A Gamble That Paid Off: When Bernie Was Riding High, Wall St. Saw A Distressed Asset In Biden-- And Bought Low

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party lined up behind Biden early, though it wasn't enough to animate his DOA campaign-- not until Obama stepped in and told the party establishment the enough time had been wasted and that Bernie could win and take away everything they had built for themselves if they don't unite behind Biden. So they did. Was anyone surprised? Was anyone surprised when Republican elites started flocking to Biden-- first in a trickle and now in a steady stream?

So why would anyone be surprised that Biden-- who has spent his entire career in politics fellating Wall Street-- would be embraced by the banksters and junior-banksters who were FDR's and the working class' sworn enemies but have been assiduously cultivated by the Bill Clinton breed of Democrats?

Over the weekend, the NY Times published a piece by Kate Kelly, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan, The Wallets of Wall Street Are With Joe Biden, if Not the Hearts that will thrill many Democrats and chill many others. The story barely mentions Bernie-- just once when he and Elizabeth Warren were dismissed-- but Bernie, fear of Bernie to be precise, was the impetus for Biden's rise among the financial elites. This story though is about how Trump is pushing Wall Street into the Biden camp. After donating millions to Biden to beat Bernie, that money "helped him build a strong lead in national polls." But with the threat of Bernie off the table, what would Wall Street do next?

"Wall Street," wrote the Times trio, "has fared extraordinarily well under Mr. Trump: deep cuts to taxes, slashed regulations and, until the pandemic hit, record stock prices. But in recent months, dozens of bankers, traders and investors said in interviews, a sense of outrage and exhaustion over Mr. Trump’s chaotic style of governance-- accelerated by his poor coronavirus response-- had markedly shifted the economic and political calculus in their industry. More and more finance professionals, they say, appear to be sidelining their concerns about Mr. Biden’s age-- 77-- and his style. They are surprisingly unperturbed at the likelihood of his raising their taxes and stiffening oversight of their industry. In return, they welcome the more seasoned and methodical presidency they believe he could bring. They may not exactly be falling in love with Mr. Biden. But they are falling in line." And they know that the raising won't be too high and the stiffening won't be too painful. Biden said so himself. He's not called Status Quo Joe just because it rhymes.

Now... ready for silly?

“I’ve seen meaningful numbers of people put aside what would appear to be their short-term economic interest because they value being citizens in a democracy,” said Seth Klarman, founder of the hedge fund Baupost. A longtime independent, Mr. Klarman was at one point New England’s biggest giver to the Republican Party. But in this cycle, he has given $3 million to groups supporting Mr. Biden.

Or as James Attwood, a managing director at the Carlyle Group and a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, put it, “For people who are in the business of hiring and firing C.E.O.s, Donald Trump should have been fired a while ago.” (Mr. Attwood contributed $200,000 in June to the Biden Action Fund, a joint committee with the Democratic National Committee.)

In May and June alone, the Biden Action Fund raised more than $11.5 million. That tally-- a good measuring stick for Wall Street support because it was set up in part to draw contributions from that industry-- included $710,000 from Josh Bekenstein, a co-chair of Bain Capital, and his wife.

But Wall Street money has proved to be a double-edged sword for Democrats, as Hillary Clinton discovered when she was hounded four years ago for delivering private speeches to Goldman Sachs and other firms. Progressive voters and activists-- many of whom backed Mr. Biden’s more liberal rivals in the primary-- are particularly leery of any appearance of coziness with the finance industry.

Leery... imagine that! Why would progressives be leery of the working class' historical enemies? Everything that is wrong with the world... follow the money. Our Times trio wrote that when asked about Wall Street’s role in Biden’s current bid, the campaign spits out all the Biden bullshit about how he fights for the common man, which is quite at odds with his repulsive record of fighting against the common man. Our trio hates Trump so they refrain from noting that although they reluctantly admit that "As a senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden has for decades had relationships with credit-card companies there, but less of a presence in the financial power center of New York. He has counted a small circle of finance executives as supporters. Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, for example, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Biden during his first run for president in 1988, and continues to back him now. The former hedge-fund executive Eric Mindich and the short-seller James Chanos have been supporters from well before the pandemic began. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Biden has also not crusaded against Wall Street, the way his primary rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders did. Financial executives mostly seem to believe that while their taxes would rise in a Biden administration, they would not be subjected to the kind of 'fat cat' rhetoric that soured some of their relationships with former President Barack Obama." Feel better now? How about this then? "'Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,' Mr. Biden told donors at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan last year. At a Brookings Institution gathering in 2018, he said, 'I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.'" Biden is wrong; they are.

Biden’s more benign stance toward the finance industry has provoked skepticism among advocates for stricter regulation. “When the candidate doesn’t have a clear plan on something like Wall Street reform, it tilts the playing field toward what is probably the most powerful industry in the world,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group. “We need more than ‘not Trump appointees’ when it comes to financial regulation.”

While Wall Street financiers tend to be more socially liberal, they have collectively swung back and forth between parties. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics show the securities and investment community donating more to President George W. Bush in 2004, and then to Mr. Obama in 2008, and then to Mitt Romney in 2012, followed by Mrs. Clinton in 2016, than to their respective presidential rivals.

This year, it’s Mr. Biden. Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

Last month, multiple Wall Street bundlers, including Alan Leventhal, the chief executive of Beacon Capital; Nat Simons, who runs a clean-tech investment fund; and Mr. Gray, Blackstone’s president, held virtual fund-raisers for Mr. Biden. The giving has been so robust that the Biden campaign is now asking for at least $1 million in donations before it will confirm the former vice president’s attendance at an event, say bundlers.

As the checks roll in, the Biden campaign has been carefully cultivating its relationship with the business community, with a focus on Wall Street. The outreach has included offering private briefings ahead of major policy rollouts and dangling various donor packages for the upcoming, and mostly virtual, Democratic National Convention.

In one call last month, two of Mr. Biden’s top advisers on financial policy, Ben Harris and Jake Sullivan, led a wide-ranging conversation to preview the candidate’s economic plan, which focuses on broad policy initiatives like investing in green infrastructure projects and minority-owned businesses. Two former Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Jacob J. Lew, were part of the call.

Several major Wall Street executives and investors were also present, including Blair Effron, co-founder of the financial advisory firm Centerview Partners; Penny Pritzker, a fund-raiser and former commerce secretary; David Cohen, a top Biden bundler and Comcast executive; and Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google.

...[H]ow Mr. Biden might affect their wallets is still a major concern for industry executives who aggressively fought the implementation of new regulations after the financial crisis of 2008. Some in the business community have suggested tweaks to the former vice president’s tax and economic policies in ways that might soften the impact for companies.

At a separate July meeting with campaign staffers and a handful of Wall Street participants, Charles Phillips, chairman of the software company Infor and a onetime Morgan Stanley tech analyst, argued that Mr. Biden shouldn’t make huge expenditures on infrastructure and other new programs without also identifying spending cuts. “We can fund some of this by getting more efficient and getting rid of waste that no one will miss,” Mr. Phillips recalled saying. He said he also argued for a simpler tax code with a corporate rate lower than Mr. Biden’s proposed 28 percent.

In addition to those watching the policy details, many financiers are closely attuned to Mr. Biden’s selection of a running mate, arguing that they might reconsider their votes if he were to choose someone like Ms. Warren, whose campaign sold coffee mugs that read “Billionaire Tears” in a nod to her proposed wealth tax on the superrich.

Some in the finance industry are concerned about Ms. Warren’s emergence as an informal policy adviser, and the possibility that she could be installed as Treasury secretary.

Mr. Biden’s policy platform on the issues affecting Wall Street’s most affluent players has been relatively sparse. He has proposed a series of tax increases on businesses and on wealthy individuals, including raising the top marginal income tax rate and taxing capital gains as ordinary income for the richest Americans. But he has not embraced a wealth tax like Ms. Warren’s, nor has he rolled out any kind of detailed policy plan focused on financial regulation.

Since Mr. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the campaign has appointed Rufus Gifford, a former finance director for the 2012 Obama campaign, as a deputy campaign manager overseeing the money operation nationwide. Mr. Gifford is in regular touch with Wall Street donors, coordinating a slew of virtual fund-raisers and discussing campaign issues with deep-pocketed financiers.

In recent meetings with donors, Mr. Biden has said that while the wealthy are going to have to “do more,” the details of his tax hikes are still being hammered out, according to someone who has attended multiple fund-raisers but requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. At a virtual fund-raiser held in July, the candidate spoke of the need for corporate America to “change its ways.” But the solution, he said, would not be legislative.

Back in February, Mr. Biden had taken a precious day off the trail to collect a critical $800,000 at two New York fund-raisers, including the one Mr. Gray co-hosted. “You’re putting me in a position to be able to be very competitive,” Mr. Biden said, thanking his Wall Street supporters.

A few of his finance industry donors, looking back, have privately remarked how the evening turned out to be the most quintessential of Wall Street plays: seeing a distressed asset at that time, and buying low.

Republican Phil Heimlich, a former Cincinnati City Council member and Hamilton County commissioner, is a principal in the #NeverTrump group, Republicans For the Rule of Law and a founder of Operation Grant, an offshoot of the Lincoln Project for Ohio. Over the weekend, USA Today published an OpEd he wrote about how Ohio conservatives are abandoning Trump for Biden. Trump, he complains, hasn't lead as a true conservative. "In 2016, many Ohio voters put their faith in Donald Trump, us included. That was an error of judgment, not intent. For these reasons, we’re joining with other Republicans in this state to vote against President Trump this November. He has created a culture of fear within the Republican Party as well as across the country, demonizing anyone with differing opinions. He belittles, berates, and ruins the careers of all who oppose him-- including his own appointed government agency heads, respected military leaders and war heroes. He has undermined the rule of law, obstructed justice, and issued pardons and commutations to personal cronies who helped cover up his misdeeds. He has demonstrated gross incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing needless suffering and death. He has run up a $2.7 trillion budget deficit, $1 trillion of which occurred before the pandemic unfolded..." And so on. And... how much of President Biden will all these conservative Republicans own? 50%? 75% 99.9% More? Maybe I'll be proven wrong. We'll know when Biden announces his VP pick. If he choses Elizabeth Warren, I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. You know I'm not.

Yesterday Juan Cole, in his Informed Consent newsletter, asked how Americans became such wimps, quietly watching Trump kill tens of thousands, destroy Social Security, Medicare, the environment and the post office and openly plot to steal the election. "Americans," he wrote, "are masochistic sheeple who let the rich and powerful walk all over them and thank them for the privilege... The rich figured out in the 1980s that Americans are all form over substance, and if you put up for president a Hollywood actor like Ronald Reagan who used to play cowboys, they would swoon over him. In 1984 when Reagan ran against Walter Mondale, I saw a middle aged white Detroit auto worker interviewed who said he woudn’t vote for Mondale because he was a “panty-waist.” Reagan took away their right to strike and took away government services by running up the deficit and cutting taxes on the rich simultaneously, then claiming the government couldn’t provide the services the people had paid for because it is broke. Reagan raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. Why? Most young people don’t realize that their health will decline in their late 60s and they often won’t actually get any golden years."

What did Americans do in response? They just bent over and took it.

Actually, it is the French who are much more like Americans imagine themselves to be. President Emmanuel Macron last December tried to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. I can’t understand why. France has persistently high unemployment as it is.

In response, all hell broke loose. Some 30 unions went on strike, and they supported each other. Trains were interrupted. Trucking was interrupted. Life was interrupted. A million people came out into the streets. But one poll had 61% of the French approving of the strikes. They went on for months, and were very inconvenient.

Macron backed down on raising the retirement age.

The French working and middle classes know how to throw a first class fit when the servants of the rich in government come after their lifestyles. They don’t always get their way (Macron used a parliamentary maneuver to make some changes in pensions, in late February), but they make damn sure the government knows it can’t get away with encroaching on them without a fight.

I actually think that one reason Europe has done much better in tamping down the coronavirus than Trump’s America is that the governments and corporations were afraid of a public backlash if the death toll went on rising. So they did their effing jobs.

In mid-April the Financial Times reported that the CGT workers union (which it darkly observed is under Communist influences) had filed a criminal complaint against the Carrefour supermarket chain and its CEO for not protecting its workers from the coronavirus. The unions also went to court to force Amazon to step back and only ship essential items until the courts could review the company’s safety procedures.

The only thing I know of like that in the US is the UCFW’s lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture’s waivers to poultry plants allowing them to speed up the assembly lines. During a pandemic! Workers breathing harder is undesirable with a respiratory disease floating about.

But in France, it wouldn’t have been one union filing a lawsuit (which one of Mitch McConnell’s unqualified Republican judges/ideologues will likely slap down). It would have been a massive set of mutually reinforcing strikes.

By feeding us decades of propaganda against unions and “socialism,” the American rich have broken the legs of the people, and left them to twitch helplessly as more and more indignities are heaped on them. They’ve divided us by race (Trump is not alone in this tactic, only the least subtle), they’ve convinced us to give the super-rich power because they will make us rich too. (How is that working out for you?).

There is now no mainstream political party in Western Europe that is anywhere near as far right as the GOP. The closest analogues to today’s Republican Party in Europe are the far right white supremacist parties, like Marie LePen’s National Front in France or the AfD in Germany.

It appears that a plutocracy produces fascism, since appeals to racialist superiority and playing on fears of a brown and black Other are the only things that can convince people to give up their basic human rights (like a comfortable life in retirement, which they have paid for, or the right to cast a mail in ballot during a pandemic).

But despite all the military parades and brave talk of master races, fascism is just the ultimate humiliation of the sheeple. Mussolini drove enormous numbers of Italians into poverty. The Axis used them for cannon fodder at the front. If the increasingly wimpy Americans don’t watch out, they will find that it is too late to fight back, since they have surrendered all their means to do so. So as to avoid being panty-waists and all. They will be left with a borrowed greasy cheeseburger they can’t even pay for.

Does this song and video make you cry? Human solidarity has always had such an incredible power over me.

There's More To Berman's Firing Than Meets The Eye

What could be a more perfect chief prosecutor (in Trump's own backyard, no less-- where he committed decades of crimes and where so many of his cronies reside) for Trump than one who has never prosecuted a case? Renae Merle, who covers white-collar crime and Wall Street for the Washington Post, noted in a piece yesterday that the Trumpanzee "pick to be the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, is the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a longtime corporate lawyer with deep connections to Wall Street. But he has no experience as a federal prosecutor." Ah... but his lack of experience is just the beginning of why he's not going to be confirmed, not even by this craven Trumpist Senate. (Lindsey Graham, Senate Judiciary Committee chair announced that he would not even open confirmation hearings for Clayton until New York’s two senators support the nomination. They both oppose it and Schumer has already called on Clayton to withdraw his name.) Berman showed up for work Saturday, by the way.

On his 2017 SEC financial disclosure form, for example, Clayton listed Deutsche Bank as a source of compensation “exceeding $5,000.” The bank was a client of his former law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

The German bank has repeatedly run afoul of federal and state laws and was implicated in large money laundering schemes. It is also at the center of a battle between the Trump administration and House Democrats over the release of the president’s financial records. The bank has played critical role in Trump’s real estate business, lending him more than $360 million since 2012.

When he took the job at the SEC in 2017, Clayton agreed to recuse himself from cases involving Deutsche Bank and other clients he had previously represented for two years. While at Sullivan & Cromwell, he advised Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital, among many others.

...Before Trump nominated him to the SEC, Clayton, a longtime partner with Sullivan & Cromwell, had never held a government position. He has represented some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including Bill Ackman of Pershing Capital.

...[C]onsumer advocates say some of his policies have weakened the SEC. The commission has made it easier for companies to raise money without traditional oversight and adopted weak protections for consumers working with brokers, they say. Clayton’s tenure will be known for “shrinking both the scope and the effectiveness of SEC regulation,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform, an advocacy group.

Everyone is speculating on why Trump/Barr-- they disagree about who ordered it-- fired Berman. Was it to protect Giuliani? Was it because of Trump's business interests in Turkey? Could be dozens of reasons that impact Trump personally. One perspective worth considering comes from Wall Street on Parade where Pam and Russ Marten explained how Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were facing uncomfortable criminal probes that Trump and Barr felt could not be permitted to go forward.

Clayton has no prosecutorial experience but what he does have, wrote the Martens, "is a lot of experience representing Wall Street’s largest banks, like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, both of whom are currently under intense criminal investigations by the Justice Department. Clayton was a former partner at Wall Street’s go-to law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, which is currently representing Goldman in the criminal case and representing JPMorgan in various matters. The breaking news last night went downhill from there. Several hours after Barr’s announcement, Berman announced that he had not resigned from his job and had no intention of leaving his post until his replacement had been confirmed by the U.S. Senate-- which could take months. There is also no assurance that Clayton would actually be confirmed, since some Republicans and Democrats believe that Clayton has been a lapdog for Wall Street in his current post.

Even more problematic, Clayton’s family has ties to an opaque company called WMB Holdings, described by David Dayen in The Nation magazine like this:

“This company and its affiliated partners (Delaware Trust Co and CSC) are conduits for creating shell corporations and other sketchy vehicles used in tax evasion and money laundering. Public Citizen found apparent links between these companies and Mossack Fonseca, the notorious Panamanian law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal.”

The timing of the attempted ouster of Berman is suspicious on multiple fronts. Goldman Sachs is under criminal investigation over a multi-billion-dollar money laundering and embezzlement scheme involving the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB. Goldman Sachs has been fighting the Justice Department’s demand that it plead guilty in order to settle the case, according to media reports.

According to the Sullivan & Cromwell website, Nicolas Bourtin, Managing Partner of the law firm’s Criminal Defense and Investigations Group, “is representing Goldman Sachs in criminal and regulatory investigations in six jurisdictions” involving the 1MDB matter.

At the time of Jay Clayton’s nomination for SEC Chair, he had been outside counsel to Goldman Sachs for years and was married to a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, Gretchen Clayton, who had worked at the firm for 17 years. She stepped down from Goldman after her husband was confirmed.

In 2017, when the 1MDB matter began to intensify, Sullivan & Cromwell partner Karen Seymour left the law firm to join Goldman Sachs as co-General Counsel and partner. She is now the sole General Counsel and earned over $8 million last year for work that included “an active focus on the resolution” of the 1MDB matter.

JPMorgan Chase had multiple traders from its precious metals desk indicted by the Justice Department on RICO charges last year for allegedly running a racketeering enterprise out of the precious metals desk at JPMorgan. The firm itself is now under criminal investigation according to a February report at Bloomberg News.

Another felony count at JPMorgan Chase could be the death knell for the career of JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. During Dimon’s tenure as CEO, JPMorgan has pleaded guilty to two criminal felony counts in 2014 for its role in handling the business bank account for Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. In 2015 the bank pleaded guilty to one felony count for its role in rigging foreign exchange trading. It’s unprecedented for a major Wall Street bank to survive three felony counts. A fourth felony count might be simply too much for even today’s crony regulators.

Mainstream media has made much out of the fact that this U.S. Attorney’s office is actively investigating Trump ally, Rudy Giuliani, and Deutsche Bank, a major financial lender to Trump’s companies. But the fact that Barr, and assumedly Trump, want to replace Berman with Clayton-- a man with no criminal prosecution experience but chummy ties to Wall Street-- suggests this is really about Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

Update:

Berman has changed his mind and decided he will step down after all. The change of heart came after Barr issued another letter to Berman on Saturday, June 20. The new letter stated that President Donald Trump was removing Berman from his job. The letter also indicated that Berman’s Deputy U.S. Attorney, Audrey Strauss, would become the Acting U.S. Attorney. Barr’s earlier statement on Friday evening had indicated that Craig Carpenito, the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, would assume Berman’s post “while the Senate is considering Jay Clayton’s nomination.”

A new embarrassment is emerging for both Jay Clayton and Sullivan & Cromwell. On Saturday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, released a statement indicating that he won’t move forward on Clayton’s nomination without the standard policy of getting a go-ahead from the two Senators of the state where the new U.S. Attorney will serve. That means that Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand would have to give the greenlight to Clayton.

Schumer released the following statement:

“Forty seven years ago, Elliott Richardson had the courage to say no to a gross abuse of presidential power. Jay Clayton has a similar choice today: He can allow himself to be used in the brazen Trump-Barr scheme to interfere in investigations by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or he can stand up to this corruption, withdraw his name from consideration, and save his own reputation from overnight ruin.”

According to the New York Times, Senator Gillibrand has also stated that Clayton should withdraw his name from consideration.

So what happens when Trump tells Graham that if he doesn't get Clayton confirmed tout suite he'll out him to South Carolina Republicans before the election?

Appreciating Bernie In Our Era Of Hobson’s Choices

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

One thing we know for certain about what weighed on Bernie’s decision to suspend his campaign is that there are things we do not know for certain. Before and after the October 1st medical adventure his heart embarked on, I wrote he’d be ticking like a Timex and coming from behind like Seabiscuit, both prediction and prayer. I acknowledge my disappointment but refrain from judgment on what I believe to be a clean call. Bernie's not infallible, but I believe he makes clean calls. That belief is why so many support him.

The Covid19 virus was a game-changer that undermined Bernie’s campaign strengths and his chances of overcoming the battery of establishment cannons arrayed against him, the pressure of which would buckle most people half his age. And unlike Perez and Biden, whatever the latest tune they whistle, Bernie wouldn’t have people risking lives in primaries in a game of Covid19 Russian roulette. Biden has a minefield of banana peels before him, but waiting for him to slip from the grasp of his army of handlers and do a face-plant is not a political strategy that inspires. It’s understandable that someone with Bernie’s integrity would focus instead on his ideals and proposals, which to anyone not in a coma or a special interest pocket make more sense with each passing day.

Biden Blunders by Nancy Ohanian

As Naomi Klein has observed, “...during times of crisis, people also are risk-averse. I think the timing of this was such, with the inability to continue campaigning in person, with people just reaching for something that looked and felt safe, I don’t think it was possible to translate that shift in openness to these kinds of policies with a huge electoral swing from Biden towards Bernie, although I was certainly hoping for it up until Bernie’s announcement last night. But while hoping for it, I was keenly aware that the polls were not reflecting it, that it wasn’t happening and that people are not up for that kind of political seesaw in this moment of tumult."

There’ve been logical, solid analyses, as by the anchors of the online political show Rising, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, that the Democratic establishment will eventually blow off anyone not brandishing a ball bat with nails in it, that whatever promises Bernie might elicit from making nice, they’ll be written in sand washed away by the high tide of big donors. And no matter what Bernie says or does, he will be blamed again if Trump wins, as CNN is already about the business of. As in 2016, how dare Bernie practice democracy and provide the country with a choice and an awareness of issues best left concealed from view.

Some might despair that with Bernie stepping back, the progressive movement has lost its lynchpin. Bernie countered that nicely with accomplishments noted in his statement that he was suspending his campaign, (not cremating it, as many in the media have implied), while staying on the ballot to hold and earn delegates to influence the party. Progressive candidates inspired by Bernie certainly aren’t fading away. Charles Booker, running against Mitch McConnell, stated “…make no mistake: our fight for Medicare for All, racial justice, a Green New Deal, and an economy that works for all of us is nowhere close to over.” Mark Gamba, the mayor Milwaukee, Oregon, running against incumbent Blue Dog, Kuirt Schrader, reaffirmed his goals of changing the healthcare system, boldly addressing climate change and holding corporate interests accountable for damage they cause. The grassroots movements supporting such candidates aren’t fading away either.

Here’s Biden’s statement on Bernie stepping out of the race, pre-canned by strategists for sure, but I’d have to say it’s not a bad statement from the point of view of conning people to fill in the blanks with whatever they hope Joe is saying about health care, etc.... Trump was masterful at letting people hear what they wanted. If he’s not too addled, he may be again. But maybe Joe can limp along for awhile on a lack of specificity and a media tossing him softballs, until Biden figures out the peril of not making solid, substantive commitments and standing by them.

Maybe Biden can ride to victory atop a platform of low expectations other than not being Trump. But if Biden wins with wishy-washy, with simply not being Trump, he’ll have nothing resembling a mandate, only a load of disappointed people when he turns out to be Mr. Cellophane, moved about with puppet strings by big donors to whom Bernie, with his small donor cornucopia, must have looked like one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables. Spurning the money of big donors and owing them nothing made Bernie a dangerous man.

Howie has repeatedly contrasted Biden’s weaknesses and Bernie’s strengths, so I’ll just offer a couple glimpses that glare out.

Recently the Biden camp conferred with Eric Holder about Biden's campaign and his vice-presidential pick. Holder who ushered, covertly from colleagues who’d have been aghast, the pardon of finance criminal fugitive Marc Rich for Bill Clinton’s signature on Clinton's last day in office, after which Rich’s ex-wife donated huge sums to the Clinton library. Does anyone doubt that had that happened a year earlier Clinton would have been impeached, and properly so? Holder, who prosecuted whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, a top counterintelligence agent who exposed CIA torture, just to ruin him and to send a message to others, putting this hero in prison, initially with an effort to throw away the key. Holder, who let bankers off the legal hook laying the groundwork for his law firm, and therefore Holder, to reap fortunes servicing those banks. Read what Holder did to bank whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld on behalf of foreign banks hiding Americans’ money. That’s the short list.

Holder was Wall Street’s early Manchurian candidate for President. He fizzled like a wet fuse, but he's been waiting in the wings if opportunity knocks, raising his profile with an anti-gerrymandering organization that’s run like a campaign. If Biden hadn’t already committed to a female vice-president, I’d bet Holder would pull a Cheney and recommend himself. He’ll certainly be influential in a Biden administration, again looking out for protecting his client bankers from facing serious consequences for misdeeds and greedy maneuvers that are again setting Americans-- and the world-- up for another fall.

American Dream Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

My point is that no one had to worry about Bernie consulting with Eric Holder. Instead Bernie would be throwing a wrench in the revolving door to keep Holder’s ilk out of his administration. Bernie would never have floated the idea of Jamie Dimon as a swell potential member of an administration, perhaps Secretary of the Treasury, as Biden’s camp did. Want some intriguing reading? Read a bit on Dimon here, and on JPMorganChase here, courtesy of Wall Street on Parade. I’m confident that after the election, when the revolving door starts spinning, Bernie will be shouting the dangers loud and clear, channeling public anger that Biden would be a fool not to pay attention to.

By the way, Wall Street called the shots on many of President Obama’s picks, including Holder for Attorney General and Hillary for Secretary of State. That insight came courtesy of WikiLeaks, so one can sense the establishment fervor to destroy Assange. And Wall Street on Parade reports that in the 2020 presidential primaries one Wall Street firm was an instrumental supporter of five different Democratic candidates. Should that leave us wondering at the impressive orchestration of the Super Tuesday endorsements, that maybe some candidates, beyond shooting for Veep or major posts, were being jockeyed to derail progressives and elevate Biden?

Establishment vs Bernie by Nancy Ohanian

Both of Bernie’s presidential campaigns laid bare the hapless state of much of mainstream, corporate media. Take the Washington Post. Does anyone think Jeff Bezos bought that paper because, like Citizen Kane, he thought it might be fun to run a newspaper? The man has a Washington agenda. The Bezos Brigaiders on the editorial pages and covering the campaign are well aware of how many newspapers have hit the skids, with major staff layoffs that leave many journalists scrambling to find public relations work. They don’t have to be geniuses to figure out what the world’s richest man doesn’t like. Bezos doesn’t like antitrust enforcement and close scrutiny and regulation of monopolies. He doesn’t care much for paying taxes. He doesn’t like to be embarrassed and pushed by potential legislation that would penalize him if he doesn’t raise wages and improve working conditions for expendable workers toiling in warehouses and grocery stores and delivering his goods. He doesn’t like unions. So none of the Bezos Brigaiders needs to be told he doesn’t like Bernie Sanders, whose major supporters include Amazon workers and who throws a spotlight on that company's excesses. And so these members of the press decided squashing Bernie is worth shredding their journalistic credibility, continuing a pattern Thomas Frank wonderfully described in 2016 in a Harper’s magazine article, Swat Team.

The New York Times opinion page and campaign coverage has been as relentless whacking Bernie. One can only marvel at how the Gray Lady has become so in the tank for the Wall Street establishment it still won’t acknowledge the folly of Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act, that had separated commercial and investment banking since FDR, becoming a major cause of the 2008 economic debacle. Both Clinton and Rubin were richly rewarded for that, from speaking fees and foundation contributions for Clinton to a job for Rubin with stunning compensation. In Washington, quid pro quo often takes its time, but it gets there.

Did it ever look to you like a contest between those two papers to find the most deranged and angry looking images they could of Bernie? Propaganda 101.

We’ve been treated to the comic spectacle of Comcast media players like Chuck Todd, putting their Orwellian knives into Bernie and his health care proposals between commercials for health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And a number of NPR reporters and analysts behaved as if they’re auditioning for Comcast, putting words in interviewee’s mouths and cutting them short if what they said wasn’t supporting the narrative. They all ought get plaques engraved with “But How Will You Pay For It?” Particularly if the big banks start tumbling economic dominoes that most media has routinely ignored.

So we can thank Bernie for making the media fix so apparent that many of us now seek out alternative media voices, voices that represent a much better use of one’s time.

Freedom of the Press by Nancy Ohanian

Consider corporate media's willingness to avert its gaze from a foreign power meddling American elections. I’m not speaking of Russia, the influence of which on the 2016 election I think greatly over-played, to the detriment of focus on critical issues and on what the Trump grifter class is up to. Whatever Russia did I doubt it had much impact next to the tabloids in the grocery store checkout line, let alone our home-grown dark money networks of the Kochs, Mercers and others from the oligarch rogues gallery. More attention should have been paid to the influence of foreign companies' American subsidiaries, including banks. No, I’m speaking of Israel, whose confederates and advocates in the US spent fortunes running ads attacking Bernie in the primaries, supporting the narrative of Bernie being unelectable. Just imagine if it had been Russia, how quickly those covertly undermining our democracy on a behalf of a foreign power would earn the accusation of betraying our country. Just because Bernie called for decency and morality in the treatment of Palestinians systematically oppressed in every way imaginable. That oppression was often done with American indifference or complicity, which Bernie was perceived as a threat to.

Predictably, media was then complicit with ludicrous and flimsy intelligence claims-- intelligence loosely defined-- that Bernie topped Russia’s wish list.

Ironically, Bernie went along a bit with the Russia narrative, something for which he’s been criticized. I’ve no idea how much he really bought into that party orthodoxy. Some purists won’t like what I’m about to say. Things are relative, and running a presidential campaign isn’t the same as seeking sainthood. Look how fast media stood Bernie before a firing squad for giving a harmless nod to educational and medical accomplishments in Cuba, painting him as a fellow traveler to discredit him, particularly in Florida.

On balance, Bernie has given it to us straight more than any other candidate. His consistent drumbeat has changed the conversation. On healthcare, 55% of voters now support single payer health care, only 35% oppose it. Major programs to counter climate change and develop related jobs are now a top priority of many, particularly younger voters. Bernie provided an articulation of the growing wealth gap that helped people better understand what they already sensed going on around them, and the campaign finance fix behind much of it. He provided hope that there was a way to do something about it. Where would the conversation be were it not for Bernie?

While I like and respect some of those who’ve been critical of Bernie over dis and dat, no offense to them but I think Noam Chomsky is better than most in assessing the immediacy of the big picture. Here’s some of his comments on Bernie ending his presidential run.

Chomsky on Democracy Now:

"If Trump is reelected, it’s a indescribable disaster. It means that the policies of the past four years, which have been extremely destructive to the American population, to the world, will be continued and probably accelerated. What this is going to mean for health is bad enough...It will get worse. What this means for the environment or the threat of nuclear war, which no one is talking about but is extremely serious, is indescribable.

Suppose Biden is elected. I would anticipate it would be essentially a continuation of Obama-- nothing very great, but at least not totally destructive, and opportunities for an organized public to change what is being done, to impose pressures.”

“It’s common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed. I think that’s a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion. Issues that were unthinkable a couple years ago are now right in the middle of attention.

The worst crime he committed, in the eyes of the establishment, is not the policy he’s proposing; it’s the fact that he was able to inspire popular movements, which had already been developing-- Occupy, Black Lives Matter, many others-- and turn them into an activist movement, which doesn’t just show up every couple years to push a leader and then go home, but applies constant pressure, constant activism and so on. That could affect a Biden administration.”

In the end, we should appreciate Bernie for the enemies he’s chosen, domestic and foreign. And we should appreciate him for the voice he’ll provide as interesting times compound.

Billionaires Think They Own The Democratic Party-- And If They Can't Have Biden Or Mayo Pete, They're Taking Their Toys And Going Home-- GOOD... Don't Come Back!

The latest polls have shown Elizabeth Warren edging ahead of the corrupt Wall Street candidate, Status Quo Joe. Although many of the worst establishment Democrats would bee willing to take her as long as it means not Bernie, some are as unhappy about her-- an inconvenience and a significant threat-- as they are about Bernie-- an actual existential threat to billionaire control of the country. Yesterday, Brian Schwartz, reporting for CNBC, reported that the worst of the worst Wall Street Dems are admitting they'll back Trump to keep Warren out of the White House. They want Biden or Mayo Pete... or Trump. Democratic primary voters should ask themselves why. Schwartz wrote that "Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle-- or even back President Donald Trump-- if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination." Does that make your blood boil? Does it make you realize why Bernie's plan for billiionaire extinction is so necessary?

In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.

“You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump,’” said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.

During the campaign, Warren has put out multiple plans intended to curb the influence of Wall Street, including a wealth tax. In July, she released a proposal that would make private equity firms responsible for debts and pension obligations of companies they buy. Trump, meanwhile, has given wealthy business leaders a helping hand with a major corporate tax cut and by eliminating regulations.

Warren has sworn off taking part in big money fundraisers for the 2020 presidential primary. She has also promised to not take donations from special interest groups. She finished raising at least $19 million in the second quarter mainly through small-dollar donors. The third quarter ends Monday.

Trump, has been raising hundreds of millions of dollars, putting any eventual 2020 rival in a bind as about 20 Democrats vie for their party’s nomination.

Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have raised over $100 million in the second quarter. A large portion of that haul came from wealthy donors who gave to their joint fundraising committee, Trump Victory. In August, the RNC raised just over $23 million and has $53 million on hand.

The Democratic National Committee have struggled to keep up. The DNC finished August bringing in $7.9 million and has $7.2 million in debt.

Biden, who has courted and garnered the support of various wealthy donors, has started to lag in some polls. The latest Quinnipiac poll has Warren virtually tied with the former vice president. Biden was one of three contenders that saw an influx of contributions from those on Wall Street in the second quarter.

A spokeswoman for the senator from Massachusetts declined to comment.

The business community’s unease about Warren’s candidacy has surged in tandem with her campaign’s momentum. CNBC’s Jim Cramer said earlier this month that he’s heard from Wall Street executives that they believe Warren has “got to be stopped.” Warren later tweeted her response to Cramer’s report: “I’m Elizabeth Warren and I approve this message.”

Some big bank executives and hedge fund managers have been stunned by Warren’s ascent, and they are primed to resist her.

“They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” an executive at one of the nation’s largest banks told CNBC, also speaking on condition of anonymity. This person said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than those of President Barack Obama, who signed the Dodd-Frank bank regulation bill in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Yet before Obama was elected, his campaign took over $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

A hedge fund executive pointed to Trump’s tax cut as a reason why his colleagues would not contribute or vote for Warren if she wins the nomination.

“I think if she can show that the tax code of 2017 was basically nonsense and only helped corporations, Wall Street would not like the public thinking about that,” this executive said, also insisting on anonymity.

Should these people be part of the Democratic Party at all, let alone have the kind of immense influence over it that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz made sure they would have? That's why I'm still backing Bernie through the primary. If Elizabeth Warren wins, I'll have not the slightest hesitation supporting her in every way I can-- and with great enthusiasm. Bernie grew up in my 'hood in Brooklyn and went to PS 197 and James Madison High School, like I did, and I know what he thinks of billionaires and what his intentions towards that kind of wealth will be.

The Primary Takes Shape-- Biden, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren

So many new polls! And they all pretty much say the same two big things, neither of which, so far out from the primaries, let alone the 2020 election day, should be taken as a sure thing:

• Any Democrat could beat Trump
• Status Quo Joe will be the nominee

Before we look at the newest polling data, let's take a quick peak at the RealClearPolitics national polling averages (which already include the Fox poll numbers).

• Status Quo Joe- 32.2%
• Bernie- 15.8%
• Elizabeth Warren- 11.2%
• McKinsey Pete- 7.8%
• Kamala- 6.6%
• Beto- 3.6%
• ooker- 2.4%
• Klobuchar- 1.2%
• Yang- 1.0%
• Gillibrand- 0.6%
• Castro- 0.6%
• Tim Ryan- 0.6%
• Michael Bennet- 0.6%
• Tulsi- 0.4%
• Jay Inslee- 0.4%
• Delaney- 0.4%
• Frackenlooper- 0.4%
• de Blasio- 0.3%
• Marianne Williamson- 0.2%
• Eric Swalwell- 0.2%

Fox's numbers are national and CBS' are of the early battleground states. We'll look at Fox first but one more thing before we do-- the Señor Trumpanzee internal polling numbers, you know, the ones that Trumpanzee denied even existed after they started leaking out. Yesterday, writing for NBC News Chuck Todd, Kristen Welker and Ben Kamisar reported that the Señor Trumpanzee campaign fired the pollsters of the "nonexistent polls," polls that showed Bernie and Status Quo Joe kicked Trump's fat ass. Trump is flipping out because all their internal leaked polls show him trailing across swing states seen as essential to his path to re-election and in Democratic-leaning states where Republicans have looked to gain traction and also show him "underperforming in reliably red states that haven’t been competitive for decades in presidential elections."

This morning, the Washington Post reported that "Trumpworld is trying to wave a red flag in front of the president to warn him that his 2020 reelection battle is going to be a tougher fight than he’s willing to acknowledge. That’s why, people close to the campaign, said that unflattering internal poll numbers leaked about matchups with Joe Biden and other Democratic contenders in key states. Trump at first denied the internal numbers existed (his campaign manager Brad Parscale confirmed they did indeed exist, but were from March) and his campaign then took action to dismiss those suspected of revealing them." Meanwhile a UT poll released by the Texas Tribune and mind-blowing results for the GOP: "Half of the registered voters in Texas would vote to reelect President Trump, but half of them would not. Few of those voters were wishy-washy about it: 39% said they would 'definitely' vote to reelect Trump; 43% said they would 'definitely not' vote for him. The remaining 18% said they would 'probably' (11%) or 'probably not' (7%) vote to give Trump a second term." Among independents, the news was even worse-- 45% said "definitely not" and just 26& said "definitely." Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research for the Texas Politics Project said that "Overall, Texas independents tend to be more conservative than liberal and tend to look more like Republicans than like Democrats ... and things have gotten worse among independents."

So... shoot the messenger, always the first sign of an executive with the worst leadership skills imaginable. Trump is down double digits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan. Without at least 2 of those states, there is no path to victory for Trump in 2020. On top of that, he's down against Biden in Iowa by 7 points, in North Carolina by 8 points, in Virginia by 17 points, in Ohio by 1 point, in Georgia by 6 points, in Minnesota by 14 points, and in Maine by 15 points. That's an end-of-the-world scenario for Trump, although... it could get worse. Trump is only ahead of Biden by 2 points in Texas. The last time a Democrat won there, it was Jimmy Carter against Jerry Ford in 1976. Trump's response after being questioned about why he is losing so badly was to deny, deny, deny, calling polls showing him losing as "fake polls" conjured up out of thin air by his political foes and claiming his campaign has "great internal polling... We are winning in every single state that we've polled. We're winning in Texas very big. We're winning in Ohio very big. We're winning in Florida very big." The only thing big in his polling are the lies he tells about it.

After Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, tried explaining the bad results in rationale terms (they're old, they're incomplete, they were done before Mueller cleared Trump...), he was forced by the White House to issue a typically absurdist Trumpist statement: "All news about the President’s polling is completely false. The President’s new polling is extraordinary and his numbers have never been better." If Shakespeare were to write a play based on the statement would it be a tragedy or a comedy. How about Arthur Miller? Sam Shepard? Stephen Sondheim? Rodgers and Hammerstein? Andrew Lloyd Webber?

I'll guess that regular readers of Fox.com went into shock yesterday when they opened to the headline: Fox News Poll: Democrats want a steady leader, Biden leads Trump by 10 points. It wasn't so much that "Democratic primary voters want someone who will unite Americans, provide steady leadership, and who has high ethical standards," as it was that "Democrats best President Trump in hypothetical matchups and keep his support at 41 percent or lower... Biden tops Trump by 10 points (49-39 percent) and Sanders is up by nine (49-40) -- both of these leads are outside the poll’s margin of error. Warren has a two-point edge over Trump (43-41), and Harris (42-41) and Buttigieg (41-40) are up by one (within the margin of error)."

But... it is Fox, so a few words of encouragement for the racists and fascists who get their news from Trump-TV:

The president’s current standing is actually better than where he stood at this point in the cycle four years ago. In June 2015, Democrat Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by 17 points.

"Trump's current position in the polls is far from ideal," says Shaw. "But he's definitely in the game. His base is on board and he'll have ample opportunity to frame the choice set moving forward while the Democrats battle for voter and media attention in the debates."

A 60 percent majority doesn’t think a politician with low moral standards can be a good leader, yet voters say they will place greater importance on supporting a candidate who shares their views (55 percent) than one who is highly ethical (40 percent).

...Some 70 percent of Democrats don’t believe a politician with low moral standards can be a good leader compared to just 48 percent of Republicans.

Democrats prioritize supporting a candidate who is highly ethical over one who shares their views on major issues by 6 points. It is more lopsided, in the opposite direction, for Republicans, as they put issues over ethics by 42 points.

Perhaps more important than people-polling at this point might be banister polling-- and only checks count, Shane Goldmacher reported for NY Times readers that Wall Street has placed its bets: Satus Quo Joe, Kamala and McKinsey Pete (who speaks their language of deception). "The behind-the-scenes competition for Wall Street money in the 2020 presidential race," he wrote, "is reaching a fevered peak this week as no less than nine Democrats are holding New York fund-raisers in a span of nine days, racing ahead of a June 30 filing deadline when they must disclose their latest financial hauls... Among those spreading the money around is Brad Karp, the chairman of the Paul, Weiss law firm and a top attorney for Wall Street institutions. He is hosting Mr. Biden for a reception at 9 a.m. on Tuesday; he is a co-host for a “lawyer’s lunch” for Ms. Harris that same day, according to invitations obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Karp, who donated to Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Booker in the first quarter, did not respond to a request for comment. The momentum of big money in New York toward Mr. Biden, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Harris is mirrored in contributor circles nationally, according to donors and campaign advisers, as well as in poll results: The trio is usually among the top five candidates in early primary states and national surveys... Biden made explicit at a fund-raiser last Monday in Washington that he does not plan to demonize the financial industry like some rivals have, saying that 'Wall Street and significant bankers' can 'be positive influences in the country.' (As a senator for Delaware, Mr. Biden was regarded as an ally of financial institutions in the state, such as the credit card industry.)"

What Goldmacher couldn't say but our own Skip Kaltenheuser did: "Considering that the greatest threat to our democracy is the rapidly increasing wealth and commensurate political power of the finance sector, and the likelihood of it ushering in another economic debacle, it’s very easy to winnow the democratic party candidates for President. The chaff to be removed are those candidates, tin cups in hand, doing a kowtow to an approving Wall Street. All that primary voters need to know to make their first cut is who is in the pocket of the Big Money, and who isn’t. The short list of major players who will owe nothing to the finance sector is Sanders and Warren, both of whom terrify Wall Street. We want candidates who terrify Wall Street, not who are terrified by it."

CBS' polling was about early states, not about the even less useful national surveys.

Democrats across the early contests say their field is too big, so they're focused on a narrower list of options. They're hoping to find the person who can beat President Trump, which is their top criteria.

Democrats have different thoughts on what "electability" entails, on what swing voters will want, and there is some division over what the party's message ought to be. They are split on whether the party's message should emphasize returning the country to how it was before Mr. Trump (47%), or whether they should argue for an even more progressive agenda than they had under President Obama (53%.) This something-known-versus-something-new dynamic helps explain some of the candidate preferences across key states.

Former Vice President Joe Biden does extremely well with those preferring the return argument, and he is in much tighter competition with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the group who want a more progressive argument. In fact, a slight majority of those who want a more progressive agenda are not considering Biden at all, and most of them are considering Warren.

Democrats are already assessing each candidates' chances against Mr. Trump and what specifically they believe it will take to win: they think their nominee ought to be a known national figure, not someone new to politics; someone who can motivate other stay-at-home Democrats to turn out.

When Democrats imagine what will appeal to America's swing voters next November, they believe the swing voters who'd consider gender would prefer a man more than a woman; that swing voters who'd consider race would prefer someone white more than someone of color; and those who would consider ideology would pick a moderate centrist more than a progressive.

Seventy-eight percent of Democrats say it's extremely important that a nominee must convince them of their ability to beat Mr. Trump to earn their primary vote. And when they assess the chances for candidates they like actually doing so, Biden stands out. Seventy-five percent of those considering Biden think he probably would beat Mr. Trump, a far higher number for Biden than among those considering other candidates.

Thirty-nine percent of those considering Warren say she'd probably win. More-- 50%-- would put her chances at "maybe"-- and 51% of those considering Sanders say he'd probably win.

But what exactly makes a candidate "electable"? Seventy-four percent say that starts with someone known in national politics, and 67% say that involves motivating their fellow Democrats who stayed home in 2016, even more so than trying to win over Trump voters.

Biden backers are a bit more likely than those supporting Warren or Sanders to say that a nominee needs to win over some 2016 Trump supporters.

The 2020 Democratic field is the most diverse in history, but we asked these Democrats what they believe swing and undecided voters would ultimately want in a candidate in terms of race, gender, age and ideology.

Many Democrats felt race or gender won't matter to others. But they think swing voters who do consider those factors would lean toward a white male, moderate candidate: a white candidate over a candidate of color by a by a six-to-one ratio; and that a man would be preferred by swing voters over a women by a four to one ratio, among those who'd care about gender.

Voters have some different reasons explaining their candidate picks. When voters in these states considering Biden are asked why, almost nine in 10 pick his time as vice president as a reason (86%), outranking his policy stances (57%), his time in the U.S. Senate (54%), and that he's familiar to them (49%).

In the survey, respondents were permitted to pick more than one reason. But voters considering Warren and Sanders are more likely to cite these candidates' policy stances as a reason why. A third of Democratic voters considering Warren say they are considering her because she is a woman (a similar percentage of those considering Kamala Harris say the same about her.)

Buttigieg stands out in that six in 10 of those considering him like his style of campaigning. Most also like his background before entering politics, and his policies.