Which Crap Centrist Will Represent The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party In The End-- Definitely One From The B-Team

Last night the ad above started airing in New Hampshire. Bad news for Status Quo Joe, who depending on which poll you're looking at, is coming in first, second or third. The ad calls for the clueless candidate to drop out of the race and directs viewers to Roots Action's BidenFactSquad page which lists various quotes from Biden and his backers illuminating his history on issues such as income inequality, racial injustice, climate change, and criminal justice reform.

Jeff Cohen a co-founder of Roots Action's Action for a Progressive Future said in a statement that they "launched this ad to convey a simple message-- that Democrats would have a hard time defeating Trump with a candidate who belittles young voters and their very real struggles... Poll after poll shows that people under 35 are more progressive and more anti-Trump than older voters. Biden’s dismissive attitude raises the specter of a re-run of the 2016 Democratic defeat, when too many young people did not vote or voted third-party... The absolute wrong way to urge young people-- or any group-- into action is by minimizing the serious obstacles they confront."

Remember, turnout among voters under age 30 increased by almost 50 percent in the 2018 midterm elections (compared to 2014). People ages 18 to 35 will make up more than one-third of the electorate by November 2020. They aren't interested in an old white establishment hack fighting for the status quo ante. Being against Trump is necessary, but voters want more than just that. Poll after poll has shown that Biden has virtually no support among voters under 35, a demographic that heavily favors Bernie.

The B-Team... as in blecccchhhh

Yesterday Ben White and Daniel Strauss penned a piece for Politico insinuating that Bloomberg might be a factor among young voters, even though most young voters detest him. They refer to him as the new candidate of the young elite and makes the absurd claim that Mayo Pete is battling Biden and Bloomberg for young voters. Once you begin reading, you realize they're just talking about these young voters, overpaid Wall Street coke freaks. They wrote that Mayo Pete, somewhat absurdly, "was quickly locking down a solid lane in the Democratic primary: a young, vibrant, gay, midwestern, war veteran mayor with progressive ideas and plenty of money-- but both feet planted in fiscal prudence. Young Wall Street and tech-entrepreneur types were starting to fall in love-- with his poll numbers and fundraising totals underscoring the Buttigieg boomlet. He was the Parks and Recreation candidate in the Democratic field and an alternative to seventy-somethings Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who are both looking to lock down the hyper-online progressive, anti-Wall Street crowd as well as blue collar workers across the Midwest." That's the "in-case-Biden-self-destructs" line the establishment keep repeating. They're eager to point out that Mayo is a lot younger than Status Quo Joe, "who has lagged in fundraising and hardly taken off in the big-donor crowd the way many expected. Buttigieg was poised to perhaps emerge as the leading moderate alternative to Biden." Biden is 76. But Bloomberg is a year older.

But then a funny thing happened last week: Another 70-something candidate beloved on Wall Street-- billionaire mogul Michael Bloomberg-- made an unexpected splash by suggesting he may still enter the race.

Bloomberg will not steal Buttigieg’s momentum with younger, wealthier Democratic voters and donors, people close to the South Bend mayor say. But the former NYC mayor does give Big Finance, Big Tech and other more corporate-friendly Democrats another progressive prospect as an alternative to Biden, Sanders and Warren.

“My own feeling is that Bloomberg getting in might-- if he stays in — might wind up getting rid of Cory Booker and Kamala Harris and others who haven’t done all that well,” said one of Buttigieg’s biggest New York bundlers. “At the end of this year, I still think it’s going to be Warren and Pete and Biden. And Pete will have plenty of money when it’s time to get into the big spending season and I don’t think Bloomberg will hurt his fundraising at all."

Indeed, multiple Wall Street executives who like Bloomberg suggested in recent days that they see a very narrow path forward for the former mayor. And that could leave Buttigieg hanging around as not-ultraliberal, not inclined to bust up major industries and not as old or potentially shaky as Biden.

And that leaves some young Democrats who work in tech and finance pretty optimistic.

For this group, a strong distaste for Warren and Sanders-- mixed with increasing doubts about the viability of Biden-- are creating the kind of opening to gain even more political and financial support that Buttigieg has been hoping for among key donor groups like Wall Street and the tech industry.

The Buttigieg boomlet in the financial community is enough to seriously annoy die-hard Biden backers on Wall Street who think the only way to stop Warren and Sanders is to double down on the former vice president, who still leads in most national polls despite his dips in some early primary states.

And Buttigieg’s youth, inexperience relative to other Democrats and thin support among the African American community are still giving potential donors pause.

“Look, Pete is definitely the new candidate of the young elite,” said a senior executive and major donor at a big Wall Street bank who backs Biden. “The problem is you can’t win the Democratic nomination without African American support. He doesn’t have any and nobody really knows who he is.”

That sentiment-- that Buttigieg is unknown-- is not borne out by either his rising poll numbers or his large fundraising numbers. Overall, Buttigieg's campaign has raised over $51 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Interviews with nearly a dozen Buttigieg backers in the investment community suggest the South Bend mayor’s mix of progressive stands on social issues and more moderate approaches to taxation, health care and the financial industry more broadly have kicked off a mini-movement among younger investor-types.

Buttigieg checks many of the boxes Wall Street executives are looking for: He’s more moderate on banking and health care than Warren but not too conservative as to turn off progressive voters. And he speaks the Wall Street language, as a Harvard-educated, former McKinsey consultant whose eyes light up at any chance to get technocratic.

Some Buttigieg bundlers say lately, as Biden’s candidacy has faltered, interest for the mayor has increased. “It started to feel like there was a high probability that Biden could falter and then there would be a big opening in the moderate lane,” said a bundler who hosted an event for Buttigieg over the summer but declined to be identified by name to avoid offending the former vice president or other candidates.

“A lot of the other candidates like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris kind of tried to straddle the moderate and progressive lanes and it just hasn’t worked for them. Mayor Pete took the approach of saying, ‘I’m just going to go with what I believe,’” this bundler said.

“The big obstacle really is the African American vote and he’s not proven he can win there yet and that bothers me. And it bothers me that part of that is because he’s gay. If he doesn’t win, fine. But I hope it’s not because he’s gay.”

It’s a sentiment many Buttigieg backers acknowledge: Mayor Pete winning the Democratic nomination is far from a sure thing. And now they face a new wrinkle with Wall Street-favorite Bloomberg possibly entering the race, occupying the lane of a mayor with extensive experience advocating for progressive policy changes.

Other Wall Street donors and bundlers are still holding back, waiting to see if Buttigieg can actually win something, before committing. “There are some people who are impressed with him but they really think he’s the guy in high school with the great future,” said a second Buttigieg Wall Street bundler of his conversations with potential new big donors. “I tell them he’s got a legitimate shot even though it sometimes feels like a crazy thing to tell people.”

Other campaigns are also taking note of Buttigieg’s support from Wall Street and tech donors and using it as a sharp line of attack, arguing that it shows he would lack boldness in reforming big industries and raising taxes on the wealthy to fund big new social programs like Medicare for All or the Green New Deal.

Buttigieg has supported a “Medicare for all who want it” approach. And he’s made the environment a centerpiece of his generational appeal but stopped short of fully embracing the most far-reaching elements of plans like the Green New Deal. Buttigieg praised the approach in a recent interview with Politico but stopped short of backing the enormous tax hikes associated with it. “We’re going to take our time doing our math before you see kind of a detailed tax policy framework from our effort,” he said.

Buttigieg’s ties to Wall Street donors probably won’t translate into the precise policies most financiers want. President Barack Obama, for instance, took plenty of donations from the finance world but still pushed and signed the Dodd-Frank law that so much of Wall Street opposed.

Still, some prominent liberals see the mayor as unacceptably close to the community of Wall Street and banking donors.

“He has more donations from billionaires than any other candidate. There are no surprises here. He made it very clear who he's standing with,” said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, the co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. The “corporate types, the oligarchs of this country know that if Sen. Sanders wins he’s going to do the bidding of the 99 percent and not them.”

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows how registered voters nationally, 34 and under are looking at the Democratic primary contenders right now. I don't see Bloomberg, with his reactionary policies and repulsive personality is going to catch up with Yang, let alone with any of the top tier candidates.

• Bernie: 31%
• Elizabeth: 30%
• Mayo Pete: 12%
• Kamala: 6%
• Status Quo Joe: 6%
• Yang: 4%

Yesterday I spoke with exactly one dozen young candidates running for Congress. Not one of them indicated that they consider Mayo Pete a serious contender and not one of them had anything positive to say about him. 29-year old Dary Rezvani, for example, is the progressive Democrat challenging Trump enabler Devin Nunes in California's Central Valley. He told me that "Pete is a dangerous candidate because he is young and well-spoken, much like Obama. I think that the idea of identity politics, especially with millennials, is fading. We have seen so many politicians who just pander in order to get votes that we want someone that we can actually trust. Most of the under 30 crowd that I have spoken to only see him as an opportunist. If there is a candidate that I think actually has a chance of capturing tech and Wall Street it would be Yang."