DownWithTyranny!

The B team

[T]he Democrats have a proportional representation beginning at 15 percent. This means that every candidate who can get 15 percent or more of the vote will have an incentive to stay in the race.

Furthermore, Bloomberg has some weaknesses that will be hard to overcome in a Democratic primary. His stop-and-frisk policing policy was seen as racist and was deeply resented. Large parts of the black community may go to Warren or Sanders rather than Bloomberg (Buttigieg seems to have a similar problem and gets little support from African Americans). Bloomberg was a registered Republican when he ran the first time for mayor and later ran as an independent. Yet he tends to dictate what people can do (he proposed outlawing Big Gulp cups in New York when he was mayor). He has been so aggressively anti-gun that in some areas there will be moderate Democrats deeply opposed to him.

Finally, Bloomberg carries the burden of being a big billionaire. He is so wealthy, he is almost a model for the kind of rich person Sanders and Warren dislike. For the increasingly radical Democratic Party to nominate a former Republican billionaire purely because he is willing to spend what it takes to buy the nomination would probably lead to a massive revolt at their convention in Milwaukee this summer. It is a little hard to imagine Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad passively accepting Bloomberg as their standard bearer.

If everyone who can get 15 percent (and therefore some delegates) stays in the race-- and if an assault on Bloomberg keeps him from breaking 50 percent-- then it is entirely possible the Democrats are headed toward a wide-open convention. This means the super delegates (who are incumbents and officials with no real legitimacy except their titles) could come into play on the second ballot.

“Is he really saying the Obama-Biden administration was a failure? Pete, just say it out loud,” Biden said at the rally. “I have great respect for Mayor Pete and his service for this nation, but I do believe it’s a risk-- to just be straight up with you-- for this party to nominate somebody who’s never held office higher than mayor of a town of 100,000 people in Indiana. I do believe it’s a risk.”

His campaign reiterated the sentiment on Twitter, responding to a common Buttigieg talking point about the “old failed Washington.”

Buttigieg’s relatively short resume has been easy fodder for rival Democratic presidential campaigns to question his qualifications for office. (Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota went after the former Indiana mayor on the debate stage over it.) But Biden hasn’t notably engaged in the criticism until now, largely shying away attacking his fellow Democratic presidential candidates.

That strategy might be changing. Biden also went after Sanders at the New Hampshire rally, questioning whether Sanders’ self-proclaimed belief in democratic socialism is a risk for the party.

“If Senator Sanders is the nominee for the party, every Democrat in America, up and down the ballot-- blue states, red states, purple states, easy districts, competitive ones-- every Democrat will have to carry the label Senator Sanders has chosen for himself,” Biden said. “So what do you do about who is going to be at the top of the ticket? Donald Trump is desperate to pin the label ‘socialist, socialist, socialist’ on our party. We cannot let him do that.”

Sanders has long come under scrutiny for identifying as a democratic socialist-- which he has more recently defined as a continuation of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New Deal kind of politics. The label has certainly become a bogeyman on the right.

Trump repeatedly invoked socialism the State of Union address Tuesday night, saying “socialism destroys nations” and censuring lawmakers who “have endorsed legislation to impose a socialist takeover of our health care system”-- a not-so-veiled jab at “Medicare for All,” Sanders’ most central policy proposal to move every American onto a single government-run health care system.

But the label hasn’t hurt Sanders with primary voters yet. He is looking well-positioned to win the popular vote in Iowa, and has widened the lead in New Hampshire. Sanders’ and Buttigieg’s campaigns did not respond for comment.

Biden has long made his electability the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, focusing his campaign speeches more on Trump-- and his belief that he is the best positioned to beat him-- than any policy platform. Coming in fourth in the first contest, however, isn’t the best look for a candidate making the pitch that they can win elections."

Two top-notch candidates from the opposite ends of New York, Shaniyat Chowdhury from southeast Queens and Robin Wilt from Rochester, each had perspectives not unlike Eva's Neither is eager to see a status quo candidate like Biden at the top of the ticket. Shan, who is running against a corrupt New Dem, very much like Biden-- Gregory Meeks-- told me that in his district,"If Bernie Sanders is not the Democratic nominee, there will be hell to pay. If Bernie Sander is indeed the nominee, then there still is hell pay against the democratic establishment. They just don’t get it. The people want Bernie because he’s the only one fighting for the working class in blue and red states. If anyone can bring the country together, it would be him. The people see it. The corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle do not.

When was the last time Democrats won the White House more than twice in a row? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the chief model for Bernie Sanders's political persona. Contrast that with how badly Democrats have been doing since they turned conservative in the 1990s. Bill Clinton, who was farther to the right than Eisenhower, failed to get more than half the vote in either of his elections. Far from being a great success story, Clinton's entire presidency may come down to Ross Perot's presence as a spoiler.

It is worth noting something important about Perot-- he was running as a populist, and his time in the spotlight was the beginning of a major realignment in US politics. Obama later managed to win two terms largely on the basis of attracting a sufficient number of populist swing voters. Hillary Clinton's failure to win in the key MidWest states was down to, you guessed it, the populists, some of whom voted for Trump, and others of whom stayed home.

This populist swing vote is what matters in choosing our standard-bearer. Biden was never the "electable" choice-- his earlier campaigns for president collapsed because he is a blatantly sub-par candidate, and he is in even worse shape now because so much of the electorate is aware of his history with mass incarceration, foreign wars, and systemic racism. Buttigieg is hardly better in this area, and benefits mainly from one of his greatest weaknesses-- a very short résumé. In that time, though, he has antagonized minority communities in South Bend, and sketched out a blandly "centrist" vision which again leaves him at best an Eisenhower Republican.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, is an off-the-charts disaster of epic proportion for the Democratic party. Do we really want to run an oligarch with no interest in speaking to or courting the voters? Do we want to let someone runs advertisements and buy the White House? Bloomberg chose not to contest the early states. He chose not to solicit donations so that he could debate-- and thus be vetted by the electorate. He is running as a nakedly authoritarian figure, comfortable with by-passing our most sacred democratic traditions. This, too, fits a historical pattern-- does anyone remember how he dealt with Occupy Wall Street? Hint: It involved ignoring court orders and using overwhelming force.

If the Democrats want to win in November, they need both to energize non-voters, and to bring on board those populist swing voters who took a chance on Obama but were disappointed by how little he actually did for them. We cannot afford to run another all-talk candidate, and we cannot afford to run another conservative. Taking out Trump will be a hard fight, and the candidate best positioned to mobilize enough voters to do that is Bernie Sanders.

Hannie Schaft, murdered by Dutch Nazis, symbol of The Resistance

Sorry to be so blunt, but Democrats have decided to impeach President Trump and we have an urgent deadline to stop them: We're rallying as many Loyal American Patriots as we can for the next 24 hours -- and we've activated 5x-matching for you.

You've already received emails from Steve Scalise, Liz Cheney, Darin LaHood, Drew Ferguson and others...

They ALL want you to know this is the most important request we have EVER made of you. If we fall short now, we will ALL suffer the consequences.

Stand with President Trump, who has been FALSELY accused!

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)- 52.45
• Doug Jones (D-AL)- 45.21
• Kyrsten Sinema (Freak-AZ)- 34.18
• Susan Collins (R-ME)- 24.97
• Rand Paul (R-KY)- 13.76

“They will not get my vote on [nuking the filibuster],” Sinema said in her office, outfitted with shiny leather and translucent chairs and boasting a vivid shade of purple that pops from the walls. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority… It is the right thing for the country.

Senate allies

Sinema isn’t actively trying to reshape the party. Though she captured a state that Democrats would love to seize in the 2020 campaign, she’s utterly uninterested in using her perch as senator to do cable TV hits, speak to the Capitol Hill press corps or offer general guidance to Democrats ahead of a crucial election cycle.

Yet her record speaks for itself. She voted for Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and opposed attempts to roll back the Trump administration’s coal deregulation regime earlier this month.

It’s an approach that has the potential to revive the Senate’s moribund middle but has left her something of a mystery to her Democratic colleagues, even fellow moderates.

“Haven’t had a lot of interaction with her. She’s kind of doing her own thing,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), a centrist senator with a more liberal voting record than Sinema’s.

Unlike any of her colleagues, she snubbed sitting Sen. Ed Markey and endorsed Rep. Joe Kennedy, an old House colleague and close friend, in the hotly contested Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary. That earned a rejoinder from Manchin: “I would never do that … made no sense to me at all.”

And she is criticizing senators in both parties for “highly partisan” statements on impeachment and is declining to endorse the House impeachment inquiry: “That’s not my job, that’s not my role.”

For all her distance from the establishment, Sinema also seems to have come to an understanding with Schumer, whom she [fake-]opposed as Democratic leader during her 2018 campaign.

Like every member of the caucus, she gets random calls from Schumer frequently enough that she can easily break into a raspy New York accent while doing a brief impression of the minority leader: “‘Sinema! What’s new?’”

But when push comes to shove on important votes, she has a warning for party honchos: Leave her alone.

“Everyone knows that I am very independent-minded,” she said. “And that it’s not super useful to try and convince me otherwise.”

Sinema isn’t especially close with either Trump or Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (neither has her phone number, she said), but she doesn’t light into them the way most Democrats do. She’s working with McConnell to whip votes for repealing Obamacare’s medical device tax and said the president “certainly” knows who she is.

And observers watching her on the Senate floor during a vote would be forgiven for thinking she’s a Republican, considering her chats with GOP senators like Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.

She spends at least as much time on the Republican side of the chamber as the Democratic half and lists Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas as an ally atop the Commerce Committee’s Aviation and Space subcommittee. Cruz returned the favor by declining to lump the Arizona Democrat in with what he sees as an increasingly socialist Democratic Party.

“I said to her one time: Why aren’t you a Republican? … she said: ‘I just couldn’t be,’” Cramer recounted.

Cramer and Sinema came into the House together in 2013, and then arrived in the Senate this year. They are close friends but couldn’t be more different. In fact, there are few like Sinema, the youngest Democrat at 43 who’s trying to figure out how to teach a spin class in the archaic Senate gym and boasts a sense of style that stands out in the tradition-bound Senate.

“I’m sort of a prude and she’s very exotic,” Cramer explained of their contrasting demeanor. “She was very hard on President Obama. So she’s quite feisty.”

There’s one Republican who’s still at arm’s length from Sinema: Martha McSally, whom Sinema defeated in 2018 but was then quickly appointed to fill the seat of the late Sen. John McCain. McSally said that the two “left it all out there on the field during the campaign” and Sinema said their staffs work together.

But after a race in which McSally accused Sinema of saying “It’s OK to commit treason,” and Sinema said McSally was spreading "smears," there’s been no real attempt to put the past behind them.

“There hasn’t been that conversation,” Sinema said flatly.

Sinema isn’t out for revenge, either. She’s currently uncommitted in McSally’s campaign against Democrat Mark Kelly and has no plans to weigh in. She said her constituents “don’t care” about endorsements.

That neutral stance might buy her goodwill with her Republican colleagues, who are in the majority, after all. But it’s another reminder that her moderate stance doesn’t play well with all Democrats. The state Democratic Party put off a censure vote against her this year, but could revive it next year.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a progressive Democrat from Arizona, said Democrats were “a little thrown back” by her vote for Barr and warned her not to forget her state’s increasingly young, diverse voting population as she navigates the tricky politics of being from a swing state.

“She runs her own thing. It worked for her getting elected. In terms of effectiveness, we’ll see,” Grijalva said. “I would be more concerned about not reflecting where the demographics in Arizona are going. And they’re going Democratic and they’re going more progressive.”

Sinema is unmoved and might even see a censure as a badge of honor after McCain received one from the state GOP. Sinema won’t fight the effort and won’t change her positions. And if the censure resolution comes back up next year? “I don’t know. Also, don’t care.”

Sinema’s attempt to be above the political fray is central to her identity and her goal of building relationships with as many colleagues as possible.

Party leaders’ whip counts? Not her problem. Using her platform as senator to regularly promote her views to a national audience? Not interested. Skipping caucus lunches almost everyone else attends? She’ll be there when it matters for Arizona.

And missing votes on the EPA chief for an Ironman race?

“Ironman’s pretty badass. It’s awesome,” she responded when asked if she got any criticism for skipping town for New Zealand just two months into her term.

Less awesome, in her view, is the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. And with her party fixated on beating both McSally and Trump in Arizona, Sinema’s endorsement or even guidance for candidates about how to win there could be key.

But that’s not something she’s interested in, either. She even said it’s “premature” to commit to supporting her own party’s nominee at this point and indicated it could be months before she tunes into a debate.

“Eventually it would be wonderful to have a candidate that shares the values of the majority of Americans,” Sinema said cryptically. “Let’s winnow the field below like, 20 or something, and then maybe it gets easier. Like, when it’s enough for two basketball teams, it’s too much.”

The central issue is the former vice president’s long-standing-- but now abandoned-- support for the amendment, which prohibits the use of federal money for abortion services.

One big effect of the Hyde Amendment is a significant limitation on abortions for Medicaid recipients.

Biden’s past position was a matter of public record, but it had not been a prominent issue in this campaign until the publication of an NBC News report early on Wednesday morning.

The report, by Heidi Przybyla, noted not only that Biden had supported Hyde in the past, but that his campaign reaffirmed that he continued to do so.

A firestorm of criticism from advocates of reproductive rights followed-- along with some of the sharpest attacks on Biden so far from his Democratic rivals.

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was asked at a Wednesday evening MSNBC town hall event whether Biden was wrong, she replied firmly “yes” before going on to describe how women would be hurt by his position.

By the next day, it was clear Biden’s stance was unsustainable-- and that the controversy was taking its toll on the candidate himself.

Sources close to Biden said he was out-of-sorts as he traveled around the Atlanta area on Thursday. The former vice president, normally known for his garrulousness, was disengaged from the people around him, these sources said, a pensive mood supplanting his usual ebullience.

Behind the scenes, even some of his own team grumbled that they were uncomfortable with his position. “It was a real problem," one close ally said. "I think a lot of people felt like it wasn't going well.”

By the time he was preparing his remarks for a Democratic Party fundraising event that night, even Biden realized there was no plausible way forward beside switching his previous position.

“I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the care they need,” he said Thursday night. “I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code.”

Outside of Biden’s orbit, Democrats were left scratching their heads about what had happened-- and pondering whether the former vice president had suffered any lasting political damage.

“I suspect that his campaign realized very quickly that this is an issue that is non-negotiable in a Democratic primary,” said Karen Finney, a senior advisor to 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Finney, who is not affiliated with any candidate in this cycle, noted that Clinton had pledged in 2016 to repeal the Hyde Amendment and that doing so had also been in the party platform that year.

The other major candidates in this year’s race are also in favor of repeal.

Referring to the Biden campaign, Finney said, “Perhaps they didn’t fully recognize the shift. This is not just in the purview of the ‘far left,’ quote-unquote, this is in the party platform.”

People close to Biden note that abortion has long been a vexing issue for him. A practicing Catholic, Biden is personally opposed to abortion. But he has emphasized that he does not believe his religious beliefs should drive legislation.

Wednesday’s NBC News report noted a recent email to supporters in which Biden said he would “refuse to impose my religious beliefs on other people,” as well as passages from his 2007 book Promises to Keep in which he described his views on abortion as “middle of the road” and acknowledged that he did not have “a right to impose my view on the rest of society.”

A source familiar with Biden's thinking said it was a complicated issue, inextricably intertwined with the former vice president’s Catholicism. “The Biden ethos is family and faith,” the source said. “Always has been, always will be.”

Such explanations beg the question of what justification-- other than cold-eyed political calculation-- could be offered for such a rapid U-turn on an issue that is fundamentally the same as it ever was.

“I think he realized very quickly that the world has changed, even since a year ago. Abortion clinics are closing, Planned Parenthood is in trouble and there aren't a lot of options for underprivileged folks. The climate has completely changed,” said another Biden ally.

The broader danger for Biden may be the way in which the change on the Hyde Amendment invites scrutiny of other parts of his past record that sit uneasily with today’s Democratic Party, where progressives are widely seen as ascendant.

Bakari Sellers, a commentator and former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, who is supporting Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), described Biden’s contortions this week as a “clusterfuck.”

Sellers added, “Since he has recognized that his position for 30 years has been incorrect and he is now changing that, I think it is only fair he now does that with his position on the Iraq War and his position on the ’94 crime bill-- and the ’88 crime bill and the ’86 crime bill.”

Biden’s support for the Iraq War and draconian crime legislation has long been seen as a vulnerability.

Others on the left look askance at Biden’s attempted explanation for his flip-flop.

“The Hyde Amendment is a racist, classist and sexist law,” said progressive strategist Rebecca Katz, the founder of New Deal Strategies. “It didn’t just become terrible in 2019. It’s always been terrible.”

On the other hand, some progressives saw Biden’s shift as evidence of the left’s growing power-- and therefore something to be commended, rather than met with churlishness.

Jonathan Tasini, a veteran progressive organizer and writer in New York, sought to put Biden’s shift in a much broader context. He highlighted the changes wrought, particularly by female activists, in recent years.

“If the Women’s March had not happened, if the 'Me Too' movement had not mushroomed, I’m not sure that Joe Biden would have felt the pressure to change his position,” Tasini said. “I think progressives are well-advised to not just look at this in the stark, political-horserace calculation but in terms of, we are moving the conversation.”

Beyond that, the question of potential damage to Biden’s bid for the nomination remains open.

People in his camp argue that voters will forgive the change of tack.

But others said that, at a minimum, the former vice president would need to be crystal-clear in his pro-choice positions from now on.

“He needs to find ways to demonstrate his commitment to abortion rights whenever his flip-flop on the Hyde Amendment comes up. It's almost as bad to have two positions on an issue [as] it is to have one bad stance,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

New Biden For President Poster

Democrats aren’t necessarily responding favorably to Biden as a candidate in 2020. They are voting for 2010s feel-good Biden, whom even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham will defend as a “friend.” Trumps spends many news cycles attacking Biden these days; he can only imagine his administration polling as high as when Biden served in the White House.

But the 1990s haunt Biden, too. In fact, he confronts more problematic decades than any other front-runner in recent memory. There’s 1970s Biden, the young Delaware senator who courted segregationists while advancing anti-busing legislation in the Senate. On Thursday, Biden withdrew his support for the Hyde amendment, the 1976 provision that bans the application of federal funding toward most abortion services, citing recent abortion bans in Georgia, Alabama, and Missouri as cause for concern. He has irritated modern Democratic activists nonetheless. There’s 1980s Biden, the upstart who flamed out of his first Democratic primary, doomed by personal embellishments and a plagiarism scandal. There’s 1990s Biden, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, who failed Anita Hill in 1991 and who supported the 1994 crime bill, which promoted harsher sentencing guidelines for federal drug offenses and violent crimes. There’s 2000s Biden, the gaffe artist who, in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, challenged Obama and Clinton from the center. There’s 2010s Biden, whom the Obama administration simply recast as an adorable figurehead—an antidote to Dick Cheney’s legacy as a shadow president intent on increasing executive power. Now, there’s 2020 Biden, 76, who, if elected, would be the oldest president in history, a party elder addressing a great rift between generations.

Biden has put forth an ambiguous political platform in a crowded Democratic field that has so far been defined by big ideas and a socialist bent. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, 77, voted for the 1994 crime bill, too-- but Sanders now advances a bold and distinct political project that largely obscures his past blemishes. Sanders is a socialist, and he’s leading a left-wing class rebellion into the 2020s. It is easy to summarize what Sanders represents, even for critics who will then go on to dispute the senator’s wisdom and fitness for the highest office. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, once a Republican, advances a meticulously progressive agenda, allowing some distinction between herself and Sanders, but no confusion about her current policy commitments.

Biden hasn’t conclusively foreclosed the previous decades of his political career. For now, Biden coasts on Obama nostalgia, marketing himself as “an Obama-Biden Democrat,” resisting the many critical efforts to bring the four previous decades of Biden’s political profile into the Biden canon. In the last week of June, the Democratic presidential primary debates will begin, and Biden’s desperate rivals may well force him to relive the 20th century and a few other low moments, including the Iraq invasion, the Patriot Act, and bankruptcy reform in the 2000s. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary will force Biden’s earlier decades into contrast with his “Obama-Biden Democrat” bona fides. He cannot coast on the good feelings which are, themselves, growing old. Uncle Joe now polls at 32 percent-- well ahead of the couple dozen rivals to the left and right of him. But Biden’s previous incarnations all polled much lower.

Donald Trump and "Trumpism " represent a profound change in the trajectory of American government, politics, and culture. Trump is the only person ever elected president without holding elected political office or serving as a general in the military. His principles instead grow out of five decades of business and celebrity success. This is why President Trump behaves differently than traditional politicians-- because his life experience has been unlike most traditional politicians.

Understanding Trump requires a willingness to study him as the remarkable phenomenon he is. This book explains Trump's actions so far and will help readers to understand the emerging movement and administration.

Newt Gingrich says President Trump should begin every day by reviewing his campaign promises. Trump owes his presidency to the people who believed in him as a candidate, not to the elites in government and the media who have expressed contempt for him since he began his campaign to become president.

"Reasonableness" would be the death of Trumpism. The very essence of Trump's mission is a willingness to enact policies and set goals that send our country in a bold new direction-- which is "unreasonable" to Washington but sensible to millions of Americans.

Art by Tim O'Brien

No matter how you sliced it, the affair lacked the exuberance and adoration we’ve come to expect from a showman like Trump on the campaign trail. He often cites his own power to amass fans and followers (have you heard he has a Twitter account?) as one of his greatest assets. He’s referred to it as his edge above all the other “losers.”

Those losers seemed to be on his mind later that night as he danced with his model-beautiful wife wearing the look of a high school bully who’d just been named Prom King. Two lines from his inauguration speech seemed especially relevant to the moment: “Everyone is listening to you now... You will never be ignored again.”

Ignored? No, but upstaged, yes. The next morning the Women’s March on Washington flooded the areas around the Capitol Dome that had been noticeably less populated when Trump was waving from and walking near his stretch limo on the parade route. The half-empty parade bleachers and unoccupied ground tarps of Friday were swallowed up by a sea of protesters who’d flown in from across the country to voice concerns about the Trump presidency.

They were thousands among the millions who protested across the nation and the world for women’s rights-- and their concern about a president whose remarks about sexually assaulting women were as disturbing as some of his conservative Cabinet picks’ views of reproductive rights.

Madonna, America Ferrera, Ashley Judd, Scarlett Johansson and Gloria Steinem stoked the crowd’s exuberance in way that Trump did not the day before. It was a rousing spectacle. It was exciting. It was everything the show on Friday was not.

And maybe that is why Spicer was sent out on Saturday to belligerently berate the press-- “the opposition party,” in the words of one Trump official. Here was the “unbelievable” scene-- the likes of which we’d “never seen before.”

The true start of the Trump presidential reality show had begun.