Tag: Elections

Similar Political Dynamics, Let’s Hope for a Similar Results

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Jamaal Bowman in his primary challenge to Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

All things considered, Engle is a prime candidate for “termination with extreme prejudice” by his constituents.

His district, one of the hardest hit by Covid-19 in the district, is right next to AOC’s, and Engel has been almost completely absent from it for decades, so it’s no surprise that he is vulnerable.

Here is hoping that this challenge gets another old party hack out:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), in her latest break with party leaders, has endorsed a Democratic primary challenger to Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), a long-serving committee chairman who represents a district adjacent to hers.

In a series of tweets, Ocasio-Cortez announced her support for Engel’s leading challenger, middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman, whose message of generational change has echoed that of Ocasio-Cortez ahead of her 2018 upset of a long-serving Democratic incumbent.

………

Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is serving his 16th term in the House.

He has reported raising more than $1.6 million through March — about three times as much as Bowman — but is facing a spirited June 23 primary amid criticism that he has not spent enough time in the district.

On Tuesday, Engel generated headlines after he repeatedly asked to speak at a Bronx news conference on protests over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd, then said near a live microphone, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”

………

Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed two other challengers to House Democrats in this year’s elections. Business executive and activist Marie Newman defeated Rep. Daniel Lipinski in an Illinois district south of Chicago, while Rep. Henry Cuellar defeated Jessica Cisneros, an immigration attorney backed by Ocasio-Cortez.

Here is hoping that Engel gets a well deserved retirement.

The geriatric leadership of the House Democrats need to go.

Yes!!!! In Your Rat-Face Andy!!!!

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A federal judge has reinstated New York’s June Democratic presidential primary, siding with Andrew Yang, the former candidate, who sued the state in federal court and called the recent decision to cancel the contest “authoritarian and illegal”.

The judge ruled Tuesday that the state had wrongfully removed the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Yang and eight other former presidential candidates from the ballot.

The decision came after two Democrats on the state’s election commission cancelled the presidential primary last week, relying on a new budget provision allowing them to remove presidential candidates who suspended their campaigns. The move outraged Sanders supporters and other progressives who said New York, a Democratic bastion, was actively disenfranchising voters.

………

The US district judge Analisa Torres wrote that the state had deprived voters of their constitutional guarantee of freedom of association. New York voters, she said, weren’t just voting for a presidential candidate, but also for delegates who could influence the direction of the Democratic National Convention in August. (Sanders and Biden announced an agreement last month to let Sanders keep hundreds of delegates, and make sure the senator is represented at the Democratic national convention.)

“The removal of presidential contenders from the primary ballot not only deprived those candidates of the chance to garner votes for the Democratic party’s nomination … it deprived Democratic voters of the opportunity to elect delegates who could push their point of view in that forum.”

I think that one of the goals of this provision was specifically to depress turnout to disfavor primary challenges and progressive candidates, which is a classic “Rat-Faced Andy” Cuomo dick move.

Your Feel Good Story of the Day

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It’s an old story, Hamilton County Sheriff fires an officer because she is gay, and she beats him like a rented mule in the primary:

In a heated race in Ohio, Democrat Charmaine McGuffey ran to be both the county’s first female and first out LGBTQ person elected sheriff. She also ran against the man she alleges fired her because she’s a lesbian – current Sheriff Jim Neil, a Trump-supporting Democrat.

And she stomped him at the ballot box, winning approximately 70 percent of the vote.

Jim Neil should never have been the Democratic Party for anything in the first place.

He’s a teabagger who appeared on stage with Donald Trump in 2016.

There is No Place for Progressives in the Democratic Party

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One of the reasons that Bernie Sanders has suspended, rather then ended, his campaign, is because, as he has explicitly stated, he wants a sufficient number of delegates to be able to submit motions on Democratic Party rules.

It appears that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is unwilling to even deal with concessions as minor as keeping “super-delegates” out of the first ballot, which is honestly is about the only thing that Sanders would get passed, so they canceled the New York State Democratic Presidential primary to ensure that Sanders will have insufficient votes to submit motions on party rules and the platform.

It is patently clear that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) sees Donald Trump as their opponent, and progressives as the enemy.

It’s the Iron Law of Institutions, “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”

There is no single action more calculated to drive people who are undecided about whether to vote 3rd party or write in Stephen Colbert (I’m leaning toward Colbert) at this moment, but they have to do it, because hippy punching is an absolute priority of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

They Really Are Contemptible

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I can get why some people would want to primary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I disagree, but I understand why.

Still selecting a recently Republican wing nut who called Social Security a Ponzi scheme is an indication of just how detached from reality they are.

My guess is that they decided that no one would notice if one Hispanic woman was replaced with another when they chose Michelle Caruso-Cabrera as their “Great White Hope.”

Some advice for AOC:  Unless you become Joseph Crowley and sell out completely, they are going to continue coming after you, so go ahead and endorse primary challengers to corporatist DINOs:

Wall Street titans are financing a direct challenge to firebrand progressive lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the New York primary on June 23.

Disclosures show that at least two dozen finance industry professionals, including several prominent private equity executives and investment bankers, made early donations to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who is challenging Ocasio-Cortez. Caruso-Cabrera was a registered Republican until a few years ago and authored a 2010 book advocating for several conservative positions, including an end to Medicare and Social Security, which she called “pyramid schemes.”

The donors include Glenn Hutchins, the billionaire co-founder of Silver Lake Partners; James Passin of Firebird Capital; Bruce Schnitzer of Wand Partners; Jeffrey Rosen of Lazard; and Bradley Seaman, managing partner of Parallel49 Equity.

………

But the candidate’s beliefs are explained in detail in a book she authored in 2010 titled, “You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” which included a forward by Larry Kudlow, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council.

In the book, Caruso-Cabrera calls Medicare and Social Security “the country’s biggest pyramid schemes,” and wrote that she would end both programs in favor of a privatized voucher system. Medicare, Caruso-Cabrera wrote, “is another pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme” that should be replaced with a health savings account that gives “seniors $1,000 or $2,000 a year to start.” Social Security, she notes, should be replaced with a private account system, in which Americans are incentivized to invest in the stock market.

In her book, she stated that tax evasion as essential to freedom, “Freedom and democracy are best secured when banking secrecy and tax havens exist.”

Making nice to these people will not get you more power in Congress, nor will it do anything to secure your position as the representative in New York’s 14th district.

In fact, given that Andrew Cuomo is governor and he hates progressives, you should be prepared for your district to be sliced and diced like Masaharu Morimoto making sushi by 2022.

Son of a Bitch

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In a good way.

Despite the best efforts of Wisconsin Republicans to suppress the vote, Jill Karofsky defeated right wing hack Daniel Kelly in the race for Wisconsin State Supreme Court judge:

Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky won the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, narrowing the conservative majority after a tumultuous election conducted in the midst of a global pandemic, according to unofficial results released Monday.

 Karofsky’s victory marked the first time in a dozen years that a Supreme Court challenger beat an incumbent — and just the second time in more than half a century. Her win over Justice Daniel Kelly will shift conservative control of the court from 5-2 to 4-3.

 Appearing by video conference from her home with her son and daughter behind her, Karofsky thanked her family and supporters and decried the decision to hold the election during the coronavirus outbreak.

………

The pandemic triggered a record surge of absentee balloting as voters looked for a way to stay at home to prevent themselves and others from getting ill. Many voters have complained they never received their absentee ballots, forcing them to choose between giving up the ability to vote and braving the polls on election day.

………

Republicans were so worried about Kelly’s chances that they considered moving the election so it didn’t fall on the same day as Wisconsin’s presidential primary, when Democratic turnout was expected to be high. They abandoned the plan to move the election amid public opposition.

By the time election day rolled around, the Democratic presidential primary had largely fizzled and the world was in the grip of the pandemic. The Supreme Court candidates abandoned their in-person campaigning and both sides urged people to vote by mail instead of going to the polls.

The voters were pissed off, big time, by the machinations of the Republican Party to suppress the vote.

If Democrats don’t see this as a political winner now, they are even more clueless than I had thought.

The GOP is Rolling Out the Brute Squad

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Specifically, they are looking to put retired police and military in voting locations to intimidate voters.

I guess this explains why they are so opposed to postal voting, you cannot send the Brute Squad to everyone’s mailbox:

On Election Day in November, some polling places could be patrolled by off-duty police officers and veterans, according to a plan hatched by Republican operatives.

The idea is a reprisal of once-illegal Election Day “ballot security” intimidation tactics, intended to challenge voter registration and remove voters from the rolls. At a strategy session in February attended by conservative donors and activists, several people expressed a specific need for Republican poll watchers in “inner city” and predominantly Native American precincts, according to audio recordings of the event obtained by The Intercept and Documented.

“You get some [Navy] Seals in those polls and they’re going to say, ‘No, no, this is what it says. This is how we’re going to play this show,’” said Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a group that lobbies for voting restrictions and organizes volunteers to go into precincts and aggressively challenge voters who they believe are improperly registered. “That’s what we need. We need people who are unafraid to call it like they see it.”

The Republican Party is not the opposition, it is the enemy.

Some Good Electoral News Out of Illinois

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The most contemptible Democrat in Congress, Dan Lipinski, has lost the Democratic Party primary to Marie Newman in IL-3.

Dan Lipinski literally inherited his seat from his dad, and has voted consistently against Democratic priorities.

The DCCC went all in for Lipinski, and considering the fact that the 3rd districtis solidly Democratic, I would hope that Newman eschews DCCC help, and refuses to pay DCCC dues.

In other Illinois election news, reformer Cook County DA Kim Foxx was renominated, defeating Bill Conway, despite the machinations of the police unions and the millions that his billionaire father donated to his campaign.

Police departments all over the nation are trying to sabotage DAs who are trying to reign in police and prosecutorial excesses, and Foxx was one of the first of the trend or reformers.

It’s good that the cops and the rich pampered son lost.

Oops!

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So, the only Russian company to see court for election tampering just had all charges dismissed.

The prosecution said that they could not pursue Concord because the evidence would reveal sensitive security data.

Concord, on the other hand, says that there is no “there” there.

I’m inclined to believe the latter.

There have been processes in place in federal courts for decades to allow prosecution when sensitive information is involved, so the prosecutor’s argument rings hollow:

The Justice Department moved on Monday to drop charges against two Russian shell companies accused of financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election, saying that they were exploiting the case to gain access to delicate information that Russia could weaponize.

The companies, Concord Management and Concord Consulting, were charged in 2018 in an indictment secured by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, along with 13 Russians and another company, the Internet Research Agency. Prosecutors said they operated a sophisticated scheme to use social media to spread disinformation, exploit American social divisions and try to subvert the 2016 election.

Unlike the others under indictment, Concord fought the charges in court. But instead of trying to defend itself, Concord seized on the case to obtain confidential information from prosecutors, then mount a campaign of information warfare, a senior Justice Department official said.

At one point, prosecutors complained that a cache of documents that could potentially be shared with the defendants included details about the government’s sources and methods for investigation, among its most important secrets. Prosecutors feared Concord might publish them online.

With the case set to go to trial next month, prosecutors recommended that the Justice Department drop the charges to preserve national security interests and prevent Russia from weaponizing delicate American law enforcement information, according to the official. The prosecutors also weighed the benefits of securing a guilty verdict against the companies, which cannot be meaningfully punished in the United States, against the risk of exposing national security secrets in order to win in court.

“Concord has been eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference,” prosecutors said in a motion filed in court on Monday. At the same time, the firm has tried to stymie the judicial process, including by concealing facts and documents and submitting a false affidavit.

Department officials denied that the decision to drop the charges was intended to dismantle Mr. Mueller’s work, noting that prosecutors are still pursuing charges against the 13 Russians and the Internet Research Agency.

On Monday, the court granted the motion to dismiss the charges against the Concord defendants.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia are still pursuing a separate case against a Russian national, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, who managed a multimillion-dollar budget for the troll farm efforts to sow division against Russian adversaries, including the United States. Ms. Khusyaynova, 44, worked for several entities owned by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch sometimes known as “Putin’s chef.” Mr. Prigozhin, a part owner of the Concord companies, was among the Russians whom Mr. Mueller secured indictments against.

The difference between Concord and Khusyaynova is the the former could mount an aggressive defense without spending 18 months in solitary confinement before the trial, because you cannot jail a corporation, so they could fight.

How Convenient

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Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole discovered her office did not count about 10% of the ballots that voters cast on Super Tuesday.

She is now asking a court to let her conduct a manual recount of the votes, after she discovered 44 thumb drives containing ballots that were not included in the final results.

………

Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole discovered her office did not count about 10% of the ballots that voters cast on Super Tuesday.

She is now asking a court to let her conduct a manual recount of the votes, after she discovered 44 thumb drives containing ballots that were not included in the final results.

………

“It was initially believed that all of the ballots cast at all of the 454 vote centers had been received back,” wrote Pippins-Poole in an affidavit to the lawsuit. “However, it was later determined that there are ballots from 44 of the precinct scanner and tabulator machines that are unaccounted for. Consequently, I need to perform a paper recount of the ballots from 44 of the precinct scanner and tabulator machines that were not accounted for during the reconciliation process.”

Seriously, every time that we find these sorts of errors, they favor one candidate.

Hoocoodanode?

Also, there should be a recount of ALL of the ballots.

Finally

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It is difficult to imagine that Evo Morales would have left office when and how he did — in a civic-military coup — if the Organization of American States had not found that Bolivia’s Oct. 20 election was fraudulent. To be sure, the OAS did not single-handedly bring down Morales. In the weeks before the coup, Morales faced large protests and a devastating police mutiny.

The protests did not focus solely on the election. Many were upset Morales was allowed to run at all after losing a 2016 referendum asking voters to approve his bid to seek a fourth term. The police mutiny centered on officers’ disgruntlement over pay and being asked to contain the protests. And the Bolivian right had declared that Morales could win the October election only through fraud for months before the vote, i.e., well before the OAS stepped into the fray.

Yet, the OAS actions were undoubtedly important in creating a climate within which a coup could not only succeed, but be applauded as a necessary step toward restoring Bolivian democracy, as the U.S. government and mainstream media did. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Following Morales’s ouster, Bolivia has come under the control of a right-wing authoritarian regime that has killed dozens of unarmed protesters, detained hundreds, blocked international human rights investigators, systematically repressed political opponents, threatened journalists and media outlets, embraced racism, and enacted a far-right agenda for which it has no electoral mandate nor constitutional legitimacy.

The question of whether the OAS was justified in declaring the October election fraudulent looms large. In a recent article published in The Post, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams, researchers with MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, conclude the answer is no. Curiel and Williams used statistical analysis to analyze a central claim made by the OAS — initially in an Oct. 21, 2019, news release — that there was a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results” following an election-night suspension of the unofficial rapid vote count. According to the OAS, this is one of numerous pieces of evidence showing fraud. Curiel and Williams unequivocally reject this, writing: “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election.”

The OAS is an organ of the US regime change mousketeers.

It Looks like Bibi Is Going to Jail

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As additional returns have come in in the COVID-19 quarantine delayed election results in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has lost seats in the Knesset, and now it appears that in a historical team up with the Arab Joint List, not only will he not get his seat, but they will be passing a law preventing an indicted politician from forming a government, so Bibi’s just become a sh%$ load more likely to end up in a cell:

An elated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu roared, “This is the biggest victory of my life!”—but that was Monday.

By Thursday, his voice hoarse, a tired Netanyahu growled, “We won’t let them steal the election!” In the words of Netanyahu’s centrist rival and Israel’s probable next prime minister, Benny Gantz, “Someone here celebrated too early.”

Then came a remarkable cascade of bad news for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, and its first to be indicted while in office.

Avigdor Lieberman, his onetime defense minister and now a fearsome nemesis, announced his support for a law proposed by Gantz, a former army chief of staff, which would bar an indicted legislator from being appointed to form the government.

Such a law would eliminate any route to immediate political survival for Netanyahu, whose trial in three separate cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust is scheduled to open in Jerusalem District Court on March 17.

In an almost never seen instance of Israeli multi-partisanship that Israeli media call “the anti-Bibi coalition,” this law enjoys the support of 62 members of the 120-member Knesset, from the majority-Arab Joint List through the left-wing Labor Party, and now, unto Lieberman, a hardline secular right-winger.

………

Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York and adviser to former prime minister Ehud Barak, noted in an interview with The Daily Beast, that, “For the third time in one year, Netanyahu pushed for an election with one goal in mind: getting a 61-seat majority to grant him an immunity from prosecution over three severe indictments he is facing. For the third time he failed.”

………

And Netanyahu was about to receive another blow.

Late Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, another former army chief of staff and the most hardline rightist in the Gantz centrist coalition, agreed to support a minority government led by Gantz, with the support of the Joint List, the Arab-majority party that leaped from 13 Knesset seats to 15 even as Netanyahu intensified his attack on Arab citizens, who form 21 percent of Israel’s population.

“Gantz is joining forces with terror supporters!” Netanyahu declared in a meeting of his coalition members. “Gantz’s move undermines the foundations of Israeli democracy and subverts the will of the voter. We’ll stand strong against it.”

………

As the situation unfolded Thursday night, Netanyahu asked his attorney general to “immediately” open a criminal investigation into alleged Lieberman electoral shenanigans a decade ago. Lieberman responded with a press release: seven laughing/crying emojis and not a single word.

By dawn on Friday, an increasingly cornered Netanyahu was accusing Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, who chairs Israel’s electoral commission, the body responsible for counting the votes, of criminal malfeasance. Netanyahu promised to petition the supreme court to investigate Hendel’s political affiliations.

The commission condemned any implication of impropriety, and Gantz posted that “counting all the votes, including those of citizens under quarantine due to fears of the coronavirus, is the basis of a democratic country, and one must respect the results and the voters’ choice—and no less the work of the Electoral Commission.”

………

How did this happen?

Relying on exit polls, Monday’s Netanyahu believed that counting his own party’s votes and those of his coalition partners, he had secured 60 out of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats, and would find a way to squeak by on a narrow majority.

One route appeared to be poaching wavering opposition legislators. In a television interview on Tuesday, Netanyahu spokesman Yonatan Orich foresaw that “the establishment of a government is a matter of a few days.”

………

Meanwhile, votes were being counted. Over two and a half days, the Likud’s coalition slipped from an high of 60 seats to 59 to 58, where it hovered for a day before the pollsters’ disbelieving eyes.

Netanyahu is a cancer on Israeli body politic, and arguably the single greatest threat to the continued existence of the state of Israel.

That he is going on trial, and likely is going to jail, is an unalloyed good.

So Ready for the Giant Meteor

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At his speech following the Super Tuesday results, Joe Biden was rushed by two vegan protesters, and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden went after one of them like Ray Nitschke.

This election is going to be a complete sh%$ show, and Donald John Trump is a master of the sh%$ show.

I am SO sick and tired of this bullsh%$.

I appreciate the fact that Jill Biden is a complete bad-ass, but I want to go and live in a f%$#ing cave:

It could have been a scene out of the romantic thriller “The Bodyguard,” except the hero of the moment in this case was not a trained agent but Jill Biden.

The sequence began as former vice president Joe Biden was delivering his victory speech in Los Angeles, thanking his supporters for his Super Tuesday comeback.

Suddenly, a protester rushed the stage wielding a “Let Dairy Die” placard. With the vegan protester just a few feet from her husband, Jill Biden clutched her husband’s right hand and interposed her body between him and the woman lunging at him.

About 10 seconds later, another anti-dairy industry protester stormed the stage. Reacting with lightning speed, the former second lady swung around, extended her arms, grabbed her by the wrists and then blocked her with a stiff-arm.

Wincing, she pushed the woman back as her husband and sister-in-law looked on with concern during the sudden confrontation.

Thank You Elizabeth Warren

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Michael Bloomberg has suspended his Presidential campaign and will endorse Joe Biden.

His performance in Super Tuesday was profoundly underwhelming, he won only American Samoa, where only he and Tulsi Gabbard was running.

He spent $½ Billion, and in 30 seconds of Liz Warren destroyed his campaign.

Good for her, and my guess is that this was the first time that someone actually took Bloomberg to task in decades.

Thank you Elizabeth Warren for excising this cancer from the American body politic.

Super Tuesday Results

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Biden is exceeding expectations, but Bernie Sanders is winning decisively in California, so it looks like under the Democratic Party formula, (Proportional apportionment of delegates above a 15% cutoff) Sanders will get more delegates.

Not a great night for Sanders, but not horrible either.

The losers tonight, Warren, who will place third in her home state of Massachusetts and finish completely out of the delegate count in California, and Michael Bloomberg, who appears to have won only the primary in American Samoa.  (Tulsi Gabbard actually won her only delegate there)

See ongoing returns here.

Cue Freddie Mercury

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Pete “Mayo” Buttigieg has announced that he he is ending his run for President:

Pete Buttigieg, the former small-city Indiana mayor and first openly gay major presidential candidate, said Sunday night he was dropping out of the Democratic race, following a crushing loss in the South Carolina primary where his poor performance with black Democrats signaled an inability to build a broad coalition of voters.

The decision comes just 48 hours before the biggest voting day of the primary, Super Tuesday, when 15 states and territories will allot about one-third of the delegates over all. The results were widely expected to show him far behind Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg’s problem is that he could never make inroads with minority voters, because they (IMHO correctly) saw that his record as mayor was profoundly racist, and you cannot win the Democratic Primary without black and Latino support.

Biden Wins Decisively in South Carolina

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Bernie Sanders came in a distant second place, with Tom Steyer in third despite devoting millions of dollars to the state contest (He has now announced that he is dropping out of the race)

As to the effect on the election, I think that this is generally bad news for Sanders, who underperformed IMHO, and Michael Bloomberg, who, while not on the ballot, has been selling himself as an alternative to a flagging Biden campaign.

Super-Tuesday is in 3 days, and I have no predictions beyond that  some of the also-rans are likely dropping out after that.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. scored a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, reviving his listing campaign and establishing himself as the leading contender to slow Senator Bernie Sanders as the turbulent Democratic race turns to a slew of coast-to-coast contests on Tuesday.

Propelled by an outpouring of support from South Carolina’s African-American voters, Mr. Biden easily overcame a late effort by Mr. Sanders to stage an upset. The victory in a state long seen as his firewall will vault Mr. Biden into Super Tuesday, where polls open in just over 48 hours, as the clear alternative to Mr. Sanders for establishment-aligned Democrats.

Mr. Biden, the former vice president, captured just under 50 percent of the vote, well ahead of Mr. Sanders, who had 20 percent. Tom Steyer, the California billionaire, was a distant third, followed by Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The victory enabled Mr. Biden to significantly narrow Mr. Sanders’s pledged delegate lead, but he did not appear poised to overtake him.