2020 Democrats

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Watch Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden clash all the way back in 2005

‘Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies. It’s all a matter of public record.’ — Elizabeth Warren has been holding Joe Biden’s feet to the fire since this tense exchange from 2005
 

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Warren leads Biden in new poll, but Biden maintains larger margin of victory over Trump

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden in the latest poll from Quinnipiac University released Tuesday, but it still looks like Biden has more appeal among black voters and potential swing voters at the moment. Warren wrangled support from 29 percent of the voters surveyed overall, compared to Biden's 26 percent, while the former vice president was trouncing Warren among black voters, 36 percent to 20 percent. Biden also led the Massachusetts senator by 16 points among voters who "lean" Democratic. In a head-to-head with Trump, Biden has a wide lead (51 percent to 40 percent), while Warren's is still solid at 49 percent to 41 percent. The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted over the phone between Oct. 4 and Oct. 7, and 1,483 registered voters were surveyed nationwide. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points.

Source: Quinnipiac University

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Biden way ahead of the pack in new national poll


Joe Biden

Former Vice President Joe Biden. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images


Politico
By QUINT FORGEY
10/23/2019


A new national survey shows Joe Biden enjoying a 15-point polling lead over his nearest rival for the 2020 Democratic nomination — bolstering the former vice president’s White House bid amid emerging threats from other primary contenders and scrutiny over his son’s foreign business dealings.

Thirty-four percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters prefer Biden as the party’s pick to take on President Donald Trump in next year’s general election, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released Wednesday.
Story Continued Below

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ranks second with 19 percent support, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with 16 percent.
Story Continued Below

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and California Sen. Kamala Harris both achieved 6 percent in the poll, while Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke raked in 3 percent of respondents.

Businessman Andrew Yang garnered 2 percent support, and all other candidates polled at 1 percent or less.
Biden’s standing in Wednesday’s survey marks his most significant edge in CNN’s primary polling since he announced his campaign in late April and dominated the Democratic field with 39 percent support.

His advantage in the latest CNN poll, conducted in the days following the fourth Democratic debate last week, also comes despite a plurality of respondents judging that Warren outperformed Biden during the televised forum.

Among those who watched or paid close attention to news coverage of the Ohio debate, 28 percent said Warren “did the best job,” and only 15 percent said Biden’s showing was superior.

White House allies and Republican lawmakers over the past month have targeted Biden relentlessly with unfounded allegations that he led the Obama administration's efforts to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect his son's business interests in the region.


Meanwhile, other recent polls have shown Warren overtaking Biden in the Democratic nominating contest, and candidates such as Buttigieg and Klobuchar have sought to make a more forceful case for themselves to the center-left voters largely backing Biden.

Biden also failed to eclipse a handful of his opponents in fundraising for the third quarter of this year, amassing just $15.2 million in the three months ending in September. Sanders raised $25 million, Warren raised $24.6 million and Buttigieg raised $19.1 million during that same period.
Besides Biden, the poll’s other obvious beneficiaries are Klobuchar and O’Rourke, who have both moved closer to appearing on stage for the fifth party-sanctioned primary debate next month.

To participate, candidates must achieve at least 3 percent support in four polls approved by the Democratic National Committee and pick up contributions from 165,000 donors by Nov. 13.

The survey is Klobuchar’s third qualifying poll and O’Rourke’s second. Eight candidates have already met the threshold for the Atlanta-area debate on Nov. 20.

The CNN poll was conducted Oct. 17-20, surveying a random national sample of 1,003 adults including 424 registered voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents.

The margins of sampling error are plus or minus 3.7 percentage points for the full sample and 5.8 percentage points for results among potential Democratic voters.




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QueEx

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Senate Democrats tell Hillary Clinton: Time to move on
Clinton would struggle to find any support from her old colleagues
if she launched another run for president.



Hillary Clinton

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton | Joe Lewnard/Daily Herald via AP


P o l i t i c o
By BURGESS EVERETT
and MARIANNE LEVINE
10/24/2019 06:37 PM EDT


Hillary Clinton isn't running for president — nor should she, say her former Democratic colleagues in the Senate. As one of her top aides keeps the door open to a 2020 run, a host of Democratic senators are sending a polite warning to the failed 2016 nominee: Don’t do it.

“She’s done a great service to our country and public service, and I supported her wholeheartedly, but I believe it’s time for another nominee,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin.


In fact, in the unlikely event that Clinton took a last-minute plunge into the primary, she might struggle to win the backing of any Democrats from a chamber in which she served for eight years.

Clinton has plenty of goodwill in the 47-member Democratic Caucus. Most of them like and respect her for her service and still smart over her 2016 loss to Donald Trump. But the sentiment that her time has passed is one shared by moderates and liberals alike.

“I don’t think it would be good for her,” said Montana Sen. Jon Tester. “She’s been through this war once. The Republicans have made a target out of her for 30 years and she’s still going to [be] that same target. I just think it would be tough.”

“That would be a mistake,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Asked to expound, he repeated: “That would be a mistake.”
“Absolutely not,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime aide and adviser, doesn’t see things that way. On Fox News this week, he declined to rule out a Clinton bid and said that “there might be a reason that she’d be the best person” to take on Trump and govern in the aftermath. But he also acknowledged she’d have to win a crowded primary, a difficult endeavor.

Clinton herself invited the scrutiny, jokingly replying, “Don’t tempt me” when Trump tweeted that Clinton should take on Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic nomination. Meeting the fundraising and polling thresholds to qualify for the debates likely wouldn’t be a problem. And she's already shown a willingness to mix it up with at least one other candidate — having swiped at Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, suggesting the Hawaii lawmaker is being backed by the Russians.

But most of her Democratic allies don’t take the buzz seriously and say they are happy with the field as it is, despite griping by some in the establishment about the current roster of Democrats.

“We have a lot of really fantastic candidates out there already. Let's leave it at that,” said Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono.

Democrats also don’t believe Clinton herself has any real interest in being a candidate again. Her political career has been a grueling one: first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, U.S. senator, secretary of State and presidential nominee.

“I can sort of see the expression on her face, of sort of disbelief and dismissal,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Clinton seeing reports that she might make a third run for president. “It’s just my instinct that there’s no way she wants to go through this meat grinder again.”

In 2013, every female Democratic senator signed on to a letter to Clinton encouraging her to run for the presidency. By 2015, most of the caucus had coalesced behind Clinton, cutting off oxygen to any potential opponents. Only one Democratic senator, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, ended up endorsing Clinton’s primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Clinton’s coronation by the party establishment left many Democrats feeling burned, particularly after she ended up losing to Trump. And today’s landscape couldn’t be more different.
“It’s hard to know whether the world has passed on or not,” said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “I’m a friend of hers and I’m extraordinarily fond of her. But that’s a factor.”


There are a half-dozen Democratic senators currently running for the nomination. And former Vice President Joe Biden already has a bloc of senators and congressmen backing him, including Feinstein. Candidates like Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg offer options from outside the Beltway.

None of that would change if Clinton got in.

“I can’t imagine that [Clinton] would want to get back in the race,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who said she prefers candidates from the middle of the country. “If she wants to, then she goes through the same process as everyone else. And we’ll see what she says in the debates.”
What is true is that many in the party are anxious about what lies ahead. The House is plunging into impeachment, the Senate will have to hold a trial and Democratic voters have a long way to go in pruning the field of presidential contenders.

Yet Democrats largely believe that reaching back into 2016, when Clinton handily won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to Trump, isn’t the antidote for the party’s current plight. It would shake up the race, but perhaps not in a good way.

“I just want to make sure we want to stay united. There are good people that are running. I can support any one of them,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.

“The field is somewhat set,” added Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), shaking his head when asked whether Clinton should reconsider. “I think we need to move forward.”



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QueEx

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Politics
As Warren and Buttigieg rise, the Democratic presidential race is competitive and fluid, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds


Washington Post
By Scott Clement
and Dan Balz
November 2, 2019


The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is both competitive and fluid less than 100 days before the Iowa caucuses, with a stable trio of leading candidates and a fourth — Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. — now rising above a dozen others in the low single-digits, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Democrats see former vice president Joe Biden as the strongest leader among the top candidates and also say he has the best chance of defeating President Trump. But he holds no advantage on five other attributes, including policy issues, bringing needed change and being mentally sharp. He remains atop the field, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) trailing, Warren within the margin of error.

Meanwhile, the poll finds significant concerns about Sanders’s fitness in the wake of his heart attack last month, with more than 4 in 10 Democrats saying he is not in good enough health to serve as president.

A majority of Democrats say they have not firmly made up their minds on whom to support, with about 1 in 10 having no current preference and about half of Democrats who do support someone saying they would consider supporting another candidate. That has added an air of uncertainty over a race that to this point has been somewhat stable.


Among Democratic-leaning registered voters, 28 percent would support Biden if their state’s primary or caucus were held today, while 23 percent support Warren and 17 percent support Sanders. Biden’s edge over Warren is smaller than the poll’s margin of sampling error. Buttigieg stands at 9 percent and is the only other candidate with greater than 2 percent support.

Image without a caption


Warren’s support has nearly doubled from 12 percent in July and is up from 18 percent in September. Support for Biden and Sanders has moved less than two points over that period. Buttigieg has gained five points since early September, a signal his national stature may be catching up to his standing in Iowa, where polls have found him rising and with double-digit support.

In Iowa, whose caucuses mark the first contest of 2020, Buttigieg garnered 18 percent in a New York Times Upshot/Siena College polllast week, within range of Warren’s 22 percent and on par with Biden and Sanders. In New Hampshire, whose primary comes eight days after Iowa, polls show Warren, Biden and Sanders are competitive with one another, while Buttigieg stands about 10 percentage points behind.

The Post-ABC News poll asked Democrats to choose which of five top-ranking candidates is best across seven personal and policy attributes. Biden continues to lead on the question of electability, with 42 percent saying he has the best chance to defeat Trump, compared with 17 percent who say the same for Warren, 16 percent for Sanders, 3 percent for Buttigieg and 2 percent for Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.). Biden is seen as the strongest leader by 35 percent of Democrats, compared with 20 percent who say this of Sanders and 19 percent for Warren.

But Biden was matched or exceeded by Warren or Sanders on other attributes. Asked which candidate “best understands the problems of people like you,” Sanders led with 30 percent, compared with 22 percent for Biden and 20 percent for Warren. The three candidates are about even when it comes to who would do most to bring needed change in Washington, and Biden and Sanders tied at 25 percent on which candidate is closest to them on the issues. On honesty, Biden and Sanders are roughly even at 26 percent and 27 percent, respectively, while 16 percent say Warren is most honest.

On the question of which of five leading Democrats “has the sharpest mental ability,” Biden was mentioned by 21 percent, falling narrowly between Warren at 24 percent and Sanders at 17 percent. Buttigieg was named by 15 percent as the most mentally sharp candidate, while 7 percent mentioned Harris.


Image without a caption

The poll suggests Sanders’s recent heart attack may have raised concerns among Democrats about his ability to serve as president. Democrats were almost evenly split on whether Sanders is healthy enough to serve as president, with 48 percent saying he is in good enough health and 45 percent saying he is not.

The stability in Sanders’s overall support, however, suggests these concerns have not taken a toll on his national support for the nomination.

Meanwhile, an 80 percent majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say Warren is healthy enough to serve, as do 74 percent who say this of Biden.

Among those who say they will definitely support their current preference if that candidate remains in the race, Biden fares best, with 34 percent support among these voters, compared with 21 percent for Sanders and 19 percent for Warren.

Among those who say they might switch to support a different candidate, 30 percent currently prefer Warren while 26 percent back Biden and 16 percent prefer Sanders. Buttigieg gets 14 percent support among on-the-fence voters.

Democrats’ second-choice preferences underscore the fluidity of the race, but also the advantage of the leading three candidates over the rest of the field. About 4 in 10 Democrats say Warren is their first or second choice for the nomination (41 percent), roughly matching Biden at 40 percent and slightly higher than Sanders at 34 percent. Buttigieg stands further back at 16 percent when first and second choices are combined.

Harris’s support has continued to fall from a peak of 13 percent in the July poll, which came after a strong performance in the first presidential debate, to 7 percent in September and 2 percent in the latest poll. But the survey suggests Harris has the potential to regain at least some of her earlier supporters in the coming months, with 9 percent of Democratic-leaning voters saying she is their second choice for the nomination.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) also fares relatively well on this question, with 4 percent saying she is their second-choice candidate in addition to 2 percent who currently support her.

Age continues to be a principal divider in Democrats’ support for the nomination, continuing a cleavage that marked the party’s primaries in 2016 and 2008. Biden holds a wide lead among Democratic-leaning voters ages 50 and older, attracting 38 percent support compared with 21 percent for Warren, 10 percent for Buttigieg and 9 percent for Sanders. But Biden receives a much smaller 17 percent among Democrats under age 50, with Sanders and Warren tied at 25 percent.

Democrats also split by their self-ascribed ideology, with Biden leading Warren and Sanders by roughly 20 points among Democrats who are moderate-to-conservative, while Warren has the edge among liberals with 33 percent support to Sanders’s 22 percent and Biden’s 18 percent

Race marks a third key fault line. White Democrats are splintered, with 25 percent apiece supporting Biden and Warren, followed by Sanders and Buttigieg at 14 percent each. Among nonwhites, Biden leads with 31 percent support, with Warren and Sanders each receiving 20 percent and Buttigieg falling to 2 percent.

Biden draws roughly similar support among men and women, with 29 percent of men and 27 percent of women citing him as their favored candidate. Warren and Sanders are mirror images of each other. Warren has the support of 26 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning women but a smaller 16 percent among men. Sanders gets 25 percent support among men but 11 percent among women.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone Oct. 27-30 among a random national sample of U.S. adults reached on cellphones and landlines. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 5.5 percentage points among the sample of 452 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent adults, and is plus or minus six points among the sample of 402 Democratic-leaning registered voters.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
 

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SNL skewers Elizabeth Warren over her healthcare plan



They’ve got a pan for that.
Saturday Night Live poked fun at Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to hike taxes to pay for her sweeping Medicare-for-all proposal on the show’s cold open Saturday night.
Show favorite Kate McKinnon played the “She’s got a plan for that” presidential hopeful at a mock event in Iowa, excitably rolling up the sleeves of a red cardigan and mimicking the Massachusetts Democrat’s matronly tones.
“Look at me, I’m in my natural habitat — a public school on a weekend,” she says, before teasing one-time rival Beto O’Rourke for being in her “dust” after dropping out of the race.
McKinnon’s kooky Warren struggles to explain why her plan is better than rival Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-all proposal — before admitting there is no way to pay for them.
“When Bernie was talking Medicare-for-all, everybody was like, ‘oh, cool,’ and then they turned to me and they said, ‘fix it, mom!’” she rambles.
“With dad, you eat birthday cake for breakfast and then go to Six Flags, and then I hold your hand and let you throw up in my purse.
“Daddy takes you to see ‘Boogie Nights’ when you’re 10; I provide the long, tender follow-up explanations about sex and whether Mark Wahlberg’s penis is a realistic length. It ain’t fun, but I will do it.”
When asked about getting the trillions needed for her plans, McKinnon’s Warren smiles maniacally and responds, “When the numbers are this big, they’re just pretend.”
“You ready to get red-pilled? Money doesn’t exist. It’s just a promise from a computer,” she continues, referencing a meme from “The Matrix” employed by the alt-right.
She points to charts saying she would get the money by cutting all military spending and going after the “Amazon Creep.”
“Jeff Bezos is going to go from paying no tax to a tax,” she said, comparing levies to the Amazon Prime fee and joking, “Unlike you, we can’t just take it out of your debit card without warning.”
She then says her main plan is to tax banks.
“Duh. What did you think I was gonna do, hold up a gas station?” she asks.
“They’re gonna pay for it and not one penny for the middle class. All we’ve gotta do is convince JP Morgan to operate like a nonprofit.”
Challenged by an audience member over the math, McKinnon’s Warren pulls out a series of dizzying charts and equations supposedly proving her plan would work.
“Do you understand this? I do. I could explain it to you, but you’d die,” she says.
She insists, however, that her plans were better than Democratic front-runner Joe Biden’s, saying, “My plan compares favorably in that it exists. No one asks how we’re going to pay for ‘remember Obama.’”
The skit ends with Warren leaving a female audience member in tears as she compares her old health insurance plan to a bad boyfriend.


“Girl, listen to me, you need to leave him,” she says as the woman broke down in tears. “You deserve better. Dump his ass!”
 

QueEx

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Super Moderator

Steve Bullock, Joe Sestak bow out of Democratic presidential race

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) ended his presidential run on Monday, explaining in a statement that "it has become clear" he "won't be able to break through to the top tier of this still-crowded field."

Bullock had some success when he jumped in the Democratic race in May, raising $2 million in his first six weeks and qualifying for the July debate. But his candidacy, premised on his ability to win red states without sacrificing progressive ideas, captured attention while never quite catching fire.

Joe Sestak, a retired three-star admiral and former Pennsylvania congressman, quit the race Sunday.

Sestak, who entered the race in July, failed to rise above zero percent in the polls and did not qualify for any of the Democratic debates. Sixteen Democrats are still in the race.


Source: Politico, The Washington Post
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Normally, I don't like to get involved into the political process but based on my experience you have no choice. Many of these politicians are using their position of power to get paid through various schemes. It used to be that communism was the threat, now it is a politician stealing wealth from oligarchs in the private sector and using the government to do it under the auspices of a crime being committed.



In some circumstances (United States), proprietary information is stolen from you by these politicians rather than seizing your wealth that you have accumulated. This could have been another motive behind Pres. Trump surveillance rather than political. I believe they were expecting to win office however, they wanted to use knowledge from the private sector that was stolen from illegal surveillance to bolster their image of being competent bureaucrat.

Because of the low pay it attracts lower tiered talent to run for office. Meanwhile, people like me will seek lucrative opportunities in the private sector. Rather than appearing incompetent or needing assistance from the private sector, many of these politicians will resort to surveillance to equalize themselves. Many of these billionaires are being baited into running for political office then put under FISA surveillance under some false pretense to glean proprietary information about their policy positions.

NASA claims it landed on the moon when it was contractors using their proprietary technology to build the spaceship that landed.

As noted in an official NASA report titled, SP-4102 Managing NASA in the Apollo Era, “From its establishment to the present, NASA has contracted with the private sector for most of the products and services it uses.” The report added, “With important exceptions, NASA scientists and engineers have not built flight hardware. Rather, they have planned the program, drafted the guidelines, and established the parameters within which the product is to be developed”
 
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes

Wilke's challenge is rightly seen as part of a growing
leftist insurgency within the Democratic Party



McKayla Wilkes.

Illustrated | Mckayla2020.com, PytyCzech/iStock

December 27, 2019

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in some regards might be considered the second most powerful Democrat in the country right now.

He is second-in-command in the chamber behind Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and he was given a primetime speaking slot before last week's vote to impeach President Trump.

Yet Hoyer is also about to become the latest prominent Democrat to face a serious primary challenge.

The House leadership is simply not cutting the mustard, Hoyer's challenger, McKayla Wilkes, told The Week in an interview. A young black woman from a working-class background, she says current party leaders are out of touch with the country and their own districts. "Hoyer and Pelosi are leading the party badly," she said, "because they're taking tons of corporate money, not standing up to Trump, and they're not championing crucial ideas like Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal."
Wilke's challenge is rightly seen as part of a growing leftist insurgency within the Democratic Party. If she manages to knock off Hoyer, it might be the strongest signal yet that the movement is winning the battle for the future of the party.


To be sure, party leadership was always going to be a challenge after Democrats won control of the House in 2018. The rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated that the party's previous moderate consensus has fractured.

There is a large appetite from progressive voters for more confrontational, left-wing politics, particularly among younger people, a sentiment which is only growing as Millennials reach early middle age and Generation Z reaches voting age. It was these voters who largely propelled the victories of fresh faces like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

And yet, the House leadership including Hoyer, which essentially holds institutional control of the party so long as President Trump remains in office, has done little to capitalize on this movement. Instead, they treat the left wing much as they did in the 1990s: as annoying gadflies to be ignored whenever possible.


Instead of a full-bore attack on Trump, they opted for a narrow impeachmentfocused solely on the Ukraine scandal — and only after dragging their feet for months. Instead of locking Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, or Mike Pompeo in the House basement to force them to testify, they proceeded with the impeachment vote without hearing from some of the central conspirators. And they have largely ignored Trump's wildly corrupt and unconstitutional profiteering off the presidency, not including it in the impeachment inquiry or any other major investigative hearing.

Their legislative priorities have also been less than bold. They passed a trade dealwith Mexico and Canada that allows Trump to claim victory in his favorite policy area. And while they have passed a number of messaging bills that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promptly bottled up, even there the leadership has stymied the left. House leadership froze out progressives from negotiation over a bill to ostensibly lower drug prices, pushing a weak version that included one absolutely loony provision that would increasedrug costs outside of Medicare so that program could get more money. That was removed only when the Congressional Progressive Caucus threatened to vote against the bill.


This brings me back to Hoyer's home turf, Maryland's 5th District. It is a very comfortably blue area: In every election since 1998, none of Hoyer's various Republican opponents got over 36 percent of the vote. Yet Hoyer is squarely in the middle of the Democratic caucus, and on its right in some areas — he voted for the Iraq War, is a firm partisan of Israel, voted for Wall Street deregulation in 2000, and voted to giveChina permanent normal trade relations that same year.

All these are major reasons why Wilkes is running. "My vision of the Democratic Party is a party that doesn't take corporate money and instead of triangulating to reach 2 percent of swing voters, does a ton of organizing to reach people who don't normally vote."

Her campaign is also about specific Maryland concerns on which Hoyer has failed to deliver. Wilkes supports a massive program of 7 million new social housing units not just because her district has a severe housing affordability problem, but because "I have friends, actually, who live in the woods in an abandoned school bus," she says. She supports sweeping criminal justice reform not just because of the mass incarceration crisis, but because she has personal experience with the Kafkaesque prison bureaucracy, having once been jailed without bail for the ridiculously piddling offense of driving on a suspended license. She supports Medicare-for-all not just because it is good policy, but because she personally knows "people struggling with long-term care, preventative care, and drug prices." Wilkes supports the Green New Deal not just because of climate change in general, but because her district's coastal communities are under dire threat from rising sea levels. "In Anne Arudnel County, in St. Mary's County, people are concerned about the level of the sea rise. People have homes that are on the water," she says. "It's actually amazing that we haven't been wiped out by a massive flood, because there are parts of Maryland that are surroundedby water."

World greenhouse gas emissions reached yet another record high in 2019. Neither the 5th District nor the country as a whole can afford more Democratic Party dithering as happened during the Obama years, with minor subsidies for renewables coupled to an epic fracking binge that made the U.S. the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world.


It's a bit hard to understand the mindset of the Democratic leadership. Age is certainly one factor. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (who has a primary challenger herself in attorney Shahid Buttar) is 79 years old. Hoyer is 80. Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is 77. At that age, it's rather common to get stuck in one's ways.

But it's not the whole story. Bernie Sanders, the most famous leader of left-wing Democrats, is 78. Elizabeth Warren is 70. Clearly being old in itself is no barrier to progressive politics or to being enormously popular among young people. No, the issue with Pelosi and company is not their age so much as how long they have been in politics, and particularly how long they have been at the top of the party.

Both Hoyer and Pelosi were elected in the 1980s, and both have been in and out of various House leadership positions for decades. Top Democrats of this generation internalized the Reagan revolution — believing that the New Deal was dead and buried, that capitalism is basically good, and that America is an unalterably center-right country. Hence left-wing candidates always lose (1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2016 notwithstanding) and the best that be done for the American people are fiddly tax credits and janky market-friendly schemes like ObamaCare. And while it is always possible for someone to change their mind, the top House Democrats plainly have no intention of doing so.

The only way to change direction, it seems, is to knock the leadership out of their individual seats, and put in some fresh folks with fighting spirit. A leader can't "be a leader in just name only. You have to be a leader and actions have to show that. We have to be bold and we have to be brave," says Wilkes. Leadership is about "sticking your neck out there for the people who actually elected you." Her primary is April 28.




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easy_b

Look into my eyes you are getting sleepy!!!
BGOL Investor
I am glad black people found out about this guy early he is bad news

What the fuck is he saying :angry:
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The 2020 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet

Julián Castro leaves the Democratic race as a more interesting, though not more popular, candidate than when he joined it.




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MCP

International
International Member
Trump’s Iran strike reverberates across Democratic primary

The scramble to confront the president on Iran laid bare how quickly the situation had metastasized into a potentially campaign-altering development.


Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By DAVID SIDERS
01/03/2020 05:51 PM EST
Link
Bernie Sanders opened his town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday with a searing rebuke of President Donald Trump’s “dangerous escalation” of the conflict in the Middle East. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren also spent their days consumed with Iran.

Less than a day after the Trump administration confirmed the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the scramble to confront the Republican president on Iran laid bare how quickly the situation had metastasized into a potentially campaign-altering development.

While nearly universally condemning Soleimani in carefully crafted statements, Democrats sought to draw subtle distinctions between themselves and their party rivals on foreign policy — for better and for worse.

Biden, the former vice president and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, leaned into his experience on the world stage at his first Iowa event Friday. Buttigieg cited his experience as a former “military intelligence officer on the ground in Afghanistan.”
Sanders reminded Democrats once again of his lonely — and politically prescient — vote against the Iraq war in 2002.

“When I voted against the war in Iraq in 2002, I feared that it would result in greater destabilization in that country and in the entire region,” Sanders said. “At that time, I warned about the deadly so-called ‘unintended consequences’ of a unilateral invasion. Today, 17 years later, that fear has unfortunately turned out to be a truth.”

Sanders, who has positioned himself to the left of the field on foreign policy, was the rare candidate not to go out of his way to assail Soleimani in prepared statements — avoiding a rhetorical two-step that could alienate interventionist-leery Democrats.

Warren failed to recognize that hazard in her initial statement, in which she called Soleimani a “murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”

Qassem Soleimani

Qassem Soleimani. | Ebrahim Noroozi, File/AP Photo

After progressives criticized her tone, she issued a second, more singularly Trump-focused statement Friday, and referred to the killing as an assassination of a senior foreign military official — language echoing Sanders’ earlier characterization.

The killing suddenly refocused, at least for the moment, public attention on foreign policy, which has played a minor role in a presidential primary dominated by domestic concerns.

“For most candidates, national security is a secondary issue,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way and a veteran of Wesley Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, noting that the moment “does feel familiar” to the political climate at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

“If this kind of results in Iran shelling some things and doing a cyberattack that screws up somebody’s website for a while, then it won’t have any impact [on the 2020 primary],” he said. “But if Iran responds with serious force in some way — and it’s impossible to speculate what that could look like — then I think it could raise real questions about the ability of the various Democratic candidates to credibly claim national security expertise.”

Bennett said it is “blindingly obvious” that a shift in focus to national security would benefit Biden, with his extensive record on foreign policy -- an opinion Biden’s campaign shares. But it will also highlight — as Sanders has — progressives’ discomfort with his 2002 vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq.

The Republican National Committee immediately seized on the Iran strike to lay into Biden. In a prepared statement, it said that if Biden were president, “Osama bin Laden would still be alive, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would still be alive, Soleimani would still be alive, China would be eating our lunch and Iran would be on the path to a nuke.”

Yet for Democrats, the broader concern was the reminder of Trump’s singular ability to dictate the terms of the campaign. Trump speculated repeatedly during Barack Obama’s presidency that Obama would try to exploit Iran for political gain, warning in one of several now-widely circulated tweets he “will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.”

This week, it was Trump raising the specter of an escalating conflict in the Middle East and opening new battle lines in the 2020 primary.

“On the one hand, this was retaliation of the highest order, against an indisputably brutal actor in Soleimani, which may rally Americans around the commander-in-chief,” said David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser. “On the other, it will almost certainly be interpreted by the Iranians as an act of war, and may fetch serious and far flung consequences which could entangle the U.S. in the Middle East in new and perilous ways.”

In a victory lap Friday, Trump said Soleimani had killed or wounded thousands of Americans and “got caught” while plotting to kill more. For the Republican president, the political message was simple: Before issuing his statement, Trump had simply tweeted an image of the American flag.

“Thus far in the campaign, foreign policy has figured as little more than an afterthought” said Andrew Bacevich, the retired Army colonel and longtime international relations professor. “The crisis with Iran, carrying with it the possibility of war, all but obliges the Democratic candidates to take a stand.

The real issue is not the escalating tit-for-tat violence, but whether or not to continue in the post-9/11 project of using force to impose order on the Greater Middle East. The effort has produced no positive results. Trump promised to call it off. He has obviously failed. Will the Democrats offer something better?”
 

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Sen. Cory Booker Drops Out of Presidential Race



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Photo: Ethan Miller (Getty Images)

The Root
Stephen A. Crockett Jr.

24 minutes ago
January 13, 2020
https://www.theroot.com/tag/cory-booker
Miller (Getty Images)

On Monday, in a move that we all saw coming, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)—he of the wide smile and charismatic optimism that’s almost too good to be true—announced that he’s ending his bid for president.

You know what this means? We won’t have a first lady named Rosario! That former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is all we’ve got left, as he’s the only black candidate remaining.

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“Nearly one year ago, I got in the race for president because I believed to my core that the answer to the common pain Americans are feeling right now, the answer to Donald Trump’s hatred and division, is to reignite our spirit of common purpose to take on our biggest challenges and build a more just and fair country for everyone,” Booker said in an email to supporters obtained by NBC News. “I’ve always believed that. I still believe that. I’m proud I never compromised my faith in these principles during this campaign to score political points or tear down others.

“And maybe I’m stubborn, but I’ll never abandon my faith in what we can accomplish when we join together,” he continued. “I will carry this fight forward—I just won’t be doing it as a candidate for president this year. Friend, it’s with a full heart that I share this news—I’ve made the decision to suspend my campaign for president.”


Since announcing that he was going to run for president in February, Booker, like many other black Democratic nominees, struggled to raise the type of money required to support a presidential run. His polling numbers were dismal as his message of love didn’t resonate with Democratic voters and he “failed to meet the polling requirements needed to participate in Tuesday’s debate. Booker also missed last month’s debate and exits the race polling in low single digits in the early primary states and nationwide,” AP News reports.

Booker reportedly informed his campaign staff in a call before making his announcement public.

“It was a difficult decision to make, but I got in this race to win, and I’ve always said I wouldn’t continue if there was no longer a path to victory,” he told supporters. “Our campaign has reached the point where we need more money to scale up and continue building a campaign that can win—money we don’t have, and money that is harder to raise because I won’t be on the next debate stage and because the urgent business of impeachment will rightly be keeping me in Washington.”

Much like the loser in a pickup basketball game, Booker will now wait on the sidelines to see if anyone wants to run with him as their vice president.

Also, and maybe more importantly, goodbye first lady Rosario Dawson.




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LIVE FROM NEW YORK

SNL's Bloomberg looms over cold open debate spoof

8:18 a.m.

Saturday Night Live took on the Democratic presidential in the show's latest cold open.
In a spoof of Friday's primary debate in New Hampshire, Saturday's episode saw:

Pete Davidson's Tom Steyer,​
Rachel Dratch's Amy Klobuchar,
Larry David's Bernie Sanders,​
Jason Sudeikis' Joe Biden,​
Kate McKinnon's Elizabeth Warren,​
Colin Jost's Pete Buttigieg, and​
Bowen Yang's Andrew Yang​

take the stage, where high jinks ensued.

Dratch's Klobuchar couldn't figure out why she isn't winning the election, Sudeikis' Biden couldn't remember what South Carolina was called, David's Sanders advocated for an app-free primary, and Davidson's Steyer was just happy to be there and make friends. Meanwhile, billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (played by Fred Armisen) loomed over all of it with his sponsorship of the debate. Watch the sketch below. Tim O'Donnell

 

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Nevada Democratic Debate Sets Viewership Record


Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg showed up for his first Democratic debate on Wednesday, and it's safe to say there was interest. About 19.7 million people tuned in for NBC and MSNBC's Democratic debate in Nevada, making it the most-viewed Democratic primary debate ever.

A June 2019 Democratic debate previously set the record with 18.1 million viewers.

The Nevada Democratic debate turned into something of a roast of Bloomberg, with every candidate pummeling the former mayor, whose debate performance was subsequently panned by pundits.


Source: BuzzFeed News

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Biden stuns with 9 Super Tuesday wins as Sanders gets 4


Former Vice President Joe Biden was projected on Tuesday night to win the Democratic primaries in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Texas while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was projected to win Vermont, Colorado, Utah, and California, the biggest prize. Maine is the only race that hasn't been called. Voters in 14 states headed to the polls on Tuesday, with 1,357 delegates up for grabs. That's 34 percent of the total number of delegates and a far bigger share than the number allotted to states that previously conducted their primaries and caucuses. Biden's wins in Minnesota and Oklahoma were especially significant, as Sanders won both states in 2016.


Source: The Associated Press, The New York Times


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Her own state didn’t support her. That says something about Elizabeth Warren

 

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POLITICS

Progressives Really Want Stacey Abrams to be Joe Biden's Running Mate and They Have the Data to Prove She's the Best Choice


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Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)


The Root
March 22, 2020


It’s no secret that anyone looking to put someone new in the Oval Office come November has quite the uphill battle on their hands. While supporters of President Donald Trump appear to remain galvanized and energized (Who knew that bigotry and jingoism delivered through grade-school level Twitter fingers would stick as white conservative America’s wet dream?), the Democratic base seems to be split into three groups: those who are still holding out for true progressivism in leadership, those who actually believe in Democrats as the party America thrives behind and those who really just want the sour tangerine flavored xenophobe out of the White House.
A progressive think tank believes they’ve found the perfect solution for placating all three groups: Stacey Abrams.


According to NBC News, a network of well-off political donors led by women named Way to Wincommissioned Data for Progress, an organization that considers themselves “the think tank for true progressivism,” according to their website, to analyze potential running mates for the Democratic nominee. This move came after frontrunner Joe Biden washed candidate Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday.

For what it’s worth, Data for Progress polls have been lauded for their accuracy in predictingpresidential primary outcomes this year, so maybe the study they conducted concluding that Abrams, despite the former Georgia House rep. being the least well known among the potential running mates included, is the most viable pick merits a closer look.

[Data for Progress] conducted an online survey of 4,998 likely voters across the country on March 12 to gauge how potential Democratic tickets would fare against Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
The group tested five buzzed-about potential options: Abrams and Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey (Biden has since committed to picking a woman).
Sean McElwee, Data for Progress’ founder, wrote in a memo analyzing the study’s findings that Abram simply polled the strongest among the widest range of demographic groups.“A Biden–Abrams ticket would beat a Trump-Pence ticket and perform competitively with other hypothetical tickets, while also overperforming with key groups that constitute the Democratic Party’s base,” McElwee wrote.
According to the memo, the Biden-Abrams pairing didn’t poll quite as well with young voters as a hypothetical ticket pairing Sen. Elizabeth Warren with Biden did, but it wasn’t far behind. With independent voters, Abrams did just as well as Sen. Amy Klobuchar whereas Warren scored significantly lower with independents. Most notably, the Biden-Abrams ticket was the big poll winner among black people and women of color which could serve to bolster Biden’s black voter support which the Democratic primary has already proven him favorable among.But according to Way to Win executive director Tory Gavito, primary support doesn’t equal general election turnout.
“Primary voters are your regular voters. If it was church, those are people who show up every Sunday. We need to figure out how to get new people in the pews,” Gavito said, according to NBC.
Gavito also noted that choosing the right running mate is even more important in the coming presidential race than it has been in past elections and highlighted the importance of demographic diversity being considered in the decision.
“Historically, folks will tell you the VP pick is less important. I think we are not in a typical historic moment,” Gavito told NBC News. “When it comes to what it takes to win, we have to balance the ticket with gender, ideological, geographic, racial and generational diversity.”

The memo released by Data for Progress warns against choosing Warran or any other Democratic senator, even those from loyal blue states, because a Republican could win the seat meaning, our president may be blue, but crucial senate votes may cease to be.
“Other hypothetical tickets raise significant concerns about control of the Senate,” the memo states. “There are even risks for Biden picking Warren to run as his vice president. The governor of Massachusetts is Charlie Baker, a Republican, who will have the power to appoint a replacement for Warren until a special election takes place.”

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Abrams has been suggested as Biden’s vice president choice. Earlier this month House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who endorsed Biden, suggested that the former VP choose a black woman as a running mate saying, “I really believe that we’ve reached a point in this country where African American women need to be rewarded for the loyalty that they’ve given to this party. So I would really be pushing for an African American female to go on the ticket.” Abrams was at the top of Clyburn’s list of potential picks along with Sen. Kamala Harris.

The one person involved in all this who’s thoughts on the matter haven’t been heard recently is Abrams herself. Although we should all remember that last year she made an appearance on The View where she expressed zero interest in being Biden’s or anyone else’s running mate.

“I think you don’t run for second place,” Abrams said. “If I’m going to enter a primary, then I’m going to enter a primary. And if I don’t enter the primary, my job is to make certain that the best Democrat becomes the nominee, and whoever wins the primary, that we make sure that person gets elected in 2020.”


 

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The triumph of Stacey Abrams over Donald Trump

CNN
January 6, 2021


(CNN) With one Senate seat secured for Democrats in Georgia and the other Senate race yet to be called, it is already clear that there is a lesson to be learned from the runoffs. It's not just that President Donald Trump has largely undermined and ruined the Republican Party. It is also that progressive grassroots leaders (led overwhelmingly by Black women) have reimagined, recreated and rebuilt the state's Democratic Party coalition.

We should not stop at denouncing the lack of smarts on the Republican side. We must also praise the real genius of Georgia's activists and organizers. This is not just a story about the final failure of Trump. It is a story of the success of Stacey Abrams -- and many of the unsung, bottom-up, inspirational leaders with whom she has worked for years. They not only helped secure a Democratic Georgia Senate seat, but they helped elect the first Black senator in Georgia, the Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Of course, there is plenty to criticize on the Republican side.

For example, the GOP ran two candidates who spent their time demonizing their opponents as "radical socialists" rather than offering their own vision to inspire voters. They marched lockstep with Trump, rather than showing independent leadership. Kelly Loeffler made the unwise decision to continually defame and malign the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King's church. Her attacks on the Rev. Warnock's sermons and ties to other pastors caused a backlash that likely turned out more Black voters who wanted to defend the Black church. The strategy failed for Loeffler.​
Poor judgment from Republicans was not confined to candidates in the Peach State. In Washington DC, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was all too happy to play the part of Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmastime. When he blocked the $2,000 Covid-19 relief checks that progressive Democrats and President Trump both demanded, he single-handedly gifted Democrats a winning closing message: Vote for us, and we will get you enough money to survive.​
To top it all off, President Trump has spent the past two months telling lies about the general election outcome. And those lies likely suppressed his own party's voters. He convinced legions of Republican voters that their votes had not counted in November, despite any solid evidence to back up his claims. The GOP in Georgia paid the price, as many Republicans apparently threw up their hands in frustration at the whole system and stayed home. Worse, Trump made it impossible for Republicans to consistently use their strongest potential message -- that voters must help stop Democrats from controlling the White House, House and Senate -- by his refusal to acknowledge that he was going to have to turn the White House over to Biden.​

But all that is still only half the story.

The other half was how smartly the progressives played their hand.

First of all, for years, the best leaders on the ground in Georgia have been putting grassroots organizing ahead of party politics. Georgia organizers built from the base, focusing on a community-oriented, person-to-person approach. They knocked on doors and made phone calls -- for years. The heroes were not national Democratic Party operatives but local leaders and organizations. It was not just Stacey Abrams -- who lost her bid for Georgia governor in 2018 but never stopped working -- though she is at the top of the list.​
We also need to give credit to the organizations and leaders who dedicated their time and energy to highlighting critical issues and mobilizing voters: Tamieka Atkins and ProGeorgia, Helen Butler and Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, Deborah Scott and GA Stand Up, LaTosha Brown and Black Voters Matter Fund, Nsé Ufot and the New Georgia Project, Color of Change and Mijente, which worked hard to mobilize the Latino vote.​

All of this work likely produced a major swing toward Democrats.

It was also a win for "Black joy" over a certain kind of White rage.
So much of our politics since Trump emerged on the scene has been about right-wingers stoking or managing White anger. And so much of 2020 was understandably and inevitably about Black heartbreak -- from the Covid-19 catastrophe to police abuse. But the first election of 2021 was powered by Black joy, instead. I talked to organizers who said they used music, food, dance and fun to engage people at a deeper level. Their efforts helped the Rev. Raphael Warnock to become only the 11th Black US senator in history -- the first in Georgia. (You can still fit a list of every Black senator ever in a single tweet! That's how rare such wins are.)


Lastly, it was a win for real people over party royalty. A few years ago, the Democrats nominated Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter for statewide elections and lost badly. They were both Democratic Party royalty. On the other hand, the Rev. Warnock is not, yet he won. He was untested as a candidate, but his personal story is compelling and his leadership qualities are authentic. Despite Georgia's painful history -- one sadly blighted with anti-Black and anti-Jewish bigotry -- all Georgians soon will have a Black pastor representing them in the halls of the US Senate.
How did we get to this seemingly miraculous outcome? It's simple.

- Trump lost his election -- and he spent two months lying and whining.
- Stacey Abrams lost her election -- and she spent two years building a stronger movement. Now, we know whose strategy was better.



Opinion: The triumph of Stacey Abrams over Donald Trump - CNN

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