Disappointed In Media Hysteria And Fair-Weather Democrats

 

Millions of Americans voted in the two party primaries. Democrats chose Joe Biden and Republicans chose Donald Trump - and both were chosen overwhelmingly. It looked like we were going to have a choice between a decent man who accomplished good things and a lying, sex abusing, felony-convicted narcissist. I was fairly confident the voters would not give Trump a second term.

But then a presidential debate was held and Biden did not do as well as expected - and all hell broke loose in the media (both print and broadcast). Instead of just reporting that Biden had a bad night at the debate, they began reporting that he was now over-the-hill and was too frail to complete a second term. They began to call for Biden to drop out of the race and for Democrats to choose a younger candidate as his replace.

I can understand why the media reacted the way they have. It was a fairly boring presidential race up until the debate and the public was not paying a lot of attention to them. They created a hysteria to boost ratings (and profits). And if it results in a Trump victory, that's Ok with them because covering Trump's disastrous second term would also mean high ratings. It's disappointing, because I had thought at least some of them were better than that.

But even more disappointing are the "fair-weather" Democrats that are showing themselves. They were happy to support Biden when the voters chose him, and things were going fairly well. And they knew the media hysteria was bullshit. Biden had a successful first term, and with a Democratic Senate and House could have done even better in a second term.

They know the media hysteria is ridiculous and untrue, but they have begun to fear for their own jobs. They think the voting public might believe the media (that Biden is a doddering old fool) and fail to show up on Election Day. For them, perception is more important than truth, and they are afraid the perception fostered by the media could affect their down ballot races. 

It is an act of political cowardice - and it feeds into the publicly perceived myth that Democrats are weak while Republicans are fighters.

Both the media and the fair-weather Democrats seem to think that all Democrats need to do to win in dump Biden and choose a younger candidate. They are wrong.

How would a new candidate be chosen? The primaries are over, and there's not enough time or money to hold new ones. And holding an open convention would not be fair to the millions of primary voters - and could create a fight that would divide Democrats only about four months before the election. It would give the voters the idea that Democrats are in chaos and unable to rule. 

It would be prescription for defeat!

The most important thing for this country is to keep Trump out of the White House. Democrats should be fighting hard to accomplish that - not arguing about who their candidate should be.

Is Elise Stefanik Donald Trump's Secret VP Pick?

Trump says he has already picked his veep candidate, but is keeping it secret. Robert Reich thinks he knows who it is. He writes:

At a recent Fox News town hall, Trump teased about his pick for a running-mate, “I know who it’s going to be” — but he didn’t say. 

Well, I’m pretty certain I know. 

The answer is important, not just because the choice could affect some voters’ decisions in November, but also because (as is the case with Biden) during the course of the next term, the number two may well become number one.

So who will it be?

Not Kari Lake, a Senate candidate in Arizona and election denier, who’s even more deranged than Trump. She’s not sufficiently well known. And too wild and undisciplined. 

Not South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another Trump lapdog. Not great on television. 

Not Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Too unpredictable and ego-maniacal. 

Not South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott. Racists in Trump world worry he’ll turn off white voters. 

Trump’s most likely pick … (drumroll) … New York State’s Elise Stefanik.

 

Why? She’s a woman, and she’s young (39 years old). Trump obviously needs help with women and young people. 

She’s also a fierce culture warrior. 

When some student protesters defended the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas, Stefanik immediately saw an opportunity to attack diversity programs, score points with rich Wall Street donors, and put a thumb in the eye of the Ivy League (even though — or maybe because — she graduated from Harvard). 

“This is just the beginning,” pledged Stefanik, after her questioning of Dr. Claudine Gay helped set in motion the Harvard president’s resignation. “Our robust congressional investigation will continue to move forward to expose the rot in our most ‘prestigious’ higher-education institutions and deliver accountability to the American people.”

She’s donor bait. Stefanik’s campaign raised more than $5.2 million during the last quarter of 2023 — including contributions from more than 35,000 first-time donors — in a haul that set a new personal record and put her among the ranks of the top fundraisers in Congress.

She’s influential among House Republicans — the highest-ranking woman. 

And she’s an outspoken Trumper. 

She was an early endorser of Trump for the 2024 election.

 

She’s even been imitating his words and phrases. In recent weeks, Stefanik has made headlines for referring to people imprisoned for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as “hostages,” and then rescinded her endorsement of a GOP congressional candidate in Ohio after he called Trump arrogant.

And taking bonkers Trump-like positions. On Thursday, she broke with the rest of GOP leadership and voted against a short-term extension spending bill to avert a government shutdown. She supported such stopgap measures in mid-November and late September. A spokeswoman said Stefanik voted against the measure, which excluded border measures, over concerns about illegal crossings from Canada.

Canada?

Last week she defended Trump against reports that he confused his presidential primary rival Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The reality is Nikki Haley is relying on Democrats, just like Nancy Pelosi, to try to have a desperate showing,” Stefanik said.

She also accused “Joe Biden and his Democrat cronies” of “blatant election interference” in a one-day delay of E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation case — even though it was Trump’s own attorneys who asked for the delay. 

When she joined Trump Friday evening at a campaign event in New Hampshire, he introduced her to the crowd as “brilliant” and said she “got very famous” for questioning the college presidents. She “did it in a surgical way. Wasn’t it beautiful?”

And she is ambitious and unprincipled — which makes her even more compatible with Trump. 

“I would be honored to serve in the Trump administration in any capacity,” she said in a recent interview, when asked if she was open to the vice president post. 

Her only downside, from Trump’s standpoint, could be that she was once a Republican moderate. She worked in the George W. Bush administration as a domestic policy aide and later for Rep. Paul Ryan when he was a vice presidential nominee.

 

After being elected in 2014 to a House seat vacated by a retiring Democrat (becoming at age 30 the youngest Republican woman in Congress), she initially took centrist positions and occasionally broke with Trump. 

She opposed Trump’s tax cut in December 2017 because it capped the state and local tax deduction at $10,000, which disproportionately affected tax filers in high-tax states like New York. In June 2017, she called his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord a mistake.

But then she saw which way the wind was blowing — not right-ward but nut-ward — and in a viral moment in November 2019, used her spot on the House Intelligence Committee to vigorously defend Trump during hearings in his first impeachment. 

In response, Trump declared, “a new Republican star is born.”

She joined the Republican leadership in 2021 to replace Rep. Liz Cheney, who was ousted for repeatedly criticizing Trump. (Cheney recently posted on X, formerly Twitter, “One day [Stefanik] will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot. History, and our children, deserve to know.”)

If Trump were smart (if pigs could fly), he’d pick as a running mate a moderate who could reassure independents he’s not utterly unhinged. 

But Trump being Trump, he wants a loyal clone, a total crackpot. 

Stefanik fits the bill perfectly. 

"No Labels" Is Just A GOP Scam To Re-Elect Donald Trump

There is a movement to run a third candidate for president in the 2024 movement. Those backing this call themselves the No Labels movement.

The idea is that they think the American people deserve a different choice that President Biden or Donald Trump. They have said they would field a candidate that would appeal to voters in both political parties and Independents. 

Current thinking has it that the candidate would be Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin has recently said he is considering becoming an Independent instead of staying in the Democratic Party. Leaving his current party would be a first step in becoming the No Labels candidate.

Is this movement truly a moderate one designed to elect a candidate? NO!

Consider where all of the money supporting this movement is coming from -- big Republican donors!

The truth is that these Republican donors know that Donald Trump is the likely GOP candidate. They don't dislike Trump -- they just don't think he could win in a head-to-head match-up with President Biden.

Their solution is to run a conservative Democrat as a third candidate. They know that the third candidate (most likely Joe Manchin) would have no chance of winning the election. They are hoping though that the candidate could take enough votes away from Biden to give Trump a legitimate chance to win -- if not the popular vote, then the Electoral College (like he did in 2016).

To be blunt, the No Labels movement is nothing more than a scam by rich Republicans to get Trump elected. Don't fall for it!

A vote for No Labels is more than a wasted vote -- it is a vote for Donald Trump!

Which GOP Candidate Is The Worst Demagogue?

Which Republican candidate is the worst demagogue? Personally, I think it's Trump. But in this post, Robert Reich makes a good case for DeSantis: 

As you know, Congress has just a few days to raise the borrowing limit before the government goes into default on its debt, which would most likely set off a global financial crisis, and potentially throw millions of Americans out of work. 

I wouldn’t have negotiated with Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans if I were president. I would have relied on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and continued to pay the nation’s bills with IOUs. 

But I’m not president, and the deal worked out Saturday between Biden and McCarthy is the only deal in town. To oppose it now is to opt for chaos.

So I was alarmed by the decision by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to oppose the agreement.

“Our country was careening toward bankruptcy” before the deal was struck, DeSantis said on “Fox and Friends” on Monday, “and after this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy.”

DeSantis’s broadside comes just as McCarthy is trying to round up Republican votes to approve the deal this week. And it puts pressure on Donald Trump to come out against the bill as well. Will he?

 

There’s much debate about the capacity of the Republican Party to govern. As you know, I’m of the view that it’s rapidly turning into a White Christian Nationalist party, divorced from democracy. DeSantis’s opposition to the debt-ceiling deal is an example.

DeSantis comes as close to a fascist as any politician in modern American history. To my mind, he’s more dangerous than Trump because DeSantis knows exactly what he’s doing and where he wants to take the country — into tyranny, bigotry, and ultra-nationalist culture warfare — while Trump is motivated by nothing more than Donald Trump. 

A test will be whether Trump follows DeSantis into opposing the debt-ceiling deal. 

What do you think?

Voter Preference For GOP Presidential Candidate In 2024

 The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 26th and 29th of 1,319 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Medical Quack To Run For GOP Senate Nomination In Pa.

Trump's favorite candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania (Sean Parnell) has dropped out of the race after being accused of wife-beating. But have no fear. The GOP has someone just as bad to replace him. Medical quack, Dr. Oz, has tossed his hat in the ring.

Here's how Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com describes it:

Mehmet Oz, known as “Dr. Oz” to the daytime television talk show crowd, entered the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvaniaon Tuesday — and there’s no better time for me to remind you how much of a quack he is.

Oz, who is reportedly a longtime New Jersey resident, announced his bid after another Republican in the race, Sean Parnell, suspended his campaign last week. Parnell, who received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in September, dropped out of the race after his estranged wife accused him of abusing her and their children.

Oz must have seen that as his calling, as he’s now among several candidates vying to win the GOP primary and face off against the leading Democrat for the Senate seat being vacated by two-term Republican Pat Toomey.

In the Washington Examiner op-ed announcing his candidacy, Oz tried to pitch himself as a trustworthy medical authority to the Republican base by regurgitating conservative talking points promising “freedom” from Covid-19 safety protocols. The doctor’s candidacy, according to his op-ed, is premised on his pandemic response proposals. (Spoiler alert: They’re terrible.)

“The arrogant, closed-minded people in charge closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses, and took away our freedom,” Oz wrote, adding, “Doctors are trained to tell it like it is because you deserve to hear our best advice and make your own decisions. It’s why I have fought the establishment my whole career.”

But Oz, a frequent Fox News guest, has been widely discredited for his health claims about Covid and other matters. His candidacy and popular punditry is just the latest sign — in fact, a perfect symbol — of the Republican Party’s embrace of misinformation and its obsession with made-for-TV figures, especially old ones who appear between catheter commercials on Fox News. 

I invite you to check out this nonexhaustive list from Business Insider that includes some of the most outlandish, baseless and false claims Oz has made during his time as a TV host. He’s frequently pitched unproven concoctions as miracle solutions for all sorts of maladies, and he’s been called to Congress to answer for his false claims. 

Just last year, he called for schools to reopen because doing so might “only cost us 2 to 3 percent, in terms of total mortality.” His disregard for life earned so much backlash that he apologized soon after making the comments.

Oz is a danger to public health who spreads his pseudoscientific theories far and wide. In that sense, he’s the perfect candidate for a Republican Party that’s just as enthralled by medical disinformation as he is.

The Field Is Down To Four As Klobuchar Drops Out

Amy Klobuchar is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race. That narrows the field to four candidates (after Steyer and Buttigieg also dropped out over the weekend). The remaining candidates are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg. Someone might mention that Tulsi Gabbard is still running, but it's hard to consider her a real candidate since almost no one is voting for her.

I expected Klobuchar to drop out fairly soon, but I was surprised that it came this quickly. I had thought she would stay in through Super Tuesday (when her home state of Minnesota votes). But she has decided to give Joe Biden a better chance on Super Tuesday. She has endorsed him.

I already liked Klobuchar (even though I didn't vote for her), but this further raises my estimation of her. She decided that choosing a candidate that can beat Trump was more important than feeding her own vanity (she would likely have won Minnesota) -- and she doesn't see Sanders as that candidate.

Buttigieg Drops Out Of The 2020 Presidential Race

After the South Carolina primary, the field of candidates was narrowed by two candidates dropping out of the race. On Saturday night, Tom Steyer dropped out. One day later, Pete Buttigieg followed suit. Both said they no longer see a path toward winning the nomination.

I was not a supporter of Pete Buttigieg this year, but I thought he ran an intelligent, inclusive, and generally positive campaign. And he is far from being a loser. Only a few months ago, most Democrats (and Americans) had never heard of Pete Buttigieg. Now nearly everyone has, and most Democrats have a very positive view of him.

This was not his year, but he has established himself as a future star in the Democratic Party. And personally, I think whoever the nominee turns out to be this year, they would be very smart to find a place for Buttigieg in their administration.

All the pundits now are talking about who will benefit from Buttigieg dropping out of the race. The general consensus is that it will help Biden. But that may not be true.

The chart below is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done between February 23rd and 27th of a national sample of 13,428 likely Democratic primary voters, with a 1 point margin of error. It shows that Buttigieg supporters are virtually split between the four leading candidates.

About 21% will go to Sanders, 19% to Biden, 19% to Warren, and 17% to Bloomberg. That, according to Morning Consult, would boost each of the four campaigns by about 2 points.

The Candidate That Could Not Beat Trump - Bernie Sanders

I consider myself a progressive Democrat, and frankly I like many of the ideas put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders. But I do not support the Sanders candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Why? Because the most important thing for the 2020 election is to get Donald Trump out of the White House -- and Sanders is the candidate that I am convinced could not beat Trump in the general election.

Note that Trump has attacked all of the leading Democratic candidates -- all but one. He has not attacked Bernie Sanders. In fact, he has supported Sanders by claiming the Democratic Party has not been fair to him.

Why is this? Because Bernie Sanders is the person Trump (and Republicans) want to face in the November election. Running against Sanders would be the GOP's dream! That's because they have a ton of material to use against Sanders -- mostly a lifetime of his own claims to be a socialist. By November, they would have many moderate voters convinced that Sanders is basically a communist.

Here is just a small part of an article in The Atlantic about this. It was written by David From.

Bernie Sanders is a fragile candidate. He has never fought a race in which he had to face serious personal scrutiny. None of his Democratic rivals is subjecting him to such scrutiny in 2020. Hillary Clinton refrained from scrutinizing Sanders in 2016. It did not happen, either, in his many races in Vermont. A Politico profile in 2015 by Michael Kruse argued that Sanders had benefited from “an unwritten compact between Sanders, his supporters, and local reporters who have steered clear” of writing about Sanders’s personal history “rather than risk lectures about the twisted priorities of the press.”

The Trump campaign will not steer clear. It will hit him with everything it’s got. It will depict him as a Communist in the grip of twisted sexual fantasies, a useless career politician who oversaw a culture of sexual harassment in his 2016 campaign. Through 2019, Donald Trump and his proxies hailed Sanders as a true voice of the people, thwarted by the evil machinations of the Hillary Clinton machine. They will not pause for a minute before pivoting in 2020 to attack him as a seething stew of toxic masculinity whose vicious online followers martyred the Democratic Party’s first female presidential nominee.

“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Hillary Clinton says in a forthcoming documentary. She stood by those words in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last week. At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this past weekend, Clinton told Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, that Sanders—alone among the Democratic aspirants in 2020—had refused to meet with her. If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, you will hear Clinton’s negative assessment of him repeated so often by pro-Trump talkers that you will almost think Clinton is Trump’s running mate.

Trump will terrorize the suburban moderates with the threat that Sanders will confiscate their health insurance and stock holdings, if not their homes. Trump accused Democrats of pro-ayatollah sympathies for noticing that his story about the killing of Qassem Soleimani was full of holes. In 1980, Sanders joined a left-wing party whose presidential candidate condemned “anti-Iranian hysteria around the U.S. hostages” being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, suggesting that “many of them are simply spies … or people assigned to protect the spies,” as Ronald Radosh reported in The Daily Beast. Imagine what Trump and his team will do with that.

The members of the team around Sanders are experts in Democratic Party factional infighting. Few have dealt with people who do not play by the rules of the mainstream Democratic Party. They have always been the rule breakers, the people who got inside the other team’s decision cycle. They have been the Minutemen fighting the Redcoats, picking off the other side’s regulars from behind trees and fences. Now they are about to experience what happens when a militia faces off on an open field against a ruthless modern army with cluster bombs and napalm. They will be shredded and torched.

Attributes Wanted In A Democratic Candidate

The latest Politico / Morning Consult Poll questioned 1,991 registered voters between June 7th and 9th, with a margin of error of 2 points.

The chart above shows the attributes that the Democrats (787 in poll) consider important or not important.

The chart below shows the attributes that the 1,991 registered voters consider important or not important for the Democratic candidate.

Is The Gillibrand Candidacy A Waste Of Time And Money?

It is an understatement to say the Kirsten Gillibrand bandwagon is off to a slow start. That bandwagon seems to be motionless.

Gillibrand, in the first quarter, raised less money than any of the other supposedly qualified candidates. And in every national poll of Democratic candidates to date, she has scored less than 2% support.

Why is she having so much trouble get her candidacy off the ground?

You might think that it's because she's not well known to voters outside her home state of New York. That's true. But she's not even very popular inside the state of New York. A Quinnipiac University Poll from last March (done of New York voters) showed she has a favorable rating from only 29%, while she was viewed unfavorably by 35%. And it wasn't a whole lot better among Democrats (42% favorable to 20% unfavorable). That's not good when less than half of home state Dems view her favorably. Why should national Democrats support her when her home state doesn't?

Gillibrand was quick to jump on board the "Me Too" movement. Nothing wrong with that, since that's something most Democrats support. But she did it by knifing Senator Al Franken in the back by demanding he resign from the Senate -- because of a right-wing effort to denigrate him with a fake accusation. Most Democrats were upset by that, even women, because they knew Franken was one of the strongest male supporters of women's rights in the Senate.

Another reason for her slow start is that there doesn't seem to be a lane for her to run in. For those wanting a woman to be nominated, there are three other female senators in the race -- Elizabeth Warren (on the left), Kamala Harris (center-left), and Amy Klobuchar (centrist). All are more credible and better campaigners, and that haven't left Gillibrand with a constituency to appeal to.

Also troubling some is her seeming with on issues. As a House member, she was center-right on issues. To become a senator, she moved to the left. What are her real beliefs?

There is no candidate for which the June debates are more important than Gillibrand. She must break out after a great debate performance, and star showing better in the polls. If she doesn't, her candidacy may not last out this year.