Tag: Democratic presidential nomination

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Elizabeth Warren may have just ended Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign tonight

Just when the corporate media thought they could get away with trying to erase U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) from the field of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Warren, at the ninth Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle, delivered a debate performance that will be remembered for a very long time, and, in doing so, may have just ended any chance of former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg winning the Democratic presidential nomination.

This is just one minute of Warren’s debate performance tonight:

This is only part of a debate exchange between Warren and Bloomberg over Bloomberg’s history of sexually harassing women and discriminating against women:

Those two video clips only consist of part of Warren’s debate performance tonight, but those two clips should give everyone a general idea of how phenomenal Warren’s debate performance was tonight. Furthermore, Warren reminded us all how Donald Trump can be defeated in the general election.

Bloomberg may be worth tens of billions of dollars, but no amount of money and no amount of television ads can hide the fact that Bloomberg has a long history of sexism, racism, and opposing efforts to increase access to affordable health care, among other things. Furthermore, no amount of money is going to hide the fact that Bloomberg’s response to Warren pointing out that Bloomberg has a long history of disgustingly sexist behavior, including sexual misconduct, was absolutely insulting to those who were wronged by Bloomberg.

Elizabeth Warren wasn’t the only person on the debate stage tonight who held Mike Bloomberg to account, but she did the most effective job tonight of holding Bloomberg accountable.

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The last great American is Elizabeth Warren

In March of 1965, Esquire magazine published this article about auto racing legend Junior Johnson, who was described in the article by its author, Tom Wolfe, as “the last American hero”.

Well, if Junior Johnson was the last American hero, then Elizabeth Warren is the last great American.

As far is as known, Warren, born in the heart of Oklahoma and now represents Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, never hauled moonshine whiskey down backroads while trying to evade federal agents or found ingenious ways to bend the rules to her advantage. Instead, Warren has been a steadfast advocate for saving the capitalist American economy from its own greed and penchant for putting poor and middle-class people at a disadvantage to the wealthiest people.

American heroes are popular and win fights that conventional wisdom would lead one to believe is winnable. Great Americans aren’t always popular, especially at first, but they win fights that conventional wisdom would lead one to believe is unwinnable.

Abraham Lincoln wasn’t always a figure who was widely revered. In fact, multiple states seceded from the Union in response to his victory in the 1860 presidential election. What made Lincoln a great American is that he was able to lead the Union to victory in a war to reunify our great country and lead the effort to abolish the horrific institution of slavery in America as it existed before and during the Civil War. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., another great American, was detested by many Americans during his lifetime, but his steadfast advocacy for civil rights in the face of oppression helped make America more of a democracy than it was during the segregationist Jim Crow era of Dr. King’s lifetime and before.

Elizabeth Warren finds herself in a moment in our country’s history where a great American often arises. America is far from the proverbial “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan spoke of in reference to America. America has massive wealth inequality, a criminal justice system that is fairer towards white people than people of color, crumbling infrastructure, a political and electoral system that gives far-right voters and interests disproportionately more political power than their share of the electorate, and failed, authoritarian-like leadership from a Republican Party that, in no way, shape, or form, resembles the Republican Party that nominated Abraham Lincoln for President 160 years ago.

Warren faces many barriers on her path to the Presidency. The most obvious barrier of all is Republican President Donald Trump, who would waste no time using the office of the presidency as a political weapon against Warren or whoever else wins the Democratic nomination. Warren’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are also barriers on her path to the presidency. However, the toughest barrier for Warren to overcome on the presidential campaign trail isn’t in the form of a political candidate, but rather the media. The news media in this country, dominated by right-wing political punditry disguised as journalism and paid for by corporate advertising, is seemingly alternating between trying to erase Warren from the public conscience and trying to drive a political narrative that is unfavorable to her campaign.

Let’s not pass up this opportunity to elect a great American like Elizabeth Warren to the White House, because we won’t have another great American like her.

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Elections Federal Politics Iowa United States White House

Elizabeth Warren wins Drake University mock caucus

Tonight, students at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa participated in a mock Iowa Democratic Caucus. Here are the caucus results, courtesy of NBC News’s Maura Barrett:

Results of first alignment
Results of second alignment

With 193 students participating in the mock caucus, the 15% viability threshold was 29 students. This meant that Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg were the only two candidates viable on the first alignment. In a total surprise, Bernie Sanders was among those who failed to make the viability threshold on the first alignment on a college campus, falling seven students short of viability on the first alignment. Additionally, five candidates had more first-alignment support than Joe Biden (in addition to Warren, Pete, and Bernie, Andrew Yang and Amy Klobuchar had more first-alignment support than Biden; Biden was tied for sixth with Mike Bloomberg, who isn’t even contesting the actual Iowa Caucuses that will take place one week from today, on first alignment).

While Iowa Caucus rules allow for a candidate who failed to make the 15% viability threshold on the first alignment to make the 15% viability threshold on the second alignment, no candidate that wasn’t already viable became viable on the second alignment, so Warren and Pete were the only two candidates viable on the second alignment, and, on the second alignment Warren had 87 students in her corner to Pete’s 66 students in his corner. Had this been an actual precinct-level caucus, Warren would have received five county convention delegates, and Pete would have received four county convention delegates.

While tonight’s mock caucus at Drake was not the actual Iowa Caucuses, and Drake University students might be a demographic that is more favorable to Warren than Iowa as a whole, tonight’s Drake mock caucus is a good omen for Warren’s campaign, and could be a sign that recent polling in Iowa could be drastically underestimating Warren’s support in Iowa.

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Elections Federal Politics Iowa Political Analysis Political Campaigns Political Polls United States White House

My attempt to analyze a junk Iowa Democratic caucus poll that was done for Breitbart

Earlier today, an obscure polling firm called Neighborhood Research and Media released a poll of Iowa Democratic voters in the lead-up to the February 3rd Iowa Caucuses. You can view the results of the poll here if you wish to do so.

Anyways, the poll was enough to move the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregate to show a narrow Joe Biden lead in Iowa; the aggregate prior to the poll showed a narrow Bernie Sanders lead in Iowa. FiveThirtyEight lists Neighborhood Research and Media as a B/C-graded pollster, so the pollster is deemed by FiveThirtyEight to have not conducted enough polling to receive a proper grade.

I will now make several observations about the recent poll out of Iowa.

The poll was conducted for the far-right website Breitbart

Any attempt by a right-wing organization, such as the far-right, pro-Donald Trump website Breitbart, to poll Democratic voters about an upcoming Democratic nomination contest is immediately suspicious in my view. Breitbart may be trying to drive a Democrats-in-disarray political narrative, a narrative that benefits Republicans politically, in more mainstream media outlets, and, at the very least, has certainly influenced FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregators, by paying Neighborhood Research and Media to poll Iowa Democrats.

The poll sample was DRASTICALLY older than the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucus electorate

The poll sample was drastically older than recent Iowa Democratic caucus electorates, including the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucus electorate. In 2016, entrance polls, the caucus equivalent of exit polls, showed that 37% of the Democratic caucus electorate in Iowa was 44 years of age or younger, with 28% older than 65 years of age. The pre-2020 caucus poll for Brietbart had a sample with less than 19% of likely caucus participants under the age of 50, with more than 58% of likely caucus participants over the age of 65. The median age in poll for Breitbart was likely more than a decade older, maybe as much as a decade and a half older, than the median age in the 2016 entrance polls!

The poll included Donald Trump as if he were a Democratic presidential candidate

Donald Trump is seeking re-election as a Republican presidential candidate. However, the poll for Breitbart listed Trump as if he were a Democrat and a candidate in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, which he is not. While Iowa Democratic caucus participants may have an uncommitted option (I’m not sure if the Iowa Democratic caucus rules allow for that), Trump will not be a candidate in the Iowa Democratic caucuses. The poll had Trump, who is not a Democrat and is not seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, at 4.7% among likely Iowa Democratic caucus participants.

The poll was in the field during the January 14 Democratic presidential debate

The poll for Breitbart was in the field from January 14 to January 17. This means that the poll was in the field during the January 14 Democratic presidential debate that was televised by CNN and sponsored by the Des Moines Register. One day of sampling, January 14, was pre-debate, with the other three days being post-debate. The poll had Biden losing a ton of support from the pre-debate sample to the post-debate sample, with Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, respectively, being the largest beneficiaries of an apparent loss of support for Biden. The pre-debate sample was a one-day sample that included 103 likely caucus participants, whereas the post-debate sample was a three-day sample that included 197 likely caucus participants, or an average of 66 likely caucus participants sampled per day. Given Iowa’s population, samples of less than 200 individuals have a very high margin of error.

Conclusion

This poll that was conducted for Brietbart is complete junk, in part due to the poll’s sample being drastically older than what an Iowa Democratic caucus electorate would be expected to be.

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Congress Elections Federal Politics Political Campaigns Political History Political Policy United States White House

Joe Biden opposes making government work for the American people

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author of this blog post is not an attorney and does not claim to be an attorney.

In an interview by The New York Times, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden publicly opposed replacing the Electoral College with national popular vote presidential elections, expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, setting term limits for U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and abolishing the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule:

An important history lesson here involves Biden’s first run for federal elected office, the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware. Biden defeated Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs a little more than two years after the Bayh-Cellar Amendment was debated in Congress. Had Congress sent the Bayh-Cellar Amendment to the states, and had it been ratified by 38 states, it would have abolished the electoral college and replaced it with a national popular vote presidential election. I am unsure as to whether Boggs had supported or opposed the amendment, as I’ve not been able to find information on any of the Senate roll call votes related to the Bayh-Celler Amendment. Keep in mind that, unlike today, Delaware was a bellwether state in presidential elections for much of the latter half of the 20th century. Nowadays, Delaware is, given increased political polarization and the expected partisan leans of each state, one of the least important states in presidential general elections under the current Electoral College system, as Delaware only has three electoral votes and is usually a Democratic stronghold nowadays.

With that history lesson aside, let’s talk about Biden’s opposition to making government work for the American people.

By saying only one word, Biden announced his opposition to fair presidential elections, term limits for federal judges, ideological fairness on the Supreme Court, and allowing the U.S. Senate to be an actual legislative body that is capable of passing legislation with majority support. Biden’s stated reason for opposing making government work for the American people is that it would create more problems than it would solve, which is absolutely false.

Also, Biden’s claim that constitutional amendments would be required to achieve all four goals is partially incorrect. The total number of Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court can, and has, been determined by passing an Act of Congress setting the size of the Supreme Court at a certain number of Justices, and this number can be raised or lowered by an Act of Congress. The Senate’s filibuster rule is not mentioned in the Constitution at all; the Senate can, if it wants to, change its own rules to abolish the filibuster and require only simple majority passage of any measure before it except for measures where the Constitution explicitly requires a different standard to pass a measure before the Senate. While abolishing the Electoral College as an institution would require a federal constitutional amendment, if enough states were to ratify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), the Electoral College would be effectively converted into a body responsible for ratifying the ticket that received a plurality of the national popular vote as President and Vice President. However, the constitutionality of the NPVIC would likely be subject to legal challenges if enough states joined the compact for it to go into effect. Term limits for federal judges at any level of the federal judiciary would clearly require a federal constitutional amendment.

Furthermore, if Biden thinks he can get political support for any kind of political agenda from Mitch McConnell, he’s absolutely delusional. McConnell will find any reason to oppose the political agenda of any Democratic president, no matter how much Democrats co-opt the Republican Party’s agenda. Seeing Biden hilariously try to seek Republican support for his agenda is quite depressing, since Biden was Vice President of the United States when Republicans obstructed Barack Obama’s agenda at virtually every opportunity, including refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court appointee Merrick Garland and shutting down the federal government.

Unlike Biden, Elizabeth Warren has promised to make the 2020 presidential election, in which she could be elected President, the last presidential election under the Electoral College system, and that is why I support Warren’s presidential bid.

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Elections Federal Politics Iowa Political Analysis United States White House

Selzer Iowa Poll has the progressive wing rising in Iowa

With 24 days remaining until the Iowa Caucuses, the latest Ann Selzer Iowa Poll for CNN and The Des Moines Register has Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren running first and second, respectively, among likely Iowa Democratic caucusgoers, with moderate candidates Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden struggling to stay at or above the 15% threshold to receive elected pledged delegates at the statewide level:

It’s clear that, when voters learn more about progressive candidates, progressive policy proposals, and progressive political values, the more that they see themselves as not just Democrats, but progressive Democrats. However, with the leading candidate in Iowa just five percentage points above the threshold to receive statewide pledged delegates, and with three other candidates at or above that threshold, the next 24 days are going to be absolutely critical to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.