2:35pm Friday Warren has dropped out, leaving a two-candidate race between Sanders and Biden. The delegate count at The Green Papers currently gives Biden a 671-599 lead over Sanders, from popular votes of 35.1% Biden, 28.7% Sanders. In California, Sanders has an 8.4% lead over Biden with over 3 million votes remaining, but some of these will be Republican primary votes. Late counting in California skews more left the longer it goes.
2:19pm Thursday Last night, Bloomberg withdrew from the contest and endorsed Biden. No decision has yet been made by Warren. In California, Sanders leads by 8.7% with all election day precincts reporting. We should know approximately how many outstanding votes are left tomorrow.
9:53pm Conversation article up. Biden is likely to win ten states to four for Sanders, and has a 102-delegate lead in The Green Papers count. In 2016, Clinton had little appeal to lower-educated whites, and that’s likely why Sanders was competitive. But Biden has more appeal to the lower-educated than Clinton. Once moderate rivals withdrew, he consolidated the moderate vote.
8:37pm With 79% of election day precincts counted in California, Sanders leads Biden by 31.8% to 22.8%. California takes FOUR weeks to count all its votes, so there’s lots of late counting to look forward to!
7:32pm With almost all votes counted in the Israeli election, the right bloc lost a seat, so Netanyahu will be three seats short of a majority. It’s right 58 out of 120, left 55, Yisrael Beiteinu seven.
7:27pm The California Secretary of State now has 64% of precincts reporting, and Sanders is almost 10% ahead of Biden.
6:00pm Texas CALLED for Biden.
4:15pm Biden up to a 1.8% lead in Texas, and the Needle now gives him a 70% chance to win.
4:06pm Biden overtakes Sanders in Texas. He’s 0.4% ahead with 60% of election day precincts in. The Needle gives Biden a 56% chance to win Texas.
4:05pm The NY Times shows 23% of California’s Election Day precincts have already reported, but the California Secretary of State (the official results service) says only 4%.
3:47pm With 54% of election day votes reporting in Texas, Sanders leads by 1.2%. The Needle still sees this as 50-50 between Sanders and Biden.
3:21pm Dave Wasserman has called Texas for Biden, but the NY Times Needle says it’s 50-50 with 34% reporting. Sanders has a 3.6% lead.
3:18pm Massachusetts officially CALLED for Biden. With 65% reporting, he has 33.4%, Sanders 26.7% and Warren 22.1%.
3:10pm With 93% of election day votes in in North Carolina, Biden’s lead is now almost 19 points, up from seven before election day votes.
3:03pm California not called for Sanders, but it looks good for hime in exit polls. Biden likely the only other candidate who breaks the 15% delegate threshold statewide.
2:47pm Minnesota CALLED for Biden. He leads by eight points with 57% reporting. Sanders was supposed to win here.
2:45pm With 43% reporting in Alabama, Sanders is at 16.2%, close to the 15% delegate threshold. Falling below 15% would be a disaster for Sanders.
2:34pm Sanders has won Utah, a stronghold for Republicans where the small Democratic electorate is progressive.
2:30pm In Texas, Sanders leads Biden by 5.6% with 23% of election day precincts in. The NY Times needle has Biden very slightly ahead.
2:25pm Dave Wasserman projects Elizabeth Warren will finish third in her home state of Massachusetts, behind Biden (first) and Sanders (second).
2:15pm While I was out for lunch, Biden was CALLED the winner in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee, giving him six state wins. Sanders won Colorado, mainly due a split early vote. Early voting dominates in that state. Biden currently leads in Minnesota and Massachusetts, which Sanders was supposed to win.
1:01pm The NY Times needle gives Biden a 68% chance of winning Texas although Sanders currently leads by 6.6%.
12:58pm As the Election Day vote comes through in North Carolina, Biden increases his lead. He’s now leading in NC by 11% with 29% in.
12:45pm In Virginia, where the election day vote was virtually all voters, Biden leads Sanders by 54-23 with 96% reporting.
12:34pm Maybe early voting will stop Biden from routing Sanders. Biden is only up by seven points over Sanders in North Carolina with 12% of Election Day precincts reporting. Biden not doing so well in votes cast before South Carolina and the withdrawals.
12:18pm With 66% reporting in Virginia, Biden is crushing Sanders by 30 points.
12:15pm Polls in Arkansas close at 12:30pm, then it’s Colorado and Minnesota at 1pm, Utah at 2pm and finally California at 3pm.
12:10pm As regards Texas, a small part of the state is in the Mountain Time zone and doesn’t close til 1pm AEDT. Exit polls will be released then.
12:06pm Alabama CALLED for Biden, while the other 12pm states are uncalled. In Massachusetts, it’s a close three-way race between Biden, Sanders and Warren (it’s Warren’s home state).
11:57am Biden is over 20% in the first Vermont results. If he stays above 15% there, he gets delegates, which Hillary Clinton was unable to do in 2016.
11:49am Biden has a 55-23 lead over Sanders in Virginia with 32% in.
11:40am Count in Virginia is already up to 22%, and it’s Biden by a crushing 54-24 over Sanders with nobody else close to clearing 15%.
11:34am CNN CALLS North Carolina for Biden based on a large exit poll lead. This is looking better and better for Biden.
11:27am With 1% reporting in Virginia, Biden leads Sanders by 51-25. Everyone else is well below the 15% delegate threshold.
11:24am The next polls to close are North Carolina at 11:30am AEDT, then Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas at 12pm.
11:08am Sanders CALLED the winner in his home state of Vermont, but the exit polls suggest Biden will beat the 15% threshold there, restricting Sanders’ delegate advantage.
11:01am Biden CALLED the winner in Virginia by CNN based on exit polls. He has a 63-18 lead over Sanders with black voters (27% of the electorate) and a 43-26 lead with whites (63% of electorate).
10:20am Wednesday With 94% counted in the Israeli election, right-wing parties have 59 seats (up four since the September 2019 election) and left-wing parties 54 (down three). Likud is the biggest party with a 36-32 lead over Blue & White, reversing the 33-32 deficit last September. It appears that Netanyahu’s coalition will be two seats short of a majority.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at the University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
Fourteen states vote in the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries tomorrow, in which 1,357 of the 3,979 total pledged delegates are awarded (34% of all delegates). Delegates are awarded proportionally to vote share, but with a high 15% threshold that applies to both statewide delegates and Congressional District (CD) delegates. The more Democratic-leaning a CD is, the more delegates it receives. Polls close between 11am and 3pm AEDT.
A few days ago, it appeared likely that Bernie Sanders would come out of Super Tuesday with a large delegate lead over his nearest rival. Even if Sanders did not win a majority of Super Tuesday pledged delegates, such an outcome would have put him on course for a large plurality of all pledged delegates at the July Democratic convention. In those circumstances, Sanders would probably be the nominee.
However, Joe Biden had a crushing 28-point win over Sanders at Saturday’s South Carolina primary. In the next two days, moderate rivals Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar withdrew from the contest and endorsed Biden. There has not been enough time for polls to catch up with these developments, but they are very likely to assist Biden.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast has the chance nobody wins a pledged delegate majority surging to 63%. This does not necessarily mean a contested convention, as it includes cases where one candidate wins a strong plurality, and a deal is worked out before the convention. No delegate majority chances have surged because Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren are still in, and will be assisted in getting to 15% by the withdrawals.
Sanders now has just a 52% chance of winning more delegates than any other candidate, down from over 70% at his peak, while Biden’s chances have rocketed to 48%. The Democratic contest is now effectively a race between two men in their late 70s, and the winner will confront Donald Trump, who is a mere 73.
I recommend The Green Papers for delegate and popular vote counts. The next contests are next Tuesday, when six states vote that account for 9% of pledged delegates.
Netanyahu could win Israeli election outright
With 81% counted in Monday’s Israeli election, right-wing PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of parties had 60 of the 120 seats, to 53 for the opposition left bloc. If the right bloc wins one more seat, Netanyahu would have outright victory after April and September 2019 elections resulted in no government being formed. Yisrael Beiteinu, with seven seats, was unable to cooperate with either the Arab Joint List or the religious right parties before. This result comes despite Netanyahu’s November indictment on bribery and fraud charges.
If the Democratic Party nominates Joe Biden they will be showing a reckless disregard for the future that Americans and the entire world face. They would be saying: we don’t see climate crises, austerity-related deaths of despair, gaping inequality, widespread poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and inadequate public services as a big deal. Instead what we really want to do is keep the Democratic Party on the side of the most powerful people in our society. We don’t care that the party has moved massively to the right during the past forty years. We are fine with demonising a centre-left social democrat as extremely left-wing. We want to help oligarchs to maintain their control of the country. We think that the systems and structures that we have are basically sound – all we need to do is change some of the individuals who are running them.
In short, it would be a tragic mistake with epic devastating consequences for billions of people, including people who are not even born yet.
But hey – Bernie Sanders shouts too much and has unkempt hair, so for stylistic reasons it is OBVIOUSLY better to put forward a person with clear signs of cognitive decline and a longstanding history of touching women inappropriately.
@Hugoaugogo
Oh boy, you got me!
Do you expect me to stop using names for things? You’re confusing the use of a name to talk about something, with the use of a name to draw other associations. I’m not labelling people centrists, I’m referring to them by the term they use for themselves. If I’m going to talk about people who label themselves such, because *they* want to claim some association or property for themselves, then I have to use their term. Or am I meant to keep typing “people who use the c-word to refer to themselves”?
Falcon WA – there is some truth to what you say. I think most of us on here who are routinely slurred as “centrists” and “Labor Right hacks” have agreed that Biden is far from the ideal candidate, and I think nearly all of us would have preferred someone else. And yes, you are right – Trump will smear and slander Biden in any way he can. The fact is that Trump would do the same to any of Dem candidates (and indeed, Sanders would have given him more ammunition than most). That’s what Trump and the GOP do.
But there is one crucial difference between 2016 and 2020, and that’s the simple fact that Trump has been President for the last three years. He’s no longer the insurgent outsider that people could take a chance on (either by voting directly for him or not voting at all), he’s the President, and to those who aren’t fans (which polls suggest is around 50% of voters), he’s far more divisive, incompetent, embarrassing and horrifying than they ever thought possible.
The driving force motivating Democratic primary voters this year is getting rid of Trump, and by the time Super Tuesday rolled around, there were only two serious contenders left, Biden and Sanders, and more voters have decided that Biden is a safer bet for the general election. That might yet be proved right or wrong, but it’s a completely understandable consideration. There’s lot to like about Sanders as a candidate, but it’s a fair bet that he would be a far riskier proposition in the main game, which, for the majority of Democrats, is almost entirely about getting rid of Trump.
The result in November will come down to turn-out, and I think Biden has shown in the primaries that he has been getting at getting out his base. This is probably because he is leaning on far more reliable cohorts when it comes to voting, such as African Americans and moderate suburbanites. Sanders by contrast talks up his strength with the youth vote. People have often done this in the past, but the evidence (even this year) is that they aren’t reliable voters.
In the end, a strong desire to get rid of Trump will likely be the overwhelming motivation in November, and so picking the most vanilla candidate makes sense, in a way. The main issue by far in the general will be Trump himself, and so a candidate that doesn’t doesn’t give the GOP as many openings to make it about them is probably going to be more successful. But, of course, time will tell.
Besides, you seem to think I’m on some holy (hypocritcal) crusade against labels, when I’m not.
For example, you can say “you’re a hypocrite”, or you can say “you’re contradicting yourself”. The former is a label, and for the most part I’ll assume that the intent is really just to point out a contradiction (i.e. the second version) that needs to be resolved, and not an attempt to dismiss the other person entirely as unreliable, untrustworthy, etc, and so dismiss their argument via an attack on their character.
And that’s why I *try* to avoid labels. They often draw in unwanted or unnecessary associations. On the other hand it’s difficult (impossible?) to talk about anything if you’re trying to avoid naming things :-P.
And old people.
Display Name – the only people on here that use the term “centrist” are Sanders fans, and their fellow travellers. Those that might fit your definition might call themselves “moderates” of “pragmatists” but on the whole save their name calling for others. Like you, they probably don’t wish to have their entire political outlook reduced to a single word.
Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow.
And there were Uncle Toms then, and there are Uncle Toms now:
Does anyone have anything to say about the primaries? The carry on about the preferred way of referencing other commenters (as if this is some kind of pronoun smack-down) is tiresome, uninformative, completely irrelevant.
My comment about centrism earlier was directly in relation to another post here earlier which was using ‘centrists’ in the context to mean “anybody who doesn’t support Bernie” and how they are morally weak because they can change candidates rather than blindly follow someone til the bitter end. Of course there are self-identified centrists and, yes, many are as ideological as any other “ist” and, no, I don’t identify as one in the slightest.
Yes, but it usually disappears extremely quickly in the noise.
C@t:
I read another opinion piece about black southern voters which said one of the reasons they are sceptical of Bernie is because they’ve lived for years being handed grand promises, and rarely have they been delivered. That sounds like one of those plausible truisms; I suspect the primary motivation for them this time around was a candidate they felt could beat Trump.
Confessions
Beware the media narrative. It’s powerful and to Biden’s advantage at the moment.
Those journalists complaint about the “Bernie Broa” are the same ones that complained about Trump’s supporters. Trump is now President.
I think it’s actually the Russian’s creating division. All campaign’s have their “Deplorables”. However that does not mean the campaign is embracing them.
Edit: in Australia we see this effect in commentary about unions.
Also, white people should refrain from using the term “Uncle Tom.” It’s not our place to gatekeep communities of colour.
As a member of Team Warren, now that she’s suspended her campaign I will be taking the following 4 courses of action:
1) I will not be endorsing any of the remaining candidates;
2) I will not transfer any of my delegates to the remaining candidates;
3) I will not be voting in the election on November 3, 2020;
4) I will take my bat and ball and go home.
#DemocracyIsDead #AmericaIsDeadToMe
RL
Exactly. It a very patronising stereotype that black people cant like Trump.
Hugoaugogo
That’s not so clear to me. I’ve seen plenty of people (here and elsewhere) refer to themselves as being in the “center” or “the sensible center”, claim various qualities for themselves and refer to others as “extreme”. In fact, as far as I can tell, the whole point of claiming the the “centre” (whatever that is) is to imply (by unspoken comparison) that your opponents are “extreme”.
Same goes for pragmatism. If I’m arguing with you, and I claim I’m a pragmatist, the implication is that you’re not. Do you honestly believe that *anyone* proposes solutions that they believe won’t lead to the best chance of success?
I would argue that the people proposing Biden or Sanders (or someone else) as a solution believe that they are looking further than just an election win, to a future they believe will only grow further out of reach with other candidates. Of course, this relies on an assessment of what’s possible or not, depending on the choices we make now, and obviously there is a fair amount of disagreement over such an assessment.
confessions
If you don’t like it, you can ignore it, as I’ve seen you do other posters who post stuff I consider irrelevant hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year. Or report it to William, and if he doesn’t like it, he can delete it.
Confessions @ #1011 Friday, March 6th, 2020 – 9:11 pm
They are realists. The hard facts of life as an African-American teaches them that. I just think it’s sad that there will always be those who are willing to sup with the devil. In this case, Trump.
DisplayName,
You are making some overly-simplistic assertions about what certain terminology ‘means’ and what people who describe themselves thusly, are.
Some people here would actually be very surprised at how little voters (anywhere) give a hoot about where precisely a candidate falls on some ideological spectrum. Most want to support somebody they like and, if it’s a primary, somebody they think can win. Issues can play a part but it’s more of interest to how it affects them, not how it gets the candidate rated on Political Compass.
I’m a patchwork quilt made up of red and blue squares.
Rational Leftist @ #1013 Friday, March 6th, 2020 – 9:12 pm
Why not? Just BECAUSE I am ‘White’, doesn’t mean I can’t spot a certain sort of African-American from a mile off, and say so. The termis a part of the American literary lexicon, so I think I can therefore use it.
Anyway, I know some of the people in that photograph and they are not simply members of some benign African-American Trump fan club. They have jumped aboard the Trump Train, despite what he has done and said in the past about People of Colour.
Of course, I applaud the Kardashian-West initiative to reduce unfair prison sentences handed down to African-Americans, and only Trump could have gotten away with taking that action because the Republican Party wouldn’t dare shout him down for doing it, like they would with a Democratic POTUS, and most definitely if the President was an African-American Democrat like Obama.
However, I don’t believe any of the people in that photo had anything to do with that.
Also, in general, African-Americans know in their bones that the Republican Party generally encourage the Whites in American society to run the show and keep them down.
David
That’s a mouthful, may I refer you to as a patchist? Maybe a Quiltist?
C@t
I’ll consider it :-P.
I’ll answer to anything for a beer DN. 🙂
re: russians creating division
whatever classified information sanders was shown, at the house national security committee intelligence briefing on 13 february, regarding the precise nature of the russian assistance/interference with his campaign, he is now in a position to share that classified information with warren, in the context of vice president running mate discussions. these would be very interesting discussions indeed, if american intelligence has identified the impersonation of supporters as one of the forms the russian assistance/interference is taking. -a.v.
Nicholas says:
Friday, March 6, 2020 at 8:48 pm
If the Democratic Party nominates Joe Biden they will be….
…giving effect to the votes of millions of Democratic-affiliated voters; voters who want to rid themselves of Trump. There is just one way for America to purge Trump and that is to elect a Democrat. They’re in the process of choosing who that Democrat will be. Sanders will not be the one, notwithstanding the self-gratifying editorials of the Democrat-hating pop-left.
Nate Silver and his ‘538’ data boffins have finally switched the Primary Forecast model back on:
Figures pre-Super Tuesday (nb 1991 pledged delegates for majority) :
538 Model – majority of delegates : Nobody 61%, Biden 31%, Sanders 8%
…forecast total pledged delegates : Biden 1738, Sanders 1363, Bloomberg 555, Warren 283
__________________________________________________________
Today’s forecast
538 Model – majority of delegates : Biden 87%, Nobody 10%, Sanders 3%
…forecast total pledged delegates : Biden 2282, Sanders 1485, Bloomberg 94, Warren 51, Other 68
__________________________________________________________
As Adrian Beaumont points out up top, the count in California tends to skew left as the days go on but there was some speculation on Super Tuesday that it might be a little different this year. Sanders margin has fallen from 8.7% to 8.4% since election night as the late ballots have been counted.
2020 Delegates
@2020Delegates
To those who are holding out hope that Bernie’s total is going to rise once more of CA comes in: so far, the late vote is coming in less for Bernie. So if anything his numbers are going to drop slightly in CA.
3:09 PM · Mar 6, 2020·Twitter Web App
Late voters swung to Biden on Super tuesday which explains the Biden surge.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-the-voters-who-swung-super-tuesday-for-biden/?ex_cid=story-twitter
I think should Biden win the presidency, and I think he will (the anti-Trump turnout will see to that) then I believe he will only serve one term. He won’t go for a second term.
The other thing why Biden is more popular is because he was part of the Obama administration and compared to Trump, people can see the obvious differences.
Sanders is becoming more desperate and he is the one attacking Biden. Biden isn’t, Biden is attacking Trump. Hmm, now where have I seen that before, looks familiar.
I Watched Joe Biden Give An Award To George W Bush So You Don’t Have To
Let no one say I don’t earn my Patreon money. For today’s article I’m sitting down to watch a one hour, 23-minute video on Facebook, the only currently available footage of the complete Veterans Day event in which George W Bush and his wife Laura were given the $100,000 Liberty Medal by Joe Biden at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center. I’ll write the highlights of the ceremony with the time stamps from the video for posterity.
01:00 — Some vacuous douchebag at the podium introduces a woman in military garb named Cynthia McCloud, the superintendent of Independence National Historical Park. When the applause fades, you can hear shouting and whistles being blown in the background which remain very audible throughout the duration of the video. These are the sounds of the demonstration outside by About Face, a veterans organization protesting Bush’s award. You can watch a video of their demonstration here.
01:15 — “Congratulations to President George W Bush,” says McCloud, because for some stupid fucking reason US politicians keep their titles for a lifetime like royalty after vacating their positions. “And to Mrs Laura Bush, for your Liberty Medal award. The award reflects your significant work with veterans, supporting especially their transition to civilian life.”
No word on the fact that Bush is personally responsible for the struggles of most of those war veterans.
02:30 — After some gibberish about ringing bells in celebration of the end of the first World War, McCloud casually mentions how it was called “The great war to end all wars” at the time. No remark on how today’s award recipient launched two full-scale ground invasion wars in his first term in office to no one’s benefit and for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
05:00 — “There isn’t a better time or place to honor President and Mrs Bush for their work with veterans than right here at the birthplace of our country.”
05:30 — Vacuous douchebag is back behind the podium thanking rich pricks who made the event possible. Names a chairman of a law firm, the president of a bank, a chairman of a real estate funds firm, a president of a university, and late billionaire Richard DeVos, who was the chairman of the executive committee of the National Constitution Center and a generous donor to Republican candidates and conservative think tanks. His daughter in-law is Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration’s Secretary of Education. The deceased oligarch gets a moment of silence at 7:40.
8:30 — A video presentation by Citizens Bank and Stradley Ronon talks about “how lucky we are to live in a government by the people, for the people, and of the people.” Talks about how people around the world long for the freedoms enjoyed by citizens of a representative democracy. Dubya is backstage with an erection.
11:30 — Trumpets announce the arrival of Biden and the Bushes, because screw pretending America doesn’t have royalty. George stands awkwardly while the national anthem plays.
20:40 — Demonstrator Stacey Bannerman can be heard interrupting a sermon about the First Amendment by National Constitution Center president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen. Camera pans to Bannerman being escorted out of the building by security while Rosen makes a comment about protesting “respectfully and civilly in accordance with our First Amendment values.” Audience screams and applauds like teenagers at a concert. Bush and Biden laugh. Bannerman was far more civil and respectful than anyone on that stage deserved.
22:30 — Rosen: “After leaving office, President Bush said he would dedicate the rest of his life to serving veterans, and so he has.” Not as well as he’d be serving them by rotting in a cell at the Hague.
27:00 — University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann gushes about the esteemed war criminal’s paintings and his “eye-riveting, heart-wrenching book.”
31:15 — Two veterans are paraded before the crowd, which inexplicably bursts into applause when one of them says she was diagnosed with PTSD and depression and pushed away family and friends. Much time spent talking about mountain biking and golf tournaments helping vets recover from war trauma.
43:20 — Former Vice President and current presidential hopeful Biden takes the podium and magnanimously explains how he calls the US Defense Department every single morning to find out the exact number of US troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Misuses the word “generically”. Expresses no interest in number of people killed by US troops, nor in the destruction he himself helped sow in Libya and Syria. Protesters outside must know Biden’s on; they’re louder now.
48:00 — Biden says he “always respected” Bush during his administration, presumably even while he was getting countless thousands murdered for no legitimate reason and after it was public knowledge that Iraq had been invaded based on lies. Makes an oblique reference to partisan dynamics in the age of Trump, calling the way opposing parties interact with one another today “demeaning”.
Protesters get louder and louder throughout Biden’s speech.
57:30 — Biden announces he’ll be giving the Bushes Philadelphia Eagles jerseys on behalf of his wife Jill, to the thunderous applause of the audience. God this is such a disgusting wank fest. He gives the mass murderer and its wife their damn medals.
1:00:00 — Laura gives a polite, uneventful speech. Who cares.
1:10:30 — The man himself takes the podium and says, “Laura and I are the second and third members of our family to have received this award. The most deserving, of course, was the first, and I am proud to follow in my dad’s footsteps once again.”
Dubya adds that both his father and his brother Jeb have served as the chairmen of the National Constitution Center, which, again, is the center at which he is receiving the award. Biden is the chairman presently. What the fuck am I even watching? What is this incestuous, narcissistic circle jerk? Does the National Constitution Center exist for any other reason than for American royalty to suck each other’s dicks with golden trophies swinging from their necks? The end of this video can’t come fast enough.
1:12:00 — Bush pays his respects to the late warmongering psychopath John McCain, because — get this — McCain was last year’s recipient of this same award. I can’t even fucking fuck fuck.
“This is a man who’d been to the darkest places as a crim- uh, a prisoner of war,” Bush said of McCain. He almost said criminal. Okay, I’m glad I kept watching. That was definitely worth it.
And that is pretty much it for the highlights, my brothers and sisters. Bush babbles about his paintings and how much he loves the United States military, finishes with a “May God bless our veterans, and may God continue to bless the United States of America,” and he’s out of there.
Well, that was awful, but someone had to do it. I’m going to go interact with as many normal human beings as I can now to remember how they talk, then have a long, long shower.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/i-watched-joe-biden-give-an-award-to-george-w-bush-so-you-dont-have-to-f780aeb725f9
Righto. From the deafening silence it’s obvious that the Biden backers from the Labor Right have no issue with him calling the far-right extremists Pence and Chaney “decent” men.
I wonder if the Labor Right also agree with Biden when he says he “always respected” the war crim Bush during his admin while he was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
,
The wake-up call that the establishment needs…
Stop saying Biden is the ‘most electable’. Trump will run rings round him
Supporters of Joe Biden are unlikely to be persuaded by most of the common criticisms. They know he can be rambling and unintelligible. They know his record is unimpressive and that he doesn’t really have “policy proposals”. None of this matters, though, because to them he has the most important quality of all: he can beat Donald Trump. Nothing you can say about the former vice-president’s record, platform or mental state matters next to the argument that he is the best hope Democrats have of getting Trump out of office.
There’s just one problem: it’s a myth. It is a myth just as it was a myth that Hillary Clinton was a good candidate against Trump. Biden is not, in fact, the pragmatic choice. He would not beat Trump. He would lose. And we must say this over and over again. Forget his flubs. Forget his finger-nibbling. Biden would be crushed by Trump. If you want Trump out of office, don’t support Biden.
Last time round, Clinton supporters lived in a strange kind of denial. Anyone could see she had unique vulnerabilities Trump could exploit. She was a Wall Street candidate, and he was running to “drain the swamp”. She was under investigation by the FBI, and his pitch was that Washington was corrupt. She had supported the catastrophic Iraq war, and he portrayed himself as an outsider opponent of those wars. Trump could “run to her left” and make criticisms she would be unable to respond to, because they were accurate. Clinton’s attempts to attack Trump as an out-of-touch, reckless billionaire sex criminal would fail, because Trump would point out that she herself was out of touch, bought by billionaires and had an unrepentant alleged sex criminal as her husband and chief campaign surrogate.
Joe Biden will face many of the same problems. He has been in Washington since the age of 30, representing Delaware, the “capital of corporate America”. He is infamous for his connections to the credit card industry, and he has lied about his degree of support for the Iraq war. Even Matthew Yglesias of Vox calls Biden the “Hillary Clinton of 2020” for his corporate ties and war support. It is worth remembering what being the “Hillary Clinton” of anything means in an election against Trump.
Consider the Ukraine scandal, which is far worse for Biden electorally than usually acknowledged. Democrats have made this the centerpiece of their impeachment case against Trump, setting aside Trump’s most consequential crimes in order to focus on the charge that Trump tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. For Democrats, the scandal is clear-cut: Trump was abusing the power of his office to “damage a political rival”. And they believe that the American people will agree, and will be disturbed by Trump’s unethical behavior. They insist there was “no evidence” that Joe Biden did anything wrong, and that Trump and his associates have been unfairly trying to smear Biden.
Democrats who think this way are walking into a buzzsaw. Let us recall: Hunter Biden was paid up to $50,000 a month by a Ukrainian oil company. Officially, the chief Ukrainian prosecutor had an open investigation into that company. Joe Biden bragged about pressuring Ukraine to fire that prosecutor, which they did. Hunter Biden says he told his father about his position in Ukraine, and Joe Biden did not ask him to step down. Joe Biden contradicts his son’s story, saying they never discussed Hunter Biden’s “work” in Ukraine. One of them is not telling the truth.
Defenders of the Bidens like to point out that the prosecutor was fired for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Hunter Biden. In fact, there was widespread pressure to fire the prosecutor because he wasn’t doing enough on corruption investigations, and there was a consensus among experts that this was the case. Biden’s actions had absolutely nothing to do with his son and it is ridiculous to suggest that they did.
All this is true. But the important question is: does it sound good? And the answer is: no. It sounds terrible.
One reason Democrats are bad at politics is that they concern themselves too much with facts and not enough with impressions. With Clinton’s “emails scandal”, they tried to show Clinton had not technically violated the law, but having Barack Obama’s FBI actively investigating Clinton for possible criminal wrongdoing looked terrible regardless of the facts.
Left-leaning journalists and pundits love to “fact-check” Trump, as if proving that he has lied is in itself persuasive. But 2016 should have showed us how powerless “debunking” is next to “optics”. If you have a Democratic candidate who looks really corrupt, it doesn’t matter if they’re not. People don’t trust the press and they don’t trust politicians.
Imagine Biden running against Trump. Trump will run ads like this, over and over. Good luck responding. Remember that time you have to spend defending yourself against Trump’s accusations is time not spent talking about issues that affect people’s lives. And Biden has already shown little interest in drawing people’s attention to the areas where Democrats should run strong against Trump, such as healthcare, taxation, working conditions and the climate crisis.
His slogan is “no malarkey”, but since Biden himself is a longtime spewer of malarkey, Trump will successfully paint Biden as a hypocrite. Biden’s central case is that he is “not Trump”, that he will return the country to virtuousness and decency. But if Biden doesn’t actually look virtuous and decent – because he isn’t – the argument that he has made for himself collapses completely.
Biden does have some strengths against Trump that Clinton did not. We mock his rambling and tendency for “gaffes”, but these do mean he never sounds like a “scripted politician”. Clinton was criticized as robotic and focus-grouped. Biden is anything but focus-grouped; whatever pops into his head comes out his mouth.
At the same time, compared to Trump, Biden has:
No money
No voter enthusiasm
No organization
No agenda
No real argument for himself
Ask yourself: how likely is such a candidate to win? Is such a person really the one you want to run against Trump? Look at the enthusiasm Trump gets at his rallies. It is real. Trump has fans, and they’re highly motivated. How motivated are Biden’s “fans”? Is Biden going to fill stadiums? Are people going to crisscross the country knocking on doors for him? Say what you want about Clinton, but there were some truly committed Clinton fans, and she had a powerful base of support. By comparison, Biden looks weak, and Trump is savagely effective at preying on and destroying establishment politicians.
Complicated factchecks that attempt to explain the nuances of the Ukrainian criminal prosecution system will not help Biden. People’s already limited enthusiasm for Biden will further wane, and Trump will point to his “strong economy” and “job creation” as evidence Obama and Biden were weak failures. Biden will look tired and irrelevant, and possibly forget why he is even running in the first place. Trump will be re-elected comfortably.
If there are Biden supporters in your life, you need to have serious conversations with them. Do not dwell on things that do not matter to them, like Biden’s record on bussing, or his latest nonsensical comment. Instead, keep the focus on the main argument that is sustaining his campaign: the idea that he is the best candidate to beat Trump. He isn’t. His electability is a myth, and when we look honestly at the facts we can see that Biden is actually a dangerously poor candidate to run.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/04/joe-biden-electable-trump-2020-election
On where Warren’s supporters might go now she’s out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-voters.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
nice to see you back, Firefox. let it rip. -a.v.
Meanwhile Republicans continue their targeting of Biden and Romney has now flipped to fall behind party lines.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/romney-to-vote-for-subpoena-in-senate-investigation-targeting-the-bidens/2020/03/06/d01a1e88-5fcd-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html
Well we all know where Bernie stands policy wise, because the right wingers on here have been having a go at them consistently. Seems that they don’t approve of public universal health care, ha, and they call themselves of the left or progressive. Anyway what are Biden’s policies. Has he uttered a single intelligible sentence on policy so far? Name a policy somebody. BTW maintaining the status quo does not count.
Firefox says:
Saturday, March 7, 2020 at 9:20 am
Righto. From the deafening silence it’s obvious that …..
….no-one could care less what you say or think about US politics. The interesting issue is the political choices made by millions of Democratic voters, not your petty/futile/trivial/angry/sanctimonious attempts at character assassination of other assorted bludgers. Who gives a rats about your truculence?
Mike Bloomberg would save nearly $4 billion on his tax bill under Joe Biden’s proposed plan compared to the ‘tax on extreme wealth’ Bernie Sanders wants
Mike Bloomberg blitzed the country with ads promising to raise taxes on the rich during his short-lived but expensive presidential campaign.
But when he dropped out of the race after getting trounced on Super Tuesday, the former New York City mayor endorsed the candidate that wants to raise taxes on billionaires like Bloomberg the least – namely, Joe Biden. Under Biden’s tax plan, Bloomberg’s annual tax bill would be $US3.7 billion cheaper than it would be under Bernie Sanders, according to an analysis by CBS MoneyWatch.
Sanders’ “Tax on Extreme Wealth” is the most aggressive tax proposal in the race, applying to individuals with net worths above $US32 million. Elizabeth Warren proposed taxing those with net worths over $US50 million in her “Ultra-Millionaire Tax.” The senator from Massachusetts withdrew her own bid for the Democratic nomination on Thursday.
Before his own withdrawal, Bloomberg proposed an income-based tax on ultra-wealthy Americans. The former New York City mayor’s tax plan included raising the tax rate for the highest-earning Americans from 37% to 39.6%, according to his campaign website. That was the tax rate before Trump’s unpopular Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took effect in 2018. Bloomberg also proposed adding an additional 5% “surtax” on incomes of more than $US5 million a year, according to his campaign website.
Biden, however, released a proposal that did not include a wealth tax. While Biden’s plan does call for raising taxes, corporate rates would still be below what they were before Trump’s tax bill took effect, according to The Washington Post.
A majority of the American public, a group of ultra-wealthy Americans, and a handful of presidential candidates all hold the opposite view, believing that a wealth tax would help close the growing wealth gap in the United States.
Any true wealth tax proposal would face substantial headwinds before becoming law, Business Insider reported. The constitutionality of such a tax would likely end up debated in front of the Supreme Court, according to former Department of Justice tax attorney James Mann, who is now a tax partner at law firm Greenspoon Marder. The revenue raised by a potential wealth tax would also likely be much lower than its advocates expect because of tax evasion tactics the ultra-wealthy would probably undertake to avoid paying more, Mann told Business Insider.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mike-bloomberg-taxes-under-joe-biden-bernie-sanders-wealth-tax-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
Sanders is campaigning against the only Democrat left in the race. He’s becoming Trumpy. He’s now an enemy of the people. His vote will crash.
Apart from policy my real concern with Biden is his already demonstrated incoherence and apparent confusion and forgetfulness on the campaign trail. It has the hallmarks of a campaign like the movie “Breakfast at Bernie’s” ( No pun intended)
FalconWA @ #1043 Saturday, March 7th, 2020 – 11:07 am
I have much the same concerns about Trump.
Firefox’s sources & Firefox are correct: republicans are going to make mince meat out of biden. -a.v.
P1
I don’t think Trump is incoherent in the same way. There is an element of evil and devil may care in Trump’s utterances that many except as Trump being Trump.
So far Trump has been able to complete sentences, generally knows what State he is campaigning in on any one day and hasn’t confused his wife with his sister when they are standing right beside him.
Running on a platform of I am not Trump and will restore decency to Washington is not enough. Biden is Washington and not being Washington is what won for Trump last time. Despite being President for three years his base still see him as “not Washington”
Biden is 2020s version of Hillary Clinton with very similar baggage. Doing the same over and over won’t change the outcome
FalconWA @ #1046 Saturday, March 7th, 2020 – 11:31 am
You apparently have not watched many of Trump’s speeches. There was a mash up video (I will try and find it and post it) of dozens of instances where Trump mispronounces words, uses the wrong word, loses his thread in the middle of a sentence, or just babbles insanely. The man is either demented or on drugs. But the really odd thing is, his audience doesn’t even seem to notice, or care!
Also, Biden running on a simple platform of “I am not Trump, and I am not a scary socialist … oh, and I was VP to Obama” is about the best the Democrats could hope to do.
I still don’t think it will be enough, but it is their best shot.
I’m sure President Joe will be pleased to give Bernie an award at some point. Probably, nicest loser.
sanders isn’t going to lose “nicely”, he’s fighting for his country. -a.v.
alfred venison @ #1049 Saturday, March 7th, 2020 – 12:27 pm
So he says.