Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Twenty Twenty Update: Bernie dials back

"Fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed." -- Molly Ivins
(click it to big it)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a week after suffering a heart attack, said that he planned to slow down his pace on the campaign trail and acknowledged that voters would likely consider his health when deciding whether to vote for him, the New York Times reports.

Said Sanders: “We were doing, you know, in some cases five or six meetings a day, three or four rallies and town meetings and meeting with groups of people. I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

He added: “I think we’re going to change the nature of the campaign a bit. Make sure that I have the strength to do what I have to do.”

It's been a very tough week for the Sanders family (and extended family).


It appears his DIL passed on the same day he returned to his Vermont home from Las Vegas, where he was hospitalized.  She was 46 years old.


All of the other candidates wished him well, but Beto was particularly effusive.


The haters?  Not so much.


After presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack last week, he used the experience to explain why he is pushing so hard for his Medicare for All plan. Sanders’s plan would expand and improve Medicare so it covers the whole country with no fees, co-pays or deductibles.

“I am more determined than ever to fight alongside you to make health care a human right,” he said in a tweet.

Yet many critics of single-payer healthcare took a cynical approach and used Sanders’s misfortune to spread blatant lies about his health care plan. The most common smears suggested Sanders “would be dead” now if his health care proposal were law or if he lived in Canada, which offers its own Medicare for All system.

There's more there if you can stomach it.  Along these lines:


Hilarious, isn't it?


Tonight, to be clear.  Update.  One more item before we move on.


Sanders had accepted an invitation from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation to appear at the event, but has canceled events related to his 2020 presidential campaign last week after a heart attack in Nevada. His campaign told CNN that the senator will still participate at its primary debate on October 15 in Westerville, Ohio.

The October 10 event in Los Angeles will air from 7:30 p.m. to 12 a.m. ET and feature Democratic presidential candidates appearing back-to-back throughout the evening and taking questions from audience members and a CNN moderator.

The town hall, which HRC bills as the "Power of our Pride," will air exclusively on the CNN television and digital platforms and coincides with the 31st anniversary of National Coming Out Day on October 11.

(All times below are Eastern.)

  • New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker will be interviewed by Dana Bash at 7:30 p.m.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden will be interviewed by Anderson Cooper at 8 p.m.
  • South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg will be interviewed by Cooper at 8:30 p.m.
  • Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will be interviewed by Chris Cuomo at 9 p.m.
  • California Sen. Kamala Harris will be interviewed by Cuomo at 9:30 p.m.
  • Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke will be interviewed by Don Lemon at 10 p.m.
  • Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar will be interviewed by Lemon at 10:30 p.m.
  • Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro will be interviewed by Nia-Malika Henderson at 11 p.m.
  • Businessman Tom Steyer will be interviewed by Henderson at 11:30 p.m.

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and businessman Andrew Yang both declined HRCF's invitation, each citing scheduling conflicts.

To the horse race:


Warren’s new lead in national polls comes on the back of a Quinnipiac poll, released on Tuesday, which shows her leading the Democratic field: 29 percent of registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters said they would vote for her if the primary were held today. Former Vice President Joe Biden, now in second place, received 26 percent of the vote in the same poll. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), typically considered the other frontrunner in the race, had 16 percent.

The poll’s questions about the Democratic primary had a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points, so Biden and Warren are in a very close race. Notably, Warren also appears to be the only candidate with a steady upward trend in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Warren still has questions to answer about her personal story.  But she's rising in the polling because she's broadening her base, adding some of Biden's African American support and some of Bernie's working-class voters.  She's building out Texas, with a new hire and an endorsement that cuts against Nancy Pelosi.  And she's essentially the only candidate at the moment whose polls and money numbers are both moving in the right direction.

The money raised by the Democratic candidates was not completely in sync with their standings in the polls. (Biden and Warren) are the frontrunners in the polls, but their fundraising fortunes diverged sharply. Warren raised $23.9 million dollars while Biden reported only $15.1 million.

(Sanders and Buttigieg) lag in the polls but they were very successful on the fundraising front. At $25.1 million, Sanders raised more money than any of the Democrats while Buttigieg raised $19.1 million even though he doesn’t break double digits in the polls. After two straight strong fundraising quartets, Mayor Pete has the resources to raise his visibility to the level of Warren, Sanders and Biden on a national scale.

The other candidates, like Sen. Kamala Harris with $11.6 million, were behind the rest of the field in polls and in money. These candidates need money desperately to raise their name recognition in the hope that increased visibility will bring more votes.

Harris may have to bet the farm on strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire to raise more money. But Sanders, Warren, Biden and Buttigieg have the financial flexibility to spend money nationally, which is important with the deluge of states including California and Texas that have early state primaries.

Could we actually have just a four-horse race in thirty days?  (Yes, I'm counting Steyer and Delaney and Yang, the self-funders, out.  We'll have them around to kick well into next year, or until they get tired of blowing their respective wads.)  Biden's in the biggest trouble, with both his polling and his fundraising slumping.  Ross Ramsey at the TexTrib is smugly carrying a couple of #TXSen torches for Beto and Castro.

Let's conclude this midweek update with these items.

-- Maybe it's the DNC in the hottest water; they're having to beg for help now from the very people they have threatened to screw over with the debates.

In an email to donors and forwarded to CNBC, Chris Lowe, the committee’s deputy national finance chair, listed two events in New York in October that will feature Sen. Kamala Harris and former Secretary of Housing, Julian Castro. Harris’ fundraiser is dubbed the “DNC Chairman’s Dinner.”

Separately, a DNC aide sent CNBC a list of other events this month, which will include a “chairman’s dinner” in San Francisco with billionaire candidate Tom Steyer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren headlining the “Women Will Vote Gala.” Warren’s event will coincide with the Women’s Leadership Forum Conference in Washington. All proceeds for these fundraisers go to the DNC and the party’s infrastructure, the aide added.

[...]

The latest Federal Election Commission filings show that in August, the Republican National Committee raised just over $23 million and have $53 million on hand, while the DNC brought in $7.9 million and had $7.2 million in debt. Meanwhile, Trump and the RNC combined in the third quarter to raise over $125 million.

Bernie Sanders has a plan that would fix all of this.  I'm just sayin'.

-- A word about Trump.

Donald Trump has divided the country, communities and families like no other president in recent times. In Forest County, in the upper reaches of rural Wisconsin, he’s also torn apart the pocket-sized Republican party.

“I had a really good friend,” said Terri Burl, chair of the county GOP. “She was vice-chair of the Republican party. I’ve known her for so long. We went to the conventions together. Now she’s a Never Trumper. We don’t speak.”

The friend, Jennifer Nery, was never a Trump enthusiast but she voted for him as a loyal Republican and under pressure from a sister who was deeply hostile to Hillary Clinton. Now she regards it as a mistake and identifies with the “Never Trump” movement in active opposition to the president.

“I’ve always voted Republican. I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a Democrat. I will be voting Democrat in 2020,” said Nery, a semi-retired farmer who looks after rescue animals. “It’s caused internal strife with some of my family members who said: ‘Jennifer, but Hillary …’ I voted the least of two evils but now I regret every minute. If could go back in time, I would have cast it for Hillary.”

Can the Democrats screw this up a second time?  Forget I asked that.
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Monday, October 07, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle

With the round-up of the best of the left of Deep-In-The-Hearta from last week, the Texas Progressive Alliance wonders how many Trump administration members can fit under a bus (it's at least three, but we forget the third one).


Opening with the new names in the race to replace Big Suck-Up John Cornyn:


And for the general election ...


Tilove at the Statesman also profiled the candidates.


The article isn't as dismissive as the headline sounds.


Lots of Texas Congressional developments last week as well.

Kuff looked at the recent PPP poll of competitive Congressional districts.  Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny wondered if the DCCC would be helping or hurting the chances of turning Texas blue next year.  And with respect to the color palette, G. Elliott Morris, writing for The Economist, describes the Lone Star State as "magenta" rather than "purple", but says it's on the way there.


In statehouse races, SocraticGadfly looked at his state rep, Drew Springer, saw that he's NEVER faced a general election and says that if Democrats are serious about turning Texas blue, they need to challenge even candidates like him.


Before the verdict in the Botham Jean murder trial came in, Dan Solomon at Texas Monthly analyzed the problem with the "castle doctrine".  And after the verdict, Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast offered his thoughts on the trial and the case as a whole.  Both pieces were written before the assassination of witness Joshua Brown.



PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posted the latest on the Democrats running for the White House in three updates -- one before and two after Bernie Sanders' heart attack -- and Noah M. Horwitz endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president.  Therese Odell at Foolish Watcher went to town on Day One of Impeachment Inquiry TV.

Taylor Goldenstein at the Chron wrote about the U of H research project examining Latino Republican voters and six myths about them.  Albert Morales at Latino Decisions, via Latino Rebels, points out the Texas-sized opportunities (Part 3B, with Parts 1, 2, and 3A linked there).


There were a handful of H-Town mayoral debates last week; PDiddie also blogged about the one that was televised, and there's another this Friday.



Speaking of Rick Perry ...


Christof Spieler at Trains, Buses, People ran through an autonomous vehicle thought exercise.



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Sunday, October 06, 2019

Sunday "Two Scoops of Peach Mint" Funnies









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Friday, October 04, 2019

The (now twice a week!) Twenty Twenty Update


Excerpting Markos again because blind hog, acorn.

The Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders wing of the party continues to tally a combined total in the mid-50s [in the Daily Kos bi-weekly straw poll], just as it has for months. Joe Biden seems to have gotten a slight sympathy or rally-around-the-flag bump in some outside polling, but we don’t see much of that here. Everything else is pretty much on-the-dot from last week. The only somewhat notable difference is Andrew Yang, but all that means is that his fan club is getting better at spamming this poll.

Kindly observe that when anyone besides his chosen one so much as slightly improves, their supporters are "spamming" his poll.  When his favorite wins, it's a reflection of the intelligence of the online community he has built.

While 60,277 votes is a lot, and close to our record high, the static results to suggest a pause in analyzing the presidential field as Impeachment rages. It would make sense, while all these candidates are presumably out and about and campaigning, it’s hard to care overly much about it as the news out of DC is so relentless and meaningful. We are witnessing history in real-time, and there’s plenty of primary campaign left to wage. We can take a break from that and focus on the more immediate threat.

But the question then becomes, does this set the field down in stone, benefiting Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, or is it temporary? Heck, we don’t even know for sure right now whether this is a Daily Kos-only phenomenon or one that is reflecting the outside world as well.

A glance at Real Clear Politics would answer this.

Yet, while we can’t answer all those questions just yet,

LOL.  From here I'll provide corrections in [brackets].

Yet, while we can’t answer all those questions just yet, it is clear that Warren has locked down about 2/5th of the vote on this straw poll, as she’s been at that level for two [three, actually] months now. Can something knock her down? That’s always within the realm of possibility, but she’s running a picture perfect campaign [thanks to MSNBC, CNN, and now her own Snopes]. Talking to campaigns, she has the best organization in Iowa and Nevada [debatable]. She’s got home field advantage in New Hampshire [false; essentially all three front-runners can make this claim, which is why the polling gyrates wildly]. She’s lagging in South Carolina, by quite a bit, but she has started to make inroads with the Black vote (her biggest weakness, by far) and in national polling, is approaching 20% of that vote.

Warren's been cruising.  She made a punishing crackback block on Jacob Wohl yesterday on top of what has been a very good month of September.  So where are those fundraising numbers?

Sanders’ mid-teens here is the same mid-teens he’s seeing in national polling, a sort of frustrating purgatory for him. It’s enough to keep him in third place (and even some seconds here and there), but that number reflects his hardest-core base of support. He’s shed much of the 40-45% he had last cycle (and over 60% he had on Daily Kos!), with no real idea how to grow beyond that [laughably false]. Saying “I thought of that first!” isn’t a winning strategy. Because first of all, someone thought of it before him, inevitably (liberalism has been around for a long time), and second of all, most people care about the movement, not any one individual. [Tacky and incorrect.]

If Sanders was the best messenger and vehicle to enact those policies, he’d be doing better. It’s that simple. 

Most of this graf is spite, but there is no denying that Bernie engenders a lot of animosity, so Kos' remark at the end is, unfortunately, accurate.

Meanwhile, Biden doesn’t appear to be losing much of his Black support. His resilience with that vote has proven frustrating to a lagging Kamala Harris (who is retooling her campaign, one that, uh, didn’t have senior staff meetings until last month), But no one loves him or his campaign, he doesn’t draw crowds, his advisors keep him as hidden as possible to avoid the next inevitable gaffe, and his 1980s-era campaign and message are increasingly out of sync with modern today’s zeitgeist. A strong Harris [or Cory Booker] would’ve been a better bet to knock him down, taking his base of support away. Her inability to do that has given Biden extra life.

Here are three good reasons why Biden is no longer the front-runner.  It's really no mystery why the core Democratic vote, African Americans, has stuck with him so long; they roll with the establishment, always.  I saw this personally in 2008, when black Texas Democrats in the primary continued to favor Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.  See if you think Perry Bacon at FiveThirtyEight explains it pretty well; I think he does.

Buttigieg can raise money ($19 million this last quarter), but it’s not translating to support. Not sure how it can, when he’s going around being a jackass and declaring himself the Next Joe Biden, as if that’s what anyone outside of Wall Street is clamoring for.

Boot Edge is by far the worst of the top five.  Beto has had enough of Petey's BS.


"I was really offended by those comments," O'Rourke told reporters after a gun control policy forum in Las Vegas on Wednesday. "And I think he represents a kind of politics that is focused on poll-testing and focus-group-driving and triangulating and listening to consultants, before you arrive at a position."

To this I might add: "Congressman Pot, please meet Mayor Kettle."

Let's move on to the debate next week in nine days, and the one in November.



We know already that the twelve above will appear together on one evening: Tuesday, October 15, live on CNN's various platforms.  That's too crowded.  This debate should have been split over two nights.  My feeling is that the DNC is trying to shield Biden from prolonged exposure.

(Rant: I find it ridiculous that a guy can raise $10 million fewer dollars -- using big-donor fundraisers -- than his third-place rival taking only small donations, have his eye spontaneously bleed during a debate with no one calling for him to drop out ... and still be considered the front-runner for the nomination.  "Because that's what the polls say"?  The polls that ask a few hundred people with landlines who answer their phones?  Those polls?

And this is the best way we have to survey American political opinion in 2019.  /rant)


Read ^^this Tweet thread^^ for more.

Now for some quick hits.


-- Once again, as of this morning:



-- Biden, still not getting it.

(Biden) telegraphing that he plans to attack his rivals on the debate stage for a lack of transparency into their finances. Biden is expected to go after Sen. Elizabeth Warren in particular, Bloomberg reported, for failing to disclose details of private income during the 1990s and 2000s from the types of companies that she now lambasts for “rigging the system.”

Warren, as a law professor, did consulting work for private companies that involved her bankruptcy expertise, including advising Dow Corning in 1995, involving a major settlement with women harmed by breast implants. Warren has released her tax returns dating back to 2008.

Biden may be looking to hammer her for hypocrisy, but his charge of a lack of transparency is badly undercut by his own financial opacity -- not decades ago, but in the last two years. Since leaving the White House, Biden, long proud of his wealth ranking near the bottom of the U.S. Senate, began delivering high-dollar speeches to well-heeled clients and raked in book revenue that elevated him well into the upper class. He earned some $15.6 million in the last two years alone, according to financial disclosures released by his campaign.


-- One of the worst things about a truly bad Kamala Harris campaign is that the even more awful puppeteers manipulating her strings are soon going to have to pick another shitty candidate.  My bet is on Boot Edge.


-- A Heart Bern update.


Someone had Tweeted -- and I had reTweeted -- that he had been released yesterday from the Las Vegas hospital that performed his stent procedure.  That, reported by the Fox affiliate in that city, appears to be false, given the information above.


-- The Guardian profiles Mark Charles.
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Thursday, October 03, 2019

Turner's challengers roast him in #HouMayor debate


Mayor Sylvester Turner’s opponents came out swinging at the first televised mayoral debate of the election, accusing him of mismanaging a pay dispute with Houston firefighters, slow-walking flood recovery and overseeing a culture of corruption at City Hall -- charges the mayor emphatically denied.

With his opponents criticizing him on nearly every question, Turner defended his approach to the firefighters’ push for pay parity with police and said the sluggish pace of Hurricane Harvey recovery largely stems from delays within the federal government.

On the corruption allegations, pushed most aggressively by Tony Buzbee, Turner said the millionaire lawyer and businessman -- who is self-funding his campaign -- is “trying to buy City Hall.”

The mayor then issued a fresh attack, criticizing Buzbee for an incident in which a federal judge removed Buzbee’s law firm from 85 cases involving a judge who maintained close ties with Buzbee and his law partners.

You can watch that exchange here:


Update: You can view the hour-long debate here.  For a few short video takes, see here.

I did not get the sense that Turner or Buzbee, the polling leaders, helped themselves last night.  Bill King and Sue Lovell looked and sounded more 'executive', shall I say.  And I'll posit that any Democrats inclined to consider not voting for Mayor Sly might feel better about a Dwight Boykins or a Lovell vote after watching ... unless they are of that scared variety of Donkey that doesn't want to see two Republicans in the runoff.

In other words, a vote for Turner being sorta like a vote for Joe Biden.

As for the remainders and their lawsuit ... *ahem*

Though 12 candidates are running for mayor, a moderator said the host networks -- ABC 13 and Univision 45 -- narrowed the field to the top five fundraisers: Turner, Buzbee, King, Boykins, and Lovell. The state of the race has recently come into sharper focus with a poll that found Turner leading the field with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Buzbee at 20 percent and King at 10.

As I mentioned back here, I'm still deciding between Lovell and Derrick Broze.  I have a few more weeks to choose.
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Wednesday, October 02, 2019

"Sorry to disappoint..."



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Twenty Twenty Update: Money Matters

The mother's milk of consultants, spinmeisters, pollsters, and those that love them has the punditocracy all squirming for a teat this week.

But maybe we should consider impeachment first?

Americans are about evenly split over impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office, as support for that move has risen among independents and Republicans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry by House Democrats last week.

About half, 47%, support impeaching the President and removing him from office, up from 41% who felt that way in a CNN poll in May. The current level matches the high point for impeaching Trump in previous CNN polling -- 47% said they felt that way in September 2018.

Indeed the tide and the sea has changed, quickly, and continues to do so even as this is blogged.  And we'll wait to see if the next debate spends too much time talking about it, at the expense of -- in my and Ted Rall's opinion -- more important topics.

-- With respect to Cory Booker and Julian Castro, the two candidates who threatened to leave us last week if they didn't meet their cash targets ...

(Booker) raised more than $6 million over the last three months, with a third of that coming in the past 10 days after he warned he would have to drop out of the Democratic presidential race if he didn't take in more cash by Monday's fundraising deadline.

Despite that flood of money, Booker says he still needs more. His campaign is pressing donors to contribute $3 million in the month of October alone to help cover a budget they predict will surpass $7 million for the final quarter of the year.

So the "Going Out of Business" sale will last at least another thirty days.


Psyche, all you Castro donors.

-- Something's Berning.


Somebodies don't like it.





Have we had enough of that?


-- That's enough obsessing over filthy lucre for me, but let's note this.


Also note that all these people are Jewish, and we're in the middle of the High Holy Days.


I just don't have any words.

-- Happening today:


Note that the times listed are Pacific.  Underneath this is a tweet from Mark Charles requesting inclusion, and another listing the Libertarian potential nominees.  I'll leave that to your discovery.

-- Should we be surprised?


Another update on Friday, with more on the next debate.
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