"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
Don't Believe The Hype: Being Better Than Trump Or Kristi Noem Is Too Low A Bar-- Newsom Is As Bad A Leader As Cuomo Is
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I only spoke with him once, but I don't like Gavin Newsom at all. He seemed very smart but utterly devoid of authenticity or even sincerity. He was trying to persuade a roomful of bloggers to back him for governor instead of Jerry Brown. I may have been the only one in the room that was revolted by his smarmy dissimulation. I haven't been impressed since. I heard him on the radio this week. I normally wouldn't want to listen to a self-serving, overly-ambitious politician like Newsom; he makes my stomach turn. But he was on the only radio station I listen to and I was alone in my car. Halfway through his spiel, he realized he was so full of shit that he laughed at himself and said if anyone wasn't confused by what he had just said, they were being dishonest with themselves. That's because-- ever the greasy politician-- he was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, the rebel counties-- Yuba, Sutter and Modoc-- ignoring his orders were endangering the rest of the state and on the other hand, they had the right to enact their convictions. Even he realized he sounded like an asshole. He said "They are putting our progress at risk. These are exceptions. The overwhelming majority of Californians are playing by the rules, and doing the right thing... We believe in ready aim fire, not ready fire aim... They put those businesses at risk and the health of their communities at risk" The 3 counties are allowing dine-in restaurants, retail stores and shopping malls, gyms, hair and nail salons, barber shops, spas, massage parlors (as you may have read, the city of NYC says swallowing semen doesn't transmit COVID-19), tattoo parlors. It seems like just a week or two ago that California was boasting that there were just 800 cases per million. As people in the Republican parts of the state realized there was no price to pay for ignoring Newsom's orders, the numbers have ticked up. By this afternoon, California had 59,698 confirmed cases and more new cases (1,073). That 800 cases per million is a long-gone figure. Yesterday it was 1,489 up from 1,433 on Monday. So far today it is 1,525. Tick, tick, tick... and Newsom is too weak and too eager to do the bidding on the corporate interests that have financed his career to standup and be the leader California requires at this moment. He says he's partially reopening the state's retail business, probably on Friday. He says he'll allow curbside pick-up for clothing stores, bookstores, sporting goods stores and florists. Ordering online makes more sense if you can't even go in the store and browse (and he's correct in not allowing that).
Newsom said the state would also allow some counties to begin easing social distancing restrictions even further if they can prove they have the ability to institute proper sanitation practices, ensure adequate testing and tracing and provide security to those who are most vulnerable, including the homeless community, older citizens and the incarcerated. “We will allow additional movement through phase two, and that includes the prospect of restaurants with modifications opening, hospitality more broadly opening, again, with modification,” Newsom said. Phase three of the state’s reopening plan includes businesses such as hair and nail salons, movie theaters and events with live audiences, although the state is not at that phase yet. Newsom’s announcement comes after San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced on April 27 that the city would extend its stay-at-home order through May. When asked about the order, Newsom said the city has guidelines that are “a little more strict” and they have the right to not come into compliance with the state’s guidelines. However, he said more rural parts of the state that meet the criteria set forth may want to go even further with their reopenings, which they would be allowed to do with conditions and modifications.
The 6 Bay Area counties got this right, while Newsom was still dragging his ass and doing nothing but trying to sound good. Compared to L.A. (27,815 cases), Riverside (4,454 cases), San Diego (4,020 cases) and Orange (2,873 cases) counties, the Bay Area counties that ignored Newsom's timid approach to go their own much stricter and quicker response have done much better:
• Santa Clara- 2,255 • Alameda- 1,809 • San Francisco- 1,728 • San Mateo- 1,315 • Contra Costa- 969 • Marin- 243
Thanks to Newsom's poor leadership, California is well on the way to becoming the Singapore of America-- good start quickly followed by a pathetic and tragic downward trajectory.
Who Can Win The Conservative Lane To Take On Bernie? None Of These Clowns?
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The fight for the conservative lane is in full swing, and yesterday, Bloomberg's campaign manager dismissed Biden's strategy for beating out Bloomberg, Klobuchar and Mayo Pete. Biden's plan is to win big in South Carolina and get the corporate media to market him as the "come back kid." Yesterday, Kevin Sheekey, the Bloomers campaign manager, claimed "South Carolina is not going to matter" and that "Super Tuesday is going to be really definitional for this race." The Real Clear Politics polling average for South Carolina has Biden way ahead again because of a just-released poll from Monmouth. The polling average has Biden at 34.3%, Bernie at 20.0%, Steyer at 14.0% and no one else in double-digits. Here's the Monmouth poll released yesterday (including changes since their October survey):
Biden is going on Chris Wallace's Sunday show on Fox to declare that he's the comeback kid after the (expected) big win among elderly rural voters who think he's the second coming of Obama and are largely unaware that his political foundations are completely steeped in racism. (Trump will make sure they know if Biden makes it to November.) So will these folks change the Super Tuesday dynamic across the country? I doubt it. Bloomberg's folks agree with me that it won't and Bernie is doing his own thing and largely ignoring the increasingly vicious and desperate squabbling in the conservative lane. He knows he'll have to fight one of them in the end-- probably at a brokered convention-- and is just trying to pile up as many delegates as he can while they work at undercutting each other. Mayo Pete (Twerp) is also keeping his nose to the grindstone, with a strategy of forgetting about winning any Super Tuesday states and instead targeting a few congressional districts where he thinks he can eke out a few delegates, like he did in Nevada.
Buttigieg’s campaign said in a memo that its objective on March 3 is to “minimize” Sanders’ margins and maximize “delegate accumulation by [congressional] district, not states.” Anticipating a drawn-out primary process, Buttigieg is looking to survive deeper into the calendar, making it to mid-March contests in the Midwest that might provide more opportunities for him. Buttigieg is focusing on selected districts in smaller media markets throughout the country to rack up delegates, from Austin, Texas and its suburbs to San Diego, northern Maine, and other locales where Democrats flipped House seats in 2018. But it’s a risky strategy to maintain momentum, and that risk is born out of necessity. ...“Pick a place and try for a win. Otherwise, if you’re playing just to pick off delegates, then that’s what you say if you’re in trouble,” the strategist said, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. “If it’s a math game, then you’re just doing it to be at the convention, and you’re not playing to win.”
In its memo, Buttigieg’s campaign pledged to “limit Sanders’ delegate lead to no more than 350 pledged delegates.” States on Super Tuesday account for about a third of the total delegates handed out in the Democratic presidential race. “How many districts are each candidate hitting threshold and by what margin? To me, that’s the most important question on Super Tuesday,” said Michael Halle, an adviser to the Buttigieg campaign. “You gain the most efficiency by becoming viable.” But even among his supporters, there’s a fear that Buttigieg’s best days in the presidential race already happened. “We’re definitely worried about him not making it to Maryland,” which votes in late April, said Raina Chambers, a 49-year-old from Beltsville, Maryland, who saw Buttigieg speak in Arlington, Va., on Sunday. Her husband, Michael Chambers, added, “but if Pete doesn’t make it, I’d be fine with Michael Bloomberg, too.”
No doubt. Most Mayo Pete supporters would be just fine with any status quo piece of shit, if not Bloomberg, then Biden or Klobuchar or Mark Warner of Chris Coons... anyone who doesn't champion the working class. Hey, what about John Delaney or Michael Bennett? Why is no one talking about digging up Frackenlooper? As for that convention... the NY Times went into fantasyland yesterday. Don Beyer (New Dem-VA) is a multimillionaire, a status quo politician who would never feel comfortable around a President Bernie. "At some point you could imagine saying, 'Let’s go get Mark Warner, Chris Coons, Nancy Pelosi,' he said, while preparing to introduce the former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend., Ind., at a campaign event near his home on Sunday. 'Somebody that could win and we could all get behind and celebrate.'" Drunk? Insane? Fatally conservative? All of the above?
Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. Since Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, The Times has interviewed 93 party officials-- all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention-- and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority. Jay Jacobs, the New York State Democratic Party chairman and a superdelegate, echoing many others interviewed, said that superdelegates should choose a nominee they believed had the best chance of defeating Mr. Trump if no candidate wins a majority of delegates during the primaries. Mr. Sanders argued that he should become the nominee at the convention with a plurality of delegates, to reflect the will of voters, and that denying him the nomination would enrage his supporters and split the party for years to come. “Bernie wants to redefine the rules and just say he just needs a plurality,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I don’t think we buy that. I don’t think the mainstream of the Democratic Party buys that. If he doesn’t have a majority, it stands to reason that he may not become the nominee.”
While there is no widespread public effort underway to undercut Mr. Sanders, arresting his rise has emerged as the dominant topic in many Democratic circles. Some are trying to act well before the convention: Since Mr. Sanders won Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, four donors have approached former Representative Steve Israel of New York to ask if he can suggest someone to run a super PAC aimed at blocking Mr. Sanders. He declined their offer. Others are urging former President Barack Obama to get involved to broker a truce-- either among the four moderate candidates or between the Sanders and establishment wings, according to three people familiar with those conversations. William Owen, a D.N.C. member from Tennessee, suggested that if Mr. Obama was unwilling, his wife, Michelle, could be nominated as vice president, giving the party a figure they could rally behind. People close to Mr. Obama say he has no intention of getting involved in the primary contest, seeing his role as less of a kingmaker than as a unifying figure to help heal party divisions once Democrats settle on a nominee. He also believed that the Democratic Party shouldn’t engage in smoke-filled-room politics, arguing that those kinds of deals would have prevented him from capturing the nomination when he ran against Hillary Clinton in 2008. “If Bernie gets a plurality and nobody else is even close and the superdelegates weigh in and say, ‘We know better than the voters,’ I think that will be a big problem,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, a Sanders supporter who is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Others in the party view Mr. Sanders as such an existential threat that they see stopping him from winning the nomination as less risky than a public convention fight. Many feared that putting Mr. Sanders on the top of the ticket could cost Democrats the political gains of the Trump era, a period when the party won control of the House, took governor’s mansions in deep red states and flipped statehouses across the country.
Aside from Mark Warner, one of the richest politicians in America and a conservative, Chris Coons, the Delaware conservaDem who is a Bidenesque character but not senile, and Pelosi, the second most hated politician in America after Mitch McConnell, other fantasies brought forward by The Times include Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris.
Jack Holmes, politics editor at Esquire on that Times rubbish: "For all the worried talk of Sanders as another George McGovern, a chaotic convention where the delegate leader is jettisoned for someone chosen by The Folks Behind the Curtain could shake the public's faith in the Democratic ticket nearly as much as McGovern's display of catastrophic judgment in the Eagleton Affair. More to the point, these Wise Men of the Democratic Party are not, at least as they appear in The Times, particularly wise. A number of them seem to think they can randomly choose a person who is not running to be the nominee... There seems to be an overwhelming sense among delegates to the Democratic National Convention that the election can only be won by sticking to the old ways, by returning to the Before Times. What no one seems willing to contemplate is that we are never going back. There is no normal to go back to. Just as NeverTrump Republicans have mostly convinced themselves he's an aberration within their party, it seems the Democratic Establishment has convinced itself he is not the symptom of any deeper, structural problems in how we run our shop. There was something so fundamentally broken in this country that we elected a racist game-show host over a former Secretary of State the last time, and now a man who calls himself a democratic socialist-- whose actual policies are more New Deal Democrat-- is winning the primary race. Maybe it's because he's promising to transform the way we do things in a country where the actual voting public doesn't seem to like how things are done."
Remember a few paragraphs up you read "William Owen, a D.N.C. member from Tennessee, suggested that if Mr. Obama was unwilling, his wife, Michelle, could be nominated as vice president, giving the party a figure they could rally behind?" Maybe The Times should have introduced him by explaining that Owens is a Republican donor and healthcare lobbyist. You know... just for a little context. The Intercept's Lee Fang reported that Owen runs a lobbying firm-- Asset & Equity Corporations-- which helped finance right-wing Republican senators Mike Rounds (SD), Dan Sullivan (AK) and Mitch McConnell (KY) last year. Confronted by Fang, Owen said "I am a committed Democrat but as a lobbyist, there are times when I need to have access to both sides and the way to get access quite often is to make campaign contributions. I’m a registered lobbyist and I represent clients and they have interest in front of Congress and I attend the Senator’s Classic, which is a Republican event, each year." Why should Owen be a DNC member, a super-delegate or someone with any power whatsoever in determining who the nominee is?
Sunday: Bernie appears at the L.A. Convention Center with Public Enemy, Sarah Silverman and Dick Van Dyke. 5pm, although doors open at 3pm. I bet they'll be registering voters.
Over the weekend, the Financial Times published a short essay by Edward Luce, The Clinton-Obama Era Ends As U.S. Democrats Seek A Radical New Voice. He wrote that the Democrats owe a debt of gratitude to Trump "as it sweeps away a cautious mindset." Well... maybe an overly-cautious... and if it does. It sure hasn't yet. Luce bids us to listen carefully so we can hear "the retreat of the Democratic establishment." I'm trying. He contends that Clintonian incrementalism served a purpose: making Democrats electable again and safe for Wall Street and that "it has had its day. The generation of Democrats that downplayed concerns about inequality and embraced global markets is being replaced by a far bolder political voice. No matter who takes the Democratic nomination in 2020, they will speak for a radicalised party in quest of the new New Deal." I wish I could be as optimistic. L'ancien régime has made it abundantly clear, it's not going without a fight. Nice that Congress now has AOC, along with Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar. And there are a few other good ones-- but very few. Thanks to the control Pelosi and the New Dems have over the DCCC, way too few. Actually let me start with the control Schumer has over the DSCC and point out what that brought us this cycle. The Democrats have 2 freshmen in the Senate, both handpicked by Schumer from the House. One, Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) was tiger single worst Democrat in the House, a deranged sociopath who is about to start voting with the GOP just like she did in the House. The other, Jacky Rosen, was nearly as bad, not because she's any good, only because Sinema was so unfathomably horrible. Sure they are different from Clinton-Obama Democrats; they're even worse.
And now the House. Of the 88 freshmen who have just been seated. 59 are Democrats (42 of whom flipped seats from red to blue. There are 45 members of Congress who have signed onto the Green New Deal-- all Democrats of course. Of the 45, just 11 are freshmen. That's 11 out of the 59 Democratic freshmen. Worse yet, only two (2) come from a flipped district. The rest, like Ocasio, Tlaib, Pressley and Ilhan, come from solid blue seats, where they defeated establishment Democrats. Of the 59 Democrats, 35 have joined the New Dems and or the Blue Dogs, basically the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Just 24 have joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus and 6 of those are also New Dems and may or may not even be progressives at all. We shall see. But it was largely the DCCC strategy to recruit and support conservative Democrats and kick progressives to the ground. A couple of weeks ago, I ran into one of the freshmen who joined the New Dems and asked him why he hadn't signed onto the Green New Deal, since he basically campaigned on it to attract progressive voters. Dramatically and condescendingly, he told me that that "isn't how it's done intros town if you want to go anywhere." And where he said he was going was onto the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. He said if he signed onto the Green New Deal, the Energy and Commerce Committee chair, Frank Pallone, who takes millions iff dollars from the special interests the committee oversees, would be angry and not allow him on the committee."So you're already turned into a complete scumbag?" I wanted to say, but didn't. Long story, short, he wasn't picked to be on the committee-- no freshmen were, just 7 conservative Dems and one progressive, none of whom support the Green New Deal. I just called him and asked if he'd sign on since Pallone rejected him anyway. He said he hopes to get on next time there's an opening and plans to kiss Pallone's ass at every opportunity. Nice. Luce continued by asserting that Trump serves as a personification of the demolition of "whatever case remained for the idea that Democrats must forever ready themselves for a promised land of bipartisan amity. In practice, many thought that stance had already been discredited by Newt Gingrich, the take-no-prisoners Republican Speaker of the House during the Clinton years. Others thought the wrecking ball the Tea Party took to Mr Obama's fiscal plans had finally settled the argument. No matter how much Democrats tacked to the centre, the rewards for this virtue never came. Republicans simply moved further to the right. Democratic presidents, such as Mr Clinton, created budget surpluses. Republicans, such as George W Bush, duly spent them on tax cuts. Inequality is far worse today than in 1992, even though Democrats held the White House for more than half that time. Median incomes, meanwhile, have barely shifted. The initial anger over the 2008 financial crash was captured by the Tea Party. " All good points-- forever lost on people like Pelosi, Hoyer and those they have and continue replicating themselves with, from status quo loving younger versions like Cheri Bustos, Hakeem Jeffries, Ben Ray Lujans, Joe Crowleys to the nightmare crop of New Dems and Blue Dogs they just ushered into Congress.
Luce writes that Trump "changed the weather. He showed that you could bamboozle a hostile establishment and still win an election. Then he switched horses and pursued an aggressive Republican agenda. From tax cuts and deregulation to gun rights and anti-abortion judges, Mr Trump now has Republican lawmakers eating out of his hand. Those who still believed it would be possible to work across the aisle-- and who pined for the days of Rockefeller Republicans-- were robbed of any remaining force. Mr Trump has done a service for the American left." Try telling that to Steny Hoyer or Jim Clyburn, let alone Ron Kind, Stephanie Murphy, Jim Costa or Henry Cuellar.
Reality has also lent it a helping hand. Regardless of your ideology, today's numbers paint a stark picture. Ten years into the US recovery, median household incomes are, in real terms, still much what they were they were in 1999. The top one per cent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent. America's average life expectancy has started to decline. Mr Trump has made inequality worse. But he is not its author. The numbers were almost as bleak at the end of Mr Obama's two terms. So tinkering no longer holds much appeal.
OK, fair enough... and then Luce reminds us that, though based in DC, he is English, not American and may still know more about Indian politics from his days based in Delhi than about U.S. politics. "Much of the focus is on who should be the Democratic nominee to challenge Mr Trump. That obviously matters. But the significant point is that the party's centre of gravity has shifted. Whoever the challenger turns out to be, whether Joe Biden, the former vice-president, Elizabeth Warren, the economic populist, Beto O'Rourke, the sunny optimist, or Mr Sanders, their platform will have to reflect that shift. Stances such as 'Medicare for all,' a 'Green New Deal,' and public election financing will have to be part of the package. So too will higher taxes." I suspect he doesn't know enough about status quo candidates like Biden and Beto to understand just how different they are from change agents like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie. Biden has already been assuring supporters-- albeit quietly-- that they won't have to worry about Medicare for All, Green New Deals, 70% marginal tax rates or anything that alters the comfortable conservatism he resides in. Beto was a member of Congress who didn't support Medicare for All or the Green New Deal.
Attention has also been lavished on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old Democratic socialist and youngest member of Congress. More notable is the respect her ideas, including a top tax rate of 70 per cent, commands among establishment Democrats. "The congresswoman is right," Lawrence Summers, Mr Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, said last week. Mr Summers personified the Washington consensus of the 1990s. Like Keynes, however, he says he changes his mind when the facts do. They no longer fit the arc-of-history Democrats used to narrate. "The false doctrines of the neoliberal priesthood are losing their hold," writes Nick Hanauer, the entrepreneur who made his fortune with Amazon. America's left is turning into a factory of new ideas. Some of them, such as a universal basic income, may be questionable. Others, such as breaking up monopolies, are more promising. Either way, for the first time in decades, America's intellectual energy is now on the left. Some liken the ferment to the "bold persistent experimentation" of Franklin Roosevelt, author of the 1930s New Deal. Doubters compare it with the false dawn of George McGovern, who lost in a 1972 landslide to Richard Nixon. Whichever view proves correct, the Clinton-Obama era is drawing to a close. A new one is just beginning.
Universal basic income may be questionable? If you say so. And breaking up monopolies is a new idea. Oy. How about this: "for the first time in decades, America's intellectual energy is now on the left?"
