets them onto his TV screen.

“These are the best ads on television. They’re absolutely devastating,” said former presidential candidate and Vermont governor Howard Dean, who complimented the group’s founders on the “controlled rage” that fuels their spots.

The Lincoln Project hasn’t pursued the Jesus ad prank. But whether they’re making fun of Trump for (allegedly) being ripped off by his campaign manager, for looking shaky while walking down a ramp, for bungling the nation’s coronavirus response, or even for the size of his hands and the crowd at his recent Tulsa rally, the Lincoln Project is willing to go places that Democratic groups haven’t. And that is drawing attention — and even money — from liberals.

“I am thrilled by the Lincoln Project’s impact, their substance and also their messaging, which is so compelling,” said Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committee member and fund-raiser, who said he’s heard other Democrats say they’re donating to the group. “Quite frankly, Democrats, activists, and patriots should be grateful for their involvement and there shouldn’t be any competition.”

The Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” ad, which prompted Trump’s angry tweets, featured images of worried-looking Americans in hospital wards or waiting in long lines paired with somber violin music. A narrator warns that Trump has made America “weaker and sicker and poorer” as the slickly produced ad contrasts Trump’s performance on coronavirus to Ronald Reagan’s hopeful “Morning in America” reelection slogan.

More recently, the group has bought ads that stalk Trump as he travels around the country. One that aired in Tulsa before his June rally compared Trump’s rhetoric to the segregationist George Wallace, splicing Trump’s image with that of Wallace and tiki torch-toting white supremacist protesters. Another airing in South Dakota, where Trump visited on Friday, features the somber words of the nation’s presidents who are carved into Mount Rushmore. Trump’s image then pops up and a narrator warns, “America’s worst president will neither be remembered nor revered.”

The Lincoln Project is the most high-profile of several Republican anti-Trump groups vowing to spend money to defeat him. Its founders, who also include Reed Galen, Ron Steslow, Mike Madrid, and John Weaver, bring extensive political pedigrees to the task.

The group’s founders have their share of critics: Republican operatives who see them as traitors, the president who has ranted about them, and Democrats who question whether their trolling of Trump and thus-far limited budget will really influence voters in the handful of swing states that decide elections.

But the Lincoln Project’s relatively modest output so far, including some ads that seemed solely aimed at an audience of one, is racking up millions of views on social media, their reach amplified by the subsequent response from the president and related news coverage.

“When he started going after us directly, it highlighted and magnified his incompetence,” said Horn. “A president who is awake at 1 o’clock in the morning using a teenager’s medium to go after political operatives for saying something that he perceived to be mean about him? It is such a reflection of him being weak.”

There’s also an aspect of psychological warfare at play, as the strategists hope the more the president engages with their ads, the less he has time to focus on a reelection message. Wilson has a running gag on Twitter that he and Conway are living “rent free” in Trump’s head.

“It throws him off the message that he should have been on … and it also shows how nuts he is,” Conway said on the podcast.

The Lincoln Project has made other enemies in the Republican Party. Galen said on the group’s podcast that the GOP had “fundamentally changed” and that Trump’s “enablers” in the Senate need to be “washed out of the system as well.”

This kind of talk — and the super PAC’s spending against vulnerable Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Cory Gardner of Colorado — have caused great animus among other Republican operatives, even those who have been critical of Trump.

“They’re not just going after Trump, they’re going after Republican senators,” said Ryan Williams, a former top aide to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. “These aren’t Republicans disaffected with the president. They’re just Democrats now.”

Privately, Democratic strategists and donors have wondered what’s driving the Lincoln Project to campaign against Republicans more broadly. Are they planning on rebranding as centrist Democratic operatives if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the White House, given some of the founders, including Schmidt, have already left the party?

But the Lincoln Project’s founders say they were driven by conscience to do whatever they can to deny Trump a second term, after witnessing what they said is his disrespect for the rule of law. At the group’s launch event in February, Wilson said he’d watched former colleagues and bosses “abase themselves and abandon their principles” and could not stand by any longer.

The Lincoln Project recently released a pro-Biden ad that will be airing in Midwestern swing states. It portrayed Biden speaking inspirationally along with clips of other presidents comforting the nation at times of crisis, juxtaposed with Trump’s comments showing a lack of empathy for people protesting racism and police brutality. Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe called the ad “stirring.” Future spots will focus on persuading Republicans to abandon Trump, the strategists say.

“I appreciate the success that we’ve achieved so far, but honestly we have barely begun,” said Horn. “Donald Trump should not expect a good night’s sleep in the White House ever again. If he was upset with us at 1 a.m. — then just wait.”

Never Trumpers Will Host Their Own "Republican Convention"

In some ways I respect the "Never Trump" Republicans and former Republicans in that they have put principle and I would argue basic decency ahead of party unlike those in the GOP who have shamelessly prostituted themselves to Trump, Lindsey Graham being but one of many examples.  On the other hand, had these same Never Trump Republicans ceased being apologists for horrid GOP policies and a take from the poor to give to the rich agenda with a heavy dose of Christian nationalism years earlier, perhaps the GOP could have been saved from a Trump takeover. I left the GOP decades ago now because I saw where the party was headed and in good conscience simply could not be part of it. Am I now a Democrat?  Yes, but by default at first and now because of the national emergency of sending Trump - and those who sold their souls to him and to Christofascists and white supremacists - into forced retirement.    Anything that weakens GOP unity and can peel off votes from Trump and Trump Republicans (a term that is the opposite of what the GOP elected officials once stood for) is to be applauded.  And yes, I have donated to the Lincoln Project because its anti-Trump ads are first class. Now, the anti-Trump movement is going to have its own convention to run concurrent with the Trump/GOP gathering in Charlotte which will likely be part religious crusade and KKK rally.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this development.  Here are highlights:

Conservative critics of President Trump will hold a convention of their own during the Republican National Convention, with plans to craft their own statement of principles and offer it to a post-Trump electorate.

“The Trump administration has failed, and that’s provided us with an opportunity to offer an alternative vision,” said Evan McMullin, who ran against Trump as an independent in 2016 and has been part of multiple anti-Trump efforts since then. “We’ll be ready in the wake of what we see as a coming Trump defeat.”

The Convention on Founding Principles is scheduled to run from Aug. 24 to Aug. 27 in Charlotte, the city hosting this year’s RNC. The Republicans for a New President campaign, the chief organizer of the event, is planning an online component and a backup plan for a virtual convention if the RNC is canceled. Asked about the plans on Friday morning, the president’s campaign brushed them off.

“These Trump haters are sad, pathetic, and irrelevant,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtagh.

The Convention on Founding Principles grew out of an event Trump critics held at the National Press Club this year, concurrent with the Conservative Political Action Conference. Organizers were pleasantly surprised when more than 300 people attended their counter-conference, prompting a move to a larger room.

The August event, said McMullin, would more closely resemble an actual political convention. There will be debates and voting on a statement of the attendees’ principles, and a vote on whether they supported a particular candidate for president — presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, or a “well-known third-party candidate.”

“After Trump’s expected loss to a cross-partisan coalition of voters in 2020, principled conservatives will continue to pursue a new direction for the party through a range of activities, intellectual, electoral and otherwise,” McMullin said. ‘Since 2016, principled conservatives have become more organized and more effective and this convention and campaign represent the next steps in the development of this strengthening movement.”

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. 

2020: America's Ongoing Civil War

As the highly flawed Democrat presidential nomination process seems at this point headed towards nominating a candidate who is almost assured to lose in November, 2020, a  piece in Salon looks at the ongoing civil war in America where Trump and white supremacists and religious extremists are actively engaged in a war turning back time and undo the progress of the last five decades.  Should Trump be re-elected and worse yet, Republicans recapture control of the House of Representatives, by 2024 America will be unrecognizable and the verdict is out on whether democracy will have survived. I try to be optimistic, but at the moment, it is difficult not to be highly pessimistic about the future. Here are highlights from Salon:

In what amounted to a casual aside at his rally in Colorado Springs on Thursday night, Donald Trump drew the battle lines in this election as clearly as I've heard them drawn yet. Facing another of his virtually all-white audience in the city that is headquarters to multiple fundamentalist sects and several Christian megachurches, Trump waved his arms and asked, "By the way, how bad were the Academy Awards this year?" The crowd jeered loudly. "Did you see it? And the winner is … a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?" he went on with undisguised disgust.

Trump may as well have waved a Confederate battle flag. The crowd knew exactly what he meant. "Make America Great Again" now had a point of origin, and the greatness they yearned for had not been expressed by the Oscar win of "Parasite" director Bong Joon-ho or, God forbid, the election of Barack Obama, but by Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. 

Trump is letting us know that he and his base don't think of this as an election. It's a civil war. They want to turn the clock back to the time that Negroes knew their place and women were happy making biscuits in the kitchen and employers could pay their workers anything they wanted and the question of who got to vote was decided by a few white men in a smoke-filled room. 

Look around you. With William Barr at the Justice Department and Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and Senate Republicans voting in lockstep with Mitch McConnell, living in Donald Trump's America feels like the South won the Civil War. If we don't get our shit together and drive him from office at the ballot box in November, we'll lose this one, too. 

Trump made use of an enemy foreign power, Russia, to win election in 2016, and if what the intelligence community told the Congress this week is correct, he's in the process of doing it again. There won't be any investigation of foreign interference this time.

Republicans voted in lockstep to acquit him and nothing happened. There were no consequences for Trump, and now he's unbound. He's going to accept Russian help with his campaign right out in the open, and he'll stand up at one of his rallies and look into the cameras and say, "I did it, and fuck you." 

Donald Trump is who he always was: a mobbed up grifter from New York who learned from his father that you can welch on debts, pay people off and game the system, and when you get caught, walk away. If you're outrageous enough about it, people will be so stunned they are unwilling or unable to act. . . . I never believed in your democracy, I never believed in your capitalism, I never believed in your establishment, and look what I did! I got elected president! Fuck you! I'm going to take everything I want! I'm going to fly Air Force One anywhere I want, and I'm going to play golf more often than Arnie Palmer, and I'm going to bellow racism and lies at my rallies, and I'm going to jack up the Secret Service for rooms at my resorts, and I'm not going to pay a fucking cent and what are you going to do about it? I'm going to call Vladimir Putin on the phone and I'm going to get him to help me steal another election, and fuck you."

That's Trump's philosophy in a nutshell: do whatever you want and say "Fuck you." He's getting away with it the same way he got away with stiffing contractors and welching on bank loans and going into bankruptcy and taking out more loans and when they come due saying "Fuck you." 

I think we stand a chance to beat him, but we'll have to dig ourselves out of a deep, deep hole when he's gone. Some of us never will: The children ripped from their mothers' arms at the border, the voters who will go to the polls and be turned away, the poor who will go hungry when their food stamps are cut, the land and water and air that will be despoiled, the species that will go extinct, the companies that will fail, the women whose health clinics will close, the hopes that will be dashed and gone away forever.

Trump has cut the heart out of America. He's turning our democracy into a dictatorship, and he's not finished.

Bloomberg's First Debate is a Bust

Michael Bloomberg joined the Democrat debate stage for the first time last evening and it was not pretty.  Bloomberg has held himself out as the savior of the Democrats and the best person to defeat Donald Trump in November, yet his rivals were unmerciful in their attacks and Bloomberg confirmed what I had heard one commentator say: debates are not his strong suit. Who actually won the debate may be in the eye of the beholder since all took incoming fire from the rival candidates, but Bloomberg seemingly was the big loser. It is essential that Donald Trump be defeated in November, but I remain uncertain who is the best Democrat - which rules out Sanders who isn't really a Democrat and never has been - to take on Trump. A column in the New York Times looks at Bloomberg's trashing last evening.  Here are excerpts:

You can buy ads and saturate the airwaves with them. You can buy allies, especially with the right budget.

But you can’t buy a debate performance, and that’s why Mike Bloomberg’s on Wednesday night mattered so much. This was the man talking, not the money.

And the man needed rescue — from his bloodthirsty rivals and even more so from himself.

Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid.

He repeatedly — and laughably — suggested that he wouldn’t tear up nondisclosure agreements with women who have sued him or his company because they wanted the silence as much as he did. Elizabeth Warren hammered and hammered him on this point, but he wouldn’t budge, and that left the impression that he couldn’t budge. The truth would be too ugly.

Ugly: That’s the word for this ninth debate of the Democratic primary season. It had the fewest candidates — six — but the most nastiness, because those candidates clearly felt an urgency to diminish their competitors and elevate themselves before it was too late. A meager haul of votes in the Nevada caucuses this coming Saturday could effectively undo one or more of them; a poor showing on Super Tuesday less than two weeks from now would definitely be the end of the road.

So Pete Buttigieg went after Amy Klobuchar. Bernie Sanders went after Buttigieg. Joe Biden went after Sanders. Elizabeth Warren went after everybody, a Sherman tank bent on flattening everything in her path. And all of them went after Bloomberg. Dear God, how they went after Bloomberg. I’ve seen chum treated with more delicacy by great white sharks. It was the first time since Bloomberg announced his run for the presidency that he was within reach. For three high-spending, high-flying months, he campaigned essentially as a phantasm, ubiquitous in television commercials but averse to interviews, a supposed paragon of electability who had yet to put himself before voters, more idea than actuality, able to be seen but not touched.

But on Wednesday night, that changed abruptly. The apparition became flesh. And it was bruised from the get-go and bloodied soon after.

It was as if the candidates had made a private pact to eviscerate Bloomberg, who has spent hundreds of millions of his roughly $60 billion fortune to climb in the polls and is poised to spend hundreds of millions more before the nomination is decided.

Is he trying to purchase it? Absolutely. But, as he said at the debate, there’s a great cause behind that expenditure — his determination to deny Donald Trump a second term — and his funding of his own presidential bid at least means he’s beholden to no one.

Buttigieg arguably showed Bloomberg some mercy by denigrating him and Sanders together in one stroke. He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage,” one of whom thinks that “capitalism is the root of all evil” and the other of whom thinks that “money ought to be the root of all power.”

“We shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out,” Buttigieg said. “We can do better.”

That line was obviously scripted but no less fascinating for it, because it affirmed the nutty extent to which Bloomberg, by dint of financial swagger and aggressive public relations, has created the narrative that he is the leading moderate alternative to Sanders and the most fearsome adversary for Trump. There’s no real proof yet of either. But it’s a notion with enough currency that Buttigieg, who actually leads the Democratic contest so far in terms of accrued delegates, felt the need to chip away at it.

Maybe Bloomberg never stood a chance, not given how prepared his rivals were to tear him apart and the particular exuberance and eloquence that Warren brought to the task. She savaged him not only for his mistakes but for his explanations of those mistakes, so that his apologies were all but erased.

You thought there was acrimony between Warren and Sanders? They’re honeymooning sweethearts compared to her and Bloomberg.

Sanders was the big winner of the night, because he entered the debate as the front-runner but evaded the kind of harsh treatment that a front-runner usually gets. Bloomberg got it instead.

So while Bloomberg warned direly that Sanders would be a disastrous nominee and possibly guarantee Trump’s victory, Bloomberg’s presence onstage may have bettered Sanders’s odds of getting to the general election. It certainly didn’t better Bloomberg’s.

There was another winner: Trump. The candidates flexed so much disdain for one another that they had a limited reserve for him, and I can imagine Trump and his advisers scouring the night’s transcripts for tips on how to take down whoever the eventual Democratic nominee is.

I don’t know how Democrats escape the uncomely chaos of their contest. But I do know that it’s not the ideal run-up to November, and Bloomberg’s billions aren’t magically going to make it all better.

New Hampshire Primary Post Mortem

Results are still trickling in, but with 93% of the vote in it is possible to pick the winners and the losers in the New Hampshire primary.  While Bernie Sanders "won," Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar  were not far behind and between them showed that a majority of Democrats want a moderate for the Democrat nominee.  Sander - like Trump - seems to have a near fanatical core base beyond which he cannot rise above. The big loser, however, was Joe Biden who landed in 5th place seeming revealing what I have long felt: he simple does not have the spark or generate the enthusiasm needed to run against Trump. Add his constant gaffes, and even if he does better in South Carolina, his campaign looks like it needs to fold its cards and go home.  The other big loser was Elizabeth Warren who appears to have hemorrhaged support to Buttigieg and Klobuchar while never making inroads with Sanders' cult followers who do not grasp that winning only 25% of the party does not make Sanders' the choice of the people.  A column in the Washington Post lays out a post mortem.  Here are highlights:

The New Hampshire primary may very well be remembered for the third- through fifth-place finishers and for how surprisingly close the race between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — the overwhelming favorite who won with 60 percent in 2016 — and former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg was. Sanders was leading in the polls, but he nearly fell to the former Midwest mayor less than half his age.

Sanders was projected as the winner, but the margin of his victory was modest (less than 2 percent). As in Iowa, he did not juice the turnout with an influx of new voters as he promised. The youngest voters made up 12 percent on Tuesday compared with 19 percent in 2016. The Democratic establishment has panicked at the prospect of a Sanders win, but he now looks like a vulnerable front-runner, with well over half of his support coming from voters 18 to 29 and more than half coming from “very liberal” voters. If he was looking to expand beyond his traditional base, he did not do it. He actually got a larger share of repeat voters than first-time voters. 

With the electorate heavily skewed in favor of electability (60 percent) rather than agreement on the issues, and about half the voters finding Sanders too liberal, there is reason to believe voters have become wary of Sanders as the standard bearer in a must-win election. His base of support seems not to have grown significantly from the start of the race.

Buttigieg, who won the most delegates in Iowa, finished strong in New Hampshire as well, overcoming questions about his experience. Buttigieg did almost as well with younger voters as with older ones, a sign of expanding appeal. His support was rather evenly spread among all education levels. . . . . He has yet to make inroads with African American candidates in other states, but he has grown beyond his initial base (mostly college-educated and older voters).

The shocker was Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who charged past her opponents so quickly the polls never full accounted for her surge. A week ago, no one would have foreseen she would get to almost 20 percent of the vote and a third-place finish. She won voters who wanted to continue President Barack Obama’s policies (Obama’s own vice president came in third in that segment of the electorate), older voters, religious voters and voters for whom the debate was an important factor.

She didn’t focus her campaign on being a female candidate, but rather on being a moderate, a problem-solver and a Midwestern winner. She says, “That’s how I’ve always won. . . . When you are feeling left out, it is not enough [to run on gender].”

She concedes she lost time while tied to her desk during the impeachment trial, noting “I like to talk to people on the ground.” But she used some of that time thinking about the race and solidifying her message. Despite the punditry, she never bought into the idea the party had moved far left.

The stunning collapse of former vice president Joe Biden, who finished fifth and will get no New Hampshire delegates, cannot be underestimated. If moderate voters and African Americans (many of whom are moderate) get the sense he is no longer viable, the floor may drop out from him in Nevada and South Carolina, bringing an end to any hope for victory.

If not for Biden, Warren, who finished under 10 percent and failed to get delegates in her own backyard, would have been the big loser. A campaign that once seemed so promising now will be hard pressed to stay alive until South Carolina. Her refusal to go after Sanders and her effort to adhere to him on Medicare-for-all only to back away may have been her undoing. In a speech to supporters, she seemed to swipe at Sanders when she criticized candidates’ who boo rivals and seem to want to “burn the party down.” Her stress on unifying the party may be overshadowed by both Buttigieg and Klobuchar, who have made this a centerpiece of their message.

The field did narrow, with two candidates dropping out: Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who never came on the radar screen for primary voters, and Andrew Yang, the champion of the universal basic income.

Among the most striking aspects of the contest, the vote-share of the moderate candidates’ (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar) came in at more than 50 percent, swamping that of progressives Sanders and Warren, who together accounted for less than 40 percent of the vote. Here is yet another sign that Democrats are giving careful consideration to winning an election, not merely making a statement. That might be the best news of all for Americans angst-ridden about a possible second Trump term.

The Insane Fury of the Democrat Online Left Toward Buttigieg (and Moderate Democrats)

Back in early 2017 Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders thrust themselves into Virginia's Democrat gubernatorial contest pushing a far left candidate and trashing Ralph Northam who ultimately went on to win the primary and the general election.  Had Warren and Sanders and their far left followers prevailed, in my view, Virginia likely would now have a Republican governor and who knows where control of the General Assembly would now lie.   All that mattered was that Northam did not meet their standard of ideological purity and wasn't radical enough.  Never mind that Northam ran on perhaps the most progressive agenda of any gubernatorial candidate in Virginia history.  It was a near repeat of how the far left was similarly disenchanted with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and seemingly stayed home or voted for third party candidates - think Jill Stein - to throw the election to Donald Trump.  History is repeating itself at the national level again as the left of the Democrat coalition attacks moderates and pushes an agenda that likely would help re-elect Donald Trump.  A prime target of the left's wrath is Pete Buttigieg whose sin is not being radical (and un-electable) enough to meet the left's purity tests.  Absurdly, some of the far right in the gay community whine that Buttigieg is not "gay enough."  From my experience, one is either gay or not, which underscores the idiocy of these folks. A piece in CNN looks at the lefts targeting of Buttigieg and moderates and, in my view, secure a Trump victory in 2020.  Here are excerpts: 

Increasingly, their opposition to Buttigieg is turning to fury, fueled by a boisterous online ecosystem of progressives who are driving anti-Buttigieg commentary and memes. They view him as beholden to corporate interests, unable to win over the diverse Democratic base that these activists take pride in, and disinterested in the systemic change they believe the country desperately needs on issues like the influence of big money on politics and climate change and systemic racism.

These narratives have persisted in spite of what his campaign points to as evidence to the contrary, including that Buttigieg has proposed plans to address those very issues such as a climate change plan to cut emissions to zero by 2050 and a proposal to address systemic racism that he calls the Douglass Plan.

Buttigieg supporters say the criticism has become unhinged, with some progressives eager to latch on to virtually any negative narrative about Buttigieg whether it is true or not.  There is no question: The youngest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, at age 37, isn't doing well with young Democratic voters. Since he jumped into the race, Buttigieg has gone from a little-known, small-town mayor, to representative of the Democratic Party vision has of itself as an inclusive party to, now, the arch-nemesis of certain progressive advocates.

The intense heat on Buttigieg from some corners of his party comes as he rises in both early state and national polls and vies with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a slice of the college-educated electorate. Both candidates have upped their contrasts with each other in recent weeks as the Iowa caucuses near.

"The nature of presidential politics is the better you do, the more you are tested," said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist of his campaigns. "Buttigieg has made a pretty remarkable progress in 2019. Now he is being tested as a legitimate top tier candidate and we'll see how he handles it." "It is an inevitable part of this process," he added. Buttigieg's critics cite a dramatic turn in his approach to his candidacy and are particularly incensed by his criticism of Warren on "Medicare For All." (Buttigieg, for his part, has pushed for a proposal called "Medicare for all who want it," an option that would keep private health care plans.) They consider his low standing with black and Hispanic voters to be disqualifying, and pejoratively refer to him as "Mayo Pete" for his overwhelmingly white supporters. As a result, his candidacy, in their view, is akin to the vanity project of an overly ambitious, privileged white man [as if Sanders' isn't exactly that]. "He's phony," said Adam Jentleson, when asked why he opposes Buttigieg's candidacy so strongly. 

For Washington insiders, Jentleson is a well-known figure, a former senior aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a far cry from the kind of left-wing progressive candidate Jentleson now would prefer. But now, Jentleson is known online as a progressive flame thrower, leading the anti-Buttigieg charge and slamming him for his attacks on more progressive candidates like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Warren.
 Buttigieg's campaign largely dismisses the intense criticism they have experienced from people like Jentleson. "We're not focused on the small echo chamber of Washington insiders talking to each other on Twitter," said Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesman, "we're focused on talking to voters about the issues that matter most to voters." He continued: "This election is about defeating Donald Trump and uniting the country the day after this president leaves office. Pete is the best candidate to do just that." The kind of attacks that have been directed at Buttigieg have puzzled the candidate as well as his aides. And as they have gone from the internet to real life, including a wave of new protests outside of his high dollar fundraisers. "It is a little strange, because I think that I broadly share a lot of the same values and goals," Buttigieg told The Washington Post's Bob Costa in an interview when asked if the protests bother him. "It's a little hard to have a conversation with them, so I don't know for sure." It has been perplexing to Buttigieg supporters that a particularly vitriolic brand of anger has been reserved for Buttigieg rather than other moderate candidates like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden, both of whom share Buttigieg's positions broadly on issues like Medicare for All and college affordability. Many of the progressive voices fanning the anti-Buttigieg flames explain the disproportionate attention by pointing to Buttigieg's standing in the polls and a feeling of inevitability that Biden's candidacy is not as strong as it currently seems. The distaste among some gay Democrats to Buttigieg has been the subject of a fair amount of analysis -- even raising the interest of Tim Miller, a moderate gay Republican and former Romney aide who has quizzically observed what he believes is a disproportionate amount of vitriol directed toward Buttigieg.

"They're the meanest," Miller said. "Within the gay community, unfortunately, I think it's a lot of resentment that Pete does not represent the gay ideal -- the pre-conceived notions about what a gay President would act like."

"The idea that he's a closet Republican is absurd, but I think because of his nature as a mild-mannered, traditional-acting religious man, that it's easier to demean him as being Republican lite," he added. But for others, the part of Buttigieg's identity that is the most salient is not that he is gay, but that he is white, which they believe has insulated him from the kind of scrutiny that other candidates have been subjected to. Throughout the Trump presidency Democrats have insisted that removing him from office is a top priority, but the #neverPete sentiment is testing that.

Donald Trump and his campaign must be smiling broadly.  If Trump wins re-election, as in 2016, the far left of the Democrats will bear a significant guilt for that result which will be the antithesis to all they allegedly support. 

Is Pete Buttigieg Too Young to Be President?

America currently finds itself with an occupant of the White House who is a malignant narcissist, who doesn't read, disregards the wisdom of experts, and acts on impulse and Twitter rants. It would seem almost anyone would be more fit to occupy the White House rather than Trump. Of the leading Democrat candidates for the presidential nomination, three - Biden, Sanders and Warren - are at an age where many people begin to fail physically in terms of stamina and cognition.  The fourth, Pete Buttigieg, is at the other end of the spectrum age wise and the persistent question of his critics is whether he is too young, despite his high education (Trump will not even allow his academic grades to be released) and poise. Buttigieg points out - as Virginians who know history - the Founders were very young, Jefferson being a mere 33 when he authored the Declaration of Independence.  A column in the New York Times looks at this question of age.  It doesn't answer the question, but give much to think about, including the crucial need to remove Donald Trump from the White House.  Here are excerpts:

Finland just elected the world’s youngest prime minister, Sanna Marin, who’s 34. Time magazine named Greta Thunberg, 16, its youngest-ever “Person of the Year.”

Even before I could mention their names to Pete Buttigieg, who’s vying to become the youngest American president, he brought them up. He also brought up Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, who was 37 when she took office, and Emmanuel Macron, who became the president of France at 39.

That’s how old Buttigieg, now 37, would be at his inauguration.

“This country was founded by 20-somethings,” he added, referring to the fact that Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, for example, were in their 20s on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson was 33. John Hancock was 39.

Donald Trump is 73, meaning that he has more than a half-century of life lessons on some of them. How does that show? Well, an hour before I connected with Buttigieg, the president saw fit to tweet that Time’s choice of Thunberg, a Swedish climate-change activist, was “so ridiculous” and that she should “work on her Anger Management problem.” Facing imminent impeachment, he started a Twitter spat with a teenage girl.

Trump is the “most extreme example of the fact that while wisdom and age may be related, they’re very much not the same thing,” Buttigieg said.

Still. Age isn’t irrelevant. America is much, much bigger than Finland and much, much more complicated than it was during the Revolutionary War. In a country so powerful, at such a perilous time, is Buttigieg simply too young and too green to lead the way?

It’s the question that hovers over a presidential campaign whose success has stunned the political world.

And even now, after first-place finishes in some recent polls of Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s pressed about whether someone with his short résumé, capped by two terms as the mayor of a city of just 100,000 people, could possibly be up to the presidency and pass muster with enough Americans to get elected. So we spent most of a nearly hourlong car ride between campaign stops in the New York City area talking about it. He conceded that the longer you’re alive, “the more you learn,” and that there are lessons and life passages still in the offing for him. He’d like to be a parent, but if he succeeds on his current quest, he’d become the leader of the free world first.

“A lot of things in my life have been out of sequence,” he said. “I was a mayor before I got married. I was a war veteran before I had dated.” He was referring to his seven months in Afghanistan and recognizing that while he has been precociously ahead of the game in many regards, he was behind in others. It was only four years ago, at 33, that he finally had a serious romantic relationship — with the man, Chasten, who is now his husband.

Age has played out in surprising ways in the Democratic primary. While Buttigieg is unusually young, the other three candidates grouped with him at the head of the pack — Joe Biden, 77; Elizabeth Warren, 70; and Bernie Sanders, 78 — are unusually old. The oldest candidate, Sanders, is by far the most popular among the youngest Democratic voters, getting the support of 52 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 in a national Quinnipiac poll released on Tuesday. Buttigieg got just 2 percent of that group, in contrast with 12 percent of Democratic voters between 35 and 49, 12 percent of those between 50 and 64 and 11 percent of those 65 and older. He attributed that to younger voters’ attraction to Sanders’s less pragmatic, more ideologically pure vision. It’s certainly not because Buttigieg hasn’t courted them. In this “O.K. Boomer” moment of younger Americans’ disgust with the income inequality, social injustices and climate change that older Americans have bequeathed them, he has claimed a generational perspective that separates him from his rivals for the Democratic nomination. He also makes the case that people of Biden’s, Warren’s and Sanders’s age have had their chance to fix things. Shouldn’t someone with an arguably fresher outlook — someone from outside Washington — take a turn? With that reasoning he frames political vulnerabilities as political virtues. . . . “It means that one generation has been in charge for a very long time.”

Buttigieg has to muster extra poise, extra confidence, lest any deficit be interpreted as immaturity. But then that poise and confidence, in the context of his age, are interpreted as arrogance. His detractors constantly tell me that he’s cocky — or robotic.

“One of the things I get is, ‘Why aren’t you more passionate?’” he said. “I’m very passionate. But I’m also very disciplined. If I weren’t, it would be harder to be taken seriously.”

The Constitution decrees that a House member must be at least 25, a senator at least 30, a president at least 35. No American president has been under 40, and only two took office before the age of 45: Teddy Roosevelt, who was 42, and John F. Kennedy, who was 43.

Shouldn’t and doesn’t that give Buttigieg pause?

“Of course you have those moments,” he acknowledged. “We’re talking about a role of unbelievable importance and complexity and challenge. And yet every person who’s done it has been a mortal, a human being — and of course so much depends not just on the individual but on how you build a team.”

He repeated something that he has said scores if not hundreds of times on the campaign trail: As mayor of South Bend, Ind., for the past eight years, he has had a kind of executive experience that someone who has served in Congress for that long or longer hasn’t. Besides, he said, experience isn’t the only font of wisdom. Education matters. Intuition, too.

He comes armed with historical examples beyond the founders of people who made remarkable contributions early on. “I’m not going to compare myself to Martin Luther King,” he said, “but he’s certainly an example of somebody who had a huge impact, mainly in his 30s.” King died at 39.

Maybe he’d match up well against Trump. I’m not sure, and how I wish I were, because the likeliest Trump slayer is the Democratic nominee I want and America needs. Both substantively and in terms of electability, Buttigieg would be better off if he were older, with higher positions under his belt, but then all of the leading Democrats have worrying shortcomings. His youth is a concern. It shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.

Joe Biden's Ukraine and Age Problems

Like I suspect many, I have real concerns over Joe Biden's age not to mention my fears that he is not up to defeating Donald Trump - the same fears apply to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  Add to this Biden's Ukraine/Hunter Biden problem that one article in New York Magazine notes will become the equivalent of Hillary Clinton's email server if Biden wins the Democrat nomination.  Biden has now compounded his age problem by indicating that he would be a one term president should he win the 2020 election. A second piece in New York Magazine looks at this problem and argues that if Biden himself has worries about his age, then so should the rest of us. All of this suggests that the Democrats need to desperately find a candidate who isn't too old, yet who can beat Trump in the critical handful of Mid-West states that will likely decide the 2020 election in the Electoral College (a system that needs to be abolished in my view since it failed it purpose by not refusing to certify Trump in 2016).  First highlights from the piece on Biden's Ukraine/Hunter Biden problem:  

In the waning years of the Obama administration, Hunter Biden, whose life was in a downward spiral, took a job with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which was transparently attempting to gain influence with Hunter’s father. The maneuver was unsuccessful for Burisma (which received no favorable treatment from the vice-president), fairly successful for Hunter (who received a hefty paycheck for minimal work), and has left a residue of low-grade sleaze that Joe Biden’s campaign has proven unable to scrape away. The dilemma this poses for Biden, and his party, is what — if anything — they can do about this problem.

So far, Biden’s responses to questioning on his son’s role, which range from challenging his interlocutor to a push-up contest to trailing off awkwardly, have hardly allayed the concern. But it’s difficult to think of a better response, since a true answer is extremely difficult for a politician to communicate. And the true answer is: Yeah, I screwed up, but it’s actually not that big of a deal.

Biden’s error is that he created what used to be called “the appearance of impropriety,” a phrase that was common back before actual impropriety rendered it into a quaint anachronism. The appearance of impropriety is that Hunter Biden made money from Burisma, a Ukrainian firm, at a time when Joe Biden was directing the administration’s Ukraine policy, creating the appearance that Burisma bought Joe Biden’s favor. Indeed, President Trump has relentlessly charged that Burisma did in fact buy Biden’s favor. This is false.

His [Biden’s] error was allowing his son to cash in on the false perception that he could sell access to his father. And by all accounts, Biden was too distracted by his job and distraught by the death of his other son to intervene in Hunter’s actions. It’s not nothing, but it is a small thing.

Democrats have bitter experience with this sort of flaw. Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of State is an eerily similar precursor. It was a small error borne of neglect . . . . And Trump turned the small error into a gigantic scandal, accusing her of heinous crimes and ludicrously insisting she ought to be imprisoned over them.

The email scandal was not just a Fox News narrative. It dominated mainstream news coverage of Clinton’s campaign, because it was a real issue, albeit a small one. Mainstream reporters made a historic blunder by devoting far more attention to the email issue than it deserved, but this is an inevitable result of the incentive system in the mainstream press, which prioritizes critical coverage over passive transmission of a candidate’s chosen message.

[O]ne of the retrospective ironies of the email scandal is that even by the narrow standards of handling government information security, ignoring every other avenue of potential misconduct, Clinton was the superior candidate. Trump’s administration has committed numerous security mishaps. As Philip Bump noted in March, the ranks of Trump officials who used private email to conduct official business include Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, K.T. McFarland, and Reince Priebus. Since then, Nikki Haley has been found to have done the same.

Reporters aren’t going to stop asking Biden tough questions about a legitimate ethical shortcoming just because his opponent’s sins dwarf Biden’s a thousandfold. Clinton’s example suggests that an apology wouldn’t do Biden much good. Maybe the solution is not to nominate Biden at all — though that strategy assumes Democrats can find somebody so pure nothing in their past can be turned into a Clinton email or Burisma level story.

We are hurtling toward a recurrence of the 2016 nightmare.

The second piece looks at Biden's age problem.  Here are highlights:

Joe Biden’s top political priority is to make Joe Biden a one-term president.

The 77-year-old Democratic front-runner has reportedly informed his closest advisers that if he is elected in 2020, he will not seek reelection in 2024. As Politico reports: According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for re-election in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.

Some in the Democratic front-runner’s camp believe his limited ambitions are an asset worth advertising. After all, younger voters have evinced little enthusiasm for Biden, with only 11 percent of Democrats under 35 backing him in a recent Quinnipiac poll. Perhaps Biden would be best able to unite his party by selling himself as a kind of rusty old wedge for prying Donald Trump from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: In this economy, the only thing that can stop a bad old white man with a penchant for incoherent rambling is a mediocre old white man with a penchant for incoherent rambling. But don’t worry — Great Uncle Joe won’t linger too long after solving the White House’s pest problem.

This pitch has its attractions, though its appeal is somewhat contingent upon the identity of Biden’s heir apparent. And the moment he actually names a specific individual, the gambit becomes less broadly appealing. But even if we stipulate that Biden’s plans for an early retirement would mitigate millennial dissatisfaction with his nomination, those plans would still do more to indict his candidacy than enhance it.

In the immediate term, leaking word that you expect to be unable or unwilling to fulfill the duties of the presidency in five years raises the question of how you can be sure you’ll be up to the job in four. Which is to say, by letting his plans slip to Politico, Biden’s campaign has accentuated the candidate’s core weakness: that he is 77, but doesn’t sound a day over 86.

If Biden wins the nomination, he will have to combat the perception that his age has rendered him unfit (or, in our spritely 73-year-old president’s phrasing, too “sleepy”) for the presidency. That’s going to be harder to do when you’ve already signaled that you’re so concerned about your own stamina, you’ve resigned yourself to being a lame-duck president from the day you take office.

Given the Democratic Party’s myriad alternative options, picking a 2020 standard-bearer who won’t run in 2024 would be the opposite of pragmatic. It would needlessly increase the GOP’s chances of reclaiming the White House after a short hiatus.

Biden has built up a lot of goodwill among Democratic voters. And as of this writing, he appears well on his way to winning the party’s nomination. But if he knows he doesn’t have eight years of public service left in him, he should do the right thing for his party and country and stop trying to serve four.

Medicare for All: Political Kryptonite

Giving away my age, I will admit that I like Medicare.  The coverage is far better than when I had private health care insurance and the premiums are considerably lower even when paying extra for supplemental and prescription drug coverage.  It also demonstrates how a public option for those who want it - something Pete Buttigieg is pushing in his campaign - could at last force serious competition on private health insurance companies which typically give would be subscribers arrays of plans that are near impossible to compare side by side but all of which are expensive and leave individuals choosing their preferred form of poison.  Medicare for those who want it also avoids potential political suicide for Democrats - something seemingly totally lost on Bernie Sanders and largely lost on Elizabeth Warren - why potentially paving the way toward a more expansive form of public option down the road.  Sometimes consistent evolution is far better than an overnight revolution.   Now, more Democrats seem to be waking to the reality that Sanders' and Warren's Medicare for all mantra could be pushing Democrats toward defeat in 2020 - something that I view as nothing less than a national catastrophe and the possible end of America's political system as we have known it.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this potential and why moderation is perhaps the best way to win in 2020.  Here are highlights:

Prominent Democratic leaders are sounding increasingly vocal alarms to try to halt political momentum for “Medicare for all,” opting to risk alienating liberals and deepening the divide in the party rather than enter an election year with a sweeping health care proposal that many see as a liability for candidates up and down the ballot.

From Michigan to Georgia, North Dakota to Texas, Democratic elected officials, strategists and pollsters are warning that the party’s commitment to the Obama-era Affordable Care Act — widely seen as critical to electoral gains in 2018 and 2019 — could slip away as a political advantage in 2020 if Republicans seize on Medicare for all and try to paint Democrats as socialists on health care.

“When you say Medicare for all, it’s a risk. It makes people feel afraid,” said Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, . . . “We won in Kentucky and Louisiana, barely, in part, because we won on health care. I don’t think we can afford to lose on health care.”

While Democrats won the House in 2018 by decrying Republican efforts to undercut popular provisions in the Affordable Care Act, the Democratic presidential primary race has turned in large part on whether to replace that law with a more expansive, single-payer system, financed by higher taxes and linked to an end to private health insurance.

[M]oderate leaders in the [presidential nomination] race, like Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former vice president, and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., support adding a public health care option to the current law. While the primary race is fluid and unpredictable, Medicare for all has steadily driven much of the Democratic discussion of health care.

A determination to shift those conversations is now spurring top Democratic officials to speak out more forcefully against Medicare for all, playing to the anxieties of Democrats who fear their party could once more lose crucial Electoral College battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to Mr. Trump if they push for a nationwide overhaul of health care coverage and benefits.

Warnings are being issued at all levels of the Democratic Party, from union members who fear losing hard-won benefits, to candidates running in swing districts, all the way up to former President Barack Obama, who offered a pointed warning about the risks of overreach at a gathering of donors in Washington, D.C., this month.

Many are gravely concerned about the impact that having a presidential nominee who backs Medicare for all at the top of the ticket would have on the most vulnerable Democratic candidates.

[A]s the race moves closer and closer to the start of primary voting, other polling indicates that voters in key battleground states have grown more skeptical of implementing Medicare for all. A survey released this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report found that nearly two-thirds of swing voters in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin rated a Medicare for all plan that would eliminate private insurance as a “bad idea.”

Internal polling conducted by the Democratic Governors Association in October found that Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana tested 15 points higher on health care than his Republican challenger. Their polling found similar results in Kentucky, where Andy Beshear, the Democratic candidate and now governor-elect, polled 12 points higher than Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican.

Even if Ms. Warren or Mr. Sanders fail to win the nomination, some Democrats from battleground and conservative states worry that the party has already damaged its brand heading into the general election.

“The politics are horrible for the Democratic Party, that’s my judgment,” said Ms. Heitkamp, who lost her seat representing North Dakota last year and is now heading up an effort to win rural voters. “We’re making the issue about our plan rather than what the president has or has not done.”

“Democrats need to start talking about the contrast with Trump on this,” said Mr. Brown, who has not endorsed a candidate in the primary race. “The conversation should not be Democrats fighting over the path to universal coverage.”

Congressional candidates are frequently asked whether they agree with the policy; candidates in all 10 of the most competitive Senate races have said they do not support it, preferring to keep their health care message focused on expanding Medicaid, protecting the Affordable Care Act and slamming repeal efforts by Republicans.

Other allies of Mr. Biden have begun speaking in increasingly apocalyptic terms about how a presidential nominee perceived as too far to the left — thanks to positions on issues like health care — would impact other candidates in competitive races.

“We’ve got to find ways that we can build on the success of the Affordable Care Act and ensure that everyone has coverage that works for them,” said Representative Chris Pappas, a New Hampshire Democrat elected last year. “Most of us who were recently elected to Congress, those who helped flip the majority in the House, really have a practical point of view of what’s actually going to deliver relief to families in our districts.”

Sadly, Sanders' and Warren's cult like followers appear blind to the reality that their candidates are pushing a plan too radical for a majority of voters at this point in time.  Winning in 2020 has to be the priority.  Without winning, no improvements can be made to the current system and, if Republicans retain control, continued efforts to destroy what has already been accomplished will increase.