January 1, 2020

trump's 'miracle' Stock Market? He's full of shit.

https://www.axios.com/trump-stock-market-gain-obama-bush-d4f951ec-1fd7-4b53-bb4e-b33d4e91df37.html

January 1, 2020

A song for Elizabeth Warren: Badlands (Live in New York City)

Bruce and the E-Street Band, at the height of their powers.

Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
You spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don't come
Don't waste your time waiting

Even sharing the joy,
you may notice that Vevo -U MG/Sony.EMI
has restricted the resolution to 240p
There's money to made in selling higher resolution
elsewhere, if they get around to it

January 1, 2020

NYT: Elizabeth Warren's New Year's Message: 'Imagine' a Better America

Elizabeth Warren’s New Year’s Message: ‘Imagine’ a Better America

Ms. Warren delivered a major speech exactly a year after she entered the presidential race, reiterating her case against corruption but also seeking a more uplifting tone heading into 2020

BOSTON — Marking a year since she began her campaign for president, and seeking to frame the final five-week sprint to Iowa, where much of her candidacy hinges, Senator Elizabeth Warren urged her supporters to “imagine that something better lies on the other side of the chaos and ugliness of the last three years” in a major speech on Tuesday.

Ms. Warren, who surged to the front of the Democratic field in early fall but has since receded, warned her party against “thinking small” in 2020 as she pitched her sweeping agenda. “Americans do big things,” she said. “That’s who we are.”

(snip) She cast the 2020 campaign as “our chance to rewrite the rules of power in our country.”

“The billionaires, the corporate executives and their favorite presidential candidates have one clear goal: to convince you that everything you imagine is impossible,” she said, sharpening her contrast with Democratic rivals like former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who have aggressively courted large contributors.

“You better believe the big donors know which candidates for president are on their side,” she added, offering something of a rebuttal to Mr. Buttigieg, who has criticized Ms. Warren for her pursuit of such donors before she began her presidential campaign. Their goal, she said, was “to convince you that reform is hopeless — to convince you that because no one can be pure, it’s pointless to try to make anything better.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020.html

December 31, 2019

Looking back on the primary race at year end,

one thing I've learnt is Biden has teflon. If anything, the gaffes and Impeachment have put a few more coats on his frying pan. He's also showing a swagger that I find encouraging. Bernie says "tump will eat his lunch". Joe replies he will invite Bernie to the White House "to get his desert". LOL.

The future remains to be written, but looking forward, Biden needs close to 40% to clinch it, and he's not there yet. I still think we may be headed for a brokered convention, which is something I do not want. Sanders has demonstrated resilience, and sits safely above 15%. Warren's trajectory is still uncertain, but she seems to have survived M4A, Pete's surge and Bloomberg's entry.

The worst outcome would be brokered convention with 1. Biden, 2.Sanders, 3. Warren, because the majority of her delegates will not support Sanders, policy similarities or not. We could be looking at a "we wuz robbed" 2016 reply - even if Biden wins outright.

Trump is going to lose this one (knock on wood). The Dem base is more motivated than at any time since 2008. For those here who say it must be Biden because a trump second term is unthinkable - you are hawking fear, however much you deny it. "The best chance of winning" equals the least chance of losing. QED. I'm more fearful of a play-it-safe Biden administration getting nowhere in the first two years, followed by another midterm catastrophe. If the economic downturn comes after 2020, things will get ugly.

All the best for 2020 and good luck to all.

December 31, 2019

Three term presidencies.

American presidents are at a disadvantage on the world stage in their second term, carrying the moniker of lame duck. If there was a three term limit, the GOP would have benefitted little, if at all. 1960, Eisenhower was certainly going to retire; The Reagan Era would have still have ended in 1992, and come 2000 Clinton was within an ace of pulling off an Israel/Palestine settlement.

Not to mention Bill and Obama would have won 3rd terms in blow outs.

December 31, 2019

Prayers For The March On The Bridge

December 31, 2019

Trump spent 1 of 5 days in 2019 at one of his golf clubs.

Trump spent 1 of 5 days at one of his golf clubs in 2019

How has President Donald Trump spent his Christmas vacation? Working, he says, but also on the golf course.

(snip) According to CNN's tally, he has spent at least 251 days at a Trump golf club and 332 days at a Trump property as President.

This year alone, he's spent at least 85 days at a golf club, despite a late start due to the government shutdown. The golf excursions have included the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia; his Bedminister, New Jersey, golf club; Trump National Doral outside Miami; and Trump International Doonbeg in Ireland.

Trump joins a long list of presidents with a love of the game, though he is the only one who publicly -- and frequently -- criticized his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Trump went after Obama's golf habits repeatedly on Twitter and on the campaign trail. "I mean he's played more golf than most people on the PGA Tour, this guy," Trump said during a 2016 campaign stop in New Hampshire.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/trump-golfing-vacation/index.html

December 31, 2019

"Bernie Sanders is definitely being underestimated in Iowa," Democratic Chairman, Poweshiek County.

Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat

(snip) Bernie Sanders is definitely being underestimated in Iowa,” said John Grennan, the Democratic chairman in Poweshiek County, Iowa.

“Part of his durability is that he has 15 to 20 percent of the caucus who are absolutely committed to voting for him no matter what,” he said. “In a field that’s split between at least 10 major candidates, that 15 to 20 percent counts for a whole heck of a lot.”

There are other factors that have helped Mr. Sanders in Iowa. Because his backers are so loyal, opponents have been unable to penetrate his base, if they have tried to at all. Part of the reason is that Mr. Sanders’s strategy revolves around engaging people who typically don’t participate in the political process, a highly difficult group to target; even the Sanders campaign acknowledges it is a risky strategy. Another factor is sheer resignation: His rivals just don’t see the point in trying to pick off supporters who probably won’t budge

Mr. Sanders has also mostly escaped aggressive attacks from his rivals. Other candidates have focused more on trying to stop Ms. Warren, whom they viewed as a bigger threat. On the airwaves, Mr. Buttigieg, another front-runner, has run television ads that attack Mr. Sanders’s proposals like “Medicare for all” and tuition-free public college but do not name him directly.

Ms. Warren herself has rarely criticized Mr. Sanders. Asked at a recent stop in the blue-collar town of Ottumwa what made her a “better candidate” than Mr. Sanders, she responded tepidly that they had been “friends for a long, long time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/us/politics/bernie-sanders-iowa-democrats.html

I would add something else. The Sanders Campaign welcomes (public) criticism. The more the better.

December 30, 2019

The next time you see a HarrisX, Harvard Harris poll on DU

He was always Mr. Centrist. He was banished from Hillaryland after 2008. He goes on Fox. (Now he's advising trump on Impeachment)

Mark Penn, What the $! Were You Doing in Donald Trump’s White House?

(snip) Penn was Clinton’s pollster and, for a time, chief strategist in her 2008 bid for the presidency. He had urged her to “slander” Obama for his “lack of American roots,” advice Clinton didn’t take, recalls Jonah Blank, a former Senate Foreign Relations committee aide. “He was promoting a racist ‘birther’ dog-whistle strategy long before Trump found it” Blank told The Daily Beast.

Penn had written in a 2007 memo to Clinton that Obama’s diverse, multicultural boyhood in Indonesia and Hawaii “exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

Penn has long been considered a “malign” force by Democrats, as one put it to me in an email, part of the cast of characters like pollster Dick Morris who had sway over the Clintons in the 1990s. Together with Morris, Penn gained notoriety for “triangulation,” steering Bill Clinton away from House Democrats and closer to the Republicans who won control of Congress two years into his presidency.

The ploy angered Democrats, but it worked: Clinton got re-elected. But over time—accelerated by Hillary’s loss to the insurgent Obama in ’08—Penn’s centrist approach to politics lost its luster in a party moving to the progressive left. When Clinton ran again in 2016, she did not hire Penn, leaving him on the outside for yet another presidential cycle.

Democrats theorize that Penn was angry about that, but his exile from Hillaryland put a mark on him. He ended up accepting an offer from Fox News, appearing regularly to opine about how Democrats were going off the rails, and to suggest Hillary might be readying another White House run. After learning that Penn had met with Trump, Obama strategist David Axelrod tweeted, “All that bootlicking on Fox News finally paid off for Mark Penn. He’s finally a White House insider again.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mark-penn-what-the-dollarand-were-you-doing-in-donald-trumps-white-house

EDIT: It's time of the week again! Bloomberg surges to 11%! Game on !
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/476689-bloomberg-rises-to-third-place-alongside-warren-in-national-poll

December 30, 2019

New: Trump approval clears 50%. Bloomberg 8% rises to 4th place.

Trump: Approve 50%, Disapprove 48%
Biden 30%, Sanders 20%, Warren 16%, Bloomberg 8%, Buttigieg 7%, Yang 4%

Except it's Zorgby

https://www.zogbyanalytics.com/news/909-the-zogby-poll-2020-democratic-primary-report-nationwide-likely-voters-poll
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/poll-trump-jumps-to-50-approval-beating-biden-sanders-bloomberg-warren 52.6

trump 538 Average: Approve 42.6, Dissaprove 52.9
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo

HarrisX gave Trump 49% approval this month. I hold Mark Penn and Scott Rasmussen in equally high esteem as high esteem as John Zorgby. Mark Penn has visited the Oval Office to advise trump on impeachment. No doubt the next HarrisX Dem primary poll will be posted here with the utmost good faith and sincerity.