Bernie Goes Bust

While his colleagues in the Senate were dominating the news cycle with a poignant and powerful filibuster in support of strong gun control measures, Bernie Sanders was holed up in Vermont, polishing remarks he delivered to supporters on Thursday night. The speech itself was familiar. A greatest hits of Bernie’s preferred policy positions and a call to arms for his people to get involved in the political process at every level of government. But for a guy who boasted of his online fundraising prowess and unexpected success during the primaries, his 23-minute speech landed with a thud. Although more than one million people registered for the online stream, at its peak, a mere 218,000 people viewed it and cable news quickly cut away as it became clear he was giving a glorified stump speech lacking a concession to Hillary Clinton.

The past few weeks have been unkind to the 74-year old democratic socialist. After camping out in California for weeks on end in the hope of winning that state’s primary, he got stomped, book ending a day that began with a 30-point blowout in New Jersey and the media’s designation of Clinton as the party’s presumptive nominee. Since then, Sanders has been further marginalized. A meeting with President Obama was quickly overshadowed by the President, Vice President, and Senator Warren’s endorsement of Clinton. As the nation reeled over the mass murder in Orlando, Sanders chose that time to issue his set of demands to the Democrats, including the removal of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Instead of supporting his “fellow” Democrats during the aforementioned filibuster, Sanders skipped it. And through it all, he has refused to concede even as the few supporters he had in Congress abandoned ship.

All of these events would have been enough to shrink whatever leverage Sanders had before his crushing loss in California, but Donald Trump’s implosion has worsened his situation. As Trump has become unmoored – lashing out at a federal judge, claiming the President was somehow complicit in the Orlando attack, accusing soldiers of theft in Iraq – and polling shows a consolidation of Democratic support for Clinton and a steady erosion of Republican support for Trump, it is becoming clear that Sanders’s blessing is not nearly as important as it looked to be just a few weeks ago. Clinton now has a posse that includes a fired up (and very popular) Barack Obama, working class hero Joe Biden, progressive champion Elizabeth Warren, her husband (and still-popular ex-President) Bill Clinton, and whoever she selects as her running mate to eviscerate Trump and rally Democrats, Independents and sane Republicans. Bernie’s support would be helpful, but no longer appears necessary.

Sanders played a weak hand hoping to maximize his return, but he pushed too hard. Instead of quitting while he was ahead, he went all in and lost. Voting ended in California 10 days ago (no mention of Bernie’s 60 point loss in Washington, D.C. earlier this week is needed) and Sanders has shown no sign of getting with the program. He could have giving a gracious concession speech, pledged his full support to Clinton and called on his voters to do the same, all of which would have enhanced his standing in the party. But he did nothing of the sort.

This is telling. For whatever lip service Sanders pays to being a Democrat, his actions tell a much different story. He has now spoken publicly, and with meaningful media attention, three times without so much as gracious and heartfelt congratulations to Clinton or an acknowledgment that the campaign is over. On the most important topic of the day, when his voice could have added weight to Senator Chris Murphy’s filibuster, Sanders was AWOL. What we have seen instead is a refusal to admit defeat, a self-righteousness bordering on narcissism, and a delusional belief that a guy who registered as a Democrat for political expediency now thinks he can tell his newfound party what to do.

When Sanders does not get all he wants, or is denied things he thinks he is owed, do not be surprised when he takes his toys and goes home, which is fine by me. His allegiance to the party was only as strong as his potential to win the nomination. With that gone, and with his endorsers abandoning him, I fully expect Sanders to revert back to being an independent – which is what he has been in his heart the whole time.

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Media Fail: California Edition

In a primary season littered with bad journalism, the California primary may take the cake. To recap: Bernie Sanders basically moved to the Golden State, campaigned there non-stop, received his typical fawning coverage based on campaign rallies he held almost exclusively on college campuses, benefitted from hours of TV time where pundits suggested he could win the state, and STILL lost to Hillary Clinton by 13 points. The morning after the election, you would barely know that the media had spent the preceding three weeks hyping his prospects or that he lost in a landslide.

Although awful, the media fail is of a piece with how they have covered the Clinton/Sanders primary race. Clinton fought Sanders with one hand tied behind her back while he swung away with both fists. Other than her (accurate) attacks on Sanders’s position on gun manufacturer liability, the Clinton team spent little time on negative campaigning against him; her Super PAC literally spent no money going after Sanders. Meanwhile, he dug in with gusto against her until the final day of the campaign.

The conventional wisdom was that Clinton supporters were not as enthusiastic as Sanders supporters. Not only was that demonstrably false, but in the place enthusiasm actually matters – the polling booth – her final margin of victory will end up being close to 4 million votes, a massive victory. That Hillary won 8 of the last 11 primaries and caucuses and 14 of the last 20 would suggest she has plenty of momentum and enthusiasm, but most of the coverage leading into California speculated about how damaging a loss there would be. When the media could not find any equivalency in delegates or votes, they tried to lean on “states won” – as if the Utah caucus was the same as prevailing in Pennsylvania, Florida or Texas – but even there, the Sanders team came up woefully short.

The kid gloves Sanders was treated with by Clinton were largely shared by a media horde that consistently drooled over his rallies but did little probing of his actual policies. What little negative press he received was of his own making – an awful editorial board meeting with the New York Daily News and his claim that Clinton was unqualified to be President – stemmed from his own lack of preparedness and tin ear. Meanwhile, in the run up to both the New York and California primaries, his campaign received oceans of positive coverage based on the size of his crowds, but when he lost each, there was little after action reporting on why that excitement did not translate into wins.

Bernie’s appeal was always based more on myth than fact. Of the 10 most populous states in the nation, Sanders only won one, and by less than two percent (Michigan). Clinton beat Sanders by more than 100,000 votes 15 times, while Sanders only bested Clinton by that margin once. Clinton’s domination was so complete there were some counties where she outpolled Sanders by a greater margin than entire states he won. In New Jersey, her margin of victory in Essex County (47,622 votes) was greater than Sanders’s victory margins in all but four states (one of which was Vermont).

But for all of this, Bernie Sanders is still getting the softball treatment. The editorial board of the New York Times thinks Hillary has to convince Bernie’s supporters she did not cheat to win and everyone in the press corps is in agreement that he deserves a wide berth to nurse his wounds even as he stubbornly claims he will soldier on, notwithstanding the clear defeat he suffered. It is fitting that the media is giving him one last parting gift – on a night when he could have shown statesmanship by conceding to Clinton, urging his supporters to vote for her, or even simply acknowledging the historic nature of her being the first woman to clinch a major party’s nomination for President, he was defiant and refused to shush his supporters who booed her name, not that you will hear much about this in the press, they are too busy hand wringing over the additional concessions that must be made to soothe his wounded ego. 

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Everything You Wanted To Know About Hillary’s Email That The Media Refuses To Tell You

Official Washington loves few things more than a heavily annotated investigative report and it is even better when there is a political slant to it. The recently released report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of State meets both criteria. At 83 pages, it appears to have heft (even though the report itself is only 42 pages, the rest is an appendix of old memos and guidance documents) and its tsk-tsking of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server fits with the media’s narrative that she is untrustworthy. 

The breathless reporting portrayed Clinton as a rogue actor, flagrantly violating the law while dissembling in her after-the-fact excuses. But if you read the report and ignore the political spin, you find a much more nuanced story. For example, a former Secretary of State connected a private laptop to a private Internet connection to conduct government business and never attempted to store or retrieve the emails sent that way, but that person was Colin Powell, not Hillary Clinton. The archiving rule at the center of one of the two complaints against Clinton could have been levied at dozens of other people who failed to print out every email they sent or received and store the paper copies (the so-called “print and file” system.)  

For all the sturm und drang, the OIG criticizes Secretary Clinton for two things - first, for failing to comply with the ridiculous “print and file” archiving requirement that OIG itself admits few people follow; and second, conducting government business on private email connected to a personal server. What the report reveals however, (and what was unreported in the press) is that Secretary Clinton was hardly alone in these supposed “violations.” The IG notes that nearly 90 senior aides to Secretaries Powell and Rice used personal email. (IG report at 20). Secretary Powell himself not only used a personal email account, he connected a private laptop to the Internet through a “private” connection in his office, sidestepping the State Department’s portal (which was itself a violation of State Department rules). (IG report at 3, 21, 31). And when contacted by the IG during the pendency of their investigation, Powell, along with aides to Rice, ignored the IG’s entreaties to determine whether the email they sent via personal email could be retrieved. (IG report at 21-23). 

The IG concluded that “Secretary Powell did not comply with Department policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.” (IG report at 22). The IG made the same finding with regard to Secretary Clinton with one important caveat: her submission of 55,000 pages of emails “mitigated her failure to properly preserve emails …” (IG report at 23, emphasis added). Powell not only failed to comply at the time, but snubbed a request from the Department that he contact his ISP to determine if his records were retrievable. (IG report at 22). Even so, the “file and print” requirement is only followed “sporadically.” The Department’s internal guidelines contain “no explicit penalties for lack of compliance” and the Department “has never proposed discipline against an employee [for failing to comply.]” (IG report at 14). 

Ironically, had Hillary done as those 90 staffers and Secretary Powell had done and simply used a personal email account instead of her own server, it is unlikely any of her records could be retrieved. Instead, the State Department (and ultimately the world) got to pour through 55,000 pages of email, the vast majority of which was the boring work of government with some cherry picked threads of gossip and other click bait ephemera the media loves to focus on. Conversely, email Powell and his and Rice’s aides sent while we were at war in two countries and attacked on September 11th, 2001 are lost to history. 

So, on the first point - failing to properly archive her records, no one has ever been punished for not following the rules and Hillary complied after the fact. But what about the dreaded private server? Well, the server is really a red herring. The issue here is corresponding over a system without proper security features - whether that is done using a gmail account or your own private server is incidental. But here’s the thing: not only was using personal email not prohibited when Clinton was Secretary, it still is not prohibited. While the federal record keeping law was amended in 2014, it did not prohibit the use of private email for official purposes, it simply required that a person who did so copy her official email account or forward a copy of the email to that account within 20 days. (IG report at 9). And the Department’s most recent guidance, issued in 2015, says that the use of personal email is “discouraged” except “in very limited circumstances.” The Department does not articulate what those circumstances might be. (IG report at 32). 

Oddly, the conclusory nature of the IG’s findings (and those most heavily reported by the media) contain no substantiation. For a report with an average of four footnotes per page, the determination that Secretary Clinton had “an obligation” to discuss her email use is simply stated as fact without citing to any internal guidance, regulation or law. It is curious that such a finding was made, particularly since the report itself acknowledges that personal email use was not then and is not now, prohibited. 

Surely, if Secretary Clinton ran afoul of Department guidelines, so too did the 90 staff members who worked for Secretaries Powell and Rice, along with what I have to assume are many other anonymous employees in a Department of thousands who probably use their personal email accounts from time to time. And the concern over the security of Clinton’s server is a fortiori for servers run by Google, Microsoft, and ISPs that are targets of daily hacking attempts. And it is not like government servers are bastions of security. The Office of Personnel Management was hacked last year, resulting in the theft of more than 10 million social security numbers of current and former federal employees dating back to 2000.

If you want to point a finger, look at the records management at the State Department - it is a total shit show. Some archived email cannot be retrieved because much of it is corrupted, password protected or contains no information (IG report at 15), the integrated archiving system did not come online until this year (IG report at 15), and the Department broke its own rules by failing to archive the email of 50 top political appointees (IG report at 16). Even if the Department wanted to determine the frequency or volume of personal email use by its employees, it “currently lacks the resources” to do so. (IG report at 19).

This is another tempest in a teapot that ignored context such as the fact that close to 100 former senior officials were also known to have used private email and that many senior officials under prior Secretaries of State (and Secretary Powell himself) ignored requests to turn over their records. The archiving rule Clinton supposedly violated was also violated by Secretary Powell, is without sanction and has never been used to discipline anyone. Unlike Secretary Powell, Secretary Clinton complied with this rule after the fact. Hardly the crime of the century, but an easy way for a media hell bent on reinforcing its preferred narrative that Hillary thinks the rules do not apply to her.

If you want to read the report for yourself, it can be found here:

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf

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Twenty Days To California

Hillary Clinton must wonder what she needs to do to make Bernie Sanders go away. Sweeps in various “super” Tuesdays stretched her pledged delegate lead to a point that made it mathematically impossible for Sanders to catch her. Yet, there he is, leveraging the media’s need to fill TV hours and column inches  to soldier on. After all, there is no shortage of college campuses and idealistic young people to make it seem like he still has a chance. And so, even if she need not win any more primaries between now and June 14th, when the District of Columbia has the final say, a loss in California on June 7th to Sanders would not look good. To the Beltway media, the dreaded “optics” of such a defeat would simply feed into the narrative that she is a weak general election candidate whose political host body (the Democratic Party) is rejecting her. 

I am sure the Clinton team would prefer not to spend any additional money locking up a nomination it thinks it has already won; however, allow me to offer a modest proposal. Instead of treating the next three weeks as an unnecessary epilogue to a primary contest that the Clinton team thinks is already over, look at this time as an unexpected opportunity to launch her general election campaign early. 

A month ago, everyone assumed attention would be focused on the Republicans, who were careening toward a contested convention and the possibility of a third-party challenger. Instead, opposition to Donald Trump folded and the race ended early. Because of this, Trump is likely to go dark as he focuses on catching up in fundraising, campaign infrastructure, and convention planning. For all his bluster, his campaign schedule even during the heat of the race was light - rarely doing more than one or two events a day - and now that he’s locked up the nomination, the idea of spending money on unnecessary rallies when so much needs to be done is unlikely. 

So with the media’s attention focused on California (and to a lesser extent New Jersey), the Clinton team should embrace this chance to dominate media coverage. Take the next twenty days to test drive her general election campaign themes, define her (and Trump) with the knowledge that she will generate an inordinate amount of national (and local) coverage simply because space needs to be filled -  so fill that space, with her message, with images of rallies and events with the diverse coalition that propelled President Obama to victory and interviews that give her a platform to speak with passion and fluency about how she will lead this country.

The return on investment from cross-country wins in New Jersey and California will not only snuff out the final embers of the Sanders insurgency, but springboard her into the fall campaign. 

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Should We Care What Bernie Wants?

With wins in four of five states that made up the “Acela” (or I-95) Primary on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton is on the verge of history – the first woman to secure the nomination of a major political party for President of the United States. Of course, this singular achievement is already being poo pooed by the press, who are either mourning the loss of what ratings come from portraying a contest that was never that close as competitive or simply reflecting their decades-long antipathy toward the former First Lady. Either way, attention has quickly shifted to a narrative framed on her need to acquiesce to still-unknown demands that may be made of her by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to secure his endorsement and, in theory, the support of his followers. 

It is particularly presumptuous of Sanders to make demands considering he himself has only been a member of the party (sort of) for less than a year and acknowledged running as a Democrat purely for political expediency. But that aside, I am not sure what he could ask for that is not already in the neighborhood of what he seeks. On many of the issues of importance to him - Wall Street reform, taxation, college education, and others – Secretary Clinton has put forth proposals that are broadly in line with his thinking with the added benefit of being substantive and workable, not an idealistic fantasy where Republicans in Congress would somehow kowtow to the whims of a Democratic Socialist in the White House. 

That he would not get Secretary Clinton to adopt his ideas chapter and verse is no sin and should not be a requirement to secure his blessing. He lost, which means his views were considered and rejected; he does not get a second bite at the apple at the threat of taking his toys and going home. And Sanders may want to rethink any requests about the nominating process. The delegate apportionment rules that he bemoans have actually benefitted him, keeping him in the race by granting him delegates in large states he lost badly (see, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Virginia) while providing oceans of positive media coverage for wins in low turnout caucuses in places like Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska that did little to move the needle in his delegate deficit. Sanders has gained a lot of mileage out of his victories even though of the ten states with the smallest turn out, he prevailed in all ten and his percentage of pledged delegates slightly outpaces the percentage of the total vote he has received. 

Even if Sanders asked that the number of super delegates be reduced or eliminated altogether, it would not help his cause because Secretary Clinton has also won a majority of the pledged delegates. Naturally, Sanders would like a system tailor-made to benefit him that would allow independents to vote in Democratic primaries (I do not get this – why would non-members of a political party be allowed to have a say in who Democrats (or Republicans for that matter) choose to lead their party?), reduce or eliminate super delegates and maybe increase the prominence of caucuses, but you only get to make the rules if you win the game. The truth is, for all the media sturm und drang, Clinton has held a consistent lead of between 10 and 20 percentage points in the total vote against Sanders since the primary season started in earnest.  

Indeed, if Sanders is truly interested in helping to advance his agenda, he would be best served by helping down-ballot Democrats flip the House and take control of the Senate, but he has been resistant to supporting “the party” until very recently and even then, his efforts on behalf of other Democrats has been limited to some fundraising letters and a passing nod to a handful of candidates. Mobilizing his volunteers and fundraising, helping to recruit progressives at the federal, state, and local level, and working with party leaders to little “d” democratize the way the party raises money will have a far more salutary benefit than arguing over a plank in the party platform that nobody is going to read anyway. 

Of course, this is not to say that Mrs. Clinton should not be gracious, but saying that is superfluous. Her campaign has run almost no negative advertising against Sanders and while the Secretary has thrown some sharp rhetorical elbows, they have been well within the rules for political campaigns. She has taken pains to publicly congratulate Sanders on his wins and extended an olive branch to his supporters in her victories. There are always going to be dead enders, people who, no matter how hard you try to appease, will not go gently into that good night. And so I say that Hillary should waste no time trying to mollify the Susan Sarandons, Rosario Dawsons and Shaun Kings of the world. They are much happier in their ideological purity than the belief that cementing the gains made under Presidents Clinton and Obama is more important than the risk of Donald J. Trump taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. For the overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents who voted for Bernie Sanders, logic and reason will prevail. 

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Bernie's Last Gasp

With a five-for-five night on Super Tuesday II, Hillary Clinton attained a practically insurmountable delegate lead against Bernie Sanders. While the Clinton team is itching to start aiming its fire on Donald Trump, the erstwhile Vermont Senator is showing no sign of going quietly into the gentle night. 

I am here to say it is time for Sanders to quit the race. It is not just the nearly 2:1 delegate lead Clinton has amassed, the 2.5 million more votes she has received than him, or the near mathematical impossibility of him catching her, it is also for the good of the party that all Democrats, like minded Independents and concerned Republicans begin the task of forming the coalition that will keep the White House in Democratic hands for another four years. 

But, says the Sanders team, what about 2008? Hillary contested every single primary before bowing out. True, so far as it goes, but this is not 2008 for several reasons:

• Obama and Clinton were neck-and-neck in the popular vote throughout and practically so in the delegate race. Clinton is millions of votes ahead of Sanders and whether you want to use “pledged” delegates as the benchmark or “pledged delegates plus super delegates,” her lead is far more than Obama’s was against her at any point along the way;
• The Democrats had a tail wind in 2008 because George W. Bush was incredibly unpopular. Even before the Wall Street collapse in September, Bush’s favorability had taken massive hits because of Hurricane Katrina, the endless fighting in Iraq, and the slowing economy. Republicans were also seeking to hold the White House for a third consecutive term, something not often done.
• Speaking of that third term, Obama is still incredibly popular with the Democratic Party and has a roughly 50% approval rating overall. While this accrues to the nominee to succeed him, the best way to lock in that support is to hew to policies that build on those already achieved, not calling for a political revolution that people are not clamoring for.

Sanders has achieved an enormous amount and the passion of his supporters cannot be questioned; however, his continued presence saps precious resources that will be needed in the fight against Trump for no particularly good reason. The idea that he will be competitive in places like New York (where Clinton served as Senator for eight years, won two landslide victories and the 2008 primary against Obama) or California (which she also won in 2008) or Pennsylvania (ditto, along with its long history of support for President Clinton) is simply not credible.

The Democrats have a unique opportunity not just to buck the no-party-gets-a-third-term trend, but to win back the Senate and eat into the Republican majority in the House. With Hillary atop the ticket competing against Trump, predictions for House races are already shifting toward “toss up” or “lean Democrat” that had previously been safe and the Senate map, which was already favorable for Democrats, will become more so. A President Clinton coming into office in 2017 with a Senate majority and a Republican House with a 10-12 seat majority may actually be able to get things done.

Conversely, Sanders backers must acknowledge the reality that the “revolution” he claims to be leading has simply not come to pass. He lags with many of the constituencies that make up the Democratic coalition and has lost badly in places like Florida, Ohio, and Virginia that will be critical in November. Down ballot Democrats may run from his support and otherwise vulnerable Republicans may survive. While he should be lauded for his narrow win in Michigan, other state victories in places like Maine and Nebraska were with vote totals that were far less than what Clinton received in a single city like Chicago or Miami. 

Moreover, a Sanders nomination would embolden Republicans to dump Trump and rally the party to a consensus nominee like Paul Ryan because Sanders would be an incredibly weak general election nominee. Polls may show him to be competitive right now, but hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent turning him into the second coming of Karl Marx. Say what you will about Hillary, she is a known commodity and someone who has survived decades of Republican barbs.

Lastly, while it is entirely possible that mainstream Republicans like Colin Powell (who endorsed Obama twice), Bob Dole, or George H.W. Bush might endorse Hillary over Trump, giving tacit permission to Republicans to vote their conscience for fear of turning over the country to him, it is impossible to imagine them doing the same for an avowed democratic socialist. Her ability to attract Republicans who view her as an acceptable alternative to Trump is simply not true of Sanders.

Were Sanders an actual member of the Democratic party and had he spent the last 25 or 30 years of his career doing the rubber chicken circuit helping to elect down ballot Democrats and sitting in state meetings building friendships and alliances with key leaders at the local level, he would understand the concept of “for the good of the party.” Hillary understands this because she has been campaigning for Democrats since George McGovern in 1972. In 2008, she not only put Obama’s name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention, she campaigned vigorously for him, went on to serve as his Secretary of State, and her husband gave a re-nominating speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention so comprehensive in its defense of Obama’s record that Obama himself said he was going to appoint Bill Clinton Secretary of Explaining Stuff. 

I hold out far less hope that Sanders will give a full throated endorsement of Clinton or campaign for her or encourage his supporters to donate to her campaign. He has been a one-man band for decades and holds no allegiance to the Democratic Party; if he did, he would know it is time to quit.

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State of the Race - Super Tuesday II

Now that Super Tuesday II is over and both parties have just about settled on their nominees, let’s take a quick look back at some lessons learned about what has undoubtedly been the strangest election cycle in a long time:

The Hostile Takeover of the Republican Party Was Not Hard or Expensive. Donald Trump has stampeded his way to the GOP nomination largely on TV appearances and a Twitter feed. He has spent less than $25 million, did not even start advertising until January, and eschewed the conventional retail campaign tactics in Iowa and New Hampshire that are supposedly essential to winning those states (he finished a close second in the former and won the latter in a walk). Meanwhile, his opponents raised (and spent) close to $200 million to little effect. In Florida, they threw more than $20 million in negative ads at him and he still won by 18 points. Trump barely broke a sweat while outlasting current and former Governors and Senators that made up the biggest (though not the “deepest”) field of Republicans in history. For as odious as his politics are, his achievement may be the most impressive feat in recent political history.

Horse Race Reporting Has Completely Taken Over Presidential Politics. Did you know Marco Rubio wants to completely eliminate the capital gains tax? Or that Rand Paul called for temporarily stopping Muslims from 32 countries from entering the United States? That Chris Christie wanted a massive overhaul of Social Security? Of course you did not because the media has become completely consumed by polling and “who won the day” analysis popularized by publications like POLITICO and cable shows like With All Due Respect. At the same time, there has been even more emphasis on faux controversies like whether Hillary Clinton tipped properly at a Chipotle instead of a deeper dive into the policies of the candidates. 

The Media Could Not Make Marco Rubio Happen. No candidate benefitted more from favorable media coverage than Marco Rubio and no candidate so successfully manipulated the press for his own gain. He spun a third place finish in Iowa into a “victory,” sold the media on a “3-2-1” strategy in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, then ignored it when it turned into “3-5-2,” and finally bought himself another month in the race by selling himself as the consensus candidate even as he was getting rolled in state after state. When he trained his fire on Trump, it backfired spectacularly and then, in a final swing of shamelessness, he bemoaned the tone of a campaign he helped lower by making allegations about hand size and pants peeing. 

The Bern Is Real. Readers of my blog know where my allegiance lies, but I will give the 74-year old democratic socialist his due, his campaign legitimately tapped into left-wing frustration and his fundraising prowess is remarkable. The media coverage of him has been awful throughout. There is no question the media was slow off the mark in seeing his popularity, but they have now overcorrected even as he is at a 60/40 deficit in both delegates and the popular vote against Hillary Clinton while she enjoys a more than 9:1 lead in super delegates that will ultimately push her over the top - which is how Obama won the nomination in 2008 even though he and Mrs. Clinton split the popular vote very close to 50/50. Sanders has been the most effective insurgent since Gene McCarthy in 1968, but he has also benefitted from tissue thin vetting that has given him a wide berth to drum home his message. After losing all five races on Super Tuesday II, he would rise in stature if he dropped out, but instead, he will soldier on, even though he has no chance of winning the nomination. 

The Establishment Is Dead. At varying times, TIME magazine anointed Rand Paul “the most interesting man in politics,” Marco Rubio “the Republican savior,” and Chris Christie simply “THE BOSS.” (caps in original). This was before Jeb Bush brought his family name into the race and immediately vaulted to the top of the polls. Paul dropped out after Iowa, Christie after New Hampshire, and Bush after South Carolina. Rubio limped on with little money but plenty of endorsements and media support (see above) before dropping out after being humiliated in his home state of Florida. Other candidates, like 2012 runner-up Rick Santorum, 2008 runner-up Mike Huckabee, three-term Texas Governor Rick Perry, and South Carolina’s senior Senator Lindsey Graham, barely registered before quitting to no ado. If a year ago you had a reality TV star and the most hated man in Congress as your two most likely victors in the Republican field, bravo.

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State of the Race: Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday is in the books. What happened and where do the two parties stand on the way to the White House? Republicans handed Donald Trump wins in blood red states like Alabama and Arkansas and deep blue states like Vermont and Massachusetts. He also won Virginia, which is a swing state in the general election, along with several other contests. Ted Cruz triumphed in his home state of Texas, next door neighbor Oklahoma, and the lightly contested Alaska caucus. Marco Rubio finally got on the board with a win in Minnesota, but had a string of third-place finishes except a strong showing in Virginia, where he placed second. No one is dropping out and there are winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida in two weeks. 

In the last week or so, the full weight of whatever is left of the Republican establishment has coalesced around the idea that Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs. The only problem is that the party itself - the actual voters who are going out and casting ballots - disagree. It is not a small thing that Trump is winning contests across the board. He is not, like Ted Cruz, a seemingly regional candidate nor is he someone who is only garnering support from a small segment of the electorate, like Marco Rubio. Any other front-runner who was getting the votes of conservatives and moderates, the rich and poor, in regions throughout the country, would be spoken of as the presumptive nominee, but Trump is no ordinary candidate. His comments and statements are considered poison by Republican elites and they fear he will lead them to electoral disaster. 

If there is a silver lining, albeit a slim one, for those in the Dump Trump orbit, it is that Trump did not sweep Super Tuesday, as some predicted. There may be just enough of a gap in his support to deny him the nomination outright, but the idea that his supporters will accept having the nomination go to someone else is as unlikely as Trump himself accepting such a result. Then again, the next two weeks will be critical - every resource remaining will be deployed to beat Trump in Ohio, Florida, or both. At the same time, Trump will need to put real time, energy (and money) into combating this strategy. If he is successful, he wins the nomination. If he is not, get ready for every political reporters wet dream - a contested part convention.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton swept the south by huge margins and narrowly won in Massachusetts. Bernie Sanders won in his home state of Vermont and took caucus wins in Colorado, Minnesota and a primary win in Oklahoma. Mrs. Clinton won the majority of delegates awarded, but Sanders collected a nice haul as well. He has the money and desire to continue the race even as his path to ultimate victory appears to be nearly shut. Hillary Clinton has amassed an insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders when her pledged super delegates are factored in, but because the states apportion delegates to the convention proportionally, it is unlikely she can win the nomination based on the primaries and caucuses alone but Sanders cannot catch her either. He can stay in the race and continue accumulating delegates but will fall well short of victory. He is in the same position Secretary Clinton was in back in 2008 and while he has every right to continue his campaign until the end (as she did), he has lost. Were Sanders a member in good standing of the Democratic party, he might be open to a discussion with party elders about bowing out gracefully, content with the knowledge that his presence in the race has brought the issues he cares about to the fore, but he is not and has no stake in the party, which he has simply rented for the purpose of running for President. 

Of course, this did not hurt the Democrats in 2008. While Hillary and President Obama competed until the end, she pivoted quickly and gave the then-Senator a full-throated endorsement and campaigned aggressively for him throughout the general election. Will the same be true of Sanders? Again, were he a card-carrying member of the party, I would feel more sanguine, but the reality is that he is not and he owes no loyalty to the Democrats to advance his career. At best, he has one more election in 2018 for another six-year term in the Senate which he should win easily regardless of how he handles his loss for the nomination. If anything, he could become a nuisance and not an ally if a hypothetical President Clinton is not sufficiently progressive on the issues that matter most to him. 

For Republicans, their options are a Trump nomination or using party rules to deny him that honor. Either way, the party will be deeply split and weak going into the general election. For Democrats, it is simply a question of how Sanders wants to lose - with dignity and class, or swinging, bleeding Clinton of money and resources she will need to win in November. 

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Leave Bernie Alone (& Let The Media Do Its Job)

If you are a Democrat of a certain age, that is, if you grew up before social media consumed our lives and the 24-hour news cycle, you have to feel for Hillary Clinton. Valedictorian at Wellesley, law degree from Yale, campaign staffer for George McGovern, staff attorney for the Watergate Committee, child and women’s rights advocate, First Lady of Arkansas and the United States, United States Senator, and Secretary of State, Hillary was Tracy Flick before anyone knew who that was. She has been a trailblazer and a pioneer, someone who was speaking truth to power on topics that are now de rigueur long before it was popular to do so.

But a funny thing happened on the way to an expected addition to her already pages-long CV – that of the first woman to ever receive a major party’s nomination for President of the United States – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist from Vermont has electrified a party he did not belong to a year ago and is threatening to snuff out Mrs. Clinton’s long-held dream of being the first woman President.

If you believe the media, there is no shortage of blame to go around, starting with (naturally) the candidate herself, but trickling down to her surrogates, campaign staff, message, questions about her honesty and trustworthiness, and on and on. That the media treats her differently is something they no longer deny and kvelling about “Hillary Fatigue” was openly spoken about in November … of 2014!

And it seems that the harder Clinton and her team push to “vet’ Senator Sanders, whether it is questioning how he will convince Congress to pass his agenda or what he knows (and does not know) about foreign policy, the more the media blanches at her tactics and the firmer his support among his true believers becomes. This is unsurprising both because of the aforementioned bias the media has for her and the fact that like Donald Trump, Sanders’s supporters are hard core – no amount of logic will get them to change their minds.

So what should Clinton do? Walk away. Cease and desist from going after Bernie Sanders - attacking the underdog, the authentic hippie from Vermont who wants nothing more than a socialist paradise is a losing argument because his supporters will not listen and the media will make you look bad for doing it. Flush all your opposition research down the toilet and focus solely on your own message. You have an amazing story to tell about what you have done and intend to do to help the American people fulfill their hopes and dreams. You served as our nation’s top diplomat for four years, traveling the globe to meet, build bonds and negotiate with almost every world leader. You served in the U.S. Senate for eight years and forged bipartisan agreement on key issues. You have survived every sling and arrow shot your way for 25 years, you do not have to apologize for who you are and what you have done.

By doing so, you will put your best, and most optimistic foot forward. Leave it to the media to do what it is paid to do – vet the candidate. Let the media pour over Sanders’s record in Congress, question him about his lack of foreign policy experience (not to mention advisors), ask him to explain how he will get Congress to work with him, who he would select for key roles, whether he supported a primary challenger to President Obama in 2012, why it is that he just became a Democrat, and all the other completely reasonable questions they have not (to date) bothered to delve as deeply into as whether you tipped properly at a Chipotle restaurant. To be sure, it is a leap of faith. In 1992, James Carville famously said that “speed kills” – the Clinton campaign’s rapid response steamrolled President George H.W. Bush’s slow moving operation and ushered in the modern political campaign apparatus that now dominates our Presidential races, but that playbook is no longer working.

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The State of the Race For President

With one caucus and one primary under their collective belts, the Democrats and Republicans head west and south to Nevada and South Carolina before a spate of contests on March 1^st dubbed the “SEC Primary.” So, where are we in the race to succeed President Obama?

 

The Democrats: What was already a small field is now down to two competitors – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Clinton eked out a win in Iowa while Sanders romped in New Hampshire. While the delegate count from those two contests is close, Clinton also has more than 300 committed “super delegates” in her corner, while Sanders has fewer than ten. The conventional wisdom is that Clinton is failing to connect with the voters in the way Sanders is, and in particular, with young voters, who went for Sanders by massive margins in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Moreover, Sanders has mobilized a huge small donor fundraising effort that will allow him to match (if not exceed) Clinton’s advertising and other campaign outreach.

 

Analysis: Sanders’s popularity in two states with very liberal, almost exclusively white populations will be tested starting with Nevada and South Carolina and then, far more substantially throughout the Sun and Rust Belts. He has the benefit of making arguments for policies that promise things people like but have absolutely no chance of ever being enacted, while she is left with the pragmatic/practical argument of incremental change. In other words, he wants you to have your dessert before dinner, and she is telling you to eat your vegetables. In the debates, he is clearly out of his depth on foreign policy but the media has done little vetting of his policy positions, voting record, or anything else that ordinarily attends the coverage of a major party candidate for President – let’s hope that changes. In the meantime, Hillary would be best served by avoiding attacking him, the media clearly does not like it and it is not her best look. Better to focus on her lengthy record of achievement and advocacy and let that speak for itself. She is battling Sanders, Republicans, and the media, so she is best served by focusing on a positive message about herself because she is held, as none other than Mark Halperin has admitted, to a different standard than other candidates.

 

The Likely Outcome: Clinton rallies slowly in Nevada and South Carolina before winning decisive victories on March 1^st and 15^th that may not secure the nomination, but will make the math inevitable.

 

The Wild Card: Pent up frustration over Obama’s inability to pass progressive legislation (e.g., single payer health care), the media’s not-so-veiled loathing of Clinton, and a massive surge of young voters create a tsunami wave that crushes her and delivers the Democratic nomination to a 74 year old socialist who was not even a registered member of the party a year ago.

 

The Republicans: Allow me to pause and chuckle at the idea that when this cycle started the media claimed the Republicans boasted the “deepest field” in their history. The current front runner is a reality TV star and the guy running right behind him is the most hated man in Congress. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush has spent $100 million to finish sixth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire and former “it” candidates Scott Walker and Chris Christie barely registered before bowing out.

 

Anyway, with that off my chest, we are down to five contenders – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush. History tells us that in the modern era, the Republicans have picked the winner of either Iowa or New Hampshire, which would reduce the options to Trump or Cruz, but perhaps this year is the exception that proves the rule.

 

Analysis: The outsider/batshit crazy wing of the Republican Party commanded a majority of the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire (if you dump in the Fiorina and Carson crumbs), so the only hope for someone other than Trump or Cruz would be to get in a three way race (worst threesome ever?) where those two would split the “anti-establishment” vote and the rest of the party coalesced around this third person. The only problem? Well, two actually: first, there is no guarantee that such a coalescing would occur. Trump’s protectionist message may sell very well in Ohio or Michigan, so even if Kasich was left standing as the alternative to him and Cruz, there is no guarantee he would win that vote; second, if the Kasich/Bush/Rubio clustering continues, they may all stay in the race, leaving Trump or Cruz to rack up wins by collecting somewhere between 25-35 percent of the vote in each state.

 

The Likely Outcome: Again, history shows that even with all this uncertainty, the likelihood is that a winner will emerge and right now, that guy looks to be Donald J. Trump. That a political novice showed a better fingertip feel for the electorate than competitors with decades more experience and millions in consultants as well as the entire political journalist class is pretty remarkable. Cruz could try to monopolize the evangelical vote and win a narrow majority of delegates, but if the race is down to him and Trump, I suspect the powers that be will hold their nose and go with the businessman who does deals, not the kamikaze pilot who everyone hates.

 

The Wild Card: Trump melts down, Bush, Rubio or Kasich emerge as a consensus “establishment” pick and the party happily steps over Cruz’s political carcass as the GOP eyes a return to the White House in a race against a 74 year old socialist from Vermont.

Congress Takes A Vacation

With news that the White House and Congressional leaders have worked out a deal that will raise the debt limit through March 2017, fund the federal government and wrap other important matters like the highway bill into a massive legislative burrito, the passage of any additional, meaningful legislation before the President leaves office in January 2017 has come to an end.

This is quite convenient for incoming Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He need not sully himself with the messy details of governing or horse trading with the so-called Freedom Caucus over threats to default on our debt or other silliness. He can focus on his primary interests, which appear to be convincing the country that Social Security and Medicare need to be some combination of slashed and privatized while ensuring the wealthiest Americans pay as little in taxes as humanly possible.

More generally, this gives Congress the freedom to do fuck all before Election Day 2016, which I would guess suits the 435 members of the House and 34 Senators who are up for re-election just fine. Without the need to do the basic blocking and tackling of legislating, they are free to raise money and campaign about how shitty their opponents are without fear of having to do any work. In the Senate, any notion of basic governing, like voting on Obama appointees to the federal judiciary or a random Cabinet Secretary (looking at you, soon-to-be Acting Secretary of Education John King, Jr.) are already out the window and with Republicans nursing a small majority that they desperately want to hold on to so they can either ram through a new Republican President’s agenda or get to the business of blocking anything a new Democratic President might do.

This also works nicely for the media. After all, why bother having reporters on Capitol Hill when they can be disbursed to cover the antics of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and the rest of the crew on the Republican side or hound Hillary Clinton while she waltzes to the Democratic nomination. Campaigns are far more compelling than dreary legislative sausage making or Committee hearings (oh right, we had one of those recently and after drumming up anticipation for months, the media gave a “move along, nothing to see here” sign when Trey Gowdy deteriorated into a puddle of sweat).

I suppose we should not get too upset about this. After all, it is nice that there will be people to inspect our food, investigate criminal activity, and allow us access to national parks, but one wonders whether a bit more should be expected from people making $174,000 a year and who are provided with lifetime health benefits after serving 5 years in office. Of course, since Congress is only in session for about 135 days each year, passing a budget and ensuring that the bills get paid may be the bare minimum of what it can do – the equivalent of getting a D minus grade on an exam in a class you are taking pass/fail. Hoping that Congress would address larger societal concerns like gun safety, climate change, income inequality, or the minimum wage, or would keep the judiciary properly staffed with judges and Cabinet agencies helmed by people who receive Senate confirmation seems to be more than we should expect anymore.

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The Bern Feels It (And Not In A Good Way)

Somewhere between Hillary’s evisceration of his gun control position and her slam that we are “not Denmark,” Bernie Sanders was probably wondering where it all went wrong. How a self-described democratic socialist who had received fawning news coverage of his large campaign rallies and appeared on the cover of TIME magazine was being gutted like a fish.

Things did not go so well for the Vermont Senator on Tuesday night. The after action reporting criticized his lack of preparation and seeming unseriousness on any issue other than his signature refrain about the evils of income inequality. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was lauded for her razor sharp responses and ability to incorporate the populist anger Sanders channels, while underscoring her capacity for getting things done. The other three candidates on the stage barely rated a mention, but the consensus was that Sanders had exposed himself as not-ready-for-prime-time, a relic of old lefty politics that the Democrats had dropped in the dustbin of history after McGovern was blown out by more than 20 points in 1972 and Reagan crushed Mondale in 1984.

To be sure, there is something to be said for Sanders’s earnestness. When he told Chuck Todd he does not consider himself a capitalist, I do not doubt his sincerity. When he said we should look to Scandinavian countries and how they provide social welfare to their citizens, I know Bernie Sanders truly believes that. The only problem is that verbalizing those ideas to an audience of 15 million people and more than 700 reporters covering the Presidential race is a complete non-starter for anyone actually interested in becoming President.

It is one thing to preach to a choir of 300, 3,000 or even 30,000 supporters, as Sanders has done on the campaign trail. But the United States of America is not just a college campus in Madison, Wisconsin or Waterfront Park in Burlington, Vermont. What candidates say is not just heard here in our country but around the world and whether you are grasping for depth on foreign policy or suggesting that banks be broken up, those words echo in ways they do not when you are merely one of 100 Senators in Washington, D.C.

You see, for all of the superficial similarities the media wants to point out between the Republican and Democratic outsiders running for President, there is one key difference – Republican primary voters clearly enjoy the clown car aspect of their nominating process. They are okay with “truthiness” on a wide range of topics and are not punishing candidates for saying stupid things. If anything, they are rewarding one offs like Ben Carson’s comment that he would not support a Muslim becoming President, Carly Fiorina’s easily debunked lies about Planned Parenthood or basically anything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth.

But Democrats have become far more sophisticated in their nominating process. The Bill Bradleys and Howard Deans of the world have had their moments in recent nominating contests and there will always be a portion of the party that embraces Medicare-for-all and massive tax hikes on the wealthy (this writer included!), but at the end of the day, Democrats have embraced the idea of “electability” because we understand that inhabiting the White House is far more important than any ideological purity test.

My suspicion is that Sanders is collecting some portion of the primary electorate that would have backed Elizabeth Warren had she run, but there is a ceiling for that support. Indeed, the idea that Hillary is unacceptable to the liberal base has always been a canard, but what Tuesday night also showed was how commanding a presence she is when the discussion turns to policy and, like it or not, how that conversation occurs in our modern media age. It is easy to buy into your own hype when the coverage is good, but unlike Sanders, who, but for a brief moment in the sun a few years ago when he filibustered the extension of Bush-era tax cuts, has strictly been a gadfly and cable TV presence, Clinton has decades on the national stage and understands its rhythms far better than her erstwhile opponent. That, far more than a clever hashtag or cheeky merchandise, is what helps win elections.

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