February 19, 2019

Bernie Sanders Announces that he is a Candidate for 2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/bernie-sanders-2020.html

I have fewer issues with Bernie than many people on DU and welcome as many voices as possible to the large marketplace of ideas that will comprise the 2020 primaries.

But, one scenario that I could see developing, that I'm not sure that I would like is that with such a large field of candidates, the progressive, or "new face" candidates could all siphon votes away from each other and open the path for a more centrist establishment candidate like Joe Biden to sweep through with like 26% of the vote.

I like Biden and I'm not sure that would be a bad thing, but there's going to be multiple spoiler effects going on. For one, Kamala Harris & Corey Booker are likely to split the black vote and open up states like South Carolina for someone else.

February 9, 2019

Rep. Pramila Jayapal torches Matthew Whitaker

February 6, 2019

Looks like Amy Klobuchar is going to announce her Presidential candidacy on Sunday

She just told Rachel Maddow that she is going to announce whether she will be running for President at an event in Minnesota on Sunday. The way Klobuchar said it (she used the phrase "drop the mic" , it seems like the only interpretation is that she will announce that she's running.

February 6, 2019

Dump brought out Holocaust survivors to pimp his policy of hostility with Iran

He launched into how Iran is "an evil regime, a really evil regime, bad, very, very bad" (after saying how strong a relationship he has with Kim Jong Un) and that Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and we can never tolerate anti-semitism (from the man who didn't know who David Duke was and said that there were fine people on both sides in Charlottesville).

It was right then that he brought out Holocaust survivors and US soldiers who liberated Dachau for applause (and a cop that responded to the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh.) This is an astounding level of manipulation. It's unfortunate that the Holocaust survivor doesn't realize that the greatest honor they could pay to their experience is to not allow it to be part of this demagogue's narrative.

February 6, 2019

Is this the longest SOTU ever?

His convention acceptance speech was the longest in history. This Stephen Miller cloying screed is endless.

February 5, 2019

I wish Comedy Central or somebody would do a SOTU simulcast with comic closed captions

That's the only way I could sit through this. Someone like Robert Smigel (who did the voice of Triumph the insult comic dog & all the voices from the fake interviews on the old Conan show) would probably be hilarious at it. It would get big ratings.