Is Biden Really Choosing Between Two Ex-Cops as VP?

by Thomas Neuburger

According to Charles Gasparino, a Fox News reporter whom you may or may not consider reliable (not because he's Fox; because he's Gasparino), Joe Biden has narrowed his VP search list to two names — Rep. Val Demings of Florida and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris of California.

Both are women, both are people of color ... and both are ex-cops of one stripe or another.

Kamala Harris is certainly a familiar name — ex-Attorney General of California and a former "top cop" who for years ran a "tough on crime" agenda. As the Guardian put it during Harris's candidacy phase, "In her career as a prosecutor, [Harris] supported increased criminalization of sex work, took no action in key police abuse cases and defended a troubled prison system. ... Among the many policies now drawing renewed scrutiny, Harris’s approach to sex work, police reform, prisoners’ rights and truancy reveal the tensions between her record in law enforcement and her current progressive rhetoric."

Tulsi Gabbard famously eviscerated Harris over her record as prosecutor during the August 2019 primary debate in Detroit:

"Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.

"She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California."

Gabbard merely scratched the surface of all that's wrong with Harris, but this much is enough in these post-George Floyd times.

Val Demings is less well known, but aside from having been elected to the House in 2016, she's the former police chief of Orlando. A simple search, in Wikipedia no less, produces this damning information:

"According to a 2015 article in The Atlantic, the Orlando Police Department "has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings's time as chief."^[10] A 2008 Orlando Weekly exposé described the Orlando Police Department as "a place where rogue cops operate with impunity, and there's nothing anybody who finds himself at the wrong end of their short fuse can do about it."^[11] Demings responded with an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel, arguing that "Looking for a negative story in a police department is like looking for a prayer at church" and added that "It won't take long to find one." In the same op-ed, she cast doubt on video evidence that conflicts with officers' statements in excessive force cases, writing, "a few seconds (even of video) rarely capture the entire set of circumstances."^[10]

"In 2010, an Orlando police officer flipped 84-year-old Daniel Daley over his shoulder after the man became belligerent, throwing him to the ground and breaking a vertebra in his neck.^[12] Daley alleged excessive force and filed a lawsuit. The police department cleared the officer as "justified" in using a "hard take down" to arrest Daley, concluding he used the technique correctly even though he and the other officer made conflicting statements. Demings said "the officer performed the technique within department guidelines" but also said that her department had "begun the process of reviewing the use of force policy and will make appropriate modifications." A federal jury ruled in Daley's favor and awarded him $880,000 in damages."

Of course, this just touches on the problems with Demings tenure as police chief. The Atlantic article quoted above says bluntly, "The [Orlando police] department has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings’s time as chief."

In a just world, this would damn her VP chances, just as Amy Klobuchar's record as Hennepin County Attorney, home of Minneapolis, damned her VP chances, at least for now.

But this is not a just world. The presidential race has devolved into a contest both candidates deserve to lose, and Democratic voters have a choice of not voting for president or voting for a candidate who, Baptist-like, will prepare the way for the Next Donald Trump as surely as Barack Obama prepared the way for this one.

The presidential race is now Joe Biden's to lose. If indeed he's choosing between two tough-on-crime, pro-police candidates as his VP and successor, he appears to be trying to lose it, or testing how low he can go in progressive voters' eyes and still win.
 
  

Who Would Be A Worse Vice President-- Amy Klobuchar Or Val Demings?

On Thursday, Norman Solomon wrote that "eighteen years before Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named George Floyd on Monday, Minneapolis police killed an unarmed black man named Christopher Burns. Today, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar decries the killing of Floyd. Back then, Minneapolis chief prosecutor Amy Klobuchar refused to prosecute city police for killing Burns... [T]he gruesome killing of Floyd has refocused attention on Klobuchar’s history of racial injustice. In sharp contrast to her prosecutorial approach two decades ago, she has issued a statement calling for 'a complete and thorough outside investigation' into Floyd’s death and declaring that 'those involved in this incident must be held accountable.'... Klobuchar’s political record, when it comes to light, simply can’t stand up to scrutiny. While mainstream media rarely seem interested in her Senate record, it has been no less contemptuous of equal protection under the law than her career as a prosecutor. When the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice issued a 'Report Card' about the confirmation votes of Senate Democrats on President Trump’s right-wing federal judge appointees, it explained that the report graded 'willingness to fight Trump’s judges.' Elizabeth Warren received an 'A,' Bernie Sanders an 'A-' and Kamala Harris a 'B+.' Amy Klobuchar got an 'F.'"

This is a gross way to put it, but there's a actual silver lining to this brutal murder of George Floyd: Klobuchar will not be president. I say president because whoever Biden picks as his running mate will probably wind up as president sooner or later. I haven't been writing about the VP speculation much-- just that Susan Rice was briefly in the mix-- but I've always suspected it would be Klobuchar because she's the only one conservative enough to make Biden comfortable.

Yesterday, writing for NBC News, Marianna Sotomayer noted that "Klobuchar’s record as Hennepin County attorney has come under fire in recent days even though she has not been involved with the police officer who is being accused of killing Floyd. Even so, she has faced increased scrutiny from the African American community in numerous op-eds over the last week that say she should not be chosen as Biden’s vice president because of her lack of prosecuting police misconduct in Minnesota during her tenure. Prior to ending her presidential campaign in early March, Klobuchar was forced to cancel a campaign event in St. Louis Park, Minnesota because black activists overtook the stage to protest her decision to sentence a Minnesota teenager to life in prison for murder while serving as county attorney."

Elena Schneider's piece for Politico emphasized Klobuchar's abysmal performance among black voters during her primary run for president-- and how Black activists are warning Biden to steer clear of her. She wrote that Klobuchar has an "ideological profile to mesh well with Biden, and she’s regularly appeared as a surrogate and a fundraiser for him, raking in more than $1.5 million for a single event she headlined. The pair have a warm relationship... and they didn’t tangle publicly during the primary."

But more than a dozen black and Latino strategists and activists warned in interviews that selecting Klobuchar would not help Biden excite black voters-- and might have the opposite effect. Klobuchar would “risk losing the very base the Democrats need to win,” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, which promotes women of color in politics. They pointed to Klobuchar’s poor performance among nonwhite voters during the presidential primary, as well as her record as a prosecutor in Minnesota.

It’s not yet clear how much the opposition of activists matters to Biden. He's made clear that the electoral politics of his pick matter less than choosing someone who can be a governing partner and step into the top job without worry.

But the vocal contingent of African American and Latino detractors-- many of whom said they would prefer that Biden select a black woman as a running mate-- is unique to Klobuchar; Elizabeth Warren, another top contender for VP, doesn’t elicit similar antagonism from communities of color.

"It comes from her performance in the primary-- her weakness in being able to motivate them," said Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, who supports several potential vice presidential selections. “The engagement and the enthusiasm of black voters is going to be a difference-maker in this election, and the concerns about her in this role stem from the degree to which she resonated or not with those core constituencies.”

Earlier this week, Biden confirmed that "multiple black women [are] being considered" for vice president. Those often named include Sen. Kamala Harris, former Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and Florida Rep. Val Demings. Besides Klobuchar, other Midwestern options, like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have been mentioned.

But for many of these operatives, Klobuchar symbolizes a strategic division within the Democratic Party: whether to focus on winning back white, Midwestern voters who flipped to Donald Trump in 2016, or on activating voters of color who were not excited to vote. She “represents that tension,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who added he’s told Biden that he would prefer a black woman on the ticket, but noted he’s “not anti-Amy.”

“It is not her fault, but she is in the middle of an ongoing battle from the last few presidential races,” Sharpton continued, adding he would be “concerned” that selecting Klobuchar would not help energize black and brown voters.

In a Washington Post op-ed this month urging Biden to select a woman of color as running mate, seven black strategists and activists called out Klobuchar, warning she would “only alienate black voters.”

"Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, does not need help winning white, working-class voters-- he serves that function himself," they wrote. Referring to her record as a chief prosecutor in Minneapolis-based Hennepin County, they added, "A choice such as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN), who failed to prosecute controversial police killings and is responsible for the imprisonment of Myon Burrell, will only alienate black voters."

“If it was important enough to raise in an op-ed, it speaks to how serious we are,” LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter and the lead author of the op-ed, said in an interview. “Her campaign appeal was about bringing in working-class, white people from the Midwest, and perhaps that’s true, but that’s a particular strategy that doesn’t align with what it’s going to take to win. You need to excite the base.”

Angela Rye, a Democratic strategist and the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, who also signed the op-ed, called Klobuchar a “nonstarter.”

Klobuchar's boosters counter that opposition to President Donald Trump will bring out the Democratic base no matter what, and that the key Rust Belt states Democrats have to win play to Klobuchar's strengths.

"I think she could help put the upper Midwest in play, and that's an invaluable asset," said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who backed Bernie Sanders during the presidential primary. He also noted that "there are a lot of black people" in the Midwest, in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, who will be key for Democrats’ winning back those states.

"I think the base is going to be excited enough because, before, Trump was an idea, now Trump is the reality," Ellison continued.

...The primary results illustrate Klobuchar's failure among voters of color.

In South Carolina, she won 1 percent of black voters, even though they make up a majority of Democratic primary voters in the state. It was the lowest total for any of the presidential candidates on the ballot.

In Nevada, Klobuchar received 4 percent support of the Latino vote, the lowest share of any presidential candidate other than Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Nationally, Klobuchar regularly polled in the low single digits among voters of color.

...Biden, too, was recently warned about not taking African American voters for granted. On Friday, he apologized on a conference call with black leaders for comments he made to The Breakfast Club radio host: "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

Klobuchar’s prosecutorial record as Hennepin County attorney is another sore spot, particularly her handling of a case involving Burrell, a black teenager. An investigation by The Associated Press found numerous flaws in the case, and civil rights leaders in Minnesota called for her to suspend her presidential campaign.

Klobuchar called for an independent investigation after her campaign ended, a move applauded by the Minnesota NAACP.

If Biden picked Klobuchar as his vice president, “it would add to [his] workload” for the general election, said Daughtry, who signed onto another letter sent to Biden, urging the selection of a black woman as vice presidential nominee.

“There are enough people who either A, don’t know her, or B, have a negative view of her that it becomes another thing the campaign has to do-- introduce her and convince communities of color that she’s OK,” Daughtry said. “That’s not impossible, but there’s already a lot of work to do in a presidential race.”

Yesterday House Majority Whip and Biden king maker, Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said that he believes it’s not the right time to choose Klobuchar. "We’re all victims sometimes of timing and some of us benefit tremendously from timing," said Clyburn on a media call. "This is very tough timing for Amy Klobuchar, who I respect so much." He's pushing Val Demings (D-FL), a former police chief in Orlando.

It's a real no-no to refer to a black woman as a moron. But Demings fits the description. She demonstrated she can read her staff's notes aloud-- more or less-- when she participated in the impeachment hearings but the idea of her as a vice president, let alone a president rises to a Trumpian level of unqualified. One of her more senior colleagues in the House who knows her well told me that "Honestly, I could go on and on and on about her. She is a deeply flawed person, in my opinion. I would say that her biggest problem, as an elected official, is her self-absorption. She has now managed to get through two entire campaigns without ever making any promise to anyone to do anything. She stands for nothing except personal advancement. Val Demings is all about Val Demings. Her only constituent is the one in the mirror. She is so lacking in principles that she joined both the Progressive Caucus and the New Dems. If there were a Gay Caucus and a Straight Caucus, she’d probably join both of those, too... On the other hand, her husband should be on that short list. He is an actual public servant, and a good soul. Compared to him, she’s [description deleted; even I couldn't publish it]."

Warren would be the best choice but it's hard to imagine Biden picking someone so much smarter than himself and so much more likely to be admired than he is-- not to mention someone as ideologically distant from where he has spent his entire adult life. Still, Warren is the one who will help him the most electorally and would be the best person standing there if he dies or becomes so much more senile than he already is that he would have to step down.

Is Bernie The Frontrunner Now? Or Will The Right-Wing Newspaper In New Hampshire Deliver That State To Amy Klobuchar?

Amy Klobuchar by Nancy Ohanian

Over the weekend in New Hampshire, the Union Leader endorsed Amy Klobuchar for president. Good news? Well... maybe for her competitors. The Union Leader isn't just a Republican Party mouthpiece, it's one of the most notoriously conservative daily newspapers in the country. Democratic primary voters don't normally take election advice from a newspaper equivalent of Sean Hannity.

"If there is to be any realistic challenge to Trump in November," wrote the McQuaids, "the Democratic nominee needs to have a proven and substantial record of accomplishment across party lines, an ability to unite rather than divide, and the strength and stamina to go toe-to-toe with the Tweeter-in-Chief. That would be U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She is sharp and witty, with a commanding understanding of both history and the inner workings of Capitol Hill. Trump doesn’t want to face her. He is hoping for Bernie, Biden, Buttigieg or Warren. Each has weaknesses, whether of age, inexperience or a far-left agenda that thrills some liberals but is ripe for exploitation in a mainstream general election. Sen. Klobuchar has none of those weaknesses."

No, her weakness-- and her consistent inability to gain any significant traction with Democratic voters-- is that she's conservative enough to please the Union Leader publisher and editor. Earlier today she was Chuck Todd's guest on Meet The Press, happily auditioning to be Biden's running mate by attacking Bernie with a lie about healthcare both of them robotically repeat. "I'm ready to support the winner, but I make a strong case here that if you look at how we've won in states like Louisiana and Kentucky and in Wisconsin, where we beat Scott Walker, or in Michigan, this is about candidates that reflected their states. I think Senator Sanders idea of kicking 149 million Americans off their current health insurance in four years is wrong." Please note the dead armadillo in the Nancy Ohanian graphic above. Also note the thermometer above, where you can contribute to the best candidate running for president, the one who can defeat Trump and make sure a Republican-lite Democrat, like Todd's guest, doesn't follow him into the White House.

The CNN poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters released this morning was taken before the Union Leader endorsement came out. Amy Klobuchar was polling at 6%, in fifth place, between Elizabeth and Tulsi. How many points will the Union Leader endorsement shave off her total? These were the totals and the momentum from the October CNN poll for each candidate:

• Bernie- 25% (up 4)
• Status Quo Joe- 16% (up 1)
• Mayo- 15% (up 5)
• Elizabeth- 12% (down 6)
• Klobuchar- 6% (up 1)
• Tulsi- 5% (flat)
• Yang- 5% (flat)
• Steyer- 2% (down 1)
• Bloomberg- 1%
• John Delaney- 0% (up 1)
• Michael Bennet- 0%
• Deval Patrick- 0%

The gains since October for most of the candidates came from two sources: the combined 8 points that became available after Kamala, Cory Booker, Beto and Joe Sestak dropped out. And 6 points that Elizabeth Warren lost after she waffled on Medicare for All and then attacked Bernie in a way no one by her die-hard supporters found remotey credible.





When asked which candidates they found most likable, Warren suffers more than any of the other candidates, although Deval Patrick is the candidate Democrats like least. Bernie may be absolutely hated by the millionaires that populate the MSNBC panels but apparently normal people aren't buying their venom:

• Bernie- 24%
• Mayo- 22%
• Status Quo Joe- 14%
• Yang- 11%
• Klobuchar- 6%
• Tulsi- 5%
• Elizabeth- 4%
• Tom Steyer- 1%
• Steyer- 1%
• Bloomberg- 1%
• eval Patrick- 0%

Democrats recognize that Bernie (50%) and Elizabeth (18%) are the two most progressive candidates and, despite his gaslighting bullshit to the contrary, almost all recognize that Status Quo Joe is not progressive at all-- never was and never will be. Biden came in 6th with just 3%-- behind Mayo (8%), Yang (7%) and Steyer (4%). Conservatives Michael Bloomberg, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick all scored 0% on the progressive question. The Union Leader's favorite candidate, today's pathetic Meet the Press guest, scored 1%.

How Flawed Is Too Flawed To Be An Effective Candidate?

I'm sure no one doubts that Trump and his allies have every intention in the world of causing as much chaos as they can-- and worse-- in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Writing for CNN yesterday, Jeff Zeleny and Kaitlan Collins reported that Trump is watching announcement rallies, tuning into televised town hall sessions with voters and listening carefully to commentary on the Democratic presidential race. His opinions fluctuate on who he will, or would like to, run against. But one sentiment is unwavering-- he has no plans to sit idly by and watch. [He] intends to play an active role in the Democratic primary and has instructed his aides to look for ways he can, according to more than a dozen Republicans involved in his campaign. His team is working to sow divisions among rivals and looking for opportunities to 'cause chaos from the left and right,' in the words of one adviser."

And despite the concerted effort by corporate media-- led, wittingly or not, by Rachel Maddow-- to white-wash Amy Klobuchar's transgressions, no one is giving Trump an easier target that the aggressively boring senior senator from Minnesota, whose claim to "Minnesota Nice is, at best, tenuous. No doubt Trump lapped up the noise, How Amy Klobuchar Treats Her Staff, by in the NY Times, yesterday. After interviewing dozens of Klobuchar staffers, Matt Flegenheimer and Sydney Ember wrote that "In private, she could deliver slashing remarks without particular provocation. Parched one day in the Capitol, she turned to a member of her team and said, 'I would trade three of you for a bottle of water,' according to a person who witnessed it." That's an example of what earlier in the month Maddow excused as her winning sense of humor. Had Bernie (or Trump) said it, Maddow would be accusing them of colluding with Russian aluminum barons.

Former aides said Klobuchar frequently told them they were damaging her political career. On one occasion, a former aide recalled, Klobuchar accused her of "ruining my marriage," too. (The aide said she interpreted the comment to mean that Klobuchar, in her telling, was forced to work overtime, away from family, to overcome the aide's failings.)

Many staff members did warmly recall the misery-loves-company camaraderie that built among aggrieved aides. But the core truth of life with Klobuchar was never going to change, they said: She thought she was demanding their best and getting far less. And she was never going to apologize for pointing that out.

"I need to do some serious soul searching about our office," she said in one e-mail, lamenting the team's work product. "How can you treat me like this time and time again?"

One of the top and most respected Capitol Hill staffers sent me this last night-- word for word: "Off the record-- I have a former colleague who worked for her and said the coverage isn’t fair... he says she’s far worse than what has been reported."

Moments later, a member of Congress, unsolicited, sent me a note asserting that "a staggering number of staffers on Capitol Hill are self-important shitheads who waste all their time gossiping and never do anything useful. It is FAR more difficult to get anything useful out of the staffers than it is other Members, even Republicans. And the way I have been playing it, there is a lot more at stake than who cleans the salad out of the comb." He did, however, go on to say that what was really sad about the article is that "Klobuchar’s main legislative 'accomplishment' is swimming pool safety. If someone could find me a candidate who had instituted universal healthcare, I wouldn’t care if he or she held some staffer upside down out the window by his ankles, and shook him until the change fell out of his pockets.

"The other day, I looked into how someone as deeply incompetent and stupid as Theresa May could ever have been elected the head of the Conservative Party. The answer is this:

• One opponent pointed out that she had children and May did not, which was reported endlessly in the media as a vicious low blow.
• Another opponent sexted a woman who was not his wife.
• Another opponent came out in favor of a third runway at Heathrow Airport, which somehow was twisted by the media into a callous disregard for the right to peace and quiet.

"The only thing that even remotely resembled debate of a serious issue is that May was the only candidate who said that she 'would negotiate' to kick three million legal EU emigrants out on their asses when Britain left the EU, while the others said they could stay.

"I’m sorry about the salad and the comb, but this already is descending into trivial bullshit. And Trump will exploit it-- mark my words."

No one's going to ever have a White House as chaotic, miserable, paranoid and dysfunctional as Trump. But that's way too low a bar to set for aspiring politicians eyeing the White House. Her staffers say she crosses the line between being a demanding boss and being a dehumanizing boss. She told her staff that their tweeting (in her name) makes her look like a joke and that she feared there was "an in-house mole." She rate-fucked staffers who left her employee when prospective employers asked for recommendations. She sounds like exactly I would have avoided hiring as a department head when I was president of Reprise Records. She was "the steward of a work environment colored by volatility, highhandedness and distrust." Staff turnover in her office "perennially ranks near the highest in the Senate." People like Klobuchar fail leadership tests and produce crap results-- always... no, not sometimes-- always; I don't care how much Rachel Maddow appreciates the deference the senator pays her.



"She was known to throw office objects in frustration," wrote Flegenheimer and Ember, "including binders and phones, in the direction of aides, they said. Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning-- a possible violation of Senate ethics rules. One of those tasks was so disgusting that I'm not going to write it out at DWT.

While there was wide consensus in the interviews that women were often held to a different standard as bosses, former aides — female and male — said their concerns about Klobuchar's behavior should not be dismissed as gender bias. Many of the aides said they had worked for both men and women, for lawmakers both compassionate and unkind, without encountering anyone else like Klobuchar.

The world of congressional staffs is one of long hours and low pay, with much of the work shouldered by twentysomething junior aides who are learning on the job. Some members of Congress are notorious for round-the-clock phone calls, late-night e-mail and fierce attention to their own press coverage. Klobuchar is among them, but former aides said they were especially troubled by her willingness-- in excess of other senators', they said-- to embarrass staff members over minor missteps or with odd requests.

Most of those interviewed for this article-- describing memories that span from shortly after her election in 2006 to the much more recent past-- discussed their time with Klobuchar on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the senator. These concerns were not idle, they said. Saving potentially damaging e-mails from Klobuchar became something of a last-day ritual, the aides said, in case they ever needed evidence of her conduct for their own reputational protection.

She was known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides, they said. Low-level employees were asked to perform duties they described as demeaning, like washing her dishes or other cleaning-- a possible violation of Senate ethics rules, according to veterans of the chamber.

Appraisals of perceived staff incompetence were delivered at all hours of the day and night:

"In 20 years in politics I have never seen worse prep," Klobuchar said in one e-mail, displeased at how a political event had been handled.

"This is the hands down worse thing you have ever given me," she wrote in another, questioning her team's grasp of policy as she rejected its "slop."

"This is the worst press staff I ever had," she announced once to employees, according to an aide present. This was effectively a rite of passage, the aide said: The senator had plainly said the same about both predecessors and successors in the office.

This much is not in dispute: For years, Klobuchar has had among the highest rates of staff turnover in the Senate, according to a review of congressional offices from the website LegiStorm. Over much of her Senate career, no one outpaced Klobuchar on this score; in 2017, two freshman senators, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, surpassed her.

The churn has produced a bit of a vicious circle. Democrats in Washington say she has struggled to recruit and retain top talent. Some operatives say they have shied away from her 2020 campaign, mindful of Klobuchar's reputation.

Among other concerns, her office's paid parental leave policy has been described as unusual on Capitol Hill. Two people familiar with the policy said that those who took paid leave were effectively required, once they returned, to remain with the office for three times as many weeks as they had been gone. The policy, outlined in an employee handbook, called for those who left anyway to pay back money earned during the weeks they were on leave.

After receiving questions about the policy from the Times, Klobuchar's office said it would be revised. "We offer 12 weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave for our staff and have one of the strongest paid leave policies in the Senate," said a spokeswoman, Elana Ross. "We've never made staff pay back any of their leave and will be changing that language in the handbook." She declined to provide a copy of the current policy as written.

This kind of stuff should point journalists to ask tough questions about how her behavior could portend for the office she's seeking-- although, Maddow might say, that it's so much easier to just let it slide and guarantee herself another first-in-the-nation interview if she ever needs one again on a slow news night. Axios managing editor David Nather pointed out why this matters: "As a new candidate without a well-defined national profile, Klobuchar's treatment of her staff has become a damaging storyline that could overwhelm what she has to say about issues." Klobuchar and her cronies would like to say criticism of her behavior is sexist-- but Amanda Terkel, writing late yesterday for HuffPo recognized that identity politics bullshit argument for what it is: offensive to feminists. One former Klobuchar staffer: "It’s not that there’s not merit to the argument that other men have been abusive and gotten away with it. It doesn’t make it OK for anybody. We don’t say, we haven’t held men accountable in the past for this on Capitol Hill, so why start now?"

Advocates for women in politics have long been focused on dismantling the barriers that kept men in power and shut women out. And while the 2020 Democratic primary is the first time in history when a significant portion of the candidates running are women, many of those barriers still exist. Women still face more questions about their fitness for office in ways that men don’t.

But with women in power, there are going to be good bosses. And there are going to be bad ones. And criticizing a female politician doesn’t mean that it’s a sexist attack. Feminism is, of course, ultimately about more than getting women into elected office.

“The only way to excuse the Klobuchar allegations is to conflate cruelty with feminism,” wrote Jezebel writer Ashley Reese. “It’s the reductive Bad Ass #GirlBoss model of empowerment that celebrates virtually anything women do-- because a woman did it. It’s about getting ahead, not other women.”

Klobuchar faced allegations of mistreating her staff as far back as 2006, when she was the Hennepin County attorney in Minneapolis-- undercutting the Wall Street Journal’s view that the upset aides are just a bunch of snowflake millennials.

  “I’m hearing people saying, ‘They just didn’t know how to work in a high-pressure environment,’ or ‘they couldn’t take the high stakes or the tough boss or the tough feedback.’ It’s incredibly insulting. It’s gaslighting,” said one of the former Klobuchar staffers. “It’s the kind of thing people tell people who have been abused. It’s not abuse, you just didn’t live up to the standards, and that’s your fault.”

Obviously, Klobuchar's shortcomings and foibles aren't the only targets Trump is tucking away in a fold of his malevolent reptilian brain. Right now it doesn't look like New Jersey junior senator Cory Booker is going to break through into the top ranks of major candidates. But if he does, Eliana Johnson's 2014 piece in the National Review will serve as a guide post to paint him as just another corrupt New Jersey pol. A former Booker staffer confirmed the general accuracy of the report, in as much as Booker ran a culture-of-corruption administration in Newark, and the crippling damage it would do to candidate Booker if he ever had to face Trump. "You know as well as I do," he told me, "it's impossible to come up in New Jersey politics without being tainted by corruption. Democratic politics in New Jersey, just like Republican politics in New Jersey is a swamp where anything goes-- and everything does. Has there every been an above-board politician from New Jersey? If you find one, let me know." At the time of the National Review piece, there was bipartisan support for demanding that the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee on Investigation look into "abuses of power and cover-ups" in the seven years that Cory Booker was mayor of Newark. Booker-- like his pal Chris Christie-- has always painted himself as someone working to root out corruption. And isn't that what corrupted politicians always do? Johnson wrote that "the comptroller’s report on the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation (NWCDC) paints a different picture-- of, at best, Booker’s inattentive oversight in allowing the agency, which until recently was responsible for providing all of the city’s water, to fleece millions from the public fisc while his political allies enriched themselves. At worst, it suggests Booker knowingly let his friends profit on the city’s dime." It would be a shame if the Democrats deprive themselves of the corruption weapon in a battle with the most corrupt "president" in American history by nominating a candidate with questionable credibility in the area.

I want to bring up something I referred to last night, Brian Hanley's Medium post about why Democrats ought to nominate Bernie. He enumerated 20 reasons but I'm just going to reproduce one-- the third in his list:

He’s the most popular politician in the country.

While Trump broke the record for the worst favorability ratings of any nominee in history, Sanders maintains the highest favorability scores of any elected official. Sanders continues to be the most popular politician in the country by a large margin. He’s the only one on either side who the majority of voters like. Even a Fox News survey found that no other politician was more well liked and most Republicans say that he’s honest.

This chart was from 2016 but it's still instructive today, especially when you look at some of the other Democrats vying for the nomination, particularly Biden, Gillibrand, Booker and Klobuchar-- the centrists, all liars who the best you can say about is that they don't lie as much as Trump. Oh boy!

Klobuchar Revisited: You Know Who Loves Her? Republicans-- And We Ought To Ask Ourselves Why

And it's not just because she treats her staff like shit. When we covered her announcement Sunday, we came across former Iowa state Senator David Johnson. Johnson, a dairy farmer, served in the legislature since 1999, representing the beet-red northwest part of the state. In 2016, he left the GOP-- noting that Trump was unqualified to lead the nation. He didn't join the Democrats but continued on as an independent. Once he realized he wouldn't win reelection, he announced he wouldn't run again in 2018. Now Johnson is working to help Klobuchar win the Democratic caucus, claiming "there are more than 700,000 Iowa no-party voters I can help organize in her support."

Remember, Johnson didn't leave the GOP to join the Democratic Party or because he was disgusted with his own congressman-- Steve King-- or his racism, xenophobia and Nazi inclinations. He left because of Trump and held to his conservative perspectives in the legislature for the two years after his switch. And Johnson is far from the only conservative Republican who has an affinity for Klobuchar. Yesterday, Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine, reporting for Politico, noted that the middle of the road Minnesota Democrat "has an unusual constituency behind her as she launches her run for president: Senate Republicans" and many of them are "raving" about her.

“I hope I’m not condemning her nascent run for the presidency,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) as he praised Klobuchar. “She’s too reasonable, too likable, too nice.”

“She wants to achieve a solution and I would hope that’s not a disqualifying thing for someone who would like to be president,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who runs the Senate Rules Committee with Klobuchar. “I like her a lot and hope that’s not harmful to her.”

Apparently she never took off one of her shoes and threw it at either Cornyn or Blunt-- or if she did, they liked it. One reason they like her is because she’s "established herself as someone who can cut deals with Republicans and occasionally tacks to the center. It’s a combination that that could give her a boost among primary voters seeking a candidate with bipartisan bona fides if it doesn’t doom her with a party moving quickly to the left." Klobuchar's kind of compromise is giving in to the Republican policy agenda. In other words, nit so much compromise as surrender.

Wilbur Ross is a billionaire, a crook and a murderer-- one of Trump's worst cabinet picks. And the information about him was readily available during his confirmation hearings. The normal Democratic senators thinking about running for president-- Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jeff Merkley-- all voted NO. Even Joe Manchin voted NO. Klobuchar somehow seemed to find common ground with the Republicans to vote to confirm Ross (as did Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown). And last week Klobuchar was doing the same thing when AIPAC and the GOP demanded that boycotting Israel should be illegal. Booker, Brown, Gillibrand, Harris, Merkley, Bernie and Warren all voted NO. Klobuchar and Bennet went for the unconstitutional common ground.

Republicans say that Klobuchar was one of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who was most respectful when questioning Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year about sexual assault allegations, even as Klobuchar found herself being asked by the nominee whether she had a drinking problem. But befitting her “Minnesota nice” style, Klobuchar moved on and didn’t linger on the confrontation.

“Her questioning [on] the Judiciary Committee is excellent,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). “Her questions can be thoughtful and respectful. Still probing, they’re not easy, but it’s a good model.”

“Of the folks that are running, she’s probably more responsible,” said Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS).

Klobuchar’s Republican pals say that her political abilities would be imposing in a general election against Trump, noting her strong appeal in the Midwest-- the region that tipped the presidency to Trump in 2016.

Some Democrats are “going to be looking for somebody that is actually going to be electable in a general election. And I think it’s a spot she could fill,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the GOP whip.

“I don’t like to give Democrats advice but they’ve got to be able to carry the Midwest,” Collins said.

It’s not just Republican senators who are fans. George Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, penned an op-ed recently that described Klobuchar as “the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing,” pointing to her Midwest roots as an asset for Democrats and praising her even-keeled temperament.

Is that what the country is looking for now? Some centrist who's better than Trump but will accomplish exactly nothing noteworthy ever? If that's who they want, Klobuchar's the one. This is a polling question PPP asked of Democratic primary voters last week:

Amy Klobuchar's Rocky Announcement Today

Despite Trumpanzee's racist spitballs from the sidelines, Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign launch yesterday went beautifully-- just in Lawrence, Massachusetts and then in Dover, New Hampshire. Her rally was a call to action against wealthy power brokers who "have been waging class warfare against hardworking people for decades"-- and against a political elite "bought off" and "bullied" by corporate giants, and a middle class squeezed so tight it "can barely breathe." This morning she started the day at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, followed by a rally in Iowa City at the Iowa Memorial Union at the University of Iowa late this afternoon. And this evening she'll be at the Mississippi Fairgrounds in Davenport for a more intimate roundtable discussion. Tomorrow she's off to South Carolina, followed by Georgia, Nevada and California.

In a post handicapping the Iowa caucuses this morning, Tim Russo predicted she'd take 7% of the vote in the crowded field. Ouch! But, still much better than Amy Klobuchar, who he assigned 1%! "What a disgusting pig this pointless grandstanding police state-reliable Klobuchar is. Felony cover music? A crime to boycott Israel? What the living fuck. Klobuchar’s usefulness will be as an example of just how far establishment Dems will allow the correct genitalia to festoon themselves with authoritarian prostration before capital."

This morning, Politico's Elena Schneider wasn't quite as colorful in her description of Klobuchar's Iowa prospects... but she did use the word "horror" in the headline. If you're pitching yourself as "Minnesota nice," the whole shitshow gets derailed when Joe Biden's operative leak that you were brutally bullying your staff the day before the kick-off.

Biden, who has no reason to run for president other than naked ego and ultimate careerism-- and nothing whatsoever to offer America put pathetic and dangerous back to normalcy, has the most vicious operatives on the field, spreading more poison about the other Democratic candidates than everyone else combined.

The run-up to Klobuchar’s expected presidential campaign launch on Sunday has been sidetracked by former aides, speaking anonymously for fear of retribution, who described a toxic office environment including demeaning emails, thrown office supplies and requests for staff to perform personal chores for the senator. It’s a sharp departure from the public brand that Klobuchar has built to get to this moment: a pragmatic, aw-shucks Minnesotan who gets things done and wins her state by landslide margins.

Before heading off to Iowa this afternoon, she spoke in Minneapolis, with the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi as the backdrop, the bridge that replaced the one that collapsed in 2007 killing 13 people. Klobuchar is very proud that she worked with Republican then-Senator Norman Coleman to get the funding, calling it an example of achieving results through bipartisan cooperation. Today she crowed "We worked across the aisle to get the federal funding and we rebuilt that I-35W bridge-- in just over a year. That's community. That's a shared story. That's ordinary people doing extraordinary things. But that sense of community is fracturing across our nation right now, worn down by the petty and vicious nature of our politics. We are all tired of the shutdowns and the putdowns, the gridlock and the grandstanding. Our nation must be governed not from chaos but from opportunity. Not by wallowing over what's wrong, but my marching inexorably toward what's right."

Most reporters, though, were more interested in the charges against her for brutalizing and abusing her staff. Her "campaign has not denied any of the specific allegations detailed in recent news stories, and Democrats in the critical first caucus state of Iowa-- where Klobuchar hopes to make a splash in a crowded 2020 field-- say the senator’s treatment of staff has the potential to sideswipe her campaign."

“It’s a very unfortunate way to start a presidential campaign,” said Jerry Crawford, a longtime Democratic operative in Iowa. “It was well-known at the insider level, but now it’s becoming well-known to the general public at the time she’s announcing, which is problematic for her politically.”

Bryce Smith, the Democratic Party chairman in Dallas County, Iowa, said “I don’t see being a hard-ass as a boss as a bad thing.” Smith noted, however, that “having to take time away from stumping on why you would be the best candidate and playing defense on what happened in her past” could be a problem for Klobuchar. “A few candidates have to do that right now,” he added.

“I doubt it will [affect voters] much,” said one national Democratic consultant, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “But does it mar her rollout and her getting support from important people, like donors and elected officials? Yes. And in the long run, that’s a problem with getting voters.”

...Klobuchar’s Senate office clearly has cycled through staff at a higher rate than most others. LegiStorm, a database service tracking the congressional workforce, found that Klobuchar had the highest staff turnover rate in the Senate from 2001 to 2016. In 2017, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) surpassed Klobuchar on the list.

Those are not the numbers Klobuchar wants to bring into focus.

...In advance of her campaign launch, Klobuchar’s record in the heartland has won attention in Washington, Minnesota and Iowa, where one Republican-turned-independent state senator pledged to bring 700,000 other no-party Iowans to caucus for Klobuchar after he heard her speak in December.

“She’s Midwestern, she’s grounded,” said David Johnson, who switched his party affiliation during the 2016 campaign and retired in 2018. “She’s not one of those bombastic politicians.”

In the months leading up to her 2020 decision, Klobuchar frequently talked about the voters “left behind” in 2016, a playbook for Democrats focused on defeating the president in the Midwestern states that he flipped into the Republican column. Klobuchar’s family biography, as the granddaughter of an Iron Range miner, could also speak to some of the white, working-class voters that Democrats hope to regain from Trump.

But Klobuchar’s path out of a primary-- dominated by flashier candidates and a left-leaning electorate-- is far from clear.

She lags behind four of her Senate colleagues in campaign cash, and she’s unlikely to be the only 2020 candidate running as a solutions-oriented Midwest whisperer. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who won reelection in a Trump state in 2018, is considering a White House campaign, and he traveled to Iowa on his “Dignity of Work” tour last week. Biden, if he ultimately jumps into the race, would also likely appeal to moderate Democrats and independents.

That throng of other options in every lane of the Democratic primary is what could make Klobuchar’s staff issues so challenging. It “steps on the story she is trying to tell,” said Doug Thornell, a national Democratic strategist.

HuffPost reported that three staffers withdrew from consideration to lead Klobuchar’s campaign, in part because of her work history with staff.

“The big danger with a story like this is that it festers and potentially undermines one of her core strengths-- that she can bring people together and that she’s got a good temperament, ‘Minnesota nice’ thing,” Thornell said. “if she picks up steam in Iowa over the next few months, that’ll help her change the narrative for her.”

Under pressure from the other candidates' actions, way-too-centrist Klobuchar endorsed the Green New Deal this week. I'm going to bet that her campaign ends when she's unable to explain it sufficiently and sell it to her dead armadillo supporters (like David Johnson). And by the way, today, Klobuchar, who has been credibly accused of things like taking off a shoe and throwing it at a staffer and-- by a 23 male intern-- of making him clean up blood on a seat, waited until after her announcement to tell the media that "Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people. I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country." Another presidential candidate, like the Starbucks Guy and Gillibrand, who needs a thorough psychological evaluation.

Amy Klobuchar And Sherrod Brown Want To Be President Too

I've tried to make it clear that the Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President series is not just for any candidate I don't like, but really for the very worst of the worst, like Gillibrand and Bloomberg. So... I may not want to see Amy Klobuchar get the nomination, nor Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris, but none of them belongs in that series. Still all fair game for criticism of course, but not as a "Worst Democraps." For example, reporting for BuzzFeed News yesterday, Molly Hensley-Clancy wrote that there's more to Klobuchar than Minnesota Nice. "[B]ehind the doors of her Washington, DC, office, the Minnesota Democrat ran a workplace controlled by fear, anger, and shame, according to interviews with eight former staffers, one that many employees found intolerably cruel. She demeaned and berated her staff almost daily, subjecting them to bouts of explosive rage and regular humiliation within the office, according to interviews and dozens of emails."

Dead Armadillo by Nancy Ohanian

It looks like two of the next announcements will be from the Midwest: Amy Klobuchar on Sunday and Sherrod Brown... soon. Since first being elected to the Senate in 2006, Klobuchar has rarely been a topic for DWT. The last time she was involved with anything controversial was when she got into a mud-wrestling match with Justin Bieber as she spearheaded an effort-- for which she was well-paid-- to make it a felony to stream certain content online. She introduced a Luddite "illegal streaming bill" (SB 978) for Hollywood, co-sponsored by 2 corporate whores, John Cornyn and Chris Coons, meant to make the streaming of any copyrighted material on the Internet a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. At the time, the nonprofit, Fight for the Future, was particularly concerned and launched a campaign called "Free Bieber," using the example of Justin Bieber’s rise to fame, doing cover songs, as a way to get out the message. (Ironically, Bieber’s camp issued a cease-and-desist over using his name in the campaign.) The implications were far broader than a Bieber, though. When Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon covered Madonna’s "Material Girl" at Occupy Wall Street, if someone had uploaded a video of the performance to YouTube, Madonna (or whomever owns any part of her music or publishing) could sue the uploader if it’s deemed a "public performance." October 23, 2011:



In the end, the Senate was just embarrassed by the bill and it didn't get a vote. She introduced it again a year later and the Senate basically told her to just stop wasting everyone's time. This week she made a spectacle of herself again-- the only serious candidate for the Democratic nomination to vote in favor of making it a crime to boycott Israel. Voting against the bill were Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, even Kirsten Gillibrand, while Klobuchar joined all the Republicans and the AIPAC-Dems to vote for another clearly unconstitutional bill that appeals to her (or her donors).

The only other time we thought about her this year was when she was blandly and ineptly questioning Brett Kavanaugh. Justin, a sharp lawyer friend of mine told me her performance would have flunked her out of Duke, where he had graduated.

NBC News began its day yesterday with a report from Chuck Todd and Co. about how geography-- ie, the Midwest-- is destiny in presidential races. A stretch, at best. "People," they wrote, "often forget this about Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign: One of his strengths-- in both the primaries and general election-- was geography. Obama’s Illinois borders Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Indiana, and Obama won all of these states in either the primaries/caucuses (Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin) or the general election in 2008 (Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana). And part of the POTENTIAL that Klobuchar brings to the 2020 Democratic field is the ability to replicate this Obama strength from 2008. Minnesota, after all, borders Iowa (whose caucuses could be more important than ever this cycle), as well as Wisconsin (which could be 2020’s all-important battleground state in the general election)." Most of Minnesota borders North and South Dakota, Manitoba and Ontario, although I guess in theory you can see across Lake Superior from Grand Marais to Isle Royale, which is part of Michigan but has no inhabitants. I doubt Klobuchar is hanging her hat on the geography theory.

Daniel Straus and Holly Otterbein had a more salient theory for what Sherrod Brown could be hanging his hat on-- being Biden without the baggage. That Biden is nothing at all-- except the name recognition from having been a part of Obama-- other than the baggage isn't occurring to anyone yet. His lane is largely discredited neo-liberal corporatism and I doubt Brown really wants to identify with that, at least not in a primary. None-the-less, they insist that Biden and Brown "are on an early collision course in the initial days of the 2020 presidential race. They’re chasing the same potential supporters, touting the same themes and even using some of the same language to go after President Donald Trump. And Brown, kicking off a pre-campaign tour of key presidential voting states last week, made clear that if he gets into the race he intends to run, essentially, as Biden without the baggage."

Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk county supervisor who hosted an event for Brown in Iowa, introduced him by ticking off a list of votes-- including opposing NAFTA, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and voting against authorization of the war in Iraq-- that had featured Biden on the other side.

"All those things that I said that Sherrod Brown got right, Joe Biden got every single one of those things wrong." Schwartz said. He said that the congressional record might not come to mind immediately for other caucus-goers. But "we've seen Biden on the campaign trail many times already so we already know what to expect,” Schwartz continued. “He certainly has done great things for the country [quick-- name one] but I just don't think that’s what folks are looking for."

Brown’s “Dignity of Work” tour introduced himself as a progressive who can “talk to workers” and railed against the distractions of Trump’s “phony populism”-- echoing a memorable Biden line from the midterm campaign trail. Brown’s political pitch is that he can win back the Midwest for Democrats after winning reelection in Ohio in 2018-- a version of the rationale that the Scranton-born former VP can reconnect Democrats with the working-class white voters who have left the party in recent years.

...Brown himself is more diplomatic. When asked whether he and Biden are trying to make the same appeal to voters, Brown pivoted to his campaign slogan. "I'm not going to make the comparison to anybody, but my whole career has been about the dignity of work," Brown said.

As Brown and Biden both consider the presidential race, they and their respective supporters have both tried to frame themselves in a specific light: progressive Democrats with long lists of liberal policy positions who can nevertheless reach out to voters across the partisan divide.

Brown will also face questions from the left-- he has firmly refused to endorse Medicare for all, for example, saying he first wants to see more incremental changes like lowering the Medicare eligibility age. But at each stop in his early pre-campaign tour, Brown has laid out his background of winning elections in an increasingly Republican-leaning state [Democrats just won 3 of the 4 House seats and came within a hair of winning the 4th] while also staying a champion of major liberal issues like fighting for same sex marriage and voting against the war in Iraq.

"I think Democratic primary voters want somebody that’s going to be on the side of workers and will not compromise on civil rights and workers’ rights and LGBT rights," Brown said during a stop in Cresco.

Ohio attorney, activist and blogger Tim Russo knows Brown up close and personal-- and is no fan. Friday he was writing about the beginning of revolution: When The Boots Wear Out, Will Anyone Be Ready To Listen. Russo wrote that in the clip from Doctor Zhivago, "Alec Guiness plays a Russian Bolshevik joining the czar’s final army with the sole purpose of being in place when World War I grinds the working class soldiers to dust, predicting, 'when the boots wore out they’d be ready to listen.' As a new presidential campaign begins to reveal to America that hindsight is indeed 2020, American boots are beginning to wearing out."

Ohio voted for Obama twice, then Trump in 2016. To establishment media, and establishment Democrats, this somehow means Ohio is irrevocably a Republican state. To Alec Guiness’ character in Doctor Zhivago, it means quite something else. Ohio has been voting for radical change three presidential elections in a row now, but change never comes. In a hopelessly rigged game, both political parties’ establishments now shamelessly plundering America before our eyes, Ohioans know to the bones in their weary feet the boots are indeed wearing out.

The Obama-Obama-Trump voter of Ohio may just stop voting altogether in 2020. If the choice for Ohio in 2020 remains an abusive, insulting, pointless D vs. R, why subject oneself to ever more self humiliation? I used to seethe in anger at nonvoters. How dare you? Now, I’m close to giving up voting myself. My own personal story of endless exile imposed by the very Democrats I helped elect myself would be enough justification.

Boy, did I help, swallowing hook line and sinker every fraudulent con designed to excise every coming generation’s security into some repugnant oligarch’s third yacht, fourth home, tax haven hedge fund on an island with a private jet strip built solely to escape the reckoning they know is coming. That is my Generation X’s responsibility-- we bought it. Such fools we were. Turns out, we weren’t temporarily embarrassed millionaires in waiting. We were suckers.

Americans aren’t yet 1931 hobos begging brother, can you spare a dime; yet. But we know our road is cut off before us. The 2020 presidential election may be the last chance America has to avoid the hell the characters in Doctor Zhivago would soon endure, as the boots slowly wear out.

This morning, Tim, no doubt fired up by Alex Guiness, was still waxing poetic-- if a little more pointedly so: "As we march back from the fake front to face our real enemies in our worn out boots, snakes like Sherrod Brown will wave their canary logo at us, but we will all know his bird is kept in a golden cage gilded by Wall Street. Rotted boots tend to cleanse the soul and open the eyes."

Are Voters Looking For Candidates From The Mushy Middle?

Didn't we learn anything from the Hillary debacle? Voters are looking for someone authentic-- not a concoction of consultant and pollster memos-- who stands for something that helps ordinary working families. I doubtHouse Democrats will even try to live up to that once they take over in January, but that's what turned out their voters three weeks ago. Today ABC had two of the mushiest politicians they could find as guests on This Week with George Stephanopoulos-- plus one, Sherrod Brown who plays the role of being authentic on TV. Brown's the guy who will never waver from his backing for the working class-- unless there's an election. After a career of flip-flops, he most recently abandoned his support for revitalizing Glass-Steagall and breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks. (Note: the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, he's taken $7,366,743 from the banksters, something which should disqualify him from any kind of presidential consideration.)

Any Klobuchar is an inoffensive centrist. Of 49 Senate Democrats, her record is the 33rd most progressive, earning her a gentlewoman's "C" from ProgressivePunch. She's exactly what you want if you want Hillary without the Hillary baggage. You think that's what voters are looking for? She doesn't stand for anything at all outside of milquetoast, garden variety Democratic policy. In an illustrated thesaurus, her photo could be on the page for antonyms for "inspirational."

Stephanopoulos introduced her as a "key Democrat on the Judiciary Committee." Who would be a non-key member? Dianne Feinstein? She's the ranking member. Patrick Leahy? Dick Durbin? Sheldon Whitehouse? They all have more seniority than Klobuchar. Chris Coons? Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris/ I guess everyone is a key member-- so no one is. So maybe Stephanopoulos should just stop the rote bullshit and stop sleepwalking through his show.

We were treated to some classic Klobuchar on the show today-- presumably what she will use to bore voters to death if she runs for president: "My mom taught second grade until she was 70 years old, and she always told me if you do something wrong, you don’t tell the truth, you take responsibility for it. You don’t blame it on the other kid." I swear she said that. Here's her exchange with the dull witted host about her presidential aspirations:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You are coming off a big re-election victory in the state of Minnesota, congratulations for that. You did well …

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

STEPHANOPOULOS: … in a lot of areas where President Trump had done well back in 2016. It sparked a lot of speculation that you might be looking at the 2020 race for president. You’ve been to Iowa a couple times as well. So can you just fill us in on how you’re thinking about that and what’s shaping your potential decision?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, people are talking to me about this, I think, in part because I’ve worked really hard to go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable, and had-- did well in a number of those places that Donald Trump won. And I also am someone that, for those that are exhausted with politics, likes to get things done. But right now, I am just still thinking about this, talking to people. I’m sorry to say, I have no announcement for you on your show.

And I actually learned this from my Senate race once, when I first was considering running for the Senate and told someone that on the radio. And that was how my husband found out about it. And since he is watching today, I’m not going to repeat that again.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re not going to share your Thanksgiving conversations either, but that is not a no either. So I’m going to end with an invitation. When you’re ready to announce, you can do it right here on This Week.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you, George.

Done puking? After the relief of a flight of ads, George brought on the Republican equivalent in nothingness and meaningless, John Kasich, another presidential wannabe, who already tried once, only to be swatted like a fly gnat by Trump.



When George asked him how serious he is about running in 2020, he said "Very seriously. I’m considering it George, these are earnest conversations that go on virtually every day with some of my friends, with my family. Look, I-- we need different leadership, there isn’t any question about it. And I’m not only just worried about the tone and the name calling and the division in our country and the partisanship, but I also worry about the policies. You know, rising debt, the problem and inability to deal with immigration, the problems that we have as America alone in the world. You know, this is what I consider a rotten deal with the Saudis to look the other way. I mean these are things that, George, I’m worried about our country and not just in the short term, but I’m worried about our country in the long term. So the question for me is what-- what do I do about this? Is it-- you know, what exactly-- do I run because I’ve determined that I can win or is it important for me to make such a good showing that I can send a message that can disrupt the political system in this country? So yeah, I have to think about it, I think about it seriously. As you know, I still travel, I make, you know, I’m-- I’m out there trying to do what I can do. I don’t know when I will have to make a decision, but let’s not-- let’s be clear, I’m not being coy, I’m not trying to do this for some kind of a game. This is really, really serious to me... [A]ll options are on the table for me. But let me ask you a statement, let me ask you to think about this. At what point does somebody work and stand on principle, to say that the direction we’re going is wrong? I mean obviously, want to have some sort of a practical opportunity, you-- but you want to be-- you want to be able to make a statement. Now maybe I do that by running again or, you know, and frankly in the last election I was the last man standing with very little money and very little name recognition. It grew over time. But what I ask myself is what do I owe to my country? What can I do to help my country? Is this-- does it mean I run for office again or are there other ways in which I can impact the flow of events? And I listened to your last interview with the senator, I thought she did a very good job, but I mean it’s the same old stuff. It’s just all this politics and mumbo jumbo and lead this and that bill and we’ve got to get out of this mire and out of this mix and it’s going-- it’s going to depend on raising the public to say we deserve and want better. I don’t know where this is all going to lead, George, but this is a serious thought and consideration every day... [L]et’s just say that Donald Trump is nominated and Elizabeth Warren is nominated, and you have this ocean of people who sit in the middle. Is there a legitimate opportunity for a third party, bipartisan kind of ticket to be able to-- to score a victory or to have a profound impact on the future of American politics? That’d be something that I would talk to you about offline and get your view, because we don’t know at this point. In other words... Well you know what? You know what? No one thought a guy like Donald Trump would be elected president. No one thought we’d have electric cars. No one thought we could-- we could talk on phones and see the person we’re talking to. I mean, this is a time of change-- dynamic change. And you can’t judge tomorrow on the basis of what happened yesterday. So I don’t know about that. Hickenlooper, love him, the name’s too long. Hickenlooper-Kasich, you couldn’t fit it on a bumper sticker. You’d need to like go around with billboards or something.

Yesterday, Nicole Goodkind wrote about the Democratic candidate who actually does stand for something and who's not in the crowded mushy middle: "The 2020 presidential election," she asserted in Newsweek "is Senator Bernie Sanders’ race to lose, according to a new survey of more than a dozen top Democratic strategists."

“His people have never gone away,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told The Hill. “And he has a loyal core following out there that will be with him come hell or high water.” Sanders is the most popular politician in America, with an approval rating of 75 percent, according to a recent Harvard-Harris poll.

Since losing the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton, Sanders has toured the U.S. to promote his political group, Our Revolution, and his Medicare-for-all bill. His frequent travel has led many to speculate that he’s drumming up support for another presidential run. Advisers to the Vermont senator also have indicated that he’s eyeing the top job. When one of Sanders' associates was asked if his team was thinking about another run, the associate simply said, "Yes, is the answer."

Sanders considers himself a Democratic Socialist, and is registered as an Independent in the Senate but ran as a Democrat in the 2016 election. Bannon says that since 2016, Sanders far-left politics have been embraced by Democrats at large. “The Sanders wing is becoming the dominant wing of the party,” he said.

Sanders’ Medicare For All Act of 2017, which promotes a single-payer healthcare plan, is now supported by a third of Senate Democrats. When Sanders presented a version of the bill in 2013, he was unable to garner any support at all.

Wow, a third of Senate Democrats! What about among the real people, who these multimillionaires are supposed to be more or less representing? Do you wonder how they feel about Medicare-for-All?

Other candidates from the mushy-middle, besides Klobuchar, gearing up-- or possibly gearing up-- to run: Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, the Starbucks guy, Mike Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, Eric Garcetti, Michael Avenatti, Tim Kaine, one of the Castro brothers, John Warner, Pete Buttigieg, Tim Ryan, Seth Moulton, Eric Swalwell, John Hickenlooper, Mitch Landrieu, Deval Patrick, Steve Bullock, Oprah, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Mark Cuban, Eric Holder, Joe Kennedy III, Beto O'Rourke... [Note: I'm not 100% sure whether Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has decided to portray himself as a centrist or in some other way, but I threw his name in anyway, since these are all loser candidates that should save their donors the cash and go back to sleep.]