Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

Senate Dems are calling on President Biden to take the debt ceiling default time bomb and unilaterally disarm it using the 14th Amendment's Public Debt Clause.

 

A group of Senate Democrats is circulating a letter urging President Biden to prepare to invoke the 14th Amendment to unilaterally resolve the debt ceiling standoff without involving Congress, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release.

The letter, signed by five senators so far, reflects building unease among White House allies over the direction of negotiations between the president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on an agreement expected to cut the deficit and raise the debt limit. Liberal lawmakers have balked as Biden entertains spending cuts and new work requirements on federal aid programs — fueling interest in a solution to the standoff that does not require a deal with McCarthy. The effort comes as House Democrats start to collect signatures for a discharge petition to move legislation that would raise the debt ceiling without any other policy changes, a long-shot procedural move aimed at bypassing the chamber’s Republican leaders.

The senators’ letter reminds Biden that the 14th Amendment says “the validity of the public debt, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Lawmakers have just days before a possible June 1 deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. If the cap isn’t raised by the time the Treasury Department runs out of available cash, the nation risks default, which would likely prompt a global economic shock that could send the U.S. into a recession.

“Republicans have made it clear that they are prepared to hold our entire economy hostage unless you accede to their demands to reduce the deficit on the backs of working families. That is simply unacceptable,” the letter states. “We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”

The letter has been signed thus far by Democratic Sens. Tina Smith (Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Edward J. Markey (Mass.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon). Those lawmakers met in the Capitol Tuesday to discuss their plans. More signatures are expected before its release, with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), for instance, also calling for the president to invoke the 14th Amendment on Twitter.

“We are in a situation where these extreme Republicans in the House are demanding completely untenable policies in exchange for not driving the country’s economy off a cliff,” Smith said. “I think it’s important we understand there is another option.”

Despite growing support among Democrats, any attempt to solve the problem without GOP involvement faces enormous obstacles. The Biden administration appears eager for a deal with House Republicans, and White House aides believe there could be huge economic and legal risks in pursuing the 14th Amendment strategy of ignoring Congress. It’s also unclear that the discharge process, which is cumbersome, could be completed before the nation defaults.

 

To his enduring credit, President Biden has already pushed back on those work requirements, once again demanding a clean debt ceiling bill like the GOP voted for three times under Trump.

It's good to see the Senate Dems in the Bernie camp agreeing with Biden on this. More of actually treating the President and leader of the Democratic party as such, thanks.

 

 

Sinema Verite', Con't

While she will still caucus with the Democrats, for now at least, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema says she's leaving the Democratic party to register as an independent.

 

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is changing her party affiliation to independent, delivering a jolt to Democrats’ narrow majority and Washington along with it.

In a 45-minute interview, the first-term senator told POLITICO that she will not caucus with Republicans and suggested that she intends to vote the same way she has for four years in the Senate. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

Provided that Sinema sticks to that vow, Democrats will still have a workable Senate majority in the next Congress, though it will not exactly be the neat and tidy 51 seats they assumed. They’re expected to also have the votes to control Senate committees. And Sinema’s move means Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — a pivotal swing vote in the 50-50 chamber the past two years — will hold onto some but not all of his outsized influence in the Democratic caucus.

Sinema would not address whether she will run for reelection in 2024, and informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of her decision on Thursday.

“I don’t anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure,” Sinema said, adding that some of the exact mechanics of how her switch affects the chamber is “a question for Chuck Schumer … I intend to show up to work, do the same work that I always do. I just intend to show up to work as an independent.”

 

What it means is if the last two years in the Senate was all about Chuck Schumer about keeping Joe Manchin happy, the next two now mean keeping Sinema from caucusing with the GOP, she might do in order to force another two years of 50-50 Senate power sharing, and even if the Dems can somehow magically defend all their other 2024 seats, we're stuck with Co-President Sinema for a long time.

But the big thing is that it now means any sort of primary challenge to her in 2024 is doomed and would assure someone like Blake Masters would win easily. She knew she was facing political oblivion if she stayed a Democrat as Rep. Ruben Gallego was waiting for his opportunity to knock her out of the running.

Now she can safely say that it's her way or the GOP. A three way race would go to the GOP, every time. Kyrsten Sinema did this to save Kyrsten Sinema's narrow ass, full stop. The caucusing with the GOP threat is secondary if she can't stay in her seat.

On the gripping hand, maybe she's just doing this for the lobbyist cred and she won't run in 2024 at all.

The Independent thing worked for Bernie, and worked for Angus King in Maine. It'll work for her if she wants it to.

We'll see.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Despite my serious and considerable doubts that either Kyrsten Sinema would blow up the Inflation Reduction Act budget reconciliation legislation from the right, or that Bernie Sanders would blow it up from the left, or that Joe Manchin would super double secret probation blow it up from the moon anyhow, Senate Democrats got the votes started tonight and passed the first hurdle.

 

A divided Senate voted Saturday to start debating Democrats’ election-year economic bill, boosting the sprawling collection of President Joe Biden’s priorities on climate, energy, health and taxes past its initial test as it starts moving through Congress.

In a preview of votes expected on a mountain of amendments, united Democrats pushed the legislation through the evenly divided chamber by 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie and overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. The package, a dwindled version of earlier multitrillion-dollar measures that Democrats failed to advance, has become a partisan battleground over inflation, gasoline prices and other issues that polls show are driving voters.

The House, where Democrats have a slender majority, could give it final approval next Friday when lawmakers plan to return to Washington.

The vote came after the Senate parliamentarian gave a thumbs-up to most of Democrats’ revised 755-page bill. But Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan rules arbiter, said Democrats had to drop a significant part of their plan for curbing drug prices.

MacDonough said Democrats violated Senate budget rules with language imposing hefty penalties on drug makers who boost their prices beyond inflation in the private insurance market. Those were the bill’s chief pricing protections for the roughly 180 million people whose health coverage comes from private insurance, either through work or bought on their own.

Other pharmaceutical provisions were left intact, including giving Medicare the power to negotiate what it pays for drugs for its 64 million elderly recipients, a longtime Democratic aspiration. Penalties on manufacturers for exceeding inflation would apply to drugs sold to Medicare, and there is a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap on drug costs and free vaccines for Medicare beneficiaries.

“The time is now to move forward with a big, bold package for the American people,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “This historic bill will reduce inflation, lower costs, fight climate change. It’s time to move this nation forward.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Democrats “are misreading the American people’s outrage as a mandate for yet another reckless taxing and spending spree.” He said Democrats “have already robbed American families once through inflation and now their solution is to rob American families yet a second time.”

Saturday’s vote capped a startling 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of Biden’s agenda that had seemed dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators — first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginia, then Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a package that would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.

A White House statement said the legislation “would help tackle today’s most pressing economic challenges, make our economy stronger for decades to come, and position the United States to be the world’s leader in clean energy.”

Assuming Democrats fight off a nonstop “vote-a-rama” of amendments — many designed by Republicans to derail the measure — they should be able to muscle the measure through the Senate.

“What will vote-a-rama be like? It will be like hell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said of the approaching GOP amendments. He said that in supporting the Democratic bill, Manchin and Sinema “are empowering legislation that will make the average person’s life more difficult” by forcing up energy costs with tax increases and making it harder for companies to hire workers.

 

There's still time to sink the bill with poison pill amendments, so we're nowhere out of the woods yet.  I still think there's a disaster coming, as do some of you.

 

But for now, the bill is now one step closer to becoming law.

The Return Of The Time Turner

Looks like OH-11 Rep. Shontel Brown has more than made her case to run again in November to Cleveland voters as she handed primary challenger and Bernout Nina Turner a far more embarrassing loss than in last August.

Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, won a rematch Tuesday against Nina Turner, a progressive activist and former state senator who is known nationally for her work on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Democratic presidential campaigns, NBC News projects.

Brown was leading 63.4 percent to 36.6 percent, with 53 percent of precincts reporting at 10:32 p.m. ET.

Brown beat Turner by 5.5 percentage points in a crowded special primary last summer and then easily won the vacant seat in Ohio’s overwhelmingly Democratic 11th Congressional District in the general election. Turner had hoped that new district boundaries, which now include more of Cleveland and the liberal bordering suburb of Lakewood, would be friendlier turf for her.

This year’s battle was quieter, lacking the national establishment-vs.-progressive intrigue that Brown and Turner played into the first time. Brown, who chairs the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, aligned herself closely with President Joe Biden and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, the district’s former representative, whose appointment to the Cabinet opened the seat. Turner co-chaired Sanders’ 2020 campaign against Biden and was on record making an obscene comment about the future president.

After losing last year, Turner decried the influx of what she called “evil money” into the race — a reference to spending by outside organizations and pro-Israel groups that saw Brown as a more reliable ally. Some Jewish leaders found the remark to play into antisemitic stereotypes. 

 

So Turner went from a 5.5 percent loss to a 25+ point loss. Yes, it sure was a great idea to waste all that money going after a primary race for a party that Turner said five years ago that she wanted no part of anymore, wasn't it?

Turner immediately blamed "outside money" for her loss, after fundraising nationally for...outside money using endorsements from Bernie and AOC. Smart!

Anyway, she announced her 2024 effort to primary Joe Biden/run against Kamala Harris which should go even better for her next time.

Right?

Post-Messed-Up In General

While President Biden is appointing new members to the board that oversees the US Postal Service, Trump's agent of the agency's destruction is hard at work trying to lock a decade-long plan into place that will effectively end the era of mail in America for 90% of the country.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will unveil the largest rollback of consumer mail services in a generation as part of his 10-year plan for the U.S. Postal Service, according to two people briefed on the proposal, including longer first-class delivery windows, reduced post office hours and higher postage prices.

The announcement set for Tuesday is part of DeJoy’s strategic vision for the agency, one that has left postal advocates wary of any changes that could further diminish operations. Mailing industry experts have warned that substantial service cuts could drive away business and worsen the Postal Service’s already battered balance sheet.

DeJoy is expected to emphasize the need for austerity to ensure more consistent delivery and rein in billions of dollars in financial losses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. The agency is weighed down by $188.4 billion in liabilities, and DeJoy told a House panel last month that he expects the USPS to lose $160 billion over the next 10 years.

The plan, which he told the panel was eight months in the making, is meant to reset expectations for the Postal Service and its place in the express-shipping market. It’s couched in the notion that the historically high package volumes of the pandemic era will persist, and reorients the agency around consumers who don’t use the mail service for letters, advertisements or business transactions as much as they once did.

“Does it make a difference if it’s an extra day to get a letter?” DeJoy told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February. “Because something has to change. We cannot keep doing the same thing we’re doing.”

DeJoy will roll out his plan as Democrats have renewed calls for his ouster and the removal of the agency’s governing board, which backs him and the proposals. More than 50 House Democrats last week asked President Biden to fire the board’s six sitting members for cause — citing “gross mismanagement,” “self-inflicted” nationwide mail delays and “rampant conflicts of interest” — and to allow a new slate of Biden nominees to consider DeJoy’s fitness for office.

Biden already has nominated two Democrats and a voting rights advocate to fill three of four vacancies (board Chairman Ron Bloom, a Democrat, is serving in a one-year holdover term) on the board of governors. If confirmed by the Senate, Democrats and Biden appointees would hold a 5-to-4 majority with the votes to remove DeJoy, if desired.

Biden cannot fire DeJoy; postal operations are purposefully insulated from the presidency and Congress to prevent politicians from tinkering with the mail system for political gain. The postmaster general answers only to the board of governors. Bloom told the House panel in February that the board “believes the postmaster general in very difficult circumstances is doing a good job.”

Most of DeJoy’s changes will not face regulatory road blocks. The postmaster general unilaterally controls operating hours at post offices, and the board of governors appears to back DeJoy’s changes to delivery times. Bloom will join DeJoy on a webinar Tuesday to announce the policies.

 

Remember two things: 

One, President Biden may not be able to get America out of this. He can only appoint governors and he'll need Senate confirmation to do it.

Two, you can personally thank Bernie Sanders for getting us into this mess. By making the perfect the enemy of the good, he blocked President Obama's appointments to the Postal Board of Governors in 2016, allowing Donald Trump to later appoint all the governors himself with Mitch McConnell's help.

We could have saved the Post Office. There's a coin-flip chance that it doesn't make it through the decade without the mail being permanently privatized.

Last Call For (Minimum) Waging War

The Congressional Budget Office has scored Bernie Sander's $15 an hour minimum wage bill as good news and bad, that it would initially reduce employment by about 1.4 million jobs and cost $54 billion over ten years, but that more jobs would be created over those five years elsewhere, and that nearly a million American households would be lifted out of poverty.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill to hike the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would grow the deficit by $54 billion over a decade, Congress’s independent budget scorekeeper estimated Monday.

That prediction of a deficit pile-up could work in Sanders’ (I-Vt.) favor as he fights to include the minimum wage increase in the package Democrats are crafting to enact President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

Under the fast-tracked budget process Democrats could use to clear the aid package with just 51 votes in the Senate, the bill must have a direct and substantial impact on federal spending, revenues or the debt. So the Congressional Budget Office score is a boon for Democrats fighting for the minimum wage hike to be included, even as Biden casts doubt on whether it would past muster under Senate rules for the reconciliation process.

“What that means is that we can clearly raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour under the rules of reconciliation,” Sanders said about CBO’s predictions.

“Let’s be clear. We are never going to get 10 Republicans to increase the minimum wage through ‘regular order,’” said Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee. “The only way to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour now is to pass it with 51 votes through budget reconciliation.”

The wage proposal, S. 53 (117), would gradually hike the federal hourly minimum from $7.25 to $15 by 2025 and index future increases to median wage growth. It would also eliminate the sub-minimum tipped wage.

 

The final call is the Senate Parliamentarian, but they are allowed to work with the Senate once they have a CBO score to consider, which they now do. So it's possible to put the $15 minimum wage hike in the reconciliation bill.

We'll see if it makes it.  Gonna want to see how the Senate GOP votes against it, and every single one of them will most likely, but again, it only matters if voters feel like making them pay.

It worked in Georgia.

Last Call For Primary Causes

New York is officially canceling the June presidential primary election.

The New York State Board of Elections voted to cancel the presidential primary scheduled for June 23 during a call with the board on Monday.

Douglas Kellner, the co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, told CNN the two Democratic election commissioners — himself and Andrew Spano — have the power under the election law to cancel the election.

“In the budget that was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor on April 3 included a provision that any candidates who have suspended their campaign or requested to be removed from the ballot should be removed from the primary ballot,” Kellner said. “And of course Sen. Sanders had suspended his campaign. He did that five days after the law was enacted. And it basically rendered the primary moot, and at a time when the goal is to avoid unnecessary social contact, our conclusion was that there was no purpose in holding a beauty contest primary that would marginally increase the risk to both voters and poll workers.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order last month moving the primary from its originally scheduled date of April 28 to June.

He responded to the board’s vote in his news conference today, saying, “I’m not going to second guess the board of elections there are a number of, I know there are a lot of election employees, employees of boards of elections who are nervous about conducting elections. But I’ll leave it up to the board of elections.”

Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, told CNN in a phone interview Monday afternoon that he agreed with the decision to cancel the state's presidential primary contest.

Jacobs said it was a "necessary move" by the New York election officials to protect the health and safety of voters and poll workers.

He noted that the outcome was essentially “pre-determined” since Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic race and emphasized the need to protect voters amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"We've stopped all non-essential business. This certainly is a non-essential primary if ever there was one," Jacobs said.

The Bernie people are furious, none more than Bernie Sanders himself.

Sanders’ campaign in a statement called the decision “an outrage” and a “blow to American democracy,” urging the Democratic National Committee to overturn it.

“While we understood that we did not have the votes to win the Democratic nomination our campaign was suspended, not ended, because people in every state should have the right to express their preference. What the Board of Elections is ignoring is that the primary process not only leads to a nominee but also the selection of delegates which helps determine the platform and rules of the Democratic Party,” said Bernie 2020 senior advisor Jeff Weaver.

“No one asked New York to cancel the election. The DNC didn’t request it. The Biden campaign didn’t request it. And our campaign communicated that we wanted to remain on the ballot. Given that the primary is months away, the proper response must be to make the election safe — such as going to all vote by mail — rather than to eliminating people’s right to vote completely.”

Our Revolution, a 501(c)(4) organization that was created after Sanders’ first run for president in 2016, has pushed its grassroots army to persuade voters to back the Vermont senator in states that have yet to hold their primaries. It aims to make sure Sanders wins enough delegates to push for key reforms in the Democratic platform.

After the self-described democratic socialist was removed from the ballot, Our Revolution’s leadership told CNBC they plan to reach out to delegates and state party leaders in the remaining primary states to persuade them that if they decide on a similar course, the party will split.

“I would say to state party chairs in other states” not to follow New York, Our Revolution’s chairman, Larry Cohen, said in an interview. “You are better off following the Republican governor in Ohio who extended a mail in ballot, than following a Democratic governor in New York, and that’s a disgrace, but that’s a reality,” he added, while placing the blame entirely on Gov. Andrew Cuomo and what he believes is his control of the state party apparatus.

Threatening the party with a schism is definitely the way to influence decisions made within the party.

Having said that, even Kentucky got its shit together enough for vote by mail this year.

Do better, Cuomo.

The Last Hat Leaves The Ring

Finally, Bernie Sanders is bowing out.

Well, sort of.

Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign, he announced on Wednesday, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden as the apparent Democratic presidential nominee.

"I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful, and so today I am announcing the suspension of my campaign," Sanders told supporters in a livestream, saying he wished he could provide supporters with "better news" but "I think you know the truth."

"We are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden and the path to victory is virtually impossible," he said. Sanders called Biden "a very decent man who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward."

Calling the decision "difficult and painful," Sanders said he had to make an "honest assessment of the prospects for victory."

He added that he understands some supporters who want him to fight on through the convention, but he could not "in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour" as the COVID-19 outbreak grips the nation.

He pledged to have significant influence over the party platform this summer, as he did during the 2016 convention. He pointed to policies like a $15 minimum wage, which has been picked up in some states and cities since he first began campaigning for it at the presidential level five years ago, as evidence that his progressive platform is winning.

It's good to see him accept reality.  I fully expected him to stay on through whatever virtual train wreck the convention would be at this point, but he's going to settle for fighting his battle on the platform and making Biden's better.

But he'll still never endorse Joe.  He never really endorsed Hillary either, saying he would do everything to help her win in July of that year and then famously telling his own voters bitterly that they were released to "their own conscience" .

I expect more of the same.

Last Call For Primary Positions, Con't

Tulsi Gabbard is finally dropping out of the race, and good riddance.

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s longshot presidential bid is over.

Gabbard’s decision to drop out, announced March 19, was long in the works. She had consistently averaged around 1 to 2 percent in national polls and performed poorly in primaries; her candidacy largely served as a single-issue protest run against American military adventurism rather than a serious bid for the presidency. Her most notable moment, a devastating attack on California Sen. Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor in the CNN’s July debate, didn’t move the dial much in her favor. So on Thursday, she dropped out an endorsed Joe Biden for president.

The irony is that Gabbard could have been a real contender. She’s a strong communicator with an interesting biography, an Iraq war veteran and the first Hindu member of Congress. Yet thanks to a series of choices she had made since getting elected to Congress in 2012 — most notably an inexplicable trip to Syria to meet the country’s murderous leader Bashar al-Assad — she managed to alienate herself from Democratic Party’s leadership and base. Her continued ties to a strange religious group called “Science of Identity” didn’t help matters either, nor did frequent clashes with the party elite during the 2020 campaign (including filing a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton).

The result is that Gabbard’s campaign never had much of a chance: She was unable to play a significant role in the Democratic primary, even on her single issue of opposing wars of regime change, due to her past missteps. She stayed in the race for a long time, but accomplished very little.

Gabbard is giving up her Hawaii US House seat too, not that she would have survived a primary anyway, for precisely the reasons above.  She's managed to alienate every key constituency in the Democratic party in record time and she has no future in it and knows it..and she endorsed Biden anyway.  You know, before Liz Warren did.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is supposedly "clear-eyed" about Joe Biden's presumptive nominee status and is concentrating on COVID-19 legislation along with Liz Warren.

Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign is signaling that he is clear-eyed about the road ahead, with his campaign manager saying he would use the lull in primary voting to have "conversations with supporters to assess his campaign."

But the statement goes on to say that Sanders will be focused on the national emergency around the novel coronavirus -- specifically "ensuring that we take care of working people and the most vulnerable."
It's largely an accident of the calendar that former Vice President Joe Biden is emerging as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee at the same time that American society has been upended.

That coincidence is a potential opportunity for the progressive moment, with once-in-a-lifetime-level federal responses being debated in Washington.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- still officially neutral in the presidential race -- has been taking a leadership role in crafting possible responses. She is proposing ideas like canceling student debt, boosting Social Security and forcing leadership changes at companies that accept bailout funds, as part of what she is calling "meaningful, grassroots relief directly to American families."

With the next giant bailout package being tailored largely by Senate Republicans, Sanders and Warren are likely to be go-to voices when Democrats have their say.

The Trump administration will need Democratic votes in the House as well as the Senate. Progressives could see disappointment turned into opportunity in the days ahead -- particularly if Sanders and Warren work together.

I still don't expect Sanders to suspend his campaign until the convention, and I still expect him to ruthlessly attack Joe Biden for another four months, because it's what he did to Hillary Clinton four years ago.  What I expect in fact is for Sanders to work on COVID-19 legislation that's very progressive along with Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, get it passed, and praise Donald Trump for signing it.

In fact, what I expect from Sanders is what he did four years ago: all but say that if he can't be the nominee, the best chance of getting individual policies of his platform enacted will be through Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, and that his voters should once again "vote their conscience" rather than endorse the Democratic nominee in the race, while pointing to a Trump-signed COVID-19 package as an argument.

I'm being cynical as hell.  I have the right to be, frankly, after what happened in 2016.

Primary Positions, Con't

It's time to start referring to Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and everyone knows it except for Bernie Sanders and his dead-enders.

Joe Biden’s decisive victories in Florida, Illinois and Arizona Tuesday effectively put the Democratic nomination out of reach for Bernie Sanders.

The former vice president won all three states by wide enough margins that he now has a majority of all delegates pledged so far, and more than half of the almost 2,000 he needs to secure the nomination at the party’s national convention this summer.

As in past victories, Biden was propelled by strong support from women, African-Americans, older voters and those who described themselves as moderates or conservatives, according to surveys conducted by the Associated Press. But he also won half of all voters aged 30-44, cutting into Sanders’s claim to younger voters. Sanders still won two-thirds of voters under 30, however.

“It’s clear, I think, the first day of the general election will start tomorrow,” said former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has endorsed Biden.

With the spreading coronavirus forcing businesses to send workers home and campaigns to abandon traditional rallies and events, Biden delivered televised remarks from his house in Delaware rather than give a victory speech in a crowded ballroom.

He spoke mostly about what the country needs to do to confront the crisis of the pandemic, “calling it a national emergency akin to a war.” But he also made an appeal for unity to the core of Sanders supporters whose votes he’ll need in the general election.
Unity Message

“To the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders, I hear you, I know what’s at stake, I know what we have to do,” Biden said in his remarks. “Our goal as a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this party and then to unify the nation.”

Biden won black and Latino voters, white and Asian voters, urban, rural, and suburban voters.  The only category where Sanders actually beat Biden was voters under 30, and you can see by the 40-point margins Biden had in the overall total how much of a difference that made.

It's time for Sanders to wrap it up, but he won't because he didn't four years ago, just like the Hillary PUMAs didn't 12 years ago, because we can't stop spending six or seven months of a contested election year tearing each other down rather than the GOP.

So Bernie will continue to snipe at Biden for four more months while the country literally burns with fever and disease, when instead those resources could be used to go after Trump, but what do I know, I'm just a dude with a blog.

Last Call For Biden, Your Time

Joe Biden's win in Michigan resets the ground rules of the last four years, and shows how a whole lot of people on the left have completely misinterpreted the last several years of American politics.

Four years ago, Bernie Sanders put up a surprisingly strong fight against Hillary Clinton on the strength of his support among white working-class voters, who proceeded to desert Clinton in November. On the basis of those two elections, the left quickly formed a series of conclusions. The working class had become alienated by neoliberal economics and was searching for radical alternatives. Because the Democrats had failed to offer the kind of progressive radical alternative Sanders stood for, voters instead opted for Trump’s reactionary attack on globalism. In order to win them back and defeat Trump, Democrats needed to reorganize themselves as a radical populist party. 

On the left, this explanation was accepted so widely it became foundational, a premise progressives would work forward from without questioning its veracity. The Sanders campaign argued that its connection to the white working class would enable Bernie to compete in areas that had abandoned Democrats years ago. “Some in the Sanders camp envision possibly making a play for Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana, as well as states such as Kansas, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Montana,” reported Politico one year ago. Every left-wing indictment of the Democratic mainstream was made in explicit or implicit contrast to this imagined counterfactual of a Sanders-led party riding triumphant through the heartland of red America. 

Even before any votes were cast in the primary, cracks were opening up in this analysis. A close look at the 2016 primary data showed that many of Bernie’s white working-class supporters were the same voters who had swung to Hillary Clinton in 2008 — they were protest votes against the Democratic Party, not affirmations of socialism. Polling on economic conditions swung dramatically positive as soon as Trump was elected, and even though Trump merely continued the same growth trajectory he’d inherited, the approval of his handling of the economy has hovered well above his overall approval. Trump’s ability to rebrand the same expansion and make it popular suggests the economy itself was not the source of the electorate’s discontent in 2016. 

And then in 2018, leftists insisted Democrats were making a catastrophic error by nominating moderates to contest swing districts, rather than Sanders-style populists. The lack of a sharp left-wing economic message would surely prevent the upsurge in turnout Democrats needed to take the House. That prediction also failed. Democrats produced a wave election on behalf of moderate voters. 

The second Sanders campaign has shown conclusively how badly the left misunderstood the electorate. It is not just that Sanders has failed to inspire anything like the upsurge in youth turnout he promised, or that he has failed to make meaningful headway with black voters. White working-class and rural voters have swung heavily against him. In Missouri and Michigan, those voters turned states he closely contested four years ago into routs for his opponent. Some rural counties have swung 30 points from Sanders 2016 to Biden 2020. The candidate in the race who has forged a transracial working-class coalition is, in fact, Joe Biden.

As I said a few months ago, 2020 was going to come down to a choice.  The choice was whether the Democrats would chase working-class white voters who abandoned Obama and Clinton for Trump, or if they would strengthen the Obama coalition and turn out enough people to beat the Trump voters anyway.

Biden's rise since Nevada proves the latter is the path forward, and what do you know, it's attracting white voters back to the party too because three years of an incompetent, evil moron in charge is making people recalibrate their priorities.

Maybe you’ve never heard of Livingston County, Michigan. It’s not Oakland County, the vote-rich behemoth located next door; nor is it Macomb County, the much-mythologized home of the culturally conservative “Reagan Democrats” who began defecting to the Republican Party decades ago. It’s a lot less populated, and a little too far from Detroit, to attract much notice from journalists and pundits. And yet, as the returns rolled in Tuesday night from Michigan’s primary, it was Livingston that told the most compelling story. Not for what it said about Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, but for what it said about Donald Trump. 

Four years ago, Livingston was a safe haven for Republicans. Voters there—white, educated, upper-class commuters who head east to Detroit, south to Ann Arbor and west to Lansing—gave no hint of a coming realignment. The county’s congressional seat, property of the GOP for 15 years, was locked down. Its political culture, anchored by a love of God, guns and tax cuts, seemed uncrackable. When the presidential primaries were held, the Republican contest attracted nearly three times more voters than the Democratic counterpart. Trump carried the county by 30 points against Hillary Clinton in November 2016, arguably his most impressive pound-for-pound showing in the state.

Today, Republicans are looking over their shoulders in Livingston County—and for good reason. They’re not worried Trump is going to lose there; they’re not worried about a wholesale change in the area’s political DNA. They’re worried about the only thing that matters in Michigan: margins. The reason Livingston is now represented by a Democrat in Congress is because Elissa Slotkin, the freshman Democrat, only lost the county by 19 points, limiting the damage in a way that allowed her to eke out an upset win with strong performances elsewhere in the 8th District.

There was a temptation for Republicans to dismiss Slotkin’s victory as an outlier, to not sweat a 30-point margin slipping to a 19-point margin. But there can no longer be any doubt about the trajectory of Livingston County and the trouble it poses for the GOP: In Tuesday’s Democratic primary, there were 27,458 votes cast in the county—compared to 17,591 four years ago. For Democratic turnout to jump 56 percent in any affluent, well-educated suburb is incredible; for it to happen in a deeply, fundamentally conservative place like Livingston County is astounding. Some people might think a difference of some 10,000 votes is no big deal. But in a state that was decided by some 10,000 votes, it’s a very big deal.

The real "revelation" is people finally admitting that sexism killed Clinton's chances to win, that especially, white men were never going to vote for a woman.  And remember that admitted pussy-grabber Donald Trump won white women too.

And 2020?  Well you know what?  That's still true.  Ask Kamala Harris or Liz Warren how Democrats handled having a second shot at nominating Not An Old White Guy.

America is still in the 1950s in a lot of respects.

Last Call For It's The Jobs, Stupid

Eric Levitz at New York Magazine explains why people younger than me love Bernie, and that's because of how screwed they are over college loans and the job market that no longer needs white collar workers.

Thanks to a combination of the Obama era’s slow but steady wage and employment gains – and the Trump presidency’s bonanza of deficit-spending and loose money – America has returned to something resembling full employment. The percentage of Americans who are looking for a job but can’t find one is now near half-century lows. And yet, the “full employment economy” that awaits this year’s graduating class looks quite different than the one that welcomed their Gen-X and Boomer predecessors. In earlier boom-times, the labor market evinced an insatiable demand for white-collar workers. Today’s, by contrast, has more aspiring professionals than it knows what to do with. And the same can be said of the economy that greeted matriculating Corbynites in the U.K.

Put differently: Even as the price of a college diploma has risen nigh-exponentially (thereby forcing the rising generation of college graduates to saddle themselves with onerous debts), the value of such diplomas on the U.S. job market has rapidly depreciated. And there is little reason to believe that this state of affairs will change, no matter how long the present boom is sustained. According to the Labor Department’s estimates, the five fastest-growing occupations in the United States over the next ten years will be solar panel installers, wind turbine technicians, home health aides, personal care aides, and occupational therapy assistants. Not a single one of those jobs requires a four-year college diploma. Only occupational therapy assistants need an associate’s degree.

Throughout my (1990s) childhood and adolescence, leaders in both major parties heralded the arrival of a “knowledge economy,” and attributed rising income inequality to a “skills gap.” Our economic system was still capable of providing a broad middle-class with high-wage, high-quality jobs; it just needed more Americans to accrue the levels of skill and education that the jobs of tomorrow required. There was an endless supply of cushy, professional-class posts awaiting those who answered our economy’s demand for highly educated workers. Economic security would come to those who did their homework.

But this story has proven to be little more than a self-flattering delusion of our (highly educated) political class. Our economy only needs so many lawyers, consultants, and financial analysts (let alone, journalists). Nor, as presently structured, can it sustain an ever-growing caste of well-remunerated coders. We have a lot of elderly people who need help going to the bathroom, and a lot of manual labor that our robots aren’t dexterous enough to perform. Most of the work that our society truly needs to get done every day doesn’t require elite academic or intellectual capacities. And thanks to the collapse of the American labor movement, most that blue and pink-collar work pays terribly. The two occupations poised to add the most jobs to our economy over the next 10 years — home and personal care aides — pay an average salary of about $24,000 a year.

A vulgar Marxist looking at Bloomberg’s chart might predict that the college students and graduates of less prestigious, public universities – who have been most disserved by the “knowledge economy” myth – would be even more inclined towards leftwing politics than their Ivy League peers. And the results of the New Hamshire primary lend creedence to that view: While Pete Buttigieg held his own in the town of Hanover, home to Dartmouth, Sanders cleaned his clock in the precincts surrounding the University of New Hampshire.

To be sure, college graduates still account for a minority of Americans under 35. But whereas this white-collar subsection of previous rising generations was predisposed to view the market economy more favorably than their less educated peers, millennial matriculators largely don’t. In fact, the overeducated, precariously employed college graduate is the modal millennial socialist.

Which makes sense: Tell a subset of your population that they are entitled to economic security if they play by certain rules, provide them with four years of training in critical thinking and access to a world-class library – then deny them the opportunities they were promised, while affixing an anchor of debt around their necks – and you’ve got a recipe for a revolutionary vanguard.

So yes, I see why Millennials love Bernie Sanders.

The problem is Boomers and even Gen Xers are far, far more likely to vote.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

With Bernie Sanders taking on Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, the forces of Trumpy darkness (orangeness maybe?) are descending on events held for both candidates, and don't expect the White House to agree to extending badly needed Secret Service protection to either one, particularly Sanders, who would be the nation's first Jewish president.

Moments after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the stage at his campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, the crowd was on its feet cheering madly for the Democratic presidential candidate.

But those cheers were swiftly replaced by deafening boos when Sanders’s supporters noticed that one man standing behind the senator in an upper section of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum wasn’t waving a “Bernie” sign like many of those around him.

Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.

“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”

While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.

“We can argue about which candidate should get the Dem nomination, but anti-Semitic acts have no place in this world,” tweeted Steven Slugocki, chairman of the Maricopa County Democratic Party. “This is absolutely abhorrent.”

It's abhorrent, completely.  It's also Trump's America.  This is only a taste of what I expect from Trump's twisted followers, all while Republicans are screaming that they are the victims.

We don't punch Nazis anymore.

We elect them.

Primary Positions, Con't

Joe Biden had a very good night last night on Super Tuesday, winning several Southern states (including Texas!) as well as Massachusetts and Minnesota, while Bernie Sanders won Vermont, Colorado, and Utah and the primary's biggest prize, California.  Five Thirty Eight's Sarah Frostenson recaps the Night Joe Came Back.

Well, it’ll still be days or weeks before we have the full vote total in California, and it’s still too close to call in Maine, but with Texas now in the win column for Biden, this evening’s top-line takeaway is even clearer: Biden mounted a comeback and won Super Tuesday.

In total, Biden won nine of the 15 primary contests at stake tonight, pulling off a number of upset victories, including a win in Minnesota (we’d projected Sanders would win there), a win in Massachusetts (Sanders again), and a win in Texas (that was more of a toss-up going into tonight), but basically Biden cleaned up across the board. He performed well in states where he wasn’t even really competing, and he proved he’s more than a regional candidate.

Sanders, on the other hand, did not have a great evening. He won just three states outright (Colorado, Utah and Vermont) and underperformed expectations. So far, he does seem on track to win delegate-rich California, though we won’t know the exact margin for a while yet.

Once all the Super Tuesday results are fully counted, 38 percent of delegates will have been awarded in the primary race, but this nomination fight is far from over, and there’s a real question about where it will go from here.

The big story from Super Tuesday was that young Democratic voters didn't show up for Bernie's revolution.  Not even close.

Exit polls for five southern states that Biden won – Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia – found that young voters did not show up at the polls in the numbers they did in 2016.

In addition, the Vermont senator has been grabbing a smaller share of them in most cases.

•  In Alabama, only 7% of the voters were in the 17-29 range compared to 14% in 2016. Sanders won six of every 10 of those voters Tuesday compared to four of 10 in 2016.
•  In North Carolina, 13% of Tuesday’s electorate were young voters, compared to 16% four years ago. Of those, 57% went for Sanders in 2020 compared to 69% in 2016.
•  In South Carolina, young voters made up 11% of the electorate Tuesday compared to 15% in 2016. Sanders won 43% of those voters Tuesday compared to 54% four years ago.
•  In Tennessee, 11% of those voters showed up Tuesday versus 15% in 2016. Sanders did better among that group Tuesday winning 65% compared to 61% four years ago.
•  In Virginia, young voters comprised 13% of Tuesday’s vote compared to 16% in 2016. Sanders won 57% of those voters Tuesday compared to 69% four years ago.

Even Sanders’ home state of Vermont showed a lackluster turnout of young millennials and 'Gen Zers.' Only 10% of the state’s electorate were under 30 compared to 15% when he ran against Clinton, according to exit polls.

And a similar trend was playing out in Texas where 16% of voters were between 17 and 29 compared to 20% in 2016.

Sanders couldn't get the numbers he got from four years ago, even in his home state.  The why of that is two words: Liz Warren.  She split Sanders's votes far more than Bloomberg split Biden's haul.

And speaking of Liz Warren, she came in a distant third pretty much everywhere last night, even in her home state of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Warren had a plan for winning. It didn't work: In 18 nomination contests, she hasn't finished above third place — including in her home state.

Now, she's facing political and financial pressures to get out.

Warren's campaign declined to comment on her next steps after her dismal Super Tuesday performance. But allies who speak regularly with the campaign say the mood was bleak. A small wave of last-minute endorsements from groups like EMILY’s List, along with late financial help from a super PAC, did not significantly move the needle.

That's left the Warren campaign to wonder whether a path forward exists. While the campaign had insisted it still saw an opening by going to the convention — she will likely collect at least several dozen delegates Tuesday — the results were far below their own publicly-released projections.

How well Bernie Sanders does from here depends on how long Liz Warren stays in the race.  As I said after Nevada, unless something happened that changed the entire trajectory of the primary race on Super Tuesday, Bernie was going to be the presumptive nominee.

That something was "Joe Biden winning in SC and both Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out and endorsing him."

It's a fight now.  Sanders remains ahead in national polling.  But Joe did something I thought that couldn't happen: he most likely ended up with more total delegates last night.  The resurrection of his campaign is something unprecedented. A week ago we were counting Biden out and Bernie running the table seemed all but assured.

The "all but" happened.

Let the battle commence.

[UPDATE] Bloomberg is out.

BREAKING: Michael Bloomberg suspends campaign https://t.co/yNCVUDNe1g

— Axios (@axios) March 4, 2020

Bye, Mike.

Last Call For Primary Positions

Joe Biden rolled to a big win in South Carolina, and billionaire Tom Steyer is folding his cards and cashing out.  Even Jon Chait is apologizing to the universe for throwing dirt on Biden's grave a bit early.

After Joe Biden finished an astonishing fourth in Iowa and then in fifth place in New Hampshire, I wrote a postmortem for his campaign. It now looks like one of the most wrong things I have ever written. It was pointed out to me after I published that I described Biden’s campaign in the past tense, something I did not plan or realize beforehand. It simply seemed obvious nobody could come back from such a catastrophe — least of all Joe Biden.

After Biden’s South Carolina victory, the first primary he has ever won in his three presidential campaigns, things look quite different. The status of Biden’s campaign has not only been upgraded to “alive” — at this point he is the primary, and probably the sole, alternative to Bernie Sanders. At the risk of overreacting in the opposite direction, Biden appears to have taken control of the Democrat Party’s center-left voters so decisively none of his mainstream rivals will be able to sustain a rationale for their candidacy. Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg — all of whom have made Biden-esque pitches to the electorate — will face enormous pressure to leave the race after Super Tuesday, and possibly even before.

The mistake many of us made with regard to Biden was viewing his campaign through the prism of age. Biden looks and acts much older than Bloomberg, Sanders (who has looked exactly 85 years old since the 1980s), and even Trump, who also appears to be experiencing rapid cognitive decline. Biden campaigned unevenly and delivered uncomfortably meandering performances at the debates that often worsened as each debate dragged on. It seemed intuitive that the pattern of decline would also apply to Biden’s campaign. His best day would be his first, and he would slowly exhaust the supply of pent-up goodwill that was his primary asset.

But whatever his limitations, Biden has not gotten worse. His last debate performance was his best. It was almost good.

The heart of Biden’s claim to the mainstream Democratic mantle is his impressive performance with African-Americans, who had little representation in the previous three contests. They are not attracted to Biden out of mere nostalgia, gratitude, or familiarity. Black voters in the state — especially older ones, who have the closest personal experience with overt white supremacy — have thought carefully about the primacy of ousting Trump over every other goal, as well as their role in that process.

This conclusion is not me reading my views onto them. Pay attention to what voters there have told reporters like Astead Herndon, Eugene Robinson, and others. Robinson described the mood of voters he met as “urgent pragmatism” to end a presidency that is reversing decades of racial progress. “Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves,” one voter told Herndon. “So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”

It's that second-to-last paragraph that shows Chait knows damn well Biden wasn't done yet, and most of all, black voters, hadn't weighed in yet in Iowa and New Hampshire when we're the backbone of this party and have been for decades.

Sanders's win in Nevada is significant, and he still has a lot of delegates he can pick up in California and Texas.  But Biden has put the marker down as the Not-Sanders, and there's a lot of territory in that area Biden can cover.

It would be different if Sanders was racking up majority wins.  He's not.  Neither is Biden by any means, and Bloomberg is essentially replacing Steyer now as the billionaire in the race, but the fight is now truly on.  Super Tuesday results are 72 hours away, and after that we'll have a real idea of who will be left.

Not-So-Great Expectations

Roughly two-thirds of Americans expect Trump to win in November, and that includes a healthy chunk of people who have no intention of voting for him, in a new CBS News/YouGov poll.  The poll also finds Sanders in the lead in national polling with 27% of the vote, but also sees Elizabeth Warren rocketing into second at 19% past Joe Biden, now at 17% heading into South Carolina on Saturday.

Whether or not they're voting for him, 65% of registered voters nationwide think President Trump will definitely or probably be reelected, including more than a third of Democrats who think so. Republicans are especially optimistic: more than 9 in 10 expect him to win.

Still, potential head to head matchups with all the major Democratic candidates against Mr. Trump show a tight race no matter who the Democratic nominee is, with no more than three percentage points separating the Democratic candidates from Mr. Trump in any matchup with the six top polling Democratic contenders.





Most voters have dug in. When it comes to who they will vote for in November, 6 in 10 voters say it doesn't matter who the Democratic nominee is, or what Mr. Trump might do over the next year.

Despite these close matchups, no Democratic candidate gets more than about a quarter of voters who thinks they would probably beat Mr. Trump (Bernie Sanders does best at 27%). Republicans are particularly confident of Mr. Trump's chances: large majorities think each of these potential Democratic opponents would be long shots to beat him in November. Democrats are less sure of their party's chances. They express the most confidence in Joe Biden and Sanders, but fewer than half of Democrats think any of the candidates is above a "maybe" to win.

This is a big indication that Trump won't get 50% of the popular vote in November, but with the electoral college as it is now, he doesn't need to.  A 47%-45% or 47%-44% result with the Democrat winning the popular vote is almost certainly going to turn out the same way as things did in 2016.

The big wild card is Florida, with the fight over disenfranchising the 1.5 million felons in the state (the vast majority who are black) who still may not be able to vote in November thanks to the GOP's Poll Tax 2.0 project, and how many of them who can get registered will turn out.  Don't expect every felon to flock to the Democrats, either.  The truth is I don't know how all that will play out in the state.

Democrats can win without Florida, but Trump will have a tremendously difficult time winning without it...unless he wins every other state he won in 2016.  If he does that, he still ends up with 277 without Florida, and he wins. It remains the ultimate battleground state, but we're actually in a situation where both candidates can win without it.  PA, WI, and MI combined are 46 electoral votes compared to Florida's 29, so the race is still going to come down to the those three Rust Belt states.

Here's what the 2016 map would look like with all four of those states as toss-ups:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

As you can see, it's basically even elsewhere in the US.  The killer is if Trump wins Wisconsin and the Democratic candidate wins Pennsylvania and Michigan, it would be Dems 268-Trump 241, and Florida decides the whole ball of wax.  If Florida then went for Trump, it would be a 270-268 victory.

That should be keeping everyone up at night.

Bern-ing Through The Competition

With a substantial win thanks to Hispanic voters in Nevada's caucuses yesterday, unless something dramatic changes in the next two weeks or so, Bernie Sanders will be in a commanding position position after Super Tuesday as the opposition to him is hopelessly split. That should be reminding people of Donald Trump's 2016 run in many, many more ways than just one...

Put "Bernie Bros" on the back-burner.

It's the army of sobrinos and sobrinas — the Spanish words for nephews and nieces — who should strike fear in the hearts of Bernie Sanders' rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination and party elites after he ran up the score among Latino voters in the Nevada caucuses Saturday. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and other Latinx backers of Sanders refer to him fondly as their "tío," or uncle.

Sanders was the choice of 54 percent of Hispanic caucus-goers Saturday on his way to steamrolling to the most convincing victory of the primary season, according to an NBC entrance poll. His closest competitor, former Vice President Joe Biden, racked up 14 percent, with no other candidate cracking double digits.

Those results signaled that the energy Sanders has poured into building a more diverse coalition than his failed 2016 campaign is paying off at just the right time. He can now stake the first claim — less than two weeks before the "Super Tuesday" contests in 14 states — to having won a state where white, Hispanic and black voters are all represented in substantial numbers.

"If you can’t put two out of those three together, you should start figuring out your exit plan," Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said of most of Sanders' rivals — excluding Biden and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — in a telephone interview with NBC News.

Gallego added that he is "not surprised" that Sanders performed so well because the candidate and his campaign learned from missteps in 2016 and organized early and effectively in the Latino community.

The outcome among Hispanic voters here could easily portend success for Sanders in delegate-rich California and other heavily Hispanic states and congressional districts coming up on the primary calendar. At the same time, Sanders has closed Biden's lead with African-American voters to 31 percent to 29 percent nationally, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Friday.

If things hold true, in two weeks pundits are going to start attaching "presumptive nominee" in front of "Bernie Sanders" and it's going to be true.  After tonight, it's time for the second-stringers to drop out: Steyer, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and I hate to say it, Warren.  Bloomberg won't go anywhere, but the only way anyone can stop Bernie at this point is everyone else bailing and leaving the road open for somebody, and that somebody should be Biden at this point.

It won't happen, of course.  Too much ego involved, and by splitting the opposition among five opponents, Sanders now has an open, if not easy path to Milwaukee in five months.

Sanders still isn't pulling in majorities, which means there's still a chance for somebody to rise up to challenge him.  But everyone still in the race believes they are one who will win, and all but one of them are 100% wrong...

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

In news that shouldn't surprise any of you, dear readers, the Russians are trying to screw with the Democratic primary by promoting Bernie Sanders.

U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.

President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken. U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media to boost Sanders’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately help elect Donald Trump.

“I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president,” Sanders said in a statement to The Washington Post. “My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.

“In 2016, Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that they are doing it again in 2020. Some of the ugly stuff on the Internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters.”

A spokesperson for the Sanders campaign declined to comment on the briefing by U.S. officials on Russia’s attempts to help the Sanders campaign.

Sanders’s opponents have blamed some of his most vocal online supporters for injecting toxic rhetoric into the primaries. At a Democratic candidates debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Sanders indirectly blamed Russia, saying it was possible malign actors were trying to manipulate social media to inflame divisions among Democrats.

“All of us remember 2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our elections and divide us up,” Sanders said. “I’m not saying that’s happening, but it would not shock me.”

Bernie Sanders would get pummeled by Trump.  Hell, even the Trump people are freely admitting they want to run against Bernie at this point.  What bothers me the most is that the Sanders campaign was told about these efforts last month and made no effort to share that info or to denounce it until somebody leaked it to the Washington Post today.  The Sanders campaign's defense is that the briefing was classified, but that means then that Bernie lied openly in the debates earlier this month when asked about Russian interference.

The bigger issue is of course that Russia continues to openly interfere in US elections, and that the Trump regime keeps actively blocking efforts to beef up defenses against them, saying they are "partisan" machinations to in fact help Democrats win (by stopping Republican cheating!)

Nothing will be done about that while Trump is in charge and Mitch is running blocks for him in the Senate though.  There's a reason they keep leaving the front door unlocked and the lights on.

We're only now finding out about the depth of Russian operations in the 2016 election in places like Florida.

A ransomware attack apparently corrupted some of the data at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office in 2016, but state and federal officials were not told about the attack for years.

The cyberattack — which became public this week after current Palm Beach County elections supervisor Wendy Sartory Link discussed it in a Palm Beach Post editorial board meeting — raises questions not only about what could happen if other elections offices across the state are hit with ransomware attacks, but also about whether the public would know if they were.

Then-Gov. Rick Scott, who is now a U.S. senator, was not notified of the reported ransomware attack in 2016, his Senate office said. The Florida Department of State also said it was not told about the attack in 2016.

The previously unreported incursion occurred in September 2016, Link told the Tampa Bay Times, under the watch of her predecessor, Susan Bucher. Link said she found out about the attack in November 2019 from one of her IT specialists after her former IT director had been fired. Link said she then reported the cyber incident to the state, the FBI and Homeland Security.

Link said she has since been told the office had been infected with a type of ransomware known as a zepto virus. She said she did not believe the attack was tied to Russian interference efforts in the 2016 election.

The Times was not able to reach Bucher on Thursday. In a Thursday interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Bucher, who was suspended in 2019 by Gov. Ron DeSantis after he said she failed to properly conduct recounts in the 2018 election, said she can “swear on a stack of Bibles” that the cyberattack described by her successor did not happen.

Link, who was appointed by DeSantis to replace Bucher, said she has spoken with the fired IT director as well as employees in her office regarding the attack, saying they described seeing files that suddenly couldn’t be accessed or whose names had changed, and pop-up text boxes demanding payments in order to get the files back. She said employees described moving frantically to contain the infection, saying the IT director at the time screamed for employees to shut down the servers.

She lied about the attack happening, so if you believe it wasn't the Russian, despite the overwhelming evidence of voter registration bamboozling in Florida over the last several years, then there's not much I can do.

Under Trump, America has done nothing to stop another round of Russian interference.  At this point the Trump regime is actively gaslighting the world and screaming that the entire thing was a hoax.

There's no way anyone should believe 2020 elections will be fair, free, or accurate.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Quinnipiac University national poll wrecks the notion that Trump somehow benefited from his acquittal, as he gets crushed in all the head-to-head matchups by a margin that not even the electoral college can save him from.

Among all registered voters, Democratic candidates lead President Trump in general election matchups by between 4 and 9 percentage points, with Bloomberg claiming the biggest numerical lead against Trump: 

• Bloomberg tops Trump 51 - 42 percent;
• Sanders defeats Trump 51 - 43 percent;
• Biden beats Trump 50 - 43 percent;
• Klobuchar defeats Trump 49 - 43 percent;
• Warren wins narrowly over Trump 48 - 44 percent;
• Buttigieg is also slightly ahead of Trump 47 - 43 percent. 

President Trump's favorability rating is underwater, as 42 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of him, while 55 percent have an unfavorable view of him. However, it is his best favorability rating since a March 7th, 2017 poll, when his favorability rating was a negative 43 - 53 percent.

So people hate him slightly less now, but he still loses to everybody.

Even Bloomberg.

Last Call For State Of The Hawkeye State

Some 72 hours later, we still don't know who won Iowa for sure, and that's because the process has been a clown show from beginning to end.  If Democrats survive all this, the first thing that needs to go is the caucus process, period.

Results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed by “quality control checks” on Monday night. Days later, quality control issues have not been resolved.

The results released by the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday were riddled with inconsistencies and other flaws. According to a New York Times analysis, more than 100 precincts reported results that were internally inconsistent, that were missing data or that were not possible under the complex rules of the Iowa caucuses.

In some cases, vote tallies do not add up. In others, precincts are shown allotting the wrong number of delegates to certain candidates. And in at least a few cases, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reported results do not match those reported by the precincts.

Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.

But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.

The errors suggest that many Iowa caucus leaders struggled to follow the rules of their party’s caucuses, or to adopt the additional reporting requirements introduced since 2016. They show that the Iowa Democratic Party, despite the long delays, failed to validate all of the results fully before releasing them to the public.

Mandy McClure, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Democratic Party (I.D.P.), said the party reported the data as provided to it by the precinct caucuses.

“The caucus math work sheet is the official report on caucus night to the I.D.P., and the I.D.P. reports the results as delivered by the precinct chair,” she said. “This form must be signed by the caucus chair, the caucus secretary and representatives from each campaign in the room who attest to its accuracy. Under the rules of the delegate selection process, delegates are awarded based off the record of results as provided by each precinct caucus chair.”

Just about every election night includes reporting errors. They can be difficult to identify, but can often be corrected during a recount or a postelection canvass. This year’s Iowa caucuses are the reverse: Errors are now easy to identify, and hard to correct.

The errors are detectable because of changes to the way the Iowa Democratic Party reports its results, put in place after the Sanders campaign criticized the caucus results in 2016. This cycle, and for the first time, the party released three sets of results corresponding to different steps in the caucus process. The rules are complex and thorough, and they create conditions in which the results can be obviously inaccurate or inconsistent within a precinct.
First, caucusgoers express their preference for a candidate upon arrival, and these votes are recorded in a “first alignment.” Then, candidates with limited support at a precinct, usually less than 15 percent, are deemed not viable; their supporters get a chance to realign to support a viable candidate. The preference at this point is recorded as well, and it’s called the final alignment.

Viable candidates can’t lose support on realignment, but there were more than 10 cases where a viable candidate lost vote share in the final alignment, even though that is precluded by the caucus rules.

This was a mess, plain and simple.  DNC Chair Tom Perez is demanding a recanvass and at this point doing so might make the situation worse for the reasons mentioned above.

What's not in any doubt though is that Joe Biden needs to hit the ground running in NH, NV, and especially in SC or Bernie Sanders will be the nominee.

Neither the disaster of the Iowa Democrats’ caucus app nor the reporting delays change the reality: The former vice president of the United States and the front-runner in nearly all the national and Iowa polls came in a distant fourth, behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren. Now he must struggle to reassert himself and hope for a magical underdog story (hey, Bill Clinton turned himself into the Comeback Kid after placing second in the 1992 New Hampshire primary). But forget about advertising and campaign staff: It’s now an open question whether Biden will have the cash to pay for his charter plane to fly him around the 14 Super Tuesday states that vote on March 3.

Running short on money is a big part of why he ended up here at all.

After a disastrous summer of fundraising, plans from the team in Iowa and other states would linger with national headquarters for weeks, then come back without approval for the spending being requested. Other candidates were quickly hiring staff—particularly Buttigieg, who in June had all of four staffers in the state but went into the caucuses with 170—while Biden’s team was under an almost complete hiring freeze. The campaign yanked its TV ads, leaving Biden dark for weeks and exponentially outspent in online advertising by Warren and Buttigieg, who soon had the rising poll numbers to show for it. At one point, aides realized, Biden was on track to spend less on TV in Iowa in this race than in his 2008 run, when he finished as an asterisk, with 1 percent of the vote.

Biden aides who were being honest with themselves knew for months that they were in trouble. Some didn’t want to believe it; some couldn’t. Others felt like they’d gotten into a taxi with a driver who was swerving all over the road, and they were just holding on and hoping they made it to the end.

They hoped that Democrats’ obsession with beating Donald Trump and voters’ sense of personal connection to Biden would pull them over the edge. Trump had blundered into his own impeachment out of fear that Biden was strong. Now they were hoping the impeachment trial would help make up for his weakness. “We might win this,” one person who worked on the campaign told me the week before the caucuses, “and it might come down to nothing we’ve done.”

When Biden held his final pre-caucus rally at a middle school in Des Moines on Sunday afternoon, 1,100 people came—his biggest crowd in Iowa of the whole campaign. Eight people introduced him; four retired senators were in the crowd. But by the time he began speaking, the Super Bowl had started, and people were dribbling out of the room. An hour earlier, a few miles away in a high-school gym, Buttigieg had drawn twice as many people.

Biden will make it through Super Tuesday, all the candidates will.  Most will stay in through Big Tuesday at the halfway point of March. But after that?  After that this might be a done deal for somebody other than Joe.

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