Ok Klobuchar is out…and she’s going with Biden.
https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1234577929662795777?s=20
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This is not a Superdelegate we want - who as a lobbyist who gets paid by some R events.
A Democratic superdelegate promoting an effort to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., if he fails to clinch a majority of pledged delegates is a health care lobbyist who has contributed thousands to Republicans.
William Owen, a former Tennessee lawmaker and Democratic National Committee member, was among the superdelegates quoted in a New York Times article revealing an effort among party insiders to block Sanders’ path to the nomination if he wins a plurality of pledged delegates but not enough to secure a win on a first ballot.
Owen also owns the lobbying firm Asset & Equity Corporations and donated $8,500 to the Senators Classic Committee, a joint fundraising committee backing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and more than a dozen other Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., last year, according to Federal Election Commission filings first flagged by The Intercept. He has also donated to Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, according to the report.
…
I am a committed Democrat, but as a lobbyist, there are times when I need to have access to both sides. And the way to get access quite often is to make campaign contributions," he told the outlet. “I**'m a registered lobbyist, and I represent clients. And they have interest in front of Congress, and I attend the Senator’s Classic, which is a Republican event, each year.”**
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Here’s some ways to watch the counts on Super Tuesday…
And what to watch for…
How much does Joe Biden dominate the South?
Can Elizabeth Warren hold her home state?
Bloomberg spent more than $660 million, and what did he get?
Texas could determine the overall winner
Early vote versus late count in California
Ok…we’ve got several hours before any results come in…it’s a waiting game.
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https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1235015263264759808?s=19
Can we put into 2020 primary?? @MissJava plz and thank u. 
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T country…and T’s whipping boy*/AG did not come back with flying colors…
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville in a fierce Republican runoff election, CNN projects, pitting the man who held the seat for 20 years against a political neophyte.
The race is viewed as the Republicans’ best opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in the country. The outstanding question now is whether President Donald Trump will try to pick that Republican, and choose Tuberville over Sessions, his old punching bag, before the March 31 runoff.
The Alabama While the President remained quiet during the race, he had publicly mocked and ultimately fired Sessions: Trump once said he would’ve nominated someone else for attorney general if he knew Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Department of Justice investigation into Russian interference of the 2016 election (Sessions served as a top official on the Trump campaign).
*Just to be on the PC side I looked up meaning of
whipping boy (from wiki)= Whipping Boy was, supposedly, a boy educated alongside a prince (or boy monarch) in early modern Europe, who received corporal punishment for the prince’s transgressions in his presence
Thx @MissJava…can u do the same shift to 2020 primary elections please? Thx.
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Sorry for the delay on that @dragonfly9, I had to disconnect for a few hours b/c < gestures broadly at everything >
lol
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Thx!
I/we understand…nothing like another onslaught of topsy-turvy news which upends every notion of ‘a regular day.’ I/we need to shut 'er down each day and vital that I/we do that.
sigh…double sigh…
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Apparently Shaun King made a claim that Rachel Maddow said the primary was being rigged against Biden and got taken down like Bloomburg in a debate.
https://twitter.com/daviddunn177/status/1235092798178652162
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1235087826720456704
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Shame on The Hill.
Trump didn’t run “uncontested.”
His mafia-like takeover of the GOP included squashing several attempts to primary him by canceling primaries, and even without that this is a ludicrous attempt at sucking up.
After a little more digging:
Despite the fact that the author here is supposed to be the RNC press secretary that article lists her as “the national press secretary for President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.” It looks a bit sketchy to me, truth to tell.And the ONE thing here she doesn’t provide any sourcing for is this claim: “Trump’s vote totals beat every past incumbent’s total in the last four decades.” I can find no proof of this, and a search of that phrase only pulls up right-wing propaganda.
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https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1235237657602600961
https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1235232714560806912
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Warren’s unfortunate thud during the Super Tuesday multi-state vote makes her now very much teetering for any place in the Presidential campaign. Except for the fact that any of her voters if she dropped out now, would probably go to Bernie and the more mainstream Dems would hate that.
Her ad buys from a super Pac will be stopping shortly as March 10th…so now what.
This past weekend, the campaign and allies predicted that the field winnowing would redound to Warren’s benefit. It didn’t.
The campaign also has financial constraints that come with a unionized staff of over 1,000 people — the largest field operation in the race besides Mike Bloomberg’s — even after raising $29 million in February. With a payroll at over $6 million per month, the campaign likely needs to keep at least several million dollars on hand to cover paychecks, benefits, and other assorted shutdown costs to avoid going into debt. Warren was able to raise a significant amount of that money with her strong debate performances, but there is not another debate until March 15.
The super PAC that provided over $12 million in air cover to Warren ahead of Super Tuesday also has said it is not placing ad buys for March 10. Warren herself has no public events planned until Friday. Perhaps anticipating that the night would go poorly, she did not give a traditional election night speech but rather held a regular town hall in Detroit, which votes next week, just as results began to roll in. She hardly mentioned the elections happening Tuesday.
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Schumer persuades Montana Governor and popular Democrat, Steve Bullock, to run for Senate 
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is making plans to run for the US Senate, telling Democratic leaders that he intends to declare his candidacy in the coming days, a decision that improves the party’s chances for winning a majority in the Senate.
Two Democratic officials familiar with the matter tell CNN that Bullock, who briefly ran for president in 2020, is now opening a door that he repeatedly insisted was closed. For months, Bullock bluntly said he had no interest in serving in the US Senate and would not be on the Montana ballot this fall.
In recent weeks, Bullock’s resistance to a Senate campaign has eased, the officials said, with his family now warming to the idea. In conversations with party leaders, he has also cited the gravity of the times and the importance of Democrats trying to win back the chamber. Bullock would face Republican Sen. Steve Daines, who has built up an impressive $5 million war chest.
Bullock is expected to make his announcement before the filing deadline on Monday.
…
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer flew to Montana to personally urge Bullock to run, according to Politico.
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Ok…could Warren and Sanders align themselves with one another? Warren’s similar platform could get more traction this way…
I always thought there might be a Sanders-Warren ticket. Ultimately that may prove to be what they would do.
Top surrogates and allies of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda, with the expectation that Warren is likely to leave the presidential campaign soon, according to two people familiar with the talks.
The conversations, which are in an early phase, largely involve members of Congress who back Sanders (I-Vt.) reaching out to those in Warren’s camp to explore the prospect that Warren (D-Mass.) might endorse him. They are also appealing to Warren’s supporters to switch their allegiance to Sanders, according two people with direct knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate discussions that are supposed to be confidential.
The whirlwind of activity reflects the rapid changes in a Democratic primary that is still very much in transition. As late as Tuesday, many Warren allies believed she would stay in the race until the Democratic convention, despite her poor showing to date in the primaries, in hopes of retaining her clout and influencing the eventual nominee.
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It’s a very tricky thing to discern where the real divide amongst the polarized political populations exists. We’ve seen since 2016, the increased public outings or politically charged spewings often recorded by video and posted on social media of outrageous bullying based on ideology, race, religion or ‘other.’
And we know we’re being egged on further and that outrage is amplified by Russian propaganda trolls…to make that divide even deeper.
Quote: Russian trolls shift tactics to become “curators more than creators,” with the same goal of driving Americans apart.
“Please move.” The white woman doesn’t raise her voice; she’s got her shirt on inside out and she’s aiming a cellphone at the taco-truck vendors parked on her street. She wants them gone, and they’re telling her to go back inside. “Okay, baby girl,” she says. “ Vamonos . I’ll call ICE.” “ Stupida bitcha ,” comes a reply.
A video of the confrontation, filmed outside a house in Dallas last spring, soon went viral, with the title “racist woman talking about shes gonna call ICE ON US FOR SELLING FOOD IN DALLAS WHEN WE HAVE PERMIT.” Within weeks, it had more than 170,000 views.
This is the new face of Russian propaganda. In 2016, the Kremlin invested heavily in creating memes and Facebook ads designed to stoke Americans’ distrust of the electoral system and one another. Now, after nearly four years under a president whose divisive rhetoric and policies have inflamed voter anger on issues such as race, inequality, and his own conduct, the Russian government is still interfering, but it doesn’t need to do much creative work anymore. The taco-truck video wasn’t fabricated in some St. Petersburg workshop. It was a real video of a real incident, made in America—and all Russia had to do was help it spread with its Twitter trolls.
Luckily for the Russians, then, the two current front-runners for the presidency, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are both polarizing figures—and they’re both candidates Russian trolls sought to promote in 2016, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller found. This time, the Democratic field is crowded and squabbling, but it includes no hawkish, long-established Hillary Clinton to tear down. If the election does end up being a Trump-Sanders face-off, one of the Kremlin’s favored candidates from 2016 is guaranteed a win. They are far apart ideologically but nearly equally suited to the Kremlin’s interests, both in being divisive at home and in encouraging U.S. restraint abroad. Both Sanders and Trump profess to want to refocus the U.S. inward—a message that clearly appeals to many Americans. But that doesn’t mean the Russian propaganda machine is slowing down; it’s just aimed at a new target.
…
No matter what, Polyakova said, “a U.S. that’s mired in its own domestic problems and not engaged in the world benefits Moscow.” That’s where the videos come in.
Americans are now the chief suppliers of the material that suspected Russia-linked accounts use to stoke anger ahead of U.S. elections, leaving Russia free to focus on pushing it as far as possible. Linvill has seen Russian trolls shift tactics to become “curators more than creators,” with the same goal of driving Americans apart. “The Russians love those videos,” he said, “because they function to make us more disgusted with one another.” He and a colleague have traced viral tweets about the Dallas incident to Russia-linked accounts that Twitter has since suspended.
America’s largely self-inflicted political condition has provided a stunning return on investment for the Russian government, which began orchestrating—as far back as 2014—what Mueller later called a conspiracy of “fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes,” including the 2016 presidential election. Mueller laid bare the extent of the conspiracy led by a St. Petersburg–based organization called the Internet Research Agency. The IRA was the nerve center of the interference operation; it had hundreds of employees and a budget of millions of dollars dedicated to what it internally referred to as “information warfare” against America, with Facebook ads, fake Twitter personas, and even efforts to organize real-world protests.Meanwhile, the irony is that the specter of Russian interference itself has become a tool to discredit political enemies online. “The biggest effect that I think foreign disinformation has had on our conversations is the perception that if someone disagrees with you, they’re a Russian troll,” Linvill said. “When, in fact, they probably just are somebody that disagrees with you.” Twitter, for instance, at one point suspended an account supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement as a suspected Russian troll. Wired later identified the user: an American living in Florida.
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Warren out!!!
She was hugely qualified for the role…but faced decades worth of being underappreciated as a woman and progressive. I think she will be involved with the new administration in 2020.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren will drop out of the Democratic presidential race, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders as the last major contenders for the nomination.
Warren’s exit — like that of billionaire Mike Bloomberg — came after the Massachusetts senator’s poor showings in crucial Super Tuesday contests.
It leaves what was once a historically diverse Democratic field essentially narrowed to two white men in their seventies.
It was not immediately clear if the progressive Massachusetts senator planned to endorse one of her rivals, a move which could be pivotal as Biden and Sanders jockey for a delegate lead.
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I’m thinking the same thing.
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Here’s a primer on what the nomination process has been with primaries and issues like superdelegates, planks and brokered conventions mean. I did not know really how it broke down, so it is good to check History Prof. Heather Cox Richardson (I tout her a lot…but she knows her stuff, and writes clearly)
@MissJava - Would you be able to move this over to 2020 Primary please? Many thx!
There is a lot of news about both the novel coronavirus and politics tonight, but I’m going to let it rest so I can address the concern that has been popping up in my email and messages all day. People are concerned that there has been some sort of a corrupt bargain between the “Democratic establishment”—possibly even including former President Barack Obama-- and retiring presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to throw the Democratic nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden in order to thwart the popular will to nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
First of all, the nomination process is not over, and there is not currently a winner. Second, the nomination has not been rigged. This is a deeply problematic construction at a time when our actual elections really ARE in danger; it is also an argument pushed by Russian disinformation to undermine faith in democracy.
Here’s how the Democratic nomination process currently works. (I am not going to talk here about the Republican system—I’ve talked about it before—but it permits less input from voters than the Democratic system.)
First of all, neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, nor any other party, is a government institution. While they have to abide by our laws, they make their own rules, and a LOT of jockeying goes into the writing of those rules. (FWIW, Sanders is the only candidate running who had a hand in writing the current Democratic National Committee rules. Three of his top advisors were on the commission that wrote the current rules, and he chose four others.)
The process is crazy-complicated, but it makes more sense if you know some of the history behind it. Democratic presidential candidates used to be chosen by party leaders, behind closed doors. That exploded in 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without winning any primaries as a solo act— he had been running as President Lyndon Johnson’s vice president when Johnson abruptly withdrew from the race too late for Humphrey to enter the primaries. Humphrey was associated with the ”establishment” and the war in Vietnam (although he was eager to end it), at a time when leaders were increasingly suspect and 80% of voters in the Democratic primaries had voted for anti-war candidates (including Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was making a strong play for the nomination when he was murdered). So when he won the nomination over anti-war candidates, demonstrators began to protest and the police counter-rioted. The convention turned into violent chaos. And, of course, Humphrey lost the election to Richard M. Nixon, who dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam, (among other things!).
After the 1968 debacle, DNC leaders commissioned a 28-person panel overseen first by South Dakota Senator George McGovern and then, when he resigned to run for president himself, Minnesota Representative Donald M. Fraser, to figure out how to get more people involved in the nomination process. The result was the state primary, which has now replaced caucuses in all but three states (and three territories), by my count. In primaries, voters cast ballots for their choice for the nomination, who then gets allotted delegates to the convention. With luck, there will be a clear winner, but if not, the convention delegates will wheel and deal to decide who should win the nomination. The commission also reduced the roles of party leaders in the nominating process, and required better representation for minorities, women, and young people.
These rules governed the 1972 convention, which gave the presidential nomination to McGovern himself, who was enormously popular with young people and those opposed to Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War, but much less so with the traditional Democrats (especially workers) who had lost representation at the convention under the new rules.
McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide—the Electoral Count was 520 to 17, and McGovern didn’t even carry his home state. Then Democratic President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid by a similar landslide (the Electoral College split was 489 to 49). At that point, Democratic leaders decided the nomination process had swung too far away from professional politicians. They thought that primary voters, who tend to be much more extreme than those in the general election, were choosing unelectable candidates.
Another commission, this one of 70 people, met in 1981 and 1982, and added back into the nomination process the voices of state party chairs, the Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents and vice presidents, and certain DNC leaders. These are the so-called superdelegates, and they are not pledged to any candidate. The idea is that, having won or run elections, these people will have a sense of who can win at the national level and will provide a counterweight if primary voters choose someone unelectable. Originally, the superdelegates made up about 15% of the delegate count, but before the 2016 election they had crept up to about 20%.
Before the 2016 election, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sanders tussled to win the nomination, the DNC overwhelmingly voted to change the rules to compromise between the two camps. Under those rules, a new commission of 21 people, including 9 nominated by Clinton and 7 by Sanders, met in 2017. They reduced the percentage of superdelegates to about 15% again, and refused to let them vote on a first ballot, bringing them in only if the nomination is contested.
So back to the question of rigging. The Sanders camp wanted to get rid of the superdelegates altogether, believing it would help him win the 2020 nomination. But they had to compromise on keeping the superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, expecting that he could win quickly with a majority if the superdelegates stayed out of it. But now that it looks like he will likely not win outright, he will likely be sunk when the superdelegates are in play on a second ballot. So now he wants the nomination to go to someone with a plurality of delegates—that is, not a clear majority, but more than anyone else—on the first ballot. This would be highly unusual: brokered conventions used to be the norm, and they are a good way to unite the party behind a candidate.
But do members of the Democratic establishment—those who could be superdelegates—want Sanders as the nominee? Almost certainly not. They do not think he is electable. He is not popular with African American voters, who are a key part of the Democratic Party’s base, and he has a history that will play badly with moderate voters.
Are they right that he is unelectable? Before Tuesday, I was not at all certain of that. But Sanders’s big play for the nomination has been that he could bring new voters into the party by attracting young people. He certainly is popular with younger folks, but they did not turn up to vote for him on Tuesday, suggesting his key strength is not as strong as it seemed. Still, political prognostications at this stage of the game are a fool’s game. My opinion and $3 will get you a cup of coffee.
Did Buttigieg or Klobuchar cut a deal with Biden before endorsing him? Almost certainly. But that is not a corrupt deal; it’s how politics works. If they followed the norm, they will have gotten him to promise to make a priority in his administration (if he is elected) something they and their supporters care about. This is key to the other part of the nomination process that is going on now: hashing out the issues (they’re known as “planks”) that will be in the party’s platform, indicating its priorities. The jockeying going on now between voters and candidates and the party’s eventual leader is key to that construction.
This is why we go through this process, and why the president and the platform matters. We often forget that when we show up at the polls every four years to pick a president, we are not simply electing a charismatic leader, we are electing someone who can get legislation we care about passed by nailing together coalitions that will move the country in a direction we like. That is incredibly important, and it’s why working with experienced politicians matters.
But it is also important to put pressure on those leaders to move in directions we want. If your favorite candidate has left the race or looks to be pushed aside, it is more important than ever to continue to advocate for the causes (and people) you believe in, to keep those things front and center. That, too, is part of the political process. Most famously, in 1890, an upstart reform party took America by storm. It organized as the People’s Party in 1891 and demanded a slew of changes to take American finance and politics out of the hands of the very wealthy. The party largely fizzled out when the Democrats absorbed their ideas in 1896. Within twenty years, though, most of their reforms had become law.
Her newsletter is free
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Some post-Warren reviews…
In my mind, the women were always awestruck by her. She performed so very well, not just as a woman but as a presidential candidate. She had her facts down, her figures percolating in her head, and she was decisive, articulate and could swing for the fennces. In other words, she was Presidential. To get such a strong performer with someone who could pierce any of the candidates with her incisive critiques was awe inspiring, but not because she was a woman but she had the chops and the fight.
So to say adios to her strengths and hello to the elder B’s is less than awe inspiring…but doable. The guys will hopefully fit the ‘Presidential’ bill…but do they inspire confidence and can they articulate a true (workable) vision? Not really. But they will do the people’s work…and beat this sad and despotic President we hope.
This article talks to Warren’s strengths…and to her take-no-prisoners approach…she will be no one’s Sally…or foil. She has locked in a certain segment of the voting population…and she is not giving that endorsement yet to either B.
But she will encourage women and girls to persist.
Here’s what I kept thinking about.
I kept thinking about Elizabeth Warren going back to her house or her hotel, exhausted and disappointed, having spent a career trying to do the right thing and now preparing to do the right thing again: drop out. Unite the party. Work with either Biden or Sanders. Try to ignore the foot-stomping rage of whichever side you turn down, since supporters of both will feel entitled to your compliance.
“Choose to fight only righteous fights,” she told her campaign staff on a Thursday call, previewing her decision to leave the race. “Because then when things get tough — and they will — you will know that there is only [one] option ahead of you. Nevertheless, you must persist.”
I thought about how, exhausted as she is, she’ll still remember to open the jar of Pond’s cold cream and dab it across her forehead and cheekbones, the way her older cousin Tootsie once taught her, because these are the rules of womanhood. Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize. Put on your fresh face for the next day. Cultivate your little tips and tricks, your time hacks and the secrets of your success. Pass them down to another, younger woman. Hope to God they work for her.
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