Tag: Democrat Candidates

Closing Thought–10Mar20

If you are following the elections these days then you may have an opinion on Medicare For All…….but what do you actually know what the candidates have to say to the accusations one way or the other?

You definitely did not get it on the debate stage….there was about 90 seconds to attack or defend and in the end all we had was yelling and accusations.

Here is an idea now that we are down to the two major candidates, Biden and Bernie……pick a place and let the two debate the pros and cons.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday night said he would “love to debate Joe Biden on this issue”—the difference between a Medicare for All plan that dozens of studies show would cover all people for less overall cost and the for-profit status quo that leaves an estimated 28 million Americans uninsured and tens of millions more underinsured, vulnerable to bankruptcies, or lacking care due to financial reasons.

“Medicare for All is wildly popular with working class and lower income people who understand that we have a dysfunctional health care system,” Sanders said in an interview with MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow.

“We are spending twice as much—and by the way—I would love to debate Joe Biden on this issue, give us an hour on MSNBC,” Sanders said, “where we can talk about how anyone can defend this system in which we’re spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the people of any other country and yet 27 million are uninsured, 30,000 people die, half a million people go bankrupt every year because of medical-related debt, and we spend far and away the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. You want to defend that system? Let’s do it.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/05/give-us-hour-msnbc-sanders-says-he-would-love-debate-medicare-all-vs-profit-system

I love this idea……put the two proposals side by side and let the people hear the entire plan…..instead of a 90 second spot.

Personally I think all the debates should be along these lines……two candidates battling it out on a debate stage and NOT in the media that generates more confusion than it solves.

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Feel The Bern!

College of Political Knowledge

#7 in series

This is a draft and since Super Tuesday it is down to Biden and Bernie…..

I hear pundits whining that none of the Dem candidates will go after Bernie on the debate stage and they keep asking why…..I know….no need to go after Bernie the MSM is doing the job for the candidates.

It is early in the 2020 election process and the Dem front runner is Bernie Sanders…..and the MSM has pulling no stops to try and change the trajectory of the voters away from Bernie.

With Bernie Sanders now having won New Hampshire (and probably Iowa, where he won the popular vote) and confirmed his position as the frontrunner for president in the Democratic Party primaries (the New York Times’ poll guru Nate Silver is giving him a better than 40% chance of gaining enough delegates by the end of the primary season to win the nomination on the all-important first ballot at the National Convention in July), it’s becoming open season on socialism and its more anodyne relative democratic socialism.

A few days ago, right-wing columnist Marc Thiessen, writing in my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, mocked the catastrophic mess of the Iowa Democratic Caucus, where there is still, six days after the voting, no clear decision on who won, Sanders or Pete Buttigieg, blaming the fiasco on “the same brilliant minds who came up with Medicare-for-All and the ‘Green New Deal.’”  His conclusion, “The Democrats’ failure in Iowa stemmed from the same fundamental flaw that has caused socialism to fail (sic) wherever it is tried — the hubris of a tiny cadre whose grand visions and lack of humility far exceed their ability to deliver.”

The Red-Baiting of Bernie Sanders Has Begun and is Already Becoming Laughable

This is nothing unusual for the GOP media circus for they have been yelling that ALL Dems are somehow socialism and/or communism…..all keep regurgitating the same lies and disinformation…..

More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power elites that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is a direct threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy individuals and huge corporations constantly exert on the political process. No wonder we’re now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats — eagerly amplified by corporate media.

In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.

Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented the problem, illuminated by one piece after another after another after another just this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media spheres is scarce.

The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders

This is nothing new…..and yes Bernie is a Democratic Socialist….and to anyone that actually knows what they are talking about then those beliefs are just “Capitalism Lite”…..they have no problem with capitalism just the excessive side of the system.

But now the label will be more important since Bernie is running against the corporate sell out Biden.

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2020 Dems–Another One Bites The Dust #20

Super Tuesday has peed on a lot of people’s dreams of the nomination….and the newest one to drop out of the race is Sen. Warren….

The writing may have been on the wall when she finished third in her home state of Massachusetts on Tuesday, but Elizabeth Warren is making it official. The Massachusetts senator will end her 2020 campaign, reports Politico, NBC News, and the Washington Post. Warren was expected to inform her staff Thursday. The New York Times notes that Warren’s departure could be a boon to Bernie Sanders, assuming he’s able to attract enough of her progressive supporters. Coverage notes that Warren was once seen as a front-runner, if not the front-runner, but the once-diverse Democratic field has now essentially narrowed to Sanders vs. Joe Biden, two white men in their late 70s.

Warren was on track to collect several dozen delegates from Super Tuesday voting, but that fell far short of expectations, notes Politico. Combined with Biden’s surge, her campaign saw no path to victory. No word yet on when, or if, Warren will endorse anyone. In a quick post-mortem, the Post offers this: Warren came out strong with great debate performances, detailed policy proposals, and passionate speeches. “But in the end, her effort to straddle the liberal and centrist wings of the Democratic Party left her a toehold in neither,” as Sanders and Biden “consolidated control over their respective camps.”

THe race now is down to old white guys fighting to meet an old white guy in the general in November.

IST keeping with tradition will show Warren to the exit with the music of Queen….

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Moderates=Mediocrity

I am hearing all those “great” pundits on the corporate media sites that keep telling me that the Dems will run to the middle the moderate….really?

What does it mean to be a moderate?

A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views and major social change.

In other words a candidate that will allow the status quo to continue to rule the nation.

If Dems continue to embrace mediocrity then there will NEVER a more equal society for all its citizens. NEVER!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Independent voters will decide the election. Or better yet: Moderate voters will decide the election. Or, wait for it … If Democrats can move to the middle, they will win in 2020.

These tropes conjure up a particular image: a pivotal bloc of reasonable “independent” voters sick of the two major parties, just waiting for a centrist candidate to embrace a “moderate” policy vision. And there’s a reason this perception exits: You see just that if you look only at topline polling numbers, which show 40-plus percent of voters refusing to identify with a party, or close to 40 percent of voters calling themselves moderates.1 But topline polling numbers mask an underlying diversity of political thought that is far more complicated.

The Moderate Middle Is A Myth

If you want mediocrity just to say that we beat Trump then we deserve all the horrible stuff that moderates bring with them.

And please do not get me started on what I think of so-called “independents”.

https://lobotero.com/2016/10/11/independents-the-lie-that-just-keeps-giving/

Centrists/moderate policies have done little to help the working class….and yet they keep winning and we keep losing.

Then we can pretend that the independents will save us from ourselves….and in the end we still lose.

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2020 Dems–Another One Bites The Dust–#19

About Damn Time!

$500 million later……Bloomberg has decide to do something truly useful and bow out of the Dem race to the nomination.

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday and endorsed Joe Biden. It was a stunning collapse for the former New York City mayor, who set his 2020 hopes on the Super Tuesday states and sank more than $500 million of his own fortune into the campaign, reports the AP. Axios put his total spend at $600 million and quipped, “Never in American history has a presidential candidate spent more to get less than Mike Bloomberg, making his buy-a-nomination bid a big bust. … Bloomberg spent $600 million to win as many states as every American who chose not to run: zero.” On Tuesday he won only the territory of American Samoa and picked up several dozen delegates elsewhere. Bloomberg issued a lengthy statement that you can read in full at the Hill. Standout lines:

  • “Three months ago, I entered the race for president to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump—because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal more difficult.”
  • “I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.”
  • “I am deeply grateful to all the Americans who voted for me—and to our incredibly dedicated staff and volunteers all around the country, who knocked on more than 2 million doors and held 12 million voter conversations in an incredibly short amount of time. No one outworked our team.”
  • “We made our campaign slogan a clear, simple promise: Mike will get it done. And I intend to keep working on the ‘it.’ I will continue to work for sensible, common-sense policy solutions that can get done. That includes passing gun safety laws that save lives. Fighting climate change. Improving health care. Making college more accessible and affordable. Creating economic opportunity for all.”

Just think of all the good Mikey could have done with that $500 million…..

Just saying.

But maybe his final result was to not win the nomination but help Biden get the lead and hold it….

A half a billion dollars later, Michael Bloomberg is out of the 2020 race. All that money and a novel strategy didn’t get him far. Where did it go wrong and what have we learned?

Bloomberg may have lost, but he walks away with a pretty hefty consolation prize, writes Perry Bacon Jr. at FiveThirtyEight. “With Biden now in a much stronger position than when Bloomberg entered the race, you could argue that Bloomberg provided what he and other more center-left figures wanted—to steer the race towards a more moderate nominee. … My guess is that Bloomberg would have preferred to be the candidate instead of Biden but knew that was a fairly unlikely outcome, since he is a one-time Republican who entered the race in late November.”

And now as with tradition……IST will shoe Mikey and his money to the exit….

And the race goes on……

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Super Tuesday!

The 2020 election is getting serious by the vote…..we are down to 5 candidates……and Super Tuesday is the proving ground for the nomination.

Here we go….the media has tried to assassinate the candidacy of Bernie after his loss in South Carolina…..did the tactic by the corporate media succeed?

Now we have a cleat picture of the direct this election will travel….

The Super Tuesday polls are closed, and it’s shaping up to be a good night for Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Not so much for Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg. Biden came out strong, particularly in the South, but Sanders took the night’s biggest prize, California, as expected. He’s also leading in the second biggest, Texas. Biden racked up wins in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Massachusetts (Warren’s home state), and Minnesota. Sanders also took his home state of Vermont and Colorado. Delegates are what matter, though, and a whopping 1,344 are at stake. Sanders is expected to be the leader when all is said and done, but because these are not winner-take-all races, the full effect of the voting might not be clear until Wednesday. The states at play, in order of delegates, per the Hill and Vox:

 
  • California: 415 delegates; polls closed at 11, and the AP called the race quickly for Sanders. The key questions are how big his margin of victory will be and how many delegates his rivals can win. Sanders dominated in early results, with 67 delegates to 18 for Biden, 8 for Bloomberg and 5 for Warren.
  • Texas: 228 delegates; all polls closed at 9; the AP called it for Biden hours later.
  • North Carolina: 110 delegates; the polls closed at 7:30, and the AP called the race for Biden about 15 minutes later.
  • Virginia: 99 delegates; polls closed at 7, and the AP immediately declared Biden the winner. That the race was called so quickly bodes well for Biden because it suggests he “cleaned up” with African-American voters, per Politico.
  • Massachusetts: 91 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about three hours after polls closed. This is Warren’s home state, of course, and thus a bad loss for her. Worse, she was on track to finish in third behind second-place Sanders.
  • Minnesota: 75 delegates; polls closed at 9, and the AP called the race for Biden within the hour. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s endorsement surely helped.
  • Colorado: 67 delegates; polls closed at 9, and the AP immediately called the race for Sanders.
  • Tennessee: 64 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about 9:30.
  • Alabama: 52 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP immediately called the race for Biden.
  • Oklahoma: 37 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about an hour later.
  • Arkansas: 31 delegates; polls closed at 8:30, and the AP called the race for Biden about 90 minutes later.
  • Utah: 29 delegates; polls closed at 10, and the AP called the race for Sanders.
  • Maine: 24 delegates; polls closed at 8
  • Vermont: 16 delegates; polls closed at 7, and the AP declared Sanders the winner of his home state at 7:20.
  • American Samoa: The US territory held a caucus, and Bloomberg won five of six delegates; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was born there, won the last one.

Pay close attention to the media reports…..the fight will be in those states of the Rust Belt…..

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1972–Deja Vu All Over Again?

This is a draft that I did not get to post in time…..this look at history may be a moot point.

1972 was the first time I voted for president…..I could have voted in 1968 but I was ass deep in mud in Vietnam and it just did not seem that important at the time.

Image

(not only do you see my political buttons from days gone by but you get a recipe as well)

And yes I voted for George McGovern…..he was the antiwar candidate and a strong Left candidate…..and now Bernie is in the early lead could this be a repeat of 1972?

George McGovern broke my young bleeding liberal heart in 1972. Bernie, oh Bernie, do not disillusion us now the way George did then.

There I was in 1972, the ink barely dry on my journalism school diploma. Working as a baby reporter at the Utica, NY, Observer-Dispatch. My generation didn’t have a letter of the alphabet, no Gen X or Y or Z, not even A, B, or C. But we were so sure we were special. And empowered. We’d shut down the nation’s universities in a general strike. We’d created and enlisted in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Those of us who didn’t get drafted. Or killed.

In 1972 the archetype of evil, Richard Nixon, was running for reelection as president. We felt as warmly toward Nixon then as we adore Trump now. Trump is nothing new for us, just something more.

My introduction to presidential politics had been in 1968, when Nixon came to Syracuse as part of the launch of his presidential campaign. I encamped at a table outside the hall where he was to speak, playing Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence nonstop for 12 hours. At full volume. That song haunts me yet. In my innocence I was sure I went a long way toward mobilizing opposition to Nixon’s perfidy.

Is Bernie Just George McGovern Déjà Vu or Déjà New?

Bernie is taking on the establishment Dems, the Corporatists, the way that McGovern did in 1972….again is this deja vu?

It’s a perfect time to recall a famous quote from one of the nation’s foremost philosophers, Yogi Berra: Its “déjà vu all over again.”

Is the Democratic Party replaying the lost saga of 2016 but with a very 2020 twist?  Bernie Sander (D-VT) appears to have been robbed of the 2016 nomination, beaten out by Hillary Clinton (Sec. of State).  Mrs. Clinton won because the Democratic Party establishment – the “superdelegates” – trumped the popular vote, securing for her the nomination.  Following the 2016 fiasco, Sanders’ forces secured changes in the Democratic Party rules preventing superdelegates from casting votes during the first round.

Sanders vs. the Establishment Democrats: McGovern All Over Again?

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174394

Bernie is not my candidate for I do not consider him as antiwar….but I will support him if it comes down to it because the rest of the Dem field are owned by the M-IC and cannot be counted on to end our endless wars.

It is fascinating the freak out by the establishment who went all in for Biden and he has sorely let them down….now they are jumping on the Bernie bashing bandwagon with more fervor than before.

Like I wrote…this look back may be a moot point after Super Tuesday…..I just could not waste a good draft…..

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Why Quit When They Were So Close?

The recent news of the exit of Amy and Pete from the race when they were the Midwest answer to everything that is wrong with this system…..but why quit just before the Big Dance?

Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have dropped out of the presidential race and are reportedly both planning to endorse Joe Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday, leading to many news articles using words like “coalesce” and “close ranks” as moderate Democrats appear to be coming together to back Biden’s candidacy in the hopes of pushing aside the much-further-to-the-left frontrunner Bernie Sanders. Here are some of the opinion articles that have cropped up so far on the subject:

  • Buttigieg and Klobuchar are doing what Republicans refused to do in 2016, writes Philip Bump at the Washington Post, recalling now-President Trump’s campaign. He was far from the establishment’s favorite candidate, but even with less than 50% of the primary vote, he scored the nomination thanks in part to the fact that so many of his rivals remained in the race. It’s possible Buttigieg and Klobuchar learned a lesson from 2016 and are clearing the path for Biden: “The anti-Sanders vote is consolidating.”
  • “It appears that the Democratic establishment is finally making a play to stop both current front-runner Bernie Sanders and the man who has purchased what appears to be every commercial you will ever see again, Michael Bloomberg,” writes Ashley Feinberg at Slate, noting that progressive voters should be “worried.”
  • Speaking of progressive voters, Elizabeth Warren is still in the running, and articles about her run the gamut from calling for her to drop out of the race and endorse Sanders (as Sarah Jones urges her to do in New York) to reminding voters they can, in fact, still vote for her; 96.1% of delegates remain unawarded, points out Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate, who also notes, “It might … be relevant to you that she’s not a nearly 80-year-old man who has recently experienced heart problems, evident cognitive decline, or being embarrassed by Elizabeth Warren on national television.”
  • But Walt Hickey predicts at Business Insider that Klobuchar’s and Buttigieg’s endorsements of Biden will be “devastating” to Warren, since their constituencies also liked her—but may now throw their support behind Biden thanks to the endorsements.
  • If Warren remaining in the race is seen as a threat to Sanders’ campaign, Bloomberg remaining in the race is seen as a threat to Biden. “Everyone from US Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to actress Alyssa Milano has rallied around Biden at the eleventh hour. Every non-hard-leftist, that is, except for one who expressly entered this race to stop Sanders,” notes Tiana Lowe at the Washington Examiner of Bloomberg.
  • As BuzzFeed points out, Super Tuesday was always Bloomberg’s big plan all along, and there’s no way he’ll exit the race before seeing how tomorrow pans out. And at the Federalist, Tristan Justice hypothesizes, “To the contrary of their intended effect to help Biden, Klobuchar and Buttigieg leaving the race could bolster Bloomberg just enough to siphon off increasingly scarce delegates in Tuesday’s primaries that would otherwise go to Biden.”
  • How Axios puts it: “Leading Democrats suddenly see their primary as a clear, two-person race—with Mike Bloomberg as the likely odd man out.”

Super Tuesday will tell the tale…..has all the negativity from the media has worked on the voter.

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2020 Dem–Another One Bites The Dust–#18

The 2020 Dem candidates field keeps shrinking…..Steyer goes then Mayor Pete and now Amy has decided that the numbers are just not there.

She has had a poor showing in all 4 of the first votes in the nation…..and now time to dash for the exit…..

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar ended her Democratic presidential campaign on Monday and will endorse rival Joe Biden in an effort to unify moderate voters behind the former vice president’s White House bid, per the AP. She is flying to Dallas and plans to join Biden at his rally Monday night. Klobuchar outlasted several better-known and better-funded Democrats, thanks to a better-than-expected third-place finish in in New Hampshire. But she couldn’t turn that into success elsewhere, as she struggled to build out a campaign that could compete across the country and had poor showings in the next contests.

Klobuchar argued that her record of getting things done in Washington and winning even in Republican parts of her state would help her win traditionally Democratic heartland states like Wisconsin and Michigan that flipped in 2016 to give Donald Trump the presidency. She was hoping to own the moderate lane of a Democratic field that grew to some two dozen candidates. But that got much tougher when Biden joined the race in April, starting as a front-runner and remaining there. Klobuchar also was quickly overshadowed by Pete Buttigieg, a fellow Midwesterner who shot from being the largely unknown mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to a top contender on a mix of intelligence, strong oratory and youthful optimism. Buttigieg dropped out on Sunday, saying he no longer had a viable path to the nomination.

That leaves very few candidates left…..mostly centrists with two progressives…..and today is Super Tuesday…..there may be more exits later today….

We will show Amy the exit in IST traditional way….with the music of Queen…..

My candidate is still trying……my alternates are getting few and far between.

We will see after Super Tuesday….

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2020 Another One Bites The Dust #16 & #17

The first four voting competitions are in the bag with South Carolina being the last and it would be the last chance for Tom Steyer…

His poor showing told this candidate that it was time to save his cash and leave the trail…..

Third place wasn’t good enough: Billionaire Tom Steyer ended his 2020 campaign Saturday night after the results in the South Carolina primary became clear. As the Hill notes, Steyer invested large in South Carolina, but he finished well behind winner Joe Biden and couldn’t take second place from Bernie Sanders. With more than 60% of returns in, Steyer had 11.5% of the vote, behind Biden (49.7%) and Sanders (19.3%). Steyer has never held elective office and campaigned instead on his business experience, notes the Washington Post. He spent an estimated $150 million of his fortune on the race, most heavily in South Carolina and Nevada, where he finished fifth.

Steyer will not be alone….Mayor Pete is also quitting while the quitting is good…..he has about as much support in the black community as I have among Righties…..time for him to go…..he will sit back and try to make the case for a position in the next presidency……as usual it is about him not the country or the party…..a typical centrist move.

Democrat Pete Buttigieg is ending his campaign for president. Three people with knowledge of Buttigieg’s decision tell the AP he is informing campaign staff. They were not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. His campaign says Buttigieg will speak Sunday night in South Bend, Indiana. Buttigieg rose to the field’s top tier but failed to notch enough wins in the critical early states necessary to keep his bid moving forward.

The millennial, Afghan War veteran, and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, defied expectations in a field of better-known candidates for months while becoming the first openly gay top contender for a major party nomination. “Mayor Pete” burst onto the scene with a blitz of national media a year ago and impressive fundraising. He leaned hard into a next-generation message of urgency on pressing issues while preaching a message of hope and inclusion.

The Dem field gets smaller and smaller…..some are hanging on by their finger tips and next Tuesday’s Super vote should help show some of the other candidates the exit sign.

My candidate is still in there but I fear her days are numbered….I will continue to support her until the day she decides to exit and then I will look for a new place to put my support.

Until that day I shall let Queen show Mr. Steyer the exit……

Who’s next?

More to come.

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