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3l1n0r · 5 years ago

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My Predictions for the 2020 Election

I predict that Joe Biden will win the nomination over Bernie Sanders, the only remaining candidate at this time. He will win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, and Trump will be re-elected. Here’s why:

I believe that if Bernie Sanders had gotten the nomination he would have won. But we’ll likely never know for sure. The Democratic establishment decided, and its voters along with it, that the best we could do against Trump was Joe Biden, arguably one of the weakest candidates in the race.

Joe Biden is a far weaker candidate than Hillary Clinton before him, in a number of ways. He constantly makes mistakes and gaffes, has a history of touching women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, has a less impressive resume with fewer accomplishments, had less support from the Democratic establishment (until the 11th hour face-turn between South Carolina and Super Tuesday), and clearly has dementia. While we will probably never get an official diagnosis of this, that won’t stop the Republicans from weaponizing it against him until at least a third of this country believes it to be fact. The situation with Hunter Biden in Ukraine will be Joe Biden’s “email scandal”; a situation in which he technically did nothing wrong (except some run-of-the-mill nepotism) but will be used to taint him with the stench of corruption.

Joe Biden is perfectly poised to lose this election; we will get Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss all over again. All he really has going for him is his connection with Obama (which won’t win over the swing state voters who went for Trump), his resume (checkered with terrible decisions that will depress turnout overall) and his long-standing ties with the black community.

It is not clear to me why so many black voters support Biden, given his terrible record on civil rights and his lies about protesting with Nelson Mandela. I believe it boils down to three things:

He was Obama’s VP, and did a good job of it

They know him

They don’t want to take any risks with an outsider leftist candidate

All of these are valid reasons. However, when pundits discuss Biden’s black support, or Sanders’ Latino support, they always ignore the most obvious factor: youth. Young voters of all races go for Sanders, olders voters of all races go for Biden. While Biden may have the support of the older black people, it is not enough to rebuild the Obama coalition that sent him to the White House. Youth was a key factor in Obama’s success, but the media’s continued dismissive attitude towards young people means that their voices are not taken seriously. (Part of this is on them, as most can’t be bothered to vote.)

I think that despite all of Biden’s obvious shortcomings, Democrats will turn out for him in a desperate attempt to unseat Donald Trump that won’t succeed. They will show up, yes, but months of the Fox News propaganda machine smearing Biden will depress turnout among young people, Bernie Sanders supporters of all ages, and possibly conservative-leaning independents as well. If Fox News can send the message to independents that Biden is just as bad, or worse, that Trump in just a few key swing states, the race will go to Trump once again.

Trump has the advantages of a mass-media propaganda machine behind him, and the incumbency. It is very likely with the coronavirus outbreak the economy will be in a recession, but Trump will pretend that such a recession is not happening and many of his supporters will believe him. He could tell them that the sky is orange and they would believe him, because he has dozens of pundits on channels broadcasting across the country arguing for why he is right and shooting down anyone who dares say otherwise. That being said, it is commonly believed that the economy is what decides presidential elections.

If economy good=re-election. If economy bad=lose re-election.

Of course, it can’t possibly be that simple. Even if the economy is doing well in the macroeconomic view, if small business and average workers are struggling (and they have been struggling for the past decade), they might be more willing to take a risk on an outsider like Trump and Sanders. This is why the economy is such a wild card. If the economy is doing well on the surface but struggling internally, it will completely pass most pundits by, and we get shock results like 2016.

We are very likely to fall into a recession because of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, Trump has handled the crisis abysmally, and significant blame for the US’s delayed response, including a lack of test kits and any sort of top-down coordination, lies at his feet. This won’t deter his base, who will be getting pumped full of messaging about how Trump has handled the crisis so well. What will be harder to turn a blind eye to is the announcement of a recession, and that recession could deter some of the people who were on the fence about Trump to swing to Biden. That alone might be enough to hand him the popular vote, but not the electoral.

The frustrating part of doing any kind of political analysis is that at the end of the day it all comes down to location. I don’t just have to predict whether voters will turn out, I have to try to predict where in the country they live and if it’s a swing state, and how likely it will go for one candidate or another. This is just my best shot at trying to predict what will happen.

If my prediction is correct and Joe Biden does win the popular vote and lose the presidency, the Democratic and Republican parties are going to need to have a serious talk about whether or not they actually think the Electoral College is fair. I don’t think anything fruitful or productive will come of those talks, but it is a conversation worth having. If my prediction is correct, it will be the third time in the past six elections that the Democrats had the presidency stolen from them.

Picking Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee will have disastrous consequences for the party. Biden would be at bare minimum a better president than Trump, but he would not be a good one, and he will not fix the problems that drove millions to vote for Trump in the first place.

I haven’t even gotten to Bernie Sanders’s supporters yet in my analysis. It is impossible to tell at this stage how many will show up at the polls for Joe Biden. Given the fact that Bernie Sanders could barely get them to go to the polls for him, I doubt Joe Biden will get much of anything in terms of youth turnout, despite his belated attempt to pivot to them now ahead of the general election. A loud minority of Bernie Sanders voters are #NeverBiden, but there is a silent majority of them who will simply show up at the polls for Trump or Biden and don’t feel the need to put the DNC on blast on Twitter to make their point. Bernie’s two greatest weaknesses, in 2016 and 2020, was his vocal minority of crazy supporters and his inability to make friends and alliances. His outsider status drew millions to campaign for him, but it turned the establishment and their followers against him, and ultimately they outnumbered him.

Historians looking back on this race will probably point to Elizabeth Warren’s claim that Bernie said a woman couldn’t be president in 2020 back in a private conversation in 2018 as the turning point that ultimately incinerated the progressive movement. Prior to that point, Bernie was holding strong in second place, and Elizabeth Warren had dipped to a low 3rd, after her October high point in the polls. In a desperate attempt to gain back her supporters who abandoned her for the perceived “more electable” progressive in the race, she launched a baseless attack against him that he denied. Most egregious of all was CNN’s clear bias towards Warren, as they responded to Sanders’ insistence he did not say what he said by turning to Warren and saying, “So how did you feel when Senator Sanders said that to you?” The clip was widely mocked on social media, but Warren’s embarrassing attempt to play the gender card with her whole “the women on the stage have won more elections than the men on the stage” spiel apparently played well with the faux-woke mainstream media.

For the record, Bernie Sanders has never stated publicly, ever, that a woman couldn’t be president. A video recently resurfaced from Time of him telling a young girl, in the 1970s, that of course a woman could be president someday. All Elizabeth Warren has as her proof is the word of a few spokespeople for her campaign, in a private meeting in 2018. Instead of confronting Bernie Sanders about it in private at the time, she waited until she was falling in the polls to launch an attack on him. It completely backfired on Warren; all she did was cement Bernie Sanders as the frontrunner of the progressive wing of the party.

She should have learned from Kamala Harris before her; playing the race and gender card might play well with the pundits, but it does not win over ordinary voters. Once you’ve reduced yourself to saying “vote for me because of my race/gender/other factor completely out of my control” you’ve lost with everyone who’s not plugged into Twitter. You have to give people a reason to vote for you, and not rely on identity politics. People don’t vote for Biden because of his identity, they vote for him because they believe he is best poised to defeat Donald Trump. People don’t vote for Sanders for his identity, they vote for him because they like his ideas and think he has a shot of getting them done if elected. But because of her attack against Bernie, her refusal to shake his hand after, her accusation that he called her a liar on national TV (he did not), her refusal to drop out of the race until Biden had already consolidated his lead, and her refusal to endorse Sanders when she finally did drop out, all speak volumes to the kind of progressive she really is. If Sanders had dropped out, he would have endorsed her, no question. But she decided she’d rather implicitly back Joe Biden, whom she publicly clashed with at the beginning of her career over fundamental policy differences, than Bernie, at a time when he needed her support more than ever. She owes a huge debt to progressives all over the country, including myself, who thought she’d actually fight for real progressive change. But it was all about getting elected, and when that failed, it was all about making sure she got a spot in Joe Biden’s cabinet. Not altogether surprising, considering she didn’t endorse Bernie in 2016, but very disappointing.

So with Elizabeth Warren out of the race, you would expect progressives to coalesce around Bernie, but this did not happen, for the reasons listed above. Some Warren supporters went to Biden because a few of Sanders’ vocal supporters sent them snake emojis and that hurt their feelings. (Snake emojis were used by Sanders supporters to call Warren a snake after she called Sanders a sexist.) Others did not go to Bernie because they believed him/his supporters to be sexist due to the media narrative coming out of that debate. Others truly believed Sanders had no chance of winning because he was too far left. But had Elizabeth Warren endorsed Bernie, not only was she likely to have gotten a vice presidency offer, she would have given Sanders a boost at a critical time when the progressive wing needed to coalesce behind one candidate. But the progressive wing was deeply divided over gender politics in a way the moderate lane was not. In the end it was Biden who coalesced support and won big in the Super Tuesday states, not Bernie.

But this does not mean Biden is a good candidate to take on Trump. He is generally perceived favorably now, but that will change after the Republicans hone their attacks against him. Trump will run circles around him in the debates and it will become even more obvious he is in cognitive decline. The public discourse will be spent poring over every detail of Biden’s long tenure in public service, and not over ways to improve this country’s future. And on top of all that, Biden will not win. Hillary Clinton had a far better shot of winning against Trump in 2016. She had every factor working in her favor. She still lost, though narrowly. Biden does not have those same factors working in his favor now. He will lose, and the media will be shocked that they could have gotten it so wrong, and the people of the world will shrug and say, “I told you he’d get re-elected,” and we’ll be subjected to four more years of whatever it is Trump is doing that cannot possibly be considered a “presidency”.

I’m obviously disappointed, and I know a lot of other people are too. But I could (obviously) be wrong. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

#Bernie sanders #joe biden #Donald trump #Elizabeth warren #political analysis #my analysis #American politics #us politics #2020 elections #2020 presidency #trump reelection #if you disagree with me that's fine but please be respectful

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niafrazier · 6 years ago

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Making the Case for Beto O’Rourke

Full disclaimer: Beto is one of my top picks amongst the 2020 democratic field as of now. I’m a supporter but am in no way affiliated with his official campaign.

At a certain point, Beto O’Rourke was hailed by the media as basically the second coming of Obama, RFK, JFK, [insert any popular democratic figure from this past century… oh and Abe Lincoln]. After he unsuccessfully attempted to unseat Ted Cruz in the senate race, many people across the country were calling him to run for the presidency. He even surged in polling being just behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, both who virtually have 100% name recognition. His senate race garnered national attention and even caught Oprah’s attention (she practically begged him to run on her show FFS). Many (including me) grew to admire his authentic, organic, and down-to-earth approach to politics, which is especially refreshing to see given the fact that everything seems so contrived nowadays. So, he wrestled with his decision thoughtfully and eventually came around to the idea, officially tossing his hat into the ring on March 14th, 2019. But now? Right out the gate, the narrative has shifted, and to the mainstream media pundits and Twittersphere, he is seen as an empty-suited, entitled, misogynistic, arrogant dude dripping with white male privilege. What changed? How is it that the media, the very one that contributed to the rise of “Betomania,” subsequently went into a frenzy and poo-pooed all over his rollout? The faux outrage, double standards, and cynicism directed at Beto by opinion writers, pundits, etc. have basically motivated me to give my own takes on the most common criticisms I’ve seen thus far. So, here we go:

“ ‘Man, I’m just born to be in it?’ ”

I’m not gonna lie, taking a look at the Vanity Fair cover and seeing that quote was a facepalm moment. As predicted, this quote sparked outrage fairly quickly… given the optics of a privileged straight white man joining a race of several qualified women and POC… Understandably so. However, upon reading through the whole article, I was able to grasp the essence of Beto’s words. Here’s what he says leading up to his declaration, expressing urgency:

“This is the fight of our lives…not the fight-of-my-political-life kind of crap. But, like, this is the fight of our lives as Americans, and as humans, I’d argue.”

And now here’s the full quote: “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

He’s not so much saying that he was born to be in a position of power, rather, he’s expressing that during such dire times, especially in U.S. democracy, he could not in good conscience be complacent and not take action. Just as he was drawn to serve his district in El Paso as a 6 year city council member and a 3-term congressman, he believes that at this moment, he has a purpose to serve the whole nation by being as actively involved in the national discussion as possible—to stand up to bigotry and divisiveness displayed by the current administration of the White House. Beto basically confirmed what I had thought after further inspection when he clarified his statement later (Google it. I’m having trouble with my hyperlinks right now). Could he have worded it better? Sure. I just reject the notion that this one gaffe is supposed to sum him up as an egotistical maniac… please.

“He adds absolutely no value to the race”

This is arbitrary depending on what your key issues are, but I’m gonna give my take on why I think he’s an excellent addition to the race. So, I’ve been intrigued about the possibility of an O’Rourke presidential run since he’s hinted at it back in November. I really didn’t know much about him until toward the end of Midterm season, but the more I learned, the more impressed I became. (Side note: it was this clip that first caught my full attention.) What really fueled my interest in Beto though, was his stance on immigration. As a first generation Nigerian American, this topic is pretty personal to me. My parents were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to immigrate to America and raise me and my three other siblings. However, I’ve also seen firsthand the difficulty of not only getting through with the ridiculous process but also assimilating into this country. For so long, the Democrats haven’t really made immigration a central issue, until the Trump administration hijacked it and pushed the Overton window all the way to the right. With heightened xenophobia running rampant in this country as a result of this abhorrent presidency, it is pertinent that the Democrats not merely pay lip service to this issue any longer and take serious action. Beto has an advantage here: He’s grown up in and served as a U.S House Rep. in the border district of El Paso, also home to the largest binational community in the Northern hemisphere. He can add a lot to the national discussion and debate on the matter. When Trump came to El Paso, the local community organized a counter rally where Beto gave an impassioned speech about the border wall and immigration. It’s pretty long, but I highly recommend the watch. Furthermore, Beto has outlined a 10 point proposal on how best to approach the immigration issue, along with some facts about the border’s history, which you can read here. Immigration hasn’t really been a winning issue, and I honestly don’t see it being one in 2020. With that being said, I respect the fact that despite this, Beto has shown that this is an issue that he deeply cares about. If I’m being honest, even though comprehensive immigration reform is universally called for amongst Democrats, I doubt that anyone in the field will truly make immigration a main priority in their prospective presidencies. To me, Beto has shown that he will. Even if he doesn’t clinch the nomination, it still means a ton to me that we can have the potential to change the narrative of immigration in this country with serious discussion. With the way Beto is able to convey his message, I am hopeful for what’s to come.

So, let’s talk about Texas. With the way Beto was able to energize the Democratic base in Texas, Democrats have the opportunity to put the Republican bastion state into play. With 38 electoral votes at stake, Texas is extremely crucial for the GOP. To put things in perspective, if Texas turned blue in 2016, President Hillary Clinton would have been a thing.

*Bonus: “He Lost to Ted Cruz lol… already a nonstarter”

Yes. But you know who else lost to Ted in Texas? Donald Trump. Cruz obliterated him in the Texas Republican primaries. I’m not saying Texas is guaranteed to turn blue with Beto on the ballot, but if we learned anything in 2016, it’s not to underestimate the possibility of seemingly blue or red states to flip at any given moment. The GOP has taken note of this. We’ve seen that Beto has a ton of appeal in Texas amongst not only Democrats but Never-Trump-Republicans and independents as well! If Beto is on that ballot, the GOP will most likely exhaust a ton of resources and money into Texas to keep it from going blue. This will only make other states that Trump won with the slimmest of margins vulnerable. Also… I find it disingenuous to make comparisons between Beto and other senators that hail from deeply blue states regarding electability. If Beto lost to Ted in California, then yeah… we could have a conversation about that.

“A woman running mate is his preference? Who does he think he is?”

The backlash on this surprised me, to be honest… Even Whoopi Goldberg blasted his ass for the statement on The View. If I had to go on a whim here, I feel like it was the Vanity Fair article that sort of set the mood for Beto’s campaign thus far… because otherwise, I believe that this really wouldn’t have been a story. In fact, Beto is not the only male candidate to call for a woman VP. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders have strongly hinted at choosing a woman running mate. Interestingly enough, I didn’t recall there being any backlash. Here are Beto’s full remarks on choosing a woman as his running mate:

"It would be very difficult not to select a woman with so many extraordinary women who are running right now, but first I would have to win and there's-- you know, this is as open as it has ever been."

This is very much the response I expected from Beto. Time and time again, he has openly acknowledged his privilege, even before getting hammered about it on social media. In the Vanity Fair article, he states his stance on lack of representation in Washington:

“The government at all levels is overly represented by white men,” he says. “That’s part of the problem, and I’m a white man. So if I were to run, I think it’s just so important that those who would comprise my team looked like this country. If I were to run, if I were to win, that my administration looks like this country. It’s the only way I know to meet that challenge.”

Furthermore, he is understanding and considerate of the fact that people are craving for diversity. Here’s what he says:

“But I totally understand people who will make a decision [cast a vote in the primaries] based on the fact that almost every single one of our presidents has been a white man, and they want something different for this country. And I think that’s a very legitimate basis upon which to make a decision. Especially in the fact that there are some really great candidates out there right now.”

I know I don’t speak for all POC or women, but as a WOC myself, I took no issue to his statements. In fact, I appreciate his sensitivity to the issue and the fact that he doesn’t shy away from addressing uncomfortable topics in politics, such as race and representation.

Let’s just be glad he didn’t pull a Hickenlooper…. Jesus.

“Light on policy… but he stands on counters amirite?”

To discuss this point, it’s important to understand Beto’s campaign style. Beto is more like a blank canvass. What he does is first listen to people and their concerns, and then from there, he shapes his policies around that. He feels that this is the best way to serve the people. The point of his road trips and tours was not to lecture people on full fleshed policy proposals. There is debate on whether or not this is an effective strategy, and I do understand that people do like to know exactly what they’re signing up for before casting a vote. That’s why some people will more likely gravitate toward candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who have been consistent in their messaging. However, I also think people underestimate the power of simply listening. Take these comments that a potential voter made concerning Beto’s ability to listen during his stop in South Carolina for example:

"I think if he keeps talking to the people and being able to listen, and not talk at the African-American voters. Talk to us. Listen to what we have to say… As long as you listen and then actually put forward ideas that are legitimate ideas to do things, then he will be fine.”

While policy specifics are important, this is still the early stages of Beto’s campaign. Specifics, of course, will have to come at some point, especially when debates come around. Another critique I hear is Beto not having any policy proposals on his website yet. He��s not alone though. Several candidates who have been running longer than he has don’t either. It’s also important to note that while people in the race most likely have been mulling a presidential run for several months or years, this has been something that came around to Beto as recent as November 2018. Stuff like this takes time. I think he has potential, however, in this area. For instance, as I mentioned earlier, he has put out a 10-point proposal on immigration. He also has a brief 5-point plan regarding criminal justice reform and legalization of marijuana. (Fun fact, he even coauthored a book concerning the legalization of weed.) And it’s not like he hasn’t taken stances on issues ever either… I mean, he has a whole congressional record, and his townhalls give you an idea of where he stands on key issues.

Oh... and about the countertops. Ugh. The fact that this really sparked outrage is comical. I’ve seen all sorts of takes on this from asserting his male dominance to throwing his youth in Bernie and Biden’s faces (lmao). At a campaign stop, the owner of the coffee shop that he was at asked him to stand on the countertop because people complained that they weren’t able to see Beto amongst the crowds and camera equipment (despite him being 6’4’’, ha). So then it just became a thing since. And he’s respectful about it in case anyone was wondering, lol. But there’s one thing I think both the Beto detractors and I can agree on: why tf is this getting media coverage? I do agree that there should be more coverage for other candidates concerning the real issues. However, the response shouldn’t be to go after Beto or chastise him for doing harmless acts during his campaign stops… Talk that up with the media. The ironic thing about this is that some of the media pundits complain about giving Beto so much coverage… all while giving Beto more coverage about the coverage he’s receiving… 🙄

So if you made it to the end of this extremely long effortpost, thank you. I actually had tons more to discuss but I’m not trying to make this into a novel. Anyways, I’ll say one last thing:

Before going along with groupthink or engaging in the toxic political echo chamber that is Twitter, I implore you all to take a step back and actually get to know these candidates. Seek after local news outlets when candidates visit to get a feel of the vibes from locals. Go to Beto’s Facebook page and watch a town hall or two. You may come home with a different impression than what is portrayed in mainstream media. I can tell you that when I did this, the difference was night and day. We have such an amazing field of contenders to choose from, and I’d hate for misinformation or bad-faith arguments to warp perceptions.

#beto o'rourke #2020 #democratic primary #2020 election #politics

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epochlag · 5 years ago

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February 19, 2020

Epoch Ruminations by BPS

What’s Bloomberg’s Electoral Endgame?

Let’s cut to the chase here, folks: Michael Bloomberg isn’t just out there spending cash to piss-off and distract President Trump and to give his fellow Democratic Party chums a boost. To the contrary, Bloomberg is actively running for and planning on winning the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary and becoming the party’s nominee, flagbearer, and knight in shining armor that will motivate, unite, and speak to the entire Democratic party. And, what is more, Bloomberg is running because he believes he is the one who can take on Candidate Trump and the MAGA nation this spring and summer and in November slay the dragon. Bloomberg believes that he is the one who can take back the White House from the authoritarian and pitiful hold of President Trump and his GOP capitulators in Congress.

Or, wait, is that actually what Bloomberg is doing…? How many delegates does he currently have? Can I even vote for him right now if I wanted to? Does anyone think that Bloomberg has an electoral strategy that actually gets him to November?

I got to thinking recently: Democrats across the country who are invested in and are going to vote in their state’s presidential primary should be asking themselves, what’s candidate Bloomberg’s actual electoral endgame here? Let me try to explain.

Where do things stand right now?

In the past few days, Bloomberg’s popularity in the polls has skyrocketed. As a result, fellow Democratic Presidential Primary contenders have turned their attention to figuring out how best to handle the Bloomberg surge.

He will be on the debate stage tonight, yet he will not be on the ballot in Nevada’s caucus on Saturday nor will he be on the ballot a week later in South Carolina. So, what’s the deal with all the freaking out? Well, a few things are causing this:

First, Bloomberg is hyper focused on spending his money and spending it wisely to lock-in a certain percentage of delegates for his campaign.

Bloomberg is burning through cheddar. And, why not? His well of dollar bills is bottomless. By Super Tuesday, Bloomberg will likely have spent half a billion dollars on his campaign, with most of it going towards advertising on every social media platform and internet streaming website that he can and as often as he can. Indeed, to date, Bloomberg has spent over $400,000,000 on his campaign (Yes, that is 400 million dollars…6 zeros…Which, is insane and unprecedented in modern electoral politics – and this is just the primary). The money translates. Bloomberg’s campaign ads, of which he has done at least a dozen, are seemingly everywhere online. Real Time host Bill Maher put the extent of Bloomberg’s online ad footprint into context during last Friday’s show when he joked that Bloomberg is even now buying up and running ad spots on PornHub.

But, still, what’s this getting him…? Even with all the spending on ads, and his effective counter punches to Trump’s personal tweets about his height, or lack thereof, Bloomberg still needs a handful of puzzle pieces in his electoral strategy to fall into place that aren’t necessarily in his control or influenced by dollars alone, especially when he isn’t even yet on the ballot and won’t be for another almost two weeks. And, this leads me to the second thing that is causing apprehension in the party especially in the Biden Camp and among moderate Dems: Bloomberg is banking on and needs Biden and his campaign to crumble and falter and do it soon.

According to the top brass on the Biden Campaign, Joe needs a top 2 or 3 finish in Nevada and the same outcome, or perhaps even to finish first, in South Carolina a week later. And, sure, if Bloomberg was on the ballot on Saturday in Nevada, it would not shock anyone if Biden once again was hit hard and came in a dismal 4th or 5th again…BUT, Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot. So, he won’t be taking votes from those potential Biden to Bloomberg swing voters that are apparently out there in the electorate.

What’s up with Bloomberg’s “Wait till Super Tuesday” Electoral Strategy?

What Bloomberg wants in his post-Super Tuesday strategy is there to be no clear winner or top 2 winners in the first four states. Right now, while both Buttigieg and Sanders have performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire, a strong performance from Biden in Nevada and South Carolina could have him back on top by March 2nd. Thus, Bloomberg would have the candidate car pile-up he was looking for in the first four primaries.

A total 1,357 delegates are up for grabs on Super Tuesday. By all estimates, Bloomberg is not going to win enough votes and delegates on Super Tuesday and in the months ahead to all of a sudden look like a potential outright winner.

As I see it, right now, Bloomberg will spend as much money as he can to potentially get him to about 20% of the primary voters in the biggest and most influential of the Super Tuesday states: California (415 delegates total up for grabs) and Texas (228).Say, he does secure that 20% of the delegates in Texas and California both. That gives him a total of 130 between the two states, with the rest of the considerable number of delegates split-up and pledged to Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, and Klobuchar.

After Super Tuesday, moving into the next 3 months, Bloomberg wants to get enough of a percentage of delegates – not enough to win the nomination outright – but enough to keep anyone else from being able to reach the magical 1,991 delegate total. Simply put, Bloomberg’s electoral strategy gets him delegates and a strong foothold into the biggest of states and most voters up and to July’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee.

Beyond Super Tuesday, what’s Bloomberg’s Electoral Endgame?

If, Bloomberg succeeds at doing the above…which is absolutely by no means a likelihood right now, he would take his campaign fight all the way to the Convention, which is held from July 13th to July 16th. This means…see where this is leading…Yeah…the Democrats – thanks in no small part to Bloomberg, in fact, thanks really to Bloomberg – would be forced into the shit storm that would be a dreaded and totally unnecessary Contested Convention.

Yet, why is this good for Bloomberg? It is and it isn’t. I mean, to be clear, if a contested convention is Bloomberg’s goal then it would have to be Bloomberg himself who would have to rise to the podium, get-up in front of the entire Democratic Party and make the case that he – and, he alone – has the money, power, and gravitas to take on President Trump and win in November.

Could this happen? Crazy things happen all the time now in our national politics and elections that, I guess, you never know. Yet, my opinion is simply: no fucking way. Sure, he’s looking good right now, but what he is banking on to fuel his candidacy is just not sustainable. To recap, to not be on the ballot at all until March 2nd on Super Tuesday – something no presidential primary candidate has ever succeeded at or even attempted doing before. And, then, to essentially make your campaign’s strategy to throw millions in cash around and spend like a madman (even, if some spending is creative, affective, inspirational, etc.) for the next 5 months is not going to do it.

Seems to me that Bloomberg has a problem, which is this: Bloomberg’s strategy, his campaign, and candidacy is entirely contingent upon a contested convention in Milwaukee in July. Based on how I’m seeing it...it is this contested convention strategy, which is Bloomberg’s electoral endgame, and is really his only play. And, he knows this. But, who else knows this? The voters. There in lies the problem. When the voters step out of the daily media bomb about the campaigns and step back from the 24-hour news blasts, and they think about it, they all also know this too. Voters are going to realize his strategy very, very soon, as a few of the other candidates do begin to inch closer to the magical delegate number. Ultimately, then what voters and Democratic Party leadership from top to bottom are going to start to hone in on in ads, speeches, campaign events, rallies, and confrontations, are a few key things:

First, nobody, no one, in the Democratic Party wants a contested convention. Indeed, every single Democratic primary candidate has repeatedly pledged to unite forcefully and support the eventual Democratic nominee if they should lose during the primary season. Second, the party understands universally that perhaps nothing could be more divisive to party unity and key swing voter turnout in November than a shitshow of a convention. President Trump would eat this up and it would fuel his campaign. Third, Michael Bloomberg, and only Bloomberg, wants to force the party into a contested, heated, bare knuckles convention in July even given the horrific aforementioned implications. And, lastly, Democrats are going to see right through this soon and they’re going to start to say, fuck that and fuck him.

A contested convention is a fucking nightmare for the Democratic Party. If Bloomberg wants to try and spend the next 5 months forcing this then Democrats – that is, those who he is seeking votes from – are going to fucking hate him. The Democrats not having a presidential nominee until July at a contested convention would almost certainly consign the Democrats to losing to Trump and having to live through his second term.

Where does this leave Bloomberg and the Democratic Party?

There’s some good news it would seem and some bad news…all potentially.

If what I have laid out is what Bloomberg’s strategy is – that is, his electoral endgame – and there is high likelihood of backlash from the party leadership and voters to this strategy, how’s he going to play it for the next 5 months?

Well, Bloomberg is going to do what he is doing right now. He is going to spend a shit ton of cash on media and ads of all sorts that mostly focus on railing against and exposing Trump, he is going to throw a ton of cash at the DNC to help in staffing up the Democratic party’s voter turnout and key electoral efforts in battleground states. And, finally, when voters and party members start to say, why are you trying to force a contested convention? Bloomberg will say, well, sort of, but what I am really all about is defeating Trump and, Hey! Look at all of this money and all of these resources I’ve provided to the party to help ensure that he is a one-term presidency. So, we must ask ourselves, is this spending a ton of money just a defensive strategy that deflects or provides an answer for the criticism about the potential for a contested convention? Or, is Bloomberg really so invested in the Democratic Party’s success that he is staying in it until the end and is entirely willing to spend all of the money he has to defeat Donald Trump?

Right now, it is hard to say. Personally, I find Bloomberg fascinating for a lot of reasons. But, when it comes to politics, I find him blunt, honest, and rational about his decisions, focus, and strategy. If, let’s say, Bloomberg is in it to win it himself, but realizes he can’t and steps out before the convention, but stays active and involved and continues on for the Democratic Party and nominee up till November with all of the massive spending and organizing and staffing the way he has been recently…? Well, if he does this, god bless him. Because to be entirely clear: Bloomberg’s financial backing, money and pockets are perhaps the only financial resource that can quite likely offset Trump and the GOP’s financial advantage. Put it this way: Bloomberg is worth $50 billion dollars, folks. If he wanted, he could go ahead and spend $5-10 billion on his campaign or for the Democratic nominee and not blink: that shit is lunch money to Bloomberg.

In my opinion, if Bloomberg does not win the nomination, things are going to go one of two ways: On one hand, it would not shock me if Bloomberg is simply in it for himself and working towards that contested convention. If he does not get the nomination and President Trump seems more and more likely to beat a Bernie or Biden, I could see Bloomberg packing up his shit, getting the fuck out of Dodge, and going back to things as usual. If he does that, then Democrats should tell him, respectfully, to go fuck himself.

Yet, on the other hand, Bloomberg could definitely still be a positive and major factor in this upcoming primary season and in the general election for the Democratic Party and the other Democrats currently running. Indeed, we might very well see a Bloomberg who swallows his pride, commits to sticking it out till November as a team player, continues to throw all the advertising and media bombs at President Trump that money can buy, and plays ball with the Democratic Party by providing financial assistance and resources via the Bloomberg Gravy Train Express.

Tonight at 9pm, Bloomberg takes the debate stage in Nevada with other Democratic Primary candidates, who by all means, at this point in the campaign have been around the block a few times. Bloomberg will have to answer to them, the moderators, and the to the American people. Should be interesting to hear what he has to say. As for me, I’ll be listening for Bloomberg to explain to us all just what his long-term electoral endgame is. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

--BPS

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lovehardenemycollector · 5 years ago

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“Can I call you Hillary?”Hillary Clinton’s appearance on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen was never going to be the typical interview with the former secretary of state and presidential candidate, what with the talk show’s penchant for getting guests liquored up and loose enough to swan-dive into rumor pools they ordinarily would never even dip a toe into. It was never not going to be the hardest-hitting, news-making sit-down with Clinton, who was promoting Hulu’s documentary series Hillary, which chronicles her life and 2016 presidential campaign and launches Friday. But that was precisely what made the appearance such a delight. It’s not every day you see Hillary Clinton take a shot with a Real Housewife and kiki with some drag queens in the Bravo Clubhouse. The interview was taped Wednesday, which means Clinton wasn’t asked to weigh in on the biggest news on the minds of many viewers by the time it aired Thursday night: Elizabeth Warren’s announcement that she was suspending her own presidential campaign, leaving it statistically near-impossible for a woman to swing open the door she cracked open in 2016. (But you do you, Tulsi.)But Cohen has always had a talent for making his guests comfortable enough to use his show as a pitching mound to throw shade—this is the show, remember, that birthed Mariah Carey’s “I don’t know her” dig at J. Lo—and Clinton seemed happy to take aim at a few choice batters.Asked what she really thinks of Melania Trump’s “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign, Clinton quipped, “I think she should look closer to home.” And she divulged that, while she’s spoken with varying degrees of regularity to most of the Democratic candidates throughout primary season, “I’ve not been in touch with a few of them, most notably Bernie Sanders.” Had Sanders reached out to her, she clarifies, she would have gladly spoken to him. Still, the comment echoes a saltiness that’s already generated plenty of headlines, when it was revealed that, in one episode of Hillary, she slams Sanders pretty harshly.“Honestly, Bernie drove me crazy,” she says. “He was in the Senate for years. Years! He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him. He got nothing done. He was a career politician. He did not work until he was like 41, and then he got elected to something. It was all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” Asked about the comment afterwards, she’s stood by it. It’s clear that Clinton knew what kind of party she was being invited to when she showed up on Cohen’s show, and she seemed totally game to engage in all of its demented joy. The episode opened with Cohen tossing off a series of HRC-themed puns, soundtracked by Clinton’s clearly amused laughter off-camera: “Let’s make like a glass ceiling and get smashed.” “I’m with her, literally.” And, in reference to the show’s drinking game, an encouragement for audience members to “drink until all Hill breaks loose.” We Need to Talk About Hillary Clinton’s Disturbing Harvey Weinstein TiesHillary Clinton Slams Bernie and Dismisses Email Scandal in New Doc: ‘All These Things About Us Get Disproved’Cohen asked Clinton what was going through her mind during iconic photos throughout her political history. About being at Trump’s inauguration, she says she was thinking, “This is even worse than I thought.” About the presidential debate in which he notoriously stalked behind her while she spoke, she remembers thinking, “This guy really has problems.” And as for the famous photo of her looking exasperated during the 11-hour Benghazi Senate hearing, she captions it, “I cannot believe these idiots.”I don’t know if this is the first time the meme of Clinton cringe-inducingly shimmying with excitement during one of the 2016 debates was brought up in her presence, but it was definitely the first time it was used as the theme for a Never Have I Ever-inspired parlor game in which she would recreate the shimmy every time she’s done the thing Cohen prompts her with. The revelations were nothing particularly scandalous, but they were pretty fun. She’s forgotten the name of a world leader she’s meeting before. She’s taken a roadie with her in a motorcade. She’s gotten tipsy with Obama. She’s gone skinny-dipping, but not in the White House pool. She’s been to a gay bar. It was all very cute!She followed tradition and delivered what she said would be her Real Housewives tagline, hilariously turning her back to the camera so she could dramatically whip herself around to deliver it: “I’m neither as good or as bad as people say.” (This is what she also reveals in Hillary as what she wants etched on her gravestone.)There’s a bit of news in her earnest defense of Nancy Pelosi’s controversial State of the Union gesture, tearing up the text of Trump’s speech after he finished. “I thought she was making a very strong point in demonstrating that so much of what he said was untethered from reality and just plain factually wrong,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the only way to get attention because otherwise his speech, which was filled with so many errors, would have been taken at face value. Because she visibly did that, which then went viral across the internet, people said, wait a minute, maybe we better take another look. I thought it was an interesting and effective gesture.” Even when she was deflecting the few more uncomfortable questions, she was quippy and fun. “I’m the last person to comment on anybody’s relationship,” she responded to a question about Melania repeated swatting Trump’s hand. The entire thing ended in a drag pageant, with RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni Trinity the Tuck, Peppermint, and Alaska modeling looks inspired by Clinton’s college days, time as first lady, and modern style, respectively. The plastered politician’s smile immediately elasticized, nearly spreading off Clinton’s face as she cackled breathlessly at the whole ordeal. She seemed to be having the time of her life. The entire thing was a blast. Sometimes it’s just fun to see a world leader be allowed to enjoy herself with such abandon, freed of shackles of political propriety. More, in the wake of the Warren news Thursday, it was a much-needed elixir for many crestfallen Bravo viewers. As one tweeted me during the show, “It could not have been better timed for this thoroughly disappointed woman tonight.”There is a necessity for Clinton to engage in the heavy news of the current election cycle, and there has been and will be ample opportunity for that. But sometimes it’s just nice to have a little fun. Preferably in the presence of some drag queens. Hillary Clinton Basically Endorses Biden After Vowing to Stay NeutralRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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morningusa · 5 years ago

Link

“Can I call you Hillary?”Hillary Clinton’s appearance on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen was never going to be the typical interview with the former secretary of state and presidential candidate, what with the talk show’s penchant for getting guests liquored up and loose enough to swan-dive into rumor pools they ordinarily would never even dip a toe into. It was never not going to be the hardest-hitting, news-making sit-down with Clinton, who was promoting Hulu’s documentary series Hillary, which chronicles her life and 2016 presidential campaign and launches Friday. But that was precisely what made the appearance such a delight. It’s not every day you see Hillary Clinton take a shot with a Real Housewife and kiki with some drag queens in the Bravo Clubhouse. The interview was taped Wednesday, which means Clinton wasn’t asked to weigh in on the biggest news on the minds of many viewers by the time it aired Thursday night: Elizabeth Warren’s announcement that she was suspending her own presidential campaign, leaving it statistically near-impossible for a woman to swing open the door she cracked open in 2016. (But you do you, Tulsi.)But Cohen has always had a talent for making his guests comfortable enough to use his show as a pitching mound to throw shade—this is the show, remember, that birthed Mariah Carey’s “I don’t know her” dig at J. Lo—and Clinton seemed happy to take aim at a few choice batters.Asked what she really thinks of Melania Trump’s “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign, Clinton quipped, “I think she should look closer to home.” And she divulged that, while she’s spoken with varying degrees of regularity to most of the Democratic candidates throughout primary season, “I’ve not been in touch with a few of them, most notably Bernie Sanders.” Had Sanders reached out to her, she clarifies, she would have gladly spoken to him. Still, the comment echoes a saltiness that’s already generated plenty of headlines, when it was revealed that, in one episode of Hillary, she slams Sanders pretty harshly.“Honestly, Bernie drove me crazy,” she says. “He was in the Senate for years. Years! He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him. He got nothing done. He was a career politician. He did not work until he was like 41, and then he got elected to something. It was all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.” Asked about the comment afterwards, she’s stood by it. It��s clear that Clinton knew what kind of party she was being invited to when she showed up on Cohen’s show, and she seemed totally game to engage in all of its demented joy. The episode opened with Cohen tossing off a series of HRC-themed puns, soundtracked by Clinton’s clearly amused laughter off-camera: “Let’s make like a glass ceiling and get smashed.” “I’m with her, literally.” And, in reference to the show’s drinking game, an encouragement for audience members to “drink until all Hill breaks loose.” We Need to Talk About Hillary Clinton’s Disturbing Harvey Weinstein TiesHillary Clinton Slams Bernie and Dismisses Email Scandal in New Doc: ‘All These Things About Us Get Disproved’Cohen asked Clinton what was going through her mind during iconic photos throughout her political history. About being at Trump’s inauguration, she says she was thinking, “This is even worse than I thought.” About the presidential debate in which he notoriously stalked behind her while she spoke, she remembers thinking, “This guy really has problems.” And as for the famous photo of her looking exasperated during the 11-hour Benghazi Senate hearing, she captions it, “I cannot believe these idiots.”I don’t know if this is the first time the meme of Clinton cringe-inducingly shimmying with excitement during one of the 2016 debates was brought up in her presence, but it was definitely the first time it was used as the theme for a Never Have I Ever-inspired parlor game in which she would recreate the shimmy every time she’s done the thing Cohen prompts her with. The revelations were nothing particularly scandalous, but they were pretty fun. She’s forgotten the name of a world leader she’s meeting before. She’s taken a roadie with her in a motorcade. She’s gotten tipsy with Obama. She’s gone skinny-dipping, but not in the White House pool. She’s been to a gay bar. It was all very cute!She followed tradition and delivered what she said would be her Real Housewives tagline, hilariously turning her back to the camera so she could dramatically whip herself around to deliver it: “I’m neither as good or as bad as people say.” (This is what she also reveals in Hillary as what she wants etched on her gravestone.)There’s a bit of news in her earnest defense of Nancy Pelosi’s controversial State of the Union gesture, tearing up the text of Trump’s speech after he finished. “I thought she was making a very strong point in demonstrating that so much of what he said was untethered from reality and just plain factually wrong,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the only way to get attention because otherwise his speech, which was filled with so many errors, would have been taken at face value. Because she visibly did that, which then went viral across the internet, people said, wait a minute, maybe we better take another look. I thought it was an interesting and effective gesture.” Even when she was deflecting the few more uncomfortable questions, she was quippy and fun. “I’m the last person to comment on anybody’s relationship,” she responded to a question about Melania repeated swatting Trump’s hand. The entire thing ended in a drag pageant, with RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni Trinity the Tuck, Peppermint, and Alaska modeling looks inspired by Clinton’s college days, time as first lady, and modern style, respectively. The plastered politician’s smile immediately elasticized, nearly spreading off Clinton’s face as she cackled breathlessly at the whole ordeal. She seemed to be having the time of her life. The entire thing was a blast. Sometimes it’s just fun to see a world leader be allowed to enjoy herself with such abandon, freed of shackles of political propriety. More, in the wake of the Warren news Thursday, it was a much-needed elixir for many crestfallen Bravo viewers. As one tweeted me during the show, “It could not have been better timed for this thoroughly disappointed woman tonight.”There is a necessity for Clinton to engage in the heavy news of the current election cycle, and there has been and will be ample opportunity for that. But sometimes it’s just nice to have a little fun. Preferably in the presence of some drag queens. Hillary Clinton Basically Endorses Biden After Vowing to Stay NeutralRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

Text

Biden and Bernie duke it out on war and peace

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/biden-and-bernie-duke-it-out-on-war-and-peace/

Biden and Bernie duke it out on war and peace

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Last Saturday in Iowa, the day after an American MQ-9 Reaper dropped its ordnance on Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Joe Biden moved quickly to make himself the face of Democratic opposition to Trump’s drone strike. It was early evening at a Des Moines elementary school gymnasium, and despite the dip in temperature and the long lines to get inside, a larger and more engaged audience than the ones he attracted over the summer and fall was waiting for the former vice president.

It was a white-collar crowd—Des Moines-area lawyers and insurance industry professionals and a smattering of D.C. Obama veterans now in town to help Biden in the homestretch. The top lawyer at ICE under the last administration was there, and told me it was the first time he’d ever canvassed Iowa for a candidate.

Iran had heightened the stakes. “#WWIII” was trending online and predictions of an all-out war were commonplace. Trump might now benefit from the halo that glows atop all wartime leaders, at least for a time. And the importance of the outcome of the Democratic primary—to say nothing of the country and the world— had suddenly ballooned. Would voters want an experienced hand whose position on world affairs is basically, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” (Biden) or would they gravitate toward someone like Bernie Sanders, whose ringing calls to get the U.S. out of Middle East quagmires have the benefit of clarity, but make many a D.C. foreign-policy hand queasy? The answer may help determine who wins over the Democratic base, and perhaps the country, come November.

While waiting for Biden that evening in Des Moines, one of the pre-program speakers led the crowd in singing “God Bless America.” When he arrived, Biden the candidate still winked and shot finger guns at well-wishers and hugged them afterwards, but it was Biden the commander-in-chief that his advisers wanted on display. The former veep pilloried what he viewed as Trump’s recklessness and called for congressional authorization of any further military engagement with Iran. His aides began planning a major speech on the issue in New York for the following Tuesday.

To Biden’s aides, it was their man’s chance to seize the moment.

“The more the world seems in disarray, especially with Trump as an erratic accelerant to that disarray, the more people seem to be looking for some return to normalcy and strong and steady leadership as opposed to erratic leadership,” said a Biden adviser. “There’s now an even greater premium on experience and being ready on Day One to deal with the mess Trump leaves. To state the obvious, that plays to Biden’s strengths.”

But it also plays to some of his weaknesses. A young voter stood up and asked Biden “How could we trust your judgment?” After all, the voter said, he’d gotten two of the biggest questions in recent years wrong: the 2002 Iraq War vote when he was a senator and the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which Biden, then vice president, counseled Obama against.

Biden was a senator for 36 years and vice president for eight. His response was essentially that the questioner was cherry-picking two decisions and ignoring everything else in his record. What about his role in bringing down Slobodan Milosevic or his advice—ignored by Obama—not to surge troops into Afghanistan in 2009 or his rallying NATO to confront Russia over Ukraine?

On Iraq, Biden gave a familiar answer that Democratic senators who voted for the invasion have been making for 17 years: It was a vote to give President George W. Bush leverage at the United Nations to bolster a weapons inspection regime, not to greenlight an imminent attack. (This is historically accurate, but a bit like arguing you let a college-aged friend borrow your credit card only for buying books for his fraternity and then being surprised about all the pot and booze he added to the bill.)

On the bin Laden raid, Biden, changing his story a bit, insisted that after a larger meeting at which he expressed reservations, he privately told Obama to go for it. (During his lengthy response, at one point, Biden accidentally said Saddam Hussein when he meant Osama bin Laden.)

Despite the tough question, Biden seemed pleased. If the subject is foreign policy, Biden believes he’s winning. He’d rather talk for hours defending his worst foreign policy blunders than spend a minute focusing on, say, busing or bankruptcy reform. “It’s not to suggest I didn’t make mistakes in my career,” he told the young questioner in Des Moines. “But I will put my record against anyone in public life in terms of foreign policy.”

Bernie Sanders was the only rival who seemed to welcome that challenge. While Biden’s strategy is that of a traditional primary frontrunner—ignore your primary opponents and focus on your general election opponent—Sanders has the classic strategy for the person in the No. 2 spot: argue it’s a two-person race.

In Iowa last weekend, where there were dozens of candidate events, Sanders was the only other politician who seemed to relish discussing the confrontation with Iran — and how the Iraq war and the Democrats who supported it helped bring about the current situation.

“What Iran has done is really highlighted both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden as representatives of two different poles in the Democratic party: one a much more hawkish interventionist arm of the party, which used to be dominant, and then Bernie Sanders, representing a more diplomacy-oriented approach, a more collaborative international approach that is ascendant in the party,” said Jeff Weaver, one of Sanders’s top advisers, who went on to ding Biden for the 2002 Iraq vote.

The common assumption about Democratic base politics has been that the domestic trumps the international, that voters in Dubuque would rather hear about how candidates are going to fix their healthcare than about how they’re going to fix the Middle East.

But that��s not entirely true. Every open Democratic primary since 9/11 has been about war, and the beneficiary of the debate over that issue hasn’t been easy to predict. In 2004, another insurgent Vermonter — Howard Dean — based his entire candidacy on his opposition to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which was enormously unpopular among Democrats and which John Kerry had voted to authorize. Kerry, after struggling in 2003, when Dean’s antiwar message thrilled liberals and filled stadiums, easily defeated his New England rival when voting began in 2004.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War was perhaps the single most important argument he made to show voters that, according to the two buzzwords of the primary, his “judgment” was superior to Hillary Clinton’s “experience.” By then, voters had grown tired of the body bags coming home from Baghdad and Kandahar, and the politics of the wars had ricocheted against the Republican Party and hawks like John McCain. But Obama soon made it clear that voting to invade Iraq didn’t disqualify Democrats from governing. He chose Biden, who, like Clinton, voted to authorize the war, as his running mate and made Clinton his secretary of state. In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Sanders was unable to run the same play against Clinton. He frequently highlighted her Iraq vote to no avail.

This election, 2020, seemed like it might be different. But Iran has belatedly forced a serious foreign-policy debate among the major Democratic candidates, with Sanders and Biden representing opposite sides of a basic question that could define the next administration: What do Democrats believe about America’s role in the world? And do they have a national-security message that can defeat Trump’s chest-thumping bravado?

***

Earlier on the same day Biden spoke, Sanders stumped in Grundy Center, about 90 minutes northeast of Des Moines. It was a small working class audience and Sanders, after blasting Biden on Iran for the cameras, returned to health care.

Though the term is not often used nowadays, the Sanders town hall format is what sixties-era activists used to call “consciousness raising.” He prods ordinary people to stand up and describe for their fellow citizens the depravities they’ve experienced in the American healthcare system. Older radicals used the method to make working people aware that they were oppressed, that they weren’t the only ones, and that they could do something about it.

These sessions usually surface so many sad stories that Sanders has a regular joke about how his wife Jane complains that his events are too depressing. He then points to an aide who will be handing out Prozac on the way out.

The Sanders view is that, quite literally, this is how the revolution starts. Raise enough consciousness among regular people about the vagaries of the health insurance industry and eventually people will be organizing together and clamoring to trade in their own insurance plans in favor of Medicare for All. This is not just how Sanders sees healthcare, but it’s how he sees almost every issue, including foreign policy.

“I was mayor of the city of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was our enemy,” he said in a 2017 address at Westminster College, in Missouri. “We established a sister city program with the Russian city of Yaroslavl, a program which still exists today. I will never forget seeing Russian boys and girls visiting Vermont, getting to know American kids, and becoming good friends. Hatred and wars are often based on fear and ignorance. The way to defeat this ignorance and diminish this fear is through meeting with others and understanding the way they see the world. Good foreign policy means building people-to-people relationships.”

But how that commendable insight translates into policy has been a struggle for Sanders to articulate.

Sanders’s foreign-policy views were first shaped by his left-wing activism during the Cold War, when the animating force on the far left was opposition to American adventurism in the name of anti-communism. As the mayor of Vermont’s largest city—a small town of 40,00, really—Sanders actually had a foreign policy. He visited Cuba, he became involved in Latin American politics centered on opposition to anything that smacked of U.S. imperialism, and he and Jane even honeymooned in the Soviet Union in 1988. (This litany of activities is frequently raised by Sanders’ rivals as deeply problematic for a general election against Trump.)

But when he got to Congress in 1991, Sanders spent the next few decades, first as a member of the House and then as a senator, strangely uninterested in foreign policy. When he ran for president in 2016, the old image of Sanders from his mayoral days as a pro-Sandinista Chomskyite is what stuck.

His 2017 speech was meant to address that. For years now, progressives have been debating how to articulate an American foreign policy that rejects what they see as the militarism of liberal internationalists, who make up the Democratic Party establishment, and left-wingers who reject any use of American power in the world as inherently tainted. Arguably, that was something Obama managed to achieve, but many on the left viewed him as just another militarist by the time he left office.

Sanders still peppers his foreign-policy remarks with a long recitation of America’s anti-democratic history, especially in Latin America and the Middle East, during the Cold War, and the worst mistakes of the post-9/11 era. But over time he has gradually shifted from an emphasis on how America has messed up the world in the past to how to confront looming threats to international democracy today.

He has repeatedly praised America’s role in creating the United Nations and expressed deep admiration for the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Germany and western Europe after World War II. In 2018, he identified growing authoritarianism as one of the great foreign policy challenges for the United States. It was a turning point for Sanders: The villains in that speech are not Americans meddling in Chile or invading Iraq, but the “the authoritarian axis”—a phrase that echoed Bush’s “axis of evil”—and in Sanders’s telling includes countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Turkey and Brazil, where there are “movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to gain and hold on to power” and are also handmaidens to billionaires and oligarchs, more familiar Sanders bogeymen.

While he called for a movement to “combat the forces of global oligarchy and authoritarianism,” the details of how a Sanders administration would use American power to do that have been vague. He had identified what he believed was the threat of our time but he didn’t say how America could counter it.

Meanwhile, Biden, along with most foreign policy centrists in the Democratic Party, has also shifted. As he pointed out in Iowa, Biden was a forceful internal opponent of the Obama surge in Afghanistan. He was deeply skeptical of the Libya intervention, which Obama came to regret, and Biden has recently called for removing most troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Biden and his ideological kin have recognized that there is almost no constituency left in the Democratic Party for the kind of hawks that dominated in the nineties and early 2000s.

But on the question of American leadership and whether American power can be virtuous, Biden is unequivocal. His campaign is premised on the idea that a President Biden can quickly restore America’s role as a force for good. For progressives that is not comforting. They fear that Biden and his advisers could easily revert to the hawkishness that dominated recent history.

In talking to Democratic foreign policy advisers across the spectrum, I heard people in Biden’s orbit caricature Sanders as a Corbyn-like old leftist who never outgrew his radical roots. And I heard Sanders’ allies describe Biden as a bloodthirsty neoliberal warmonger who will return to militarism once elected. The truth is that Democratic voters have forced both men to shift: Sanders to accept that if he wants to be president he needs to be comfortable with taking the reins of a superpower and Biden with the fact that the legacy of the Iraq War has poisoned the idea of liberal interventionism to an entire generation. (Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg fit neatly on this continuum, with Warren closer to Sanders and Buttigieg closer to Biden.)

All three—Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg—have tried to articulate an alternative vision to a Biden-style establishment Democratic foreign policy — what Sanders’ advisers call the D.C. “blob.”

And there are notable differences on some key issues. Sanders and Warren are willing to leverage aid to Israel to change the country’s behavior toward the Palestinians, while Biden isn’t. Sanders opposes the recent USMCA trade deal, while Warren and Biden support it. Sanders and Warren would leave almost no footprint behind in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Buttigieg and Biden want some forces to respond to any resurgence of al Qaeda and ISIS.

Progressives have also changed the politics of foreign policy. Democrats across the spectrum no longer believe that a reflexive toughness to international crises is a prerequisite for victory. In 2004 Kerry, who in his youth was most famous for his opposition to the Vietnam war, reinvented himself as a war fighter for the general election. (He lost.)

In 2020 the pressure for Democrats in their response to the killing of Soleimani was to show they would not exaggerate or dwell on his crimes in the Middle East and that they would not say anything that would encourage escalation with Iran. Warren originally tweeted that “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.” The next day, in a tweet that focused solely on Trump, she wrote that the president had “assassinated a senior foreign military official.” Gone was any description of Soleimani’s history in the region.

But in the end, the 2020 foreign policy debate among Democrats is likely to play out a lot like the 2020 domestic policy debate among Democrats: with the establishment candidate co-opting just enough of the left’s grievances to snuff out the challenge.

The Sanders wing long ago won the debate about deemphasizing the use of force, ending “forever wars,” prioritizing diplomacy, and bolstering relationships with democracies. But what the progressives have not yet been able to fully articulate—and there’s a vast literature that has tried—is how a President Sanders or Warren or even Buttigieg, who have all identified promoting democracy and curtailing the rise of authoritarianism as major modern priorities, would actually do that.

I asked a top adviser to Sanders about whether there are more details to add to Sanders’ 2018 call to reverse the rising tide of autocrats.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

#Bernie #Foreign #Peace #Politics

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