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Sunday, February 16, 2020

New Hampshire finally voted last week. Bernie Sanders won, although not by the margin I had hoped for -- 25.58% to 24.27% for Pete Buttigieg, 19.69% for Klobuchar, with significant drops for Elizabeth Warren (9.19%) and Joe Biden (8.34%). Sanders did, however, get more young voters than everyone else combined. As I note in the German Lopez note below, the Buttigieg/Klobuchar bubble seems to have less to do with anything attractive about their platforms than with the irrational fears of many Democrats (including some older ones who are philosophically aligned left, but grew up in a world where red-baiting was always effective) that Sanders would wind up losing to Trump. How they figure Buttigieg or Klobuchar might fare better is something I don't care to speculate on. Neither has the familiarity or national organization they'll need in coming weeks, and their repeated (misinformed and disingenuous) attacks on Medicare for All in recent months, while effective for raising donations and establishing themselves as niche candidates, makes them improbable (as well as damn unsatisfactory) party unifiers.

Biden is still better positioned to recover in later primaries, but did himself much harm in Iowa and New Hampshire. In particular, he lost favor with the "anybody but Trump (except Sanders)" party faction, and his support among Afro-Americans was never any deeper than a cautious wager. Biden has slipped behind Sanders in national polls, lost his big lead in Nevada, and may even lose his "firewall" state of South Carolina (see FiveThirtyEight, which also forecasts Sanders to lead in most "Super Tuesday" contests, including: California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, and Tennessee -- in fact, the only state Biden is still favored in is Alabama). FiveThirtyEight still projects Biden to finish second, but they already have Michael Bloomberg in a close third, with Buttigieg a distant fourth, Warren with vanishingly slim chances in fifth, and Klobuchar even further behind. That assumes they all keep running, which almost certainly won't happen.

[PS: Closing this now to get it up and out of the way. I've been running into frustrating dead ends seems like everywhere.]

Some scattered links this week:

• Eric Alterman: The modern GOP is built on lies. A few tired examples here, going back to Nixon, but nothing that even pretends to argue, "in some ways Trump is more truthful than previous Republican presidents." I might concede that Trump's lies are more self-revealing than those of his predecessors, and add that the biggest lie of all was Reagan's "morning in America" slogan, which encouraged Americans to deny reality and live in their own heads. Do that long enough and you eventually get to a guy like Trump, who can't tell the difference, let alone care.

• Michael Arria: Amy Klobuchar says she would work on increasing support for Israel if elected president. Related: Stephen Zunes: Klobuchar has pushed extreme right-wing policy on Israel/Palestine.

• Monifa Bandele: Take it from an activist who was there: Stop and frisk cost New Yorkers their lives.

• Ross Barkan: Michael Bloomberg isn't a smug technocratic centrist. He's something far worse.

• Alexander Burns/Nicholas Kulish: Bloomberg's billions: How the candidate built an empire of influence. As David Sirota tweeted:

  In investment terms, this story makes clear Bloomberg spent years buying large blocs of shares of the Beltway Democratic apparatus, and now he's trying to buy the primary to complete a hostile takeover.

• Jonathan Chait:

  • Obama auto standards may survive because Trump staff can't do math: "Malevolence tempered by incompetence."

  • Barr wants to hide Trump's authoritarian plans, but Trump keeps confessing: "A president uninterested in theory never stops asserting his 'absolute right' to destroy democracy."

  • Trump: If Romney was truly religious, he'd have convicted me on both counts. Sounds like Trump has a pretty bizarre notion of religion, but also reminds us that Romney's stand on principle was wobbly at the knees.

  • The GOP elite couldn't stop Trump in 2016. But maybe Democrats can stop Bernie. Yeah, but how hard did the "GOP elite" really try? Trump is an embarrassment, but he never really challenges orthodoxy, and he delivers votes for an agenda that is deeply unpopular. (When he does slip up, he apologizes quickly. Sure, his racist outbursts are the exception, suggesting that's something "GOP elites" have no serious problems with). By the way, who are these "GOP elites," and how do they enforce party discipline? Looks to me like a loosely connected circle of like-minded but mostly independent billionaire donors, kept in sync by propaganda networks like Fox News. The donors signaled their acceptance of Trump when they pulled the rug out from under Cruz and Kasich, when they were still likely to win a few primaries. Thanks to the Clintons and Obama, Democrat elites are more organized to control the party, and they are ideologically disposed to beat down any leftist deviations, as a big part of their pitch to donors over the last 30-40 years was that they could control the masses while making the world more profitable for the oligarchs. And unlike GOP elites view of Trump, they really do see left-populism as a threat, to their worldview as well as their all-important patronage. So Chait won't be able to lament their lack of effort, although he still may be disappointed at how ineffective they may be. Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar don't have half a vision between them, and their resolve to do nothing but accommodate business interests is less inspiring than ever. Chait regrets that the do-nothings don't have a charismatic candidate in 2020 like Obama in 2008, but why should he think that would do the trick? (It's not clear now that Obama had much vision either, but at least he let people imagine he did.) Obama showed us how little progress mere competent moderation delivers -- not enough to lift Hillary over Trump, who was able to campaign on "what do you have to lose?"

  • Joe Biden's campaign was a disaster for liberalism and the Democratic Party: If "liberalism and the Democratic Party" couldn't find a more articulate candidate than Biden, maybe the disaster was already there, just something not just Biden couldn't fix. After Hillary lost to Trump, it should have been obvious that the Clinton-Obama-Biden formula had run its course. Chait blames Biden for denying promising candidates the money they needed to run competitive races, but wasn't his weakness clear a year ago?

  • Trump fires Defense official for refusing the break the law on his behalf: Elaine McCusker.

  • Here's what I do like about Bernie Sanders.

• David Dayen: The lessons of the Culinary Union health care fight. Turns out the reason the Las Vegas union is so anti-Sanders is that they own and run their own health care provider system, which gives them a conflict of interest between their own business interest and the class of workers they represent. One reason unions are in such sad shape these days is that too many of them started thinking of themselves as separate from the broader working class. By the way, Pete Buttigieg tried to latch onto this one particular (but in next week's Nevada caucuses, strategic) union as support for his attacks on Medicare for All, not realizing (or caring) it's a minority position among unions. See Jason Lemon: Union president accuses Pete Buttigieg of 'perpetuating this gross myth' about union health care: 'This is offensive'.

• Benjamin Dixon: Michael Bloomberg's campaign is an insult to democracy.

• Lee Fang:

  • TV executives celebrate unprecedented flood of Bloomberg campaign spending.

  • Foreign-funded dark-money groups lobby IRS to repeal remaining reporting requirements.

• Christopher Flavelle: Global financial giants swear off funding an especially dirty fuel: Alberta oil sands.

• Melvin Goodman: The real John Bolton. By the way, Jeffrey St. Clair: Roaming charges: The steal of the century, has an amusing screen shot of Lou Dobbs backed by a framed photo of Bolton captioned: "A TOOL FOR THE LEFT." It's true that Bolton's always been a tool, but you only have to be marginally smarter than Dobbs to realize he's never been one of ours.

• Ryan Grim:

  • Mike Bloomberg is hiring so many operatives, local and state campaigns are starving for help.

  • /Akela Lacy: AIPAC is helping fund anti-Bernie Sanders super PAC ads in Nevada.

• Umair Irfan: Antarctica broke two temperature records in a week. Related: Juan Cole: It is 65° F in Antarctica and if the Thwaites Glacier plops in, expect 4 ft of sea level rise.

• Sarah Jones: Michael Bloomberg defended fingerpriting food-stamp recipients in 2018 interview.

• Fred Kaplan:

  • Trump's $740.5 billion military budget is wildly irresponsible and misleading.

  • Nearly everything Trump's State of the Union said about foreign policy was wrong.

• Ed Kilgore:

  • De Blasio to endorse, campaign with, Sanders: That won't sway many voters, but it does make him point man on Bloomberg.

  • Why there is no Democratic 'never Bernie' movement: Well, what do you call the Bloomberg candidacy? Even back in 2016 Bloomberg was calculating how his running could undermine Bernie. The only reason he's not talking about it now is he realizes that doing so would utterly discredit his campaign.

• Michael Kranish:

  • Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women's allegations of profane, sexist comments.

  • How the relationship between Trump and Bloomberg went into a tailspin.

• Maris Kreizman: $2 million book deals about the Trump administration are anything but brave: "John Bolton's latest tell-all book deal is part of a worrying trend within publishing."

• Nicholas Kristof: The hidden depression Trump isn't helping.

• John le Carré: On Brexit: 'It's breaking my heart'. Also colors his remembrance of Olof Palme, the assassinated Swedish statesman whose name adorns a prize le Carré was just awarded.

• Joshua Leifer: A tense relationship: "The vexed history of Zionism and the left." A review of Susie Linfield's book, The Lion's Den: Zionism and the Left From Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky.

• Will Leitch: Pete Rose's plea to be unbanned from baseball is right out of the Trump playbook. Well, with Trump in his corner, maybe this isn't the best time to even partially rehabilitate Rose. Trump seems to feel that the right politics excuses (or at least merits forgiveness for) all manner of wrongdoing, while those with wrong politics should be harassed and jailed. As such, he's managed to lump Rose in with the likes of Joe Arpaio and Eddie Gallagher (the Navy SEAL charged with war crimes). Nonetheless, I will say, as I've always said, that being banned from ever working for (or owning a stake in) any MLB organization is one thing, and being ineligible to have your pre-ban achievements evaluated by the Base Ball Hall of Fame is (or should be) another (and the fact that they aren't is really the fault of the BBHOF). I always thought Rose was slightly overrated as a ballplayer, but I was more bothered by the adoring sports writers who bought into his Charlie Hustle act. When you look at his numbers in context, he wasn't anyway near the second coming of Ty Cobb, but he was comparable to long time Hall of Famers like Sam Crawford, Zack Wheat, Paul Waner, and Paul Molitor (who Baseball References regards as Rose's most similar batter, followed by Robin Yount, Waner, and George Brett; they also list Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb at 2 and 3, and Cap Anson at 7, but clearly aren't making necessary adjustments for cross-historical context; more telling is the "most similar by ages" chart, which only matches Rose with three HOFers, for a single year each, from ages 22-37: Molitor, Rod Carew, and Freddie Lindstrom; on the other hand, he has multi-year matches with Buddy Lewis and Johnny Damon; everyone from 38-45 is in the HOF, but few lesser players last that long; even so, 38-41 is Molitor, 42 Waner, 43-44 Rickey Henderson, and 45 Anson). One irony since Rose was banned is that the steroid scandal has kept far greater stars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of the HOF (Bonds' most similar matches are Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth; Clemens' top ten matches are all in the HOF, and that doesn't include what would have been my first guess, Lefty Grove). Another irony is that if you gave in and considered Rose, you'd probably also have to consider another banned gambler whose career (until he got banned) resembled Cobb's even more: Shoeless Joe Jackson. On the other hand, if you do insist on imposing a morals clause on HOF membership, why not kick a few folks out? Cap Anson was singularly responsible for driving black players out of MLB in the late 1880s, and a long list of executives continued the color ban until 1947 -- first among equals there was Kenesaw Mountain Landis (the commissioner who banned Jackson and set the precedent for Rose, although he later whitewashed similar charges against Cobb and Speaker).

• Nicholas Lemann: Can journalism be saved? A review of many books, one of the few posts at this site without a paywall lock.

• Mary Kay Linge/Jon Levine: Bloomberg reportedly considering Hillary Clinton as his running mate: One thing I've noticed this week is that I find Bloomberg so despicable I'm willing to give credence to any story, no matter how dubious the source, that makes him appear even more evil (or stupid or vain or conceited or vile).

• German Lopez:

  • Bernie Sanders lost among New Hampshire voters focused most on beating Trump. I saw this poll referred to first in FiveThirtyEight's New Hampshire live blog (since deleted?), and it goes a long way to explaining the results.

    But among the 34 percent of New Hampshire voters who prioritized a candidate who agrees with them on major issues, Sanders led with 39 percent support, with Buttigieg and Klobuchar lagging far behind at 21 and 12 percent respectively. (The top issues, according to the same poll: health care, climate change, and income inequality.) . . .

    While voters may name concrete priorities when asked by pollsters, voters in reality balance a whole host of variables, from electability to policy positions to personal likability, when picking a nominee. But given that so much of Democratic voters' attention is going to beating Trump -- and has been for some time -- this conflict between electability and policy positions will likely be a major one for the rest of the primary season.

    For Sanders, now the frontrunner, it also seems to be a notable weakness. It's not just that he lost among voters who prioritize beating Trump. Democrats in general seem to view him as less electable, at least according to the New Hampshire exit polls: Asked who stands the best chance against Trump, 27 percent of voters said Buttigieg, 21 percent said Klobuchar, and 19 percent said Sanders.

    This sounds like a lot of Democrats are so chickenshit they're willing to pick inferior candidates if they think they might fare better against Trump. The reasoning, I suppose, is that any Democrat would be better than Trump, which runs the risk of sliding into the notion that the Democrat most similar to Trump would capture the widest slice of in-between voters.

  • Virginia is poised to decriminalize marijuana.

• Annie Lowrey: The Berniephobes are wrong: "Wall Street fears the rise of the Vermont senator. The rest of America has less to worry about."

• Ann E Marimow: Trump takes on Judge Amy Berman Jackson ahead of Roger Stone's sentencing.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • How Justice Scalia paved the way for Trump's assault on the rule of law: "Three words: 'the unitary executive'."

  • America's democracy is failing. Here's why. "Four ways America's system of government is rigged against democracy (and Democrats)."

• Nicole Narea: Trump is sending armed tactical forces to arrest immigrants in sanctuary cities.

• Osita Nwanevu: End the GOP: "In order to save our democracy, we must not merely defeat the Republican Party."

• Alex Pareene: Michael Bloomberg's polite authoritarianism.

• Andrew Prokop:

  • Andrew McCabe, Michael Flynn, and the latest Justice Department drama, explained.

  • The fiasco at Bill Barr's Justice Department, explained.

• Joe Ragazzo: There's no resurgence in American manufacturing. It's a myth.

• Nathan J Robinson: A Republican plutocrat tries to buy the Democratic nomination: "No Democrat should consider Michael Bloomberg as a candidate."

• Aaron Rupar:

  • "This is a president declaring himself above the law": A former ethics chief on Trump's dangerous new era: Interview with Walter Shaub, who says, "What I didn't expect is how badly the system would fail to stop him."

  • Trump: The economy is the best in history. Also Trump: We need to cut raises for federal workers.

  • Trump's New Hampshire rally showed how he's already sowing discord about the 2020 election.

• Charlie Savage/Adam Goldman/Julian E Barnes: Justice Department is investigating CIA resistance to sharing Russia secrets.

• Dylan Scott:

  • Why Medicare-for-all works for Bernie Sanders -- and nobody else.

  • Why Utah is sending workers to Mexico to buy Medicine: "The state's plan to send patients to Mexico to buy cheap drugs is an indictment of US health care."

• Rebecca Smithers: Bill Gates orders £500m hydrogen-powered superyacht. [PS: This article was subsequently removed. Evidently Gates did not buy this yacht.] Related: Rupert Neate: Superyachts and private jets: spending of corrupt super-rich revealed [2019-10-23].

Alanna Vagianos: Michael Bloomberg quietly rejoined clubs that largely exclude women, minorities

• Joyce White Vance: If Trump is allowed to turn the Justice Department into a political weapon, no one is safe.

• Peter Wade: Bloomberg said ending a racist housing practice caused financial crisis.

• Kimberly Wehle: A conservative judge draws a line in the sand with the Trump administration.

• Savannah Wooten: Trump's proposed budget is fuel for American militarism.

• Matthew Yglesias:

  • 7 things to know about the private equity industry. A "Weeds" podcast with Emily Stewart, but the "seven main takeaways" are printed. I might try to reduce this to one: PE firms buy up supposedly underperforming firms with borrowed money, rob them, then dispose of the remains either by reselling them or by letting the bankruptcy courts settle with the creditors.

  • Mike Bloomberg is trying to remind voters that Trump inherited his money.

  • Mainstream Democrats shouldn't fear Bernie Sanders: "He'd be a strong nominee and a solid president." Under a section called "Stop freaking out":

    Some of his big ideas are not so hot on the merits, but it's not worth worrying about them because the political revolution is so unrealistic. And on a couple of issues where the next president will probably have a fair amount of latitude, Sanders breaks from the pack in good ways. He's perhaps not an ideal electability choice, but his track record on winning elections is solid and his early polling is pretty good. There's no particular reason to think he'd be weaker than the other three top contenders, and at least some reason to think he'd be stronger.

  • Amy Klobuchar is the thinking moderate Democrat's electability candidate.

  • Elizabeth Warren's once-promising, now-imperiled campaign, explained.

• Li Zhou: The Senate just voted to check Trump's ability to take military action against Iran. Have you noticed that when a president wants the authorization to use military force, it only takes a bare majority, but when Congress wants to limit a president's warmaking, it takes two-thirds to override a presidential veto?

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