THE STRAW MAN

Joe Biden has won the DNC nomination. Bernie is not ready to admit that, yet, but Biden has won. Technically, Biden didn’t win, everyone else lost. Biden only campaigned in Iowa and New Hampshire and he got hammered in both states. He barely showed up in the rest of the states and that turned out to be the winning strategy. Most people don’t know much about Joe Biden, other than he seems to be a nice guy and he has been around forever. They know a lot about the other candidates and they hate all of them. Bernie is the only DNC candidate with a real following and his followers are far left of the main stream Democratic Party. Most of the other candidates didn’t make it past South Carolina. Even Elizabeth Warren bowed out after Super Tuesday. Tulsi Gabbard can hardly be considered a candidate since she couldn’t actually compete with anyone anywhere. Her political career is probably headed toward being a Fox News contributor.

So, now Joe stands alone and no one even pretends he is up to the challenge. We are about to see a nationwide stealth campaign. We will see commercials. We will see surrogates. We will see carefully scripted, extremely short public appearances, strictly limited to what is displayed on the TelePrompter. The MSM will instantly go into cover-up mode, refusing to cover any negative stories about Biden. Watch for the Biden campaign try, and fail, to prevent Fox News from covering any of his events. The MSM will greatly reduce camera shots to reduce the risk of catching Joe in a moment of candor. We will see everything, but the candidate himself.

The DNC debate is likely to be masterfully produced with the sole intent of protecting Joe Biden. They have already used the coronavirus as an excuse to eliminate a live audience. The debate will be on CNN with hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper plus Univision anchor Jorge Ramos. All will be warned not to embarrass Joe. All of them hate Bernie, but Bernie has lost, so they really won’t care what he says about anything, as long as he doesn’t rip on Biden. They will encourage him to rip on Donald Trump. Joe will get carefully worded softball questions for which he is already being coached to read the scripted answer. It is far from certain he can handle even that. Answers will be limited to 30 seconds, so that Joe has neither the need nor the time to think. Time limits will be ignored for Bernie. Strictly enforced for Joe. Remember during the last debate the only thing Joe got right was to shut up when his time was up.

Everything possible will be done to reduce the risk for Biden. One thing they will easily achieve, with or without special effort, is to make this the most boring debate in world history. CNN’s ratings are already in the tank and that won’t change. Even Democrats won’t watch, because they have already settled on Biden. While Bernie will view this as his last chance to sell himself to American, America will probably be watching something else. Anything else.

This is still very high risk for Biden, because there is zero potential he will be impressive and there is high risk he embarrasses himself. Since he doesn’t need to impress, they may even sedate him. That would be perfect, because he will already be sitting down and if he does poorly, they can blame it on coronavirus meds.

Following the debate, I wouldn’t even be surprised to have Joe Biden self-isolate to protect himself and others from the coronavirus. That would be a perfect solution. He will look kind of presidential, because he won’t be talking. He has an excuse for not campaigning and people have an excuse for not going to a campaign rally. We are going to be inundated with a lot of talking heads explaining why Joe Biden is the perfect candidate to defeat Donald Trump. Michael Bloomberg will probably spend another $500 million on commercials. We just won’t actually see much of Joe Biden. If you think the liberal left is good at smoke and mirrors, you haven’t you haven’t seen anything yet.

I wouldn’t even be surprised to see the DNC start cancelling primary elections, because of the coronavirus.

This may actually work, up until the DNC convention. But at some point, Joe Biden is going to have to do something, somewhere, sometime. But don’t be surprised if, for safety reasons, his acceptance speech at the DNC is done by video.There will be an attempt to cancel all presidential debates because of the coronavirus.  A coronavirus caused by Donald Trump. If it is possible to win an election for president by not actually campaigning, then Joe Biden is your guy.

I doubt that this will work, because although CNN is exactly this stupid, the rest of the country is not. That is why Joe Biden is winning now. Most Democrats voted against the insane class. Most, but not enough of them, will vote for Biden in the general election because he is a Democrat. Others will vote for him because they cannot and will not ever vote for Trump. Some will vote for him assuming that his VP will soon take over. But no one will even pretend that Joe’s the man. Very few people will vote for Joe Biden because they think Joe Biden will make a great president. They will vote for Joe, the straw man.

I doubt that anyone thinks this will work, but it will be tried because they are out of other options. When you’re about to go down for the last count, you will clutch at any straw. Joe Biden is the ultimate last straw man. Clutching at straws seldom works. We better all pray it doesn’t work now, because the only thing certain is that Joe Biden will never be the person calling the shots if he is elected President.

If you want to see what this looks like, check out the last part of Woodrow Wilson’s term as President or better yet read up on the Howard Hughes story.

TDM

BAD MITTEN

I used to live in Michigan. Several years were in the Upper Peninsula (UP) and later in Grand Rapids, Michigan. People who live in the UP frequently refer to Lower Michigan as the “mitten.” A lot of people I know in Michigan give directions by pointing to their right hand.  Your right hand, with the thumb slightly extended looks a lot like Lower Michigan. So, when I refer to Lower Michigan as the “mitten” is it not an insult, it is just reality.

Today Michigan is holding the primary election. You can blame the results on the mitten, because the six people still living in the UP aren’t enough to have a big impact. Unlike California, people will have to identify themselves, before voting, so this election has a lot more credibility. Unless all of the polls are wrong, Joe Biden is likely to wipe the floor with Bernie Sanders. If that happens, many of the pundits think this will end any chance of Bernie winning the nomination. It may take several more weeks for Bernie to admit that, but that is how a lot of people will view the results. But, if there is one person capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, it is Joe Biden. He was actually doing fairly well in New Hampshire, until he got into a public screaming match with a voter. After that, his support disappeared overnight. Well, Joe did it again. Someone challenged him on gun control and Biden lost his cool. It may be too late for this to have an impact, but at least Joe gave it his best effort.

Either way, it is hard to find fault with a state delivering the death blow to Bernie’s campaign. If he is not actually a communist he sure seems to admire the way they run things. He probably could have beat Biden, if he had resisted explaining why Castro did some cool things while destroying Cuba. This was so bad that even CNN noticed which is pretty astonishing.

On the other hand, it is equally difficult to explain how anyone could consider Joe Biden to be a viable option for President of the United States. At this point the problems are so obvious that I am not sure Joe Biden considers himself to be a viable candidate. He is just better (less bad) than any of the other DNC candidates, including Bernie.

The real blame here lies not with the good folks living in the mitten, it belongs solely to the geniuses at the DNC that that narrowed the choice down to this pathetic pair. Throw in a lot of credit to the MSM which is well aware of the problem but totally unwilling to tell anyone. This, of course, is the same media that had no concern regarding Biden bribing Ukraine with about $1 billion of your money to force them to fire a specific prosecutor. Trump asking questions about it, however, was the crime of the century.

Either way the vote goes today it is probably going to do more to re-elect Donald Trump than help either of these two losers win the nomination from the DNC. As for me, I always root for the mitten. Even when it looks like a bad mitten.

TDM

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

Democrats dream of California deciding the next general election for President of the United States. They want to provide the same level of leadership for the country that we have endured in California. If the election was based solely on the popular vote, that is exactly what would happen. During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote by a significant margin, until you add in the votes from California.  The numbers are very well documented. Hillary got 65,853,562 votes nationwide vs Trump with 62,985,134. The national margin of victory for Hillary was 2,868,518. In California, Hillary got 8,753,788 vs Trump with 4,483,810. The California margin of victory for Hillary was 4,269,978. It gets even worse when you take a look at Los Angeles County. In Los Angeles County alone Hillary got 2,464,364 votes while Trump only got 769,743. That was a margin of 1,694,621 or nearly 60% of the national margin for Hillary. By the way, Los Angeles County had to agree to a consent decree that will remove about 1,500,000 people from the voter registration rolls because they either don’t live there anymore or they are deceased. California has more registered voters than they have live citizens eligible to vote.

Once again, California has proven that it cannot run any election fairly and certainly cannot run one efficiently. We won’t know the actual results of the primary election until April. California law allows that much time to count. In every recent election, where the race was even close, late counting always favored liberals and Democrats. Miraculously, time after time, it was Democrats who gained dramatically in those late counted votes. I can find no instance where late vote counting favored a Republican. Perhaps there was one, but I am not aware of that.

So, if a national election were to be decided by popular vote, it would be decided solely by California. Election night would look like a replay of the Iowa Caucuses. Wise pundits would look at the results and ask one simple question. Are there enough uncounted votes outstanding to swing the election to the Democrat? If the answer is yes, that is exactly what will happen. It may take days, weeks or close to a month, but the result will be inevitable. Additional ballots, filled out by persons unknown, dropped off by persons unknown, collected by persons unknown, delivered to persons unknown and counted by persons unknown would determine the results of the next election. We could know the actual results of the election by Thanksgiving or at least early December. It would only be a matter of how long it took to find enough votes to push the Democrat over the top.

When you combine that with California giving driver’s licenses to people who are not here legally, with motor voter registration, with no voter id, with zero chain of custody documentation regarding ballots, with more registered voters than living citizens of voting age, why would you have any faith in any election held in this state?

I would probably have more faith voting in an election in Moscow, because at least they would pretend to be paying attention. In California, they don’t even pretend anymore. During the 2016 election, my wife and I went to a polling station. We voluntarily showed our ID, although no one cared. They just asked for our address and showed us where to sign. This year there was only one voting station in Folsom and you had to do research to find that. The instructions we got with our ballot only told us where to locate drop off boxes, if we didn’t want to mail it in. We went to the same location where we could actually vote in 2016. No one checked anything. There was zero attempt to document who we were. We didn’t sign anything. The only guidance we got was a finger pointed at a box with a slot in front where were could drop our ballot. We assume that once Democrats have enough votes to meet their requirements someone may get around to counting our ballot too.

California knows this is insane. Here are the instructions for voting in person:

Check-in with the Vote Center staff.

  1. Wait patiently while the Vote Center staff confirms your eligibility to vote.
  2. Tell the Vote Center staff if you would like to vote at the Vote Center or need a replacement ballot to take away and return later (by 8pm on Election Day).
  • ​You may or may not have to provide personal identification when you vote in-person. Visit the Secretary of State’s website for more information.
  1. Wait for your ballot to print or for your access to an accessible ballot marking device.
  2. Vote for the contests and candidates of your choice. You do not have to vote on every contest listed on your ballot – it is up to you!
  3. When finished voting, insert your voted ballot into the designated ballot box. Your ballot will be counted at the elections main office at 7000 65th Street. The Vote Center staff will give you an “I Voted” sticker – wear it proudly!

Why bother waiting patiently while the vote center staff confirms eligibility to vote when you can just drop your ballot in a box and walk away?

Some of you, who live in other states, may be wondering why this is a problem. The answer is that unless this changes and unless we retain the Electoral College, this is exactly how every national election will be decided. Then the rest of you can wake up each morning to a state  run like California. Where the Assembly, the Senate and every state-wide office is dominated by liberal democrats. They will be incredibly diverse with regard to gender, gender preference, race, religion and any other politically correct demographic considered to be important. What they won’t be is smart, honest or remotely competent, but, that doesn’t matter, because the group photo hug is spectacular. Best of all, you get a great “I Voted Sticker.”

TDM

YIPEE!

Joe Biden will be the DNC nominee for President, if he is still alive in July. This is good news, because it means the nominee will not be Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer or Bernie Sanders. All considered to be real possibilities by the MSM. But, the MSM is wrong about everything, so this should be no surprise.

Joe Biden didn’t win the nomination. He just stayed alive while the others all self-destructed. Just a couple of weeks ago, no one thought Biden had any chance. He had been creamed in Iowa and New Hampshire. He had no money. His campaign rallies were a joke. He was making daily gaffs. His campaign was doomed to failure. The other DNC candidates just ignored him.

But then, a series of miracles. It started with Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer deciding to throw away millions of dollars trying to buy the election. They both failed miserably, but in the meantime people like Klobuchar and Buttigieg couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Combine this with the idiotic impeachment farce, which made it impossible for anyone to campaign and it was a perfect political storm.

Bernie had victory within his grasp. Everyone else was fading and it looked like it was down to him and Biden. He thought Biden would be easy prey. But Bernie accidentally told the truth and he burned his own house down. He started praising Castro, of all people, for a great education program and universal health care. He even praised Hugo Chavez who made Venezuela such a paradise on earth. When this became public, his support dropped like a stone.  While there are still a lot of people feeling the Berne, there aren’t nearly enough of them.

The result was that Joe Biden, who had been ignored by everyone, ended up being the only one left standing. Odds are this even surprised Biden. He woke up Sunday morning with a surprise landslide victory in South Carolina. Then, two days later, he basically ran the table on Super Tuesday.

Joe Biden is still Joe Biden and he is no more capable of campaigning for President of the United States than he was last week. He is also the presidential candidate least likely to survive a full term in office. As a result, today begins one of the most critical campaigns in our nations history, the campaign to be Joe Biden’s running mate. The logical thing would be to choose someone who is capable of being president, ready, willing and able to take over when necessary. But this is not your father’s Democratic Party. This time the VP candidate must be a female, preferably black or Hispanic. A nationwide woman hunt is already underway. The results are likely to be frightening.

In the meantime, the Trump campaign is conducting workshops on how to restrain the giggles. This reminds me of when the DNC nominated Hubert Humphrey to be the nominee in 1968. Hubert Humphrey took the stage in Chicago and shouted: “yippee.” They were also shouting “yippee” someplace else. That would be the Nixon campaign headquarters. They were also the ones still shouting “yippee” in November.

TDM

THE BIDEN BOUNCE

Joe Biden may just be able to win the DNC nomination. If some of the recent polls are accurate, which is always a reach, Bernie could have a tough day. Just last week Bernie looked like he would win big in California, Texas, North Carolina, and Minnesota.  Polls today show that Biden may do better in all four states. It is interesting to note that no one is talking about Michael Bloomberg being a factor. For better or worse, the Democratic establishment has decided to go all in on Biden.

That sounds great, until one realizes that Joe Biden is an awful candidate. In addition to the daily gaffs, his creepy behavior toward young girls and his lack of any accomplishments, the corruption accusations still loom large. Although the MSM considers those corruption allegations to be irrelevant, the opposite is true. There simply is no good explanation for Biden bragging about withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine in exchange for firing a specific prosecutor. This would look bad even if his son wasn’t hired by one of the suspect firms. None of Biden’s Democratic opponents bothered to attack him regarding his real record during the primary election season. One suspects that they all thought Biden would defeat himself by being, well, Biden. They were right to believe that. Up until Saturday, Biden had NEVER won a Democratic primary or caucus in any of his prior attempts to become President of the United States.

It now looks like Biden has a chance of getting to the DNC convention with enough delegates to secure the nomination. But, there the rub. That does not mean that Biden miraculously became a good candidate. That would be impossible. It is rather that the other candidates were even worse. Or more accurately, he became the only viable alternative to Bernie. Biden’s sole value may be a perceived ability to stop Bernie.

He may not even do that, if the polls are wrong. There has been a lot of early voting and Bernie may still win big today. But assume for a second that Biden does stop Bernie. That does not mean that the DNC has suddenly gone brain dead and remains oblivious to the fact that he is a horrible candidate. There is a more sinister potential here. What if the DNC does not actually want Biden, they just desperately want to get rid of Bernie? That is easy to understand. They see the same daily gaffs. The warning signs are all blinking red.

But the DNC could not afford to have Bernie arrive at the convention with a head of steam. If they took the nomination away from him, after he had won it during the primary elections, there would literally be a civil war in the Democratic Party. On the other hand, if Bernie is the nominee, many establishment Democrats predict a Republican landslide in November. The democratic establishment has been showing signs of desperation for several weeks.

This caused me to reflect on what would happen if Joe Biden wins the nomination but is clearly unable to compete in a general election campaign. Hmmm. No Bernie, and then no Biden either. The DNC could replace him with someone else, it would even look like the right thing to do. “Win one for Biden” would be the battle cry for the general election. The MSM would buy something like this.

If I were Joe Biden, or a member of his family who cares about him as a person, this would cause me grave (pun intended) concern. Just because Joe wins the primary elections doesn’t mean anyone really wants him as the nominee. That could just put him in a precarious position on a shaky pedestal.

It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where this would be unthinkable. It would be great to believe that no one in either party would be capable of such unimaginable evil. But that would require one to ignore the simple fact that every Democrat in the House, with only two exceptions, voted to impeach and remove a President of the United States from office without anything close to just cause. It would require one to ignore the fact that every Democrat in the United States Senate voted to convict and remove a President of the United States from office even though the House Managers case was so pathetic those same Democratic Senators begged for additional witnesses.

If no senior member of the Democratic establishment could bring themselves to do the right thing even when the impeachment of President of the United States is at issue, why would one ever expect them to do the right thing now.

If congratulations are due to Joe Biden, which is far from certain, such congratulations should come with a huge warning. Are these people behind you, or are they really just against Bernie? Once Bernie is out of the way, how will they value you then? For Joe Biden, the cost of winning may result in the biggest possible loss.

TDM

STUPOR TUESDAY

Next Tuesday 15 states will all vote to hold their primary election. It is hard to imagine a more bizarre and unpredictable set of circumstances. In addition to the meltdown on national TV by all of the DNC candidates, we have the plunging stock market caused by the Coronavirus hysteria. If one of the DNC candidates was capable of showing leadership, they could seize the day. But, they all view leadership primarily in terms of trashing Trump.

Unless something happens, eventually people will realize that they aren’t sick with coronavirus, no else they know is sick with coronavirus, and those people who are sick with coronavirus are more likely to recover than people who catch the flu. In the meantime there will be tremendous damage from the hysteria.

Coronavirus is a serious problem in China and other places, but it may never be a serious problem here. One thing, overlooked, is who Trump put in charge of the CDC. Dr. Robert Ray Redfield, Jr, is a virologist. He allegedly banned terms like “evidence-based”, “fetus” and “transgender” in budget documents. He appears to be deliberately avoiding political correctness and instead focusing on the core job of the CDC to protect us against things like the coronavirus. He may be exactly the type of person we need running this agency during this situation. While Democrats routinely accuse Trump of being anti-science, the reality is that he appointed a real scientist to run this important agency.

One would be wise to listen to Dr, Redfield him because he is an expert in the field and he has actual facts.

“The risk to the American public is low. We have an aggressive containment strategy that really has worked up to this time, 15 cases in the United States. Until the last case that we just had in Sacramento we hadn’t had a new case in two weeks,” he said, referring to a case diagnosed Wednesday in California. That person has no known contact with an infected person.

“In some countries this has moved very quickly, like we saw in Korea now, where we had more cases in Korea in the last 24 hours than we had in all of China. We’ve seen in Italy, it’s moving fast, in Iran, it’s moving fast,” Redfield said. “But other countries have really used a containment and a blended mitigation strategy like Singapore and Hong Kong and they have really limited the spread after the initial introduction from China.”

Now compare that to John Garamendi who wants us to order 100,000 test kits from South Korea, where they actually have a serious problem. Garamendi failed to notice that there is considerable dispute as to whether these test kits even work.

Democrats view this as Trump’s Katrina and they are desperate to have this be a major crisis that they can use to defeat Trump. What they are forgetting is that no one in his or her right mind wants this kind of crisis. Openly rooting for disaster is not actually appealing to most people. Watch for Democrats to quickly morph to working together in a bi-partisan manner when it becomes obvious that they are losing the media war.

In the meantime, the beat goes on. Next Tuesday was supposed to be a defining moment for the country. It will be a defining moment, but it is likely to define Democrats as hopelessly incompetent.

Bernie Sanders is getting hammered from all sides, including from a lot of Democrats. Joe Biden is, well, Joe Biden. It is hard to imagine him beating anyone in an election for anything. He is only leading now because everyone else running is much worse. None of the above, if available, would be the instant front runner. Michael Bloomberg tried to buy his way in, but even this amount of money can’t buy you love and it certainly can’t buy a personality.

It looks like Joe will win in South Carolina and Florida. That will create at least the illusion of success. Bernie will win in California. No one knows who will win in Texas. Bernie has spent a lot of time there and he is leading in the polls, but by a small margin. Biden was way ahead until about a week ago. Bernie passed him and now both are showing a downward trend. The MSM keeps reporting that Texas is turning blue, but Republicans keep winning big. The MSM often gets confused and forgets that Texas is a really big state and Harris is only one county. Perhaps the real question will be whether anyone bothers to show up and vote in Texas next Tuesday.

Tuesday night may be stunning primarily because there will be so little results to report that actually matter. At least they will have votes to discuss, unlike Iowa Caucus night, but the most consist theme will be chaos. This will be so bad that commentators are likely to spend more time talking about the coronavirus than the election. Then, when they finally get to sign off the air and go home, they will look for a place that serves real Coronas.

TDM

INCOMPETENCE, INC.

I thought the DNC had hit a new low with the Iowa Caucuses fiasco. I was wrong. Then I thought they had really reached bottom after the Las Vegas Debate. I was wrong about that too. Then I watched the South Carolina Debate and this was so bad I was positive the DNC had finally hit rock bottom. I wasn’t even close. Although all of the above were exactly that bad, they don’t even compare to the newest self-inflicted disaster.

The Coronavirus is obviously a serious problem. At a minimum, it is devastating the economy in China and that has worldwide implications. In addition there are numerous reports of the disease spreading rapidly and uncontrolled all over the world. Except here. While we have some cases here, this doesn’t compare with the problems elsewhere.

President Trump actually took effective action to stop the spread of this virus before his enemies realized there was a problem. On February 12, Trump barred foreigners who have been in China from entering the U.S. at all and Americans returning from China were quarantined for 14 days. The WHO was outraged:

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2020/02/12/trump-right-to-restrict-travel-to-fight-coronavirus-n2561170

They described Trump’s policies as absurd claiming this will: “unnecessarily interfere with travel and trade.”

I have seen no evidence that Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi offered anything other than criticism. They consider any travel ban imposed by Trump as irrational if not racist. They have repeatedly hammered him for saying we need to protect our borders. If it was up to the DNC, we would have open borders and there would have been no travel bans at all. If it was up to them we would already have a Coronavirus crisis here in the United States.

Now, the same people who have resisted him at every step are criticizing him for not doing enough. Yet, nothing they have or can suggest will do nearly as much to protect us against the Coronavirus as the action already taken by Trump when they still thought this was caused by drinking Corona beer.

So far their only suggestion is to spend more money and rely on guidance from the WHO. That would be the same WHO that botched containing the Coronavirus in the first place. The same WHO that would have stopped Trump from blocking travel with China. Nancy Pelosi just moans about Trump’s incompetence while actually providing prima fascia evidence of her own incompetence.

She, at least, appears to realize her error. Today she is talking about the seriousness of the situation and the need for bi-partisan cooperation. Perhaps someone bought Nancy and mirror and she got a glimpse of the real problem.

My prediction is that we will see a lot more of Coronavirus, but regardless of what happens the U.S. will handle this much better than anywhere else. That will soon be beyond obvious. This vicious and unjustified attack on Trump for handling something well just may do more damage to the DNC than all the other fiasco’s combined.

Democrats have proven to the world why they should never ever be put in a position of power. It would be insane to assume these people are remotely capable of acting responsibly. They will do or say anything in a failed attempt to destroy Trump, without regard to the consequences. In this case, screaming hatred instead of working together to actually handle the Coronavirus responsibly puts everyone at risk.

Imagine there is another crisis, next year about this time. Who would you prefer to be in charge of handling this? Donald Trump, who took prompt action to handle the Coronavirus, very likely the reason we don’t already have a widespread reports of the disease here in the United States? Or any of the clowns raising their hands and trying to scream each other down during the South Carolina Debate. Or how about Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi who want Trump to take guidance from the WHO and spend billions with no definable plan of action.

This time, by spouting off before taking two seconds to see what is really happening; Democrats may have made the answer to that question really easy. Results to be announced November 3, 2020.

TDM

A PARTY IN MORNING

There always has to be a morning after and for the Democratic Party that is today. Last night’s DNC debate was an unmitigated disaster. This was so bad that the few Hollywood Celebrities who chimed in at all appeared to do so while throwing up. My favorite was by Norm MacDonald, who is strongly pro-abortion:

“Warren says Bloomberg told a pregnant women (sp) to ‘kill it’. Impossible to kill a fetus. Shame on you, Senator Warren.”  @normmacdonald

No one on any network even pretended this was impressive. CBS, which attempted and failed to moderate the debate, took a poll that showed 47% of respondents said the debate performance made them feel nervous about the entire pool of candidates.  The highlight of the event, for them, was when Amy Klobuchar said that if her competitors continued to tear each other apart that Trump would win the election. But, while they agreed with that, it didn’t appear to cause anyone to choose her as the candidate.

This looks more and more like a worst-case scenario for Democrats. Sanders will continue to lead, but only because of the quality of his opponents. Biden is likely to come in second, primarily because most people want someone else and Bloomberg looks worse in comparison. No one else is likely to matter, although Steyer may buy enough votes in South Carolina to hurt Biden. When Biden pointed out Steyer had invested in coal mines and private prisons he probably dealt a fatal blow to any slim prospect of Steyer winning anything. In an act of desperation, Steyer literally proposed black reparations.

Biden is likely to win in South Carolina, barely, but enough to stay in the race. His last remaining virtue is the perceived ability to prevent Bernie from winning outright. Sanders will continue to win, but he appears to have a hard ceiling. It is very likely that in every state more people will vote for someone else, but that vote will be split at least two ways and possibly more. In recent days many prominent Democrats have come out publicly saying they would never support Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg will stay in the race and continue pouring in money, but there are tons of negative stories about him with more to come. Democrats want Bloomberg’s money, but they don’t want him.

I expect all three to survive, sorta, Super Tuesday, but all will be limping toward the DNC convention. The 2020 DNC convention in Milwaukee may make the 1968 DNC convention look good in comparison. In 1968 no one was even close to having won the nomination. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy has been assassinated. The choice was between Hubert Humphrey, who didn’t actually compete in any primaries, he just inherited LBJ’s votes, and George McGovern who was the peace candidate. Democrats chose Humphrey who got hosed by Nixon. It didn’t end there. Four years later McGovern won and was also hosed by Nixon.

Meanwhile the scene inside and outside the convention was a hot mess. The highlight was when Dan Rather was hustled out of the building by security guards on national television. Dan Rather gave his version of events to Walter Cronkite:

“Walter … we tried to talk to the man and we got violently pushed out of the way. This is the kind of thing that has been going on outside the hall, this is the first time we’ve had it happen inside the hall. We … I’m sorry to be out of breath, but somebody belted me in the stomach during that. What happened is a Georgia delegate, at least he had a Georgia delegate sign on, was being hauled out of the hall. We tried to talk to him to see why, who he was, what the situation was, and at that instant the security people, well as you can see, put me on the deck. I didn’t do very well.”

Cronkite responded by saying: “I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, Dan.”

In the meantime, there were 10,000 protestors outside the building who were confronted by 23,000 police officers and National Guardsmen. There was a lot of violence in the streets, some blaming most of it on the police and others on the protestors.

Richard Nixon, who was probably hated by Democrats and the MSM even more than Donald Trump, coasted to election. Democrats and the establishment were united in their hatred of Nixon, but they were too busy destroying each other to have any chance of winning the general election.

The only thing that would make this worse would be if the DNC establishment chose none of the above and parachuted in a white knight to save the day. That would only infuriate the few remaining Democrats who are not already totally disillusioned. The real lesson of 2020 is that todays DNC is not actually capable of running anything, including the Iowa Caucuses. They certainly aren’t capable of running the country. One important difference is that this time it won’t be just the President, it will be the House and the Senate.

TDM

AN UNCIVIL WAR

Democrats are debating again tonight in Charleston, South Carolina. If you have ever been to Charleston, it is a fascinating place. It is easy to understand why this was a magical place back to the earliest days of this nation. It is beautiful and the old homes are amazing. It was also where the Civil War started. The shooting part to the civil war started when confederates shelled Fort Sumter. But the real start to the civil war probably began at South Carolina Institute Hall in Charleston, South Carolina on April 23, 1860. Most people don’t realize that this was the Democratic National Convention, not just the South Carolina State Convention. This was when the DNC developed a pro-slavery platform. The war didn’t start with the election of Abraham Lincoln, we were on a path toward war long before then. Ultimately, this convention split the Democratic Party between North and South. This culminated on December 20, 1860 when a state convention was held in Columbia, SC where South Carolina officially voted to secede from the union.

Tonight, we are likely to see another civil war within the Democratic Party fireworks  should be expected on that debate stage tonight. Bernie Sanders is showing signs of running away with the nomination. Very few people think Joe Biden has any chance of stopping Sanders and no other candidate is even close. The only speck on the horizon is Michael Bloomberg, who was humiliated in the last debate.

I think that every other candidate on that stage will be focused on stopping Bernie Sanders. His comments this week praising Fidel Castro for his anti-literacy program in Cuba were insane. They were also incredibly stupid, because many other Central American countries made similar progress, without creating a totalitarian state in the process. Bernie also is on record as praising Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega. Today, on the MSM, the only area of bi-partisan agreement is on the need to stop Bernie Sanders. The Democratic establishment and its supporters in the MSM are terrified at the prospect of Bernie Sanders winning the nomination. We can expect the other, desperate candidates on that stage, to pick up the flag.

This is compounded by the severe lack of time. The South Carolina primary is this Saturday and then next Tuesday there are primaries in 23 states, including California and Texas. If Sanders does well Tuesday, it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to even slow him down.

We are also at the point where the naïve narcissists trying, and failing, to win the nomination themselves are being forced to confront their own failure. At least some of them probably realize their campaign is doomed and the only question is whether they are angry enough to take down Bernie with them. My guess is they are exactly that angry and odds are we are going to see a coordinated assault on Bernie tonight.

At the end of the last Debate, Jake Tapper basically asked the other candidates if they would support Bernie as the candidate. Everyone one of them hinted at support for a brokered convention. The only person they hate more than Bernie Sanders is Michael Bloomberg.  As a result, if they run out of ammunition to use against Bernie, the focus will quickly shift to Bloomberg. My best estimate is that after tonight Bernie will still be the front runner, but he will be wobbling toward the finish line. Michael Bloomberg is likely to self-eliminate. That will result in a DNC convention in Milwaukee during July trying to choose a candidate when after two years of campaigning the only winning vote total will be for none of the above.

Democrats will be on a desperate search for someone else. But the problem is that Democrats have no bench and this pathetic group of clowns represents the cream of a crappy crop. Choosing someone like Hillary, Michelle Obama, John Kerry or even Oprah will not solve the problem. It will only confirm what we already know, that none of the above is a better choice, even if that means re-electing Donald Trump. In the minds of a lot of Democrats Donald Trump is the worst President is U.S. History, but still better than any Democratic alternative.

TDM

THE END OF THE WEIN

It is always a sad day to see anyone facing a sentence practically guaranteeing they will die in prison. That does not mean that Harvey Weinstein does not deserve his fate, he was convicted of horrific crimes. He appears to be more than deserving.

It would be foolish to expect Weinstein to do well in prison. He will probably have to be put in solitary confinement for his own protection. If you think a lot of people were less than disappointed that Jeffrey Epstein left this planet, that list pales in comparison to those connected with Weinstein.

A lot of top Democrats quickly distanced themselves from Weinstein when he was first arrested. That includes Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Al Franken, Kirsten Gillibrand, Richard Blumenthal, Martin Heinrich, Bob Casey, Patrick Leahy and a cast of thousands. But, this is just the start of the list. Weinstein was famous for holding Democratic fundraisers for President Obama and Hillary Clinton. The list of Hollywood celebrities posing with Weinstein is almost unlimited. Some of these people eventually turned on him, but odds are they all knew him and knew all about him. That is the real tragedy here, that those who enabled this behavior are unlikely to be held accountable.

At this point, Weinstein has to be beyond desperate. His only chance now, of even getting a better prison cell, is to start singing like a canary. He may have a long list of available tunes. Weinstein is probably close to the point where death is a better option than reality The burning question is whether he will suffer his fate in silence or at least attempt to bring some of his former friends along for the ride. Regardless of what Weinstein wants, after the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, few would predict that authorities will have better results pretending to protect Weinstein.

This is clearly the end of the Wein, or at least a lot of people desperately want that result.

TDM