The Fight For The Conservative Lane Of The Democratic Party Nomination

The B-Team frontrunners

In a Q&A with the L.A. Times editorial board the day after Christmas, Nick Goldberg, editor of the editorial pages, kicked off the show with a great question: “What do you say to voters who worry that in a general election a candidate as far to the left as you are is gonna alienate swing voters and moderates and independents?” Bernie was happy with the question and noted he’s “heard it once or twice” and has “thought about it a whole lot, anyone who underestimates Donald Trump as a candidate, for a variety of reasons, will be very mistaken.” Let me give you his whole response before we get to the sentences I need at the very end of the response (which I bolded):

He is going to be a very, very strong candidate. He certainly has a very strong base. He will have unlimited amounts of money to campaign on. He is a pathological liar. He will merge in an unprecedented way agencies of government with his campaign, because he doesn’t particularly believe in the rule of law. So he is going to be a very, very tough opponent.

The only way that you beat Trump is by having an unprecedented campaign, an unprecedentedly large voter turnout. And we’ll have to combat every single day the voter suppression which you’ve recently seen manifest itself in Wisconsin and Georgia. And we can expect that to take place all over the country. We are living in perilous times, and Republicans understand that if they can keep poor people and people of color and young people from voting, they’ve got a better shot to do it. And I have zero doubt that they will do it. They’ve appointed right-wing judges who will sustain their efforts. So we have to combat that in every way we can.

But the reason I believe that I am the strongest candidate, and the reason I believe our approach is right is if you want a large voter turnout, if we understand that there are tens of millions of people in this country who don’t vote, who’ve kind of given up on the political process, that young people-- although we’re seeing some real gains there and we’re working really hard on this thing-- young people, who are by and large progressive-- my guess is roughly speaking for every three people under 30 who vote, two of them are going to vote progressive, okay, but many of them don’t vote-- I think I am by far the strongest candidate to reach out to those people. I think I’m the strongest candidate to bring together a multiracial coalition of African Americans, of Latinos, of Asians.

So to answer your question, I don’t believe that the [way to win] this election is to just speak to Republican women in the suburbs. That’s one theory. And I think many of those women will vote for me because they are appalled, correctly so, about Trump’s personal behavior and his temperament. I think we can win many of them. Not all of them. But on the other hand, the key to this election is can we get millions of young people who have never voted before into the political process, many working people who understand that Trump is a fraud, can we get them voting? That is the key to this election. So I’ve heard that hypothesis, I just don’t agree with it.

And let me add to that if I might, [there are] people who run the same old, same old type of campaign. And you know, [former Vice President] Joe Biden is a personal friend of mine, so I’m not here to, you know, to attack him. But my God, if you are, if you’re a Donald Trump and you got Biden having voted for the war in Iraq, Biden having voted for these terrible, in my view, trade agreements, Biden having voted for the bankruptcy bill. Trump will eat his lunch.

Mr. faux-macho asshole-- the one with the “D” next to his name, not the one with the “R” next to his name-- responded on CNN in his signature disgusting style: "Tell him come and I'll give him some dessert at the White House."

Soon, either Bernie or Elizabeth-- hopefully both on a unity ticket-- will be facing one of the corporate Dems from the Republican wing of the party competing for the conservative lane: Status Quo Joe, Mayo Pete or, incredibly, #NeverTrump Republican Michael Bloomberg pretending to be some sort of Democrat for the sake of his outsized ego. So more important than the retort to Bernie one of Biden’s speechwriters put in his mouth, was Mayo Pete’s all out attack on his rival during an Iowa Public Television broadcast over the weekend. Remember, if conservative Democrats were happy with Biden, there’s no room for Mayo Pete (nor for Bloomberg or Klobuchar). According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, all the other right-of-center Democrats are eating Biden’s dust, at least nationally:

• Status Quo Joe- 28.3%
• Mayo Pete- 8.3%
• Bloomberg- 4.9%
• Klobuchar- 3.6%
• Delaney- 0.6%
• Bennet- 0.4%

The Iowa caucuses-- which can’t be accurately polled-- show Mayo edging Biden 22.0 to 18.8, with Klobuchar at 6.3% and Bloomberg at 1.3%. In New Hampshire, where Bernie leads, the other right-of-center candidates were behind Mayo:

• Mayo Pete- 17.7%
• Status Quo Joe- 14.3%
• Klobuchar- 2.0%

Mayo is in single digits in all the other early states, and not a threat to Biden-- unless he can beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire. He doesn’t have to win either state, but if he leads Biden in both, he could make some inroads nationally and lessen the importance of Biden’s unassailable lead in South Carolina. It would certainly mean that Mayo will probably take potential Biden votes/delegates in SuperTuesday states-- especially California, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Maine, Utah, Virginia, Minnesota and North Carolina, basically leaving Biden with Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee.

On Sunday, Mayo-- campaigning in Iowa-- brought up Biden’s vote for the Iraq War in a way to show why Biden shouldn’t be president. “This is an example of why years in Washington is not always the same thing as judgment. He supported the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States in my lifetime, which was the decision to invade Iraq.”

Afterwards, he told reporters that “It’s certainly a question that reflects on foreign policy judgment at a time like this when it’s so precarious for the people of the U.S. Obviously, my judgment is different when it comes to a lot of these issues.” Obviously? These are two completely unfit candidates for the presidency. And the next day, Mayo doubled down on his criticism of Status Quo Joe, this time during an interview with the Associated Press. On Monday, Mayo said that he "would not have wanted to see" his son serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company while he was leading anti-corruption efforts in the country. He told Tom Beaumont that his administration would "do everything we can to prevent even the appearance of a conflict. That's very important because as we see it can create a lot of complications even when there is no wrongdoing." I just hope to God Democratic voters across the country figure it out in time-- and don't move to any of the other conservatives in the race.

So far Biden hasn't responded with an invitation to a White House he'll hopefully never live in. If you'd like to help make sure neither he, Mayo, Bloomberg or any other conservative follows Trump into it... well, that's why I included the 2020 ActBlue thermometer above. Be part of the political revolution.