More Thursday Male Beauty

Biden is Running as Obama’s Heir. The Problem: He’s Not Obama

Joe Biden has now formerly thrown his hat into the crowded Democrat nomination race. Personally, like Bernie Sanders, I believe that Biden's time has passed and that it's time for a younger Democrat standard bearer who can lead the party and the country into the future rather than have the 2020 presidential election between two near geriatric candidates.  In Trump we already have an aging, out of touch (and in my view, mentally ill) candidate who frankly only bonds with white supremacists, religious extremists, and vulture capitalists who are driven by hatred and/or greed. Democrats need a counterpoint to that and Biden, is too old and too tide to the past to be an effective counter to Trump despite possible strengths with segments of the black community and union members.  Having seen Obama twice, once at very close range, the other reality is that Biden simply does not have Obama's charisma.  Democrats ran a candidate in 2016 who lacked charisma and we know how that turned out.  Here are highlights from a piece in Politico that looks at Biden's effort to be what he is not:

Joe Biden and Barack Obama got off to a rocky start in 2007, but they found their way to a mutual respect and good working relationship for the next eight years.

Obama showed his appreciation at the end of their second term by rewarding Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award possible.

I'm an Obama-Biden Democrat, man. And I'm proud of it,” Biden told reporters earlier this month.

Yet despite a legitimate claim to be the standard-bearer of President Obama’s legacy, Biden faces a fundamental challenge as he seeks his party’s nomination for the White House: Convincing the diverse and youthful coalition that elected Obama to two terms that a 76-year-old white man is the right person to carry the mantle.

To Biden and his advisers, age and race are inferior to the political realities of his special relationship with Obama. The question is whether primary voters will see it the same way, especially when the former president has indicated he’ll remain neutral in a crowded Democratic field filled with diverse and dynamic candidates.

One thing is certain: Obama’s political apparatus is not united behind Biden, whose campaign announcement comes after more than 20 other candidates launched their bids.
None of Obama’s inner circle of advisers have signed on with any campaign. But other Democratic contenders have snagged top-level Obama campaign talent and tapped its fundraising prowess.

While Biden’s campaign manager, Greg Schultz, led Obama’s campaign efforts in swing-state Ohio, Beto O’Rourke hired Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and has enjoyed the support of Paul Tewes, the 2008 Obama campaign’s director in first-in-the-nation Iowa. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren signed Joe Rospars, Obama’s chief digital strategist in 2008 and 2012, and Emily Parcell, political director for Obama’s 2008 Iowa caucus team. Several top former Obama administration officials contributed to Pete Buttigieg.

“I don’t think there’s any one standard bearer for the Obama legacy in this primary. There are multiple candidates who could carry that mantle,” said Ben LaBolt, former spokesman for Obama’s reelection campaign.

“A big question looming over the primary is: is this a moment for the longest record of experience or is this a moment for generational change within the party and a new vision within the party,” LaBolt said, noting that “even President Obama has talked about letting this be a moment for generational change and for others to lead and rise through the party and step up. So I don’t think it will be a completely clean shot if he tries to claim he’s the sole purveyor of his legacy.”

The generational split is clear in a February POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showing Biden is weakest with voters under the age of 30.

An Obama campaign veteran who had discussed working with Biden’s campaign said there’s a divide among former Obama staffers.  “A lot of us don’t want Joe to run. His time has passed and it’s not his moment,” the operative said. “The real Obama legacy is about the future, not the past. And if he runs, it’s going to put that legacy on trial in a Democratic primary where guys like Bernie [Sanders] are going to take shots at it and tarnish that legacy ... We want Joe to ride off into the sunset.”

Looking at the early state calendar, that support from black voters could be a big boost to Biden in South Carolina, where 60 percent of the primary electorate is black. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, has not endorsed any 2020 candidate but is a Biden ally who speaks favorably of him. . . . “There’s some love for Joe Biden,” he said, “and it’s because of Barack Obama and how he stood by him. People remember.”

Time will tell if Biden is delusional or not. Meanwhile, I have decided so far who I do not like and support but not yet found the candidate that has won my allegiance and who I think can successfully take on Trump. 

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) Endorses Mayor Pete

The political endorsement race has begun and Pete Buttigieg - who will be headlining the Virginia Democrats' Blue Commonwealth Gala in Richmond in June (yes, the husband and I are going) to help raise funds to flip control of the Virginia General Assembly to Democrats - has won the endorsement of Don Beyer, a former two term Virginia Lt. Governor and third term member of Congress from Northern Virginia. As Beyer notes in a piece in the Washington Post, Buttigieg communicates a rational progressive agenda while also displaying attributes that may ring positive with moderates and independents.  Stated another way, Buttigieg is not so far to the left - even though he's gay - as to lose moderates and independents.  Here are article highlights:

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg won his first endorsement from a member of Congress on Wednesday, as Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) announced that he was backing the young Indiana politician known as “Mayor Pete.”

“Everybody I talk to — even my Republican brother-in-law I had breakfast with — is excited about him,” Beyer said in an interview.

Beyer initially did not know what to make of the millennial mayor of South Bend, Ind., who formally announced his White House bid this month.

“I started off as a huge skeptic,” he said. But he looked into the 37-year-old’s background and liked what he saw: He’s a former Naval intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes scholar who speaks seven languages, a Midwesterner who does not shy away from religion and a mayor with executive experience that many contenders lack.

What really won Beyer over was a series of interviews he heard Buttigieg give. “The thing that really most impressed me was listening to him,” he said. “I think he’s the most articulate of all the candidates we have. He speaks plainly but very thoughtfully. Politics is about communicating and being able to tell a story well. And I think he does it better than anyone I’ve seen since Barack Obama.”

Beyer endorsed Obama in early 2007 and volunteered on his campaign, knocking on doors for weeks in Iowa ahead of the state caucuses. Beyer, who is serving his third term in Congress, representing a deep-blue Northern Virginia district, plans to do similar work for Buttigieg.

“I endorsed Barack Obama early, having been moved by both his intelligence and his political capability,” Beyer said in a prepared statement. “I am similarly inspired by Mayor Pete. With him, I feel the promise of a new generation, and I see a way out of the darkness.

“In making this choice, I think of the qualities missing from the current occupant of the Oval Office. They are qualities that Pete Buttigieg exudes: decency, a grounding in history, optimism, a sophisticated grasp of the world and of the dangers of bigotry, and a generosity of spirit. The Democratic field is full of people with these traits, but Pete possesses them to an uncommon degree, and, just as importantly, has a gift for communicating them.”

Beyer said he does not think most voters will care that Buttigieg is gay, saying that America “has largely worked through” anti-gay sentiment. That the mayor is “in a stable marriage with somebody he obviously loves tells us good things about him,” he said.

As for his age, Beyer noted that Buttigieg would be 39 by the time he’d take office — “not much younger than Teddy Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and they did quite well.”

Democrats Take Note: Bernie Sanders Scares A Lot of People

While in the top tier of candidates in early polls, Bernie Sanders has lots of baggage and is potentially frightening to moderates that must be won over in the 2020 general election if Democrats hope to prevail.  Yes, Bernie's cult like followers - who are, in my opinion, very much akin to Trump's in terms of blind, unreasoning devotion - do not want to hear concerns or criticisms, but with so much on the line in the 2020 election, rational thought is required. A thoughtful piece in the Washington Post does a balance assessments of the liabilities that Sanders could bring to the fore if he were the Democrat nominee.  To Sanders supporters, all I can say is that not wanting to hear valid concerns does not make them any less true.  Here are excerpts:

I asked a group of Democratic and liberal-leaning consultants, pollsters, economists and political scientists what the likelihood of a Sanders’ nomination was, what his prospects would be in the general election, and how Democratic House and Senate candidates might fare with Sanders at the top of the ticket. When necessary, I offered them the opportunity to speak on background — with no direct attribution — to encourage forthcoming responses.

The answers I got from Democrats who make their living in politics revealed considerable wariness toward Sanders — the response many Sanders supporters would expect.

“Point 1, I am very worried about Bernie. Socialism is a problem word,” a Democratic operative with ties to the party establishment said: Sure he has a “stick it to the elites” message that could explain it, but it’s a problem. Point 2, Democrats are doing very well in the suburbs. Bernie could threaten that shift with an economic frame that is just too much for them. He could become a huge problem in the suburbs of Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Orange County, etc. where the key Senate and House races will take place.

“Bernie is one Democrat who probably cannot win,” said a second operative:
I worry about his style for swing women voters. His proposals are good and have agenda-setting strength. I think his language of no alternative-no compromise-socialist will spook too many voters.

In the most important election in the lifetime of many Democrats — with Trump poised for a second term — the electability of the Democratic nominee is the top concern.

Democratic primary voters and caucus goers are more liberal than voters in the general election, including the Democratic electorate as a whole. They are more likely to be comfortable with the idea of socialism and more tolerant of what the Daily Mail called Sanders’ “very 1960s love life,” of the content of Sanders’ early writings and of his son born outside of marriage — matters, for better or worse, that are of concern to socially moderate and more conservative voters on whom much is riding in this election.

Sanders and his supporters have argued that his early history is part of a no longer relevant past and that he intends to run on his platform, not on his personality or personal life. Nonetheless, if Sanders wins the nomination, Trump and his Republican Party are certain to try to make the young Bernie Sanders a major issue.

What are the politics of Sanders’ commitment to democratic socialism?

An August 2018 YouGov survey found that 26 percent of voters had a favorable view of socialism (6 percent “very favorable,” 20 percent “somewhat favorable”) while 42 percent had an unfavorable view (31 percent very, 11 percent somewhat).

During the primaries, Sanders is unlikely to face demands for a persuasive response to charges that the domestic spending programs he supports — Medicare for All, a federal job guarantee, a Green New Deal, free tuition at public colleges, universal child care — would cost trillions of dollars. The libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimated that Medicare for All alone would cost “$32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation,” which would require tax hikes on the middle class as well as on the rich and corporations — a sum that would, in fact, be virtually impossible to raise or procure.

Daron Acemoglu, a professor of economics at M.I.T., who has thought deeply about global and domestic inequality, draws a clear distinction between socialism and social democracy. In Acemoglu’s view, which he expressed by email, Sanders’ “economists don’t understand basic economics. They are not just dangerous, they are clueless.” Socialist regimes “from Cuba to the eastern bloc have been disastrous both for economic prosperity and individual freedom.”

Acemoglu questions Sanders’ economic sophistication, arguing that social democracy, when practiced by competent governments, is a phenomenal success. Everywhere in the west is to some degree social democratic, but the extent of this varies. We owe our prosperity and freedom to social democracy.

The trick, though, Acemoglu argues, is that social democracy “did not achieve these things by taxing and redistributing a lot. It achieved them by having labor institutions protecting workers, encouraging job creation and encouraging high wages.”

Jagdish N. Bhagwati, an economist at Columbia and an expert in development economics and international trade, . . . described Sanders’ thinking as “a little bit naive,” displaying little “understanding of the complexity of the issues he raises.” Sanders, Bhagwati says, is in great need of “first-rate people to sort things out.”

In Bhagwati’s view, if Sanders continues to propose solutions to major problems “from the heart and not the head,” he will “not get anywhere other than shadow politics.”

Democrats are banking on making the 2020 election a referendum on Trump. How likely are the more controversial aspects of Sanders’ politics to blunt that strategy and turn the contest into a referendum on both Trump and Sanders?

A March NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of all voters described themselves as “very uncomfortable” with Trump’s bid for re-election, and another 9 percent said they have “some reservation.” None of the Democratic candidates were viewed with the same level of discomfort, but Sanders had the highest percentage of voters, at 37 percent, who were “very uncomfortable” with his campaign, along with 21 percent who said they have “some reservations.” . . . In other words, Sanders carries a lot of baggage.

Democratic primaries, as I mentioned earlier, are hardly a proving ground for how well a democratic socialist — and a self-declared social and cultural outsider — will sell in November, something Trump and the Republican Party are already gearing up to turn into a major 2020 issue.

The question extends beyond Sanders. Democratic constituencies competing to pick a candidate to square off against Trump next year face a difficult-to-resolve problem. Will they find themselves flying blind, entangled in a cause more than a campaign as they leave too much of the middle-of-the-road electorate behind 

As I have said before, in a general election, I do not view Sanders as electable.  Democrats need a candidate who can win in November 2020.

More Wednesday Male Beauty

I'm not typically into facial hair, but I might make an exception  . .

The Diminishing Power of Trump's Lies

Outside of Donald Trump's white supremacist and right wing Christian extremist base where the truth and objective facts have never mattered, the Mueller report has helped to do one thing, namely demonstrate just how dishonest Trump and many of his minion - e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders who learned to lie from a master liar, her father - have been from day one of the Trump campaign.  Indeed, the volume of lies has only increased. In my view, it is to a point where the press needs to start skipping White House press briefings and cease reporting what are deliberate lies.  Why disseminate Trump's lies for him and a bunch of lies for liars who have proven their credibility to be less than that of a sleazy carnival barker selling snake oil?  Stop amplifying the lies. Thankfully, some in the press seem to be waking up to reality and questioning their actions in broadcasting known lies and untruths. A piece in Politico looks at the growing media reluctance to accept Trump's non-stop lies.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large. They’re in for a long wait.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

“Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview.

Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

“I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.  Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his staffers have responded to the Mueller report with nearly simultaneous claims of vindication and frustration. [Trump's] The president’s delight that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has been quickly replaced with rage.

After initially claiming “total exoneration,” [Trump] the president now calls some of the report’s findings “total bulls--t,” and he has bashed ex-staffers who supplied detailed notes about crucial behind-the-scenes moments at the White House. Trump is particularly furious with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump repeatedly told him to oust Mueller, a directive he ignored. The president denies McGahn’s assertion, although Mueller found ample evidence to substantiate it.

“Journalists shouldn't take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that [Trump] this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn't trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker.

“And we didn't even need Mueller to tell us that,” Baker added. “Every White House reporter has experienced it over the last couple years. Time after time, he has denied things that were confirmed elsewhere.”

Earlier this month, for example, Trump denied reports that he had offered then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon had he been jailed for illegally blocking migrant from entering the country.

Privately, White House reporters said they felt vindicated by Mueller’s report, noting that it supported much of their reporting about the president over the past two years. They have no plans to apologize for their coverage.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his aides from calling for journalists to beg for forgiveness. . . The New York Times has not apologized to the president for its 2016 coverage.

Asked whether reporters’ approach to White House coverage should change in the aftermath of the report, Bob Woodward said, “I don’t think so. I think, by and large, people have maintained their aggressive edge.”

Woodward, in an interview, added that reporters should focus less on allegations of Russian collusion and more on what he called the “governing crisis” created by the internal chaos in the White House. Issues like Trump’s policy toward Iran are deeply consequential and warrant deeper scrutiny from the press, he said.

Trust nothing that Trump and his sycophants say and cease giving him a platform to disseminate lies.  Question everything coming out of his thoroughly dishonest regime. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

U.S. Supreme Court: How to Preserve White Power in Four Easy Steps

With Donald Trump's two appointments to the U,S. Supreme Court - Neil Gorsuch, who believes right wing Christian beliefs trump the civil rights of others, and Brett Kavanaugh -having shifted the balance of the Court to the far right, the Court now stands poised to implement the pro-white, pro-right wing Christian, bigotry of the Trump/GOP base.  Somewhat incredibly, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts is now the swing vote.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, a series of cases have the potential to preserve disproportionate white power thanks in no small part to the peevish Bernie Sanders who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Whatever legal horrors may be forth coming, responsible citizens never forget to remember that these Sanders voters and Jill Stein voters ushered in this potential nightmare (something 20% of Sanders supporters have said they will do again in 2020 if their cult leader is not the Democrat nominee);  Here are column highlights from the Washington Post on today's oral arguments and what may be forthcoming:

The Trump administration and Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices Tuesday held a legal seminar on how to preserve white hegemony in four easy steps.

Step 1: Devise a discriminatory policy.
In this case, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, after consulting with Stephen Bannon, who was then President Trump’s nationalist “alt-right” adviser, resolved to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census for the first time in 70 years. This would have the well-documented effect of reducing responses to the census by Latinos (from citizens and noncitizens alike), resulting in the undercounting of that population for purposes of congressional apportionment and $900 billion in federal funding.

Step 2: Create a pretext.
In this case, Ross lied to Congress, saying the Justice Department wanted  the citizenship question added to help enforce the Voting Rights Act — a claim three lower courts dismissed as pretextual. In fact, emails showed that Ross (with White House encouragement) was the one who pushed for the citizenship question and quietly dragooned the Justice Department into asking for the question to be added.

Step 3: Muddy the waters.
In this case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco and conservative justices raised doubts about the statistical capabilities of the Census Bureau, claiming it couldn’t accurately “quantify” the damage that would be done by adding a citizenship question because the alternative way to get such information was an “untested statistical model.” Why “untested”? Because the administration denied its experts’ requests to run tests before leaping to a decision.

Step 4: Blame the victim.
Francisco, the top Trump administration lawyer, saved this nastiness for the final minute of the 80-minute argument. If the court disallows the citizenship question, he said, “you are effectively empowering any group in the country to knock off any question on the census if they simply get together and boycott it,” he said, raising the possibility of a boycott by gender-nonbinary people.

For decades, the decennial census sent to each household hasn’t included a citizenship question (it’s instead asked on surveys), and for good reason. Latino residents — legal or illegal — tend to resist such questions out of an (unfounded) fear the government might use the information against them or their relatives. Census Bureau research has projected a drop of at least 5.1 percent from noncitizen households if the question is added, part of an estimated undercount of 6.5 million people. This contradicts the Constitution’s requirement for an “actual enumeration of the people” — not just citizens.

But the conservative justices seemed willing to overlook Ross’s lie and the administration’s dubious justifications.

Francisco began with a deception, saying the citizenship question “has been asked as part of the census in one form or another for nearly 200 years.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Francisco the same question three times before he acknowledged that the citizenship question had been abandoned in 1960, in part, because it would depress the count of noncitizens. . . . So the administration is free to disregard millions of Latinos in the census — and the courts have no say.

This seemed to be fine with Republican-appointed justices. Justice Samuel Alito said he was satisfied that the accuracy would be 98 percent if the citizenship question were asked (never mind those 6 million or so left out).

Trump’s two appointees developed a newfound fondness for foreign law: Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the United Nations recommends a citizenship question, and Justice Neil Gorsuch said “virtually every English-speaking country” asks one.

More disturbing were their counterfactual theories claiming some other, unknown variable might cause Latinos not to answer the census. (No such notions appeared in the case record, and census experts had already controlled for other variables.)

The justifications all sounded a bit “contrived,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, like so much “post-hoc rationalization” of a decision made for another reason.

When you consider that the indisputable effect of adding the citizenship question will be to suppress Latinos’ census participation — and by extension to suppress their political clout — it is difficult not to be cynical about what that reason is.

That's right, a 6.5 million person under count.  To put that in easily understood terms, that is more than 10 times the population of Wyoming or larger than the populations of the Washington, Houston, Miami or Philadelphia metropolitan areas. 

My big complaint with the column - and the mainstream media in general - is that it persists in using the word "conservative" to describe justices and others who are in fact outright racists and bigots.  In the context of the upcoming LGBT employment non-discrimination cases before the Court this term and next term, no doubt "conservative" will be used instead of homophobic and anti-LGBT bigots.  It is far past time that the media begins to call out judges, justices, elected officials and candidates for office for what they truly are and throw away the false and deceptive term "conservative" once and for all. 

Biden Reportedly Delays Alleged Campaign Announcement

As the number of Democrat presidential nominee candidates still increasing - some I have to say I have no idea why they are even running other than out of vanity - word on the street is that Joe Biden's supposed announcement of his candidacy tomorrow is going to be delayed. While some see him as able to challenge Trump, his history of gaffes and failed primary runs - and his age - make me wonder if he doesn't suffer from the same vanity syndrome as the other largely unknowns who have thrown their hats in the ring and gained zero traction.  Like Sanders, I simple do not see Biden having the ability to unify Democrats and successfully challenge Trump in a battle between geriatrics. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the apparent delay which I for one wish would become permanent.  Here are article excerpts:

On Wednesday, former vice-president Joe Biden was expected to announce his candidacy for president with a video shot in part in his hometown of Scranton, followed by either a rally in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or Charlottesville, Virginia. But according to Edward-Isaac Dovere, the Atlantic reporter who initially broke the details of Biden’s announcement, the campaign tip-off may be delayed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on Monday that Biden would not be traveling to Charlottesville on Wednesday, and that “considerations” involving the sites in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had been “scuttled.”

“Things are fluid,” a Biden adviser told Time on Friday. Despite that fluidity, Biden is still accepting campaign donations prior to his reportedly pushed-back announcement.

A former Biden aide also spoke with Time on Friday, with a level of candor that suggests they wouldn’t have been surprised by the shuffling of the announcement: “I’ve never seen anything so half-assed. They’re improvising and doing last-minute planning. The guy has been running for President since 1987 and can’t figure the basics out, like where to stand on his first day? This should make everyone very nervous.”

Politico reports that Biden could announce on Thursday, while noting that the timing is still “in flux.” Also in the report is a “battle plan” for the former veep, whose campaign intends to secure key union endorsements, like the International Association of Firefighters, and to rally around Biden’s support within the backbone of the party Establishment.

Despite allegations of unwanted physical contact, Biden has led the Democratic field throughout most of the primary race’s early months — he’s leading with 30 percent in the most current Morning Consult poll, six points ahead of the next contender, Bernie Sanders. But another Biden insider who spoke to Time expects that Biden’s lead during his non-campaign will be harder to maintain post-announcement: “This guy’s best day is the day he announces. Everything after that gets worse.”

Biden needs to NOT run.