Polls opened here in #Londonderry at 6AM. One voter told me she was the 1,501 person to vote. Steady turnout so far this morning! #NHPrimary pic.twitter.com/dv5ZvkSmBX
— Monica Ricci (@MonicaWWLP) February 11, 2020
NEW – @AndrewYang is dropping out. Late last night, we sat for an exclusive interview about what’s next for him, what he wants out of the Yang Gang and what the other candidates need to learn from his https://t.co/L6oSkr0mK5
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) February 12, 2020
NEW – @MichaelBennet is dropping out too. “Whether you knew it or not, we were having a great time together,” he says of New Hampshire in Concord. “Tonight is not going to be our night. But let me say this to New Hampshire. You may see me once again.” pic.twitter.com/jsHE4gb9Dc
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) February 12, 2020
I’m sure Bennet is a fine Senator, and may even become president in some less fraught year, assuming we survive this one. And Andrew Yang… meant well. But with a better signal-to-noise ratio, maybe Kamala Harris and/or Cory Booker and/or Julian Castro are still in the race right now. So my sympathy for these guys is limited.
Take a hint, Deval Patrick. Maybe Mike Bloomberg will offer you a cabinet position, if you drop out and endorse him before Super Tuesday.
Hardly worth complaining about Tom ThStheyer, because only the threat of violence or a big on-camera french kiss from Bernie could get him to go away now, and I’m not sure about the first one.
One thing remains true: No one really knows what’s going to happen. Let the voters vote.
— laura olin (@lauraolin) February 12, 2020
NOT DEAD YET:
It really doesn't get sadder than this. https://t.co/V5rkLidgpK
— German Lopez (@germanrlopez) February 12, 2020
Reminder: NH Is for Ratfvckers –
"I hear a lot of Republicans tomorrow will vote for the weakest candidate possible of the Democrats," Trump says of the crossover primary in NH, where independents can vote in either primary.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 11, 2020
Horse-race touts, of course, are lovin’ it.
NEW from me on the coming war of attrition and why this Democratic field is so flawed that even Biden still has a chance https://t.co/8TX0KZ0Ooz
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) February 11, 2020
BGinCHI
Thankfully, only 59 states left.
John Revolta
Can I just say that I love the word Winnow?
A Ghost To Most
@BGinCHI: Thanks, Obama.
Ask Me About My Gluten Sensitivity
It’s absolutely astounding to me that Iowa and NH are the first two primaries.
This has to change.
PsiFighter37
Warren and Biden are both on life support. If the top 3 in NH are a sign of who is moving forward, put me down for Klobuchar.
The Dangerman
Reposting from downstairs … just because as I step out for dinner…
I think Warren would fit really well in the VP slot; she kicks Trump in the teeth nicely and you know Trump is aching to drop the Pocahontas shit at the risk of ignoring the Top of the Ticket to do it. Temptations, like Girl Scout Cookies (the Cookies, Donald, the COOKIES, not the Scouts, you pervert).
Klobuchar/Warren? I dunno. An all woman tag team on Trump would be interesting. Without going to an Anagram thingy, I think I see a “Bra” and a “Whack” in there. Now, that would be fitting for Donald, I think.
Crossovers should go the way of caucuses.
patroclus
Klobuchar in the top tier!! America, fzck yeah!!
Baud
@The Dangerman: 2016
Mandarama
I hate everything. Can’t this season be a dream sequence we wake up from?
BGinCHI
Can Warren get back in?
Hoping Super Tuesday is her day. I can’t believe she’s losing to the fucking mayor of South Bend.
Barbara
@patroclus: 😊 I don’t love all of her political stances but I love her attitude. She reminds me of me.
Baud
@BGinCHI: Get back in where? She hasn’t dropped out.
guachi
Jennifer Rubin’s columns supporting Klobuchar are going to be lit.
BGinCHI
@Baud: Into contention.
Baud
@BGinCHI: I wish, but I don’t see which segment of voters she starts to attract at this point.
Martin
I like Bennett, but he’s basically a jar of mayonnaise in suit, when you need to be sriracha to survive this shitshow which we call american politics.
Anne Laurie
Agree, but New Hampshire will be the last state to give them up, if that happy day ever arrives. Leaving aside the ratfvckers, NH is full of yappily principled INDEPENDENTS who make up their own minds every four years… and it’s totally coincidental that their minds always agree with the philosophy of the worst Repub running.
PsiFighter37
@Baud: Sounds like something someone from Russia would twll
him to say.
ThresherK
@The Dangerman: Agreed on the crossovers.
Tired of hearing the naive (that’s not any of you, Jackals) among lefties all hepped up about who’s gonna do great in open primaries by getting R’s to vote for X.
John Revolta
Hilarious. Trumpf went through all this shit over Biden, and he’ll probably be out by St Patty’s Day.
different-church-lady
This is starting to seem more like an acid trip than a primary.
BGinCHI
@Baud: I know. And no matter how much I scream at the TV, it’s not helping.
Smart TV my ass.
trollhattan
@John Revolta:
Susan Collins is trying to winnow her furrows.
Anne Laurie
@Baud: One more demonstration that Senator Sanders is never right.
BGinCHI
@John Revolta: Sadly, since it’s the only day malarkey is useful.
Anya
I am so sad about Warren. The orange vulgarian is going to gloat and this makes me really angry but I wanted her to come strong.
If Biden doesn’t perform well in South Carolina, he really needs to drop out. Still can’t understand why is his campaign this bad?
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Have you tried reasoning with it?
PsiFighter37
And you think that both Booker and Harris are out of this field, and Former Mayor Pete is a top contender. Yuck.
Martin
@Anne Laurie: Problem is that in order to achieve that with closed primaries, you need to do away with easy voter registration. My mom changed her party affiliation the day of the Iowa caucus. That’s good – we want that. So closing the primary while sticking to ease of voting won’t produce the result you want.
And is there a case where ratfucking ever actually changed the final result for the nominee? Sure, it delays things a bit, but Democrats appear to have always prevailed in the end.
trollhattan
@Anne Laurie: CA Dems allow independents (“Decline to state”) to vote in the Dem primary, CA Repubs do not. NB Decline to state outnumber Republicans in California.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I didn’t see that in any of the menus.
BGinCHI
@PsiFighter37: This.
Baud
@Anya: He’s got a good ad team, but nothing else is clicking, including the candidate.
PsiFighter37
@Anya: His campaign was thrown together late, and it seems like his lackadaisical debate performances measured up to his effort put into running a political campaign. Talk about one of the bigger paper tigers in recent political history. I thought despite all of this, Biden would start off better.
I wonder if he makes it to SC at this point – if African-American voters abandon him in droves in the next round of polling, he should dip out to save whatever face he will have left.
Eljai
@BGinCHI: Warren at least has a Grass Roots structure already in place, so she may be down, but not out. I wonder how Buttigieg and Klobuchar will deal with the increased scrutiny.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He needs to talk about where they’ll go for spring break before he decides to notice his campaign failed to launch?
Martin
@Anya: Biden is being dropped as a candidate because Trump and the GOP are cool with fucking him over regarding Hunter. Why invite a repeat of 2016 ‘but her emails’?
Don’t blame Democrats for not wanting to stand in the line of fire of a DOJ and Senate arrayed against the party nominee.
David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch
Good speech by Amy.
Good timing. Looks like Mayor Pete and Grandpa Simpson will wait until everyone is asleep.
This deserves a contribution. https://amyklobuchar.com/donations/
BGinCHI
@Eljai: Good points. My hope rests there. She’ll keep fighting, at least.
patroclus
Amy’s speech was very good – touched on the rule of law (very relevant today) and all of the other bases for Dems, but the opening of “Hello America, I’m Amy Klobuchar and I’m gonna beat Donald Trump” was perhaps her introduction to a lot of voters who haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been for her for months and I’m thrilled beyond description that her tortoise-like campaign is actually paying off! Bernie who? Pete who? Klobuchar should be our candidate!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Harris flaming out so early was one of the biggest surprises this cycle. Booker fizzling did not surprise me at all
Anya
This is the worst timeline. It’s like we’re in world of Flashpoint. Where is Barry Allen to reset the timeline?
Lyrebird
@BGinCHI:
I’m actually psyched she is getting a solid 4th place in NH. (ETA – yes this is an over generalized comment, but based on numerous years living there.) NH peeps in my experience distrust Southerners and hate people from Mass. above all, so I did not expect many to vote for her in NH.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, that really hurt.
tam1MI
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He entered the campaign to crush Warren’s hopes. He has succeeded in that objective. What else is there for him to do?
Baud
@Lyrebird: What state do you like for her? She needs to start coming in first or second somewhere by at least Super Tuesday.
guachi
I think it would be interesting if the final delegate count was 8/8/8 – a three-way delegate tie for first. Because you know BernieBros would be screaming that Sanders really won because he got 0.5% more votes than Buttigieg, or something.
PsiFighter37
@tam1MI: Oh please…Deval Patrick had less than zero impact on Warren’s performance in NH. Good grief.
Butter Emails
@Baud:
Remind me again, which state has Klobuchar taken 2nd in?
debbie
I cannot believe people are beginning to think about writing off Elizabeth Warren. Jesus, she fought for the fucking CFPB. She will fight for this, and fuck anyone who is dismissive of her.
Christ, all day I’m hearing NPR use the word “disarray” and suddenly, suddenly discovering that Amy Klobuchar could be the only one who can save us from Trump. Or maybe Bloomberg.
What a fucking letdown. From Progressive to Republican Lite in mere months. No wonder I’ve started yelling at my radio again. Don’t settle before the hard part even begins.
Martin
@Baud: Nevada has been pretty open. No recent polls though. So maybe there.
PJ
@PsiFighter37: I think Biden would like to be President (thinks it’s his duty, even) but Biden didn’t want to run for President in 2016 (yes, I know, Beau, but even before Beau was sick, Biden didn’t have his act together – Hillary was on that the minute she stepped down from being Secretary of State), and the fact that he delayed making a decision about it until late in the 2019 season, after more than two years of President Trump, is a clear indicator that he didn’t want to run for President this time either.
alikins
I’m about by the Politico article that had one small paragraph about Warren near the end. I admit I’m really fricken biased for her. It still ruffles my feathers that the media went apeshit about who came in 1st, 2nd, and 4th so as to completely ignore Warren. I don’t want to be imagining monsters everywhere, but it really feels like the media is doing its best to erase my candidate. I hope she comes back with Super Tuesday.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was actually surprised at how little support Booker got but you’re right, Harris was a shock. My grandma says her attack on Biden did her in because Dem primary voters didn’t like her kicking Biden down like that. I don’t know about that. I mean, the Dems are abandoning Biden so why punish Harris and not Sanders?
Miss Bianca
Trump squats like a fat orange toad in the WH, Republicans are so spineless that they don’t even hold primaries in some states, and yet once again, as far as the media are concerned, it’s the DEMOCRATS who have a “weak field”.
This type of shit is why I hate journalists, and I *am* a journalist!
PsiFighter37
@guachi: I personally hope Former Mayor Pete scores a comeback victory – anything to anger the Bernie Bros.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Bloomberg announces he is spending even more money tomorrow. Big-money donors would start donating heavily to Klobuchar if they could read the tea leaves.
catclub
“I’m going to Minnesota nice kick Trump in the nuts… repeatedly.”
BGinCHI
@debbie: NPR sucks.
It’s like Cilizza, but with even more mediocrity and clichés.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady:
IKR?
PJ
@debbie: NPR has, in my adult lifetime, always been Republican Lite.
Another Scott
@debbie: I heard the same NPR reports you did. It was really, really bad.
As I said downstairs, I just donated to SP Warren again.
It’s still early.
She’s still the person that I think would do the best job in fixing what’s broken and moving the country forward.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Lyrebird: Warren gave a great speech tonight and by going early, got some good free press.
She singled out Amy for praise as Amy singled her out as well.
The women are sticking together. And Warren called out unnamed people for “cursing” other Democratic candidates in Iowa. I think Liz now hates Bernie, although she will never say it.
ETA. Warren is clearly going to the convention with whatever delegates she has.
PsiFighter37
@Anya: The biggest mistake Democrats in 2016 and 2020 made were playing nice with Wilmer. Someone should’ve gone scorched-earth on his ass early and often.
Baud
@Butter Emails: None, but she’s rising right now. She’ll also have to do well enough by Super Tuesday to be viable.
Anya
@Martin: Honestly, I thought the fact that Trump and GOP are attacking him would’ve helped him with the Dem primary voters. I think as Dem voters we’ve developed some sort of PTSD from Trump’s win that we’re just making some sort of decisions based on fear and loathing rather than who’s actually the best candidate with the most realistic solutions to our problems. I am really lost and I don’t understand what’s happening.
PsiFighter37
@Immanentize: She should. Warren faces long odds to be the nominee, but I’d be eternally grateful to her (or anyone else) if she (or anyone else) took down Wilmer before they dropped out. And since they mostly have the same voter base, she would be most effective. YMMV.
tokyokie
I hate seeing Mayor Pete doing well. We cannot beat der Trumpenführer without the enthusiastic support of blacks, and I just don’t see blacks going all-out for him.
Martin
@debbie: The only reason early states matter is because they keep the money coming in. The delegates don’t matter – at all. It’s all about narrative.
So if Warren can fundraise enough to be competitive on Super Tuesday, then yeah, she’ll fight through. The upside is that nobody is really pulling in more than 25% of votes, so it’s pretty open. The downside is that donors may not see it that way. The shock is that there’s a candidate that will spend at least 10x as much as the frontrunner on Super Tuesday. We’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t even know how to predict how much it’ll matter.
David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch
56% of the vote is in and Wilmer is leading by a razor thin 2%.
That is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY below exceptions. If he can’t generate a Revolution!™ in his own back yard, then where can he.
Baud
@Anya: Me too. Maybe Biden could have taken better advantage of it. He has seemed even more listless lately.
Immanentize
@Miss Bianca: And not that high quality window pane I got in San Fran.
Adam L Silverman
Quotes from the former NH GOP Chair:
Anya
@PsiFighter37: Absolutely agree with this. Everyone is treating him with kid gloves. Mayor Pete should finish him off. It’s not like there is a love lost between him and Sanders supporters.
Adam L Silverman
@The Dangerman:
Dude: PHRASING!!!!!
Baud
@tokyokie: If he doesn’t improve with the black vote, he won’t be the nominee.
guachi
The irritating NYT needle predicts Sanders with a 1.0 point win. Delegate breakdown of 9/8/7 for Sanders/Buttigieg/Klobuchar. There are 8 statewide delegates and 8 for each of the two Congressional districts. That means it’s 3/3/2 statewide and 3/3/2 for one district and 3/2/3 for the other. So Klobuchar is in 2nd (or, more unlikely, 1st) in one Congressional district.
Archon
Warren has basically no real path to the nomination and that’s a shame.
Lyrebird
@Baud: I’m even more out of the loop than usual with family stuff this year, but I did read somewhere yesterday that Warren had a good chance of winning the nom if things are still unclear at the convention. That sounds nerve-wracking, though.
I do know that NH is also the whitest place I’ve ever lived… can’t speak to the IA situation bc I don’t think I’ve been there.
SC will be very interesting. Nevada will be interesting. I should not make predictions, since I’d never guessed we’d still have Mayor Pete and not have Harris or Booker in the race. I wish we could fire Cilizza and Todd and the other touts.
Could we pretend I’ve just closed with a clever remark about the Baud! 2020 campaign?
Marcopolo
Please folks who are feeling queasy take a deep breath or ten. Eat some ice cream. Do something that makes you happy. Whatever happens tonight life will continue tomorrow. Once again, someone will wind up being the D nominee (at least I think so but June is like a century off in Trump years).
If you still have a horse in the race you can still throw them some change or make some calls for them or knock some doors for them. If you don’t, try to find a new horse you like. Rinse, repeat until someone has a majority of the delegates.
Or find a state/local candidate/issue to put your energy behind (such as getting Medicaid expansion on the ballot here in MO). The goal is getting voters to the polls for candidates & causes we support in Nov.
Anne Laurie
She didn’t really ‘flame out’ — she withdrew before her campaign could mire down in debt & screw over her staffers / volunteers. Which makes me think — hope — that she’ll be back for another cycle, with more experience & attention from the mainstream media.
Baud
That would be way below expectations.
Adam L Silverman
@John Revolta: It worked, didn’t it. Just like the Benghazi select committee worked. And the email bullshit worked. The point wasn’t to use this against VP Biden in the general, it was to make it so he wouldn’t be the nominee because the President and the rest of the GOP wants to run against Senator Sanders.
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: …Are we still doing Phrasing? :)
Miss Bianca
@tokyokie: I wouldn’t mind seeing Mayor Pete doing so well if I didn’t think he was doing it at the expense of better-qualified candidates. And that’s more on America, frankly, than it is on him. If we took elections seriously, neither he nor Trump nor any other political lightweight would have got as far as they have.
This article kind of summed up how I was feeling about it. Substitute “male privilege” for “white privilege” and you’ve got it exactly.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/11/pete-buttigieg-black-americans-democrats
debbie
OT, I just watched Trump’s Oval Office remarks about his buddy Roger Stone. He was looking exceedingly bronzed, but it extended all the way to his (alleged) hairline.
Anya
@tokyokie: what if Stacy Abrams was his running mate? White straight men can all (obviously the good allies are excluded) lose what’s left of their minds.
TS (the original)
@Anya:
He lost two other earlier campaigns, without much above a murmur – main claim to fame is being Obama’s VP – and I have never been very impressed with his VP achievements (if there were any?)
Martin
@Anya: Look, I like underdogs. In a fair fight, give me the skinny kid with fire in her eyes.
This isn’t a fair fight. This isn’t Biden vs Trump. This is Biden vs Trump and the DOJ and the State Dept and the IRS, and the Senate that covers for them. We just heard Lindsay Graham say that Rudes will be giving all of his dirt directly to Barr. The IRS turned over Hunters tax returns to the Senate while withholding Trumps. This is not a winnable fight. That’s what the impeachment is bringing home to Democrats.
Which candidate stands the best chance against the federal government? That’s the fight.
Immanentize
@Baud: in politics, a win is a win, but sheesh, that is a sad and sorry win after 2016. He is flailing like Biden.
LC
@guachi: But the statewides are 5 and 3. I think they are doing the math wrong.
Each district should go 3,3,2 with Klo getting the 2.
The 5 statewides should go 2,2,1.
The other 3 statewides go 1,1,1.
That would make it 9-9-6. I guess Klo could have caught Pete in one of the districts but it seems very unlikely.
guachi
@Baud: Definitely. If Buttigieg can get to 2nd in the district he’s currently 3rd in then he and Sanders will each get 9 delegates and that would be a VERY poor performance for Sanders.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: After Iowa, NH, and Nevada only 150 delegates will have been won. By the time SC and Super Tuesday happens 1,700 will have been won. She came in 3rd in Iowa and got delegates. She came in 4th tonight and did not. Klobuchar came in outside the top four in Iowa and in the top three tonight. No reason for anyone to panic in either of those campaigns.
guachi
@LC: Oh, sorry if I have it wrong. I didn’t realize the statewide delegates were awarded in two different lumps.
All I know is Klobuchar is often at 7 delegates (it’s now 9/9/6 predicted) so I assume Klobuchar is 2nd in one of the two districts.
trollhattan
Today’s top-of-the-fold Far Side* is dog heaven. Looks fun.
*Larson launched a website a few weeks ago. No new material so far, but not a problem.
Immanentize
@TS (the original): I heard Biden’s speech in SC tonight and it was puzzling, even to his audience, to whom he was clearly trying to pander. I think the Biden magic done dried up. And Amy is better than Pete, so I expect her to work that lane hard.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: That reset didn’t go well.
Immanentize
@LC: Isn’t it possible that Warren got to 15 in a district?
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: We’ll need to see some credentials. Do you have a press pass?
Tazj
@guachi: Decision Desk is predicting 9 delegates each for BS and Pete. They don’t expect that to change when the final votes come in and because I’m not a BS fan, I’m happy with that.
Butter Emails
@Archon:
It true – having taken 1st and 2nd in New Hampshire and Iowa, Bernie and Buttigieg simply have too much of a delegate lead to be overcome.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Michael Bennet
Peter Strzok
Amy Klobuchar
Cornel West
Any questions?
Kent
@Baud: the primary isn’t closed. He’s in it after all.
guachi
@Immanentize: Warren is at 10%. If she got to 15% in one district she’d have to be at 5% in the other and that isn’t happening.
It’s a poor showing for Warren and Sanders but probably not unlikely considering the number of liberal voters is very (and uncommonly) low in New Hampshire.
Anya
@Martin: I mean, once they vanquish Biden who’s to say they won’t direct all that arsenal against the Dem nominee or other frontrunners? These are lawless times and the DOJ is basically the Hoover FBI on steroids. Expect the worst and I am not sure our party is equipped to fight this. It’s gonna be really ugly and the media will cover it like it’s wrestle mania, and not an election. The sad part is a huge segment of our fellow citizens decided that they are okay with all of this.
zhena gogolia
@John Revolta:
I wonder what will happen to all those investigations into Hunter Biden that the Sunday shows were all excited about.
But Biden’s not out yet.
David 🎅🎄Merry Christmas🎄🎅 Koch
@guachi: New Hampshire is his best state. He won it by 23 points four years ago. He has the republicans voting for him to ratfuck the results.
A one point victory in his own backyard against an unknown 37 year old Mayor would be a total disaster.
Anne Laurie
Yeah, I’m semi-secretly a little delighted by that.
He was ‘persuaded’ to run back when it looked like Warren would take the ‘leftist’ lane, and the Wall Street dudes having hissies about her wanted to guarantee at least one early cycle of ‘Warren fails to meet expectations’ media. That turned out to be premature, since the money guys seemed to have underestimated the media’s active hostility towards any candidate who they perceived as ‘making them do homework’ — policy wonks, ugh.
Someone with better access than mine said last night that Patrick was assured Barack Obama would endorse him as soon as he got in. That was a miscalculation, if true — they’re friends, but President Obama endorsing before the national convention would be something outside his entire political philosophy.
different-church-lady
And as though everything wasn’t already shitty enough, Lyle Mays is dead.
Miss Bianca
@Martin:
Damn. It’s bleak, it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, I hate it. And yet…I kind of wish this were the message that was out there right now. From every candidate, basically. Making the case: “this is why I have the best chance of standing against the federal government.”
Kristine
Can Warren’s showing have resulted in part from anti-Massachusetts feeling?
Adam L Silverman
@catclub: Something along these lines.
Immanentize
Well at least Steyer is beating Gabbard!
zhena gogolia
@Eljai:
Has either of them been to Kyiv lately?
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: That’s the same thing that’s happened to the California GOP.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I gotcher press pass RIGHT HERE, buddy…!
Immanentize
@Anne Laurie: I think Deval was just “getting his name our there” for VP. Or somesuch. He ran, he faded out fast, but he ran.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
She’s not my fave, but I don’t think Klobuchar is Republican Lite.
Immanentize
@Kristine: most definitely. But she should have done better. It’s a conservative State, and they hate Massholes. Who doesn’t?
LC
@Immanentize:
Theoretically, but I don’t think anyone has her close. The distribution I’ve seen seems to be pretty even overall and I don’t think she is close.
I haven’t seen numbers that make it look like Klo is poaching one somewhere, either, but if people are seeing her at 7, maybe she is stealing past Pete somewhere.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Immanentize: Historically, Biden has been a terrible campaigner for president. This is not too surprising.
zhena gogolia
@Anya:
I thought it would help him too. But seeing Hunter Biden’s face splashed all over the Sunday shows just made me lose hope.
Martin
@Anya: Oh, they will absolutely go after the others. Who doesn’t think that the DOJ won’t open an investigation into Jane Sanders sometime in September?
That’s why I think Bloomberg will be the nominee. Yes, he’s a bad Democrat. Yes, he’s got his own skeletons. I don’t question any of that.
But he has unlimited money and the money class likes him – the folks that generally the GOP rely on. Nobody in the GOP will lose sleep if the federal government lands on Mayor Pete. There will be ramifications for going after Bloomberg. He can fight back. He’s the only one who can fight back. A lot of pragmatic voters are going to come to that same conclusion.
Immanentize
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: I heard pundits saying Biden looked like he had “fragility.”. Ouch. Put a fork in him. This will be how Bernie is dispatched as well. “He looks tired.”
tomtofa
@debbie: His hairline is fine for a guy in his 70s (says a guy in his 70s). Money does that. It’s what’s happening just behind the hairline that he seeks to conceal. Bad choices in hair surgeons.
He seeks to conceal a lot of things, and has made a lot of bad choices. The media accepts his combovers, in whatever area of his life.
Adam L Silverman
@Archon: Sure, while she stands 3rd in the delegate count after New Hampshire finishes.
Anne Laurie
The online Bernistas have been losing their shite over Buttigieg since his Iowa ‘upset.’ Even the mainstream media is getting a little uneasy about them — CNN had an article tut-tutting ‘divisive incivility’. (To which the Rose Emojis responded, of course, by sending a stream of tweets & responses that verified all the worst accusations against them.)
Nobody expects them to act like grownups, but the level of middle-school name-calling is causing former ‘democratic socialist’ supporters of Sanders’ platform to edge away. Complaining that Mayo Pete is a flaming [email protected], but also not actually the right kind of gay, and simultaneously he’s actually a straight guy pretending to be queer for leftist cred… lots of people had a bad time in seventh grade, but some of us managed to get over it!
catclub
it looks to me that turnout in NH is quite high, possibly higher than 2008.
So much for pundits claiming a lack of democratic enthusiasm.
Is my math wrong? I wonder if there are many more Democratic votes because the GOP primary is skippable for independents who can vote in the open democratic primary.
Adam L Silverman
@MisterForkbeard: We damn well better be!
Dave Larson
@zhena gogolia: He’s very close to done. Nevada is likely to be another bad showing, so he’s got one chance to save himself with a win in South Carolina. But his campaign is getting desperately low on funding, so even SC looks like a long shot.
And that’s a shame – he was the one candidate African American voters were enthusiastic about.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Unfortunately my mind keeps going over this scenario too. It’s tragic. But there it is.
Sab
@Barbara: You and Kay. Women lawyers do seem to love attitude. (Not criticizing.)
zhena gogolia
@Dave Larson:
Are you THE Dave Larson?
tomtofa
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes it did.
Anne Laurie
Incidentally, there’s a respite thread upstairs. Video of today’s Westminster agility trial winners — competitive, but not mean-spirited!
oldgold
@Lyrebird:
History does not support your proposition that NH primary voters are hard on Mass pols. 88 – Dukakis won; 92 – Tsongas won; 04 – Kerry won.
catclub
@Anne Laurie: It is great how they all bark going through the weaving poles.
Martin
@Miss Bianca: It’s very bleak. But I’m a numbers guy. My job has always been to take this pile of garbage information and chart a path to achieve a given set of objectives. And part of that was learning early on when to tell the bosses ‘you aren’t going to get this’. I know you want it. I want it too. It’s not going to happen. Focus your energy on how to shape that pile of garbage so it looks better in the next cycle and maybe we can get there then.
The 2016 rules were that Clinton was fighting Trump and Comey and the NYT and the Russians and we lost. In 2020 it’s worse. A LOT worse. Don’t lose sight of the fact that this will be much harder than 2016. Not because the electorate isn’t mad at Trump, they are, but Trump will openly solicit the Russians, the DOJ, everyone he can get to win. He will flood social media from Russia like last time. He will flip over every table and bully everyone to fight for him. This is going to take more than a grassroots campaign.
I think a guy like Pete is going to get dunked on hard. He’s a good guy, I like him, but who has his back? Who in government are afraid of him and his allies? Nobody. Who might they be afraid of? Find that person.
Anya
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe he’ll do it right this time since he didn’t create this one;-)
@Adam L Silverman: man, I am in a really bad place right now. Trump’s constant criminality and how can break every rule with relative impunity is hard to take. He put children in cages and we don’t even talk about it anymore. But you are right. This negativity doesn’t help and it tends to cloud reality.
Immanentize
Does anyone think Harry Reed will put his thumb on the scale in Nevada? If so, for whom?
mad citizen
Lawrence O’Donnell noted that 10% of NH Rs made the effort to vote for Weld today. Trying to get some indicator for November
Watching Mayor Pete’s speech. Trying to be open but I continue to find him robotically-boring. Dukakis.
Dave Larson
@zhena gogolia: I am. I owe you a Xmas card.
E
It’s kind of ridiculous to say that the person who got more votes in the first two contests and is currently ahead in Nevada as well, is flailing.
Anne Laurie
Wouldn’t go that far, myself — Warren’s from a generation and a region where women didn’t permit themselves to ‘hate’ easily.
But she was, according to most Congresscritters, Sanders’ only friend in the Senate. I think he’s lost that one friendship. Which he may not notice… until he needs it. He’s gonna find out that he’s been on camera with his fly undone, and nobody bothered to warn him. Office ‘gossip’, the stuff people need to know about what’s happening behind closed doors, won’t get shared with him. It’s not like his staffers are gonna be networking with the other guys’ staffers, either…
zhena gogolia
@Dave Larson:
Haha, don’t worry.
I contributed in memory of TR and they sent me a CD. (Haven’t listened yet.)
Off to bed now!
patroclus
I’m for Amy, so this is admittedly biased, but Buttigieg hasn’t mentioned one actual policy yet in over 10 minutes of speaking. is there any substance to his campaign or is it just platitudes and thanking his staffers and supporters?
Kent
In our current timeline, Mitt Romney is now Republican Lite. Amy Klobuchar would be one of the most progressive candidates to ever win the Democratic nomination. Easily.
Sab
@debbie: Sent her some bucks tonight, before she has to ask.
J R in WV
@Baud:
Hell no! This is obvious as we witness Republicans fuck with the Democratic vote numbers in New Hampster.
janesays
NBC News just called it for Sanders. No big surprise, except that I don’t think his people anticipated him just barely winning this state.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: I don’t know how closely Reid is affiliated with this union, but I bet he knows the people at the top of it pretty well
Misterpuff
@catclub: I’m still in the Warren corner, but when the history of this primary season is written Amy will be credited with a very good week. She stepped up in the confusion of Iowa, made a victory speech, made an impression. Performed well at the debate and worked the momentum angle for a very strong third and gave another rousing speech. And she’s stolen the spotlight from Mayor Pete who by all rights should be the story, now he’s a media afterthought. OK I exaggerate a bit.
Anya
@Martin: I am not even sure if he’ll appoint decent judges. We might be put in the same dilemma as the French voters when the choice was between Macron and Marine Le Pen.
* Michael Scott gif* NO GOD! PLEASE NO!!! NOOOOOOOOOO
janesays
It’s just platitudes and plaudits. Easily the most vapid campaign left in the race (among the genuinely viable campaigns). Ugh.
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: It’s happening all over the country. It is what isn’t discussed when it is reported that the President has 87% plus support among Republicans or when he tweets about it and brings it up at press gaggles and at rallies, that while he has unusually high support among Republicans there are now fewer overall Republicans than there were before he became the nominee and the president.
janesays
@E: Agree that it’s pretty idiotic to say that Sanders is flailing right now, but it’s also idiotic to suggest he’s dominating.
He’s the most vulnerable frontrunner I’ve seen this century after the first two contests.
Mai naem mobile
@Martin: Jon Ralston says the hotel unions are not going to support Warren or Sanders because of M4A because they get good insurance through bargaining. The hotel union vote is a biggie in Nevada politics. That’s what worries me about Warren.
Anya
At least I don’t have to endure Andrew Yang and his model minoritism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya:
Tricky thought. I can’t see Schumer putting much pressure on him. A coalition of progressive Senators– Warren, Brown, Harris, Whitehouse– might be able to, but the politics are kind of hard to imagine. What would he want badly enough to make him ask, once he’s got the ultimate trophy for his mantle?
Anne Laurie
Absolutely, and predictably. This NH primary was Sanders’ to lose, going back to 2018; he’s a favorite of the Granite State ‘independents’ and anarcholibertarians who are a little too proud to vote the straight (R) ticket, at least in the primaries.
If he’s fighting for first with some guy from the midwest (albeit the kind of budget-restraint, law’n’order guy also very attractive to those particular NH voters), well… sooner or later, some Media Village Idiot is gonna break from the conventional-wisdom flock and start touting Sandernistas in disarray!
And that’s when the whole ‘Sanders v Trump’ narrative will fall apart. Bernie won’t quit, because his grift works even better when he’s the neglected genius, but the media’s attention will shift to more Democratic choices in the Democratic race.
Immanentize
@janesays: Samders has a ceiling. It seems to be 30% of primary voters at best. He is not expanding the voter base. 2/3 of Dem voters do not want him. He did not improve from Iowa and he lost almost half his voters in four years. Not a strong look.
In any case. I will go back to my earlier position and just wait until after Super Tuesday to see who got the sweet and who got defeat.
JMS
No Biden, no Bernie. I think the electorate may be coming around to my view finally? I just sent Amy a small contribution—first to a politician in a long time. More to come if she can dispatch other candidates in their 30s or 70s.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This reminds me, we seriously need an effective Senate leader. Schumer is such a disappointment. I thought he would be good in all the stuff, except Israel and big banks/financial stuff but is there a single thing he’s effective at? Thank Batman for Nancy Smash.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, it started happening here in CA about 10-15 years ago.
John Revolta
@Adam L Silverman: @zhena gogolia: Well it does give one to think. You can’t really say that their Ukraine plan went as intended, but did it do the trick for them anyway? Anyone who followed the story knows that the Hunter story is a complete nothing that they wanted to push on us, but if all you got was shadows and penumbras……………..well all I can say is if that’s all it takes to scuttle a candidate nowdays then God help us
But you gotta admit that Joe didn’t do himself any favors either. His campaign has been lame and I believe that’s at LEAST as big a factor in his poor showing thus far.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya:
I get it, I really do. But as I’ve written on both the front page and in comments a number of times, this is what they want to happen. The President, his surrogates, the hostile foreign powers that have been waging war on the US since at least 2014 and are still doing so in a largely non-kinetic form of war and warfare to make him president and to keep him president because that suits their strategic objectives, want you to be overwhelmed. They want you to feel beaten and hopeless. They want you to be so fed up with the bizarre reverse panopticon where we all forced to pay attention to the President all the time because not doing so could mean catastrophe that you give up, give in, and just go along.
I know it is easy for me to say, but pace yourself. Turn off when you need to. Cut yourself and everyone else some slack. Take some time for whatever diversions you prefer. Right now the battle is all mental and emotional. So make sure you give yourself the space to refortify yourself.
There are places that these people can’t reach and things they can’t despoil. For example, the vast majority of criminal justice in the US is at the state and local level. And the vast majority of that happens in big cities, that are predominantly Democratic, all within 100 miles of the coast, because that is where the majority of Americans live. Or big cities that are predominantly Democratic in big empty states, because that’s where the majority of the people in those states live. No matter what bullshit Barr pulls at the DOJ and no matter how much he blusters like he did this morning, he cannot make the NY AG, the CA AG, the NC AG, the CO AG, the IL AG, the MI AG, the Washington AG, etc and all the district attorneys in those states do his bidding.
While hope is not a strategy and getting through this isn’t going to be easy, but there is reason for hope.
Sab
@Mai naem mobile: That’s why I hate caucuses. Cannot vote your heart in front of co-workers.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: And prepare to do so in South Carolina.
https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/upstate-gop-leaders-plotting-to-impact-sc-democratic-primary-by/article_f1e7abd2-4788-11ea-aa9f-33a1d262994c.html
janesays
@PsiFighter37: I’d be surprised if even ten percent of New Hampshire voters even knew he was candidate when they went to vote today.
opiejeanne
@Butter Emails: heh. Nice sarcasm.
PJ
@John Revolta: The media still ran with the Hunter Biden story, though not as quickly or as strongly as they would have had it not been so rapidly exposed. Sanders’ surrogates hyped it, and many commenters on this here blog expressed their concern about the optics and how it means we can’t attack Trump on his own nepotism, etc. As long as there is a sliver of reality to back up any of their lies, Republicans will go with it and tear down every Democratic candidate, and Democrats will help them do it.
Adam L Silverman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: The anti-immigrant stuff was the death knell. The President, who is all in on that stuff and other equally odious policies, has taken that dynamic national.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a lot will depend on how/if the money flows in, but here’s why people are talking about the third-place candidate
Adam L Silverman
@John Revolta: He’s never been a good presidential campaigner. And what he was selling this time, which was a return to normalcy, started out sounding good, but both the reality that there is no return to what the US was on the morning of election day in November 2016, that what appeared normal on the surface was actually pretty abnormal below it, and that we have to move to a new normal combined with his sounding and looking old and tired appears to be working against him.
Gretchen
We have 3 men in their late 70s who got into the race because they thought that they were the only ones who could save the nation. Two more millionaires, with absolutely no governing experience, who thought that they could run the government better than anyone who knew anything about the subject. And the 37 year old mayor of South Bend with no discernable achievements besides being good in school, who also thought he was the savior. If these 6 guys with outsized egos had sat down and let the people of appropriate ages, experience and accomplishment run, we would have a field of people who would actually beat Trump and be a good president. Say Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, Castro, Booker. That would be a field, which we can’t have because of white guy arrogance energy. Yang included for this example.
Immanentize
Ruh roh. Buttigieg is now one point away from Sanders. 80% reporting.
ETA I see Jim, etc. Got there first.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
Sexism + racism. Always a toxic combination.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
people here find Booker and Castro far more impressive than I or the vast majority of Democratic voters did
Lyrebird
@oldgold: I think those are all general election numbers? I don’t know who was in their primaries, but I’m sure your point is valid as well. FWIW, Kerry won by a hair. I did work for the Kerry campaign… a good man who inspired us to go all out. Sigh.
Anya
@Adam L Silverman: 💜 Thanks, Adam for being a voice for sanity and facts. Imma try. Any time I am down, I’ve been donating (I really try to check my privilege. Trump and his policies won’t harm me personally and I can afford to donate) so I really shouldn’t be apathetic and bring down everyone. But sometimes it’s really hard.
I am going to take Adam’s advice, and do some self-care so I am off to bed. Have a goodnight everyone.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Right. That’s why in 2016 I turned my energy toward state level issues. Can’t fight a corrupt federal government by voting. But a big state can fight them. California can do most of what we wanted Dems to do federally. Doesn’t help the other states now, but it might with the next Dem president.
I don’t expect a pony in the 2020 election. I think a Dem house and senate is achievable, and I’ll settle for a president that won’t veto their shit. Will I get all of the guardrails put in policy that I want to ensure we don’t repeat this? Not sure. But I don’t believe any of the viable Dem candidates stand in the way of that.
I believe that the strength of Democrats lies in implementing durable systems. Short term policy gains are nice, and all, but nothing beats a civil rights act or medicare. Who will build that? I like Warren for that reason. I don’t see Bernie or Pete doing that. I don’t even see Biden doing that. Not sure about Amy. But really it needs to be championed by Congress. They made or broke the ACA. They’ll make or break everything else worth fighting for.
Immanentize
@Anya: Sweet dreams!
Sab
@Mai naem mobile: Also too, American unions are in decline because they don’t look after anyone but their own declining membership. And the only members in that membership they care about are the old guys with seniority. So nobody else cares about them.
I used to audit casinos in Nevada. The smaller casinos had appalling health plans. Worthless. Members didn’t figure out how bad until needed.
Obamacare made somewhat better. If they are basing their whole decision on the M for All then they are being, as usual, idiots who are too much into the details.
jonas
@Adam L Silverman: What’s the evidence any of the Ukraine shenanigans against Biden were a factor for Dem primary voters thus far? I think there’s a simpler explanation: Biden was doing well in polls based purely on name recognition in a crowded field of less well-known contenders and to a certain extent, he was just promising a return to normalcy. When he actually had to go out and campaign and debate and get compared to other candidates, well, arguing for Obama administration, Act II (This time under an old white guy!), was just not that compelling for either centrists or progressives.
Adam L Silverman
@Anya: You’re welcome.
I take cash, checks, and most major credit cards…//
cokane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s a real surge. But it’s a small state. And it’s a third place finish. I dunno. I think some news outlets are going to make hay of it for a bit, because it is genuinely newsworthy. But I have a difficult time seeing her numbers grow in the upcoming states.
Kraux Pas
The only reason I would ever consider voting for Biden is to stick a thumb in the eye of idiot right-wing conspiracy mongers.
@cokane: If Warren continues to under-perform, my support is almost certain to move to Klobuchar.
Adam L Silverman
@jonas: I don’t know if we have any evidence in any direction about why he’s suddenly not doing so well. Some of that is because Iowa and NH are so unrepresentative in regard to the Democratic electorate. Some of it is that it is very hard to actually measure in any quantifiable way the effects of an influence campaign. I’m curious to see how he’s going to do in Nevada and South Carolina, though it appears the GOP are going to try to ratfuck SC for Bernie (which is NOT Bernie’s fault) and on Super Tuesday. I think we’ll know more after that.
Martin
@Gretchen: Don’t underestimate the role of mayor of NYC. Only 10 states (omitting NY because NYC is over half the state population) have a larger population than NYC, and it’s a politically fraught place on account of being a city that dominates not just one state, but three.
It sure as fuck is more governing experience than mayor of South Bend, or even governor of Arkansas.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Martin
@Sab: The fragmentation of US labor unions has really hurt workers. The Federation of Guys that Hit the Pipe with the Thing doesn’t have any bargaining power.
Gretchen
@Butter Emails: yes, Warren has lost 39 of the 1991 delegates, and only has 8. It’s hopeless.
Gretchen
@Martin: Yes, I respect Bloomberg’s experience as mayor of NY. But I don’t respect a 77 year old billionaire who feels like he’s the only salvation of the Democratic Party and buys his way in. He could wield his financial power to support someone younger and better placed. Late 70s is too old to be president.
Mai naem mobile
@Sab: i didnt realize the Union plans were not good. I had a friend years ago who was under his dads insurance which was through the Iron Workers Union in Nevada and he had a really good plan. Anyhow, I’ve thought about this and i am tired of punditing this election for my own vote. I’ve decided to vote for Warren. My nightmare matchup everybody’s done and it’s down to Bloomberg vs. Bernie. AZ primary is mid March so chances are it will be down to the last 4 people ar most.
Suzy
@Martin: Joe Biden has his weaknesses as a candidate, but his support seems to have totally collapsed suddenly. I can’t help thinking this is because of the Impeachment inquiry that has made people pay attention and, indeed, demonstrated to democrats that the GOP was going to mount a full smear war on Joe Biden. Seems to me that they planned to go even BIGGER than against Hillary. I have a feeling that this time around, Putin has gone even further in his involvement. He is behind the whole smear campaign against Joe. With his pals Shokin and co spreading disinfo through Guiliani, and Putin’s hackers getting into Burisma.
Putin and Trump surely got what they wanted.
janesays
@Immanentize: All true, but literally no candidate looks strong right now. Klobuchar had the best night in terms of momentum, but coming in fifth and third place in the first two states doesn’t really scream dominance.
So yeah, Sanders is definitely beatable. But not until somebody actually beats him. I can see any of Bloomberg, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar taking him down in a one-on-one face-off, but two of them need to get out of the way for that to happen.
Martin
@Gretchen: The good news is that according to him, if you can beat him, you get to use his money to beat Trump.
You gotta earn it, though.
AnotherBruce
@Adam L Silverman: Well Eugene Robinson mentioned that Biden never won a primary in the other two times he ran for the presidency. He is still running in South Carolina, that tells me (If he fails again.) That he’s just not good with campaigning for president. In other words, he just good at shooting himself in the foot.
Annie
@Adam L Silverman:
@Adam L Silverman:
thank you for this, Adam.
I’m 64 and the idea of Bernie being the nominee gives me hideous flashbacks to 1972, when a New Democratic nominating system empowered the left end of the Democratic base. So they got way too far out over their skis and nominated George McGovern. Fine man, good Senator. Lost all but one state and DC to Tricky Dick.
Martin
@Suzy: We’ll see. If the goal was to knock out Biden so they could get Sanders and they ended up convincing Bloomberg to get in the race – even if he doesn’t win but does dump a bil in the Dems piggy bank, I think that will have backfired.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzy: I think the Hunter/Burisma stuff may have had an effect, but
he’s been lagging in money for a while, several months I think, as Sanders and Buttigieg were swimming in money, building organization and ground games in IA and NH that Biden couldn’t match. And then Bloomberg threw everything out of whack, and Steyer is further fucking things up (IMHO)
They saw Biden as a threat, and never thought trump would win in ’16, so even though they hated her, the goal was a weakened Pres HRC, rather than a defeated one.
Gretchen
@PsiFighter37: There are three tickets out of Iowa. Warren gets #3, so the three tickets are #1, #2, and #4? What? She has staffers in 30 states, she has plenty of money. Why are people so eager to write her off?
Adam L Silverman
@Annie: I don’t tell people who to vote for, but my concern with Senator Sanders is that while every potential Democratic nominee is going to get the same treatment that HRC got in 2016 and that VP Biden is getting now, he has the potential to receive the most and worst of it. I also have serious concerns about who be empowers as senior staff and surrogates. Personnel is policy and his personnel are toxic.
catclub
Only if getting Biden out is the best solution for getting Trump re-elected. I think they shot way too early, and that Biden would not have been the strongest candidate anyway, so they have left whoever will turn out to be the strongest, still in the race. being able to pummel Biden during the general election campaign might have worked better for them.
John Revolta
@Adam L Silverman: I would add: out of all my concerns about Bernie, maybe the biggest is- I don’t believe he has any respect for anybody’s opinion other than his own.
Adam L Silverman
@John Revolta: I have concerns about his inability to work or play well with others as well.
janesays
@Anya: Oh, absolutely, but there’s not a fucking thing we can do about that. There is no apparent dissension in the ranks among Democratic senators, and they’re largely a go-along-to-get-along crowd. Unless Schumer does something to royally piss a bunch of his senate colleagues off, we’re stuck with him as our party’s senate leader for the foreseeable future.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Revolutions tend to only work out well for the leader. The rest tend to wind up in the gulag.
Sab
@Mai naem mobile: Big casinos with big unions have good plans. Tiny casinos don’t.
joel hanes
@Anya:
why is [Biden’s] campaign this bad?
Because too many people saw him on TV losing the thread, not being able to keep up, unable to carry one end of a sharp conversation because he has a “senior moment” and misses the point or because his hearing doesn’t work right or something. And because of unforced errors such as “lying dog-faced pony soldier”, a geezer joke that’s bitterly unfunny unless you take your script from old John Wayne movies. And because it’s obvious that Trump and Barr and Giuliani will find a way to do the “but her emails” thing on Hunter every single day until November, and the press will enable them. And because Joe Biden has blown every single Presidential bid he’s ever made — it’s what he does.
In a better world, neither he nor Sanders ran in this cycle.
janesays
@Lyrebird: Kerry won the New Hampshire primary by quite a bit more than a hair – he came in first with 38% of the vote to Howard Dean’s second place finish with 26% of the vote. Also worth noting that the guy he beat was the very popular longtime former governor of the state right next to New Hampshire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Hampshire
Dukakis won that primary by an even larger margin in 1988: 37% to Dick Gephardt’s 20% second place finish.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: I keep trying to explain revolutions here, but what do I know, I’m just a specialist in low intensity warfare and asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m particularly concerned about his ability to work with Mark Kelly, Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham
Mai naem mobile
I just think we get slaughtered down ballot with Bernie. I don’t think his Bernie Bros army will even mark anything on the ballot beyond Bernie. BTW has he even switched parties yet or is that too much paperwork for him like his taxes were last time around? I don’t even understand how a non Democrat can run in a Democratic primary.
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
Only one time (out of [counts …] um, many) was I ever this unhappy while on acid.
cokane
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe because what you’re doing is disingenuously applying a word with a broad meaning to two completely separate things. I mean there’s zero evidence anything Sanders is doing is “revolutionary” in the sense you’re talking about. He’s literally just running a typical political campaign, just like he did four years ago.
janesays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You forgot John Hickenlooper.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@janesays: I could be wrong, but I think Hickenlooper’s probably the strongest challenger against the weakest R incumbent ETA: by which I mean, less in need of a strong top of the ticket than the others. I think Sanders saves Collins et al. “Whoever wins in November, I’ll a voice for common sense in Washington….”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
I’ve said before I’ve never understood this. How is it in anybody’s strategic interests to have an unstable, blustering maniac have control of the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet? It makes me think perhaps Putin, Xi, etc aren’t playing with a full deck themselves
Innocent people have died and been traumatized because of their “strategic interests”. These hostile foreign powers are ruled by arrogant autocrats who have little respect for human rights.
Putin and Xi don’t deserve the power they have
joel hanes
@different-church-lady:
This isn’t the absolutely luminous version from the album, because that’s been taken off youtube.
It’s still glorious.
San Lorenzo
Martin
@cokane: Then he should choose better language if he doesn’t like how people respond to it.
Trump also ran a typical political campaign. How’s Bolton’s standing in the party right now? Corker? Flake? Romney? Amash?
A lot of Bernie’s supporters behave a lot like Trump’s. If you aren’t loyal to the new king, you’re out. That’s how revolutions tend to go.
joel hanes
@Mai naem mobile:
has he even switched parties yet
Senator Sanders has long since filed the paperwork to run for Senator from Vermont in 2024 as a candidate from the Independent Party.
Neither he nor his most fervent followers are Democrats. (Remember that in 2016, a bunch of Bernie delegates showed up for the Nevada Democratic caucus without ever bothering to register as Democrats, and were enraged when they were denied credentials. )
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
For me, I don’t like Sanders’ political revolution idea.
But you paint a very bleak picture above about the Dem nominee vs the federal government.
Under such a scenario, it’s a binary choice: fight such a corrupt government by any means necessary, if necessary, or give up and become serfs. I think I’d take my chances with a real revolution if it comes down to it
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My view is that the US maintained a strong hand on the global power system largely by forming alliances and by diffusing points of conflict that strongmen would seek to exploit. The US didn’t hold the Soviets in check, but the US with a unified EU, and Japan and a host of other nations did.
If Putin and Xi can break those alliances apart then their relative strength grows. Putin can better bully Europe into paying him. Xi can be the new power broker.
Putin and Xi don’t care about innocents so long as it doesn’t affect their lock on power. For that matter, neither do Americans or else we wouldn’t tolerate our gun violence and such.
Joy in FL
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you, Adam. I needed to read this kind of hope from someone credible.
cokane
@Martin: Anyone who compares what the Sanders campaign is doing to violent revolutions of the past is the one who needs to learn to use language better.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t think Republicans appreciate how far many of us have been pushed because we don’t wave guns around every time someone states their preferred pronouns. I don’t relish seeing people pushed even further. It will be horrible.
Martin
@cokane: Can I compare it to the GOP nonviolent political revolution that brought us Trump? Because it’s every bit the same kind of revolution that Sanders is proposing. Trump promised working class whites would reap the benefits. How’s that working out for them? Isn’t that how all revolutions tend to go?
Kent
I’m not a Bloomberg fan but I would vote for him over Bernie or Trump. That said, basically all the candidates feel they are the salvation of the Democratic Party. You don’t run for president without an ego. We have all been saying how Iowa and New Hampshire have no business going first. Well, Bloomberg is doing something about that by ignoring them and if he actually won without even competing there it would completely change future nomination strategies.
The only thing he is doing differently from any other candidate is refusing to solicit nickel and dime contributions from small contributors which honestly wouldn’t be a good look anyway for someone worth $55 billion. Otherwise he is doing exactly what all the other candidates are doing in all the upcoming big states which is building up an organization and running lots of ads.
cokane
@Martin: You can try. But the comparison seems to fall apart to me when you compare a reality TV star who never held office to a career politician.
People use the word “revolution” in all kinds of contexts — about art, about music, about attitudes on things like gay marriage and trans rights. The idea that we must associate the usage of “revolution” by a campaign to ugly or violent things in the past is an extreme degree of bad faith.
JGabriel
According to WaPo, Sanders won by 1.6%. The NH Delegate count was Sanders, 9, Buttigieg 9, and Klobuchar 6. Added to the Iowa results, that puts the race to 1,990 Delegates at:
joel hanes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
you paint a very bleak picture
It’s been a bitter war ever since the Rs stole the Presidency in 2000 and W/Cheney purged the US Attorneys on the basis of political leaning, Monica Goodling stuffed the DoJ with wingnut graduates of Regent, and von Spakovsky focused on suppression of Democratic votes.
If some of us seem bitter, tired, angry, cynical, it’s because we’ve lived through all this shit since Nixon, and the GOP just keeps getting worse and worse.
joel hanes
@cokane:
We all want to change the world
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Cenk has already started posting on Twitter about how they’re going to purge all of the “corporate” campaign staff from the party as soon as Bernie takes control.
I think there’s way more of that thinking among Bernie’s staff and allies than you’re willing to admit.
JGabriel
Really? I mean: Seriously? It’s a race to 1,990 delegates, and no one has more than 22. As far as the total count (IA + NH) goes so far, Warren is still in third place – ahead of Klobuchar and Biden.
Let’s wait till after Super Tuesday before we start counting out anyone who has delegates at this point.
Martin
@cokane: So why have Vermonters never signed onto his revolution? I mean, he’s popular, but where’s the revolutionary VT governor or state legislature? Why isn’t VT leading on progressive legislation? It’s not bad, but there’s 40 million Californian’s pushing that envelope a lot harder.
I mean, Vermont isn’t much bigger than my city. It shouldn’t be that hard to rally a population of that size to his ideas.
BR
Gotta say, feeling pretty down about Warren getting not only no delegates in NH but also the media shutting her out. No matter — going to vote for her anyway on my mail in ballot.
BR
@Martin:
Yeah, the thing that worries me is that Bernie has never been a truly tough election for anything statewide or national ever. Never one that has gotten media scrutiny with GOP attacks and the rest. Warren has, Biden has, Klobuchar has, Harris has, Booker has, …
Chris Johnson
@catclub: Being able to pummel Biden in the general WOULD be better for Trump and Putin. I’ve been saying that for some time.
The reason they saw him as singularly threatening is that they see him through the eyes of the media they control, i.e. they are drinking the kool-aid intended for consumption by rubes.
I’m very curious to see whether Putin flips out at the prospect of having to go up against Bloomberg, and ending up with an America led by a rival despot who hates him (and isn’t much better than him, but yeah)… or whether he decides to ‘help’ Bloomberg and treat it as more of an informal changing of the guard.
Bloomberg wanted to get all the Russian billionaires to come live in New York City. He meant it. To him, their stolen wealth was not just good but laudable.
Bloomberg could either be Putin’s Big Daddy, or his worst nightmare. It all depends on the attitudes of one old racist oligarch who apparently is meant to control the world, because capitalism.
Or, this could all be bullshit being spread before the horrible old bastard has even one vote cast for him.
Putin wanted Trump to run against Biden, but also expected Biden would be the one to beat, because old white man: automatic win, right? Much like the media is now treating Bloomberg. Old white rich man equals automatic win.
We shall see. Some of Putin’s plans are not coming off the way they were intended. Notably, I doubt he meant for Bernie to do this poorly in NH.
Kent
They did try Bernie’s single payer “Medicare for All” idea. It crashed and burned when the bill came due due to sticker shock.
So there’s that.
Kent
I don’t know about all of this but it does suggest some provoking trains of thought. If Bloomberg is, indeed more friendly to Russian oligarch money than say Clinton might have been. Does that change the calculation for Russian-inspired fuckery in the election? Do they decide to step back and say “hand’s off” we’ll let the chips fall where they may and we don’t need all the headaches that are Trump if we have another money-friendly oligarch who will leave our money alone?
Would Puten really go all in for a half-crazed Trump if there is a deal to be cut with Bloomberg?
Wheels behind wheels and we are all the pawns and spectators.
Martin
@BR: I’m not even worried about that. I mean, ‘the states are the laboratories of democracy’ is an expression that means that it’s generally easier to get a smaller, homogenous population to try out a new idea than a large population. Now, there are some things that Vermont is legitimately too small to pull off, but there’s a lot they can. So why aren’t they?
Show us how this works. There’s a great laboratory seemingly unused.
BR
@Martin:
Yeah, though I don’t hold him responsible for state-level policy, since he hasn’t really been in charge of that ever.
What I need to see from him is two things: 1) the ability to take a punch from the GOP smear machine and turn it around like Obama could and 2) a recognition that he hires terrible staff and needs to get some better people.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Vermont has a Republican Governor, revolutionary!
Martin
@BR: Revolutionaries don’t worry about such things. They build their movement where they find it. Building an army of democratic socialist Vermonters seems like a no-brainer.
Martin
@Kent: Bloomberg isn’t friendly to russian oligarch money. That quote is a bit out of context. Bloomberg was merely arguing that having more rich people in the city means more income to tax which is good for the city.
Kent
@Martin: Bloomberg has more investments in Russia than Trump does. All those Putin cronies sitting in their Moscow penthouses might well be looking at their vast holdings on Bloomberg terminals.
I know Trump is totally owned by Russia. That’s a different thing entirely. But I’m just wondering out loud whether it makes any difference at all to Putin who Trump’s opponent is and if Bloomberg looks to be the one and looks like a possible winner could they ever reach a truce, oligarch to oligarch?
In other words, does Bloomberg know something we don’t know? Because he is sure dropping an astonishing amount of money into this election and he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would just waste it.
Kent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/11/not-long-ago-bloomberg-likened-putins-attack-ukraine-americas-annexation-california/
“I was talking to somebody the other day about Russia, and nobody thinks that Russia should be in the Ukraine and trying to take land in an independent sovereign country,” he told moderator Jennifer Bradley. “Except, if you really think about it, what would America do if we had a contiguous country where a lot of people in that country wanted to be Americans. Texas and California ring a bell? We just went and took it. I’m not suggesting that Putin’s doing a good thing or that it should be allowed. But we did this. That was 200 years ago, but we did it.”
It doesn’t appear to occur to Bloomberg that there are several important differences between Russia sending little green men into Crimea to steal part of Ukraine’s democracy in 2014 vs. the United States annexing California after the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. For one thing, American expansion in the 19th century fit (sadly) international norms of behavior at the time. By contrast, Russia’s attack on Ukraine represented a stark departure from an international order that had remained intact since the end of World War II.
Bloomberg’s penchant for false equivalence didn’t stop there. He also compared the Russian takeover of Crimea to the United States’ possession of a military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“And you want a warm water port? Guantanamo Bay ring a bell? Someplace. We kept that,” Bloomberg said.
The United States has many warm-water ports, and the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay was founded in a 1903 treaty with the Cuban government, not a military invasion by unmarked special forces troops. Also, U.S. military bases abroad are meant to project stability, while the Russian occupation of Ukrainian land is meant to ensure that Ukraine never becomes a stable, Western-facing democracy.
Bloomberg then explained that Putin has good reason to be aggressive in Europe because, according to Bloomberg, the West provoked him by expanding NATO.
“One of the reasons that Putin has reacted the way he did is there was a movement to have NATO be right along the Russian border,” he said. “If you read Russian history, they have always been invaded, and so they know this meant they had a mentality that the world was out to get them.”
Morzer
@catclub: Could we change that to “Minnesota ice pick Trump in the nuts”?
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: I’ll say this – Sanders inspires passionate devotion among a section of the Democratic coalition, but also inspires passionate dislike among what looks to be a larger section of that same coalition. That doesn’t look like any sort of way to beat Trump to me. Even if the miracle happened and Wilmerus Maximus triumphed, what followed would be four years of kvetching, bullying and ultimately blaming the Democratic party for his failure to achieve anything. Which, with grim inevitability, would lead to a defeat against a smarter, meaner Trump successor and vengeful GOP.
Martin
@Kent: But there’s nothing remarkable about that statement. Some Democrats were concerned about the expansion of NATO into Ukraine due to fears that it would spark the very thing that happened – so he’s simply restating a recognized concern. So nobody should pretend that Putin’s actions were unforeseeable. And it’s certainly not beyond the US government to push for such actions as a provocation.
That’s not a defense of Putin, but I think it’s fair to be introspective about what we hoped to achieve in Ukraine, whether we achieved it, and what should have happened instead. Being realistic about the motivations of others is not appeasement – it’s important to making sure you don’t get a response to an action that you aren’t prepared for. Clearly we weren’t prepared for Putin’s actions toward Ukraine.
And being introspective toward our own motivations is equally important because our hands are not entirely clean here.
Chris Johnson
Putin would hate going from being the power behind all thrones, to being the little kid brother. Bloomberg sits in the big grown up chair, taking guns away from black people and destroying all unions forever, and Putin sits in the little boy chair as the god-king of a much tinier, less important country! That’s not gonna fly with Putin.
I think that could BE part of Bloomberg’s motivation. My theory is that all these fuckers know all this. Putin, Trump, Epstein, decades of corruption and ‘deals’ and money flying around, buying politicians, getting their way, and these people all KNEW what was happening. Hillary goddamn well knew. For a long time she didn’t deign to tell us, and when she did, it was useless. They all know. The Village, the MOTUs, they KNOW the score.
Peons like Republican Senators are small fry, to be bullied until they fall in line, which is what happened.
There’s a damn small number of white male humans walking around who know all of this and always have done, and they like it that way. It becomes petty crap. It becomes Putin not wanting to spend his last years as little brother billionaire to Bloomberg ruling the USA, therefore he does…? in order to screw progress on climate change, partly on some brainless notion it’ll open up Siberia for farming or something, or open the Arctic for shipping… but REALLY it’s because it would piss Bloomberg off.
Earth dies because a couple old white men who owned everything, hated each other.
This is why letting individual human millionaires exist, is bad policy… billionaires, forget about it! Fifty-billionaires? Trillionaires, eventually? No. Wisdom does not scale with power, even when you manage to scale power up to where individual human white men wield power to rival countries.
We already know they have killed unions, or are busy killing them. Next we’ll have individual human trillionaires, and they’ll kill the concept of COUNTRIES. Titan-Mecha-Bloomberg, the trillionaire, will seize all power globally, and banish the idea of countries. All humans will… damn if I know what he’ll want all humans to do. Die, maybe. All humans will be stop-and-frisked.
Bloomberg is likely dropping the equivalent of what to me would be fifty-four bucks (out of my ‘paying bills’ account, more accurately it’d be a couple hundred) because he can see that, absent a revolution against him and his, somebody is going to end up the god-king JUST by buying themselves that position. In fact it already happened, to Trump, and that fact offends Mike SO MUCH that by God he’ll spend that fifty-four bucks! He will take Trump’s place, so there!
That’s capitalism. (late stage capitalism?)
It’s no longer America, though. Back when our Presidents were fretting over the burgeoning power of our monied corporations, one thing they didn’t often have to cope with was corporations being PETULANT. Corporations are collective entities, like nations: there’s a kind of stability that can exist there. Still not good, but you can cope with it or fight it or make sense of it.
Billionaires are fucking toddlers. We’re being killed by toddlers, whether it’s roasted to death by Putin or starved as unworthy poors by Bloomberg. Our fates are being settled by TODDLERS.
janesays
Soooooo…
…when do we get to the part about Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, and the Freemasons?
joel hanes
@Chris Johnson:
one thing [the Founders] didn’t often have to cope with was corporations being PETULANT
Have you actually read anything about the history of the British East India Company? Or of the South Sea Company and that bubble?
CarolDuhart2
@cokane: Rhetoric matters. Calling something a “Revolution” creates expectations of rapid, drastic change which is not going to happen, at least during this time. Bernie’s answer to the political deadlock his, and just about any President-will face is to tell his kiddies “march in mass” on Washington. It ignores the deliberate creation of a Federal system designed to diffuse power away from the Executive and sometimes even the Congress. What happens when there’s an inevitable backlash to some of his ideas, let alone him? People can’t march everyday, all day long.
Which is why I get frustrated with the “National Strike” crowd excoriating us for not understanding this reality. They look, like Sanders look=at Hong Kong or Korea or France, and wonder why we can’t just march our way to a Progressive utopia.
Morzer
@CarolDuhart2: There were huge marches against Brexit in the UK – and yet Brexit is still going to happen, even though it’s the dumbest thing a nation has ever voluntarily done to its own economy.
Mai naem mobile
So I go back to this thread this morning and it’s all gone cray cray. I was willing to go along with Bloomberg having an ego and being worried about Warren’s wealth tax but the oligarch WWE 2020 Showdown Putin vs Bloomberg, and Crimea annexation and the Mexican American War lalalalalala…guess I am completely losing the plot here.
Morzer
@Mai naem mobile: Siri, show me a typical Balloon Juice thread.