Did The GOP Convention Lose Trump More Voters? Don't Ask The Facebook Propaganda Machine

On Friday night, Trump hosted another super-spreader event, this one in a crowded airport hanger in New Hampshire. In 2016, New Hampshire was essentially a 47-47% tie, although Hillary had a couple thousand more votes and won the states 4 electoral votes. Trump has always maintained he was ripped off and would win New Hampshire back in 2020. Polling doesn't indicate the race is even close in New Hampshire this year. Trump favorability is way underwater and the latest RealClearPolitics polling average shows Biden beating him by nearly ten points. The most recent poll from the University of New Hampshire shows Trump losing with 40% of the vote to Biden's 53%-- and with a 10% lead among independents. On Friday night in the hangar, while his supporters were giving each other COVID-- Trump blustered and projected ("If Biden wins, which I honestly can’t believe would happen, I will have lost to a low IQ individual") and threatened and raged, blasting "Democrat-run cities" ("We’re going to have an unbelievable year unless somebody stupid gets elected and raises your taxes").

Is it possible that the polls are all wrong-- again? I think it's more possible that the media is trying to make the election an exciting horserace but... there was that study by Cloud Research on who lies to pollsters. It shows that Republicans and independents are more likely to lie than Democrats. And they are twice as likely as Democrats to say they would not give their true opinion in a telephone poll question about their preference for president. What does that mean? Well, it raises the possibility that polls understate support for Señor Trumpanzee. Cloud Research reported that 11.7% of Republicans and 10.5% independents said they would not give their true opinion, as opposed to 5.4% of Democrats. "Shy voters" had 6 concerns:

• A lack of trust in phone polls as truly being anonymous.
• An apprehension to associate their phone numbers with recorded responses.
• Fear that their responses will become public in some manner.
• Fear of reprisal and related detrimental impact to their financial, social, and family lives should their political opinions become publicly known.
• A general dislike of phone polls.
• Malicious intent to mislead polls due to general distrust of media and political pundits (though a sentiment expressed only by a few “shy voters”). 

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

And then there's the Kevin Rouse OpEd in the New York Times that has gone viral, What If Facebook Is The Real Silent Majority? Nearly a dozen people sent it to me before noon on Saturday. I never got into Facebook. DWT posts get put up there and I'll occasionally answer requests I notice but I've never once, for example, looked to Facebook for news (or even opinion). I'm the opposite of Rouse, who wrote that since the 2016 election, he's "been obsessively tracking how partisan political content is performing on Facebook. I guess he takes Facebook a lot more seriously than I do. No offense, but I tend to think of people who use Facebook as a news source as being just slightly above brain-dead. But what do I know? I still blog all day. To me Facebook has always been a game I never played. To Rouse-- and I suspect, most people, Facebook is, as he wrote, "the world’s largest and arguably most influential media platform. Every morning, one of the first browser tabs I open is CrowdTangle-- a handy Facebook-owned data tool that offers a bird’s-eye view of what’s popular on the platform. I check which politicians and pundits are going viral. I geek out on trending topics. I browse the previous day’s stories to see which got the most reactions, shares and comments. Most days, the leader board looks roughly the same: conservative post after conservative post, with the occasional liberal interloper... It’s no secret that, despite Mr. Trump’s claims of Silicon Valley censorship, Facebook has been a boon to him and his allies, and hyperpartisan Facebook pages are nothing new. (In fact, my colleague John Herrman wrote about them four years ago this month.)

But what sticks out, when you dig in to the data, is just how dominant the Facebook right truly is. Pro-Trump political influencers have spent years building a well-oiled media machine that swarms around every major news story, creating a torrent of viral commentary that reliably drowns out both the mainstream media and the liberal opposition.

The result is a kind of parallel media universe that left-of-center Facebook users may never encounter, but that has been stunningly effective in shaping its own version of reality. Inside the right-wing Facebook bubble, President Trump’s response to Covid-19 has been strong and effective, Joe Biden is barely capable of forming sentences, and Black Lives Matter is a dangerous group of violent looters.

Mr. Trump and his supporters are betting that, despite being behind Mr. Biden in the polls, a “silent majority” will carry him to re-election. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest and most online son, made that argument himself at the Republican National Convention this week. And while I’m not a political analyst, I know enough about the modern media landscape to know that looking at people’s revealed preferences-- what they actually read, watch, and click on when nobody’s looking-- is often a better indicator of how they’ll act than interviewing them at diners, or listening to what they’re willing to say out loud to a pollster.

Maybe Mr. Trump’s “silent majority,” in other words, only seems silent because we’re not looking at their Facebook feeds.

“We live in two different countries right now,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and digital director of Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. Facebook’s media ecosystem, he said, is “a huge blind spot for people who are up to speed on what’s on the front page of The New York Times and what’s leading the hour on CNN.”

To be sure, Facebook is not the only medium where right-wing content thrives. Millions of Americans still get their news from cable news and talk radio, where conservative voices have dominated for years. Many pro-Trump Facebook influencers also have sizable presences on Twitter, YouTube and other social networks.

But the right’s dominance on Facebook, specifically, is something to behold. Here are just a few data points I pulled from CrowdTangle this week:

The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. That’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR combined. (Data from a different firm, NewsWhip, showed that Mr. Shapiro’s news outlet, the Daily Wire, was the No. 1 publisher on Facebook in July.)

Facebook posts by Breitbart, the far-right news outlet, have been shared four million times in the past 30 days, roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate combined.

The most-shared Facebook post containing the term “Black Lives Matter” over the past six months is a June video by the right-wing commentators The Hodgetwins, which calls the racial justice movement a “damn lie.” The second most-shared Black Lives Matter post? A different viral video from The Hodgetwins, this one calling the movement a “leftist lie.” (The Hodgetwins also have the 4th, 6th, and 12th most shared posts.)

Terrence K. Williams, a conservative comedian and Trump supporter, has averaged 86,500 interactions per Facebook post in August, more than twice as many as Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, who has averaged 39,000 interactions per post. (Mr. Trump outdoes them both, naturally, with an average of 92,000 interactions per post.)

A few caveats, before my Democratic readers jump off the nearest pier.

These figures include only posts on public pages, in public groups, and by verified accounts, and they don’t include Facebook ads, where the Biden campaign has been outspending the Trump campaign in recent weeks. Counting Facebook interactions doesn’t tell you how someone felt about a post, so it’s possible some conservative posts are being hate-shared by liberals. And Facebook has argued that engagement isn’t the same thing as popularity.

“These points look mostly at how people engage with content, which should not be confused with how many people actually see it on Facebook,” Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement. Mr. Osborne added that “when you look at the content that gets the most reach across Facebook, it’s not at all as partisan as this reporting suggests.” (Facebook does not disclose this type of data publicly, except once in a while in response to my tweets.)

Democrats aren’t totally absent from Facebook’s upper echelon. Ridin’ With Biden, a pro-Biden page started in April by the founders of the liberal Facebook page Occupy Democrats, has quadrupled its following over the past three months, and routinely gets more engagement than Breitbart and other right-wing heavy-hitters. Individual posts by Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats have broken through in recent weeks.

And political campaigners have pointed out, correctly, that being popular on the internet isn’t a guarantee of electoral success. (“Retweets don’t vote,” as an experienced Democratic operative once told me.) In addition, Facebook’s older, more conservative user base may not reflect what’s happening on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which draw a younger crowd.

Still, the platform’s sheer scale makes it vital to understand. As of 2019, 70 percent of American adults used Facebook, and 43 percent of Americans got news on the platform, according to the Pew Research Center. (Those numbers may have increased because of the pandemic.) We know that the company’s product decisions can make or break political movements, move fringe ideas into the mainstream, or amplify partisan polarization. Registering four million voters before the November election, as Facebook has said it would do, could be a decisive force all on its own. (Typically, higher turnout benefits Democrats, but given what we know about the media diets of hyperactive Facebook users, who knows?)

The reason right-wing content performs so well on Facebook is no mystery. The platform is designed to amplify emotionally resonant posts, and conservative commentators are skilled at turning passionate grievances into powerful algorithm fodder. The company also appears willing to bend its rules for popular conservative influencers. Recent reports by BuzzFeed News and NBC News, based on leaked documents, found that Facebook executives had removed “strikes” from the accounts of several high-profile conservative pages that had shared viral misinformation in violation of the company’s rules.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my daily Facebook data-dive as a kind of early-warning system-- a rough gauge of what’s grabbing America’s attention on any given day, and which stories and perspectives will likely break through in the days to come.

And looking at Facebook’s lopsided political media ecosystem might be a useful reality check for Democrats who think Mr. Biden will coast to victory in November.

And on his own Facebook page, Michael Moore couldn't agree more: "Sorry to have to provide the reality check again, but when CNN polled registered voters in August in just the swing states, Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie. In Minnesota, it’s 47-47. In Michigan, where Biden had a big lead, Trump has closed the gap to 4 points. Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC to pull this off? The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states-- but not Michigan. Sound familiar? I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much. Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!"

I thought Moore was the voice of doom in 2016. His prediction that Hillary would lose turned out to be correct, even if she did actually get 2,868,686 more votes than Trump did (48.2% to 26.1%). Yesterday Jonathan Lemire reported for AP that "The GOP convention’s target audience, according to campaign officials, was mostly former Trump supporters, those Republicans or independents who may have backed him in 2016 but grew unhappy with his rhetoric or handling of the pandemic. The goal, by trying to humanize Trump and demonize Biden, was to set up a permission structure to make those voters feel comfortable enough to vote for Trump again, even if they cared for his policies far more than his personality. Officials believe they accomplished that over the four-day convention and are encouraged by internal numbers that show Trump had begun closing the gap on Biden even before the events of this week in Washington. The campaign’s theory of the election has long been to turn out Trump’s base-- a smaller set of the electorate than which backs Biden, but more enthusiastic-- while also trying to win over nonvoters and drive up negative impressions of Biden so that some of his possible backers stay home.

The president’s advisers privately acknowledge minefields lay ahead in the final nine weeks before Election Day.

Trump aides are warily watching the calendar as Labor Day approaches, concerned that the three-day weekend, traditionally marked by parties and sizable gatherings, could trigger a spike in infections just like they believe Memorial Day did at the other bookend of summer.

Would You Vote For Anyone-No-Matter-Who Against Trump? What About Republican-Pretending-To-Be-A-Democrat Michael Bloomberg?

Did you get inundated with requests for contributions on Friday? The DCCC and DSCC-- and the lame consultants they work with-- encourage their candidates to flood everyone's mailboxes with desperate, hollow pleas for donations for the bullshit "end of the month deadline." It used to be all about the end of the quarter deadline. Soon it will be about the end of the week deadline and eventually the end of the day deadline.

Coincidentally, the final reports have come in with the end of the quarter FEC filings. Let's talk a look at the FEC reports filed for each candidate vying for the Democratic presidential nomination filed for the quarter ending December 31. Tom Steyer raised $205,380,488 and spent $199,989,748. 98.58% of his money raised was self-funded ($202,496,602).

Bloomberg raised $200,359,618.56 and spent $188,385,951.94. He self-funded virtually all of it-- $200,114,049 (00.88%).

Among the candidates not trying to buy the White House, these are the raised/spent numbers so far for the cycle:

• Bernie- raised $107,916,369, spent $89,743,329
• Elizabeth- raised $81,291,563, spent $67,576,254
• Mayo- raised $75,427,078, spent $60,908,002
• Status Quo Joe- raised $59,545,050, spent $50,601,488
• Yang- raised $31,331,251, spent $27,158,259
• Klobuchar- raised $28,736,113, spent $23,762,532
• Tulsi- raised $12,447,703, spent $9,689,816
• Michael Bennet- raised $6,831,685, spent $6,314,126

Writing for Open Secrets, Karl Evers-Hillstrom of the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Bloomberg has already shattered all self-funding records in history-- and just two months after announcing.

By generously funding his own campaign, Bloomberg has already surpassed his 2020 rival Presidential Donald Trump in the record books. Not adjusted for inflation, Trump held the self-financing title for his 2016 campaign, pouring over $66 million of his own money into it. But Trump relied on contributions in the general election and is not personally bankrolling his reelection campaign.

Bloomberg’s figure dwarfs even that of billionaire Ross Perot, who spent $63.5 million of his own money on his 1992 presidential bid. That’s about $115 million when adjusted for inflation.

Bloomberg, who has already accumulated $33 million in debt to his own committee, stuck by his promise to reject all campaign contributions. He argues in his campaign ads that he is the only candidate not beholden to “special interests.”

The former New York City mayor spent $180 million through the end of the year, twice as much as the next top spender in the Demcoratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Bloomberg has already spent $300 million on TV and digital ads through the end of January, according to an estimate from Advertising Analytics.

Sanders campaign aides have expressed concern about Bloomberg’s massive spending, but so have aides to former Vice President Joe Biden. The two moderates are headed for a clash on Super Tuesday, where Bloomberg has concentrated almost all of his ad spending. Biden aides are reportedly concerned that Bloomberg’s rise could hand Sanders the nomination.

A recent survey from the Los Angeles Times and University of California found that Sanders has a strong lead in California, which holds roughly 40 percent of Super Tuesday’s convention delegates. Sanders is polling at 26 percent, compared to Biden’s 15 percent and Bloomberg’s 6 percent, according to the poll.

The Democratic National Committee handed Bloomberg a win Friday when it changed its qualification rules for its Feb. 19 debate in Nevada. Candidates no longer need to hit a donor threshold, only needing to reach 10 percent in four relevant polls.

If he doesn’t win the nomination, Bloomberg has said he will convert his campaign into an independent effort to support the Democratic nominee in November. He is reportedly willing to spend $1 billion on the election, which would be an unprecedented amount of spending by a single person.

A reliable source inside and high up in Team Bloomie contradicts what Bloomberg-- a notorious liar-- has said about supporting whichever Democrat wins the primary. According to the source, who has never steered me wrong, if Bernie wins-- as appears likely-- Bloomberg will try to mount an independent campaign, reportedly with Stacey Abrams as his running mate, to throw the election to Trump and keep Bernie out of the White House. Fake right-wing Democrats like Bloomberg have tried to do the same thing in the past, successfully against William Jennings Bryan and unsuccessfully against FDR.




In his Washington Post column yesterday, ex-Republican Max Boot wrote that the GOP doesn't deserve to survive the debacle they created. Boot began by claiming he would never rejoin the GOP, which he left the day after Trump won the 2016 election. [NOTE: It's important to remember that Boot and other #NeverTrumpers are conservative Republicans at heart, not Democrats, and while we welcome their hatred of Trump, the Democratic Party actually stands for things they despise. They should have no role in picking our candidates.] Boot noted that when Trump leaves the White House "he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is. The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure."

He Can Do It by Nancy Ohanian

The most significant of the “nay” votes was Lamar Alexander (TN), a 79-year-old political warhorse who is retiring this year. He admitted what the most purblind Trump partisans will not: that “it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent.” The reason he did not need to hear any witnesses, Alexander explained, was because “there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven.” So far, so good. But then he pivoted to argue that for some reason Trump’s misconduct doesn’t meet the “high bar for an impeachable offense.” He concluded that the verdict on Trump should be left to “the presidential election”-- you know, the election Trump just tried to fix.

Alexander’s statement raises more questions than it answers: If Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine into helping him politically does not rise to the level of impeachable conduct, what does? Does Alexander subscribe to Alan Dershowitz’s doctrine of presidential infallibility? And, even if he doesn’t want to keep Trump off the ballot, why doesn’t he advocate Trump’s censure or political defeat? But instead of advocating any punishment for Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct, Alexander wants him rewarded by being reelected.

Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) at least made clear that he rejects the argument-- raised by the president’s lawyers but rejected by almost all scholars-- "that ‘Abuse of Power’ can never constitute grounds for removal unless a crime or a crime-like action is alleged.” He, too, seems to assume that Trump is guilty, although he doesn’t quite say so. But Rubio argued “against removal in the context of the bitter divisions and deep polarization our country currently faces.”

Of course, if Trump were removed, it would require the support of 20 Republican senators, so it would hardly be partisan. But lest anyone think that Rubio is refusing to call witnesses for purely partisan reasons, he patted himself on the back for rejecting “calls to pursue [the] impeachment of President Obama,” without specifying what Obama could have been impeached for. You can bet that if Obama had done what Trump did, Rubio would be in favor of impeachment.

But wait. It gets worse. The prize for the most illogical statement must go to Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (AK). She wrote: “Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.” She then announced her opposition to calling witnesses-- a move that could have made the trial a lot fairer. Huh?

Given the flimsiness of the Republicans’ rationales, it’s hard not to conclude that something else accounts for their decision-making. It’s obvious what’s going on in Rubio’s case-- he thinks he has a future in politics and wants to stay on the good side of Trump supporters. His colleagues who are facing reelection this year, such as Cory Gardner (CO) and Thom Tillis (NC), are no doubt terrified Trump will endorse a primary challenger. Some other Republicans are no doubt deluded enough to imagine that Trump’s call was “perfect.” But what about Alexander and other senators who know better and will never face the voters again?

Tim Alberta of Politico makes a convincing case that even retiring lawmakers fear breaking with the president would hurt their future “earning power” and subject them to unwelcome “harassment” from Trump cultists. These concerns are understandable but should not be dispositive. Senators who shirk their constitutional duties are cowards who disgrace their oaths of office and betray the Constitution. Our troops risk their lives for this country; these senators won’t even risk some unpleasantness.

I want nothing to do with a party led by the deluded and the dishonest. I fervently hope our democracy survives this debacle. I fervently hope the Republican Party does not.

SPOILER: Even If Trump Wins Ohio, Bernie Will Still Beat Him In The Electoral College 348-182

CBS News released their new YouGov poll yesterday. There was a great deal of information but what I found the most important measured the enthusiasm level for the various candidates in Iowa. Remember, a caucus is not a primary. Caucus goers change their minds after arguments from their neighbors. And when initial voting is concluded, anyone who doesn't get 15% is eliminated and their supporters can go vote for someone else on the next ballot. The graphic above, shows the first choices. Who will Amy Klobuchar's and Elizabeth Warren's backers gravitate to when they are eliminated in some of the caucuses? Warren's supporters' second choice is Bernie. Those backing Klobuchar are assumed to be conservative and the assumption is that they will move to Status Quo Joe, likely to be the most prominent conservative left standing after she (as well as Delaney, Bloomberg and Bennet are eliminated). Some, though, may move to Mayo Pete.

CBS News pointed out, correctly, that "It's not just the caucus arrangement that keeps Iowa a fluid race, it's the voters, too: just over a third of those expressing a candidate choice say they've 'definitely' made up their minds. Sanders has the most solidly committed supporters, and this has been true in recent weeks: 48% say they've definitely made up their minds. That's higher than Biden's 27% 'definite' supporters, which is a potential vulnerability for Biden in the final stretch. Another is that his supporters are relatively less enthusiastic than those of other top candidates; fewer than half are."

In other words, Biden's (and Mayo Pete's) supporters aren't really that committed. Both depend on voters over 65 years old who may be very open-minded when they hear arguments about climate and healthcare from Bernie supporters, Status Quo Joe's backer's know he would not make a good president and are the most open to voting for someone else.

Now let's move to the Civiqs polling, also released yesterday. What makes this survey so interesting is the information available on independent voters. Assume 90+% of Republicans are going to vote for Trump and that 90+% of Democrats will vote for whomever the nominee is, even if the nominee is Status Quo Joe. Nationally, Trump is 5 points underwater among independents, his job approval up among 45% and down among 50%.

These are his net approval numbers by state:

• Alabama- 60-37% (+23)
• Alaska- 51-46% (+5)
• Arizona- 46-51% (minus 5)
• Arkansas- 63-34% (+29)
• California- 30-67% (minus 37)
• Colorado- 42-55% (minus 13)
• Connecticut- 37-60% (minus 23)
• Delaware- 41-57% (minus 16)
• Florida- 47-51% (minus 4)
• Georgia- 47-50% (minus 3)
• Hawaii- 28-70% (minus 42)
• Idaho- 63-35% (+28)
• Illinois- 35-63% (minus 28)
• Indiana- 54-43% (+11)
• Iowa- 48-50% (minus 2)
• Kansas- 52-44% (+8)
• Kentucky- 58-38% (+20)
• Louisiana- 56-42% (+14)
• Maine- 38-59% (minus 21)
• Maryland- 29-68% (minus 39)
• Massachusetts- 30-67% (minus 37)
• Michigan- 43-54% (minus 11)
• Minnesota- 42-56% (minus 14)
• Mississippi- 56-42% (+14)
• Missouri- 57-41% (+16)
• Montana- 53-44% (+9)
• Nebraska- 54-43% (+11)
• Nevada- 42-55% (minus 13)
• New Hampshire- 42-55% (minus 13)
• New Jersey- 36-61% (minus 25)
• New Mexico- 44-53% (minus 9)
• New York- 34-63% (minus 29)
• North Carolina- 47-51% (minus 4)
• North Dakota- 65-33% (+32)
• Ohio- 50-47% (+3)
• Oklahoma- 62-34% (+28)
• Oregon- 35-62% (minus 27)
• Pennsylvania- 45-51 (minus 6)
• Rhode Island- 33-65% (minus 32)
• South Carolina- 52-45% (+7)
• South Dakota- 58-39% (+19)
• Tennessee- 57-40% (+17)
• Texas- 50-47 (+3)
• Utah- 52-44% (+8)
• Vermont- 28-69% (minus 41)
• Virginia- 41-57% (minus 16)
• Washington- 34-63% (minus 29)
• West Virginia- 63-33% (+30)
• Wisconsin- 47-51% (minus 4)
• Wyoming- 68-28% (+40)

So let's make some very shaky assumptions:

1- these numbers are correct
2- these numbers are static and won't change during the campaign
3- these favorability numbers will predict the 2020 outcomes

To be totally honest, all those assumptions are more wishful thinking than anything else. But if they were all true-- and they could be-- Trump's electoral vote total would be 182 and the Democrat who faces him would have 348. By way of comparison, these were the electoral vote totals over the last dozen cycles:

2016-- Trump 304, Hillary 227
2012-- Obama 332, Romney 206
2008-- Obama 365, McCain 173
2004-- Bush II 286, Kerry 251
2000-- Bush II 271, Gore 266
1996-- Clinton 379, Dole 159
1992-- Clinton 370, Bush I 168
1988-- Bush I 426, Dukakis 111
1984-- Reagan 525, Mondale 13
1980-- Reagan 480, Carter 49
1976-- Carter 297, Ford 240
1972-- Nixon 520, McGovern 17

I Sure Hope Elizabeth And Bernie Join Forces To Crush Conservatives Biden And Trump

The Bernie's Back Rally in Queens yesterday was massive-- 25,872 in the park and what looked like almost as many outside. People were watching from the bridge and there were so many people trying to get to the park that the blocks around it had to be closed to traffic. Watch AOC's inspiring and heart-felt endorsement of his campaign:





A few days ago, Leila Ettachfini, writing for Vice slammed Hillary-brand feminists-- who helped brings Trump-- who are whining that AOC's, Ilhan's and Rashida's endorsements of Bernie "isn't feminist." She wrote that some women "saw the decision to support Sanders as a betrayal of the progressive ethos. Among them was Jane Eisner, the director of academic affairs at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, who jumped to criticize the representatives’ decision in a since-deleted tweet. 'I find it fascinating that women of color overlook female and minority candidates to endorse a white guy,' Eisner wrote." I don't wonder why she decided to delete the tweet.

Even as Sanders and Warren themselves have taken great pains to treat each other cordially in public, some of Warren’s supporters have been especially vocal in their criticism of the democratic socialist’s supporters so far this cycle. Political pundit Emily Tisch Sussman, for example, argued in September that anyone supporting Sanders over Warren was inherently sexist because Warren’s “plans have evolved” and are “more detailed” than Sanders’.

But it’s safe to assume “The Squad” doesn’t need white feminists to help them understand which candidate best supports their feminist principles. The criticism is especially rich, considering Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Pressley have each achieved numerous milestones when they were elected in 2018. Collectively, they represent the first Muslim women in Congress; the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress; the first Somali-American in Congress; the youngest woman in Congress; and the first Black women elected to Congress by Minnesota and Massachusetts.

To decry their or anyone’s support for Sanders over Warren as anti-feminist is less than helpful to the greater cause of gender equality, and more of an oversimplification of what feminism actually is—or is supposed to be. By removing the agency of these women of color to choose a candidate that best aligns with their political ideology, critics are reducing complex politicians to one-dimensional figures.

That is not how any of these women see themselves. Omar, in a video explaining her endorsement, said she had decided to endorse Sanders because he “built a movement and continues to build a movement that transcends gender, ethnicity, religion.”

Like Sanders has been for decades, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib all identify as democratic socialists-- a fact that places them in stark contrast with Warren, a self-described “capitalist.” All three representatives have been supportive of Warren and many of her policies throughout the campaign trail. Ocasio-Cortez and Warren have worked together as lawmakers to usher the Green New Deal to Congress. Just last week, Tlaib and Warren put out a video together about the impact of environmental racism in Detroit.

But to act as if Warren is inarguably the evolved form of the Vermont senator is simplistic at best. Sanders’ policy proposals on many issues that affect women could be considered more progressive than Warren’s—specifically when it comes to addressing low-income women of color. While Warren wants to reduce rents for Americans by 10 percent, Sanders supports national rent control. While Warren only recently changed her previously unwaivering pro-Israel views, Sanders has condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestine since the 1980s. And while Warren’s newfound support of Medicare for All has left some questioning her commitment to the issue, Sanders has supported single-payer healthcare for decades.

“It’s good to see [Sanders and Warren] working together to push the national conversation further left,” Moumita Ahmed and Kat Brezler, co-founders of the group Feminists for Bernie Sanders, said in a statement to VICE. “Still, he is anti-capitalist, she is not. We don’t see a future for true feminism without a future that is no longer burdened by capitalism.”

Considering their politics, the congress members’ decision to support Sanders over Warren shouldn’t surprise anyone. As the people with the most progressive records in Congress, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib’s endorsement of the candidate with the most progressive policy proposals makes sense, even if that candidate doesn’t mirror their own identities.

“Voting for a woman doesn’t mean voting for policies that support women,” said Ahmed and Brezler. “Conflating the two is a dangerous display of identity politics.”

Warren is trying hard to find another progressive woman or group of progressive women to counter the move by AOC, Ilhan and Omar. Katherine Clark (MA) and Deb Haaland (NM) already have and they are both solid progressives, but few people have heard of either and fewer will be swayed by their endorsements. My dream ticket is Bernie/Elizabeth for 2020 and then Elizabeth at the top of the ticket in 2024. The real nightmare would be if Bernie and Elizabeth splits the progressive vote and we wind up with Status Quo Joe as the nominee, the only Democrat Trump would be able to beat. Biden's reactionary negative attitude towards Medicare-For-All helps explain why many progressives don't want anything to do with him and won't vote for him-- and not just at primary time. Ben Palmquist tackled it for readers of In These Times last week. "Biden and other centrists," he wrote, "are deploying cynical arguments to defend the for-profit insurance system. We shouldn’t buy it... While Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have defended a Medicare for All system that would guarantee healthcare as a right, other more centrist candidates have sought to undercut such a plan-- and they’ve been led by Joe Biden... [T]he Biden campaign has been testing messages designed to undercut support among Democrats for Medicare for All. The survey, commissioned by Wall Street-funded Democratic think tank Third Way, road-tested fear-mongering rhetoric that was crafted by the for-profit health insurance industry-- and sounded a lot like Republican talking points. Biden isn’t alone. In the last debate on September 12, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke all joined him in falsely suggesting that people would lose choice and freedom under a Medicare for All system.

This portrayal of private insurance plans as bastions of choice and freedom isn’t just misguided, it serves to defend profit-hungry companies at the expense of the millions upon millions of Americans who would benefit from guaranteed health care and financial security provided by a single-payer, Medicare for All system.

Biden and his ilk make the critical mistake of conflating coverage with care. They assume that people “covered” by subsidized private insurance plans can actually get care, and can do so without going broke-- but that’s simply not true.

From 2005 to 2018, some 60 million Americans per year-- including one half of the insured population-- were forced to skip or delay medical care. In 2016, a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in partnership with the New York Times found that 85 million Americans were in medical debt. Of those, roughly 6 in 10 were insured.

The government can help extend private coverage to more people, but insurance companies will keep pushing costs onto us, keep dropping treatments, medicines, and doctors from their plans, and keep denying our claims. The only real solution is universal, guaranteed healthcare.

The attacks on Medicare for All also betray an impoverished understanding of freedom as a choice between insurance products. But people don't want a choice between Aetna and Cigna. They want the freedom of guaranteed healthcare; the freedom to choose their doctor, hospitals and treatments; and financial freedom from insurance, hospital and drug bills.





The flip side of freedom is coercion, and while centrist Democratic candidates may raise alarms about government coercion, they ignore the countless ways that insurance companies coerce people every day. They force people to pay ever-higher premiums, deductibles, out-of-network fees and copays. They force people to forego dental, reproductive and mental healthcare, as well as prescriptions. They force people to stop seeing the doctors they want to see by narrowing networks. And they force people into poverty by denying insurance claims and refusing to pay medical bills.

While claiming to recognize healthcare as an inviolable human right, Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Harris and O'Rourke also ignore the deep inequities produced by the multi-payer insurance system they defend. The plans put forward by Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar would leave millions of people uninsured, and though Harris and O’Rourke’s would get everyone coverage, none of these plans would guarantee all medically necessary care.

The current fractured insurance system carves people into categories according to their economic and family characteristics, favoring some while denying care to others. By selectively imposing coverage restrictions and cost sharing, the system grants different people different access to different plans that cover different doctors, different hospitals, different medical conditions, different body parts, different treatments and different medicines.

Such a system favors people who live in areas with high employment over those where there’s low employment, workers in big firms over workers in small firms, workers in full-time jobs over those in part-time jobs, and workers in formal employment over workers who are self-employed or do informal work. It favors people older than 65 or younger than 26 over those in the middle, people with high incomes over people with middle-and-low incomes, people with family wealth over people who don’t have savings, and people who are married over those who are single.

Rationing care on the basis of these non-medical economic indicators is incompatible with guaranteeing healthcare as a right, and also reproduces racial and gender inequities. Because the most robust coverage is reserved for those with formal full-time employment in lucrative economic sectors, comprehensive care is disproportionately denied to Black and brown communities facing high unemployment, immigrants working in low-wage industries, and women working in part-time jobs and unpaid domestic labor.

Separate-and-unequal coverage doesn’t just hurt those at the bottom. By accepting and institutionalizing the notion that some people are more deserving than others, tiered coverage is precisely what makes U.S. healthcare both precarious and vulnerable. This vulnerability breeds fear of losing one’s coverage, which for decades has been exploited to stifle reforms and feed relentless attacks on public programs and social solidarity.

Medicare for All, in contrast, would guarantee a single standard of care to everyone. The plan introduced by Sanders in the Senate would provide all medically necessary care, comprehensive long-term care, mental health, reproductive, dental, vision and all other care people need. Everyone in the United States would be guaranteed seamless care from cradle to grave, freeing us up to move in and out of jobs and relationships without worrying about medical care, and we’d never have to deal with an insurance company or medical bill again. Healthcare would be provided to all of society as a public good like fire protection rather than as an individually rationed commodity. What’s more, Medicare for All would do all this for less than it would cost to keep propping up the private insurance system.

While Biden and Third Way may be polling language to attack such a Medicare for All system, the case is clear: the “freedom” to “choose” for-profit insurance is a false choice. Medicare for All is wildly popular because it would finally provide comprehensive healthcare to everyone. Democratic leaders should stop using insurance industry talking points and Republican fear-mongering to tell people otherwise.

President AOC? Not Yet

The graphic above shows the 45 members of the House who signed on to a vague statement of support for the Green New Deal. But now that AOC is actually getting ready to introduce a formal bill-- although some of the details are still sketchy and up for negotiation-- there are far fewer members... at least so far. The first members of Congress to sign on as co-sponsors:

• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
• Ted Lieu (D-CA)
• Ro Khanna (D-CA)
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
• Joe Neguse (D-CO)
• Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)
• Brendan Boyle (New Dem-PA)
• Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX)
• Yvette Clarke (D-NY)

He may have been a little ahead of himself but Michael Moore has already declared Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the leader of the Democratic Party. Don't we wish! Also, he said, "moderates" are should wise up and realize the whole "moderate" thing is gone and just needs to be buried.

MOORE: If you're being moderate, stop being moderate. Take a position. There's no middle ground anymore. There's no half-way point to should somebody be paid a living wage. 'Well, I'm a moderate so I think they could be paid half of that living wage.'

You know, on the issue of choice, there is no half-way there. You're either for it or you're against it.

Do you believe in equal rights for women? Do you believe we should have an Equal Rights Amendment?

There's no middle ground. There's no time for moderation.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gave us another reason to love her tonight while the unspeakable baboon was pretending to be president and so many Democrats make fools of themselves by jumping up and applauding him, treating him like a "normal" "president." (By the way, the 3 New Dems sitting directly behind her were Ann Kuster (NH), Julia Brownley (CA) and Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ) and the smiling imbecile in front of her is Joe Manchin (WV). All 4 of them have ProgressivePunch "F" ratings and only Trump makes them look any better than they are.

Saturday The DNC Finally Picks A New Chair-- Let's Pray It's Not Another Disaster Like Wasserman Schultz

The DNC charter says a new chairman has to be elected before March 1st. Saturday is as close to the deadline as they could have gotten. It's been a long race, primarily between the progressive wing represented by Keith Ellison and the status quo establishment wing represented by Tom Perez. Obama has been quietly making calls on Perez's behalf. The energy of the Resistance in fully behind Ellison.

This week New Hampshire Democratic Chairman Ray Buckley-- also the chairman of the Democratic chairmen organization-- dropped out of the race and, significantly, endorsed Ellison. That's a very big deal that the media largely missed. This is what he told his supporters when he endorsed Keith:

We need to reform the DNC and strengthen our state parties if we are to win back power. After helping win 11 of the last 13 statewide elections in New Hampshire-- and electing the nation's first all-female, all-Democratic congressional delegation-- I wanted to help lead this national effort.

Many of the 10 of us who were running spoke about these issues. But Keith's track record of winning elections, increasing voter turnout in Minnesota, being an organizer, partnering with the progressive grassroots, and helping to change the national debate in a way that favors Democrats all stood out.

I have 100% confidence that with Keith Ellison as our Chair, the Democratic National Committee is going to become much more accountable and that the grassroots will be the top priority of the DNC. With Keith's leadership, we will start winning again.

...Keith Ellison also knows elections are not won and lost in the DC beltway, but on the ground across the country. We both believe in providing support and investing resources to help every state party succeed, and organizing in every county across this great country.

There are only 447 voting DNC members. As I've talked to the DNC membership, it's clear that nobody has all the votes they need yet. It's also clear Keith has widespread and growing support.

Yesterday John Lewis, one of the moral centers of the Democratic Party, once again threw his weight behind Ellison (see video above). And remember, Lewis was not just a supporter of Hillary Clinton's campaign, he went out of his way to disparage Bernie during the primary. His endorsement of Keith is an important step in healing the gap between progressives and a political establishment that blundered and failed and brought us the disaster of Trump and Trumpism.

"We need his leadership. We need his vision. We need his commitment and his dedication now more than ever before," said Lewis in his announcement. "Keith wants our party not just to wait until the next election but to organize now for the long haul."

Yesterday many of us got an e-mail from Michael Moore under the subject line: Do These 10 Things, and Trump Will Be Toast. They were all good. #6 is especially relevant to this post though:

TAKE OVER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: The old guard of the party has twice in 16 years presided over the majority of Americans electing the Democrat to the White House-- only for us all to see the losing Republican inaugurated as president. How is it that we have won the popular vote in SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS-- the Republicans have only won ONCE since 1988-- and yet, we hold NO power in any branch of government?! That, plus losing 1,000 local seats in this election that the Dems use to hold-- plus watching many Dems in Congress unwilling to stand up to Trump ― PLEASE, the old leadership has to go. God love ‘em for their contributions in the past, but if we don’t enact a radical overhaul right now, we are doomed as far as having a true opposition party during the Trump era. And that, more than anything, will help to usher in the vice-grip of a totalitarian culture.

You must do two things:

Let the DNC know that THIS SATURDAY, February 25th, the Democratic National Committee MUST elect reform and progressive candidate, Congressman Keith Ellison, as the new DNC chair. Keith is a former community organizer, the first Muslim elected to Congress, and a key backer of Bernie Sanders. He not only has Bernie’s support-- and mine-- but he’s also backed by Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Gloria Steinem, John Lewis and many others. Sign his petition of support at www.keithfordnc.org/howyoucanhelp. Let the DNC know how you feel.

And locally, you need to start attending your county Democratic meetings. If possible, organize your friends and others and take over your local Dem organization. More on this at a later date.

The DNC chairman's race worked to benefit the Resistance. Can you imagine if a universally despised piece of shit like Wasserman Schultz was still chair and attempted to make herself part of the grassroots movement? It would have died an ugly death. Keith is largely seen as a part of the Resistance and can help channel its energy into the 2018 electoral cycle. I doubt many people would be interested in Perez's attempts to do something similar. Yesterday, Bill McKibben addressed concerns about the party and the Resistance in an OpEd for The Guardian. "If Keith Ellison wins," he asserts, "the party might just be able to win back its lost credibility."

The resistance is doing as well as anyone could realistically hope. Deprived by the elections of any institutional power, we’ve marched in record numbers with courage and wit. That’s helped journalists to find their footing, and President Needy’s poll numbers have begun to tumble. But only a crazy person could keep up this plate-spinning pace for long. Since he clearly will, those fighting Trump need to find a fortress to call home-- a place to find shelter in and from which to sally forth.

One of those fortresses may be the Democratic party, depending on how this weekend’s vote for a new DNC chairman comes out.

There are a number of candidates, but two appear to be in the lead: former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. Both, by all accounts, are good guys, and not greatly divided by ideology. But they clearly represent the two wings of the party.

Perez is from the ruling wing, the institutional party. He’s closely identified with Barack Obama, who he worked for, and Hillary Clinton, who he supported. Ellison is from the movement wing. He’s closely identified with Bernie Sanders. Indeed, he was one of the few members of Congress who actively supported his insurgent candidacy.

The choice is actually about the best way to unite the opposition to Trump, at least for the purposes of winning elections.

We don’t need the Democratic party to tell us what to think-- we have vibrant and engaged movements out there that are reshaping public opinion every day, in the airports and on Facebook. Black Lives Matter leads our movement intellectually in a way that the Democratic Party never will. But we may need the Democratic party for the fairly limited purpose of winning elections and hence consolidating power. What would best serve that utilitarian need?

The answer, I think, is pretty clear.

Ellison-- and by extension the movements he represents-- offers the party the items it lacks and needs. Credibility, for one. You could (and this is the argument of Perez and his establishment team) begin in the middle, with as unthreatening and centrist a party as possible, and then reach out to the various movements and try to bring them on board. But I doubt that will work.

The deep-seated anger at the elites, who have compromised serious principle time and time again, is simply too strong. If the polls are to be believed, most Americans don’t trust any of Washington’s power centers, the DNC included. No one looks at Steny Hoyer and thinks ‘what barricade can I die on?’ The last chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, was the embodiment of this kind of non-principled power-based thinking, and she did tremendous damage. [Editor's note: She'll still have to be dealt with for the DNC to ever regain any kind of confidence form grassroots progressives.]

And if that’s true of Americans in general, it’s doubly true of young people. In fact, more than doubly: the single most remarkable statistics of the 2016 election season were the four- and five- and six-to-one margins by which Bernie won young voters.

That he was able to overcome that inherent distrust means he may be able to do the party a great service, and deliver it a generation of voters who are not otherwise inclined to affiliate with institutions of any sort. Ellison is the bridge to that world, and it would be political malpractice to draw it up. But he’s also the bridge to the world of movements, which supply the passion and spirit and creativity that the DNC requires at least as badly as it needs credibility.

A typical Ellison supporter is someone like Jane Kleeb, the whirlwind Nebraska organizer who spearheaded much of the fight against the Keystone Pipeline, and is now assembling a coalition of farmers, ranchers, and other unlikely activists across the Midwest to fight fossil fuel infrastructure and demand renewable energy.

Kleeb’s just been elected chair of Nebraska’s Democratic party, giving it a transfusion of organizing energy that had been lacking-- if you want to compete in the heartland, she’s the kind of person you need.

These folks are serious about winning elections-- Ellison himself has been a remarkably successful campaigner in his Minnesota base, expanding his margins year after year and lending effective support to the rest of the ticket. And they know how to raise money, one of the key jobs of a party: Bernie’s 27-bucks-at-a-time model is clearly the future of political fundraising, a welcome change from simply finding plutocrats or shaking down Wall Street.

Ellison is in a very real way the safe choice. If the institutionalists are put in charge, then much of the DNC’s energy in the years to come will be spent trying to deal with people who distrust institutions. But with Bernie’s implicit backing, Ellison can short-circuit that conversation and simply get to work.

Few people will accuse the black Muslim Berniecrat of being an apparatchik. And since he’s simultaneously a modest Midwestern track-and-field coach, he’ll be able to get a message across to the broad middle.

I don’t know whether that will be enough to save the Democratic party. We’re in an era of rapid deinstitutionalization-- our political parties may just become hollow shells that cannot compete against insurgent candidates like Bernie (who was an Independent most of his career).

But there are, unfortunately, strong forces in the Constitution that favor a two-party system. So even if parties are not as important as protest, it’s still worth seeing if they can serve a useful role going forward. Keith Ellison is the best chance of finding out.

Moments after McKibben's OpEd was published, Steve Phillips' powerful-- and contrarian-- endorsement of Ellison hit the NY Times, urging DNC voters to "choose a leader who will resist the pressure to pursue the wrong white people. Hundreds of articles have been written about the imperative of attracting more support from white working-class voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but then bolted to back Donald J. Trump. The far more important-- and largely untold-- story of the election is that more Obama voters defected to third- and fourth-party candidates than the number who supported Mr. Trump. That is the white flight that should most concern the next D.N.C. chairman, because those voters make up a more promising way to reclaim the White House. The way to win them back is by being more progressive, not less. To be clear, all white voters matter. But Democrats must make tough, data-driven decisions about how to prioritize their work. Right now, too many are using bad math and faulty logic to push the party to chase the wrong segment of white voters. For example, Guy Cecil, who spent nearly $200 million as head of the progressive “super PAC” Priorities USA, urged the party to rebuild trust with the “millions of white voters who voted for President Obama and Donald Trump.” The math underlying that conclusion is incorrect (Mr. Trump picked up not “millions,” but only 784,000 white votes in the 10 battleground states he won by single digits). And it misses the bigger-- and more fixable-- problem of white Democratic defections to third- and fourth-party candidates."

Hillary Clinton lost the decisive states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan by 77,744 votes; the number of Democratic votes dropped significantly from 2012 levels, and the Republican total increased by about 440,000 votes. The third- and fourth-party surge, however, was larger than the Republican growth, with 503,000 more people choosing the Libertarian or the Green candidate than had done so in 2012. When you look at the white vote in those states, the picture is even more stark.

In Wisconsin, according to the exit poll data, Mrs. Clinton received 193,000 fewer white votes than Mr. Obama received in 2012, but Mr. Trump’s white total increased over Mitt Romney’s by just 9,000 votes. So where did the other 184,000 Wisconsin whites go? A majority went to third and fourth parties, which, together, received 100,000 more white votes than they did in 2012.

In Michigan, where 75 percent of the voters were white, Mrs. Clinton received about 295,000 fewer votes than Mr. Obama did, but the Republican total increased by just 164,000 votes. The ranks of those voting third and fourth party leapt to more than 250,000 last year from about 51,000 in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton fell short by just 10,704 votes.

In Pennsylvania, the Democrats’ problem was not with white voters, but with African-Americans. Mrs. Clinton actually improved on the Democratic 2012 results with whites, but over 130,000 unenthused black voters stayed home, and she lost by about 44,000 votes.

If Democrats had stemmed the defections of white voters to the Libertarian or Green Parties, they would have won Michigan and Wisconsin, and had they also inspired African-Americans in Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton would be president.

If progressive whites are defecting because they are uninspired by Democrats, moving further to the right will only deepen their disillusionment. But if the next D.N.C. chairman can win them back, the country’s demographic trends will tilt the field in Democrats’ favor. As Mrs. Clinton’s popular vote margin showed, there is still a new American majority made up of a meaningful minority of whites and an overwhelming majority of minorities. Not only is there little evidence that Democrats can do significantly better with those white working-class voters who are susceptible to messages laced with racism and sexism, but that sector of the electorate will continue to shrink in the coming years. Nearly half of all Democratic votes (46 percent) were not white in 2016, and over the next four years, 10 million more people of color will be added to the population, as compared with just 1.5 million whites.

Keith Ellison, a D.N.C. chairman candidate, has a proven record of engaging core Democratic voters rather than chasing the elusive conservative whites, and the party would be in good hands under his stewardship. (Thomas E. Perez, the former labor secretary, has less electoral history, but his reliance on political superstars such as the strategist Emmy Ruiz, who delivered victories for Democrats in Nevada and Colorado, is encouraging.)

Whoever prevails as chairman must resist the pressure to follow an uninformed and ill-fated quest for winning over conservative white working-class voters in the Midwest. The solution for Democrats is not to chase Trump defectors. The path to victory involves reinspiring those whites who drifted to third-party candidates and then focusing on the ample opportunities in the Southwest and the South.

Mrs. Clinton came closer to winning Texas than she did Iowa. She fared better in Arizona, Georgia and Florida than she did in the traditional battleground state of Ohio. The electoral action for Democrats may have once been in the Rust Belt, but it’s now moving west and south.