Category: Presidential Campaign

Bloomberg is Out

No Comments

No, we are not talking about his sexuality, we are talking about his running for President.

He’s not running for President:

Americans today face a profound challenge to preserve our common values and national promise.

Wage stagnation at home and our declining influence abroad have left Americans angry and frustrated. And yet Washington, D.C., offers nothing but gridlock and partisan finger-pointing.

………

Over the last several months, many Americans have urged me to run for president as an independent, and some who don’t like the current candidates have said it is my patriotic duty to do so. I appreciate their appeals, and I have given the question serious consideration. The deadline to answer it is now, because of ballot access requirements.

Many Americans who have the name “Michael Bloomberg”.  No one was clamoring for Bloomberg to run but Michael Bloomberg.

………

But when I look at the data, it’s clear to me that if I entered the race, I could not win. I believe I could win a number of diverse states — but not enough to win the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the presidency.

In a three-way race, it’s unlikely any candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and then the power to choose the president would be taken out of the hands of the American people and thrown to Congress. The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress — not the American people or the Electoral College — would determine the next president.

As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a risk I can take in good conscience.

He’s trying to cast this as a noble decision, but that’s crap.

He was indulging in onanistic narcissism, and now he is done.

Saw the Dem Debate Tonight

No Comments

I’m not sure who won, but here are my quick thoughts:

  • It was much more contentious than the previous debates.
  • Bernie Sanders is more likable.
  • CNN’s format was weird, and the questions from the audience were even weirder.
  • Clinton was hoarse.
  • Sanders was weak on gun control, which has always been one of his weak points.

Not sure what it means in the context of the election, though.

Jim Webb, How About a Nice Hot Cup of Shut the F%$# Up?

No Comments

And he wonders why no one supported his Presidential run.

I think that being a clueless narcissistic asshole, even by the standards of politics, might have had something to do with it:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, but he hasn’t ruled out casting his ballot for Donald Trump.

 ………

 “I would not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Webb said on MSBNC’s “Morning Joe.”

 When asked whether he’d vote for Trump, Webb said he wasn’t closed to the idea. “I’m not sure yet. I don’t know who I’m going to vote for,” he said.

 He said Clinton would simply continue President Barack Obama’s policies, but that with Trump, things would change — but he’s not convinced it would be for the better.

 “If you’re voting for Donald Trump, you may get something very good or very bad,” Webb said. “If you’re voting for Hillary Clinton, you’re going to be getting the same thing.”

There is something seriously wrong with that guy

For Sanders Supporters Who are Silver Lining Types

2 Comments

First, note that the primaries are structured that all of Clinton’s strong states will be done by mid March.

Basically, the southern states, the ones that won’t vote for a Democrat, are relatively early in the process:

I’m keeping this short to put a very simple idea into your head. Because of the way the Democratic Party voting calendar is structured this year, Clinton’s largest lead will occur on March 15. After that, most of Sanders’ strongest states will vote.

 What this means is simple:

  • Hillary Clinton will grow her lead until the March 15 states have voted.
  • Bernie Sanders will erase that lead — partly or completely — after March 15.
  • How much of Clinton’s lead he will erase depends on your not buying what the media is selling — that the contest is over.
  • In most scenarios where Sanders wins, he doesn’t retake the lead until June 7, when five states including California cast their ballots.

March 15 is the Ides of March; a good way to remember the date. The message — gear up for a battle after the Ides of March, and don’t let the establishment media tell you what to think. They won’t be right until the last state has voted.

 If you want to stop reading here, this is all you need to know.

………

Bottom line — Super Tuesday is upon us, and what’s bad for Sanders supporters on March 1 is going to look worse for a few weeks. Stay heartened. Whatever the result in March, this isn’t over until June, after Sanders’ best states have voted as well.

(Emphasis Original)

This is not surprising. Both of the party establishments have attempted to front load the the south, the Republicans because they double down on racism, and the Democrats because they want to forestall the liberal wing of the party. (Super Tuesday was largely a product of the right wing of the right wing of the Democratic Party.)

This raises an interesting question, “Does Sanders have the resources go to distance?”

The answer is clearly, “Yes.”

In fact, it is very likely that Sanders has more Cash on Hand than Clinton does:  (Note that this does not include Super PAC money, but that money does not go as far, because it cannot be targeted as flexibly)

Hillary Clinton raised $30 million in February and has $31 million on hand, her campaign announced on Wednesday — far less than Bernie Sanders.

 ………

 Her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, raised $43 million in February, with $6 million of that coming on Monday. Sanders’ campaign has not announced its cash on hand, but as of the end of January, he had nearly $15 million in the bank.

Sanders Raised $20 million to Clinton’s $15 million in January.

So, Sanders raised $63 million in the first two months of the year, and Clinton raised $37 million, and she has $31 million cash on hand, and we can be reasonably certain that the Sanders campaign has a lower burn rate than Clinton, because she is employing a lot of high powered consultants, and has a far more extensive fundraising apparatus.

Assuming the same spending rates, and Hillary and Bernie would be neck and neck in cash on hand.

My guess is that Bernie is a few million ahead, and Hillary’s big donors are running into campaign finance limits, so the Sanders campaign can take this to the convention.

Who Knew?

No Comments

Marco Rubio’s jokes about Trump’s dick size are not a low point in Presidential campaigning. It turns out that it it goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson:

………

As a matter of fact, Jefferson was well aware of the political salience of the well-timed tiny-dick joke because he used them himself, in the ferocious campaign of 1800.

As the challenger in 1800, his goal was to topple the incumbent. His critique of President John Adams included the accusation that he was “a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”


And, of course, old Martin Van Buren campaigned by accusing William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, of being “a man who wore corsets, put cologne on his whiskers, slept on French beds, rode in a British coach, and ate with golden spoons from silver plates.” Which is sort of an implied dick joke from a more civilized time. And thus do we discover that, in yet another vital element of being a political candidate, Marco Rubio comes up…well…short.

I loves me some history.

Not a Great Night for Sanders

No Comments

Right now, he appears to have won Vermont, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oklahoma, and Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Vairginia.

She also got about twice as many delegates.

Trump won all but four of the states on the ‘Phant side, with Cruz winning Texas and Oklahoma, and Rubio winning Minnesota, and Vermont being too close to call.

We are no hearing a clamor for Bernie to leave the race from the pundits, despite the fact that the Democratic side of the Race is closer than the Republican side, and no one is suggesting that other Republicans capitulate to Trump.

I just love our punditocracy works.

As an aside, Sanders is crushing it on fundraising, raising $20 million in January and $42 million in February, and appears to be outpacing Clinton, with a far lower burn rate, so he can continue to run until the convention.

This Ain’t Just About Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. It’s Also About Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

No Comments

That’s gonna leave a mark

Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who is generally considered someone to watch in the Democratic Party, has resigned from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders:

Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, resigned as a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday in order to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for president.

The endorsement came a day after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in South Carolina by a huge margin — she captured nearly 74 percent of the vote — in a signal of her support in the South right before several other Southern states vote in Tuesday’s primaries.

Ms. Gabbard explained her decision in a video on YouTube in which she said that, as a military veteran, she wanted the United States to avoid “interventionist wars of regime change.”

“As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know first hand the cost of war,” said Ms. Gabbard, one of the first female combat veterans to serve in Congress. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power and when not to use that power.

This is a harsh, and IMNSHO justified critique of Clinton’s blithely bellicose foreign policy, but I have to think that a lot of this is that she no longer wants to deal with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Just to remind you, Wasserman-Schultz banned Gabbard from the debate audience for calling for more debates, so I am inclined to think that part of this is being driven by her no longer wanting to work with the hacktacular DWS.

Based on various statements from the Beltway media, I get the sense that it is not only Representative Gabbard who is getting sick of Wasserman-Schultz.

The DNC chair appears to be high handed, self absorbed, and threatened by competence around her, and that is a toxic mix in any organization.

Too Funny

No Comments

It appears that during the last Republican debate, when everyone was calling everyone a c*cksucker, whoever was doing the closed captioning threw up his hands in despair:

Last night’s Republican brawl at recess was best summed up by some anonymous soul working at the closed-captioning desk at CNN who clearly was completely fed up with the idiotic proceedings on stage and decided to let the hearing-impaired citizens of the United States of America know that he was. (In fact, I hope that the hearing-impaired citizens of the United States of America know how lucky they were last night.) This wasn’t a political debate. This was a pissing contest among men who are worried about the size of their dicks.

(Unintelligible yelling)
Would you have trusted any of these clowns with the nuclear codes? (Maybe John Kasich, but only if there were absolutely no other option, Curly Howard being dead and all.) I wouldn’t trust any of them to park my car.

(Unintelligible yelling)

What was your favorite moment? Was it Dr. Ben Carson’s contention that the “fruit salad of their lives” are dangling precipitously on “the abyss of destruction?  What did he mean? Who knows? The mind of Dr. Ben Carson is not the mind of an ordinary man. The mind of Dr. Ben Carson is on loan from a curiosity shoppe somewhere on the moons of Saturn.

Perhaps I should start playing the Republican Debate Drinking game, because it does sound entertaining, if not particularly informative.

The People Have Spoken, the Bastards!*

No Comments

Hillary Clinton crushed Bernie Sanders in South Carolina:

Drawing overwhelming support from the African-American voters who deserted her here eight years ago, Hillary Clinton won her first resounding victory of the 2016 campaign in South Carolina on Saturday, delivering a blow to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont as their fight turns to the 11 states where Democrats vote on Tuesday.

After supporting Barack Obama in 2008, black voters, who will be the dominant force in the coming Southern primaries, turned out in droves for Mrs. Clinton here. They chose her over Mr. Sanders by more than six to one, while white voters narrowly favored her as well, according to exit polls.

………

This time it was Mrs. Clinton who emerged from the first southern primary with a clearer path to the nomination. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Mrs. Clinton won 73.5 percent, to 26 percent for Mr. Sanders. Turnout was about 370,000, according to Edison Research — modest compared with the 532,000 ballots cast in the Clinton-Obama primary race here in 2008, and well below the record 743,000 votes cast in South Carolina’s Republican primary last Saturday, which Mr. Trump won.

Some observations:

  • She beat him by nearly 3 to 1, so Sanders lost this ugly.
  • There was not a whole bunch of voter enthusiasm. Turnout was low.

I think that the Sanders campaign needs to work on its ground game in general, and its GOTV effort in particular.

Bernie’s demographic trends younger, and it is difficult to get younger voters to show up at the ballot box.

I was hoping for Sanders to stay within single digits, so I has a sad right now.

*Not my quote, it comes from the inestimable Dick Tuck.

Very Long, Read Anyway

No Comments

How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable by the invaluable Matt Taibbi.

If  Mark Ames’ 2004 essay, “Spite the Vote,” gave us the big picture on Trump’s appeal in a moment of prognostic brilliance, Taibbi’s article explains the specifics, and the specific dangers.

He also makes a very good argument that Clinton is precisely the sort of candidate who will lose to him in the general.

I gotta look into Alyiah to Israel for my family and me. 

President Trump. 

I do not like that, Sam I Am.

Finally, Someone Confronts Hillary About It.

No Comments

Just Desserts at a Fundraising Dinner

I could call Hillary’s endorsement of the penal state in the early to mid 1990s the “Elephant in the Room”, but given the attendant political symbology, it wouldn’t clarify the issue.

Bill Clinton was campaigning for president, and when he was campaigning for reelection, both he and Hillary Clinton acritively demonized black popular culture, see the “Sista Soulja Moment“, particularly with regard to young black men.

Their crime bill was an abomination, and Hillary was blithely talking about “super predators” as a code word for young urban black males.

A black lives matter protester shelled out $500 for a fundraising dinner, and got in Clinton’s face about her history:

Two activists with the Black Lives Matter movement interrupted a private fundraising event in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night, demanding that the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton account for language she used as first lady about the need to “bring [at-risk youth] to heel”.

First reported by the Huffington Post, the protest began after Clinton told attendees about the need for police body cameras to stem police violence against members of the public. At this point, activist Ashley Williams stepped forward and unfurled a banner reading: “We have to bring them to heel.”

The banner’s text refers to a speech Clinton made in 1994 in support of her husband’s crime bill, the passage of which has since been criticized as having expanded the prison system and imposed unduly harsh sentencing on non-violent offenders.

“I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton,” Williams said once Clinton turned around and noticed the sign, paraphrasing another line from the then first lady’s speech. “Will you apologize to black people for mass incarceration?”

Williams told the Huffington Post that she and another protester made a $500 donation to the Clinton campaign to attend the event, held in a private residence with roughly 100 attendees. Williams was eventually removed from the fundraiser by secret service agents.

Her eventual response, “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today,” is a non-apology apology.

What’s more it is further reduced in meaning in that she delivered this message only in writing.

There is a problem with what you said 20 years ago. 

The bigger problem was that you actively promulgated a racist trope because it helped Bill’s reelection campaign.

It is a very sad part of your history, and any apology needs to come from your mouth, and not from a memo dashed off to one of your pet journalists.

What an Unbelievably Transparent Cop-Out

No Comments

This is why, if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, she is likely to get beaten by Donald Trump:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton again refused to release transcripts of her paid speeches to big banks, telling a CNN town hall audience Tuesday night that she will only release her transcripts if her Republican opponents release theirs.

 “Earlier tonight, I asked Senator Sanders: Will you give your transcripts of speeches?” said host Chris Cuomo. “He said he doesn’t have the bank speeches. If he can find any of the speeches that he did give for money, he will gladly give the transcripts up. So: Will you agree to release these transcripts? They have become an issue.”

 Clinton replied: “Sure, if everybody does it, and that includes the Republicans.”

 She continued: “Because we know they have given a lot of speeches.” She then went on to offer a defense of her Wall Street regulatory plan.

 And she asked: “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”

Because you are claiming that you are not in Wall Street’s pocket, and the Republicans are in Wall Street’s pockets as an article of faith?

Because you have made a specific claim that you told them to “Cut it out”?

Because you got over a half a million dollars for your speeches?

Because that answer makes you look like a whiny self-entitled jerk.

Because you are f%$#ing running for f%$#ing President of the f%$#ing United f%$#ing States?

Even if you believe Hillary Clinton’s argument that she is likely to be more successful at getting things through Congress, which means that you have to ignore the fact that Bernie did more in the House and Senate than she did, this means that she is pretty damn near hopeless as a candidate.

She is the Martha Coakley of Presidential campaigns.

Letting her get the nomination likely to make Donald Trump President.

Headline of the Day

No Comments

Hillary Clinton’s Latest Attack on Bernie Sanders Sounds a Lot Like Mitt Romney:

Fresh off a vindicating win in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton found herself embroiled in a controversy over remarks denigrating rival Bernie Sanders‘ policy proposals as “free everything” — an attack, critics charge, that echoes Republican talking points.

The former secretary of state actually delivered the jab on Thursday, as polls showed her locked in a tight contest with Sanders in the Silver State. But the remarks didn’t receive widespread attention until late this weekend, after Clinton defeated Sanders by more than 5 percentage points.

Speaking at a campaign rally, Clinton said, “I’m not just making speeches and not just promising free this and free that and free everything.” The line was widely interpreted as a dig at Sanders’ proposals for tuition-free public college and a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health system.

A familiar refrain? For many listeners, Clinton’s remarks evoked memories of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, both patrician Republicans who came under fire for comments suggesting that Democrats sought to curry favor with voters by offering free benefits.

I think that there is a lot more of the “Hillary Rodham Goldwater Girl” from 1964 in her than I had previously realized.

This is Actually Not a Bad Thing

No Comments

It appears that much of Clinton’s victory margin was delivered by Harry Reid’s political organization:

I’d like to congratulate the winner of the Nevada Democratic caucuses: Harry Reid.

What’s that, you say? The Senate Democratic leader wasn’t running? What am I talking about?

Last Saturday may well have been the day that altered the course of the Democratic presidential race — when Hillary Clinton blunted Bernie Sanders’ campaign. After she was forced to work as hard as she ever has for a week (with a little help from a lot of friends), she was sling-shotted with new momentum into South Carolina’s primary this Saturday and Super Tuesday on March 1. Nevada could indeed prove to be the contest that saved Clinton’s campaign.

But the caucuses, which Clinton won by about 5 percentage points, also cemented Prince Harry as a man Machiavelli would have bowed to, a man with one eye who still sees the field better and is still more dangerous, effective and cunning than any pol the state (the country?) has ever seen. Clinton might not have won Nevada if Reid had not interceded last week, when the man feigning neutrality saw what everyone in the Democratic elite saw: Sanders erasing a once mountainous lead and on the verge of perhaps winning Nevada and rendering inoperative the “Hillary is more electable” argument.

The story of the Nevada caucuses is that a lame-duck senator and a self-neutered union conspired to revive the Clinton campaign in a remarkable bit of backroom maneuvering that helped Madame Secretary crush Sanders in Clark County, the key to winning almost any statewide election. Combined with a Clinton machine, erected last spring and looking invincible, that suddenly had to scrape the rust off its gears and turn out her voters, Caucus Day also was a remarkable story of an indomitable candidate, her nonpareil Nevada staff and a ragtag but committed Sanders operation that made them sweat.

Politically, Clinton is not a great campaigner, but playing this sort of insider game is her mutant super power..

I’m pretty sure that Hillary had to ask for this help, and knowing when to ask for help is a valuable skill.

I would rather that Sanders had won the caucus, but this is a smart move.

H/t DownWithTyranny!

Understanding the Trump Voter

No Comments

In 2004, Mark Ames wrote about the “Spite Voter”, and it is the best explanation of the Trump appeal.

Here is a sample paragraph:

Spite voting is not just an American problem; it’s a flaw in democracies everywhere. When I lived in Kosovo in the late summer of 2000, I asked my Serb friends there if they thought Milosevic was going to win the upcoming Serbian presidential elections. Most were pessimistic. They told me of friends, young people even, who voted for Milosevic “just out of spite.” The Serbian spite voters believed that if the opposition got their way and Serbia became as tame and civilized as Luxembourg, all those college-educated Otpor protestors and pro-Western intellectuals would simply take the privileges enjoyed by Milosevic’s cronies for themselves. They didn’t want caste-based happiness and its accompanying propaganda, so they voted for Milosevic precisely because he was wrong, because he was a vote against hope. Under Milosevic, nearly every Serb was f%$#ed equally, and that suited some people, particularly some Serbian males, just fine. But if you’re a failure under two completely different regimes, then the inescapable conclusion would be that it’s your own damn fault. Better to keep the villain in, and the young ambitious go-getters out.

(%$# mine)

Read the rest.  It’s long, but well worth reading.