stevenkesslar

Another piece from Morning Joe this morning: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/how-impeachment-inquiry-impacts-us-globally-70079557753 Two points I'll make about this. First, at the very end, Tom Friedman says "It's the independent nature of the witnesses this time that is going to change the character of this story." I think he is right. I watched wall to wall TV last night and channel flipped. MSNBC alleged that Fox is freaking out, and Paul Ryan (now a Fox board member) is privately saying it's time to prepare for the post-Trump era. While Laura let Ghouliani go on and on about how he's gonna be the hero in the end (poor Rudy!) Sean Hannity is reported to be saying in private this is very bad news for Trump. And the "cover up is worse than the crime" riff got more coverage than I might have thought it would. What I found interesting is that nobody brought up the fact that the US Ambassador to Ukraine was sacked, perhaps because she and Ghouliani were operating at cross purposes. She was apparently fighting corruption, and he apparently was trying to get Ukraine's leaders to do corrupt things. So Friedman went off on Ambassador "The Woman Was Bad News" Yovanovitch in this piece. I think his basic point is correct. You could not have had Watergate without John Dean. My hunch is that as the facts emerge, she is going to be the Jane Dean of Ukrainegate. We'll see. Second, and to take back a little bit of what I said about Pelosi in the post directly above, both Friedman and Robinson talked about how the Democrats are their own worst enemy. I would not say that about Nancy. But I agree that some of the hearings are straight out of Keystone Kops. I haven't really tuned in, but my impression is that Schiff is one of the better spokepeople. That said, he kind of blew it yesterday. The main point Friedman and Robinson made, to state it more bluntly they they did, is that the danger is the Democrats have hundreds of showboats who will all want to speak for themselves, poorly. When what's really needed now is to let the facts speak for themselves. I think these two points tie together. If the Democrats botch some of this, which they will, the facts will still come out. Friedman is probably right that what we know now is just the tip of a huge iceberg. So part of this issue for Team Nancy will be how do you edit, and keep people focused on the same clear message. (I know. I know. Ironic that I would use the word "edit".) In the end, though, it doesn't matter. If this really is the tip of the iceberg, we know that the damage is already done. Now the rest of the story is simply seeing how we get to the inevitable tragic ending.

Nancy on Morning Joe this morning Pitch perfect, I think. https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/pelosi-trump-used-taxpayer-money-to-shake-down-leader-for-his-own-gain-70068293762

Trump Reelection Depends on New Voters By A.B. Stoddard I'm putting that article here because I think A.B. is exactly right, and this is where the rubber hits the road on whether Ukrainegate helps or hurts Trump in 2020. All the evidence - the 2018 midterms being Exhibit A, Trump's low favorability ratings being Exhibit B, and the horse race polls in swing states being Exhibit C - suggest that she is right and Trump does not have the votes to win in 2020. At least based on the actual patterns of voting in 2018, and the turnout models embedded in almost all those 2020 polls. So Trump has to throw the puzzle pieces up in the air and hope they somehow land differently. Presumably, that's what Trump holding a rally in New Mexico (New Mexico? Really?) was intended to do. If you want to go full whack job devil theory, you could argue that Ukrainegate was actually designed in Frankenstein's lab (or at least Ghouliani's) to accomplish this. The theory would go like this. Trump did get a lot of White men to throw a Testicle Tantrum in Fall 2018. It went sort of like this: "Men, grab your testicles and hold them dear. Because these lying conniving women that get paid by George Soros are out for them. They will destroy the careers and testicles of any perfectly fine young man - why it could even be your son! - by alleging that he keeps waving his cock and balls in the face of helpless or drunk women or girls. That is what these lying, conniving Soros-loving women will do." Of course, some of these White Men With Big Testicles may have daughters as well as sons, but let's not go there. There is some evidence that the Testicle Tantrum worked in some places in 2018. Not in California, where pretty much every Republican House incumbent got castrated (politically, I mean). But in places like North Dakota and Missouri, where White Men and their Big Testicles still stand tall and proud. They sure taught Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill a lesson. Which is a funny thing, in a way, regarding your point about socialism, @RA1. I've known a Republican for about 20 years who would call me and whine about how it's a well known fact that Claire McCaskill is one of the most liberal members of the Senate. I kept correcting him and saying, no, Claire McCaskill is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. She's the kind of person you want around if you like the idea of compromise, and solutions. Amazingly, facts won out, and I eventually persuaded the Republican that McCaskill was in fact one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. So the net effect of 2018 is we have more women in Congress. And they are more like AOC, and less like Claire McCaskill. So I'm not sure how well Trump's 2018 Testicle Tantrum really worked out for him. I doubt that's the outcome he had in mind. A.B. is right that Trump caught lightning in a bottle in 2016. He played off all kinds of economic and social grievances that had been festering for decades, and that he could rightly claim happened on the watch of both political parties. But here's the thing. The opioid epidemic is just as bad, or worse. We've regained some manufacturing jobs, but at about the same pace as we did under Obama. Meaning we haven't come close to replacing the roughly 6 million manufacturing jobs we lost under W., thanks to China and the Great Recession. And maybe Trump's trade war will seal the deal. But his favorability rating in Iowa is as low as the silos of rotting soybeans are high. At least Iowa's Joni Ernst probably knows how to defend herself when the conniving Soros women come after her. But Trump in Iowa? I'm not so sure So you could go full whack job devil theory and argue that Ukrainegate was cooked up by Trump and Ghouliani as a way to get all these people who don't usually vote to vote in 2020. Including all the people who didn't vote until Trump came along in 2016, and then a whole bunch more who didn't even vote in 2016. How likely is that? Not very, I think. What Trump had going for him in 2016 was "Make America Great Again". So how well will it work if 2020 is about "Make Ukraine Great Again"? Because Trump's sole remaining defense, which he is using, is to say that he really wasn't just trying to keep himself in office by cheating. It's that he just wanted to help Ukraine be a little less corrupt. Really. And this is the strategy to get voters in Florida who did not vote for Trump in 2016 to vote for him in 2020? Nah. Even Trump and Ghouliani ain't that stupid. All of this stuff has the telltale signs of desperate people doing desperate things. I think it's more likely that what will resonate in 2020 is a huge reaction against corruption. And it's more like that Trump will end up looking to many new and younger voters like "corruption in the flesh". Geez. Didn't somebody running for President just say something like that?

Life is full of irony, isn't it? I understand what you are trying to say about the impact of the Clinton impeachment on the 1998 midterms - not the 2000 Presidential election. Here's a line I stole from somewhere about the 1998 midterms and the subsequent revolt against Gingrich that captures the irony of that situation. Feel free to steal it from me: Bill Clinton got a blow job. And Newt Gingrich lost his job over it. Here's another irony, in light of Monicagate and its presumed impact on Gore's loss in 2000: Bill and Hillary Clinton are still married. Al and Tipper Gore are not. Then again, history usually gets things right. Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. Trump may or may not be convicted after impeachment. But he won't win a Nobel for his efforts. History will likely remember Gore as ahead of the curve on climate change. History will likely remember Trump as one of the latest corrupt climate change deniers.

For the record, my point was exactly the opposite. It was the Republicans that were helped. Al Gore lost and George W. Bush won in 2000. At the time, Lichtman said that it was going to be a close race, and that the scandal of impeachment would work in W.'s favor. He called it right. That of course does not mean it will work out the same way this time, of course. That said, take a look at this. It echoes what I said above, based on the initial polling. Finally, somebody agrees with me! Impeaching Trump is only going to get more popular

Support for impeachment jumps in new poll Wow. This is a pretty remarkable shift. It's the second poll out in 24 hours that shows a plurality or even a majority of Americans are open to the idea of impeaching POTUS. This poll is even worse news for Trump, I think, in that it doesn't include the "IF" clause in the poll I posted above. Meaning "IF" it's "proven" that Trump suspended aid to Ukraine to push Ukraine's leaders to investigate Biden and his son. Here's how the question in this poll was worded: Table POL1: As you may know, the first step toward removing a president from office is impeachment. Do you believe Congress should or should not begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office? https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016d-6ecb-dbb7-a16d-7feb39630002 Those are the cross tabs for the poll, which offer more detail that I think is just bad news for Trump. The 43 % who say they oppose impeachment corresponds with 41 % who "strongly" or "somewhat" approve of Trump. Just like with Nixon in the 70's, my guess is that even if we proved that Trump is the Antichrist, he'd go down with 40 % + of Americans saying that what Democrats did to him was a sin. That also leaves close to 60 % who are at least open to consider impeaching Trump. The other bad news for Trump is that a very small plurality of Independents now favor impeachment: 39 % for, 36 % opposed, the rest no opinion or undecided. My guess is that it is likely to only get worse for Trump, at least in the short term. The reason I included the cross tabs is that the results change ever so slightly when you add detail to the impeachment question, and ask it like this: Table POL4: As you may know, according to news reports, President Trump told senior administration officials to withhold military aid from Ukraine. This occurred days before President Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate allegedly corrupt behavior by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who worked with a Ukrainian natural gas company. Sometimes in surveys like this, people change their minds. Based on what you know now, do you believe Congress should or should not begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office? When asked this way, the margin of support for impeachment among all voters increased a few points, to 44 % for/41 % against. Support among Independents shifted one point, to 39 % for/35 % against. That's meaningless statistically. But as the article says, many of the people polled hadn't even heard about the last day or two of disclosures. As more information comes out, there is reason to think it will not make people feel sympathetic to Trump. For example, it's an allegation rather than a fact that a career diplomat who was the US Ambassador to Ukraine was fired because she would not "play ball" with Ghouliani's "hard ball" tactics. But in politics perception is reality. If people start to see it that way, watch out below, Rudy and Donald. Same thing if they start to feel the President and all his men tried to cover up the verbatim electronic record of the call, as the whistle blower alleges. There's one final slice of bad news for Trump, I think, embedded in the cross tabs of this poll. 41 % of Independents "strongly" disapprove of Trump's job performance, and 19 % "somewhat" disapprove of his job performance. On the face of it, it is bad news for Trump that 60 % of Independents disapprove of how he is doing his job. It's likely that most of the 39 % of Independents who favor impeachment are the ones who "strongly" disapprove. And if there is any group of voters that is likely to be moved by cold hard facts as opposed to partisanship, it is probably lukewarm Independents. My guess is that as the facts we are just learning get beaten to death by the media and Democrats, there's a good chance that a majority of Independents - arguably even something as high as 60 % - could end up favoring impeachment. We'll see. This is all a huge shift from where voters were at earlier this year, right after the Mueller report came out: Trump’s Popularity Hits Record Low as Support for Impeachment Wanes To make sure it's completely clear, that's from a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from April of this year. Back then, Independents were opposed to impeachment: 44 % against, 31 % for, the rest undecided. So Republicans of course have their heels dug in. But both Democrats and Independents are shifting, rapidly. I've read a bunch of articles today about what Pelosi and the "swing" moderate Democrats who shifted in the last few days are thinking. It seems like it boils down to two words: "smoking gun". And maybe a third: 2020. It's one thing to talk about something that happened in 2016, that Mueller never produced an absolutely compelling smoking gun for. The feeling or gamble now seems to be that we have a smoking gun. And in this case it was aimed at Democrats running in 2020. Nancy was definitely speaking up loud and clear and on message today: The final thing I'll say is that the silence on the part of most Senate Republicans is deafening. Of course, as always, The Divine Miss Graham is on message as Trump's Secretary Of Cocksucking. He's arguing that it's not Trump's fault that the Dept. of Defense just wanted to do a "policy process" before they released the money to Ukraine. We all of course know that one thing Donald Trump always insists on is an absolutely thorough and fair "policy process", right? Come to think of it, that's probably why they got a 25 year career diplomat Ambassador with a great reputation out of the way, and Trump's beloved sidekick, Rudy Ghouliani, ran with the ball. That had to be all about having the very best "policy process", right? Reading between the lines, the fact that Miss Graham isn't engaging in the kind of histrionics that won her an Oscar for her performance at the Kavanaugh hearings is itself a subtle tell on what's going on right now. Most Senate Republicans - you know, the White guys who would have to vote to convict - are not saying a word right now. To me that says a whole hell of a lot. I suspect they are just scared.

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5-4-18 Menendez joint letter to General Prosecutor of Ukraine on Mueller investigation.pdf One final letter that is extremely interesting. I got to that link from an article on Breitbart. The article makes a classic false equivalence argument. It argues: what's wrong with Trump and Ghouliani (and maybe Barr) asking Ukraine to do something regarding investigations around the 2020 election, when you had Democratic Senators pressuring Ukraine to do something regarding the 2016 elections? The letter is from Senators Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy to former Prosecutor General Lutsenko. This is clearly one of the lines that the Republicans will use: hey, everybody does it! In fairness, since Sen. Menendez is one of the three Senators, it's a valid enough point. By the standards of the Trump Swamp, Menendez is of course innocent. Unlike Kavanaugh, they thoroughly investigated. Like Manafort and Flynn and others, he had his day in court. Unlike Trump's cronies that went to jail, Sen. Menendez was found innocent. That said, a lot of people (including Democrats) in New Jersey still think he's corrupt, according to polls. Again, I think this is just all going to feed an anti-corruption mood. Trumpians will try to create a false equivalence here. But I think most people get that the Mueller investigation was a bipartisan effort conducted professionally and openly, and Mueller himself was a former Republican FBI Director. (Notwithstanding some right wingers who thought he was a Clintonista, or a Gestapo agent who just liked to kick down doors). So it's appropriate for US Senators to openly ask Ukraine to cooperate with a bipartisan public investigation into corruption and prior election interference run by a Republican former FBI Director. Comparing that to what Trump and Ghouliani (and maybe Barr) did in a private phone call - asking a foreign leader to interfere in a future election for Trump's personal political benefit, and then trying to obfuscate about it and cover it up - ain't gonna fly with most people, I don't think. The reason I think that the letter is interesting is these two lines: I could see this playing out in an impeachment for several reasons. First, it's a back door way to tie Trump's Ukraine 2020 election interference corruption scandal back to the Mueller 2016 election interference investigation. The letter names Trump and states the apparent motive in not cooperating with Mueller was "to avoid the ire of President Trump". So it ties it back to Mueller's finding that Trump attempted to obstruct justice, time and time again. Trumpians will of course all scream "witch hunt". Most Americans just don't see it that way. Pelosi is being quoted as wanting to focus impeachment on Ukraine, not Mueller plus everything else in the garbage heap. Once again, I think it shows she has pitch perfect political judgment. That said, she's also saying we can add back other articles of impeachment later. So this piece creates a direct tie between Ukraine and Mueller's findings of obstruction of justice. It also speaks to the "quid pro quo" argument. Of course anybody who has watched The Sopranos gets the fact that you don't have to spell out a threat in order to make one. So there will be a lot of talk about Trump and Ghouliani acting like TV mafia clowns. And the letter from Democratic Senators is based on a New York Times article, not something Lutsenko himself said. So cue up the "fake news" chorus. All that said, if this rises to the level of broad public debate, I think most people will grasp the idea that the "quid pro quo" was simply understood. Not only in the context of one specific phone call Trump made, but also in the context of the overall dynamic of the relationship. I think there's a very good chance the majority of Americans will see this like a mafia TV thing - "Celebrity Mobster!: Apprentice Edition" - and conclude that Trump and Ghouliani were in fact telling the leaders of Ukraine that if you don't do what we want to help our own personal political interests, you are going to suffer.

Hunter Biden 'did not violate anything,' former Ukrainian prosecutor says Meanwhile, former Ukranian Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who the new President let go last month, says there is no there there regarding Biden or his son. I'd bet money that this is going to hurt both Trump and Biden: Trump more, and Biden less. It all smells of corruption. Even if you believe that it is not Joe Biden's fault that his son got rich in his perfectly legal dealings with Ukraine and China, it just seems likely to play into a "pox on all your houses" anti-corruption mood.

This is bad bad bad for Trump. Here's the redacted whistleblower letter. As one Democratic Senator said off the record a few days ago, it is in fact worse than the non-transcript "lipstick on a pig" version the White House put out: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf It is going to be fascinating to see how this plays out. The memo has as much to do with the endemic corruption in Ukraine as it has to do with the endemic corruption of Team Trump. Which is to say, it is very confusing. Arguably, that works to Trump's advantage, because he can try to say it's whatever he wants it to be. More likely, I'd guess, the American people will sniff out the corruption in this, and say that if it stinks like shit, it probably is shit. It's also time to resurrect the Watergate bumper sticker: "the cover up is worse than the crime." It's probably not a headline thing, but we now know thanks to the whistle blower's letter that there was an inside effort to "'lock down' all records of the phone call, especially the official word for word transcript of the call .... White House officials told me they were 'directed' by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system..." What sounds like headline material is that a career US diplomat, Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanavitch, was recently fired because she would not "play ball" with Ghouliani and Team Trump on getting the Ukraine to target Biden for investigation - which is to say, for refusing to "play ball" in getting the country she was ambassador to to interfere in the 2020 US election. Trump Blasts Own Ambassador in Call With Ukrainian President The U.S. president said he wanted to keep Kyiv honest. So why did he fire his ambassador after she called out corruption? That's former Ambassador "The Woman Was Bad News" Yovanovitch. I can't imagine it will help Trump with moderate suburban women, among others, when it comes out gradually that he bullied and fired yet another professional woman trying to do what is right for her country.

I just laughed my ass off when I read this article. What Is CrowdStrike and Why Is Donald Trump Blabbering About It to Ukraine

My my my. We're a little bit fact challenged today, aren't we? I guess you are going for a daily double. Fact challenge one: Clinton was not "re-elected" in 2000. He was, of course, re-elected in 1996. But that was way before any impeachment drama. So if your argument is that impeachment will help Trump get re-elected, just like it helped Clinton get re-elected, news flash: it didn't. Fact challenge two: Nancy Pelosi is not a socialist. Nancy Pelosi’s Life in the 0.1 Percent You can attack Nancy Pelosi for being one of the richest members of Congress, and for being a capitalist fat cat - which is sort of what that 2015 article from the conservative National Review above does. That's fair game. Liberal hypocrisy, blah blah blah. But that then pretty much disqualifies you from calling her a socialist. It will be really interesting to see how the Republicans try to put a lipstick on this pig of socialism if Warren is the nominee, and Pelosi is the Speaker of the House. (Warren's net worth is estimated to be about $8 million or so, I think - including her husband's wealth). Now I'll go off into Fantasyland for just a minute. Professor: Dems need to impeach Trump to win 2020 Professor Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted the last nine presidential election wins, says Democrats will only have a chance at winning in 2020 if they impeach President Donald Trump. Lichtman is interesting. On the fact of it, his system of "keys" sounds like crystal ball and Abracadabra. Except that it is an empirically verifiable fact that he used his "keys" to correctly predict who would win the Presidency in the last nine of nine elections. In Fall 2016 I was paying close attention, because he was saying - loudly - that unless something changes, Trump is probably gonna win a narrow race. He of course turned out to be right. His system makes common sense. At core, it kind of like, "It's the economy, stupid." So of course it will matter if we tip into a recession, or even into a near recession, in the next year. Lichtman's point recently has been that the Clinton impeachment did "work" for the Republicans. Had Clinton been impeached, who would have been the President? I believe the name is Al Gore. Instead, Gore ran for President in 2000, and lost. Even Gore has said the taint of Clinton scandal and Clinton fatigue were contributing factors to his loss. Lichtman would agree. I think Lichtman's argument is common sense. The economy is okay, like it was under Obama. But it's not booming. For 6 months now we've had a reduction in net non-farm payrolls in 10 states, including key ones like Michigan and Pennsylvania. So that could go either way. There's a good argument to be made that adding a big scandal to this is not likely to help Trump in 2020, just like the Clinton impeachment didn't end up helping Gore.

Thought I'd add these polls: 1. Even when Watergate started to get serious, support for impeaching Nixon was mostly in the 30's 2. Support for impeaching Trump last month was actually slightly higher than support for impeaching Nixon at the beginning of the Watergate scandal 3. And this poll, fresh off the press, really blows my mind NEW POLL SHOWS MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT TRUMP IMPEACHMENT IF PRESIDENT SUSPENDED UKRAINE AID OVER BIDEN INQUIRY The number not in that brand new poll is where Independents come down. But my guess is you can kind of back out of the numbers and probably Independents are around 50/50, or maybe even slightly in favor of the idea of impeachment. The key number to me in this poll is that 55 % of voters are open to the idea .... IF. The "IF" here is obviously huge. But now that the transcript is out, I think we know enough to say that something relating to Biden, Barr, and Ghouliani was going on in that phone call Trump made. Which is to say, my guess is 55 % or more will say it is at least a legitimate and in fact important thing to look into. We all know Trump won't be convicted, anyway. So the real question comes down to the political benefits and costs of looking into it. 55 % is in the ballpark of the percentage of voters that disapprove of Trump in any of the poll averages in any particular month. It's hard for me to imagine that any Democrat running for President will get more than 55 % of the vote next year. In fact, 55 % is obviously a big stretch - unless we are deep into a recession. So it's not clear from these numbers that Democrats have a lot to lose, at least at the Presidential level, by moving forward. The people who are adamantly against this appear to be the one quarter to one third of Americans that are the hardcore Trumpians, anyway.

So what do people think about the idea that we are now definitely headed into an "impeachment inquiry"? Will it help the Democrats? Hurt the Democrats? Neither? Or is it too early to tell? A PLAN TO WIN THE IMPEACHMENT FIGHT That's the best article I have read about the political logic of impeachment. In fact, it might be more accurate to word it this way: of the dozens (if not hundreds) or articles I've read on impeachment, this is about the only article I've read that really makes sense to me. The article was written this May, and is now being republished in light of what just happened. So it does not include Ukraine. But that doesn't really matter, because the basic strategy it outlines doesn't change at all. Other than Ukraine provides one more possible nail in the coffin. I've been with Pelosi on this issue all along. Which is to say that for the last year or so, I've been tilted against it - at least as something to rush into. Now that she is in, I'm sort of right in the middle. It a high risk move that could have a high payoff, or could come at a high price for Democrats. I don't have a strong feeling about that one way or the other. I do think the Ukraine thing is an appropriate tipping point, for one reason. Everything about Mueller was essentially pointing a rear view mirror at the 2016 election. Even I mostly felt, "It's history now. Let it go." Particularly given that Trump's easy response to "obstruction of justice" is "No. It's called me doing my job." Whatever you think about the politics of Trump asking a foreign leader to work with his Attorney General and personal lawyer to investigate his most likely opponent in the 2020 election, it definitely does one thing. It makes the debate about Trump's alleged bid for foreign interference in the 2020 election. That alone is an important difference. It's way to early to tell. But the initial silence of many Senate Republicans suggests they get that most Americans don't feel the job of the leader of Ukraine is to interfere in the 2020 US election. What I like best about that article is that I think the real political issue is not whether the Democrats try to impeach, but how well they do it. I strongly agree with the author that the Democrats will do best if they can use impeachmeent to pound in simple, clear, and relentless messages. (Ironic, I know, that I would say that.) Just to prove I am capable of it, if I had to boil it all down to one word, it would be: CORRUPTION. If I could add a phrase, it would be: TRUMP AND HIS CRONIES ARE IN IT FOR THEMSELVES. My guess is that maybe 10 % or so of the electorate is up for grabs. The other 90 % won't change their mind, even if you could prove that Trump is Jesus Christ, or the Devil Incarnate. I might up that to 15 to 20 % if the economy really changes. Meaning recession. A chart in a recent issue of The Economist shows that in the last six months, net non-farm payrolls actually fell in 10 US states. Including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. You may have noticed the headlines saying Trump's average national approval rating right now is at a two year high. That said, it is at or under 45 % in almost all the swing states, including most of the key ones he won in 2016. There's no doubt a variety of reasons. But economic softness is probably one of them, whether we are technically in (or headed into) a recession or not. So even if there is not a recession, his economic leadership could be a vulnerability. Which is why the combo of impeachment and Warren hammering away on how Trump and his cronies are corrupt fat cats who are only in it for themselves could be a winning political formula, I think. At the end of the day, I'll stick with the idea that maybe 10 % of the electorate is really up for grabs. And maybe we will in fact find out things we don't know as a result of an impeachment inquiry. More likely, though, I think what it really will come down to is how well Democrats and Trump can control the message about what we do pretty much know already. In that regard, I'm tempted to say Trump has the upper hand, simply because he alone has the bully pulpit of the Presidency. (And in this case, I mean bully literally.) That said, this also makes a subtle change about the relative merits of who we nominate. It makes it a little harder for Biden, since his family is now smack dab in the center of corruption allegations. It also slightly changes the context of Warren's favorite word: CORRUPTION. I'll close with the question I started with. Do others thinks this helps the Democrats, hurts them, makes no difference, or it's just too early to tell. And why?

I've wondered about that, too. In particular, I have wondered about the difference between Mexican Americans in California, and Mexican Americans in Texas. You could also throw Florida in, but then it gets more complicated because you get the older conservative Cubans, and now the anti-Socialist refugees from countries like Venezuela. The Texas Hispanic Vote Is No Guarantee for Democrats. Here’s Why. That's not a particularly good article, but I haven't found a particularly good article that explains the differences between Texas and California. There's two factors that are obvious ones to me. One is social conservatism, which this article talks a lot about. The other is perceptions of economic opportunity, which this article does not really discuss. Suffice it to say that Mexicans who immigrate to America seeking opportunity tend to like Republicans like Schwarzenegger (also an immigrant) and even Trump, to the degree that these Republicans are perceived as speaking the language of universal economic opportunity. I've seen polls (this is years ago) that say when you control for income, Latin Americans are essentially White. In my mind, why would a Mexican American be different than an Italian American was, or a Polish American was, when they had immigration waves a century or more ago, and were viewed by many as the trash at the bottom of the ladder? For that matter, how about German Americans or Scottish Americans - Trump's ancestry? (Let's leave Melania out of this.) One obvious difference is skin color. My hunch is that the darker a Latino you are, the more likely you are to be a Democrat. I was surprised when I started going to Mexico and watching TV there to learn Spanish, and noticed that most Mexicans on TV are somewhat Whiter than most Mexicans in a grocery store. So they have their own thing with skin color. And of course, at least in the 21st century, Mexico is no longer a one party state. There are a variety of political ideologies. So I assume when they immigrate, they bring their political leanings along. If anything, my bias would be that immigrant Mexicans moving to seek economic opportunity might be marginally more conservative and/or business-oriented. If so, that's an obvious reason why we should be welcoming them, not building walls. I've wondered whether part of the difference between Texas and California is what part of Mexico people immigrated from. Some areas are more liberal, some more conservative. But I've never seen anything that suggests that is a factor. The thing that I think is huge is how Mexicans are treated when they arrive. The turning point in California was under Governor Wilson, when the perception was that the Republican Party went to war with Mexican immigrants. If you buy that (I do), it explains why most Mexican Americans in California view the Republican Party as hostile. The difference in Texas and Florida can be partly understood this way: That's Jeb, not George. By all accounts, Jeb speaks Spanish much better than his brother. Of course, it helps to have a wife from Guanajuato. That's political symbolism rather than substance. I don't follow state politics in Texas or Florida very closely. But I think it's fair to say that Republicans in Texas and Florida have not done stupid shit like Republicans in California did, that were perceived as all out declarations of war against immigrants. In Florida in 2018, DeSantis had a Latina running mate. Rick Scott can speak Spanish almost as poorly as I do. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Nelson just sounded old, White, and English speaking. The interesting theory is this: as goes California, so goes the nation. That has not been an idea I would ever bet against. And there is reason to think that Trump is to the United States as former Governor Pete Wilson was to California. Meaning, these are Republicans who are defining their party as being hostile to the basic interests of Mexican Americans - unlike the Bushes, for example. There is some evidence from 2018 that Mexican Americans in places like Texas are taking it that way. (DeSantis cleverly ran around that problem, I think, in various ways.) One way I think we could win a fight on decriminalizing prostitution is by being really loud and factual about the fact that the real focus should be on the trafficking of women and kids, for both sex and labor. And if it were me, I'd start by screaming loud every day that Donald Trump has declared war on just about every Latina woman and child, be they from Mexico or the Triangle countries. We don't need to get into decriminalizing prostitution here. My point in bringing it up is that I think the political implications of Trump's war on Latin women and kids could be broad, deep, and enduring.

If it were 2016, I'd take the bait and talk about Bernie. But I won't now, since the trend is that he is sort of (barely) holding on, and Warren is rising. So it is more interesting to talk about her. First, she pretty much stops Trump's best zingers in their tracks. Examples: Trump says. "You're Pocahontas." Warren says, "Thanks, and you just proved you're a racist." Trump says. "I'm a capitalist. You're not." Warren says, "Funny thing is, I'm a capitalist, too. Perhaps you mean you're corrupt, and I'm not." If you watch that clip above of Warren at a committee hearing, it explains how I think she calls people into the trenches and wins. It's not that she's against capiatlism. It's that she wants capitalism (and banking, and the mortgage industry) to work for everyone - not just the fat cats. Having flipped a few homes that I sold to low-income families (one was White, one was Black, and both famiies should have over $100,000 in equity today, if they did not use the home as a piggy bank), I just love this example: Trump slams 'total hypocrite' Elizabeth Warren So it's clear, that article is from May 2016, before Trump was elected. You just got to love it. After Trump U and all the bankruptcies and law suits and fair housing complaints, Trump is going to go after Warren for being scammy on real estate? Give me a fucking break! I won't go any more into the details, other than to say I pray Trump makes this a campaign issue. The more you get into it, the more you learn that, "Duh! She's a capitalist." Just not one that loves to rip people off.

Interesting article. I've now completely moved this thread off Beto. But I'm posting it here because it involves a discussion of the same swing states discussed above where both the Presidency and the Senate could be up for grabs. It discusses a strategy of winning those states and The Presidency funded by rich women, and based on organizing women and people of color. These wealthy Democratic women have a plan to beat Trump at his own game The progressive group Way to Win was co-founded by an heiress to a Texas oil fortune.

Krystal Ball: Democrats on track to nominate Warren, lose to Trump So it's happening. There's another article I read on The Hill prior to the one above. I won't post it, but it was all about how everybody in DemocratLand is buzzing because at least one reputable poll in Iowa shows Warren out front in the first state that will actually vote. The Biden Bubble may be beginning to pop. I'm posting the article above because it's part of the buzz. So it's clear, it is written by a progressive (I'm guessing a Sanders supporter). So it's not an attack from Biden allies coming from the center. Bernie and Elizabeth so far are honoring their agreement to take the high road together. But it's fair to say Warren will now have people coming at her from both the left and right, saying she's a disaster waiting to happen. You can sum up the "progressive" argument by just using the buzz words: Wine track. Government bureaucrats with plans. College grads who knows shit about blue collar workers who lost a factory job. Cultural snobs. And (cover your ears, children) Pocahontas! In fairness, the argument is that Pocahontas is a symbol of inauthenticity. Warren is a phony. A Harvard snob pretending to be a working class Mom from Oklahoma. I think this probably defines the next phase of the Democratic primary. Warren will either rise to the occasion, or this may be where she stumbles and falls. I think she will rise to the occasion, and here is why: To put it in context, that's a clip from a town hall in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Two of the four people Warren is seated next to were Trump voters in 2016. In a prior clip, which is interesting but which I won't post, Warren goes through her plans for a two cent wealth tax on mega-millionaires, and how she'll use it to invest in a green economy and green manufacturing jobs. What is fascinating to me about this clip is that it deals with the next question: yeah, you have all these great plans. But why should we believe a word you say? And even if we believe you, why should we believe for one minute that any of this shit is actually going to happen? In some ways, it's actually more interesting to watch this by turning down the volume and just looking at these people's faces, and eyes. It speaks to hopelessness, disbelief, cynicism, being lied to, maybe just being ready to throw in the towel. And at one point Warren says to Chris Hayes (at about 9:30), "We can give up. You're right. We can just totally give up and say, "Hey, let 'em (the fat cats) have it." The next part of what she says is I think what makes or breaks her: "Or we can say that this is the moment we fight. I am in this fight all the way." The audience exploded in applause. You know who she reminds me of? Donald Trump! Make America Great Again! One thing I give him credit for is that Trump sold hope. But is was hope based on the idea that some rich fat cat who knows everything and always wins (sorry, that's a lie) is just gonna take care of it for you. Trust me. Call me biased, because I spent decades organizing in communities like this. But my gut feeling is that people know there's a reason why Trump has not delivered as promised. And they know in their hearts that Warren is right. You're never going to get anything unless you fight for it. I posted that lead article because I think "Krystall Ball", the author, has a shitty crystal ball. What defines Warren is not that she is a Harvard professor, or a wine sipper. Or that she is imperfect and she fumbled on the beer video and Pocahontas. What defines her is that she has spent her whole life getting back up on her feet, and fighting, and winning. And we know who she fights for. People who can't pay medical bills. People losing their home. People being screwed by banks and rich fat cats. And now, people being screwed and lied to by Donald J. Trump. I think this is what is going to make her or break her. Can she convince America that it is time to jump in the trenches and fight, together, for the country we actually want? And now the real test begins.

I will. That's the best book written on the financial crisis, I think. McLean is a former WSJ reporter, if I recall right. Her reporting and detail is just incredible. It is an intentionally top down look, so she focuses more on the CEOs and politicians than the grass roots. And it is a horrible indictment. And it comes down to a three letter word: EGO. And actually maybe another four letter word: MALE. She's a smart woman (her book on Enron, who I personally spent 4 years organizing against, and winning, was called The Smartest Guys In The Room). So the question is: why would incredibly powerful and rich men like Stan Greenberg and Angelo Mozilo actually destroy the companies they built from the ground up? McLean's answer: because they were big men, with big egos. They all thought their shit didn't stink. And all these people under them made shit loads of money. She says there was a saying at the time: IBG, YBG. I'll be gone, you'll be gone - when the shit hits the fan. That explains it all, I think. Bill Clinton and Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan belong on the list of big guys with big egos. That's Brooksley Born, who was a Clinton appointee who ran the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 1996 to 1999. That is the agency that, in theory, could have been on top of all this incomprehensible shit happening with derivatives of mortgages being traded around Wall Street and the planet. And she was pushing for tougher authority to stop exactly the kind of bad shit that ended up happening in the next decade. McLean, who I think is a centrist feminist, describes a key meeting in the Clinton years where Greenspan and Bob Rubin were in the room. (Clinton wasn't.) Rubin, who had a reputation as Mr. Nice, is the one who knee capped Born. It's not clear from the reporting that Clinton even knew about that knife fight. He offered to reappoint Born. She apparently felt if she wasn't going to be allowed to do her job, it wasn't worth it. Again, this is why we need somebody like Elizabeth Warren in the White House. She knows how to fight with knives and win. In fairness, can you blame Clinton for crimes committed in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007? Even if Born had gotten everything she wanted, some Republican would have been running the CFTC under W's watch. Just like they ran the Fed, the FDIC, the OCC, the Treasury, everything. As Michael Moore said, they were not interested in enhancing the rule book. They were interested in throwing the rule book out. What would have happened if this had all come down on Clinton's watch? We'll never know. But the point is: it didn't. You can't blame what happened in 2008 on what he did in 1998. You have to blame it on what W. tolerated, perhaps even with the best of intentions, in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. Will Elizabeth Warren tolerate this happening on her watch? Call me naive, but I think she's the last fucking person in the world who would.

Sorry to pry. But is your friend named Sean Hannity? This is a perfect example of why Fox News is the Fake News capitol of America. Sean Hannity doesn't have a fucking clue what he is talking about. And it's worth talking about, because it's also a perfect example of the cruelty and ignorance that Trump is using to march his party off a cliff. Just like the Republicans led off us a cliff with Iraq and subprime a decade ago. And on this one, I know my shit. I could post the books and Pulitzer Prize winning series I have been quoted in on the history of racial redlining. So let's start with this. Sean fails at Journalism 101. It's not The Community Investment Act, which would be CIA. It's the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA. The distinction matters, since the concept is that banks have an "affirmative obligation" to reinvest in the communities they take money out of. This isn't gifts to poor criminals. This is reinvestment in working class communities. In your words, this is capitalism. (Remember, now. Elizabeth Warren knows this issue inside out, like I do. And she's a capitalist, bless her heart.) Michael Moore did great. His first point is spot on. If a law passed by a moderate like Bill Proxmire in 1977 forced the government to make home loans to people that couldn't afford them, why did the crash not happen in 1978, or 1979? Sean has no answer for that. The irony is if Sean was speaking the truth - which he is not - this interview happened 32 years after the CRA was passed. Do the math. Most people get 30 year mortgages. So even if Sean was correct, which he's not, the people that banks were forced to give bad mortgages to in 1977 or 1978 or 1979 would have had their loans paid off by right around 2009. Mortgages don't fail when people finally have their mortgages paid off. That dog won't hunt, Sean. I once was quoted by media that used AP all over the country because I had a great zinger at Congressional testimony. "Your chances of being a bank that fails a CRA exam are smaller than your chances of dying in a plane crash." So Moore is right on that, too. Nothing happened under Reagan and Bush 1 because the law was not enforced. Which goes to my whole point in this thread, about what Presidents can do if they have a will to. In some ways, that was good news, in retrospect. I think of community organizing and community development as a form of capitalism. So during the 80's I was organizing against folks like GE Capital and Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America. Which eventually led to multi-billion dollar community reinvestment partnerships. And they worked. So at the grassroots, we were being like Elizabeth Warren. We were coming up with plans, and figuring out what worked. Clinton's timing was perfect. By the time he took power, a lot of really good work had been done, and a lot of really good partnerships had been built. In one week in in the late 1980's, I recall me or my boss going to speak at press conferences on pilot programs with Dick Gephardt, George Voinovich, and Dan Rostenkowski. If I recall right, my boss actually got to fly in a private jet with Rostenkowski to announce this program. With the CEOs of Fannie, GEMICO, etc. It was a big deal. And that was just one piece of many - the piece I know best. So Clinton built on all that and nationalized it. And it worked great, as the chart I posted above showed. So the question is: if this is Clinton's fault, why did it blow up at the end of W.'s second term? If you understand mortgage financing, the biggest risks come in years 3 to 5. If you add a recession into the mix, that makes a difference. The biggest reasons you lose your home are job loss, or divorce. So having a recession in 2001 was a real stress test for working class Blacks and Hispanics and Whites that bought homes in the Clinton years - like 1997 or 1998 and 1999. And you know what? Mostly, people sailed through. Home prices sagged a little, but they didn't plummet. I can tell you why, from personal experience, not only as an organizer but as a landlord. I bought my first two rentals homes for about $100,000 each in 1997, using mortgage financing that would have been considered "subprime" at the time - meaning edgy, but not crazy. By 2001, I had some equity. There were months when I struggled to make the mortgage payments, like if the rent was late. But I did whatever it took (hey! I became a world class whore!), and I got by. Even if I couldn't pay the mortgage, I could have avoided foreclosure by selling. By 2007 when the shit really hit the fan, those two homes were worth well over twice what I bought them for - because of the bubble. They both went down in value about 30 % during the crash. But they never got close to what I bought them for, let alone what the mortgage was for. What really went wrong is that in 2004, 2005, 2006 you had predators running amok making predatory loans. And they were more home equity loans than purchase loans. Warren is right on that, too, if you listen to her and want to knows the facts, as opposed to Fox Fake News. The predators saw an opportunity to steal the money. And they did. I think it's fair to blame Democrat Barney Frank a little, since he chaired the House Banking Committee up to 2004. To me, he sounded willfully ignorant. Democrat Chris Dodd, who chaired the Senate Banking Committee, should have gone to jail. He was a "Friend Of Angelo's", meaning the CEO of Countrywide Mortgage, which was ground zero for predatory lending. But most of these loans were made when Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate, the House, the Fed, the FDIC, the OCC, HUD, and all the other federal regulatory agencies. So my view is it is fair to say they are the ones that let the predators run amok in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007. Again, it takes 3 to 5 years. It's no shocker that loans originated in 2005 or 2006 went bad in 2008 or 2009. Even more so when you set the mortgages up to fail, like Moore stressed, with teaser rates and balloons. It was utter and total fraud, and lots of bankers should have gone to jail. Warren is right about that, too. And she was right to fight like hell for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which hopefully (unless it's run by Mick Mulvaney) will stop this from happening again. Ironically, the problem is more like the opposite of what Fake News Sean Hannity said it was. This was not about bad people that the government forced banks to give bad loans to in 1977. This is about good people who bought homes in 1997, under Clinton, like me. And by 2007, if the predators were able to, they conned some of those people out of their money and their home. Now, in fairness, Sean is right about one thing. Nobody forced these home owners to take out predatory home equity loans. Again, I can speak to this from personal experience. At one point in Sacramento 3 of my 4 tenants were all former home owners who had lost their homes to predatory lenders. One was a Black family, one was a Hispanic family, one was a White family. It hit working class and middle class people of every race. When the Black tenant told me she was in a short sale when she filled out the rental app, I went liberal and said something about how I felt the banks had really screwed people bad. That was enough to start her sobbing, because the pain and humiliation went that deep. So you can call her stupid, or whatever. But she was a wonderful church woman, and a great tenant. The White couple had bought their home back in the 90's, like when I did if I recall right. So I was confused. I asked, "You must have had equity? If you couldn't make the mortgage payment, why didn't you sell?" The answer went something like this: "Remember all those lenders that called you up, or knocked on your door, and asked you if you wanted to take that trip to Europe, or buy that boat or that vacation home? Well, we did." It didn't help that the predatory loan had a teaser rate that made it doomed to fail from the day it was originated. But the government was run by Republicans then, and they let the predators just make a gazillion doing it. This is exactly why we need somebody like Warren in the White House. I'm 1000 % sure the predators will try to do it again, if we let them. And you think Fake News Sean and Bankruptcy King Donald or Mick Mulvaney or Steve Munchkin are gonna stop them? Give me a fucking break, Sean.

Me too. Like I said, I was sending her money every month last year for her House race. It's the only House race I gave to outside California, and I did it mostly because her message and her persona was so fresh and likable. Her husband is a Republican, and she's a bad ass warrior who bombed bad guys and fought to be one of the first women pilots. She seems like a poster child for how we get beyond the current obstructionism. And since McConnell is credited by many as being the architect of that obstructionism, starting from the night Obama was elected in 2008, taking him out could be a twofer. Out with Mr. Gridlock, in with Ms. Compromise. That said, one thing she has in common with Beto is there's a sloppiness to both of them, or perhaps better stated a lack of seasoning. They are both making avoidable errors. None of these errors are fatal. But in a place like Texas or Kentucky, where there pretty much is no margin for error for a Democrat, you just can't afford to make many mistakes. Did Mitch McConnell Recruit His Opponent? I always enjoy reading the author of that piece, AB Stoddard, who is a pragmatic centrist. If McGrath is rubbing her wrong, that's not a good sign. That said, this surprised me: https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/politics/2019/five-state-prescription-drug-survey-annotated-questionnaire-KY.doi.10.26419-2Fres.00335.003.pdf That was one of five state polls that came out last week from the same pollster, Fabrizio Ward LLC, that showed Trump behind Biden from anywhere from 4 to 9 points in four key states: Colorado (9 points), Maine (6 points) Arizona (5 points), North Carolina (4 points). Kentucky was the only one of the five where Trump is ahead, by double digits. This poll shows Trump whopping Biden by 53 to 41 in Kentucky. So this is mostly bad news for Trump. And if the nominee were Warren or somebody else, recent polls show she's doing about as well as Biden in these head to heads with Trump. If Trump loses Arizona or North Carolina, it is of course game over. The really surprising thing is that in all five states, voters are saying they are more inclined to dump the Republican incumbent than to keep them. All five incumbents (McSally, Collins, Tillis, Gardner, McConnell) have low favorable ratings. So I think it's fair to say they are all vulnerable. And McConnell has the worst numbers of all five. 62 % of people in Kentucky said they want a "new person" in the Senate seat. Only one third say they think McConnell deserves re-election. Those numbers are significantly worse than for the other four Republican Senate incumbents. And the most surprising thing is that in the same poll that shows Trump clobbering Biden in Kentucky, McConnell and McGrath are essentially tied, 47/46. If you assume Stoddard's article is at least partly correct, and McGrath got off to a rocky start, it is not bad news that she is still in a statistical toss up. By all rights in this political environment and in a red state like Kentucky it seems like she should just be a lamb waiting for slaughter. So just like Beto probably benefited from a blue wave and the unpopularity of Ted Cruz last year, as well as his own freshness and enthusiasm, McGrath might have the same shot in 2020 in Kentucky, for many of the same reasons. So now I will circle back around to Beto and close with this point. What may end up helping both of them in the long run is that even if they have flaws or make fumbles, they are both likable people. Having watched both of them for about a year now, I'd say Amy wears better than Beto. She comes across as a woman that would do anything for her kids and her country. I still think Beto comes across as having a big ego. That said, I agree with you that there is nothing that has happened so far that precludes him making a comeback in the future.

This is a really fascinating series of articles. (And it's also even more long-winded and detail-oriented than me!) Arguably, it solves the problem of what happens if we elect a Democratic President, and we end up with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Day One Agenda This kind of policy and political strategy would be tailor made for a President Warren in particular. One of the reasons I like her is she has the biggest Rolodex in Washington. And it works two ways - up and down. She can and does go up to the ivory towers and talk to the legal eagles and policy experts and ask, "How does this work in theory?" And she can and does go down to the grassroots Black female activists who actually work in the grassroots and ask, "How will this actually work in practice?" Bernie and Pete and Kamala might be willing and able to pull off versions of this. I don't think Biden would even be interested. There are supposedly 30 individual essays on each of these good ideas. I could only find two in the "Day One" series: one on student loan forgiveness, and one on banking and corporate reform. I'm only going to post the one on Wall Street and banking reform, because I don't think the stuff on student loans would be as of much interest here. But I hope they are going to do a whole series of these. Loads of good ideas. Overhaul the Business of Wall Street This particular article on Wall Street is itself an argument for a Warren Presidency, I think. She did overcome all odds to "mother" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including navigating political opposition by what I view as the "bank whores" within the Obama Administration itself. I actually believe that if somehow we could redo history and we had a President Warren from 2000 to 2008, we'd be living in a very different United States. First, there would not have been an Iraq War. Second, there would not have been a predatory lending crisis that led to a Great Recession. I was present at the creation of some things in the 1980's. I helped organize lobby days on Capitol Hill to fight for and defend the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which is mentioned in the article above. I organized the "hit" on Fannie Mae where about 1000 people took over their DC corporate headquarters and forced them to negotiate what turned into, initially, a $1 billion Community Home Buyers Program. What Bill Clinton did in the 1990's was a case study that the central thesis of this series is right. What Presidents can do using their own authority for the good is amazing. He took all these things that had been happening at the grassroots, centered around fights with banks over the CRA. And he turned them into a national home ownership and wealth creation strategy. It worked brilliantly. Even in the peak of growing Black home ownership, the net worth of Blacks was a pittance compared to the net worth of Whites. But depending on what statistics you look at, as a result of what Clinton did - pushing home ownership - Black net worth as much as doubled. Again, that's easy to do when you are starting from a very low place. If you want to hear Warren at her best, listen to her take on what the predatory lenders did. She is absolutely right. You can't blame any of this on Clinton, because it didn't happen until 2006 or 2007. We had a recession in 2001, and people who bought homes in the Clinton years pretty much sailed through just fine. (I bought my first two rental homes in 1997, so I know this from personal experience. If you can get through the first five years, you are usually okay.) What Warren talks about is how the predators came in in the early 2000's and started making shitty home equity loans to people that were pretty much set up to fail. And if you look at when it really got out of control, it was after 2004 - when the Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate and House Banking Committees, and all the regulatory agencies. It's a bit too black and white to say it this way, but my view is the Republicans told the predators, "Do whatever you want. Make big gobs of money at their expense." If you go back, Warren (and Bob Shiller, by the way) were two of the academics arguing at the time that this was going to end very, very badly. And they were right. So two points. Smart people did see it coming. And we should not underestimate the ability of a President to do harm, or to do good, simply by using the authority the American people give to them.

Agreed. He was one of about half a dozen Senate candidates I sent money to every month last Fall. Ideologically, he is a good fit for Texas Democrats. Which is to say he is a moderate. Interestingly, almost all my "winners" last Fall were on the House side - like every single Democrat in California running in a relatively suburban district to take a seat from a Republican. Almost all my "losers" were moderate Senate candidates - O'Rourke, McCaskill, Heitkamp. The one exception in the "loser" column was Amy McGrath, a moderate veteran who ran for a House seat in Kentucky in 2018 and lost. She'll be McConnell's opponent for US Senate in 2020. My point is that it seems pretty clear there is huge open space for moderation in "purple" (you could say suburban) areas of blue states like California. In a state like Texas, where there are a lot of those "purple" areas (again, you could say suburbs like around Houston and Dallas) a moderate Democrat can win eventually, I think. In red states that are predominantly rural or small town, forget it. As much as 2018 was mostly a blue year, it was also an incredibly polarized year. White men in states like Missouri and North Dakota said pretty clearly, "We don't want your God damn moderation. Take your center-left Democratic women like Heitkamp and McCaskill and shove em up your ass." (That's actually being generous, I think. I know a Republican who kept insisting Claire McCaskill was one of the most liberal members of the US Senate. In fact, she was one of the most conservative Democrats, which she had to be to win in Missouri.) McGrath will be interesting to watch in 2020. She's an unseasoned candidate, running against an extremely shrewd and vicious political animal, McConnell, who is wildly unpopular even with his own constituents. It's as red as red states get, so I don't have much hope for her. That said, if there is a strong wave and if a lot of moderate women swing Democrat, it's possible that the women running for Senate seats in both Kentucky and Texas could win. Which is why I think having a very energizing woman (that's spelled W-A-R-R-E-N) at the top of the ticket could turn out to be a plus. As far as Beto himself goes, I'm now glad he is not running for Senate. I was very disappointed when Beto announced for President. The question last Fall was whether Beto was going to be the next John Tower, who worked very hard over several election cycles to become the first Republican Senator elected from Texas in a long time. There were lots of older Texans that compared Beto to Tower. (Tower ran against LBJ when he was a Senator and lost. Then the seat opened when LBJ became VP, and Tower won that special election. He was the first Republican Senator elected in Texas in almost a century.) I think if Beto had doubled down and run against Sen. Cornyn in 2020, he could have won. Had he doubled down and ran again after a close call last Fall, that would have in and of itself been a way of saying, "I will persist." People love underdogs and fighters. I think the Beto brand is now toast. That's partly what that quote above says to me. He's just not going to be taken seriously anymore. Mostly because it seems like it was all an exercise in ego for him. He just had to run for President, even though his failure seemed not only predictable, but certain.

I just had to post this. It is toward the end of a serious but uninteresting article about which Presidential candidates might in fact be running for Veep. When I got to the part about Beto, I just could not stop laughing my ass off. Sorry to all you Beto fans out there. But it is wicked funny. VEEPSTAKES 2020: WHICH DEMOCRATS ARE SECRETLY RUNNING FOR SECOND PLACE?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-want-u-s-forces-to-defend-saudi-arabia/ So it's clear, that is just a "polling bite" I read out of a longer article on 538. That is super bad news for Working Class Joe. For a month or two I've been noticing that the percentage of the primary vote that is for Warren and Sanders combined is higher than the percentage that Biden gets, in almost every poll. And this "progressive" slice of the Democratic primary pie just keeps slowly growing as Warren and Sanders do their tag team schtick. As of this week Warren is now tied to or slightly ahead of Biden in Iowa. It's all pretty much bullshit until people start voting. But Iowa is now not really that far away. So this does not look good for Biden, either. But that ranked choice thing is really bad news for him. It's the first thing I've seen anywhere that suggests that if you skim off everybody else, including Sanders, that Warren may equal or best Biden on her own. As others continue to throw in the towel, there's reason to think Warren will benefit more than Biden. If you pull back the camera and look at the entire chess board, that could be significant for some other reasons, as well. The #1 best reason for a Biden candidacy all along for me has been this concept: Democratic Senate majority. That's speculation. And it's a subset of the concept that Biden is, in fact, the most electable candidate. That's always been a big question, and it is becoming a bigger one by the day. But I think it's objective to say Biden is the most moderate of the top tier. So it doesn't surprise me that Doug Jones from Alabama, for example, would much rather run on a ticket with Biden at the top. All year I have thought a Warren/Sanders or Sanders/Warren ticket could be a good idea. It is now very clear they draw in unique voters. Warren might be better with suburban women who gave Trump a try in 2016. Sanders might be better with working class men who gave Trump a try. But the problem with both is that their Senate seats would be filled by a moderate Republican Governor if either wins, at least until special Senate elections could be held in Massachusetts and Vermont. So even if Democrats picked up 4 Senate seats and had a 51 vote majority the day after the 2020 election, a winning Warren/Sanders ticket would take that down to 49. At least for much of 2021 until there was a special election, presuming that a Democrat won in both races. For most of 2019, Warren has done marginally worse than Sanders or Biden in these horse race match ups with Trump in the Rust Belt/Midwest "blue wall" states Democrats need to win - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And that's what Biden's folks are really hitting hard right now. Even in Massachusetts, for example, they claim Warren just doesn't do well with the "Joe Six Pack" types. That said, even that idea seems to be shifting rapidly. There's lots of examples of that, but here's one: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/pennsylvania/ Three months ago, a poll by Firehouse showed Biden a little ahead of Trump, Sanders a little behind Trump, and Warren getting clobbered by Trump in Pennsylvania. Now the same poll shows Warren and Sanders both ahead of Trump by 2, and Biden ahead by 4 in Pennsylvania. The same trend seems to be playing out gradually in Michigan and Wisconsin. Any relative advantage Biden (or Sanders) had over Warren in a horse race poll against Trump seems to be disappearing. Another important thing that seems to be emerging in the latest polling is Warren does better than Sanders, and pretty much as well as Biden, in some other key states. Like Arizona, where both Biden and Warren are in a statistical tie with Trump but Bernie is 8 points behind Trump in one recent poll. In the latest Florida poll, Warren is even with Trump, whereas Biden and Sanders are both one point behind. That's basically a statistical tie. But my point is that Warren is doing no worse than Biden, and she may be doing better than Sanders, in terms of being able to beat Trump in what are emerging to be the swing states, like Arizona and Florida. My hunch is these are states where the suburbs and women are the key, and Warren just seems to be doing better in those areas than Sanders. While the "blue wall" states may be the minimum required to win back the White House, they have almost nothing to do with the race for the US Senate. Those key states are Iowa, Maine, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and if I really cross my fingers and hope maybe even Texas or Kentucky. Those odds do not seem awful. If you count that as eight possibly winnable seats, Democrats could pick up 4 and have a functioning majority - even if Warren's Senate seat is temporarily filled by a Republican until there is a special election. So it's all very crystal ball to speculate about the impact of Warren on Senate races in those states a whole year from now. But my growing sense is that she is connecting with college-educated professionals and/or women more and more by the day. And like in 2018, they seem to be the swing voters that are most likely to call the shots. Like I said, the only really good reason I've been able to think of all year to seriously consider Joe Biden is my mind can't escape the idea that he could be the best one to lead the ticket if we want to win the Senate. But I'm not very confident of that anymore. If I had to name the single thing I find most fascinating about Warren right now, it's the way she deflects questions about how - for much of her life - she was a registered Republican. Like her evasiveness on taxes for Medicare For All, you could argue the silence is practically deafening. When asked about why she was a Republican, the stock answer seems to be a smile and a shrug and something like, "Geez. I don't know. That's just what folk like me from Oklahoma did. Didn't really think about it much." And she has gotten away with it, so far. Which is interesting. Bernie gets perpetually crucified for being a democratic socialist, even though he has always, always, always voted with the Democrats since he was elected to Congress. So how exactly is it that a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination gets away with not have to say almost anything about why she was a Republican for much of her life? My point is that I strongly suspect that she knows exactly what she is doing. Or, to use the new buzz words, she has a plan. If she does win the nomination, I suspect next Fall she will start to unpack why she shifted. And I suspect it will be Reagan in reverse. Meaning it's not that she left the Republican Party and capitalism. It's that she's still just a Main Street capitalist, really, and it's the Republican Party and corporate capitalism that left her (and America) behind. If any of that is true, she may be exactly what we need if the goal is to drag women running for Senate seats in places like Maine, or Texas, or even Kentucky over the finish line.