GOP Strategist Has A Message For The Trump Campaign: Fear The Bern!

A new Emerson poll of likely New Mexico voters shows Bernie winning among Democrats with 28%, followed by Status Quo Joe (27%), Andrew Yang (10%), Elizabeth (8%), Mayo Pete (7%), Bloomberg (3%)... You may recall, Trump bragged about how New Mexico is one of the states he could flip. In 2016 even a terminally weak candidate like Hillary beat him there, 385,234 (48.26%) to 319,667 (40.04%). Since election day, Trump's approval rating has plummeted by 27 points and his approval/disapproval numbers in December were 43-53%, underwater by 10 points. If he's counting on New Mexico's 5 electoral votes, he might as well go home now, especially if Bernie in the nominee. Bernie? Yeah, here's why:

James Barnett is a founding partner of the Republican lobbying and p.r. firm, Battleground Strategies. Before that he was the chair of the Vermont Republican Party and was the campaign manager for Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown's reelection campaign. This week Barnett had a timely message for the Trump campaign: Fear the Bern. It's a warning to his fellow Republicans. Referring to Bernie and Elizabeth as "far left candidates"-- hey, what do you expect; he's a brainwashed Republican-- he wrote that conventional political wisdom is that Señor Trumpanzee "stands his best chance in 2020 if Democrats nominate a far left candidate... I have witnessed both of these candidates up close as a former chairman of the Vermont Republican Party when Sanders rose from the backbench of the House to the Senate, and as campaign manager for the Senate reelection of Scott Brown against upstart Warren in Massachusetts. It has given me some insight into both of their strengths and weaknesses." He admirers neither.

Sanders may be a socialist, but his populist brand of rabble rousing mirrors Trump, and could cut into the new Republican blue collar base. Warren, on the other hand, is a traditional liberal who poses as a populist. Working class voters recognize the difference between the sincerity of Sanders and the sanctimony of Warren. To understand this dynamic, compare two instructive elections in locations that have little in common, one in tiny Essex County in the most rural northeast corner of Vermont and another in the only New England metropolis of Boston.

Essex County is the most Republican part of what was once the most Republican state. It is now the lone Republican holdout among the 14 counties in Vermont. In 2016, it was the red dot in the blue sea of the state, going for Trump by 18 points. Flashback to 2006 when Sanders ran for the open Senate seat in Vermont in the only serious contest he had faced since 1994 when socialism was still a dirty word. Sanders cruised to victory and won Essex County with 59 percent of the vote, even as those same voters overwhelmingly supported the reelection of Republican Governor James Douglas.

Vermont is not up for grabs in 2020 or anytime soon, but these same white rural working class voters are scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They are the voters who delivered Trump his narrow victory in 2016. Fast forward six years to Boston and the 2012 election when Warren rode the coattails of President Obama to the Senate. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and party standard bearer, lost Boston proper without cracking 20 percent. Warren won big there too, but trailed the showing of Obama by five points.

Why? Because in places like gritty South Boston, many working class voters rejected her. Like in Essex County in Vermont, they are Trump voters and could also be Sanders voters. But they are not buying what Warren is selling. As Warren marched in the South Boston Saint Patrick Day parade thar year, one man on the curb mimicked her often repeated refrain about the “hammered” state of the middle class, adding a disdainful twist as only a Bostonian could and said, “Hey Warren, this is the middle class getting hammered,” as he downed the final swig of his Bud Light.

These street smart voters can sense a phony when they see one, and Warren is a fraud of the first order. Whether it is the current uproar over her wine cave hypocrisy, her false claim of being Native American to gain a leg up on her professional competition, or her faux outrage at big corporations she used to collect huge paychecks from, she will say or do anything to get ahead.

Like him or not, Sanders is anything but fake. He has been singing off the same song sheet for a half century. You will not find any big corporations on his resume. His disdain for millionaires and billionaires is as fervent as ever, even as he has become one. He does not shrink from his ideas out of political expediency. He believes what he says, as wild as it may sound.

With the Cold War in the rear view mirror, culturally conservative blue collar types can look past his ideological extremism to see someone promising to shake up the status quo bigly. That is the same quality they saw in Trump, who in 2016 won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan by a total of less than 78,000 votes. In 2020, he cannot afford any attrition. If the past is a prologue, Sanders can take some of those votes. Warren has no such track record. That is why Trump should be rooting for Warren.

Julián Castro endorsed Elizabeth Monday morning, spectacularly. They produced a powerful, compelling campaign video. Good! Fantastic! She'll need all the strength she can gather to be an effective running mate for Bernie and a strong, effective vice president.

A Taste of What Waits for Candidate Biden In the General Election

What will happen when these two meet on the debate stage?

by Thomas Neuburger

After the third Democratic primary debate, Julián Castro was widely criticized for suggesting that Joe Biden might be disturbingly forgetful — "Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said two minutes ago?" he asked in a thinly veiled reference to the rumors that Biden is becoming senile.

Here's that moment (trimmed for brevity):

The negative response was immediate, putting Castro on the defensive and forcing him to claim the remarks weren't "personal." (Of course they were; there's no other way to take them.)

But the problem with criticizing Castro for these comments is that Trump will do so much worse to Biden if Biden becomes the candidate. In another context, when Pete Buttigieg criticized other candidates for using debates to score points against each other, Castro responded, "That's called an election!"

True enough. What charges will come from Trump, and in what form, if Biden is the Democratic nominee? Can Biden withstand them?

The GOP Attack

We now have a preview of what Trump's attack might look like. This is from a YouTube channel called "GOP War Room," and as strident as it is, it's nothing compared to what's really coming Biden's way.

Imagine the effect that flooding the nation with this kind of material will have in the general election. Imagine what the actual Donald Trump will do with this line of attack when he faces Biden directly. I'm not sure Biden will keep his old name "Sleepy Joe" — Trump may well change it out for something much more biting, much more "on the nose."

If I were Biden, I would expect nothing less from the Trump campaign than a vicious, constant and all-out attack on my mental faculties. If Biden verbally stumbles in the polite confines of the recent Democratic debate stage — as indeed he did — how will he behave in a two-hour cage match with Donald Trump, or a two-month blood feud with his campaign?

The Electability Question

It's often asserted that Biden is the most electable of all the Democratic candidates. Don't believe it. Given his mass of vulnerabilities — including and especially his tendency to verbally wilt in public when under no pressure at all — Biden may well be the most likely to lose to Trump, and by the greatest margin.

Something to consider if you're a pro-Biden Democratic operative, or simply a voter looking to rid herself of the current White House resident. It may simply not be true that "any D will do." Some Ds may not do at all.
 

Your Sunday Night Biden-- You Really Want Four Years Of This?

Friday evening, Bill Maher did what you would expect Bill Maher to do-- excused Joe Biden's behavior, with some cute jokes ("his hands have been part of an exploratory committee for decades"). Although he considers the whole #MeToo thing "a little nitpicky," he did acknowledge that "of course, no one likes to be touched unwantingly and women get a lot more of that than men but..." Yes, but. One of the best-- and most productive-- members of my senior management team at one of the companies I ran would go a little further than Biden did. He's gay and he would, in a very friendly way, grab men's crotches as a way of accessing if their penis was large enough for him to bother with; he's a size queen. Men didn't like that. Gay men didn't like it; straight men didn't like it. How do you think Bill Maher would feel about it? Especially if it was done by someone in a position of authority over him? Someone who could determine how much his bonus would be, for example? A little nitpicky?



A second Trump term make me feel gross and uneasy too, Bill. That's what Bernie's there for. Watch this. I agree with this guy on every call but two. The Omaha, Nebraska has one electoral vote and Bernie's going to get it in 2020. And Florida... I'm not as sure as he is that Florida is going to Trump. But that's a little nitpicky because it doesn't matter since Bernie will have already crushed Trump in the electoral college before all Florida's votes are counted.



Enough of Bill Maher's Biden-isn't-so-bad jokes? "it's getting ridiculous." Is it? How about talking about Biden's actual record as a corporate whore and Wall Street shill? Or about his grotesque racism instead of the touchy-feely stuff? Still, later in the show, Maher brought on Julián Castro to say he likes that Biden finally found something he's not willing to apologize over. "I like that," Maher said to Castro, about Biden saying he's not sorry for feeling up women for 60 or 70 or 80 years or for however long he's been acting like a creep. And he ten launched into a disgusting attack on Castro for a statement he had made on Maddow's show about taking Biden's attitude towards women serious ("with great gravitas"). "I think he should joke about; I don't think it's that big a deal," said Maher, who has been making a career for himself as Mister-Anti-Politically-Correct.

Castro killed him. Maher played the part of pig. Castro played the part of ethics teacher-- and Maher's audience agreed with Castro... loudly. Maher didn't like it when Castro used the word "bullshit-- twice-- to describe Maher's intention of laughing it off. Watch the exchange at the link above.

New York Magazine got a groups of their regular writers together for a chat about the Biden thing, Is The Biden Appeal About To Fade?. I sure hope so, but many people-- mostly people over 70 who have lost their memories or who are very conservative Democrats-- disagree with me. The panel consisted of Benjamin Hart, Jonathan Chait, Margaret Hartmann, Ed Kilgore, Ezekiel Kweku, Eric Levitz, David Wallace-Wells, and Ben Williams. Kweku made the salient point right off that bat that he may not be the best candidate to beat Trump-- Biden's pitch, his calling card-- because "his high ratings are pure Obama nostalgia, and I have my doubts that they would carry him through both a primary and a general election. Chait and Williams seem to agree: "I likewise suspect his campaign performance would bring him back to Earth," said Chait. "People forget all the gaffes. He has run before and lost very badly!" and Williams added that he feels "it’s better to nominate someone without a decades-long record to attack. Anti-Trump sentiment is going to rally behind any candidate."

Ezekiel: Biden has to appeal to a different set of voters than Trump does.

Ed: Biden is pretty slowly morphing into a 2020 version of Hillary Clinton, without her particular gender issue-- beginning as a unity candidate but becoming more controversial every day. Eventually, that will affect both his primary and his general-election numbers. Or maybe I just don’t get his avuncular, “Uncle Joe” appeal.

Ben H: I just wonder if that appeal, which, yes, is strongly tied to Obama nostalgia, is a little deeper and harder to uproot than we understand.

Margaret: I think a lot of people feel the statute of limitations has run out on stuff Biden did decades ago, and they’re really attached to him as an Obama administration figure.

Ben H: I also think there’s a strong sense out there among older white Democrats that nominating a woman and/or a person of color would be a risky move.

Ezekiel: Plenty of white guys to choose from.

Margaret: Are there, though? Guys who have that combo of experienced, “electable,” and centrist? And aren’t 37? If I’m a voter looking for that, I’ve eliminated Beto, Sanders, Buttigieg … who’s left?  (I’m seriously asking-- I can’t remember everyone in the field anymore.)

Ed: There’s Tim Ryan, as of today. If Biden doesn’t run, Terry McAuliffe and Bloomberg probably will.

Ezekiel: Why do you need “electable” and “centrist”? Isn’t the appeal of centrism, in this context, electability?

Ed: I’m not sure how to define “electability” anymore. Biden has led Trump pretty consistently in polls, in a way that no one else has. But I’m guessing that won’t last.

Ezekiel: I very much don’t understand the profile of a voter who (1) thinks a woman or person of color is a risky move and (2) likes Biden because he was in Obama’s administration. I’m not saying that these people don’t exist, I just don’t understand what exactly they’re thinking.

Ed: I’ll say this about his personal appeal: Everyone talks about the terrible legacy of the 1994 crime bill, and I agree with much of the criticism. But I also remember watching CSPAN, transfixed for hours (something I never did), as Biden made the case for it. There was a point at which he alluded to NRA president Charlton Heston’s claim that the bill wouldn’t actually provide as many cops as sponsors claimed, and Biden commented: “I went home last night and my wife said, ‘Joe, you said the bill had 100,000 cops, but MOSES said it didn’t!,’” and went on in that vein for a while. It was great theater. So he’s capable of that sort of thing.

Eric: I think giving Trump another opportunity to attack his opponent as one of the out-of-touch elites who supported the Iraq War and is in bed with the finance industry isn’t ideal. But they all have liabilities.

Ben H: It’s true that the big-business coziness hasn’t stuck to him yet, and will likely be a potent line of attack.

Ed: I’ve heard no rumors of Obama vocally coming to his defense. Has anyone else?

Ben H: No, and I seriously doubt he will. I don’t think he wants Biden to win... he never seemed enthusiastic about Biden’s potential candidacy in 2016. He easily could have boosted him, but he didn’t.

Pressure On Hillary To Pick A Progressive Running Mate Mounts

Rosie would have been the better choice

Few people outside the Beltway and San Antonio, where he was mayor, have ever heard of Julián Castro, the centrist Democrat Clinton picked as her running mate over a year ago. (It's supposed to be a surprise so... shhhhhhhhh.) Anyway, once she settled on Castro she asked him to get a tutor and learn to speak passable español-- he already had one, a Jewish lady from Laredo-- and she told Obama to give him some cabinet position to raise his stature. (His twin brother, Joaquín, is a New Dem congressman and vigorous Hillary surrogate.) They figured he wouldn't be able to screw anything up if they made him Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He's been told to stop telling reporters that "Joaquín and I got into Stanford because of affirmative action. I scored 1210 on my SATs, which was lower than the median matriculating student. But I did fine in college and in law school. So did Joaquín. I’m a strong supporter of affirmative action because I’ve seen it work in my own life." His appeal to fellow Hispanic voters may be limited by his own assimilation. He's the son of Rosie Castro, an inspiring activist who helped found La Raza but he supports "free" trade, including NAFTA, advocates an energy policy that includes fossil fuels, believes in balanced budgets and refers to David Souter as his ideal Supreme Court justice. Hillary's kind of Democrat.

Castro “has all the assets to become the next favorite son,” is how John A. Garcia, a political-science professor at the University of Arizona, puts it. “He has an elite education, which has given him a national network, and a quiet, serious public persona that appeals to a lot of younger Hispanic voters,” Garcia says. “People look at him and say, ‘Finally, we have somebody who won’t screw up.’ Of course, he’s still young, and he might be too good to be true, but if I were betting on the next national Hispanic political leader, I’d bet on Julián.”

In 1984, Mexican-American political activists were thrilled when Walter Mondale publicly considered Cisneros for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. But second place no longer seems such a great prize. “In 1984, there were 20 million Hispanics in America,” according to the political activist Antonio Gonzalez, who heads the William C. Velasquez Institute. “Today, we are 50 million, and more and more people are registering to vote.” Who they will vote for and what issues will cement their party loyalty is one of the great questions of American politics. This year Democrats hope to exploit the ire among Hispanics over the new G.O.P.-inspired law in Arizona that empowers local police forces to crack down on illegal immigrants.

This week, progressive groups shined a different kind of light on Julian-boy-wonder than he's been used to. I got this from Rootstrikers, for example, yesterday:

Imagine if the federal government was helping big bankers on Wall Street profit off the foreclosure crisis they helped create.

Sadly, you don’t have to imagine.

Under Secretary Julian Castro, the federal housing department has operated an egregious Wall Street giveaway.

The program is supposed to stabilize communities by transferring overdue mortgage loans to institutions that will help homeowners avoid foreclosure-- instead, 98% of recent mortgage sales have gone straight to Wall Street, and at a HUGE discount.

Today, we’re launching a major campaign at DontSellOurHomesToWallStreet.org with partners representing some of the hardest hit communities. We’re demanding that Secretary Castro stops selling our communities to Wall Street and focuses on helping people stay in their homes.

Housing advocates have been advocating for fixes to this “Distressed Assets Stabilization Program” for years.

Big names have spoken up too-- last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out the department for “lining up with the Wall Street speculators.”

Under pressure, last April Secretary Castro’s Department of Housing and Urban Development promised to reform the program and help homeowners avoid foreclosure by selling more overdue mortgage loans to nonprofit community organizations rather than Wall Street banks.

Those were empty promises. The two most recent sales under Secretary Castro have sent 98% of the mortgages straight to Wall Street-- and at rock-bottom prices.

A measly 1% got sold to nonprofit community organizations, which can better work with homeowners to figure out a plan to keep them in their homes.

Just last week, Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Raul Grijalva sent a letter to Secretary Castro calling for fundamental reforms of HUD’s mortgage sales.

Today, we’re joining that effort alongside a national coalition of 14 housing advocacy, civil rights, and progressive groups, from Presente.org to the Working Families Party to MoveOn.org.

And here’s another reason our pressure is likely to work:

Julian Castro is widely rumored to be a likely vice-presidential nominee. But becoming vice president will be tough if he doesn’t first prove he’s willing to take on Wall Street, and not just pad their profit margins.

Politico's Edward-Issac Dovere asserted yesterday that the dozen groups stirring the pot on Castro were sending a message to Hillary. "They’re just as open with their political aims," he wrote: "to publicly discredit Castro as a progressive, latching onto the mortgage issue to seed enough suspicion to keep him off Clinton’s shortlist.

“It’s a situation where the Clinton campaign wants Castro to be a major asset to her chances of winning the White House, and unless he changes his position related to foreclosures and loans, he’ll be a toxic asset to the Clinton campaign,” said Matt Nelson, the managing director for Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latino organizing group that focuses on social justice.

“All year, we’ve seen the candidates tripping over themselves to show how tough they’ll be on Wall Street,” said Kurt Walters, the campaign manager for Root Strikers, a 501(c4) group of Demand Progress and its 2 million affiliated activists, who is planning to deliver the petitions to Castro’s office when they’re ready. “Then to turn around and take a step backwards on that exact question, and put someone who has been doing the exact opposite-- I think it would be tough for a lot of people who care about Wall Street accountability to get excited about that pick.”

...“If Secretary Castro fails to create significant momentum in terms of stopping the sale of mortgages to Wall Street, then I do think it disqualifies him. But there’s time left on the clock,” said Jonathan Westin, the director of New York Communities for Change, which was formed out of the remains of the community activist group ACORN. “I think a lot of the progressive movement would not be in support of a Castro ticket if he fails to make traction here.”

...Maurice Weeks, an Atlanta-based organizer who works on housing justice in communities of color for the Center for Popular Democracy/CPD Action, said that Castro’s lack of action at HUD is breeding more gentrification and suffering in a way that should make blacks and Latinos pay attention.



...[Color of Change's Brandi] Collins said this complaint about Castro’s leadership is reflective of a whole range of issues her organization has had with what members say is the secretary’s closeness to Wall Street and lack of attention to black and brown communities.

“If he’s not showing up for our communities while the cameras aren’t there, we don’t know that he’ll show up when he’s on his way to the White House,” Collins said.

According to Julia Gordon, formerly at the Center for American Progress and currently an executive vice president at the National Community Stabilization Trust, the coalition may have a point-- if only because it is taking advantage of opaque accounting at HUD. Gordon said she’s met often with HUD about these issues but hasn’t seen the kind of progress she’d like or evidence that the program matches the claims that officials make.

“We know it’s been good for investors. According to HUD, it’s been good for the fund, although the level of detail that they release to account for it is minimal. We really don’t know how good it’s been for the homeowners, and that’s where this wave of protests is coming from,” Gordon said... “Both HUD and [the Federal Housing Finance Agency] have let down communities by not focusing on what they want the buyer to do with these,” Gordon said, arguing that they’ve been focused instead on offloading the debt. “They’re just like, ‘Get it away from me.’”

The idea that Castro would be the first Latino on a national ticket means something, Nelson said, though he argued that this only adds to the burden for the secretary to show leadership on the mortgage issue in the way progressives want at this moment of added attention to their concerns.

Nelson said that at Presente, they think of it like a parable-- it doesn’t make it any better to be hurt if the hurt is coming from one of their own.

There are two trees in a forest, Nelson said, and they see an ax coming to chop them down. “Don’t worry,” says one tree to the other, “the handle’s one of us.”

“Basically,” Nelson said, “we’re fighting to make sure Castro isn’t the handle.”

I'd guess Elizabeth Warren would be Bernie's first choice and that, given his age, she'd be the nominee for president in 2020. What a one-two punch that would be! Imagine a first woman president that is going to make voters think, we should get more like that!