In the midst of the Donald Trump Impeachment Trial, the first test of support for Democratic Presidential candidates is only nine days away, occurring on Monday, February 3, when the Iowa Caucuses occur that evening.
With Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar forced to sit in the Senate to listen to the impeachment case, it could be that Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg will gain an advantage, although Amy Klobuchar has won some editorial and political support in Iowa locations, and Bernie Sanders still seems to have an edge in many polls, although not all of them.
Iowa is totally non representative of the nation in its heavily white population, and hopefully will NOT be the first contest in future Presidential elections, but there is no question that whoever ends up on top ten days from now will have a boost that might be a major factor in that person winning the Democratic Presidential nomination to run against the most dangerous President in American history!
I hear that Elizabeth Warren has gotten an endorsement from the Des Moines Register.
Chairman Tom Perez, former labor secretary under 44th U.S. president Barack Obama, recently nominated a number of individuals to the Democratic National Committee (linked report):
https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1221167638254161920?s=20
Republicans Are Trying to Interfere in the 2020 Democratic Primary
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/28/republicans-are-trying-to-interfere-in-the-2020-democratic-primary/
Our Future Will Be Shaped By the Outcome of the Iowa Caucuses
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/28/our-future-will-be-shaped-by-the-outcome-of-the-iowa-caucuses/
It’s possible that the winner of next week’s Iowa caucuses will be the first choice of fewer than one in four Democrats. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, Bernie Sanders currently leads the pack with 22.6 percent. Their forecast has Sanders pulling in 27.9 percent, but that’s only after he receives some reassigned votes from candidates who don’t clear the 15 percent minimum threshold in some caucuses.
They project that four candidates will win delegates in the Hawkeye State. Biden is polling about even with Sanders at 22.3 percent, followed by Pete Buttigieg at 17.1 percent and Elizabeth Warren at 14 percent. Among the rest, only Amy Klobuchar is showing any pulse, but her eight percent rating is far below the minimum threshold, and most of her votes will probably be reallocated.
So, as far as the delegates go, the projection is Sanders 12.8, Biden 12.5, Buttigieg 8.5, and Warren 5.3.
Statistically, this would amount to a four-way tie. And, based on the difficulty of polling the Iowa caucuses and the traditional late volatility in these contests, it’s quite possible that the final order could be scrambled or even reversed. In 2012, Rick Santorum rocketed to the top in the last days from a position about as weak as what Klobuchar is showing now, so she shouldn’t be counted out.
Still, I think it’s safe to say that the media will portray a first-place finish quite differently from a fourth-place finish, even if only a few points separate the two candidates and if there’s no significant difference in how many delegates they’re awarded. It’s easy to see why an endorsement from the Des Moines Register could be immensely valuable to Elizabeth Warren.
It’s also very possible that Trump’s impeachment lawyers could change history by using their time less to defend the president than to attack Joe Biden.
[The second day of the president’s opening arguments in the impeachment trial took a sharp turn, when Trump attorneys Pam Bondi and Eric Herschmann spent a significant portion of their time on the Senate floor arguing that Biden should be investigated for corruption.
Bondi primarily focused on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his role on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma while his father was vice president and in charge of Ukraine matters. Trump’s team has presented no evidence that Biden used his role as vice president to benefit his son nor alleged anything improper other than the “appearance of a conflict.â€
But Senate Republicans used the concerted attack on Biden to raise questions about his political viability.
“Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers, will they be supporting vice president Biden at this point?†asked Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).]
Trump decided to use Ukraine to attack Biden at a time when Biden was clearly polling the best against him in hypothetical one-on-one matchups. It may be that the impeachment trial is doing what President Zelensky would not: unfairly tar Biden and knock him out of his frontrunner status.
Of course, I’m not sure that Iowa Democrats will react the way that the Republicans hope. They may rally around Biden precisely because he’s being attacked, or because it makes it look that Trump fears him the most. All I know is that tiny differences in voter sentiment can have enormous consequences.
It shouldn’t be this way. The media should really do a better job of explaining how inconsequential it is to win 13 delegates for first place compared to five delegates for fourth. They should point out that no candidate who is preferred by only a quarter of caucus-goers can really be considered a frontrunner. And what does it really mean that a few thousand votes separate four candidates in a mostly white rural state? The results from Los Angeles County in California will have vastly more statistical significance, and they’ll come from a more representative cross-section of the Democratic Party.
Yet, we’ll all be on pins and needles waiting to see who the big winner and loser is in Iowa, and everyone will talk about all the errors and misjudgments that were made and why the loser’s campaign was doomed from the start. It’s all foolishness.
It’s not even guaranteed that the election night delegate winner will be awarded the most delegates. They might drop out later and see their delegates reassigned. They may see their delegates poached by a better-organized candidate, as happened in 2012 when Ron Paul wound up with almost all of Iowa’s delegates despite coming in third on election night.
[Yes, indeed, you would have never known it in all the hype leading up to Iowa, but their caucuses have “practically no effect†on who will get the delegates from the Hawkeye state at the Republican National Convention. In 2012, Iowa had 28 delegates at the convention, and according to the New York Times, Ron Paul got 22 of them, Romney got five, and Rick Santorum got zero. One vote is listed as undetermined but probably went for Romney.
Ron Paul achieved this by focusing on the real contest, which actually takes place later in the year at county and state party conventions. This is why it is entirely accurate to call the caucuses a “beauty contest†but horribly misleading to suggest that the voters who turn out to provide “Iowa’s Republican Party a sense of the voters’ thinking†have any efficacy whatsoever over who will represent them at the convention.]
I find it frustrating that the future of the country could be dramatically altered depending on who is perceived to have won a beauty contest in Iowa. But that’s the situation we’re in, and the smallest of factors could have a tremendous impact on how the candidates finish next week.
Isn’t this system great? (sarcastic)
I second what Bill Dan said:
One can think of the primary as being broken out in four ways:
*By age – The Democratic Party is 2 different parties, one for those over 45 and one for those under it. This split has been obvious since 2008 and has not abated.
*By ideology – Left versus center, and these differences are not minor
*Old versus new – it is this latter split that is the most interesting. People who are not for Biden or Sanders are effectively deciding among 3 candidates: Warren/Buttigieg/Klobuchar.
*By race – this is very effected by age, which is why in some polling Sanders leads Biden among POC (Hispanics are younger than whites or African Americans)
I am in the old versus new camp – I want someone new and not connected to the bitterness of ’16. That means no to Sanders or Biden (though he did not run in ’16).
I was for Harris and Booker, and now for Warren. Warren has real problems but is the only remaining candidate with a prayer of uniting the Party, though Klobuchar would better than Sanders/Biden/Buttigieg.
Biden strikes me as a terrible candidate. Sanders is too left to win and too old.
I’m in the over 45 camp yet want someone new. That’s why I’m most interest in Warren, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg.
Same way with me, Leia.
The endorsement race is rather interesting.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-2020-endorsement-race-is-getting-interesting/
For the record, I could care less who winds up winning, as long as he or she beats Trump in November.
Yet another powerful reason the Iowa caucuses need to go bye bye.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/27/1914440/-Iowa-s-undemocratic-caucuses-shut-out-too-many-voters
What Progressives Can Learn From ’60s Radicals
The story of Fred Hampton and the first Rainbow Coalition would be a good place to start.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/29/what-progressives-can-learn-from-60s-radicals/
As a member of the 1960s radical left, John Judis has written about why that movement failed and issued a warning to today’s progressives about not making the same mistakes. He begins by noting a speech by anti-war activist Tom Hayden in 1969.
[At the time, many on the new left thought a revolution was imminent. Major cities had been set ablaze by rioters; gun-toting members of the Black Panther Party had confronted legislators in Sacramento; hundreds of thousands were marching against the Vietnam War; and with Richard Nixon in office—and the war showing no signs of abating—the protests were turning violent.
Hayden, too, was confident about what lay ahead. Perched on the edge of the stage in a denim work shirt and blue jeans, he spelled out his vision for a new American revolution. I still recall him saying—in the language of the period—“We already have the blacks, the browns, the women and the students,†and then adding that if we could also get blue-collar workers, we’d have the basis for a revolution.]
Judis suggests that the reason the movement stalled was because they failed to achieve Hayden’s vision.
[There were always new-left radicals who tried to build bridges. But by the late ’60s, when Hayden was urging outreach to what was then an overwhelmingly white working class, many revolutionaries had abandoned any attempt to create a popular American majority…
What also doomed the new left was that…the movement began to splinter into identity groups; indeed, this was the beginning of what has come to be known as “identity politics.†Black nationalist and later Latino, Native American and feminist groups pursued their own demands with some success, but the larger movement lost a sense of cooperation and coherence.]
What Judis failed to acknowledge is that in Chicago, the Black Panther Party was working to create the first Rainbow Coalition, the subject of a film that aired Monday night on PBS (it is available for streaming on their website).
The film depicts the efforts of Chicago Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Bobby Lee to form a coalition with members of the Young Lords and Young Patriots. The former were Puerto Rican and the latter were whites who had migrated from Appalachia to Chicago. These groups came together to do things like feed children and provide free medical care while fighting against police brutality. As Fred Hampton said in the clip above, “we’re going to fight racism, not with racism, but we’re gonna fight it with solidarity.â€
The power of that kind of coalition is demonstrated by the reaction it elicited from the white power structure. Initially, their efforts were attacked and sabotaged, while participants were arrested and jailed. But then, on December 4, 1969, the apartment where Fred Hampton was sleeping was raided by the police and he was assassinated.
Documents stolen from the FBI in 1971 uncovered the efforts to infiltrate these groups and undermine their work through a program known as COINTELPRO. They also proved that the assassination of Fred Hampton was carried out under the direction of the FBI.
Back in the 1950s, the FBI initiated this counterintelligence program in order to discredit these militant groups. One of its main goals was to “prevent the rise of a black messiah.â€
As Michael Harriot explained on Twitter, by 1969, “Stokely Carmichael publicly denounced the Panthers, MLK was dead, Malcolm was dead. And in Chicago, there was this young kid rising named Fred Hampton.†I’ll let Harriot take it from there.
[When Hampton joined the Black Panthers, the feds were worried. It had nothing to do with violence. It didn’t really have anything to do with the Civil Rights Movement.
They KNEW Fred Hampton was different.
Like the others, Hampton started out with mainstream black organizations. By the time he was a teenager, he was organizing his own youth chapter of the NAACP in his small Illinois suburb.
In a SINGLE YEAR, he had 500 members.
If this sounds like hype, consider this:
When Hampton attended his FIRST BPP meeting in Nov. ’68:
-the FBI had already opened up a file on him A YEAR EARLIER.
-his phone had been tapped for 9 months.
-he had been designated as a “key leader†on the FBI’s “agitator index†for 5 months
Fred was different, yall.
In six months, he had brokered a nonaggression pact with every gang in Chicago. He was teaching gang members the law. He upset the city hospitals when convinced doctors to volunteer and give FREE medical care.
But this isn’t why he was dangerous…
6 months before his death, the charismatic Hampton organized the Conference for the United Front Against Fascism. Calling the conglomerate the “Rainbow Coalition,†the group included black gangs, Puerto Rican gangs and others.
From July 18-21, 1969 people from across the US attended the conference, including lawyers, politicians and civil rights activists from all walks of life. They would all agree that ALL the organizations would fight for black freedom
FIVE THOUSAND people attended the conference and they all reached the conclusion that black liberation could only be achieved through armed self-defense and community control of police.
But that wasn’t why Hampton was dangerous.
There was a group at the conference called the Young Patriots who adopted the Panthers’ 11-point plan. The Puerto Rican Young Lords promised solidarity, as did The Red Guard, a Chinese American group.
But here is why this was a problem:
Of the 5000 people who were in attendance, MOST were white.
Fred was creating a national coalition for armed resistance against racism. It would be the next phase in the Civil Rights Movement]
Fred Hampton was assassinated eleven months after the Tom Hayden speech that Judis referenced, which raises the question of whether it was actually the splintering of identity politics that ended the movement. Or, did it begin to die that night in the apartment of a 21-year-old who posed such a threat that he had to be eliminated?
The film that aired on PBS to document this history ends with the dissolution of the Rainbow Coalition after Hampton’s death as leaders went underground. But they also point to the legacy it left in Chicago.
In 1974, Jose “Cha-Cha†Jimenez, of the Young Lords, ran for Chicago alderman and got over 40 percent of the vote,
Rainbow Coalition members organized to defeat Edward Hanrahan, the state’s attorney responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton.
The vision of a Rainbow Coalition helped elect Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago in 1983.
Jesse Jackson revived the concept of a Rainbow Coalition during his 1984 presidential campaign.
Bobby Rush, a member of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, was elected to Congress in 1993.
Barack Obama was inspired to move to Chicago in 1985 because of the legacy of the Rainbow Coalition and Harold Washington.
Back in 1967, Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton published a book titled Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. They articulated a vision about the kind of coalition Hampton went on to develop in Chicago.
[It is hoped that eventually there will be a coalition of poor blacks and poor whites…and we see such a coalition as the major internal instrument of change in American society. It is purely academic today to talk about bringing poor blacks and poor whites together, but the task of creating a poor-white power block dedicated to the goals of a free, open society—not one based on racism and subordination—must be attempted. The main responsibility for this task falls upon whites…Only whites can mobilize and organize those communities along the lines necessary and possible for effective alliances with the black communities. This job cannot be left to the existing institutions and agencies, because those structures, for the most part, are reflections of institutionalized racism. If the job is to be done, there must be new forms created. Thus, the political modernization process must involve the white community as well as the black.]
I agree with Judis that today’s left could learn a lot from these ’60s radicals—both their successes and failures. It is clear that that was the goal of Ray Santisteban in making the film, The First Rainbow Coalition. That’s why I would encourage everyone to watch it.
A new Iowa poll has Bloomberg at 4th place. Guess those ads he has on TV must be pretty effective.
Are Identity Politics Hampering the Current Progressive Movement?
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/29/are-identity-politics-hampering-the-current-progressive-movement/
The reason John Judis explored why the radical left of the 1960s failed is because he wanted to issue a warning to the progressive movement that is forming today. Here is how he defines that movement.
[For nearly a decade now, arguably dating to the Occupy movement of 2011, a new generation of left-wing activism has been stirring. A host of organizations (Indivisible, the Sunrise Movement, 350.org, People’s Action, the Working Families Party, Black Lives Matter, the Justice Democrats, a revived Democratic Socialists of America) and new publications (Jacobin, the Intercept, Current Affairs) are doing what groups like SDS did in the ’60s: elevating left-wing causes and promising dramatic societal change.]
Judis goes on to specifically align those efforts with the presidential candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He notes that Sanders is advocating for a “political revolution†and Warren is running on a platform of “big, structural change.â€
While he points out that today’s radical left is positioned to fare better than their predecessors, Judis warns that they are making some of the same mistakes that he identified as the reason the movement failed in the 1960s. But before he articulates those, Judis catalogues the conditions that led young people to be more amenable to radical ideas. In doing so, he points to things such as instability in the workforce, the cost of housing, and the decline of unions. Those were coupled with the disasters of the Iraq War and the Great Depression, followed by the threat of climate change and Donald Trump’s presidency.
What stands out is that, even though Judis listed Black Lives Matter (but not organizations like United We Dream) as part of the new progressive movement, his list doesn’t include anything about the racism of police shootings or nativist immigration policies. That becomes even more critical when his warning to today’s progressives echos what he identified as the failure of their predecessors: identity politics.
[[T]oday’s left has become fond of a political strategy that discounts the importance altogether of winning over the white working class. Such a strategy assumes Democrats can gain majorities simply by winning over people of color (a term that groups people of wildly varying backgrounds, incomes and worldviews), single women and the young…the left is again dividing into identity groups, each of which feels justified in elevating its concerns above others…
While activists focused on identity politics have, like their predecessors from the ’60s, made perfectly reasonable demands—for instance, an end to police brutality, or equal wages for men and women—they have also made extreme demands that display an indifference to building a political majority. Some have backed reparations for slavery—an idea rejected by broad majorities of the electorate, most of whom are descended from immigrants who came to America after the Civil War. Other groups have demanded “open borders,†defying a majority of Americans who think the country should be able to decide who to admit as citizens and who will be able to enjoy the rights and benefits of being an American.]
In the context of talking about the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the idea that today’s left has discounted the importance of winning over the white working class is simply not factual. Sanders has made that the cornerstone of his entire political career, including his current run for president. Back in 2014, Simon Van Zuylen-Wood interviewed Sanders for an article in the National Journal. Here is how Sanders described his efforts to spark a political revolution.
[“Let me ask you,†he says, his gangly frame struggling to contain itself to our couch, “what is the largest voting bloc in America? Is it gay people? No. Is it African-Americans? No. Hispanics? No. What?†Answer: “White working-class people.†Bring them back into the liberal fold, he figures, and you’ve got your revolution…
“How do you have a party that created Social Security lose the senior vote?†Sanders asks me. The answer, he believes, is that seniors have been distracted from the pocketbook issues that should matter most in politics. The Left, in turn, can win them back, along with other white working-class voters, by downplaying the culture wars—what Ralph Nader once called “gonadal†issues—and instead focusing on economic populism.]
Here is Sanders expressing that same view at a campaign stop in Georgia last year.
[DEC 2019:
Bernie Sanders blames Democrats for only getting 10% of the white vote in Mississippi when Obama ran.
“90% of whites in Mississippi are not racist” – racism is NEVER a factor in Bernie’s eyes. NEVER.
THREAD 1/8
-from @josecanyousee on Twitter]
As you can see from that tweet, the criticism of Sanders is often that he attempts to appeal to white working-class voters at the expense of acknowledging racism as a factor.
Judis goes on to suggest that the current left is failing because they have made “extreme demands†when it comes to dealing with racism. But he ignores the possibility that white working-class voters might find that a Democratic socialist advocating for “political revolution†is equally extreme. In a subtle way, Judis seems to be acknowledging the fact that racism is a factor when it comes to appealing to white working-class voters by calling for moderation on racial issues while embracing extremism on those related to economics.
There is a case to be made that most Americans—including white working-class voters—are not prepared to support extremism on either front. The real test when it comes to building a progressive majority is the challenge of bringing together a coalition of voters. As Stacey Abrams suggested, that doesn’t mean eschewing identity politics, it means letting voters know that “we see all of you.â€
[“Identity politics means that yes, I want healthcare, but I need you to understand why I’m not getting it,†@staceyabrams says.
“You don’t win elections by convincing the same people to do the same thing — you win elections by getting new people to say ‘I care, too.’â€
-from @TheView on Twitter]
If that message is articulated clearly and some white working-class voters continue to object, it is very likely that racism is involved and they are never going to join a progressive coalition.
* * * * * PREDICTION * * * * *
The 2020 Democratic nomination for president of the United States will go to Vermont U.S. senator Bernie Sanders.
* * * * *
Over the last week or so, the trajectory of the race has changed. The momentum has moved from Joe Biden to Bernie Sanders.
In 2016, the national margin for Hillary Clinton nationally was +12.06.
Pollsters are reporting Joe Biden nationally in single digits. But, state by state, Sanders is poised to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. And, due to increased Latino support, Sanders is in position to also win Nevada.
The fourth state in February is South Carolina. It is favored to go to Joe Biden. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won it by +47.22 percentage points. Say there are four people who register with voters in that state with anything substantial percentage wise. I would expect Biden to win there by +23. I now anticipate his margin there will be in the 10s at best.
The February results, as mentioned above, would further change the trajectory—a trend line—for the rest of the contests which would result in Bernie Sanders winning nationally by however many percentage points. (I, at this time, can’t guess. But take –12.06 and add it to, say, +5—and you get an idea of the level of shift and what it does for states count, including carrying highly-populous states.)
Super Tuesday is March 3. Bernie Sanders is polling ahead in California. Hillary Clinton won it by +7.03 in 2016. Texas is scheduled the same day. Recent poll has Joe Biden winning it by +2 following Hillary Clinton having won it in 2016 by +32.
An easier way to explain this is as follows:
The 50 states and District of Columbia. In 2016 Bernie Sanders won 22 states. A probable map for him is that he wins those states again here in 2020. (Not a single one flips to Joe Biden.) A 2020 Bernie Sanders’s pickups come in Top 10 populous states, most obviously, but also geographically in all areas. The one Top 10 state he carried was my home state Michigan. His margin was +1.42. So it backed him +13.48 above national support. If he is flipping California, he is definitely flipping in the Rust Belt. I think right away of Illinois. Except for 1988 (when home-state son and U.S. senator Paul Simon carried it), Illinois was won by all eventual Democratic nominees in the primaries. Add to it Pennsylvania and Ohio. (The latter is on the schedule in April.) Add Bernie Sanders’s home state New York. Then look to the South. North Carolina, based on how it performed so close to the national margin, is ripe. So is, and based on demographics (and movement in his direction), Florida. They are 8 of the nation’s Top 10 populous states. (Significance: Approximately 54 percent of the nation resident in a Top 10 state. When you get to Nos. 20 and 21, are approximately 70 percent of the nation’s residents.)
Texas and Georgia, just going by their 2016 margins, look like the toughest if Sanders doesn’t win 9 or all 10. And a part of how this happens is unlike how 2016 played out: Bernie wins in the top populous counties state after state. I also look to, when you see the second round of listed states, pickups in not only Iowa and Nevada but also New Mexico, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Arizona, and New Jersey (won in 2016 by Hillary Clinton by nearly +27 and recently polling for Joe Biden by about +3). I also look to Maryland (which, like New York and Pennsylvania, is on the schedule in April.
If much of all of this plays out—with nomination to Bernie Sanders—he can go from 22 states, from 2016, to at least 32 but on the way to 40.
Refer to my map:
• https://www.270towin.com/maps/jbNLX.png
The solid blue are states carried by Bernie Sanders. The light blue are potential pickups. The ones in yellow—however many of them—can also feasibly flip.
Here are some sources:
• https://theintercept.com/2020/01/28/joe-biden-older-voters-bernie-sanders/
• https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-01-28/bernie-sanders-grabs-lead-in-california-presidential-primary
• https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting_odds/democratic_2020_nomination/
Here is a list of the 2016 margins for Bernie Sanders (with a negative sign, showing reach):
Top 10 Populous States
• Michigan +1.42
• Illinois –1.95
• California –7.03
— National Margin –12.06 —
• Pennsylvania –12.08
• Ohio –12.99
• North Carolina –13.64
• New York –15.92
• Florida –31.06
• Texas –32.00
• Georgia –43.10
Non-Top 10 Populous States
• Iowa –0.25
• Missouri –0.25
• Kentucky –0.43
• Massachusetts –1.40
• South Dakota –2.06
• New Mexico –3.06
• Nevada –5.35
• Connecticut –5.38
— National Margin –12.06 —
• Arizona –14.90
• New Jersey –26.64
• Maryland –28.72
• Virginia –29.09
An interesting video on Texas:
If Bernie is the nominee, prepare for Rump and the ReThuglicans to do red-baiting.
If Bernie wins the general election, prepare to be disappointed when his lofty ideas don’t pass Congress, especially if the ReThuglicans maintain control of the Senate.
And if Bernie is not the nominee, get behind whoever is the nominee, as we need to defeat Trump or we lose our democracy and America as we once knew it is destroyed. That is what’s at stake in this election.
Rustbelt Democrat, you are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT correct in your observations!
Ali Velshi was explaining about how caucuses are done. Sounded very complicated to me. I prefer one vote, one person method of a primary.
I understand what you mean, Southern Liberal. In general, primaries use secret ballots for voting. I prefer that as well.