Mayo Pete: Manufactured Candidate-- But By Who And For What Reason?

I know the value of good a good p.r. and publicity operation. When I moved to San Francisco after my years abroad, the first job I got was in a p.r. firm and I learned about it from the inside. When I started my own indie music label the only way we could compete with the majors was p.r. since it was a relatively inexpensive too. And when I was running first Sire Records and then Reprise Records, p.r. was a major factor in breaking cutting edge artists that radio generally avoided. Few American politicians seem to understand how valuable p.r. and politics are. With just a very few exceptions (Ro Khanna, AOC and Ted Lieu are examples) few House members have publicists worthy a bucket of warm spit. And among the presidential candidates this cycle, the only campaign that has a first class p.r./publicity operation-- so much so that it has been almost entirely p.r.-driven-- is Mayo Pete, who has the best political comms person in the country, Lis Smith. It's hilarious that for the all the millions of dollars of his own that Delaney had wasted, he has the worst p.r. of any campaign and is generally loathed by a public that had never heard of him before and is polling 0.5%, compared to Mayo's 6.5% (according to the latest RealClearPolitics national polling average). In the most recent favorability poll of the 2020 candidates Mayo is unknown by 39% of Democratic voters while Delaney is unknown by 58%.

But it was all Lis Smith. Last week the Center for Public Integrity released a report by Lateshia Beachum and Jonathan Larsen, Meet The Lobbyists And Special Interests Who Helped Launch Pete Buttigieg's Political Career. There's a reason he refused to swear off filthy big money in elections while all the other credible candidates were doing so-- even after Biden was pretending he wouldn't take money from lobbyists! A bit of a slime ball, "Buttigieg has since reversed his stance and now promises, albeit unconvincingly that special interests would have no influence on his candidacy or would-be presidency. But Mayo, they wrote "has nonetheless continued to rely on wealthy and well-connected “bundlers” to help him fundraise-- and to great effect, raising more money of late than most other 2020 presidential candidates. A clue as to why Buttigieg has engaged in the traditional trappings of campaign fundraising comes from early in his political career: his first mayoral campaign."

At least 19 names on Buttigieg’s mayoral 2011 pre-primary filing were those of former or current registered federal lobbyists who have tried to influence lawmakers on issues ranging from the environment to construction.

According to the Buttigieg campaign, those lobbyists, “include some of his friends from college and grade school, the former Director of Harvard’s IOP [Institute of Politics]-- which Pete was involved in as a student-- as well as people active in Indiana Democratic politics.”

Although Indiana does not require lobbyists to disclose their specific contacts with public officials, the 2011 campaign filing shows that Buttigieg did receive money from at least one lobbyist whose firm later did business with the city of South Bend.

In March 2011, a lobbyist named Brad Queisser gave Buttigieg $250 for his mayoral campaign. Quiesser was from Indiana, and had been active in the state Democratic Party.

The Buttigieg campaign told Public Integrity and TYT that Queisser “is very well-known in Indiana politics and has been an active supporter of a number of candidates over the years.” The campaign said Queisser beneficiaries included former Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Evan Bayh (D-IN), Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) and former Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN).

In 2011, however, Queisser was based in Washington and working for a lobbying firm called mCapitol, (where Hill had also worked from 2004 to 2006). On March 31, 2011, the same week as Queisser’s donation, the federal political action committee for mCapitol and its parent company-- an engineering firm called MWH-- gave Buttigieg $1,000.

MWH had given to Buttigieg before, when he unsuccessfully ran for state treasurer in 2010. During that campaign, MWH’s PAC gave an in-kind contribution, valued at $2,577.82, as well as $1,000 cash, according to state and federal campaign finance records.

MWH PAC’s federal disclosure forms show it made subsequent contributions to Buttigieg of $1,000 in May 2011 and $1,000 in July 2011.

On Oct. 1, 2012, mCapitol registered to work as a federal lobbyist on behalf of Buttigieg’s mayoral administration. The registration form lists Queisser as the sole lobbyist expected to represent South Bend’s interests to federal officials in Washington, D.C. Over the next three years, South Bend would pay mCapitol $230,000 for its work lobbying the federal government.

MWH, mCapitol’s parent firm, also got work from South Bend. Just before Buttigieg took office in 2012, the city had agreed to overhaul its sewer system, in response to pressure from both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department.

In September 2014, the city’s Board of Public Works retained MWH to find as much as $200 million in potential savings in the city’s half-billion-dollar sewer-rehabilitation plan. The contract was worth $2 million.

In 2013 and 2014, the MWH PAC donated another $6,000 to Buttigieg’s 2015 re-election campaign. That was followed by $2,000 in 2015.

By March 2016, MWH had identified $315 million in possible cost cuts. Four months later, MWH won an additional $430,000 from the city for its sewer work.

The Buttigieg campaign said the city hired MWH “under pressure from the Common Council” to reduce costs. The Buttigieg administration “worked with MWH Global after it was selected to reduce the flow of raw sewage into the river by more than 80% while saving the city more than $500 million.”

The MWH sewer contract included subcontracted work performed by a company called American Structurepoint. The 2011 filing obtained by TYT shows that Marlin Knowles, a part-owner of American Structurepoint until at least 2014, gave Buttigieg $1,500 in March 2011.

The Buttigieg campaign cited industry recognition American Structurepoint has received for its work on the Smart Streets project. Neither American Structurepoint nor Bose Public Affairs, which bought mCapitol, responded to requests for comment.

From what I've seen, Mayo Pete's presidential campaign has been just noise-- more identity politics and slick garden variety McKinsey bullshit. Christina Cauterucci addressed it in late March for Slate: Is Pete Buttigieg Just Another White Male Candidate, or Does His Gayness Count as Diversity? At the time, Mayo was the newest, shiniest Democratic political celebrity-- and polling, on at least one serious poll, better than anyone other than Bernie and Biden in Iowa... leading Elizabeth Warren, Kamala, Booker, Beto, let alone one-percenters like Gillibrand, Klobuchar, Frackenlooper, Inslee, Castro. Cauterucci channeled some of them: "[W]ith momentum comes backlash, currently in the form of frustration that the well-qualified female and black candidates in the race are getting shoved aside for another white guy. When, for instance, economist Alan Cole tweeted that Buttigieg 'seems head-and-shoulders smarter than the other candidates running,' a characteristic response, this one from writer Jill Filipovic, was: 'Warren, who taught at Harvard, was one of the most well-regarded law professors in the country and one of the most intelligent people to serve in the senate, but we don’t politically reward, let alone even identify, that kind of fierce intelligence in women.' But Buttigieg faces his own structural disadvantages in the race. 'Buttigieg is the first gay candidate in history,' film journalist Mark Harris tweeted. 'So no, you don’t get to use him, of all candidates, as the 'typical white guy the media always falls for. He doesn’t deserve a free ride, but let me assure you: Gay people in America aren’t given free rides.' These aren’t just random tweets; the conversation is at the heart of a broader debate on the left about identity and representation."

Getting into an argument over which marginalized identities are more or less marginalized, is precisely what Hayes meant when he said "Everything else is noise." Cauterucci, an out lesbian, happens to see Mayor Pete as "someone whose affiliation with the gay community only goes so far as his own gay relationships, who can seemingly only conceive of homosexuality as a value-neutral or negative-- certainly not positive-- aside in a person’s biography." She sees his reluctantly shared gayness-- big closet case for much of his life-- as an "ultimately unimportant distinction-- 'like having brown hair,' his coming-out essay said... Part of this emphasis on background and credentials is a kind of 'demographic politics,' by which the demographic boxes a person checks are taken as indicative of their political potential. This is how Tim Kaine was selected as Hillary Clinton’s Vice Presidential candidate: He was from Virginia, went to Harvard, spoke Spanish, played the blues. Swing state appeal, competence, cosmopolitanism, 'cool dad' factor: a perfect mix. Pete Buttigieg is trying the same thing. Look at the number of boxes he checks. He’s from the Rust Belt so he’s authentic, but he went to Harvard so he’s not a rube, but he’s from a small city so he’s relatable, but he’s gay so he’s got coastal appeal, but he’s a veteran so his sexuality won’t alienate rural people. This is literally the level of political thinking that is involved in the hype around Buttigieg... Buttigieg himself is quite explicit about pitching himself this way. Asked about why anyone should vote for him over other candidates, he did not cite a superior governing agenda. Instead he said: 'You have a handful of candidates from the middle of the country, but very few of them are young. You have a handful of young candidates, but very few of them are executives. We have a handful of executives but none of them are veterans, and so it’s a question of: What alignment of attributes do you want to have?'"

More devastating to the case Mayo is trying to make was Nathan Robinson's definitional essay in Current Affairs, All About Pete. Right off the bat, he warns his readers to "only accept politicians who have proved they actually care about people other than themselves…" Introducing his essay, he wrote that "If you know only one thing about Pete Buttigieg, it’s that he’s The Small-Town Mayor Who Is Making A Splash. If you know half a dozen things about Pete Buttigieg, it’s that he’s also young, gay, a Rhodes Scholar, an Arabic-speaking polyglot, and an Afghanistan veteran. If you know anything more than that about Pete Buttigieg, you probably live in South Bend, Indiana. This is a little strange: These are all facts about him, but they don’t tell us much about what he believes or what he advocates. The nationwide attention to Buttigieg seems more to be due to 'the fact that he is a highly-credentialed Rust Belt mayor' rather than 'what he has actually said and done.' He’s a gay millennial from Indiana, yes. But should he be President of the United States? When he is asked about what his actual policies are, Buttigieg has often been evasive. He has mentioned getting rid of the electoral college and expanding the Supreme Court, but his speech is often abstract." Later in his essay he mentions that "A labor organizer friend of mine has a test he uses for politicians: When they talk, is it all about themselves, or all about the causes they care about? Do they talk incessantly about their Journey and their Homespun Values, or do they talk about people’s needs, the power structure, and how to build a more just world? Pete’s book is, for the most part, all about Pete. That’s not what you want... The common critique is that behind the mushy values talk there are too few substantive solutions to social problems."

Robinson recommends that anyone considering supporting Buttigieg read his new campaign book, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future, "from from cover to cover. It is very personal, very well-written, and lays out a narrative that makes Buttigieg seem a natural and qualified candidate for the presidency." That said, Robinson wants to make sure his readers know his biases before he gives this his analysis of Mayor Pete's book. "I don’t trust former McKinsey consultants. I don’t trust military intelligence officers. And I don’t trust the type of people likely to appear on '40 under 40' lists, the valedictorian-to-Harvard-to-Rhodes-Scholarship types who populate the American elite. I don’t trust people who get flattering reams of newspaper profiles and are pitched as the Next Big Thing That You Must Pay Attention To, and I don’t trust wunderkinds who become successful too early. Why? Because I am somewhat cynical about the United States meritocracy. Few people amass these kind of  résumés if they are the type to openly challenge authority. Noam Chomsky says that the factors predicting success in our 'meritocracy' are a 'combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, [and] self-serving disregard for others.' So when journalists see 'Harvard' and think “impressive,' I see it and think 'uh-oh'... I have lots of friends who are the products of elite institutions, but became critical of those institutions after being exposed to their inner workings. If Pete Buttigieg is one of those, great! Pete Buttigieg is not one of those... Calculated folksiness runs through the whole book... He doesn’t mention seeing injustice [in Cambridge]... Talking about politics on campus, Buttigieg says:

In April 2001, a student group called the Progressive Student Labor Movement took over the offices of the university’s president, demanding a living wage for Harvard janitors and food workers. That spring, a daily diversion on the way to class was to see which national figure-- Cornel West or Ted Kennedy one day, John Kerry or Robert Reich another-- had turned up in the Yard to encourage the protesters.

Striding past the protesters and the politicians addressing them, on my way to a “Pizza and Politics” session with a journalist like Matt Bai or a governor like Howard Dean, I did not guess that the students poised to have the greatest near-term impact were not the social justice warriors at the protests […] but a few mostly apolitical geeks who were quietly at work in Kirkland House [Zuckerberg et al.]

I find this short passage very weird. See the way Buttigieg thinks here. He dismisses student labor activists with the right-wing pejorative “social justice warriors.” But more importantly, to this day it hasn’t even entered his mind that he could have joined the PSLM in the fight for a living wage. Activists are an alien species, one he “strides past” to go to “Pizza & Politics” sessions with governors and New York Times journalists. He didn’t consider, and still hasn’t considered, the moral quandary that should come with being a student at an elite school that doesn’t pay its janitors a living wage. (In fact, years later Harvard was still refusing to pay its workers decently.)

If you come out of Harvard without noticing that it’s a deeply troubling place, you’re oblivious. It is an inequality factory, a place that trains the world’s A-students to rule over and ignore the working class. And yet, nowhere does Buttigieg seem to have even questioned the social role of an institution like Harvard. He tells us about his professors, his thesis on Graham Greene. He talks about how how interesting it is that Facebook was in its infancy while he was there. But what about all the privilege? Even Ross Douthat finds the school’s ruling class elitism disturbing! Buttigieg thought the place fitted him nicely.

...Buttigieg’s thesis [on war] was in part about Vietnam, which he calls a “doomed errand into the jungle.” The liberal vocabulary on wars like Vietnam and Iraq should trouble us. It says things like “doomed” and “mistaken,” (“a lethal blunder” that “collapsed into chaos,” to quote Buttigieg) its judgments pragmatic rather than moral. In doing so, it fails to reckon with the full scale of the atrocities brought about by U.S. government policy.

...If you are Pete Buttigieg, at this point in your life [a graduate of Harvard and Oxford] you have the ability to take almost any job you want. These schools open doors, and you pick which one you go through. (Ask yourself: If I could do anything I wanted for a living, what would I do?) Pete Buttigieg looked inside himself and decided he belonged at… the world’s most sinister and amoral management consulting company.

McKinsey is in the news almost every week for some new horrendous deed, from advising Purdue Pharma on how to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales to counseling dictators worldwide on how to build more efficient autocracies.

...Pete Buttigieg does not recall his time at McKinsey with a sense of moral ambivalence. Today he says it might have been his most “intellectually informing experience,” and by that he doesn’t mean that he saw the dark underbelly of American business. No, he was “learning about the nature of data.” It was a thoroughly neutral experience, “a place to learn.” The most critical thing he will say is that he was “sympathetic” to those who think consulting careers less worthy than “public service.” But ultimately, Buttigieg only left McKinsey because it “could not furnish that deep level of purpose that I craved.” His sense of purpose. Have a look at the book: See if you can find a single qualm, even a moment’s interrogation of the nature of the company he worked for.

In fact, Buttigieg was asked in an interview what he thought of the company’s misdeeds. On the work pushing OxyContin, he replied that he “hadn’t followed the story.” On collaborating with the murderous Saudi government:

I think you have a lot of smart, well-intentioned people who sometimes view the world in a very innocent way. I wrote my thesis on Graham Greene, who said that innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

The dumb leper again! Man, Buttigieg never misses a chance to cite that thesis. Vietnam was poor innocent America wandering the earth and accidentally causing a million deaths. McKinsey consultants are poor, innocent, leprous invalids, too sweet and unworldly to notice that their client is Mohammed bin Salman.

...Look into the actual records of these candidates. Get their shitty books and scrutinize them closely. A lot of money is going to be flowing toward tricks like this, as frantic Democratic elites try to push someone like Buttigieg in order to prevent a Sanders nomination. They know Buttigieg is one of them; they see “McKinsey” and realize they’ll come to no harm. But they hope you don’t see what they see. It has been the same over and over: Hey kids, Tom Perez isn’t any different from Keith Ellison! No need to do anything rash now! At every turn, bandwagon-hopping frauds are going to mouth the latest slogans. Abolish ICE? Yeah dude! I’ll abolish the fuck out of ICE.

...Demand the evidence. Examine the record. We have got to learn to see through this stuff. You have to look at what they did and said before it was politically opportune to say what they’re saying now. Five minutes ago, Pete Buttigieg was “the management consultant making the South Bend sewers run on time.” Now he’s suddenly a radical who want to pack the Supreme Court. From Mitt Romney to Eugene Debs in a single news cycle.

The Onion... But: Swing Voter Really Relates To Buttigieg’s Complete Lack Of Conviction

Writing for Politico Magazine over the weekend, John Harris noted that Mayo Pete's "teacher’s-pet glibness and implacable careerism" may be desirable traits for many voters. Other voters can't get beyond the big Mayo Pete problem, that no amount of slick p.r. will ever alter: his obvious lack of a soul. Mayo turned 38 yesterday. Mayo goes bad. Some professionalisms advice: "Once you open the jar, keep it tightly sealed in the fridge when not in use. Unlike ketchup or BBQ sauce, open mayo shouldn’t be stored at room temperature. Once you open the jar, keep it tightly sealed in the fridge when not in use. Unlike ketchup or BBQ sauce, open mayo shouldn’t be stored at room temperature. There are at least a few symptoms that your mayo has gone bad. Here they are:

• Any organic growths inside the jar, like mold or spores.
• Off, acidic, or putrid smell.
• Noticeable change of color, like darker shade of white or brownish-yellow.
• Off taste (although if you've tasted it, it may be too late.)

Still, wrote Harris, Mayo Pete "is still 17 months younger than Macaulay Culkin of “Home Alone” fame, an attentive reader notes. After all these years, that is a gap that shows no sign of narrowing. On the other hand, he is now a full three years older than Mozart-- another prodigy, but who never served one term as mayor of South Bend, Ind., much less two-- was at the time of his death... The very traits that usually impress—his fluency in political language; go-getter’s résumé; intense ambition carried in the vessel of a calm, well-mannered persona— are increasingly being greeted with skepticism and even derision. Notably, this is coming from his peers.

“Buttigieg hate is tightly concentrated among the young," a writer at The Atlantic observed. “Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left,” read a headline in Politico Magazine. “Swing Voter Really Relates to Buttigieg’s Complete Lack of Conviction,” said a headline in The Onion. For months, the satirical site has been vicious toward him in ways that evoke the wisecracking cool kids at the back of the class mocking the preening overachiever in the front row.

The Buttigieg backlash, by my lights, flows from origins that are less ideological than psychological. I noticed it some time ago with some-- certainly not all-- younger journalistic colleagues in particular. He torques them in ways that seem personal.

They are well-acquainted with the Buttigieg type. They find his patter and polish annoying. They regard his career to date-- Harvard, Oxford, McKinsey, the mayoralty-- as a facile exercise in box-checking: A Portrait of the Bullshit Artist as a Young Man.

Above all, they wonder why the artifice and calculation that seem obvious to them are somehow lost on others.

These Buttigieg skeptics, in my experience, typically overlook another possibility: His admirers aren’t oblivious to the fact that he’s partly B.S.-ing. It just doesn’t much bother them. I’ll go a step further: Viewed in the right light, his teacher’s-pet glibness and implacable careerism are desirable traits.

The essence of American politics in recent years is contempt. The decadeslong erosion of respect for nearly all institutions-- the federal government, business, academia, the media-- was what tilled the soil for Donald Trump’s election. His insults of adversaries, his gleeful shattering of familiar norms and precedents are the living expression of the contempt Trump backers feel toward an established order they believe is not remotely on the level.

The opposite of contempt is a deferential faith that, on balance, the established order is on the level. Its most prestigious prizes are worth the effort, worth the ass-kissing along the way. B.S. ultimately is a form of respect. The fact that Buttigieg has spent a lifetime standing on his toes to pluck these apples-- president of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, a Rhodes Scholarship, and now a shot at becoming the youngest person ever to reach the White House-- is the living expression of that faith.

It’s not just young people who have ambivalent feelings-- a stew of admiration, disdain, envy-- toward his precocity and candlepower. Sure he’s smart, but probably no smarter than Ken Jennings; no one is asking the Jeopardy! champion to run for president. The question is: To what end are intelligence and ambition harnessed?

“The words are great, but he has no soul,” said one senior Democrat whose name would be familiar to any Politico reader. “All head and no heart,” said an operative who helped make Bill Clinton-- another young man in a hurry, for whom smoothness sometimes came off as slickness-- president a generation ago.

The questions about Buttigieg’s B.S. quotient, however, are the same ones that might go to any politician or, arguably, to successful professionals in any field in which words, argument, the management of image (as opposed to measurable statistics like runs batted in or ordnance dropped on target) are coin of the realm.

...The fact that Buttigieg in his 20s was probably wagging his tail at landing a job at McKinsey-- another validation that he is one of the smart kids-- and this achievement now is a source of embarrassment in a party that has turned anti-corporate is kind of funny. But it is hardly an outrage. He served in Afghanistan; does it matter that he was well aware the military tour would be good for his political career? Just because someone may be slightly unctuous in his or her ladder-climbing doesn’t mean the person has no genuine convictions or that his or her achievements aren’t impressive.

Activists on the left are surely correct that Buttigieg does not represent the disruptive spirit of the age and that he is not an especially plausible vessel for the kind of foundation-shaking change they seek. Looked at through the prism of temperament and character, as distinct from his policy positions, he may be the most conservative candidate in the 2020 race, Trump included.

Buttigieg surely would be too conservative for his party and the moment alike—too establishment, too cautious, too Clintonesque-- were it not for two things. The first wave of coverage that greeted his early presidential campaign tended to emphasize the potential of his campaign even though he is young and gay. It became clear over time that both of these are essential elements. Imagine tweaking those parts of the bio. A 48-year-old straight former mayor of a small city would hardly be quickening pulses on the 2020 presidential campaign trail.

Two radical developments made it safe for someone like Buttigieg to be conventional in most respects. One of the developments-- the legal and cultural embrace of same-sex marriage-- is now so accepted that it’s hard even to recall that 20 years ago it was unthinkable and that even a decade ago it was a bridge too far for Barack Obama. The other radical development—Trump and his presidency—is even more consequential. If Trump hadn’t shredded the concept of plausibility, turning “I can’t imagine something like that happening” into an obsolete phrase, few people would find Buttigieg plausible in 2020.

But Trump did shred the old standards, and Buttigieg is plausible. What’s more, as he makes the turn from “mid-30s” to “late 30s,” it’s a little easier to ask: How young is he really?

He is one year younger than Al Gore was when he first ran for president, in 1988, and just a few years younger than Dan Quayle was when he was elected vice president that year, or when Theodore Roosevelt was when he was elected vice president in 1900 and ascended to the presidency less than a year later. Or, in a 2020 context, he is eight years older than Joe Biden was when he first became senator, and the same age that Amy Klobuchar was when she was elected top prosecutor for Hennepin County, Minnesota-- a jurisdiction with more than 11 times the number of residents of South Bend.

Too young, too impatient, too nakedly ambitious? Maybe for some voters, maybe not for others. But on Mayor Pete’s birthday, admirers and skeptics are both right on one count: We’ve seen his type before.

The Daily Beast reported last week that in his NY Times interview Mayo Pete told the editors that "he can’t stand any type of mayonnaise other than the unflavored original. Asked if he was familiar with his 'Mayo Pete' nickname, Buttigieg replied: 'I’m not. Do I want to know?' After it was explained to him by The Times panel that the name was given him by teens who think mayo is 'bland, 'white,' and 'gross,' he replied: "I get the white part." After telling the powerful story of his decision to come out as gay, he was told: 'This makes you less mayo.' Buttigieg responded: 'Maybe. Hopefully it’s at least a better flavor. I don’t know... I actually hate flavored mayo-- they do this avocado stuff now and it-- because I only use mayo when I’m making tuna salad. And I want it as straightforward as possible.'" The Times editors decided Amy Klobuchar would make a better president.

Let's move from Mayo for a moment to Status Quo Joe. I hope this ad-- the most effective ad of the 2020 primary so far-- will be played all over television in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and in the Super Tuesday states as well... like California, Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Alabama, Oklahoma, Utah, Arkansas and Tennessee. Watch this 30 second spot. It shows one really powerful reason why Joe Biden should never, never be the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

AOC And Pramila Take On Mayo Pete And Status Quo Joe And Their Slick Conservative Talking Points

If the Democratic primary is about picking the slickest, smoothest liar, there's no contest. Well... Status Quo Joe is certainly the biggest liar among Democrats, but Mayo Pete is the slickest and smoothest. That's what working as a McKinsey consultant teaches you. If you can't look someone straight in the eye and persuade them that up is down, the moon is made of green cheese and 2 + 2 = 5, you don't last as long as Mayo Pete did at McKinsey.

When Mayo began his p.r.-driven campaign, he hadn't yet decided which lane to run in. Not having much of a record, and with no values or principles-- other than personal careerism-- weighing him down, he flip-flopped between running as a progressive reformer and as a conservative establishment defender. For him is was deciding on which tie to wear on any given day. In the end, the flood of cash was just too much for him to resist and he's now in it as a full-fledged advocate of the status quo establishment, every bit as much as decrepit class warriors Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg.

One of the crucial debates in the 1940's over Social Security-- rabidly opposed by conservatives on both sides of the aisle-- was over including rich people. After all, the super-wealthy didn't need Social Security payments, why include them in? It was a shrewd move by the conservatives, but progressives understood how excluding people based on any factor would guarantee that there would always be a class of people-- and the rich are a powerful class of people-- dedicated to destroying the system and repealing it. In the end, Social Security is so successful-- despite what conservatives predicted so hysterically and vehemently-- because it is universal. Mayo is using the same old divisive conservative talking points to try to undermine Medicare-for-All and undermine reinstating free state colleges. He's slick but he isn't fooling everyone. He sure isn't fooling AOC.

Thursday, Congress' most popular member let loose a twitter storm against Mayo Pete's sneaky elitism. This is it-- AOC sounding like FDR-- in narrative form:

Universal public systems are designed to benefit EVERYBODY! Everyone contributes and everyone enjoys. We don’t ban the rich from public schools, firefighters, or libraries becauce they are public goods. Universal systems that benefit everyone are stronger because everyone’s invested! When you start carving people out and adding asterisks to who can benefit from goods that should be available to all, cracks in the system develop. Many children of the elite want to go to private, Ivyesque schools anyway, which aren’t covered by tuition-free public college! Lastly, and I can’t believe we have to remind people of this, but it’s GOOD to have classrooms (from pre-k through college!) to be socioeconomically integrated. Having students from different incomes & backgrounds in the same classroom is good for society & economic mobility.

Is Mayo using GOP talking points? Well... to be fair, his talking points are more conservative, neo-liberal and corporatist than specifically Republican. Mayo is a Democrat, maybe a Democratic from the Republican wing of the party but, still, a Democrat. His kind of Democrat doesn't have to turn to the GOP for talking points when they can get them from the Blue Dogs, New Dems, Third Way, the DCCC, the DSCC, Forward Center, Problem Solvers, etc. And, remember, the 3 B's-- Biden, Bloomberg and Buttigieg-- are all packaging these same conservative talking points to undermine the progressive agenda that appeals to the working class whose interests each is essentially running against.

Mayo Pete And Status Quo Joe Are Fighting For Less Choice In Healthcare

The B-Team-- not as bad as Trump

Everyone should know who Wendell Potter is by now. Aside from being a bestselling author and a advocate for health insurance reform, he's an outspoken former health insurance industry executive (CIGNA), who saw how the health insurance industry could easily game Obamacare and became an early advocate of Bernie's Medicare-for-All proposal. I want to put one of Potter's Twitter storms into narrative form here. Without mentioning them by name, it's an attack on the treacherous betrayals of working families by conservative Democrats Mayo Pete, Bloomberg and Status Quo Joe.

Lately I’ve noticed some Democratic politicians defending the current healthcare system by saying it preserves "choice" for Americans. As a former health insurance exec who helped draft this talking point, I need to come clean on its back story, and why it's wrong and a trap.

When I worked in the insurance industry, we were instructed to talk about “choice,” based on focus groups and people like Frank Luntz (who wrote the book on how the GOP should communicate with Americans). I used it all the time as an industry flack. But there was a problem.

As a health insurance PR guy, we knew one of the huge *vulnerabilities* of the current system was LACK of choice. In the current system, you can’t pick your own doc, specialist, or hospital without huge “out of network” bills. So we set out to muddy the issue of "choice."

As industry insiders, we also knew most Americans have very little choice of their plan. Your company chooses an insurance provider and you get to pick from a few different plans offered by that one insurer, usually either a high deductible plan or a higher deductible plan.

Another problem insurers like mine had on the “choice” issue: people with employer-based plans have very little choice to keep it. You can lose it if your company changes it, or you change jobs, or turn 26 or many other ways. This is a problem for defenders of the status quo.

Knowing we were losing the "choice" argument, my pals in the insurance industry spent millions on lobbying, ads and spin doctors-- all designed to gaslight Americans into thinking that reforming the status quo would somehow give them "less choice."

This isn't the only time the industry made "choice" a big talking point in its scheme to fight health reform. Soon after Obamacare was passed, it created a front group called the Choice and Competition Coalition, to scare states away from creating exchanges with better plans.

The difference is, this time Democrats are the ones parroting the misleading "choice" talking point. And they're even using it as a weapon against each other. Back in my insurance PR days, this would have stunned me. I bet my old colleagues are thrilled, and celebrating.

The truth, of course, is you have little "choice" in healthcare now. Most can’t keep their plan as long as they want, or visit any doctor or hospital. Some reforms, like Medicare For All, would let you. In other words, Medicare-for-All actually offers more choice than the status quo.

So if a politician tells you they oppose reforming the current healthcare system because they want to preserve "choice," either they don't know what they're talking about-- or they're willfully ignoring the truth. I assure you, the insurance industry is delighted either way.

Have you actually read Bernie's Medicare for All proposal, the real one, not the version being twisted out of shape by Mayo Pete, Status Quo Joe, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and their lobbyists, the corrupted Democratic establishment and the Republican Party? These are the key points:

• Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
• No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
• Medicare coverage will be expanded and improved to include: include dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
• Stop the pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

"Today," wrote Bernie, "more than 30 million Americans still don’t have health insurance and even more are underinsured. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Incredibly, we spend significantly more of our national GDP on this inadequate health care system-- far more per person than any other major country. And despite doing so, Americans have worse health outcomes and a higher infant mortality rate than countries that spend much less on health care. Our people deserve better. We should be spending money on doctors, nurses, mental health specialists, dentists, and other professionals who provide services to people and improve their lives. We must invest in the development of new drugs and technologies that cure disease and alleviate pain-- not wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year on profiteering, huge executive compensation packages, and outrageous administrative costs. The giant pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies have spent billions of dollars over the past decades to ensure that their profits come before the health of the American people. We must defeat them, together. That means joining every other major country on Earth and guaranteeing health care to all people as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program."

And we'll end with a look at some new polling (just above) that measured support for Medicare-for-All among registered voters and also just among registered Catholic voters, using two different ways of framing the question. Looks like despite all the millions of dollars that Big PhRMA and the insurance company crooks-- plus the Status Quo Joe and Mayo Pete campaigns-- have spent denigrating it, voters still understand that Medicare-for-All is good for them and for their families.

Want To Know Who Mayo Pete Really Is?

Mayo has the best p.r. operation of any of the campaigns-- and has had that going for him for years. It's how much a total nothing has wound up on the debate stage with actual leaders. Evan Allgood wrote about an excellent way of looking at who and what Mayo actually is via a short imaginary monologue, I'm Pete Buttigieg, And After A Lot Of Soul-Searching, I've Realized That I Am A Young Joe Biden.

Sorry, progressives, but I never made you any promises. Sure, I may have endorsed the Green New Deal, single-payer healthcare, and decriminalizing border-crossings. But after a lot of soul-searching, and significantly more poll-testing, it turns out that I am a centrist in the mold of Joe Biden. Amazing timing, right?

For a while there I wasn’t sure if I was a male Liz Warren, a quiet Bernie Sanders, or maybe an articulate Steve Bullock. Nope. After looking deep in my heart, and paying a bunch of consultants gazillions of dollars, I’ve realized that I just happen to be exactly the kind of middle-of-the-road candidate so many Americans are clamoring for. Only less handsy, better at social media, and lucid.

Yup, just think of me as a young, hip, multilingual Uncle Joe, with more gun selfies, fewer teeth, and none of the baggage/experience. Biden has a bad habit of speaking from the heart, which is why he’s always rambling on about cereal. I’m far more calculating-- everything I say has been run through an algorithm, focus-grouped by boomers, and rehearsed with Mark Zuckerberg. Isn’t that reassuring?

Now, it seems to rankle my opponents that I spent the past year speaking in riddles and ducking fundamental policy questions before finally generating my platform via McKinsey’s Palatable EThos Emulator (PETE)®. One of Beto O’Rourke’s aides even described me as a “human weather vane,” which is an outrageous comparison because most weather vanes are made out of steel, while I am made out of steel-cut oatmeal.

I don’t need lessons from Beto on courage-- political, personal, or musical. What’s more courageous than exploiting a vulnerable 77-year-old man for the good of the country? Or accepting millions of dollars from lobbyists and bankers when I know I’ll take a little friendly fire for it? Or doing the “High Hopes” dance in public, when, again, friendly fire is imminent? (Lighten up, folks! Who doesn’t love Chaos! At the Arcade?)

Heck, I know I’ll take some heat at the debates, but not because of my policies (which barely exist), my résumé (ditto), or the fact that I’m a wealthy white guy from Harvard who feels that this moment “calls for someone like me.” No, it’s because this primary is getting to be a two-way race between myself and Elizabeth Warren. Hey, quit laughing.

Oh, you think it’s between Warren and Biden? This is Biden 2.0, baby, and it’s only a matter of time before I make the beta version obsolete. They’re not saying “Let’s go, Joe!” at the bingo halls in Iowa. They’re saying, “Peeeeeeeeeete!” and then, about me, I think, “BINGO!” I’m almost as popular in Iowa as I am in the New York Times’ Opinion section, so I must be doing something right.

If it’s easier, though, you can just think of me as an elfin Michael Bloomberg, or a Republican.

I really am sorry if you feel I just wasted a few minutes of your time. Hopefully, this new video by Robert Reich on nothing-whatsoever-to-do-with-Mayo-Pete should right that wrong:

Who Will Save The Grotesquely Corrupt Democratic Party Establishment From Bernie's Zeal For Reform And Fair Play?

Votes have finally still dribbling in from the New Hampshire primary when I was finishing up on this post. 100% of the votes have now been counted and all the candidates-- except Status Quo Joe, who was in South Carolina-- were already off to Nevada. The New Hampshire numbers were catastrophic for Biden but didn't cause him to drop out the way they did for Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet and Deval Patrick. These were the numbers available (with all 100% in):

• Bernie- 76,324 (25.7%)
• Mayo Pete- 72,457 (24.4%)
• Klobuchar- 58,796 (19.8%)
• Elizabeth- 27,387 (9.2%)
• Status Quo Joe- 24,921 (8.4%)
• Steyer- 10,7727 (3.6%)
• Tulsi- 9,655 (3.3%)
• Yang- 8,315 (2.8%)
• Deval- 1,266 (0.4%)
• Bennet- 963 (0.3%)

Wednesday morning, the media spin was how Bernie didn't do well, how well conservative candidates Mayo Pete and Amy Klobuchar did, how badly Biden had done and, most of all... who will stop Bernie?

Do you remember how Harry Reid and his Las Vegas thugs fixed the Nevada primary for Hillary in 2016? Reid, a shady status quo establishment character, is, naturally enough, a big Bloomberg booster. He told Vice that Bloomberg "has a plan, that’s for sure. You have to recognize, the man-- he really was a good mayor of a huge, huge, city, the largest city in America. I like him, I’ve always liked him. Nobody’s done more on guns and climate than he has. No one." What's Mini-Mike's plan beyond spending a million dollars a day on Facebook ads? And what's he done for Climate? And what does Reid know about Climate? It sure looks like the remnants of Reid's greasy political machine is up to its old tricks. The Nevada Independent got its hands on a flyer the Culinary Union sent out to its members. Imagine for a moment that someone wants to give you a dollar, but that that entails you giving up your dime pr even half-dollar. That's how the Nevada Democratic establishment is framing Bernie's Medicare-for-All plan-- giving up your half dollar and neglecting to mention the dollar. [It's also the way the Republican Party explains Medicare-for-All.] The establishment warned Culinary Union members-- in both English and Spanish-- that Bernie is trying to "end Culinary Healthcare."

The Culinary Union, which provides health insurance to 130,000 workers and their family members through a special trust fund, strongly opposes Medicare for all on the basis that it would eliminate the health insurance they have negotiated for over several decades. Health insurance provided by the Culinary Health Fund is considered to be some of the best in the state, and the union even opened a 60,000-square-foot state-of-the-art health clinic a couple of years ago for its members.

The union, considered an organizing behemoth in the Silver State, has been known to tip the scales in elections in the past. Though the 60,000-member union has not yet decided whether it will endorse in the Democratic presidential primary, the flyer appears to be part of a coordinated campaign ahead of Nevada’s Feb. 22 Democratic presidential primary and shows the union will not be sitting idly by, with or without an endorsement.

A spokeswoman for the Culinary Union said the flyer is also going out to members Tuesday night via text and email.

Another handout that the Nevada Independent reported on last week obliquely accuses Sanders and Warren of wanting to take away union members’ hard-fought health plans and warns that electing a candidate who supports Medicare for all would lead to four more years of a Donald Trump presidency.

The new flyer makes more clear the distinction the union is drawing between Sanders’ and Warren’s plans. The flyer also lauds the four other presidential hopefuls-- former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and California billionaire Tom Steyer-- for backing more modest plans to establish a government-run public health care option that would “protect Culinary Health care.”

The only other difference the flyer draws between the six candidates is on the issue of “good jobs.” The flyer says that all of the candidates all would work to “strengthen organizing, collective bargaining, and right to strike,” but only Klobuchar would “work with unions on regulations about technology at work,” which has been a major concern for the Culinary Union given the rise of automation in the service industry.

The Intercept noted that "the DNC is acting shady in managing the Democratic primaries... [and] As Michael Bloomberg buys his way into the Democratic primary, he is plastering the airwaves with hagiographic advertisements that ignore his awful record on race, labor unions and how he escalated the Stop-and-Frisk program as mayor of New York."

Lee Fang, also writing for The Intercept yesterday went after Mini-Mike's barrages lies, a barrage that is starting to define his campaign, The most obvious place to start is the Stop-and-Frisk policy that most New Yorkers viewed as an outgrowth of Bloomberg's low-key racism but that he is trying to bullshit his way away from, just the way Mayo Pete has tried too do about his own mayorial racism. Let's start by watch this clip from Ari Melber's Tuesday show:





Fang wrote that "In response, the Bloomberg campaign released a misleading statement on Tuesday claiming that he simply inherited the policy and later reduced the practice. 'I inherited the police practice of stop-and-frisk, and as part of our effort to stop gun violence it was overused... 'By the time I left office. I cut it back by 95%, but I should’ve done it faster and sooner. I regret that and I have apologized-- and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities.'"

The statement drew immediate backlash over its twisting of history. In 2001, New York City maintained an aggressive program of stopping and searching people throughout the city, with an overwhelming focus on young African American and Latino men. But, under the Bloomberg administration, the program vastly expanded, from around 97,296 stops in 2002 to a height of 685,724 in 2011-- a more than sevenfold increase during the former mayor’s tenure.

Far from changing course over the mayor’s focus on “racial equity,” as he has since claimed, the practice was clawed back by several lawsuits, which charged that the law enforcement program violated the basic constitutional rights of residents. U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, in a scathing decision, noted that over the course of 2.3 million frisks, weapons were found only 1.5 percent of the time. The decision pointed out that over half of the stops included African Americans and about third Latino, with less than 10 percent targeting white people.

The Bloomberg administration fought alongside New York’s notoriously aggressive police union to continue the program, arguing that the stop-and-frisk effort was focused on suspects with “furtive movements,” in “high-crime areas” and those with a “suspicious bulge.” But the judge knocked down those assertions, noting that such claims are vague and subjective.

In the comments that circulated online this week, Bloomberg can be heard speaking at an Aspen Institute conference in 2015 defending the program’s racial slant as justifiable given the proportion of crime in African American and Latino communities. “You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” said the billionaire former mayor. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York; that’s true in virtually every city.”

While data does reflect that violent crime tends to cluster in particular neighborhoods and among young men, the Bloomberg administration’s stop-and-frisk program went well beyond targeting based solely on objective evidence. Expert testimony in federal court found that the New York Police Department carried out far more stop-and-frisks on African American and Latino residents even when controlling for precinct-level crime statistics and socioeconomic characteristics. In other words, the evidence showed that minorities were targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of suspicion than white people.

The charge of racial bias was also backed up by multiple investigations and media scandals. In one case, a low-level police officer recorded his superior instructing him on how to target residents for stop-and-frisk in a particular neighborhood. “I have no problem telling you this: male blacks, 14 to 20, 21,” the officer said in the recording. In another case, a young Harlem teenager surreptitiously recorded officers stopping and frisking him. Asked why they had targeted him, the officer replied, “For being a fucking mutt.”

What’s more, the true extent of the program may never be known. Every time a New York police officer engages in stop-and-frisk, they are expected to fill out a form for the action to be recorded by the city. Court monitors have noted that there is evidence that many stops go unrecorded or are improperly documented. Current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who succeeded Bloomberg in 2014, dramatically curtailed the police program, prompting backlash from the police union. Last year, the New York Police Department reported 11,008 stops, a small fraction of the amount of stops during the Bloomberg era.

Bloomberg has attempted to use his vast fortune to rebrand his image. The Bloomberg Philanthropy has given grants to various civil rights groups and worked to build schools, libraries, and community centers in low-income and minority neighborhoods, a fact often cited during Bloomberg’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

The billionaire executive’s largesse, however, can’t conceal Bloomberg’s own words defending the racial bias in his approach to law enforcement. The Aspen Institute comments in 2015 were among many instances in which he defended the program. In 2013, during a radio program, Bloomberg declared, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s exactly the reverse of what they say.”

And by the way, you've heard about the two billionaires-- one relatively benign and one possibly as bad as Trump-- trying to buy the election, right? This chart from Kantar's Campaign Media Analysis Group shows spending on TV (just TV) advertising through January 29. It is absolutely jaw-dropping! I've never seen anything like it.

What is the Democratic Party establishment so scared about-- and why are they right to be scared? No more feathering of nests at the expense of them working class, for one thing. Chris Maisano: "Forty years of neoliberalism have beaten down and disorganized the US working class. The Bernie Sanders campaign is showing how electoral politics can be used to re-politicize working people-- and organize collectively for their class interests... In an environment of profound social fragmentation, it should not be surprising that popular discontent has found expression through the Sanders campaign and the 'political revolution' it spearheads. The decline of organized labor and the social disintegration of many working-class communities means that only a relatively small fraction of workers are positioned to pursue effective forms of collective action in their workplaces or communities. Election campaigns are therefore one of the few channels currently available to engage and politicize a mass working-class audience, reconstitute the working class as a political subject, and create a more favorable environment for workers to organize both inside and outside the electoral arena. The Sanders campaign is priming working people to think of themselves as members of a class with an interest in political revolution. How could this be anything but a boon to the Left and the prospects for labor movement revitalization?"

Is Today The Day Bernie Seals The Deal With America-- Will The Real Remedy To Trumpism Win Big Enough In New Hampshire To Power Him Into Nevada?

I guess the Iowa counting is done now. Here's how the establishment cheated Bernie. In the first round, he received 43,699 votes (24.7%) to Mayo Pete's 37,596 votes (21.3%). In the second round Bernie received 45,842 votes (26.5%) to Mayo's 43,274 votes (25.1%). As you know 43,699 and 24.7% are more than 37,596 and 21.3% and 45,842 and 26.5% are more than 43,274 25.1%. But the Iowa Democratic establishment awarded Mayo 13 delegates and Bernie 12 delegates. Sounds similar to how Trump got into the White House with 62,984,828 votes (46.1%) even though Hillary won 65,853,514 votes (48.2%). Except in the case of Iowa, the decision to cheat the winner had nothing to do with anyone but the Democratic Party. This should be the last time Iowa gets the first in the nation slot.

So what happens in New Hampshire today?The Real Clear Politics polling average:

• Bernie- 26.6% with last minute positive momentum
• Mayo- 21.3% with last minute negative momentum
• Elizabeth- 13.1% with last minute negative momentum
• Status Quo Joe- 12.9% with last minute negative momentum
• Klobuchar- 9.6% with last minute positive momentum

The final Emerson tracking poll (Sunday) shows Bernie way ahead but doesn't pick up on the turn-around towards Mayo after a p.r. drubbing over the weekend. It also shows Klobuchar with the biggest moment, vaulting into third place, significantly ahead of Elizabeth and Status Quo Joe's whose campaign seems to have petered out entirely.

A Boston Globe poll by Suffolk Sunday also had Bernie way ahead with 27% (up 3), with Mayo trailing with 19% (down 3), Klobuchar in 3rd place, closing on Mayo with 14% (up 5), Elizabeth and Biden each falling further behind with 12%.

Politico's headline emphasized that the conservatives are brawling among each other while Bernie is "gliding" towards a win in New Hampshire. Holly Otterbein and Stephanie Murray noted that superPAC money from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party smeared Bernie to the tune of $800,000 in TV ads during the last week of the Iowa caucuses-- using GOP talking points and insisting he couldn't beat Trump. But... "Here in New Hampshire, the opposite has happened: The airwaves are free of anti-Sanders spots in the days before the first-in-the-nation-primary" while the conservatives, in their words, "shank each other," raising concerns-- if not panic-- among the pro-Wall Street Democrats who control the party machinery. One of them-- too frightened to speak on the record-- told Otterbein that "It’s fratricide at the moment. It’s super bad. Too many mods against Bernie and a fading Warren. Very, very scary," referring to corrupt conservatives as "mods."

Tom Steyer is largely training his advertising firepower onto Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. The former vice president is mocking Buttigieg’s experience and targeting him in a digital spot. Fighting back against Biden, the ex-mayor says he’s tired of being a punchline.

...Sanders, who is campaigning at 10 stops across the state this weekend, has been boasting about those establishment jitters on the trail.

“We’re taking on not only the whole Republican political establishment and Trump, we’re taking on the Democratic establishment!” he said to cheers at a canvass launch Sunday afternoon. “And as some of you may have noticed, Democratic establishment’s getting a little bit nervous.”

He drew out the word “little” jokingly, adding that he’s also up against Wall Street, insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry.

...Steyer is airing an ad on television in New Hampshire, which flashes images of Buttigieg and Biden as a narrator states, “We simply can’t afford to nominate another insider or an untested newcomer who doesn’t have the experience to beat Trump on the economy.”

Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren also criticized Buttigieg on the debate stage Friday over his experience and racial disparities in his mayoral administration. And Biden’s team released an ad online Saturday, widely viewed to be the most negative spot by a 2020 candidate so far, which said that while Biden helped pass the Affordable Care Act, Buttigieg was installing decorative lights under bridges. It has more than 4 million views.

...A post-debate poll by FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that Sanders received the highest rating for his debate performance.

Scott Ferson, a Boston-based Democratic strategist who is leading an outreach effort to engage independent voters in New Hampshire, said Klobuchar could gain from Buttigieg and Biden attacking each other.

"I tend to think it's sort of a pox on both their houses as they start doing this back-and-forth,” he said. “That always tends to benefit sort of who hasn't been touched, who's coming on strong, who's improving. And I think, frankly, who I've seen improve the most has been Amy Klobuchar.”

Mark Mellman, president of the Democratic Majority for Israel, argued that his super PAC’s anti-Sanders attack ad in Iowa cut into his momentum. It said that a socialist could not defeat Trump and referenced his October heart attack.

“He still has a chance to win the nomination. But without our ad, he would have come out of Iowa with a significant lead on every metric and would likely duplicate that result in New Hampshire and Nevada,” he said. “At that point he would have been very difficult to stop. In part because of our ad, he still has a real fight on his hands.”

Mellman said that his organization “won’t be airing any ads in New Hampshire and haven’t made final decisions beyond that.”

Already, there are whispers about attack ads being cut against Sanders so they can air in Nevada if he emerges from New Hampshire triumphant.

“We expect that wealthy special interests will do everything to stop Bernie Sanders,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ senior adviser.

Also in Politico Monday morning, was a piece by Michael Kruse asking if the Democratic Party is now Bernie's. "He won the most votes in Iowa a week ago," wrote Kruse, "a result that seems clear in spite of the botched caucuses. He’s leading in more and more polls, at times trailing only Joe Biden, whose campaign seems to be wheezing. And he has become nothing short of a grassroots fundraising colossus, the possessor of a reservoir of resources that could let him run forever. In this panicky, high-stakes race to take on an emboldened Donald Trump in November, Sanders is positioned as well as, if not better than, any of his many competitors to be the Democratic nominee. That this man, who has spent most of his life spurning and disparaging the Democratic Party, who is only semi-nominally even a member of the party and who is reviled by some of its biggest names, could be by summer its titular head is a prospect few would believe possible. That is, if they hadn’t seen Trump do something similar in 2016: The ultimate anti-establishment outsider, the almost ridiculous choice in fact becoming the choice. The seriousness of Sanders’ chances can be measured in relation to the apoplexy he’s started to generate among stalwart operatives. Bernie Sanders? “Having him for president of the United States?” longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said when we talked last week. 'Are you fucking kidding me?'"

"Regardless, though, of what happens Tuesday and from here, Sanders, already more than any other 2020 candidate, has shaped the ideological tenor of Democrats’ lumbering primary process-- more even than he did in ’16," wrote Kruse. "His 'Medicare for All' proposal, the linchpin of his expansive progressive agenda, has served as the policy position around which the other top candidates have defined themselves. Add in the poll numbers for Elizabeth Warren, another left-of-center Democrat angling for giant structural change, and the upper tier of the Democratic field leans more toward Sanders than it does Joe Biden. And he has ensured his stamp will remain on campaigns still to come. By far the most prominent surrogate in the field is Sanders’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term, just-turned-30 congresswoman from New York City who could be his granddaughter-- and whom Sanders supporters and, in particular, his legions of millennials view as proof that all of this is not about just an individual but rather a movement that has altered the contours of liberal politics and is nowhere close to done."





UPDATE: Dixville Notch


Dixville Notch, a very Republican town, gave the winless night to the most Republican of the candidates running in the Democratic primary. But don't worry, Dixville Notch's midnight primary only predicts GOP winners and never Democratic winners. Between 1968 and 2012, the candidate with the plurality of Dixville Notch's voters was the eventual Republican nominee for president. On the Democratic side, however, they usually get it all wrong and their winners wind up in the also-ran category. Bill Bradley won in 2000, for example and four years later it was Wesley Clark-- who received just 13% of the vote statewide and placed third in New Hampshire.