"As Joe Biden builds momentum, Bernie Sanders ramps up attacks after Super Tuesday narrows field" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, March 4, 2020
WASHINGTON —Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showed he was prepared to put up a fight after his disappointing Super Tuesday, noting he and Joe Biden would likely be roughly tied in convention delegates once the results from California are fully tabulated.
Like the Washington Generals used to.
The next phase of the battle is likely to pit Biden’s momentum — and backing by the Democratic Party establishment — against Sanders’ voter mobilization efforts as the race moves to primaries in general election battleground states such as Michigan, Arizona, and Florida.
What difference does mobilization make if there are funny things happening in the machines, as well as the establishment pumping up turnout for a change?
Biden may have the edge in these states after he swept districts across Texas and the South on Tuesday, powered by support from older Black and Latino voters, as well as moderate white suburbanites and women, according to exit polls, but Sanders stayed close behind by mobilizing the young, communities of color, and white working-class voters. Without either candidate building an insurmountable lead in delegates Tuesday, the contest is shaping up to be a long one, political strategists said.
"The race is essentially tied, and it’s going to be a tough fight,” said Matt Bennett, a cofounder of the center-left think tank Third Way.
They claim to be progressive centrists, but their top co-chair is Clyburn and it looks like a Clinton racket.
Oh, how quickly the Globe forgets, 'eh?
Yeah, a lot changes over the course of six years.
Biden won Super Tuesday’s second-biggest prize, Texas, and primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia, according to projections by the Associated Press. Exit polls from The Washington Post showed he had the most sway with voters whose main desire is to defeat President Trump. He also performed better with those who cast their ballots late in eight states.
Super Tuesday was a massacre, and it was “just unprecedented, no ground game, no resources, and he didn’t just win, he won decisively” -- like the tornadoes through Tennessee. No one saw them coming, either.
The excitement and trust in Biden among older, Black voters was palpable from Virginia to Dallas and Houston.
Now I'm feeling like I may have coronavirus.
“People are seeing the importance of the African-American vote and the importance of African-American women voting and how we always go to the polls,” said Jacqueline Barksdale, 53, of Charlotte, N.C, who attended a Biden watch party on Tuesday night at a cidery in Charlotte, but Sanders’ supporters attempted to remain optimistic, if somewhat shaken by the lower-than-expected turnout. Long waits reported at polling stations in low-income and communities of color in California and Texas only made it harder. Still, Sanders won Colorado, Utah, and his home state of Vermont, and he was projected by the AP to win California, the state with the largest number of delegates, largely boosted by young and Latino voters, as well as the most liberal.
That's when the Globe narrative begins to fall apart. What do they mean low turnout? Just for Bernie? Joe was boasting about it Tuesday night, and we are told Latinos boosted Bernie but not as much, huh? I thought Republicans were the experts in voter suppression, yet here it is in the Democratic primary.
How can you blame the young for being disinterested and disillusioned with politics? I am a lot older and care very deeply, and even I am disinterested and disillusioned with the political puppet show and intramural ba$ketball game.
“I want everyone to give me a call back after California’s numbers are fully in, so we can do an actual postmortem,” said Natalia Salgado, political director for the progressive Center for Popular Democracy network. Salgado pointed to hard-fought efforts by the Sanders campaign to reach out to young and new voters, yet, she conceded, “In some ways we saw the pay off, and we also saw there needs to be a deepening of sorts of those efforts.”
Biden’s surge began with his landslide victory in South Carolina. Within the next 72 hours, two of his moderate rivals — former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar — suspended their campaigns and endorsed him.
He wins the South's version of New Hampshire, and yet it's huge.
The support continued to build Wednesday. Mike Bloomberg, the former New York city mayor, dropped out after failing to win any state primaries, with his only victory coming in the caucuses in American Samoa. The billionaire businessman spent more than $500 million after skipping the early contests to focus on Super Tuesday states. He quickly got behind Biden, saying he was leaving the race for the same reason he got in: to defeat President Trump. It’s unclear whether his support for Biden could translate into more campaign dollars or staff, but addressing supporters on Wednesday, Bloomberg signaled his campaign for a stronger and more united America would continue.
“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it," Bloomberg said in New York. “After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.”
That's gross given the odd habits of Creepy Uncle Joe; however, beyond Mike's nondisclosure agreements are the entries in Epstein's book.
Sanders, who narrowly won Michigan during his 2016 presidential bid, could hold on to his edge there and other union states across the Midwest. He argued Wednesday that Biden would have to explain his votes to authorize the Iraq War and “disastrous trade agreements" that devastated the region, as well as his desire to maintain what Sanders called a “dysfunctional and cruel” health care system.
“I like Joe, I think he is a very decent human being,” Sanders said. “Joe and I have a very different voting record. Joe and I have a very different vision for the future of this country. And Joe and I are running very different campaigns.”
Sanders launched new TV ads hitting Biden for his Iraq war vote as well as past comments about freezing spending on Social Security, and the senator announced campaign events in Michigan and Mississippi, which hold primaries next Tuesday, as well as Arizona and Illinois, which vote a week later.
They have already called Michigan for Biden!
Biden’s campaign rolled out endorsements from current and former elected officials in several of those upcoming states as he and Sanders prepared to go head-to-head.
“It is a different race now,” said Representative Mark Pocan, a progressive Democrat from Wisconsin. “You’re not like, ‘Oh, I kind of like Pete, I kind of like whoever’… Now you’ve got a contrast.”
Representative Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, noted that many voters Tuesday made up their minds at the last minute and that Sanders performed well with some key voting blocs.
“You saw with Latino voters … a real push towards Sanders,” she said. “Just like we can’t diminish Joe Biden’s success last night, we also can’t diminish Senator Sanders’ success in California with young voters, with Latino voters.”
You are grasping at straws! The alleged data and pre$$ narrative show none of that!
The most interesting outcome on Super Tuesday was in Texas, which felt the pull of the South and the West and the generational divide of the Latino voter bloc. Young and Latino voters, particularly along the border, bolstered Sanders, but older and more moderate Latinos helped deliver Biden a narrow victory in the state with the second-most delegates.
If they can rig the Lone Star state (Beto?), it's over.
“Joe Biden owes his victory in Texas to Latinos voters,” said Kristian Ramos, a Democratic consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based consulting shop Autonomy Strategies. “If his share of the Latino vote had been consistent with what he got in California, he would have lost, but he was able to close the margin with this group considerably to form the coalition to win.”
Those dynamics will be at play in Florida.....
They just called Florida for Biden!!
--more---"
Yes, the “Joementum is real. The American people have spoken, and Joe Biden is sprinting towards the Democratic nomination” scream the headlines.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren now below fold (or behind the closed doors of smoke-filled backroom) and on her way out:
"All eyes on Elizabeth Warren as she weighs her future after Super Tuesday rout" by Liz Goodwin and Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, March 4, 2020
Some liberals urged Senator Elizabeth Warren to drop out of the race and endorse Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a last-minute effort to unify the left. Moderates including former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and billionaire Mike Bloomberg backed former vice president Joe Biden after ending their campaigns this week, but it was not clear whether Warren would rally behind Sanders or Biden, or simply withhold an endorsement should she choose to exit the race, making her a potential wild card in a race that could still hold some surprises.
“I don’t think it’s a given at all that she endorses Bernie Sanders or anyone,” said one Democratic operative familiar with her campaign who spoke on condition of not being identified.
She is going to play coy again, eh?
If she doesn't endorse Bernie she will prove she is a faux progressive and simply a lapdog for the DNC.
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a supporter of Sanders, took to Twitter Tuesday night to suggest Warren should get out of the race, but the leaders of groups backing Sanders were careful to avoid appearing too eager to push out Warren, the last woman standing in the top tier of the race.
“We’re not going to tell Elizabeth Warren…to get out of this race,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, who said he was not confident Warren would endorse Sanders if she drops out, or that her exit would necessarily be a boon to Sanders.
Some elements of Warren’s campaign were still chugging along on Wednesday. Her staffers in Michigan, which votes next week, made calls about a weekend of get-out-the-vote events. The venues in Arizona, Michigan, and Idaho where she is scheduled to hold campaign events in the coming days said she had not canceled, but Warren faces a stark and unpleasant reality: A candidate who once rode a tide of excitement about her policy-focused presidential campaign to the top of the polls had finished third or worse in all 14 states that voted on Tuesday — including her home of Massachusetts.
Just days ago, her campaign had suggested it could amass enough delegates to play kingmaker at a brokered convention, but that plan now seems less plausible, since only Biden and Sanders consistently racked up delegates on Tuesday, and may find themselves in a position to amass enough to clinch the nomination on their own. By Wednesday afternoon, estimates showed Biden and Sanders each had more than 500 delegates in the ongoing count, while Warren had notched only about 60. A candidate needs 1,991 to win the nomination on the first ballot, but there was a glimmer of hope for Warren. The race has been remarkably fluid and unpredictable, as evidenced by the way Biden benefited from an enormous surge of support on Tuesday, winning states he had barely campaigned in, following his win in South Carolina on Saturday.
Yeah, maybe she can build momentum.
“We also all know the race has been extremely volatile in recent weeks and days with front-runners changing at a pretty rapid pace,” Lau wrote in his e-mail to the staff, referencing a fact that may provide incentive for Warren to stay in the race and see if she can catch a last-minute surge of support.
Some of her supporters urged her to stay in the race at least until the next debate, on March 15, when she would likely be the only woman standing next to Biden and Sanders, each of whom have their own flaws and foibles. Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard remains in the race, but has not met debate thresholds for months.
Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who made his own decision to drop out of a presidential race in 2004 after initially resisting calls to do so, said Warren could benefit from sticking out the race a bit longer, in case the rapidly changing picture scrambles once more, but some progressives have begun hinting that Warren’s candidacy is hurting Sanders, who underperformed in some states on Tuesday and now faces a dire threat from Biden.
“Imagine if the progressives consolidated last night like the moderates consolidated, who would have won?” Omar asked on Twitter Tuesday night.
Then Bernie would be ahead in delegates and Joe would be the Comeback Kid, 'er.....
Sanders struck a careful note instead. When asked about Warren at a Wednesday press conference, he took out a piece of paper and placed it on the top of his lectern, reading from it as he answered the question.
If history is any guide, Warren may be inclined to wait on an endorsement if she exits the campaign. In 2016, she stayed neutral during the primary between Sanders and Hillary Clinton — even though she was more ideologically aligned with Sanders — and then endorsed Clinton once she was the presumptive nominee.
A Warren endorsement would likely provide Sanders with a much-needed boost as he heads into a slate of contests against Biden.
“It’s certainly possible that her strength among suburban women could help [Sanders] with that demographic and show that he could be something of a unifier,” said Sean McElwee, a progressive pollster who has worked with Warren’s campaign.
For some reason, they really don't like Bernie.
McElwee said he believed more of Warren’s remaining supporters leaned toward Sanders over Biden, because those who leaned toward Biden were more likely to have jumped ship already during his post-South Carolina surge, but Warren has expressed deep skepticism about both Sanders and Biden on the trail, clashing with Sanders over his alleged private comments about a woman not being able to defeat Trump and tangling with Biden after he called her elitist and suggested he had just as much to do with creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as she did, and just in the last few days, she told crowds in Houston and Los Angeles that neither Sanders nor Biden can meet the moment.
Some Sanders endorsers have started reaching out to people in Warren’s camp to talk about unifying and to soothe any bad feelings between the two groups.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Wednesday that activists should remain positive and welcoming, an attempt to calm any online vitriol from Sanders supporters against Warren that could hinder an endorsement, according to one Democrat familiar with the strategy.....
Who wants it now? It's worthless and too late!
--more--"
"Sure, we’d vote for a woman ― just not those six" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, March 4, 2020
So this is where we find ourselves, 3½ years into a women’s movement marked by fiery rage and purposeful political activism: The most diverse field of Democratic presidential candidates in history is being winnowed to a duel between two white male septuagenarians who have already lost the nomination three times between them.
Watch the online vitriol, will ya'?
The rage is still so vivid to me, from Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood video to the #MeToo movement to women’s call to action and demands for change at the voting booth. I keep thinking of all the signs I saw at the women’s marches — not just the giddily profane ones, but the poignant ones, too. The Future is Female. A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance. America Grabs Back.
Women did not grab back on Super Tuesday and they did not channel their Trump-induced anger into a female champion. Women decided again that there is not going to be a woman president anytime soon.
At least someone down at the Globe acknowledges that women are not monolithic in their thinking.
“There’s zero evidence to the idea that women will somehow wake up in the morning and magically support other women,” said Soraya Chemaly, the author of “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger.”
Kristina Looper, a 30-year-old Cambridge voter with a doctorate in physics, spoke of the heyday of the women’s marches in the past tense on Super Tuesday.
“It was really a response to frustration with the looming Trump administration, and I don’t feel like that particular part of the movement has done a lot of work to move things forward,” said Looper. She voted for Senator Elizabeth Warren because she viewed her as the best candidate — not because she’s a woman.
That's why I voted Bernie. His positions on the issues.
“I feel like the bigger thing that has happened since then was the get out-the-vote and the forwarding of women’s candidates in the midterm elections when we took the House.”
Yes, women’s anger was converted to electoral action in the 2018 midterm elections that catapulted historic numbers of women to Congress, but voters have always been more comfortable electing a woman to a legislative body — where she’s one of many — than to an executive position, where she’s the boss, according to the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which supports women’s advancement in politics.
Chemaly pointed to “a well-documented and persistent pattern” of women — particularly white women — failing to support their peers as leaders. She cited a 2015 Harvard Graduate School of Education study of nearly 20,000 teenagers that found the students most trusted as leaders were white boys. The least trusted were white girls. Those least likely to support white girls? Other white girls.
“I think we saw that again with Elizabeth Warren,” said Chemaly, who supported her. Leadership among white women tends to make other women feel competitive and inadequate, she said.
But that's mens fault.
Some women said that the movement of the past few years doesn’t persuade them to vote for a woman, particularly when there are progressive men in the race looking out for their interests.
Really? Where?
“I feel like the threats to women in general are with Trump, and I don’t feel like any threat to me is coming from the Democratic Party,” said Bethany Sales, 30, an editor.
She still smarts remembering the Access Hollywood video that leaked a few weeks before the 2016 election — and what she calls voters’ “blatant disregard for what came out" by electing a president they’d just heard bragging about assaulting women. In the months and years that followed, Sales went to the Women’s March in Boston and donated money to Planned Parenthood, but in the primary, she was torn between Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. She didn’t like Warren’s late attacks on Sanders and she was most impressed with his consistency and passion on the issues that most concern her.
“There’s just something about Bernie,” she said. “It’s hard to find authenticity in politics, especially now, and there’s just something authentic about him.”
So on Super Tuesday, Sales went to her Cambridge polling place ― the same one where Warren votes ― and cast her vote for Sanders.
Women have always bristled at the notion that we should back a candidate based on gender. That’s also because of the cultural focus on individualism, said Chemaly.
“We focus a lot on the idea that we have a lot of self-efficacy and agency, that we as individuals can seek it out and make our own judgments,” Chemaly said. “People aren’t really educated to think about the role that they play in perpetuating inequality. They just see candidates as individuals.”
It's on excuse after another.
Even those who supported Warren on Tuesday were adamant about their gender-objectivity.
“I think she’s the best candidate and also happens to be a woman,” said Caroline Elkins, a 50-year-old Harvard University professor who cited Warren’s eloquence, intelligence, and clear vision for the country’s future. “Hands-down there’s nobody close to her in the field.”
Elkins delighted in watching Warren’s debate performances, particularly when Warren savaged Mike Bloomberg for silencing former employees with non-disclosure agreements, but voters did not reward Warren with the debate ribbon she won in her youth. Instead, they went for the guys.
“And that should surprise us why?” asked Elkins.
Warren was the only woman remaining in the race with a chance to win the nomination and on Super Tuesday, she didn’t win a single state. Not the state where she was born and raised (Oklahoma), the state where she taught as a young professor (Texas), or even the state she represents in the US Senate (Massachusetts).
“Her candidacy gestures to what I think many women, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy, wrestle with every single day," Elkins added. “Her struggle is our struggle."
Today, those who advocate for women’s political advancement are looking for bright spots. In the 2020 race, six women appeared on a presidential debate stage at once — more than had ever taken the stage in all of American history, noted Amanda Hunter, research and communications director for the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.
Like a kernel of corn in a turd.
“Each of the women in this race, in their own way, challenged stereotypes and showed a different example of what a presidential candidate looks like,” said Hunter.
So we have this: In 2020, the “woman candidate” was no longer a token, but a full category that included Warren and fellow Senators Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Kamala Harris; author Marianne Williamson; and Representative Tulsi Gabbard (who, like Warren, is still in the race, though in early contests she picked up only a single delegate).
Some of those women presented credible candidacies and political personae and were viewed as less polarizing and more “likable” than Warren, but in the end, America didn’t like them either.....
The reporter is confusing America with the Democratic primary voters. The slip is an interesting insight into the way they thing, though.
--more--"
BREAKING NEWS: Elizabeth Warren is dropping out of presidential race
"For women, it’s ever thus; After Super Tuesday, what are we left with -- besides the nagging sense that no woman will ever be good enough?" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist, March 4, 2020
Elizabeth Warren has been the best candidate by almost every measure, but it’s often the case that better than isn’t good enough when you’re a woman.
So what are we left with, besides the nagging sense that no woman will ever be good enough?
Unease, for one thing. Though they are men, both Bernie Sanders, 78, and Joe Biden, 77, have electability issues galore. Gaffe-y Biden has been pummeled by a president willing to abuse the power of his office to knock out the former vice president. The Burisma conspiracy machine is already crackling back to life, and Trump has sprung to Sanders’ defense so often during this primary campaign that it’s clear he sees weaknesses that the Vermont Senator’s fans do not.
Biden is a throwback, which is clearly part of his appeal as a candidate, but doesn’t augur well if you’re looking for more ambition in the next Democratic president. Still, we’re at such a desperate point that many of us would be thrilled simply to go back to the way things were before the disaster that is the Trump presidency, even if it means the next president has been on the wrong side of a distressingly wide variety of issues (paging Anita Hill), but most outside the Trump cult agree that a win by any Democrat in the general election is absolutely vital.
Look at her wax nostalgic like a, gulp, conservative.
Which is why talk has now turned to running mates, and the critical role thereof. Certain names keep coming up, most of them women: Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who endorsed Biden; California’s Kamala Harris; Stacey Abrams, the rising Georgia voter rights activist on every list. Each of them is seen as somebody who can make up for the deficits of youth, eloquence, and diversity at the top of the Democratic ticket.
In other words, it may fall to women to carry a man over the finish line. Is that progress? Or the world’s oldest story?
Behind every great man is a..... didn't a woman say that?
Vice president is nothing to sneeze at, but with Warren, women were entitled to dream of so much more.....
She could have been a trailblazer, and why has she stopped dreaming (the feeling of entitlement may be a problem, though)?
--more--"
They gotta stand by their man, 'er, woman, and the Globe now says this isn't a good way to pick a president:
"This isn’t a good way to pick a president; There’s no perfect way to pick a presidential nominee, but the Democratic Party’s process is awful" by The Editorial Board, March 4, 2020
So after months of debates, a gazillion polls, and endless politicking in the early states, Democrats abruptly narrowed their field to two candidates on Tuesday. With most results from the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday contests counted, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden are now the only two candidates left with a viable pathway to a delegate majority at the convention in Milwaukee.
There’s no perfect way to pick a presidential nominee, but the Democratic Party’s process is awful. First they let unrepresentative Iowa and New Hampshire spend months agonizing over their choices, an unfair privilege that forces candidates to lavish attention on two predominantly white states and court voters practically one at a time. Then they let a group of states big enough to deliver a knockout punch vote all at once, with almost no time to weigh whatever choices are still left when their turn comes up.
The primaries are too slow, then too fast. Too deep, then too shallow. Too small, then too big.
Consider that in Massachusetts, voters had less than 48 hours to make a fully informed choice.
HAW HAW HAW!
Yup, the POOR UNINFORMED Massachusetts voters! I agree!
In the end, Massachusetts went for Biden, who beat both second-place Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who finished third. Yet just a few days before, the polls showed Biden not standing a chance in the Bay State.
There you go!
Indeed, Joe Biden did extraordinarily well everywhere on Super Tuesday, riding momentum from his landslide victory in South Carolina and the endorsements he garnered from Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. Maybe his support was always there, and will endure as the campaign turns to Michigan and Missouri. Or maybe Tuesday’s results were really a snapshot in time, based on the burst of short-term momentum for Biden that would have faded.
Maybe Liz will catch lightning in a bottle, right?
It goes without saying that Biden and Sanders are both far preferable to President Trump, and as flawed as the Democratic process is, the GOP’s primary rules are still worse: The party allows winner-take-all primaries, while the Democrats at least attempt to ensure that candidates’ representation at the convention is proportional to the number of votes they received in the primaries, but before the next election, the Democrats need a serious overhaul that goes beyond a few tweaks to the rules. Get rid of caucuses; put more representative states at the beginning of the line; leave a more reasonable time period between primaries; prevent so many states from voting on the same day that a well-timed hot streak cannot decide the nomination.
DOES IT?
I would like you to say it anyway because your coverage fooled me.
Democratic voters — no matter which candidate they supported — should demand more from the party. The exact scenario that played out this year may never repeat itself, but to ensure that its process is equitable to all racial groups, and fair to all voters, the party needs to modernize its antiquated system......"
They appear to have no problem with superdelegates, though.
Time to abort:
"The arguments were the court’s first sustained consideration of abortion since President Donald Trump’s appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh shifted the court to the right, with a ruling expected in June. The case is very likely to yield an unusually telling decision, one that could reshape the constitutional principles governing abortion rights and ripple through the presidential campaign....."
Related:
"Çhief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday criticized as “inappropriate’’ and “dangerous’’ comments that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer made outside the Supreme Court earlier in the day about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Roberts was responding to Schumer’s remarks at a rally outside the court while a high-profile abortion case was being argued inside. “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said, naming the two appointees of President Trump, according to video of the rally available online. It was not clear exactly what the New York Democrat meant....."
Oh, I think it is. The intelligence agencies have six ways from Sunday to get back at you, remember?
Also see:
Trump attacks Sessions ahead of primary runoff for US Senate
He was forced into a runoff with a political newcomer boosted by name recognition from years as a football coach at Auburn University.
Trump accuser defers request for DNA sample
She's frigid when it comes to the climax.
"A Maryland board voted Wednesday to pay a total of $8.7 million to three men who were wrongly imprisoned for more than 35 years each for a murder they did not commit....."
It's the rule rather than the exception regarding AmeriKan JU$TU$.
"A Virginia elementary school clinic aide convicted of stealing students’ prescription medications and replacing them with other drugs was sentenced Monday to five years in prison....."
She needed them to kill the pain.
Related:
Years before deadly shooting, a noose appeared on the gunman’s locker at Coors brewery
Now I understand why that was a one-day guzzle and not a six pack.
Mafia daughters, squabbling lawyers open Durst murder trial
This blog is jinxed and that's why I'm done.
May God help us all:
"Deadlocked in 3 elections, Israel seeks ways to avert a 4th" by David M. Halbfinger New York Times, March 4, 2020
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestured during a meeting of Israel's right-wing bloc at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Wednesday (Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images).
JERUSALEM — With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supporters for another term outnumbered by lawmakers who want him gone, Israel’s political system — having cranked through the motions of a third election in less than a year only to produce another stalemate — began grappling Wednesday with what to do next.
A nearly complete vote count showed Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and religious parties with 58 seats in the 120-seat Parliament, three short of a governing majority.
That leaves Israel more or less back at square one — except that Netanyahu’s trial on felony corruption charges starts March 17, his opponents appear exhausted by a campaign in which he outclassed them to achieve a solid plurality, and no one in the country appears willing to contemplate a fourth ballot.
Netanyahu’s Likud party sought to maximize its leverage as the largest faction to emerge from Monday’s election, floating the possibility of its recruiting right-leaning lawmakers from the mostly left-leaning Labor-Gesher-Meretz alliance or from the centrist Blue and White party, headed by former army chief Benny Gantz, who was Netanyahu’s leading challenger, but just one defector — whose political career could be ended, analysts said, by such a betrayal of the voters who elected him or her — would be a lot to ask. Three would seem a miracle, even for Netanyahu, and the likeliest candidates to be wooed by Netanyahu all insisted they were holding fast to their promises to see him into retirement and could not be bought off, no matter the inducement.
The anti-Netanyahu forces, for their part, showed some new fight Wednesday. Lawmakers from all three center-left parties said they would propose or support legislation to bar Israel’s president from asking a lawmaker under indictment to form a government.
The idea of such a law drew howls from Netanyahu’s supporters on the right, who said it would be retroactive and ad hominem, and would not survive a court challenge.
Ayelet Shaked, a former justice minister from the right-wing Yamina party, accused the left, “which exalts democracy,” of trying to use legislation to “cancel election results,” and “with the aid of terror supporters” at that.
The term “terror supporters” referred to the predominantly Arab Joint List, which won a record 15 seats in Parliament on surprisingly strong turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, some members of which are accused by critics of having expressed sympathy for terrorists. Ahmed Tibi is widely reviled among many Israeli Jews, among other things for having been an adviser to Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader.
Analysts said it was unlikely that the legislation barring an indicted lawmaker from serving as prime minister would be approved, in part because of the political storm it could kick up, but several suggested that the anti-Netanyahu parties were making a point as the jockeying over coalition talks begins: They have leverage, too.....
Maybe Netanyahu could delay Parliament and head off a no-confidence vote.
--more--"
Also see:
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky led a major government shake-up Wednesday, ousting his prime minister and several other Cabinet members less than a year in office. The reshuffle — the second by Zelensky in a month — is probably related to the slumping approval ratings of Oleksiy Honcharuk, the outgoing prime minister, amid Ukraine’s economic downturn, but internal rifts could have played a role as well. The shake-up comes days after Kyiv held talks with a visiting mission from the International Monetary Fund regarding approval for a $5.5 billion loan program......"
Tells you all you need to known about Ukraine and to whom they are indebted.
"Two more Turkish soldiers were killed Wednesday in a Syrian government attack in Syria’s northwest, the country’s Defense Ministry said, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued to rack up casualties. Turkey has sent thousands of troops into the area to support Syrian insurgents holed up there, but hasn’t been able to stop a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive to retake Idlib province. The assault came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to depart for Moscow, where he said he aims to broker a cease-fire in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Turkey and Russia are the two main power brokers in Syria and each supports rival sides in the nine-year conflict. Russian officials have said they hold Turkey responsible for the collapse of a cease-fire agreement reached in Sochi, Russia in 2018. They say Ankara has failed to honor the deal and rein in militants who continued attacking Syrian and Russian targets. Turkey has rejected the Russian assertion, saying Ankara was making progress against radical groups in Idlib when the Syrian government launched its offensive. Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov assailed Turkey for shielding ‘‘terrorists’’ in Idlib, a statement that reflected Moscow’s forceful posture ahead of the Syria talks....."
And peace, at last, was his:
"Taliban ramp up attacks on Afghans after Trump says ‘no violence’" by Najim Rahim and Mujib Mashal New York Times, March 4, 2020
KABUL — The Taliban have resumed attacks against Afghan forces soon after signing a deal to end their war with the US military, raising concerns that the Americans are leaving their Afghan allies vulnerable to an insurgency unwilling to let go of violence as its main leverage.
The Taliban have carried out at least 76 attacks across 24 Afghan provinces since Saturday, when they finalized an agreement for a troop withdrawal by the United States, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s national security council said, and Wednesday, the United States conducted its first airstrike against the insurgents after an 11-day lull.
A senior Afghan security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Afghan forces had still not resumed their offensive special operations but were remaining on active defense — only targeting Taliban units that were advancing on their outposts.
The deadliest of the dozens of assaults so far were on the outskirts of Kunduz in the north in the early hours of Wednesday. The Taliban’s elite Red Unit stormed Afghan army outposts there from several directions, killing at least 15 Afghan soldiers, according to Lieutenant Colonel Mashuq Kohistani, the commander of the Afghan army battalion in the area.
“We were newly establishing the base, and our soldiers did not have proper trenches to protect themselves,” Kohistani said.
The Kunduz attack came just hours after President Trump spoke on the phone with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy leader, who negotiated and signed the agreement with the Americans.
Afghan officials have long been concerned that, without some sort of binding cease-fire, the United States’ eagerness to leave Afghanistan might make them vulnerable in future talks with the Taliban.....
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
This first article, found on the back of the front section, page A10, confirms my worst fears regarding what I perceive to be a rigged primary:
"How Joe Biden Ran Up the Score in Virginia" by Reid J. Epstein and Stephanie Saul New York Times, March 5, 2020
FALLS CHURCH, Va. — They all came together on Super Tuesday in an extraordinary surge to the polls in Virginia, propelling former vice president Joe Biden to an overwhelming victory in a state that just days earlier had seemed up for grabs. The triumph was part of a 10-state sweep for Biden that resurrected his presidential candidacy and established him as the centrist Democrat who would go head to head with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the standard-bearer of the party’s liberal wing.
He must be on top of the world right now.
In Virginia on Tuesday, it was no contest. Biden won with 53 percent of the vote, 30 percentage points more than Sanders. Voter turnout broke a state record for a presidential primary and the range of support suggested Biden had the potential to put together a broad coalition across categories of race, gender, and age that could be a potent weapon in a race against President Trump.
This from an article from the New York Times by Epstein and Saul. There is your narrative regarding the unbelievable results from Tuesday. I can only note that AIPAC was against Sanders, and there was hardly any reporting anywhere regarding their recent conference.
That was the motivation for Laura Bligh, a 39-year-old personal trainer from Falls Church. She had planned to back Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts but said she changed her mind Monday and voted for Biden. Bligh said she considered her vote not just a repudiation of Trump, but an effort to block Sanders, who she predicted would lose in a bid against the president.
Think of the convoluted logic there: She didn't vote for who she really wanted, she voted for someone to block someone else so someone else would lose.
In Virginia, exit polls show that Biden dominated across gender, race, and educational lines. He had support from men and women, white and Black people, college graduates and nongraduates alike by double-digit margins over Sanders. In fact, in most of the demographic categories that Biden won, his share of the vote was larger than Sanders’ and Warren’s combined.
All you can do is shake your head and laugh. They keep doubling down on the absurd and inane.
Related:
"Progressive policy ideas have dominated the early stages of the Democratic primary campaign, but Democratic voters may be seeking more moderate options. Only 1 in 4 Democratic voters said they would favor eliminating private health insurance and replacing it with a government-run plan — the centerpiece of the “Medicare for All” proposals put forward by Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and only 1 in 3 favors making public college tuition free for all Americans regardless of income, another idea shared by the two leading progressives in the race. Those results, from a survey conducted this month for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey, are striking because past polls, including those from the Times, have shown broad-based support for progressive ideas among Democrats. Last month, 81 percent of Democrats said they approved of Medicare for All; in July, 82 percent said they supported making public colleges free for all, but those earlier surveys asked simple yes-or-no questions. The most recent survey offered respondents more options to choose from, and it found that Democratic voters consistently preferred policies that were well to the left of current law but were more moderate than those proposed by Sanders and Warren. Most Democrats, for example — 58 percent — said they would like to make government-run insurance universally available while allowing people to keep their private insurance if they prefer it, a policy similar to the “Medicare for all who want it” plan proposed by Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and a related proposal from former vice president Joe Biden. The preference for more moderate policies cuts across age groups, races, education levels, and even ideology: Among Democrats who said they were “liberal” or “very liberal,” only 30 percent chose the most progressive option for health care reform. The Times survey showed similar results when it came to “free college” proposals......"
One hardly knows where to begin with that steaming swirly of perception management and narrative creation. So within a month, the 80% of the people that make up the Democratic voting block abandoned incredibly popular programs because of a poll the New York Times commissioned, and two months later everyone is aboard?
The Times now doubles down again:
Even more significantly, Biden made major inroads among Sanders’ core constituencies. For instance, Hispanic voters — who went overwhelmingly for Sanders in the Nevada caucuses — actually went for Biden by about 13 percentage points in the Virginia primary, and even among voters who described themselves as very liberal, Sanders won by only about 4 percentage points.
The only major demographic group that Sanders won in Virginia was young voters.
The print version ends it there, and the vote theft couldn't be more obvious. They did it in broad daylight!
One thing I will never do ever again is criticize young people for being disinterested. How many times can your hopes be raised before being robbed?
Biden’s triumph here was clearly aided by his romp in the South Carolina primary last Saturday and a string of endorsements from prominent Democratic politicians in Virginia — Senator Tim Kaine, Representative Bobby Scott, and McAuliffe among them.
Yeah, South Carolina was a massacre for him.
Exit polls also showed that Virginia voters coalesced around Biden’s candidacy practically overnight. Nearly half said they made up their minds in the final days before Tuesday’s contest, with two-thirds of those voters picking Biden.
Overall, 1.3 million voters in Virginia went to the polls Tuesday, surpassing the votes cast in 2016 by nearly 70 percent and, even more stunningly, breaking a previous Democratic record of 986,000 set in 2008, when Barack Obama was on the ballot.
Hmmmmmmmmm!
Democratic turnout Tuesday was up broadly compared with 2016 — with Texas up 49 percent, Tennessee up 38 percent, and Vermont and North Carolina both increasing by 16 percent. Several states that had switched from caucuses to primaries this year — Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and Utah — also saw heavy increases in participation.
Yeah, Tornado Joe swept through there, too.
Nowhere was the Democratic boom more pronounced than in the tony northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. Here, among the million-dollar homes populated by lobbyists, corporate lawyers, and employees of government contractors, Biden ran up huge margins over Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field while turnout in some areas nearly doubled from the party’s 2016 primary.
For Sanders supporters, watching the turnout surge he had promised go to Biden served as a particularly bitter disappointment. They attributed the Vermont senator’s weak showing in the suburbs to moderate Democrats’ coalescing around Biden faster than progressives did behind Sanders — though in Fairfax County, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, won more votes than did Warren. They also cited the rapid nationalization of a race they had hoped to win through on-the-ground organizing.
It was a tale of two Super Tuesdays.
Jonathan Sokolow, a labor lawyer who is co-chairman of the Sanders campaign in Virginia, said the results in Virginia and elsewhere were not an indication that Sanders did not have wide support in the party. “I don’t think it’s correct to say that we don’t have majority support,” Sokolow said. “We’re fighting to see who is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump,” but across the Virginia suburbs, Sanders’ argument fell flat in the face of Biden’s late strength.
Marcus Simon, a Democrat who represents Falls Church in the Virginia House of Delegates, said he voted early Saturday for Warren. By Tuesday, he had changed his mind and encouraged his wife to vote for Biden. Tucker Martin, who a decade ago was a top aide to former governor Bob McDonnell, Republican of Virginia, appears to fit into this category. Martin considers himself a Republican, but Super Tuesday, he cast a ballot for Biden.
“I am a Never Trumper, and I’m out of partisan politics,” Martin said Wednesday. “I think for many voters in Virginia, Joe Biden may represent a safe place to go to register their dislike for the current occupant of the White House.”
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Related: Biden holds massive lead over Sanders in Florida
There isn't going to be a contested convention, and Bernie will have far less delegates than last time.
Turning to the front page and below the fold, the Globe further subverts Sanders with the sexist and homophobic horde may be better known as the Bernie Bros.:
"When it was first coined, in a humor piece by the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer in October 2015, the term “Berniebro” was meant to satirize a particular Sanders-supporting demographic: young white males who passionately defended and supported the presidential candidate online. Five years later, polls show that the Sanders coalition has broadened significantly, but the attacks can feel like a swarm of locusts......"
That's right. The Globe is equating you to parasites!
Above the fold is a trio of mournful eulogies for the Warren campaign:
"Warren’s campaign had an outsize impact on Democratic politics" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff, March 5, 2020
She didn’t win a single state, amassed only a handful of delegates, and placed a dismal third in her own state, but Senator Elizabeth Warren nonetheless had an outsize influence on the 2020 presidential race, one that will extend to the Democratic convention and beyond.
From modernizing retail politics with her joyful “selfie” lines to her meaty policy proposals to elevating many progressive ideas into the mainstream, she formed the contours of the contest.
“She not only shaped this race, but I think she is going to have a dramatic impact on future presidential races," said Representative Katherine Clark, a Melrose Democrat, who had endorsed Warren, but history may most remember her candidacy, analysts said, for her political disembowelment on national TV of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who many Democratic voters desperate to defeat Trump believed could be the best suited for the job. She effectively ended his campaign in about 40 seconds.
Her takedown of the eighth-richest man in the world not only made for exciting television, but it also instantly altered the political terrain and contributed to the rapid winnowing in the field’s moderate lane in favor of former vice president Joe Biden.
“Taking on Bloomberg the way she did clearly had a massive impact on his candidacy. There’s no two ways about that,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who managed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.
And we all thank her for that, and she is one hell of a debater.
Warren’s influence went further than proving even half a billion dollars can’t buy you a presidential nomination, political strategists said. The Cambridge Democrat, whose catchphrase centered on having a plan for everything, drove many of the dominant policy conversations in the race, even as she paid a price for her specificity on issues such as Medicare for All.
Her juggernaut of a policy shop forced rivals to play catch-up and flesh out their own platforms.
Except Sanders was way out in front back in 2016.
Several strategists credited Warren’s signature wealth tax — and the way she pitched it to voters — as particularly consequential.
Brian Fallon, a former top campaign aide to Clinton, said there have been two key moments in the last several years that signaled the evolution of Democratic thinking and comfort levels on raising taxes on the wealthy. The first was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggesting in a “60 Minutes” interview that a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the richest Americans could pay for the Green New Deal climate change plan.
The other was Warren’s proposed 2 percent wealth tax, he said, and not just the plan, but the way she broke down the substance into an easily understandable concept of mega-rich people paying two cents out of every dollar of their net worth over $50 million. So simple, her supporters turned it into a rallying cry at her events: “Two cents! Two cents!”
“I think that has totally shifted the window. It has created the political permission structure for Democrats to call for much higher taxes on the wealthy” and not spend a second worrying about the political fallout, which had hampered the party on the issue since the 1980s, Fallon said.
Penny for my thoughts?
Keep your two cents.
Warren, by contrast, appeared to relish the angst her proposal evoked from the ultra-wealthy, weaving in good-natured scorn of freaked-out billionaires into her stump speeches, selling mugs to hold all those “billionaire tears," and even cutting a TV ad calling on billionaires to share the wealth that slammed four of them by name and net worth.
The polling backed her strategy up, finding more than 60 percent of Americans supported the concept. Indeed, her case has been so convincing, even former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin — whose brand of Wall Street-friendly economic policy is exactly what Warren has focused her entire political career fighting against — said this week that moderate Democrats “must recognize the popular resonance of a wealth tax,” even if they don’t support it.
“A wealth tax is on the table,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
“She clearly furthered the progressive agenda," said pollster John Zogby. “For a while, she really owned those issues as far as people were talking about them. . . . [Senator Bernie Sanders has] been saying the same stuff. She mainstreamed it.“
Like she claimed regarding Occupy?
Warren furthered the work Clinton started in her ground-breaking runs for president.
Maybe, although it seems like a step back since she isn't going to get the nomination.
Clark said Warren’s candidacy was powerful because she elevated issues that resonate with women and everyday families, talking about her own experiences as a single mother and her parents’ financial struggles and connecting those stories with her policy prescriptions.
She did disassemble regarding getting fired for being pregnant.
“She’s not only a model for girls with her pinkie swears around the country, but she really did set a standard for how to cede families the pain many of them are in and how to make that into bold policy” to address their struggles, said Clark, and while Warren’s departure means Americans yearning for a woman president must wait at least four more years, as she emotionally noted at her press conference Thursday, she disrupted the prevailing power dynamics surrounding the male dominance of presidential politics, said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, in an e-mail.
“She was willing to call out gender bias directly and, as is consistent with all she does, explain it as a means to combating it," Dittmar said. “For example, when she was called angry, she pushed back by noting that women are subject to this criticism ‘over and over’ again as a way to discredit them.”
Warren not only wounded Bloomberg, calling out his alleged mistreatment of women and shaming him to release three women from nondisclosure agreements so they could freely speak about their experiences at his company, she also played a role in getting MSNBC host Chris Matthews off the air, when he seemed incredulous that she didn’t believe Bloomberg’s denials.
“She was willing to confront their sexism head on, even when some may have argued the political benefit was minimal and/or not going to [help] her,” Dittmar said.
That fearlessness, predict those who know Warren well, will persist long after November.....
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"Women react with anger, dismay to Warren’s departure" by Jazmine Ulloa and Laura Krantz Globe Staff, March 5, 2020
WASHINGTON — For women across the country who hoped to see Senator Elizabeth Warren — or any qualified woman — become the first female president, the news of her departure from the race was yet another disappointment mixed with heartache, and anger. The Democratic nomination process started with six diverse female candidates, including Warren and three other senators, after the 2018 congressional midterm elections saw women and people of color make historic gains, but now, only one woman remains: Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who has earned just two delegates and never broke into the top tier of contenders.
“Every time I get introduced as the most powerful woman . . . I almost cry because I’m thinking I wish that were not true," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday, reflecting on what Warren’s withdrawal means about the willingness of the country to break the nation’s highest glass ceiling. "I so wish that we had a woman president of the United States.”
Even this one?
Warren nodded to the contradictions women face in politics ― or any professional pursuit.
“You know that is the trap question for everyone," she said when asked about the role that gender played in the 2020 race. “If you say, ‘Yeah there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’ And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’"
“I promise you this,” Warren continued. "I’ll have a lot more to say on that subject later on.”
A record-breaking number of women and women of color were elected to the House in 2018, causing political analysts to dub it the “Second Year of the Woman,” following a historic surge in 1992. Women now hold 101 of the 435 House seats and 26 of the 100 Senate seats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
At first, the 2020 presidential race seemed to carry the same signs of progress for Democrats. The diverse slate of candidates included California Senator Kamala Harris, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who was one of the most prominent faces of the #MeToo movement in Congress, but they encountered the same structural barriers that women often do: inequities in donors and campaign infrastructure, and this year, the specter of President Trump loomed large, putting the hard-to-define concept of “electability” front and center.
“Democratic primary voters’ top priority is beating Donald Trump, and most subconsciously, I believe the gruesome reality of Trump’s America has put a fear in our hearts . . . about the effectiveness of the racist, sexist campaign he would have run against a woman or person of color,” tweeted Addisu Demissie, the former campaign manager for New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who dropped his presidential bid in January.
Potential gender bias wasn’t the only problem Warren faced. Her campaign was criticized over the costs of some of her proposals, mainly her Medicare for All plan, and her lack of support from voters of color even though she made efforts to connect issues of racial disparity to her arguments about corruption and the economy, and in the end, Warren had trouble even with women voters. Exit polls on Super Tuesday, when Warren was the only top-tier female candidate still in the race, showed her median support from women across all 14 states was 15 percent, trailing far behind former vice president Joe Biden at 37 percent and Senator Bernie Sanders at 25 percent, but Warren did better with women than men, where her median support was 9 percent.
Still, women lamented Warren’s bid for the White House had ended.
“Why we have replicated a pattern that has always been in American politics requires introspection,” said Erin O’Brien, a political science professor who was gathering her thoughts Thursday before preparing to lead her “Women in Politics” class at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “I know how the movie ends, but I still watched hoping for something different.”
“I do think there’s a certain element of misogyny that is there,” Pelosi said, noting that Hillary Clinton “was better qualified than so many people who have sought that office and even won it.”
Hillary was compromised and corrupt!
On second thought, I guess that does make her eminently qualified then.
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"Elizabeth Warren’s loss — and ours" by Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist, March 5, 2020
It’s not just the little girls Senator Elizabeth Warren met at rallies who believed the job of a woman is to run for president. Some of us who were little long ago grew up believing it too, and, further, that women who did so might actually have a shot at making it — despite all of the alarming evidence to the contrary that has piled up over the decades, and particularly the last few years.
That optimism — or a good chunk of it — is one thing we’ve lost with Warren’s exit from the presidential race, and we’ve lost a lot more besides.
If that wasn’t obvious before, the senator’s graceful and emotional announcement on Thursday made it painfully clear. It was every bit Elizabeth Warren — self-effacing, passionate, heartfelt, substantive, wry. Whether or not you believe she deserved better than the painful defeats of Super Tuesday, those qualities, and her contributions to this race, are extraordinary.
She explained her losses on Tuesday, including in her home state, with a humility that is in distressingly short supply these days — especially in politics, where giant egos and blind certainty pass for campaign platforms. She was told there were only two lanes to run in, she said, a moderate one already occupied by former vice president Joe Biden, and a progressive one claimed by Senator Bernie Sanders, but she thought she could carve out another.
“Evidently, I was wrong,” she said.
How often do we hear that from a politician?
Those determined to dismiss the Senator’s every move as calculated and inauthentic will no doubt find little to admire in that concession, but Warren has been willing to admit her errors before.
Now that she was leaving the race, it was safe for Warren to show more of the emotion that those who filled her town hall meetings across the country already knew well. She spoke of standing in the voting booth, seeing her name on the ballot, thinking, “Whoa, kiddo, you’re not in Oklahoma any more,” and of how her parents would have felt about that if they were still alive.
“For that moment,” she said, her voice thickening, “I missed my mom and dad.”
There was fire, too, of course, and pride about the issues Warren, the brainiest and most intellectually serious candidate in the field, had put on the national agenda: Fairer taxes on the rich, the importance of affordable child care, the scourge of tuition debt. It’ll be a long time before we see somebody offer as detailed a vision for the country — partly because anybody inclined to do so will see how Warren’s was picked apart and think better of it, but here, as before, Warren was both the girl from Oklahoma and the brilliant Harvard professor.....
I thought Bernie was still standing.
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Yes, the women of Cambridge are regretting the one that got away.
"Elizabeth Warren departs the presidential race disappointed: ‘I really thought we could do it’" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, March 5, 2020
Fourteen months after she launched her presidential campaign, it was over. She failed to build a broad enough coalition of voters to remain at the top of the polls and now leaves two white men in their late 70s who Senator Elizabeth Warren said in the last days of her campaign could both fail to meet the moment.
It was unclear which candidate would benefit the most from Warren’s departure. According to polling done this week by Morning Consult, 43 percent of Warren supporters said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was their second choice, while 36 percent said it was former vice president Joe Biden.
Hers was a meticulous campaign that sought to change the country and politics itself, one that showed a candidate could raise real money without exclusive fund-raisers and pushed many of her competitors to give their campaigns the kind of substance baked into hers, and it all changed Warren, too.
She is “smarter and tougher now,” and they are acting like Sanders doesn't even exist!
She was ideologically aligned with Sanders, she wanted to build support on the left while also appealing to women who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016, but on Thursday, Warren said she had misread the contours of a race that had a deeper divide between liberal and moderate voters than she ever wanted to believe. She ultimately found herself without a lane when voters went to the polls, placing third in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire and Nevada, and fifth in South Carolina. She failed to build winning coalitions even in liberal bastions like California and her home state of Massachusetts — a loss she downplayed when she spoke with reporters on Thursday.
Look, I don't blame her for staying in until Tuesday and wouldn't have held it against her if she had remained for a week or two. I would have seen it as hurting Sanders, but when you are running for president and there is still a chance.... and now we are told those voters (like Bligh above) went for Biden.
At the beginning of her campaign, Warren had low polling numbers and thin fund-raising, hobbled by the hangover from a widely panned DNA test she took to prove her claims of Indian ancestry. She rolled out her first major policy plan — a small tax on the wealthiest Americans — in January, and soon turned ideas to break up big tech companies and tax corporate profits at a higher rate into the fuel for her summer-long rise in the polls.
That's the only mention of the DNA test that came to define her prevaricating, and I will forever believe that her comment regarding the loss of Palestinian lives regarding an Israeli assault on Gaza back then is what did her in. Not even Sanders referenced Palestinians, and soon after Liz started slipping in the polls under the fig leaf of Medicare-For-All.
Over the course of the spring, “I have a plan for that” became an applause line and then a rallying cry — and she seemed to be a neat foil to an incumbent president who has never dwelled on the details. Her campaign focused on hiring organizers, especially in Iowa, envisioning a long brawl for the nomination, and they bet that their early investment on the ground would lift them above opponents who planned to spend gobs of money on television — an assumption that turned out ultimately to be incorrect.
Warren often told the story of her own upbringing, with voters listening in rapt silence as she described her family’s financial insecurity and her “twisty-turny” path from being a college dropout to a senator, but it was never clear that Warren was able to get that story to resonate beyond the hyper-engaged voters who came to her campaign events, and while she won wide praise from Black activists for speaking directly and thoughtfully about structural racism, she failed to draw enough supporters from voters of color when they went to the polls.
In the interview, Warren said that she was proud of her campaign’s strategy, but that it simply wasn’t right for the political moment.....
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Enough crying in your beer, and I'm surprised they haven't suggested that Russians were responsible.
Also see:
Facebook removes Trump ads labeled ‘census’
Trump clubs took in $157k more from Secret Service
Judge lashes out at Barr for Mueller report summary
He better be careful:
"Schumer, criticized for blasting justices, regrets the words but not the message" by Carl Hulse New York Times, March 5, 2020
WASHINGTON — Under fire from President Trump and Republican senators who accused him of threatening two conservative Supreme Court justices, Senator Chuck Schumer said on Thursday he “should not have used the words” he did Wednesday in a fiery speech warning of the consequences of their rulings, but Schumer, who chalked up his sharp tongue to his Brooklyn upbringing, refused to apologize for the spirit of his remarks, saying that Republicans would pay a political price if the court struck down abortion rights.
The inflammatory and threatening words “didn’t come out the way I intended,” he said after McConnell scolded him, but I think they came out exactly as he intended.
Democratic officials said that while Schumer’s remarks might have been inflammatory, they were not all that unhappy that the episode put new attention both on the Louisiana case at hand and the Republican push on the courts overall. In his comments, Schumer also sought to shift the focus from him to the issue of abortion and Senate Republicans.....
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Related:
Senator Schumer wants Office of Management and Budget appointee Michael Duffey to testify in a Senate trial (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images).
He's the real deal and knows the intelligence agencies have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you (or me or anybody else for that matter, right?).
Related:
The GOP’s latest assault on Obamacare comes at exactly the right time — for Democrats
They had to move Weinstein to the Rikers Island infirmary because he threatened the women and their daughters after the conviction and wouldn't acquiesce to a non-black server in the prison cafeteria.
Not like it is a war crime or anything.
"Russia, Turkey agree to cease-fire in Syria’s Idlib province" by Isabelle Khurshudyan and Sarah Dadouch Washington Post, March 5, 2020
MOSCOW — Russia and Turkey agreed Thursday to a cease-fire in Syria’s ravaged Idlib province, the latest agreement on a cessation of hostilities following an especially brutal campaign by Russian-backed Syrian forces against Turkish-supported rebel groups in the region.
The announcement, at a Moscow news conference held by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was made after nearly six hours of talks between the two leaders as the risk of direct military confrontation between Russia and Turkey increased sharply in the past week.
The cease-fire was set to go into effect at midnight.
The agreement stated that joint Turkish-Russian patrols will begin March 15 along a section of the M4 highway, one of Syria’s most important trading routes. No mention was made, however, of another keenly contested highway, the M5.
The northwestern corner of Syria, which consists of Idlib province and surrounding areas, borders Turkey and is home to thousands of rebel fighters and more than 3 million civilians, the United Nations says. The pocket is mainly held by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as well as Turkish-backed rebel groups. Tensions escalated sharply in January after the Russian-backed Syrian forces intensified their offensive in this last opposition stronghold.
The Syrian government’s months-long offensive to wrest control of Idlib has caused a major humanitarian crisis, as hundreds of thousands have fled their homes and headed toward Turkey, which has long since closed its border to refugees. Ankara, meanwhile, has deployed thousands of troops to Syria to prevent President Bashar Assad’s forces from defeating rebel groups, including Turkish-backed factions, and consolidating government control in Idlib and nearby areas.
Since Feb. 3, 58 Turkish soldiers have been killed by Syrian airstrikes and ground attacks, data from the Turkish Defense Ministry shows, including two killed Thursday after the talks began. Erdogan said Turkey has killed more than 3,200 Syrian soldiers, in addition to destroying tanks, weaponry, air power and ammunition depots.
For the first time since the Idlib fighting erupted last year, Russia refrained from intervening on Syria’s behalf last week.
‘‘We need to discuss everything so that nothing like this will ever happen again and so that it won’t ruin Russian-Turkish relations, which both you and I respect and cherish,’’ Putin told Erdogan on Thursday.
Turkey has justified its intervention, in part, by saying that it is aimed at preventing a bloodbath in Idlib. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the region in recent weeks in what human rights groups describe as indiscriminate air and artillery strikes that frequently target civilian areas. One of Ankara’s main interests in stemming the violence is stopping a wave of refugees at its border - Turkey already has more than 3 million displaced Syrians.
Previous talks on Syria between Putin and Erdogan have produced nothing sustainable. In the days leading up to Thursday’s face-to-face, analysts predicted that any new deal would be no different.
Moscow has accused Ankara of violating a 2018 cease-fire deal that established a demilitarized zone and of using strikes and attack drones to defend rebel forces, including groups that Russia and Syria consider terrorist organizations. Russia also has been accused of violating truce arrangements.
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I don't see how anyone can trust the Turks.
