Source: (Wikipedia)
Table Of Contents:
Conventional Wisdom About the Democrats’ Primary Is Wrong: Conrad Black, American Greatness, Feb. 13, 2020
The Bernie Sanders Experience: Barton Swaim, WSJ, Feb. 7, 2020
How Trump Wins Again: David Brooks, NYT, Feb. 6, 2020
The Middle East Thinks America Is Going Crazy: Steven A. Cook, Foreign Policy, Feb. 12, 2020
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Conventional Wisdom About the Democrats’ Primary Is Wrong
Conrad Black
American Greatness, Feb. 13, 2020
There are three widely proclaimed verities now bandied about in the aftermath of the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
They are that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a clear front-runner with a chance for a break-through to a commanding lead in the quest for the nomination. The second is that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a serious candidate with a chance for the Democratic nomination, and the third is that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been providentially assisted by the disintegration of the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden and the bunching together of Sanders, Buttigieg, and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and will seize the leadership of the race when he gets to the ballot in 15 states simultaneously on Super Tuesday, March 3.
I think all three of these deductions are mistaken.
Bernie Sanders won 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, where he won about 26 percent this week in an eight-candidate race. But five of the candidates collected 30 percent of the vote, and Sanders only got 26 of the remaining 70, about 36 percent. If the competition is whittled down to Sanders and Buttigieg, who is a much less formidable candidate than Clinton was four years ago, Sanders got about 52 percent of the vote. He did not win the nomination last time, though without the vote-rigging of the Obama-Clinton party establishment and their hundreds of unelected superdelegates, he would have made it a very close race. Still, New Hampshire in 2016 produced a much better vote for Sanders than it did this year.
Pete Buttigieg is not really taken seriously by anyone as a candidate for president this year. He is a self-assembled, auto-candidate attracting gays and those who feel strongly that gays have been mistreated, as well as veterans and their families because Buttigieg once served in the Navy Reserve and was in Afghanistan for a short tour. Unlike eight of the nine presidents prior to Bill Clinton, Buttigieg was never on active, combat duty. There’s nothing wrong with that. In this contest, he is the only person who was ever in any uniform except in school or at a costume party. But that doesn’t make him an irresistible magnet to the country’s approximately 18 million veterans.
Buttigieg started the race on the Left, between Biden and Sanders, and moved to the center as Biden’s campaign faltered. Now he’s trying to be the progressive alternative to the Marxist Sanders. He is facile and articulate, but not qualified and lacks the gravitas, experience, and inherent qualities of leadership and self-confidence the presidency requires from any serious candidate. There is nothing wrong with being young; so were Alexander the Great and Napoleon. But he hasn’t done anything serious and has not been anywhere near the vast complexity of the federal government. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Bernie Sanders Experience
Barton Swaim
WSJ, Feb. 7, 2020
There is something exhilarating about attending a Bernie Sanders campaign event for the first time, even for an incorrigible conservative like me. The crowd is larger, louder and weirder than the typical primary election gathering. There are sweatshirt-wearing college students, cantankerous geriatrics, bedraggled parents of toddlers, hipsters with multiple facial piercings and purple-haired 20-somethings of indeterminate gender. When I arrived at the Bernie rally in Milford, N.H., an all-female rock band called the Bad Larrys was warming up the crowd with angular chords and indecipherable lyrics. I happened to see a guy holding a book, so I sidled up next to him and asked him what it was. The book was titled “Why Buddhism Is True.”
At campaign events like this one, I like to ask people if they’re certain of their support for the candidate or still considering alternatives. At an ordinary event—a rally for Pete Buttigieg, say, or Elizabeth Warren —some substantial minority of people have come simply to observe. “I haven’t decided yet” is a common response. Not at a Bernie rally. I tried and failed to find an attendee at one of his New Hampshire events who wasn’t already committed to Mr. Sanders. Many said they would vote for whoever the party nominates, but all said they planned to vote for Mr. Sanders in the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11.
When you ask Mr. Sanders’s supporters what it is about him they find attractive, you often get something about authenticity. “I don’t know if I’d say ‘authentic’ or ‘honest,’ ” the Buddhism guy told me, “but it’s something like that.” “With some of them,” one woman said, speaking of the other Democratic candidates, “you’re just not sure what they really believe. With Bernie, you know.” The social-justice campaigner Shaun King, who spoke before Mr. Sanders at the Milford rally, put this question to the crowd: “Who’s more authentic, more real than Bernie Sanders?” Somebody behind me muttered, “Nobody, man.”
Four years ago, when pundits compared the Vermont senator to Donald Trump, saying that both were “populists” running “insurgent” campaigns, Mr. Sanders bristled, and maybe rightly so. But the two men’s supporters have this much in common: They believe their man is who he says he is.
Even I get the appeal. There is a kind of endearing grouchiness about Mr. Sanders. At the Milford event, his wife, Jane, introduced him, and kissed him on the cheek as he walked onto the stage, eliciting a quick shy grin from the senator, but otherwise he never smiled. When a woman interrupted one of his lines by shouting “We love you, Bernie!” he looked slightly annoyed. His persona suggests a man who doesn’t cultivate his image—messy hair, ill-fitting jacket, untempered Brooklyn accent (“health keeah is a yooman right”). You might guess that young people would prefer the fresher and more polished Mr. Buttigieg to a crotchety 78-year-old, but you would be wrong.
What Mr. Sanders’s fans love about him—his forthrightness—is also, of course, what makes him a hard sell in a general election. Unlike Sen. Warren, whose economic views are broadly the same as his, Mr. Sanders proudly wears the label “democratic socialist.” Also unlike Ms. Warren, he concedes that he will have to raise taxes. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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How Trump Wins Again
David Brooks
NYT, Feb. 6, 2020
As several people have noticed, this was the most politically successful week of the Trump presidency.
First, President Trump’s job approval numbers are rising. When the impeachment inquiry got rolling in October his Gallup approval rating was 39. Now it’s 49. If he can hold this level, he’ll probably be re-elected.
Second, impeachment never became a topic of conversation among rank-and-file Democrats, let alone independents and Republicans, so it was easily defeated in the Senate. To the extent that it was noticed, impeachment worked for Republicans and against Democrats. Approval of the Republican Party is now at 51 percent, its highest since 2005. More Americans now identify as Republicans than as Democrats. As Gallup dryly observed in announcing these numbers, “Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached.”
Third, there is no Democratic transcender. The Iowa results, though far from final, indicate that there is no obvious candidate who can be quickly embraced by all factions of the party. With Mike Bloomberg now doubling his campaign spending, it looks like the Democratic primary battle is going to go on for a while. Democrats may wind up in a position in which they can’t nominate Bernie Sanders because he’s too far left, and they can’t not nominate him because his followers would bolt from a Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg-led party.
Only 53 percent of Sanders voters say they will certainly support whoever is the Democratic nominee. This is no idle threat. In 2016, in Pennsylvania, 117,000 Sanders primary voters went for Trump in the general, and Trump won the state by 44,292 ballots. In Michigan, 48,000 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 10,704. In Wisconsin, 51,300 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 22,748. In short, Sanders voters helped elect Trump.
Fourth, Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency. In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”
I don’t know if he can keep this tone, because unlike Ronald Reagan, he’s not an optimistic, generous person. But if he can, and he can keep his ideology anodyne, this message can resonate even with people who don’t like him.
Trump’s speech reframes the election around this core question: Is capitalism basically working or is it basically broken? … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Middle East Thinks America Is Going Crazy
Steven A. Cook
Foreign Policy, Feb. 12, 2020
When I landed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, last week, the United States was in the throes of a bruising debate about Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and the Super Bowl halftime show. It was either the worst halftime show ever or the best, women were either shamed or empowered, and the kids were forever damaged. The next day, things got more serious with the absurd debacle that was the Iowa Democratic caucuses, whose winner could not be announced until the following Sunday due to “quality control” issues. Almost immediately, the conspiracy theorists kicked into high gear, ignoring the most obvious explanation for the problems Iowa Democrats encountered: incompetence.
On my second morning in the Emirates, I woke up to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and all the fury that it produced over Rush Limbaugh’s Presidential Medal of Freedom—which surely debases the value of the honor for all past and future recipients—and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up the president’s speech. Before I got on the plane back to Washington, the Senate acquitted Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress. The lone Republican dissenter in the abuse of power charge, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, was promptly disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference because organizers could not assure his safety. Watching these events unfold in succession from 7,000 miles away rather from my usual perch inside the Beltway made America’s apparent crackup feel all the more real.
I was not the only one paying attention. So were the Emiratis. They carefully noted the three-ring circus. To a person, those I spoke to on my trip were horrified at the incompetence of the Democrats in Iowa, stunned by the lack of civility during and after the State of the Union, and firmly of the belief that Trump will be reelected in November. The confidence that there will be a second Trump administration, however, does not allay a sense of disbelief and discomfort about America’s growing dysfunction. They are concerned about the pathological polarization they see and what it might mean for their ties with the United States.
They also aren’t waiting around to find out. The Emiratis are keenly aware of America’s ambivalence about the Middle East and are unapologetic about plans they already have underway to join find new partners to help them achieve their objectives. And, across the Middle East, they are not alone.
For all of the talk in Washington about relitigating U.S. ties with its regional allies, Middle Eastern leaders are doing much the same with regard to the United States. I first got a hint of this a number of years ago during a conversation with an Egyptian official who related that what he called the “isolationist” worldviews of politicians like Sens. Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders—and the apparent appeal of these ideas to large number of Americans—raised questions in the minds of leaders in Cairo whether the United States would in time relinquish its role as Egypt’s strategic partner and stabilizer of the Middle East. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Sanders Wins New Hampshire, Klobuchar Only Pro-Israel Candidate to Win Delegates: David Israel, Jewish Press, Feb. 12, 2020 — Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won Tuesday’s The New Hampshire primary, followed by former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Democrats Gave Obama a Free Pass. That Could Hurt Us on Election Day.: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, NYT, Feb. 5, 2020 — The sting of Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 still hangs heavy over the Democratic Party.
Bloomberg is Considering Hillary Clinton As His Running Mate, says Matt Drudge: Lauren Hirsch, CNBC, Feb. 15, 2020 — Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is considering Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential running mate after positive internal polling about the potential pairing, according to the Drudge Report, which cited sources close to the Bloomberg campaign.
The Trials of Bill Barr: Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, Feb. 13, 2020 — The Roger Stone sentencing uproar is deeply important, and not because it’s another Trump “scandal.” Rather, it’s a clash that was always coming—the moment at which an ungoverned bureaucracy smacked up against Attorney General William Barr’s promise to restore equal justice and accountability at the Justice Department.
Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged?: Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, Feb. 15, 2020 — The Justice Department announced Friday that it is closing its investigation of Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, over his false statements to investigators probing an unauthorized leak that McCabe had orchestrated.
WATCH: Charlamagne tha God on Biden, Bloomberg: Why Are Black People Supporting Old White Men With Histories Of Racist Legislation?: RealClearPolitics, Feb. 14, 2020 — “Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne Tha God joined CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday evening to discuss why Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg are leading in polls among black voters in South Carolina.
