While
the impeachment inquiry by the Democrats continues, unabated, there is still
the not so insignificant matter of the 2020 presidential election whose fierce
competition lies at the heart of the allegations of bribery by President Trump,
from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
With
Wednesday's Democratic debate in Atlanta, let’s take a look at some of the
leading contenders, and some surprising late entrants, and even some that are
rumored to be.
First
things first, the goalposts have changed. With all eyes, and bodies, focused on
Iowa, which was the game changer for Barack Obama, it has also changed the game
for South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete, as he prefers to be called, who has surged
ahead with a 25 percent rating, in a leading poll, surprising many, but also
raising important questions about his electability, and his continued struggle
to earn support among Black Americans.
Meanwhile
Elizabeth Warren is taking hits on her Medicare for All, plan, or to be more
succinct her version of what she would like to see happen, and some grousing
about what it will cost, and its feasibility for all.
The
avuncular “Uncle Joe” Biden is still near the top, but has had good days and
bad days as some of the Iowa polling shows him near the top, but not at the
top. And, some are seeing him as carrying too much baggage: the roughshod
treatment he gave Anita Hill, in the Clarence Thomas hearings; being an old
white man, sounding geriatric in his confusion, mixing up Vermont with New
Hampshire, a previous anti-abortion stance; and the tough on crime bills in the
90’s; but still holding the grip with Black voters.
Bernie
Sanders, is also still in the running, but some polls have him in fourth place,
and others are looking at the numbers, and wondering why he is not trending as
well as expected.
Just
for dash, we see the unexpected - but maybe not to all - entry of Deval
Patrick, and rumors that Hillary Clinton might enter the fray.
If
all of this seems to be an embarrassment of riches to some, for others, it’s
just an embarrassment, and one person we spoke to said, “I used to be a good
little Democrat, but all of these people and that woman with that health care
bill, and taxing all of the billionaires seems crazy to me!”
Crazy
might be just the beginning, with a year to go before voters hit the booths,
and the all-important South Carolina primary.
While
ahead in the polls with white college educated voters, Pete’s standing among
black voters has remained bleak, with most reacting negatively to him as an
openly gay man, (married to another openly gay man), with many black heterosexual
men reacting negatively to even mention that fact.
He
also faced a nasty patch in his native state, where he was confronted by a
local black voter, who asked him if he expected black voters to rally for him,
and said that it wasn’t going to happen based on his firing of a popular black
police chief who was wearing a wire to record white officers making racist
remarks, and the shooting of a black teenager, who was transported to the local
ER in a police car, by an officer with a fierce reputation of
being a racist.
Buttigieg
replied that he didn’t want her vote, and she retorted that he wasn’t going to
get it.
While
it has seemed to be common knowledge that blacks turn out en masse for Democratic
presidential candidates, this has only been recent history and as our friends
at factcheck.org summarized, “But then President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed
through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation in public
places) and his eventual Republican opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, opposed it.
Johnson got 94 percent of the black vote that year, still a record for any
presidential election.
The
following year Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican
presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since.
This means that any Democratic candidate needs the black vote, and the young
man from Indiana, has done some somersaults to reverse the echo from the above
encounter.
In
an attempt to win, and woo, black voters in South Carolina, Pete’s staff
supplied them with copies of his Douglass plan (to remedy the racial
disadvantages of American blacks), only to later have those messages of
support, and the names of local black lawmakers, identified as supporting him
as a presidential candidate, when in fact they were responding only to the plan
itself.
Ryan
Grim of The Intercept reported recently, that “To
build support for the plan, Buttigieg and his staff lobbied prominent black
South Carolinians to endorse it in order to strengthen the cause of racial
justice. The Washington Post reported on Monday that “Buttigieg persuaded hundreds
of prominent black South Carolinians to sign onto the plan even if they are not
supporting Buttigieg himself.”
Taking
a closer look at the stratagem, he also reported that, “The supporters were
rolled out in a press release and open letter published in the HBCU Times —
which focuses on “positive news related to Historically Black Colleges and
Universities.” Listed at the top of the press release were three prominent
supporters, Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Devine; Rehoboth Baptist pastor
and state Rep. Ivory Thigpen; and Johnnie Cordero, chair of the state party’s
Black Caucus.
“There
is one presidential candidate who has proven to have intentional policies
designed to make a difference in the Black experience, and that’s Pete
Buttigieg,” read the open letter released along with the plan. “We are over 400
South Carolinians, including business owners, pastors, community leaders, and
students. Together, we endorse his Douglass Plan for Black America, the most
comprehensive roadmap for tackling systemic racism offered by a 2020
presidential candidate.”
“The
blowback came immediately. Devine, who has not endorsed a candidate yet in the
presidential election, told The Intercept that she did not intend her support
for the plan to be read as an endorsement for Buttigieg’s candidacy, and
believes the campaign was “intentionally vague” about the way it was
presented.”
As
if that was bad enough, we have this from their report, “Thigpen, meanwhile,
has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, and was startled when he
learned the campaign had not only attached his name to the plan, but also
listed him as one of three prominent supporters atop the letter.”
Even
that was not enough, as the Intercept continued, ““I never endorsed that plan.
I don’t know how my name got on there. No, that’s not true: I know how my name
got on there,” Cordero began, before explaining that Buttigieg had emailed him
the plan and asked for feedback, which began a conversation with Buttigieg’s
staff.”
This
is a level of subterfuge that we’ve seen before but not by someone claiming
Midwestern values of honesty.
As we previously noted Mayor Pete is running mostly
on a personal narrative of being just another “regular” guy who just happens to
be gay, and as the old saying goes, “it played well in Peoria,” but now decades
after that humorous cliché was begun, it seems to play well in Iowa.
While
whiteness alone is not a deal breaker for black voters, abusing the trust of
elected lawmakers and leadership is.
Gayness
is always a hotly debated topic in the black community, and is still not seen
favorably, despite some younger member’s statements; and, there are still
homophobic jokes, snickering and elbowing, with violence perpetuated against
gay people in larger urban core cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New
York.
The
AME church - a black denomination - does not support gay marriage, and there
are still many religious people that use the old line of “Adam and Eve, not
Adam and Steve.”
Many
local observers, we have recently spoken to have said, “Imagine if Mayor Pete
was Tyrone Anderson, of Englewood (a predominantly black neighborhood in
Chicago), then you really would see the homophobia in the black community.”
While
the primaries are important for the black vote, the general election results
are the proof of the pudding and Buttigieg is not trending high with black
voters, of age, and in February with the South Carolina primary and a ton of
black voters, the majority of whom are over 45, his chances weaken, and his
contortions, and false claims of support are not going to help him.
Biden
has also faced criticism on his previous comments about working with white
segregationists, and his stance on school busing by fellow candidate Kamala
Harris, who, when they later debated, he said to her, “Take it easy on me kid.”
That
type of remark, warm, cushy, and touching is very Biden, but it also seems to
have raised some doubts in Iowa, and elsewhere about his toughness, or is it
softness, and his previous label of being “electable”?
The prolific fact finders
at Vox.com have also shown that he is at mission critical with some of the black
electorate, “And while October polling shows that roughly 40 percent of African
American respondents support Biden right now, his numbers with black voters
under 45 are lower than that. The aforementioned Morning Consult poll, for
example, finds that just 32 percent of black voters ages 35-44 support Biden.
For the youngest bloc of voters, aged 18-29, this number falls to 29 percent.”
His
campaign is also low on cash, with the last report of
having less than $9 billion in the bank, and some concern about overspending on
air travel, that has some donors up in arms.
While
a fourth place showing is clearly not what his campaign wants, he was on a high
in May, with some averaging 33 percent, then down to 20 percent in June, than
cascading downwards to 11.
Last
month he surged downward to 0.2 in one poll, while some staffers so inherently believe
in him as Obama’s Veep, that he can bounce back, but speaking of the former
president, he has not given the one endorsement that matters, noted New York Magazine
in a recent focus article, also commenting that the campaign staff is looking for “old
school endorsements.”
In
particular, they also noted the inexperience of his staff, many of whom have
not worked on a major campaign.
Of
all of the myriad of comments and observations, from the piece, this one stood
out the most about Biden, and his crew: “He freaks out over minor stuff on the
trail that staffers don’t believe he should be concerning himself with and yet
is unable to make strategic adjustments. But the staff concern themselves with
unimportant matters, too, running what they think is a general-election
campaign when they need to be running a primary. Inside the campaign, the Biden
brain trust seems to exist more to comfort the candidate than to compel him,
and strategy meetings inevitably devolve into meandering, ruminative
roundtables that feel purposeless except to fill time in the day. Nobody will
tell the candidate in plain terms what they think he needs to change. Not that
Biden really listens anyway.”
If
that continues, then the surge downward may continue.
Warren
meanwhile has been spiked by Pete, and others, on the cost of the Medicare for
All bill that she now, supports, although research has shown that she has
bought into this latently, with some saying that this surge of support might be
needed when the numbers are coming in, and she needs to get some from the
Sanders camp.
Indeed,
these assertions might be correct, considering that defanging Big Tech was more
her forte, but as Clinton learned in 2016, the numbers are all that matters.
Nowhere
do these numbers matter more than the specter of a 20.5 trillion tax package
and draining the billionaire well, once again, for the end of private
insurance; and, as we noted in the past, 60 percent of those American with
private health plans like what they have.
Warren
herself, before her campaign took a stronger look at the polls, supported the
ACA and building support with needed changes, much as Nancy Pelosi and others
have done.
Expect
another lunge towards Warren on Wednesday, and maybe even a surprise to her
challengers, especially Pete, as he closes in on her.
What
remains to be seen is if Sanders will come to her rescue, or let her drown.
Presidential
Elections can always have surprises, and one, now, is the entry of former
Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, rumored to have the support of Barack
Obama, but also a target for those who feel that his “corporatese” as the
so-called Bernie Bros, have coined, carries the baggage to the establishment.
This
is especially seen with his employment at Bain Capital, which did former
presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as the “scourge” of capitalism.
The
big bet is that he can do very well in the New Hampshire primary, and as The
Hill reported, ““Is he a top-tier competitor in New Hampshire instantly?
Absolutely,” longtime Massachusetts political operative Scott Ferson said.
“If
there’s somebody from Massachusetts, going back to Paul Tsongas and Mike
Dukakis, they usually win the New Hampshire primary,” he continued.
With
no single candidate taking the lead, the field is open and Patrick might make
the grade, even as Michael Bloomberg has coyly suggested he might enter. But,
with all things being equal Sanders supporters and staff have their say.
“Sanders’s
senior adviser and speechwriter, David Sirota, jabbed at both Patrick and
Bloomberg in his “Bern Notice” newsletter this week, writing, “The potential
last-minute candidacies of corporate titans are a direct response to the Bernie
Surge,’ according to The Hill.
Sanders
critics, and they are there, feel that he, along with Warren, may take the
Democrats too far to the left, and there are still lingering echoes form 2016
that his timetable, those ‘Day One” scenarios are overly ambitious, (e.g. free
public college education) not to mention costly, but that being said, he might
be able, after Wednesday night, to reaffirm, himself, and voters.
“But
Patrick also brings strengths after accumulating a moderate record during his
time at the helm of Massachusetts, and he appears to see an opening in the
fluid Democratic field, with a number of polls showing no clear front-runner
has emerged,” the report added.
Interviewed
for The Guardian was “Bob Shrum, a Democratic
strategist who was an adviser to the Al Gore and John Kerry campaigns, was
equally skeptical.”
“I
don’t think she would do it and I don’t think she should,” he said. “It would
be late and very divisive. I am dubious that she would win the nomination, so
why would she do that to herself?”
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