Sunday, February 16, 2020

Sunday 'Slow Bern' Funnies




Chuck Todd: 'I don't understand how Bernie is considered a front-runner'


A True Centrist Democrat Story, in four parts



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Friday, February 14, 2020

The Election 2020 Update: It's Bernie, bitches

The nice thing about posting this today is not having to post about Biden collapsing, about bitter Liz spewing, about Amy Klobucop rising, BootEdge doing whatever he's doing, Money Bags apologizing, and the usual MSNBC frothing rants about soshulizm.  I really should mention Yang, Bennet, and Patrick dropping out, though.

Okay then.


Went to the Houston campaign office opening last night.  We got there right at 6:30; both front rooms were almost full.  Maybe 100 people, about ten of which were my shade of pink.  I went hypoglycemic and had to leave around 7 so I missed the opening speeches, but the music was getting loud and the crowd was festive.  Took some pictures, but none of them are as good as this.


Sanders' approach here in Deep-In-The-Hearta is straight into the barrios.



Austin's East End last night.  Details on McAllen for tomorrow.


He also made an appearance -- along with three other front-runners -- via teleconference at the LULAC forum in Las Vegas.


So some Latinxs (Latinxes?) are apathetic, but it doesn't look that way to me.

-- Bloomey rolled into H-Town for the Harris Democrats' JRR dinner, picked up Sly Turner's endorsement, spoke at the Buffalo Soldiers museum.  Trying to mend fences over stop-and frisk.  Doesn't seem to have gone too well.




As first reported in Monday's Wrangle, Bloomberg's hiring of every single political person in sight has become a fascinating story all its own.

Bloomberg entered the presidential race in November, and has since spent more than $300 million of his own money in his effort to secure the Democratic nomination. Much of the focus on Bloomberg’s historic spending spree has been on the TV ads he’s running in at least 29 states, helping boost him into the top tier in polls and driving up the price of air time for other candidates. Beyond pushing out his competitors, though, Bloomberg’s spending is having a shockingly disruptive effect on Democratic politics throughout the country: He is hiring armies of staffers and canvassers in nearly every state in the country at eye-popping salaries, poaching talent from other campaigns and progressive organizations that are now struggling to fill jobs. In just three months, the Bloomberg campaign has hired thousands of people to staff more than 125 offices around the country, the New York Times reported Thursday.

[...]

Progressive groups, local campaigns, and presidential operations are either losing staff to the Bloomberg campaign, or are struggling to hire people because the former mayor has picked so many political operatives and canvassers up, according to interviews, emails, and messages from dozens of people involved in hiring. Several of them spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, either not to offend the biggest spender in political history, or not to expose publicly that they are having a hard time finding staff, which the public could perceive as suggestive of weakness.

[...]

During an interview this week on The Hill TV’s show “The Rising,” a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, Chuck Rocha, said the campaign recently lost a staffer in South Carolina to Bloomberg.

“I’ve heard it in every state that we’ve been in,” said Rocha of the Bloomberg effect, adding that one staffer recently came to him and said, “‘Hey Chuck, I’m with Bernie, I’m gonna vote for Bernie, but I’m gonna go get this money, cuz he’s gonna double my salary and pay me till November and I’ve gotta pay my bills when this thing is over.’

And I was like, ‘Look brother, go do what you’ve gotta do. Out of respect, we’d still like your vote, and ask your mommy and daddy if they’ll vote for Bernie as well,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, no problem.’ That’s a real thing.”

The salaries being paid to Bloomberg staffers are well above market rates, and often come with housing included, as well as a laptop and an iPhone. One operative lured to Bloomberg’s office in New York said she observed a seemingly endless wall of iPhones stacked like bricks as far as she could see. Another said that Bloomberg offered a job to one operative who didn’t take it, but still received a laptop and iPhone from the campaign in the mail anyway, presumably by sheer dint of onboarding momentum. One progressive consultant in Arizona has lost multiple hires to Bloomberg and is having a hard time finding workers. “I have heard of new organizers being hired by Bloomberg and then saying they are secretly still knocking for Bernie,” the consultant said.

"We already know what you are; we're just negotiating the price".

That was not snark.
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Monday, February 10, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle

With early voting by mail already under way, and early voting in person a week away, the Texas Progressive Alliance encourages voters to be informed about your ballot choices for the Lone Star primary elections.  Election Day is March 3.

The TPA also wishes everyone Happy Valentine's, and that includes those who may be *ahem* recently single.  Here's a last-minute gift idea for them.


The Secretary of State has promised that Texas will not be another Iowa.

The (office of the TXSoS) confirmed it would report presidential primary votes at the Senate district level on election night, as it has in past presidential primaries. This is important because a majority of the delegates a Democratic presidential candidate 'wins' is based on results in each of the state’s 31 districts.

Earlier (Wednesday, February 5), the Texas Democratic Party said it had been advised that the new election results reporting system would not be able to allocate presidential primary votes by Senate district on election night.

“Texans deserve to know who won their election,” said a tweet posted to the party’s official Twitter account. “If, in fact, the [Secretary of State] refuses to report all of the election results, including presidential preference by senate district, it is a violation of the public trust and fails Texans.”

The state party allocates more than half of its delegates based on Senate district performances, which would have meant that candidates’ final delegate counts would not have been known for potentially several days after the primary election. Democratic caucus results from Iowa were delayed by two days because of issues connected with a new application designed to tabulate votes from more than 1,600 caucus sites.

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State said the allegations made by the Democratic Party were “categorically false,” reported the Texas Tribune’s Alexa Ura.

Progress Texas has been encouraged about the prospects of turning Texas blue for some time.


Be advised, however, that their definition of the words 'progress' and 'progressive' really mean 'any old Blue will do'.  (That's not the standard definition.)

In last week's Wrangle, this blogger ranted about misuse of the word 'progressive'.  This week, both Gadfly and Jaime Abeytia picked up on that with rants of their own. 

Dos Centavos posted his Stace Slate for the primary, illustrating the dilemma of voting for an actual progressive (like Bernie Sanders) and a conservaDem (like Royce West) or a Libertarian who voted in the 2016 GOP primary (like MJ Hegar) or a pretender (like Chris Bell, who endorsed Republican Bill King in the 2005 Houston mayoral runoff over Sylvester Turner).

Don't make this mistake.  Do your homework; know your candidates.


Meanwhile Kuff kept on doing that same boring thing he does with campaign finance reports, this time for Texas Democratic Congressional candidates.  The one thing we know for certain is that the Texas Congressional races in both primaries are awash with too much money.  Another thing to remember is that big checks don't do the talking or the walking for progressive candidates.

Case in point: The Texas Signal, a blog of, by, and for the Democratic political consultant people, ponders the rise of Michael Bloomberg and his presidential campaign in the state.  I'm sure it's a wonderful thing these days to be getting paid a comfortable wage to play politics in the Great State.


Keep in mind that the guy writing the checks wants something in return.


And a Texas Rural Voices reader explains why she supports ... Tom Steyer.

Despite a few TPA members appearing once again not to be 'awake' about progressive politics, there was some hope elsewhere in the Texblogosphere.

Clay Robison at the TSTA Blog noted that public school principals don't have private jets.  Better Texas Blog connected income inequality with the decline in union membership.  And  Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current reviewed the state of election integrity without mentioning 'Russian hackers' once.

With a few words about Trump, SocraticGadfly looked at the recently-ended impeachment process and blogged about why it failed politically, and Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer reminds you not to believe a word Trump or his sycophants say about health care and health insurance.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is peddling as fast as he can but is still barely keeping up with the all of the developments from last week in the Democratic presidential primary.  In the second link there he wondered if Iowa turnout may have been dampened by coronavirus paranoia.

(T)here is much more to worry about with the flu.  I got my shot four months ago.  And I am not changing my behavior or buying any face masks or cutting Asian restaurants out of my dining options.

Houston's Asiatown restaurants are getting crushed by the coronavirus fears.

Local leaders say business is down as much as 70% in some spots as customers are too fearful to patronize the part of town.

“I know of one restaurant that has lost $30,000 a day," said U.S. Rep. Al Green.

[...]

Officials said libelous social media posts are spreading misinformation and have led to empty restaurants and stores.

"It is having a significant impact," Green said. "A needless impact, given that there is no reported case. There is no reason to be away from your normal life. So I’m begging people to please come back."

There are lots of opportunities to see Texas Democratic candidates this week.


THE TEXAS JUSTICE TOUR CONTINUES
Free event for Democrats in Williamson & Travis Counties

REGISTER: https://form.jotform.com/92335580529159

Sunday, February 16, 2020
5:30 to 7:30pm
Whitestone Brewery
601 E Whitestone Boulevard #500
Cedar Park, Texas 78613

Meet Democratic candidates for state and local judicial offices, including the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Complimentary food and beverages.

ORGANIZING SPONSORS:
Judge Amy Clark Meachum for TX Supreme Court
Justice Gisela Triana for TX Supreme Court
Attorney Brandy Voss for TX Supreme Court
Judge Tina Clinton for TX Court of Criminal Appeals
Judge Brandon Birmingham for TX Court of Criminal Appeals


Castro has been doing his part for Elizabeth Warren's campaign all across the country.


And there were several events last week that rallied the faithful.


There was a great deal of news about the Texas environment.




-- Anger runs through Hill Country as Kinder Morgan pipeline nears completion


Kinder Morgan’s $2 billion pipeline project, known as the Permian Highway Pipeline Project, has exercised its right to eminent domain leaving a plethora of infuriated Texas Hill Country property owners in its sizable wake.

These landowners are contesting the actions of Kinder Morgan and seeking a remedy. At issue are land valuation and the offers the energy infrastructure giant has made to property owners.

[...]

Property owners see more than just the face value of the land and believe the pipeline company is “either intentionally lowballing landowners or seriously misjudging the value of Hill Country real estate,” reported Austin’s National Public Radio station, KUT.

[...]

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2005 furnished governments with the authority to condemn private property for economic development ...

“On something like a gas transmission pipeline, the legislature has given eminent domain authority to people like Kinder Morgan if they are a common carrier,” Clint Schumacher, an attorney at Dawson & Sodd specializing in eminent domain, said.

A common carrier moves other companies’ gas or oil through its pipeline at established rates reported the Texas Observer, and “Kinder Morgan gains the power to seize private land through eminent domain as a ‘public utility.”

The Texas Observer further noted that due to a 2011 Texas Supreme Court decision -- Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline -- the Texas Railroad Commission, the state entity with oversight, isn’t required to verify a common carrier claim.

-- Peak Permian oil production may arrive much sooner than expected (DeSmogBlog)

-- Winter storm resulted in massive amounts of flaring in Permian Basin


-- EPA promises additional soil testing at southern Dallas Superfund site


Let's close another Wrangle with some news on the lighter side of the ledger.

The San Antonio Museum of Art opens 2020 with a groundbreaking new exhibition titled “Texas Women: A New History of Abstract Art.”



The first large-scale exhibition of its kind, the show features 85 works by female abstract artists who have lived and worked in Texas from the mid-20th century to the present.


Using your company's product, carried to the extreme.

For the past month Felderhoff, who is a co-owner with his brother of Muenster Milling Co, a fourth-generation family business that makes pet foods in Texas, has been eating nothing else but his company’s products and, yes, that means dog food.

“Well, it’s a little naive to say I want to [eat dog food] for 30 days,” he admitted in the first of a series of videos documenting his journey on the company’s YouTube page. “But we want to prove that we believe in what we do.”


“For two years, I have toyed with the idea of eating our dog food for a month,” he wrote on his company’s blog. “Not just as an advertising bit ... far from it. I want people to know that we are so passionate about what we do, that we’ll do anything we can to make sure we’re providing the best food possible for their dog, so much so, that we’ll even eat it ourselves.”

Sure, Felderhoff is doing this for good reasons, like raising the awareness of animal obesity and promoting pet adoption. And, as he admitted to the Houston Chronicle, his products are not exactly fine cuisine for the human palate. “Dog food is not easy to eat,” he said. “It tastes like it smells. One of the things I did that was key is that I did do some intermittent fasting.”


(Sidebar, personal:) Publisher George B. Irish turned off the Light in 1993 from atop a desk in the newsroom as the presses rolled out the afternoon daily's final edition.  Irish had been part of the Hearst executive team that negotiated the $185 million buyout of the a.m.-circulated San Antonio Express-News from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. that included keeping the E-N employees and terminating the Light's.

As VP of the company and GM of Hearst Newspapers in 1995, Irish performed an encore -- not exactly a killing, FWIW -- on the San Francisco Examiner, W.R. Hearst's very first newspaper, by buying the SF Chronicle, which I blogged about here.  (It was quite the story; too bad the links are dead.)  In 2008 Irish left his position as SVP of the Hearst Corporation to become the eastern director of the Hearst Foundation.  As I wrote there, not a promotion.  Irish still dutifully serves Hearst in the same capacity at (by my math) age 75; Frank Bennack, his mentor, turned over the executive washroom keys a couple of years ago to Steve Swartz, who replaced Irish at the helm of the newspaper division and then in the job Irish got close enough to smell but never taste.

Bennack wrote his memoirs last year but is still hanging around as vice chairman of Hearst at 86 years of age.  Not many fresh ingredients in the Good Housekeeping kitchen.
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Sunday, February 09, 2020

Sunday Funnies










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Saturday, February 08, 2020

#DemDebate: New Hampshire wrap

Bernie strong as always.  Biden lost again, right from the get-go.  Warren got the fifth-most speaking time, not enough to call it a good night for her.  Buttigieg took incoming and withered (hey, he's the one claiming war duty).

Klobuchar consistently gets good marks from the talking heads, and they're universally perplexed as to why it's not translating into votes (it is, just not enough).  There are blindingly obvious reasons for this, which is why they are blind to them.

More on the top five from Jessa Crispin at The Guardian:


Here we are gathered together during the Year of the Rat, and I regret to report that Pete Buttigieg is ascending. I kept waiting for his fellow candidates to go after him for little things like, oh I don’t know, claiming victory over a caucus before all results were tallied? Minor despotic behaviors, that sort of thing? Instead, we heard mostly the same talking points coming from the same candidates who were almost all wearing the same outfits from the last debate. Is that Klobuchar dress plum or more of an eggplant? I’ve seen it so much by now you think I would have figured it out. (Is it just me, or does she spend most of her time on the debate stage explaining to people why they should like her more? Like someone who realizes she’s about to be broken up with suddenly listing out all their best assets?)

Steyer and Yang: At least the half-decent billionaire has stopped staring into the camera with each response, but his appeals for a middle path will go nowhere.  Yang spoke least, and the Gang is pissed again.  Both guys are going to get tired of pissing money away sooner than later, I suspect, and both should endorse Bernie when they reach that point.

So I will just be Tom Steyer yelling from the margins of the stage PULL IT TOGETHER for the rest of this campaign. While some of the Democrats have gotten better at addressing the lived experience of people in the country, most are still speaking in broad ways that don’t connect. 

James Carville said this too, though he was praising BootEdgeEdge and damning Bernie when he said it.  Carville is nucking futs but the Caucasian Washington establishment drools over him.  There are, to be sure, elements of 'not getting it' that ring like a fire alarm.

Whenever abortion is discussed on the stage, it’s always in terms of “protecting Roe v Wade,” and not the massive crisis of accessibility that is going on in most states, with clinics closing, prices rising, and distances traveled for care increasing. It’s easy to talk about “rehabilitation” being the solution to the opioid crisis, but no one talks about how ineffective, expensive, and dangerous treatment facilities are in this country. 

More Crispin:

It’s hard to talk in specifics when you’re given 75 seconds to address structural problems, but the distance between political speech and actual reform never seems to stop growing. It was the exasperated, exhausted outliers at the ends, Yang and Steyer, who spoke the most directly -- Yang channeled Marianne Williamson there for a second, talking about the “disease” of American society that Trump is but a symptom of -- but they are just biding their time, hoping if they stay in long enough they can force a cabinet position somewhere. The inevitable debate confrontation with Trump is coming, and only Bernie Sanders and the single-digit losers seem ready for the fight.

She nailed it.

Bloomberg:  He's still not losing, so when he finally shows up in Las Vegas he should catch a lot of well-deserved shit.

As for the pundits, Cillizza hit more often than he missed this go-round, except for his take on Sneaky Pete.  This was spot on, and if you noticed at the start, the sound was messed up too.

* Lighting: Was it only me who fixated on the fact that the candidates' faces were well-lit but their hands were basically in the dark? Just a weird thing -- particularly for those candidates -- Bernie, I'm looking at you -- who gestured a lot with their (unlit) hands.


Van Jones, another guy who tends to piss me off too often, did so again last night.

During a post-debate analysis, Jones reacted to a moment in the New Hampshire debate where all the candidates except one, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, put up their hands when asked if they were worried about a “socialist” (i.e., Sanders) at the top of the 2020 Democratic ticket.

“Joe Lockhart and I did the three count. Three Mississippis, before Klobuchar put her hand up,” host Chris Cuomo noted. “[Sanders] has been redefining the word. Can it be redefined in a way that works in America?”

“I don’t know if he can,” Jones said, before explaining that his take that the term is more problematic than Sanders’ actual agenda. “For his young supporters, they call themselves socialists, but they really just seem to have, like, grandparent envy. In other words, their grandparents pretty much get to see a doctor for free. And want the same thing. Grandparents went to college for $4 a semester. And they want to do the same thing. Why call yourselves socialist? You basically just say: ‘Grandma and grandpa, I want what you had.’ The idea that is some socialist revolution or whatever. This is not the socialist revolution we heard about in the ’60s and ’70s. And I think the label does harm when the policies are pretty reasonable.”

It's a generational difference for sure, and Jones' POV -- elitist and stale -- is coming from the grands'.  Chris Matthews, Exhibit A.


All evidence suggests that the yoots outnumber Boomers, especially those with this mindset, and they were the ones who got the job done in 2018.  Will they save their generation -- and the world -- from incrementalism and turn out in 2020?  I expect so from anecdotal observation, but I need confirmation.  I can at least predict that they will do a lot better than the (older) Latinx bloc, which apparently is still sitting around with its arms crossed waiting to be catered to.

What Twitter had to say: An extremely valuable round-up (for me).

The snark went a bit more cerebral.

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Friday, February 07, 2020

Election 2020 Update: #coronavirus, #DemDebate, Iowa, New Hampshire ...

Will the contagion wreck the global economy?  What about the US economy; the issue Trump expects to win on?  There are as always multiple moving parts, and I'm obviously not an economist.  So take this news for what it may be worth.  Food for thought ... or empty carbs.

China announced on Thursday that it will halve additional tariffs on $75 billion worth of US imports, as the world's two largest economies continue to step back from a years-long trade war that has hurt both countries and dented global growth.

The move comes as China is grappling with the escalating coronavirus outbreak. The disease has killed 565 people, mostly in China, and infected more than 28,000 people in over 25 countries and territories.

[...]

(Asian economists) have warned that the coronavirus outbreak could dent China's economic growth this year and have knock-on effects for the global economy.

When the outbreak hit, Beijing took the extraordinary step of placing major cities on lockdown in order to contain it. The government also extended the Lunar New Year holiday, effectively bringing factories around the country to a standstill as workers have been ordered to stay home. Millions of people have pulled back on consumption, as they hunker down indoors and avoid public spaces.

I can tell you anecdotally that the same is true in this country.  There is low-grade fear -- that's the proper word -- among Americans that matches the description of the Chinese in the last sentence in the excerpt above.

Oil is crashing because demand is in free fall.  This could be very bad, obviously, for Texas oilmen  and Texas Republicans (a redundancy) and Sheldon Adelson -- who owns casinos in Macau, now a ghost town -- in the short run.  And all of that by extension bad for Trump.  Ironically, things might just rebound in time for the November election to save his fat, lying ass.

The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is already scuttling supply chains and wreaking havoc on companies around the world that do business in China, but if analysts' projections are correct, the rebound from the virus could help propel the U.S. economy to new heights right around the time of the 2020 presidential election.

Why it matters: With President Trump touting the stock market's performance and jobs growth as key accomplishments, that bounce-back could play a major role in the election's outcome.

What's happening: S&P Global expects the outbreak to "stabilize globally in April 2020, with virtually no new transmissions in May."

And most economists predict the world will get back to business as usual by the summer -- and make up for lost time with accelerated economic growth in the second half of the year.

The economy will do whatever it does.  My POV is that there is much more to worry about with the flu.  I got my shot four months ago.  And I am not changing my behavior or buying any face masks or cutting Asian restaurants out of my dining options.  YMMV.

But on that note ... do you think these fears dampened Iowa caucus turnout?

Campaigns were expecting high turnout in Iowa, but it didn't happen -- and that has to be worrying for Democrats.

The closing campaign events were all packed. And yet, turnout was more on par with 2016 than the record-setting 2008 campaign. About 172,000 turned out this year. It was 171,000 in 2016, and 239,000 in 2008.

It very well may be that undecided voters stayed home and are fine with whoever wins. But Democrats were hoping to show just how enthusiastic their base is to turn out and beat President Trump.

In this first contest, it didn't happen.

That was Takeaway #4 from Domenico Montenaro at NPR about Iowa.  Number 5 -- you probably could have guessed it -- had to bash Bernie.

The Sanders campaign points to polls showing that he beats Trump in a general election. And that's true.

But his performance in Iowa didn't help make his case. Sanders promised turnout would be north of 239,000. It wasn't. And he didn't turn out new voters. In fact, the percentage of first-time caucus-goers went down this year, even compared to 2016. In 2008, the percentage of first-time caucus-goers was 57%; in 2016, it was 44%; this year, it was just 35%.

Sanders has a massive base of support with voters under 30, but he didn't appear to expand beyond that. Sanders won the raw-vote total, but losing in rural areas cost him delegates. Sanders' votes came from urban areas and college towns. That's not where Democrats need to show strength.

So with moderates splitting the vote, and Sanders beating out Warren in Iowa, he looks stronger today for the nomination than he did before Iowa, but he didn't do much to help his argument that he's best to beat Trump.

A reasonable enough argument, but conclusions drawn from one state -- where 92% of the caucus-goers were white -- and a counting process so fraught with errors that most news organizations refuse to declare an outright winner, make this premise watch-worthy, not predictive.

(A sidebar about Iowa: there's been an awful lot of crap -- not a pun -- Tweeted about the sad display of incompetence at best, and corruption at worst, of the convoluted tabulation.  I just don't care to refry those beans.)

Hawkeye results are showing us once more that they have always been about media spin and momentum, almost to complete exclusion of any other value.  To that end, I can certainly agree that Uncle Joe is gasping for oxygen, and that Elizabeth Warren desperately needs to finish ahead of Buttigieg.  New Hampshire can reinforce Sneaky Pete as a front-runner or dispel that notion.  See Takeaways 1, 2, and 3.  If Klobuchar finishes fifth again she should really drop out.

Meanwhile, Yang reboots:

... Andrew Yang's campaign laid off staff Wednesday after a dismal showing in the Iowa caucuses and with the New Hampshire primary less than a week away.

The bulk of the layoffs came in the digital and communications departments, as well as in policy, according to a source familiar with the move, who described the result as an abrupt surprise to staff. Yang had garnered only about 1% of Iowa's state delegates as of the latest results, released Thursday.

He had a nice moment in his town hall Wednesday night ...


... and he'll be debating tonight, having missed the last one.  Yang is a cypher; an intangible when it comes to electability.  I have no idea what his end game might be at the moment.  Here's the news only the paid political consultants care about.

By the end of 2019, Yang's campaign had an 87% burn rate with $4.2 million in cash on hand, according to FEC filings.

-- Speaking of the "E" word:  IMO only #MayoCheat is not electable.  As applied to Bernie and Warren (as a democratic socialist and a woman respectively, duh) it's foolish.  Biden's electable but he can't beat Trump.  This is a difference, not a distinction.

BootEdgeEdge's biggest problem isn't that the US electorate will not vote for a gay person.  That finishes second to his invisible support among African Americans.  A larger-than-expected number of Black men and women are already empirically demonstrating that they won't turn out to vote for Democrats.  Why any Democrat who wants to defeat Trump -- irrespective of skin pigmentation -- would cast a ballot for Pete strikes me as the epitome of ignorance.

For the moment let's put aside these socially uncomfortable truths.

Pete Buttigieg is too inexperienced to be president of the United States.  He got one vote when he ran for DNC chair against Tom Perez and Keith Ellison a few years ago.  He lost 62.5% - 37.5% when he ran for Indiana state treasurer.  In the two elections he won -- elected and re-elected South Bend mayor -- he did so with a grand total of 10,991 and 8,515 votes respectively.

And to put it more diplomatically than I wrote above: despite his showing in rural Iowa, his biography is simply too problematic in culturally conservative counties and states that Democrats must recapture in 2020.

The highest government office Pete Buttigieg is qualified to be, today, is VA secretary.

-- That leaves Steyer and Money Bags.  One of these is better than the other.  One is in tonight's debate and one is not.  One has had exceptions made on his behalf, to the dismay of candidates who have left the race, so that he can appear in the next debate.  One has more momentum than the other, especially in Texas.  That giant sucking sound you hear is blue lips all over his ass.

“I like that he is here. I strongly believe we have a chance to deliver the state’s 38 electoral college votes to the Democratic nominee. But it won’t happen of its own accord. It’s going to take a massive level of organizing and a significant investment. … The fact that he’s willing to do that bodes very, very well for the state, and may bode well for his candidacy.”

Who said it?  No peeking.


Hard pass, Lillie.

-- Oh yeah, the debate.


Vox's take suggests that Warren may have to get after Bernie again, Biden might jump on Pete, and a few other incendiary possibilities.  I'll Tweet some tonight and post a wrap-up tomorrow.

-- Here's your Socialist Workers Party ticket.

SWP vice presidential candidate Malcolm Jarrett, at left, joins presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy on autoworkers’ picket line in Arlington, Texas, during GM strike last fall. Right, Kennedy discusses politics, SWP program with 
Jason Denton on his doorstep in Dallas, Jan. 25, 2019. Photo credit: The Militant

Alyson Kennedy grew up in Indianapolis, where she was attracted to the massive battles she followed on TV against racist cops and KKK thugs across the South that tore down Jim Crow segregation, strengthening the whole working class. After she move to Louisville, Kentucky, she joined the fight to desegregate public schools there in 1975.

Today she works at Walmart in Dallas, where she organizes with other workers to press for higher wages and better working conditions and builds support for other struggles in the interests of working people.

A socialist and trade union fighter for more than four decades, Kennedy, 69, is a member of the Socialist Workers Party’s National Committee and was the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2008 and for president in 2016.

It's not clear to me whether the party's candidates will be on the Texas ballot even as a qualified write-in, if that.  Kennedy was supposed to be a challenger to Ted Cruz in 2018, but failed to appear.  I tried to contact her campaign several times that year without response.

Malcolm Jarrett, Socialist Workers Party candidate for vice president, 49, works as a cook at a catering company in Pittsburgh. He was attracted to working-class struggle as an African American youth in eastern Missouri, as his family joined in the defense of the Black community in Cairo, Illinois, from assaults by cops and vigilantes. In these struggles, he gained a real appreciation of the support from farmers in the area. Jarrett was also influenced by the popular revolutionary movement that overthrew the apartheid regime in South Africa.

He joined the SWP while organizing protests at Southeast Missouri State University to oppose Washington’s war against Iraq in 1991. Today he stands in solidarity with protests by workers and youth against wars promoted by both Washington and Tehran in Iran and Iraq.

SWP has also announced US Senate candidates, including Texas.


-- Joe Walsh falls by the right-hand wayside.


-- Snark, anyone?



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Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Election 2020 Update: Iowait

And wait.  And wait.

Monday night’s Iowa caucuses were supposed to offer America a first look at the Democratic Party’s front-runner in the 2020 presidential race, based on the results of the first primary battle. That didn’t quite happen. Instead, after a chaotic night full of errors and mismanagement, the party had still failed to name a winner by the next afternoon.

While party leaders and pundits alike are struggling to figure out what went wrong, it looks like a hastily-built and reportedly insufficiently tested smartphone app is at the center of the disaster.

As you can click and see in the excerpt ... still no final tallies as of this mornng.  Nobody could have anticipated that technology might prove to be democracy's undoing, after all.

It's a shame they can't blame the Russians.

The 2020 Iowa caucuses turned out to have been designed to depend on the use of a new, untested app with extensive ties to establishment insiders and to the Pete Buttigieg campaign, and because of problems using this app as of this writing we are still waiting on the full results of the election. The Iowa Democratic Party has bizarrely released a partial result with 62 percent of 99 counties reporting, which just so happens to have favored the campaign of a Mr. Peter Buttigieg, who in the sample came out on top in delegates despite coming in second in votes.

According to an Iowa precinct chair, the problems using the app (developed by the aptly named Shadow, Inc) included literally switching the numbers entered into it on the final step of reporting results.

“A precinct chair in Iowa said the app got stuck on the last step when reporting results,” CNN reports. “It was uploading a picture of the precinct’s results. The chair said they were finally able to upload, so they took a screenshot. The app then showed different numbers than what they had submitted as captured in their screenshot.”


Here's a live look at an Iowa precinct captain attempting to use the app.


And here is your executive summary.

It doesn’t actually matter any more who really won Iowa at this point; the damage is already done.

Iowa is a sparsely populated state with an insignificant number of delegates; nobody campaigns there for the delegates, they campaign to make headlines and generate excitement and favorable press for themselves in the first electoral contest of the presidential primary race. This has already happened, and with Buttigieg first declaring victory before any results were in, followed by his delegate count lead announced hours later, the favorable press has predominantly gone his way.

More reading if you care:

-- Buttigieg and/or Sanders will win Iowa.  What's next?

-- Iowa's biggest loser wasn't Joe Biden, though that should have been the media's top story.

-- Worst in the Nation: What the Iowa caucus disaster means for the Democratic Party.

Trump’s campaign wasted no time in sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome and ridiculing the Democratic Party for its incompetence. “It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?”

-- And my personal favorite: the Iowa caucus choked itself to death.

"A Systemwide Disaster." "Meltdown." "Debacle." These are the headlines coming out of the Hawkeye State after its caucus on Monday night. Maybe it had to end this way for Iowa, a state that re-elects men like Chuck Grassley and Steve King with dreary consistency, and which has now seen caucus disaster for the third straight time.

Alllllllllrighty then.  On To New Hampshire!

-- We have CNN town halls tonight, continuing tomorrow night.


There is one glaring omission from this slate.


Gabbard is polling ahead of Yang, Steyer, and even Bloomberg in the RCP collated averages, but CNN is including ... Deval Patrick in this lineup.


I don't care for CNN picking favorites among presidential candidates any more than I do the Texas Tribune selecting their/"our" Senate Democratic contenders.  (It's remarkable how hard they have worked to ignore the woman who earned 24% in the 2018 primary against Beto O'Rourke, but when all you care about is fundraising, that's what happens.)

-- That's a segue-way into Friday night's debate.  Update: This isn't the one the oligarch bought his way into; that one's in Vegas on February 19.

Slated for February 7 in Manchester, New Hampshire, the debate is the first of a trio happening that month as individuals in all four early states head to the polls (or caucuses). The debate’s start time will be 8 pm ET; it’s expected to run for about three hours.

Scheduled just days after Iowa’s caucuses and less than a week before New Hampshire’s February 11 primary, the debate, hosted by ABC, WMUR-TV, and Apple News, is poised to inform last-minute voter decisions both in the state and across the country. As Vox’s Ella Nilsen reports, roughly two-thirds of voters in New Hampshire still haven’t made a final decision about their top candidate. It’s possible candidates’ last-ditch debate appearances -- and arguments -- could make the difference.

Nina Turner's use of the 'O' word got a well-publicized rise out of MSNBC contributor/The Root politics editor Dr. Jason Johnson.


As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Money Bags is buying entire statewide Democratic parties, not just the DNC, and not just a place on the debate stage.


Click The Root link for their take on Bloomberg's purchase of a debate podium from the POC perspective.  Both of these issues w/r/t debate qualification -- class and race -- are another pair of problems for the DNC, at a time when Trump is ascendant.

-- Bloomberg has doubled his ad buying after the Iowa clusterf.  He bought so much airtime in Houston in November that a politico working for Sylvester Turner in his runoff against Tony Buzbee whined about escalating media costs.


-- Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is canceling ads her campaign purchased in the two states that vote after South Carolina.  Make of this whatever you like.


^^This^^ is your site for all of that shit right there.  Tea leaves and goat entrails no charge.

Got more but I think I'll stop here since I will have to blog a lot about these people this week.  One little bite of snark before I go.

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