Hot Takes on the Democrats’ Debate

The Daily Escape:

Autumn, Zion NP, Utah – November 2019 photo by robvisserphotography

Wednesday’s two hour debate hosted by MSNBC and the WaPo gave 10 Democratic presidential candidates yet another chance to introduce themselves at a point when there is less than three months before the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But, while Wrongo likes them all in the abstract, none of them is world-class. They each have strengths, and while it is still early, and most still have time to grow into the role of top-tier presidential nominee, none is there yet.

A note about the Ukraine impeachment hearings: Shouldn’t the other candidates be willing to defend Biden against the attacks by House Republicans and the administration? Shouldn’t they spend some time attacking the Republican Party as a corrupt entity that must loose power?

Or, are they worried that the Bidens actually may be a little dirty?

The candidates seem to be relying on a calculation that detailed policies are the right way for their campaigns to win the nomination and ultimately, the election. For Wrongo’s money, the candidates should be attacking Trump, the undemocratic Senate, and Supreme Court. Warren gets closest, with her stressing corruption in the corporate and political domains. But most Democratic primary voters aren’t into the wonky details of “my plan vs. her plan”.

Here’s Wrongo’s take on how they did.

  • Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders finished in the top tier. Sanders in particular seems to be a better candidate since his heart attack, while Mayor Pete barely squeaks into this group. Warren led the field in talk time with 13.4 minutes to Mayor Pete’s 12.8. Sanders was in fourth place, with 11.8 minutes.
  • Harris, Booker and Yang are in the second tier. All had strong performances, but Harris in particular seemed to return to the form she showed in the first debate. It’s interesting, but it may not be enough, particularly since she isn’t currently top-three in her home state of California. Yang and Booker made the most of their limited talk time. Yang got 6.9 minutes, vs. 11.5 for Booker and Harris.
  • Biden, Klobachar and Steyer finished in the third tier. Biden talked for 12.6 minutes, and had good moments, but the gaffes remain. Steyer did well, but should drop out, as should Klobachar.
  • Gabbard trailed the field.

A few words about trying for consensus with Republicans. When candidates like Biden, Mayor Pete, Booker and Klobachar talk about unity and consensus, Wrongo hears them saying they will not fight for real change to our corrupt system.

Regarding Biden: He’s from an era where the Parties weren’t as ideologically coherent and polarized as today. There were both conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, so a liberal Democrat could find common cause with liberal Republicans on certain issues or, with conservative Democrats on other issues on the basis of partisan allegiance.

That doesn’t exist anymore because those guys are gone. Policy success on an issue now depends largely on partisan and ideological alignment.  So, all that “working with the other side” means in practical terms, is an expectation of failure.

For Biden, the question should be: “Why aren’t those Republicans who are willing to work with you not defending you now, when you’re at the center of a fabricated scandal?” The basic premise of his candidacy is that his personal connections with Republicans will overcome their ideological or partisan viewpoints, so he’s operating under a delusion.

In sum, the Democrats running for the presidential nomination are beginning to look like Richard Russ’s novel “Empire Falls: The leading Dems are The Old Crank at the End of The Bar, the Slightly Senile and Slightly Pervy Retired Priest, the Woman Schoolteacher Who Knows Everything and the Cub Scout Going for His Presidency Badge. It’s somehow not that lovable here in reality.

A final word about the impact of the impeachment hearings, and how they overlap with the debates. The initial debate question was about the Ukraine scandal and impeachment. From Charlie Pierce: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“This is an unprecedented moment. A sitting president is under an impeachment inquiry, and likely will undergo a trial in the Senate, while also running for re-election….sooner or later, the issue of whether or not this president should be removed before the voters pass judgment on him is going to come to a very sharp point….”

These aren’t simple calculations. So far, there isn’t sufficient evidence to get 20 Senate Republicans to vote to convict the President on impeachment articles.

And the Mueller report didn’t grab the American public, so it will be ignored by Republicans.

The questions are:

  • Whether what we’ve heard will change the minds of enough Independents and a few Republicans?
  • And/or, will it fire up enough Democrats so that they turnout and overcome Republican efforts at voter suppression next November?
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Saturday Soother – November 9, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, Kyoto, Japan — hat tip to blog reader Ottho H. for finding this photo.

The first flakes of snow fell on the fields of Wrong on Friday. Temps were around 24° at daybreak, with winds of 20+ mph, so it felt like winter. We’ve emptied the fountain that birds have used since the spring as a source for drinking water. Other than cleaning leaves out of our gutters, which won’t happen until most of the Oak leaves are down, we’re buttoned up for winter.

What’s not buttoned up is the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Michael Bloomberg has finally jumped in. The story is that originally he believed Biden would win, so he stayed out. But, most of us believed despite the polls, that Biden had no chance. First, because he is certain to blow himself up as he has in the past. Second, the smell around his son Hunter’s role in Ukraine makes it difficult for Dad Joe to stake out a winning moral position opposed to Trump and his kids.

Back to Bloomberg, as the NYT’s David Leonhardt says:

“I’ll be surprised if Michael Bloomberg wins the Democratic nomination. We are living in a political era characterized by economic dissatisfaction and populism, and a 77-year-old Wall Street billionaire doesn’t look like an obvious nominee for a left-of-center party during such a time.”

It’s difficult to know how this shakes out. First, is Bloomberg serious this time? He’s been down the road this far at least twice before. Second, if he’s in, who gets hurt?

Does Bloomberg hurt the moderates Biden and Buttigieg, while simultaneously helping Sanders and Warren? Is that his plan? Or is Bloomberg underestimating Biden? He can’t hope to dent Biden’s strength with non-whites, so what’s his path to the nomination? Lots of questions.

Finally, in a follow-up to yesterday’s column about Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan (M4A), here’s a Cook Political/Kaiser Family Foundation opinion poll about M4A in the key Midwestern battleground states:

It doesn’t seem that Warren’s plan can be a winner in the Midwest.

We’ve had enough of politics and political problems for this week. It’s time to build a fire and have a Saturday Soother. Let’s start by brewing a mug of Bengal Spice Tea from Celestial Seasonings. Wrongo prefers his with a side of single malt. Now, sit by the fire and contemplate where all of your winter jackets and gloves are hiding.

Next, watch the embedded video by the Apartment Sessions, a Brooklyn NY-based multimedia artist collective that produces monthly videos with a rotating ensemble of NYC/New England-based professional musicians. This performance was recorded for Halloween on a moving “J” train in the NYC subway. They perform Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”, with Ben Levin on the Telecaster. Wrongo knows that few people click through to watch the video, but today’s is a must watch.

It’s the most fun any of us are likely to have in the NYC subway:

Stand clear of the closing doors please.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Detroit Debate Wrap-up

The Daily Escape:

Mt. St. Helens, WA – 2019 photo by 12_woman. The big eruption that devastated 230 sq. miles was in May, 1980. Hard to believe that’s almost 40 years ago.

The two days of Detroit Fight Nights are over, and the bloviating about who won or lost is rocketing around the internet, so Wrongo will add his few cents to the till.

First, CNN worked really, really hard to gin up fights between the candidates. They had some success by giving also-rans (John Delaney and Mike Bennet) a chance to go at the front-runners on both nights. The CNN idea was to make it a contest between progressive Dems and moderate Dems, and the debaters happily complied.

This is being talked about as a fight for the soul of the Party. It isn’t; that will happen at the convention when no candidate wins on the first ballot.

Second, it’s clear that these 20 people include 10-12 who should be on the JV team for some other openings in Democratic politics. The NYT reports that just seven candidates have qualified for the next Democratic debate: Those seven are Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, O’Rourke, Sanders, and Warren, while Castro, Klobuchar, and Yang are close:

“The Democratic National Committee has set stricter criteria for the third set of debates, which will be held on Sept. 12 and Sept. 13 in Houston. If 10 or fewer candidates qualify, the debate will take place on only one night. Candidates will need to have 130,000 unique donors and register at least 2 percent support in four polls. They have until Aug. 28 to reach those benchmarks. These criteria could easily halve the field.”

Castro and Yang each have more than 130,000 donations and each have three of the four qualifying polls they need, while Senator Klobuchar has met the polling threshold, and has about 120,000 donors, so a one-night 10-candidate show is likely in September.

Regarding Detroit’s winners and losers, Wrongo’s view is that Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg won on the first night. On night two, Biden won by not losing. But night two had more interest. Castro did better than expected, as did Booker and Yang. Harris slipped a bit, while Gillibrand, Gabbard and Bennet had moments, all are in Brownian motion. The rest of the less-than-one-percenters should save their pennies.

We’re not going to get a real sense of how this campaign will unfold until Sanders, Warren, Harris and Biden are on the same stage. They will be joined by Buttigieg, Booker and O’Rourke, and possibly three others.

The tests we should be keeping in the back of our minds are:

First, can I envision this candidate giving a speech to the nation from the Oval Office while demonstrating leadership and being completely credible?

Second, can this candidate stand up to Trump on the trail, and if it should be necessary, beat him in a face-to-face debate?

Even with downsizing the group to 10 candidates, very few can meet both eye tests to Wrongo’s way of thinking.

How do you see the candidates?

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Marist Poll Points Towards Winning Democratic Policies

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Castle Reef, Montana – July 2019 photo by xzzy. Not to be confused with Capitol Reef NP, in Utah.

Yesterday, Wrongo showed an analysis of possible voter turnout by gender and age, and the implications for 2020. Overnight, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll shows how it may be possible to craft policies that appeal to those groups, among others.

The poll was conducted from July 15 to 17, after the president’s tweets about the four Democratic congresswomen. It surveyed 1,336 adults largely (68%) by mobile phone, and has a margin of error of ±3.5%.

Some of the top line results: By a 53%-to-39% margin, Americans said they would definitely vote against Trump. That compares with the 54% of American voters who actually didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, an insufficient number to win the Electoral College. Trump did better among independents. A third of which said they would definitely vote for him, while 54% say they definitely won’t.

But, let’s focus on a few topics that had majority female support. Overall, 59% of women disapproved of the job that Trump is doing, compared to 52% of all respondents. And 62% of women said they would “definitely not vote for him”, substantially higher than the poll’s average.

All isn’t roses for the Democrats with women. When asked “do you think the ideas being offered by the Democratic candidates running for president would generally move the country in the right/wrong direction?” Women only gave the Democrats a 52% “right direction” tilt. Overall, Americans split 46%-to-43% on whether Democrats would take the country in the right or wrong direction, within the margin of error in the poll. Much of that may be due to unpopular policies offered by the current crop of candidates.

Here’s a list of the most popular policy proposals by Democrats:

  • 89% say requiring background checks for gun purchases or private sales is a good idea
  • 70% support offering Medicare for all as an option alongside private health insurance
  • 67% are in favor of regulating prescription drug prices
  • 64% are for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the US illegally
  • 63% support legalizing marijuana
  • 62% favor Increasing taxes on those making more than $1 million
  • 57% are for banning assault-style weapons
  • 56% support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour

There are a few issues that are very unpopular, even with Democrats:

  • 26% are for a guaranteed universal basic income of $1,000 per month
  • 27% favor providing reparations for slavery
  • 27% support decriminalizing illegal border crossings
  • 33% support offering health insurance to illegal immigrants
  • 41% are in favor of doing away completely with private health insurance

People are split on giving free college tuition at public colleges and universities (53% said it’s a good idea, 43% said it’s a bad idea.

Overall, independents said they were not impressed with the direction either President Trump or Democrats want to take the country at this point. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College, said:

“They’re not willing to grant President Trump reelection, and yet they’re not persuaded by Democrats at this point.”

Showing that Democrats are not truly happy with their choices for president, 82% of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents say they have not yet made up their mind on who to support in the Democratic primary. A majority (54%) say they want a nominee who can beat Trump, rather than one who shares their position on most issues (42%). That’s up 13 points from last month when 47% said they wanted someone who shared their position on most issues versus 46% who said they wanted someone who has the best chance of beating Trump.

Turning to the other side, Trump’s primary support comes from white males, Gen X (ages 39-54) and evangelicals. When asked if they would definitely vote for Trump in 2020, 66% of evangelicals, 51% of Gen X and 47% of white males said yes. That’s quite the weird coalition.

BTW, just 23% of Gen Z/Millennials (ages 18-38) said they are definitely voting for Trump.

As we said yesterday, Democrats have a chance to present a set of policies that will appeal to women and the youngest voters, in addition to their base. The field of 20+ has certainly reviewed the NPR/Marist Poll results at this point. Maybe a few are rethinking their stance on eliminating private insurance, or offering insurance to illegal immigrants.

It’s still early, and this poll is just another snapshot. The true picture will emerge in a few months.

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Is It Time to Cull The List of Democratic Nominees?

The Daily Escape:

Yellowstone Falls – 2011 photo by Wrongo

With so many candidates, Axios reports that there is a real chance for a brokered Democratic convention. Letting the corrupt DNC’s Super delegates choose the nominee sounds terrible to Wrongo. The main reason is that the Democratic Party’s rules impose a 15% electoral threshold, which means that to win delegates in a state primary, a candidate has to win at least 15% of the vote.

This matters, because there are so many candidates, and most of them aren’t polling very well. A Quinnipiac poll this week shows the difficult road ahead for the Democratic candidates. The chart below shows that only six of the candidates are known well enough that at least half of respondents have an opinion about them. For 17 of the candidates, at least half of respondents said they didn’t know them well enough to say whether they viewed the contender favorably:

Buttigieg is just outside the six, polling at 5% while O’Rourke, who is better known, polls at just 2%. Quinnipiac also looked at the candidates’ net unfavorability among Democrats. The net rating is determined by subtracting the favorable ratings from the unfavorable:

Just three candidates have net unfavorable ratings among Democrats: Tulsi Gabbard, Seth Moulton and Bill de Blasio. OTOH, only eight candidates have truly interesting favorability ratings: Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren, Booker, Buttigieg, O’Rourke and Castro. Clearly, the bottom three have no hope at all in the 2020 Democratic nomination race, but the same most likely applies to the next eleven.

Finally, let’s look at how Quinnipiac says the candidates have performed over the last few months:

It’s early days, but Warren jumped over Harris, Buttigieg and O’Rourke in the past two months. Sanders’s biggest problem in the short run isn’t Biden, but Warren, who is just behind him in the Quinnipiac poll. If she in fact passes him, it’s not clear how Sanders would strike back. Sanders’s support seems to have moved with Buttigieg: When Mayor Pete gained ground, Sanders fell. With Buttigieg’s support dropping back down, Sanders’s has gone back up.

Also notable is the fall of Beto. He benefits from being well-known, but not well-liked as a presidential candidate. There have been calls for him to drop out and run for the other Texas Senate seat, held by John Cornyn, who has a campaign war chest of $7.5 million. But, there is already an announced Democratic candidate, MJ Hegar, who lost a close race for a seat in Congress in 2018. So look for Beto to keep running. Also, four million people in Texas voted for Beto in 2018, while just 11,000 elected Mayor Pete last time, so Beto has shown the ability to raise money and win votes.

While polling isn’t voting, these numbers suggest that some winnowing of the field would help focus primary voters on the future of the Party, and on the election. Overall, Quinnipiac shows that 18 candidates are polling at 3% or less (and many of them not registering even 1%), so they face an uphill task to achieve relevancy.

Should the DNC raise the threshold for admission into the debates from 1% to 2%, the debate field would shrink to only eight. Is it too soon to call for 10-14 Democrats to drop out of the running?

Turning to Trump, Quinnipiac says he has a huge problem with women. While 60% will definitely not vote for him, just 28% would definitely vote for him. Among white women (a group he won in 2016), he has a 20-point gap between those who will definitely not consider him and those who definitely will vote for him (55/35%). The GOP’s ongoing war on Roe v. Wade is truly bad for a candidate that faces the wall of female opposition Trump is facing.

Let’s close with a quote from Quinnipiac in 2015: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Leading the pack with 10 percent each are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker…Trump tops the “no way” list as 21 percent of Republican voters say they would definitely not support him. Bush is next with 17 percent, with Christie at 15 percent. “

This proves once again that polling isn’t voting. Democrats must choose wisely, or the GOP could be back in 2024, likely with someone at least as bad as Trump, but who is much more sophisticated, say Tom Cotton.

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Will Dems Develop a Winning Message?

The Daily Escape:

Lady Liberty from the water – June, 2015 photo by Wrongo

Joe Biden kicked off his run yesterday by saying that he’s for the middle class, and against Trump. CNN is reporting that Biden now leads the field with 39% of voters supporting him. Sanders is second with 15%. Warren is third with 8%, and Buttigieg fourth with 7%.

It’s good to remember that there are still 551 days to go before the 2020 election. Here are a few other past poll leaders with 551 days to go: Hillary Clinton led the Democratic primary by 9.1% in 2008. In the 2008 GOP primary, Giuliani led by 12.4 points. In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton once led by 56.6 points. In the 2016 GOP primaries, Jeb! Bush led by 1.2 points. All of them lost.

The biggest issue for Democrats right now is squaring the circle on their message. The leading Dems don’t divide neatly by labels. Some are Republican lite, some are very progressive. All have to articulate policy and show charisma, while working to garner enough delegates to win the nomination.

Let’s discuss two issues: First, are they really going to run against Wall Street? Are they going to take campaign funding from the financial services industry? As Wrongo said last week, there is an inherent tension in the current funding strategy of the Dem candidates. They all are targeting small donors in order to demonstrate substantial grass-roots support. But, the nominee will need to raise more than $1 billion for the general election, and it’s doubtful that individual donors have such deep pockets.

That means they will eventually have to turn to PACs and corporations in order to win.

But Sanders and Warren have pushed the party to the left on Wall Street and capitalism. NY Mag had a piece describing a meeting among Wall Street Democrats, who are unhappy with the field. They dislike Sanders and Warren, and when they strategize, the financiers’ primary goal is to find a Democrat who can both deny either of them the nomination, and also beat Trump:

By evening’s end, multiple donors walked away planning to write checks to three or four or five candidates — hoping they stay relatively moderate — rather than going all in on any one. Among the committed Democrats on Wall Street, this wait-and-see, as-long-as-it’s-not-Bernie-or-Elizabeth posture has become the norm.

Can the Democrats win without Wall Street’s money? Will the current crop of candidates walk away from their promise to take on the financiers, in order to beat Trump?

Asking for a friend.

Second, what will their message be on the economy? Trump is presiding over a late-stage economic boom. By November, 2020, Trump will be able to claim credit for the longest period of uninterrupted growth in American history. How will Democrats counter a Republican argument to stay the course?

The best possible message may be: That big corporations aren’t paying their fair share (as opposed to more taxing of the rich). That too much of the prosperity that working people create stays with the corporations. That the cost of both health care and education are too damn high.

Just this week, the WaPo asked voters, “Do you think the economic system in this country mainly works to benefit all people, or mainly works to benefit those in power?”

  • 60% of all respondents said it benefits those in power
  • 66% of independents said the same thing
  • 81% of Democrats agreed as well

Regardless of how strong the economy is for the next 19 months, Americans are sure to remain discontented with the economic dominance of the powerful. The NY Mag Intelligencer says the Dems should focus on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania: (brackets by Wrongo)

We know that this tiny subpopulation leans left on economic issues and tends to resent the rich. We also know it leans right on immigration and tends to resent “illegals.” When Barack Obama and Mitt Romney [made] the 2012 election a referendum on whether rich business owners earned every penny they have, a critical mass of Midwestern swing voters broke for the Democrats. When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agreed to make 2016 about whether rapid demographic change was making America “Stronger Together” — or less great than it used to be — they broke right.

In 2012, Barack Obama told an “us versus them” story about class conflict. Sanders, Warren and Biden are doing that right now. A message that says “the rich have rigged our economic and political systems to their advantage” is an immensely popular message.

If Democrats don’t run on it in 2020, it won’t be out of concern for alienating voters, it will be out of concern for alienating Wall Street.

Let’s close with a tune in honor of May Day. Here’s Sierra Boggess singing “The Lusty Month of May” from Camelot, performed at BBC Proms 2012.

Your May mileage may vary:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 28, 2019

In an interesting column in the Cook Political Report, Amy Walter notes: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…one way to look at the 2020 Democratic primary contest was to think of it as a battle between those candidates who wanted a ‘revolution’ versus those who want to see more of a ‘restoration.’ The leaders of the ‘revolution’ wing, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, aren’t running to simply replace President Trump, but to bring serious, structural change to the country. This week, the leader of the ‘restoration’ wing — Vice President Joe Biden— announced his candidacy. To Biden, it’s not the system that’s broken as much as it is the person in charge of the system who is broken.”

She goes on to quote Biden’s first campaign video:

“I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,”

Biden says he’s only running because of Trump. The revolutionaries would be running even if another Republican was in the White House. Walter points out that makes Biden like many of the Democratic candidates who ran for Congress in the 2018 mid-terms. They weren’t politically seasoned like Biden, but they were similarly moved to run by Trump’s presidency. More from Walter: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“And, like Biden, most of those Democratic congressional candidates emphasized not a radical change but a check; a check on Trump’s presidency and his policies. But, most of those candidates were also running in suburban, swing districts where a message of moderation was a winning strategy. Biden is running to win in a much more diverse and ideologically fragmented primary contest.”

She says that most of the 20 candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are closer to the ‘restoration’ wing than the ‘revolutionary’ wing of the Party. And she closes with:

“To me, the big question for these next few months is if Biden will take the fight directly to the revolutionaries in a way the other candidates have not…..Now, he has a chance to pivot to the offense. And, to reset the rules and terrain of the game that have, until this point, been set by Bernie Sanders. Let’s see if — and how — he does it.

Interesting viewpoint as we sail on toward the first Democratic primary debates on June 26-27. BTW, 16 candidates have qualified for inclusion, showing that the bar was set far too low. On to cartoons.

Biden’s also running against himself:

Mueller called Trump “Individual 1”. Here’s to 10-20 in 2020:

Warren’s policies cause concern among the 1%:

Dems face a quandary. Trump will be happy with whichever they choose:

Trump will stonewall responding to subpoenas all the way to 2020:

Trump also has a yuuge grey wall:

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Politics Friday

The Daily Escape:

Dun Briste Sea Stack – 2010 photo by John Coveney. The Stack shows 350 million years of sediment. In 1981, scientists found the remains of a medieval house, walls, cultivation ridges, and a corn grinding stone on the top. Must have been a tough commute.

We may be over-emphasizing the Mueller report. From Politico:

“The Mueller report may be consuming Washington — but it barely registers for vulnerable Democrats meeting voters outside the Beltway. In a half-dozen town halls from California to Connecticut this week, swing district Democrats fielded few — if any — questions about special counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year probe, even as it threatens to dominate the party’s summer agenda.”

This is called a “District Work Period” for the House, and many members are conducting town halls. Politico reports that:

“Livestreamed events by Reps. Antonio Delgado (D-NY) and Jahana Hayes (D-CT) began with Mueller briefings, but quickly pivoted to education funding and local pollution and mostly stayed there.”

More from Politico:

“I’ve been very surprised by how few people brought [Mueller] up since I’ve been back,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) after two weeks back in his suburban Twin Cities district.”

No one brought up the Mueller report at Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-VA.) town hall in her district west of Richmond:

“In the big spectrum of everything, people are still deeply concerned about prescription drug prices….People are still deeply concerned about the opportunity to get their kid’s education. They’re wanting to see Washington focused on immigration reform.”

Rep. Josh Harder of California told Politico he had “10 times the amount of interest on issues like health care, immigration and student debt than on impeachment or investigations into Trump.”

Wrongo’s Congressperson, Jahana Hayes along with Antonio Delgado, are members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Hayes’ roughly 90-minute event focused more on the Green New Deal and education spending.

So, it’s good to realize that the attendees at town halls may be more representative of the country than what we see on MSNBC, PBS or FOX.

Normal people aren’t political junkies.

In other political news, Joe Biden declared he’s running for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination. The NYT says that he’s starting with $0. This raises the question of funding strategy. Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren have sworn off attending high-dollar fund-raisers to bolster their populist credentials. Most others have said that they will not take PAC money.

Some top Obama fund-raisers are lining up with Sen. Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who are trying to have it both ways. From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Unlike [Sanders and O’Rourke], Mr. Biden does not have an at-the-ready list of hundreds of thousands of contributors to ply for small donations. He must rely heavily, at least at first, upon an old-fashioned network of money bundlers….who can expedite dozens, if not hundreds, of checks for $2,800 each, the legal maximum an individual can contribute in the primary.”

This raises two questions. First, Biden has been a poor funds raiser in the past. He was near the back of the fund-raising pack in his 2008 presidential primary run. He raised $8.2 million from individual donors in 2007; while his competitor, Barack Obama, raised more than $100 million during the same year.

The Times says Biden felt that he couldn’t raise the tens of millions of dollars necessary to compete against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race. That was one reason why he decided in 2015 not to run.

A second point is that whoever wins the Democratic nomination for president will need to raise tons of cash. It is doubtful that individual donors can provide the $1 billion or so it will probably take to defeat Trump. If the nominee can’t rely solely on individual donations, he/she will need money from PACs and Corporations.

This is the inherent tension in the current funding strategy of the Democratic Party.

Biden will go after big donors, and he’s likely to succeed. He was the VP for 8 years, and he has deep ties to moneyed donors and big companies, many of which are incorporated in his home state of Delaware. The rest of the field has a choice to make: They can criticize Joe for taking corporate donations, but ultimately, the Democratic nominee will have to turn to the big “bundlers”, along with corporations and PACs to win the election.

Their current strategy runs the risk of making the ultimate Democratic candidate look cynical at a time when the candidates want to appear authentic, believable, and on the side of the little guy.

The NYT says that Biden has to raise $100,000/day from here to Christmas to match what Sanders has already raised. We’ll see if he’s up to it this time.

It’s gonna take lots of money to stand out in a field of 20 candidates.

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Biden?

The Daily Escape:

Azulik Hotel, Tulum Mexico, – 2019 photo by Phoebe Montague

A long-time friend of Wrongo and Ms. Right who is also a reader of the Wrongologist, emailed that a friend who is a well-placed Democrat in DC, said the Party plans to push Joe Biden for a single four-year term “to bring us together in healing”. He would also appoint a younger VP who would appeal to Millennials.

After a little digging, it seems that may be the plan. CNN reports that Biden is considering:

“The early selection of a running mate, which one aide said would help keep the focus of the primary fight on the ultimate goal of unseating Trump.”

If Biden would commit to one term, selecting his VP candidate early would lay hands on that person as the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024. It sounds like a really bad idea, one that also would preclude Biden’s selecting one of the existing candidates for the 2020 nomination.

This strategy would have precluded Biden getting the VP nomination in 2008. Obama couldn’t have picked Biden early, because Biden was also running for president. And even once Biden dropped out, he wasn’t prepared to immediately back Obama over Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

Biden has tons of history for his primary opponents and the Republicans to pick through. Ryan Cooper, writing in The Week, said:

“Joe Biden is about to ruin his reputation….The most immediate problem for Biden personally is that he has #MeToo written all over him…..there are already vast compilations of footage of him being far too handsy with women in public settings.”

More from Cooper:

“Biden’s actual policy record is probably almost as big of a potential problem. The Democratic Party has shifted markedly to the left over the last decade, as the consequences of the party’s policy record from the mid-1970s to 2008 have become clear….he was personally involved in almost every bad policy decision of the last 40 years.”

Democrats use identity politics to help win elections. They try to knit together disparate groups of voters to counter the GOP’s solid South and Western states. Biden is tragically flawed in this regard. When you have a long history, people can learn that he gave the eulogy at Strom Thurmond’s funeral.  Thurmond was one of the most notorious segregationists in history.

In 2020, Biden’s eulogy works with Democrats in South Carolina, but how Biden confronts his 2003 praise for a former segregationist elsewhere in the primaries could prove a big challenge. Biden would be trying to lead a party that says it’s committed to fighting racial inequality, but would he be seen as the right person for the job? Some in the party will reject whatever explanation he gives, while others will say he’s trying to persuade more white voters to join Democrats in 2020.

Many black voters failed to support Hillary Clinton in 2016 for much less than Biden’s praise of Thurmond. Like Clinton, Biden has already expressed regret for supporting criminal sentencing laws that disproportionately punished people of color. He needs to clearly explain his treatment of Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during Supreme Court confirmation hearings that Biden chaired in 1991.

Biden’s old Senate votes in favor of the Iraq War, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the North American Free Trade Agreement will be difficult to explain to young Democrats.

He has long said he believes in bi-partisanship, saying that the differences between Republicans and Democrats are superficial disagreements, not fundamental differences over matters of principle. Given Biden’s success in early Iowa polling, some might say that message is resonating. After all, according to orthodox wisdom, there is no more commendable virtue in American politics than bipartisanship.

Candidates always try to assure voters that they will strive to “work across the aisle” to deliver “commonsense solutions”. But, Wrongo thinks his ratings are due largely to Joe Biden being widely considered a likable guy, genial Uncle Joe. A father who has suffered family loss, there’s also a halo effect from his relationship with Obama that drives his favorability.

Biden is 76. He’s one of a cohort of elder politicians running for President, including Bernie Sanders (77) and Elizabeth Warren (70 in June). There are several candidates in their 60’s, 50’s, 40’s and a few in their 30’s.

Biden starts with strength among Democrats who think a safe pair of hands is a tested white man, and with Independents nostalgic for the Obama administration.

He will be opposed by Millennials eager for a new generation of leaders, and people of color who won’t buy his explanations about Anita Hill and Strom Thurmond.

He looks like a divisive candidate to Wrongo.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 10, 2018

Trump says Russia should return to the G-7, making it the G-8 the way it was before Crimea. He says that Obama let Crimea get taken by Russia instead of blaming Putin for invading, and it isn’t his problem. OTOH, the G-7 seem like it would prefer to be the G-6.

But we start this week with RFK:

Fifty years ago, RFK was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his coffin carried by his sons and only surviving brother. He was a man of promise, of purpose. Someone who could have made a huge difference, but it was not to be. This puts Wrongo in mind of the last line of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Wrongo didn’t know what Fitzgerald meant when he first read this line in high school, more than 50 years ago. Now, he realizes that as we age, there is more of the past. It is a beacon, a lighthouse, both a warning and a welcome.

We can’t know what RFK’s future would have been, or how it would have shaped the future of America. We can be fairly sure he would have beaten Richard Nixon in 1968, but even that isn’t a certainty.

California’s blue wave may not hit the beach:

Trump shows the G-7 he really does love Russia:

Some cakes in Colorado really do have two guys holding hands:

We are the only country with an uneducated person as the Education Czarina:

GOP proves once again that it has no moral core:

Trump’s new pardon box:

 

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