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You can talk about the Nevada caucuses here… — 28 Comments

  1. I’ve said this with Trump and I’ll say it with Bernie: Whatever you think of him as a candidate, his success is a sign of the basic health of American democracy. Our ENTIRE political establishment has failed us and choosing anything rather than reward that failure is a sign the American people are still capable of running their own affairs.

    They may not always be right but at least they are thinking for themselves.

    Mike

  2. Mike, I think you’re way too optimistic. Choosing Bernie over the existing or the Pre-Trump political establishment is asking for more of the same on steroids.

  3. Bernie Uber Alles.

    The Dem/managerial/tech/Hollywood/MSM elite are not at all happy.

    Both parties (as of now) with candidates off the reservation.

  4. “more of the same on steroids.“

    But that’s the point. Democratic candidates have been pushing a diet version of Bernie Sanders for years, then finding excuses not to do anything or secretly cheering when Republicans stopped them from doing anything. Have you seen Chris Matthews talking about Bernie? Where was that panic and fear in 2016? Answer: he knew Bernie wasn’t going to win and he wanted to preserve Bernie’s socialist demagoguery for use in future elections.

    When Democrats haven’t been distracting voters with identity politics, they’ve been telling them that Bernie’s ideas are okay. Given that context, picking Bernie is a rational choice. Buying into the sudden anti-Bernie fear-mongering would be the behavior of mindless sheep, not citizens.

    Mike

  5. Random thoughts here …

    Was Bloomberg sandbagging in his first debate performance? Most everyone thinks he was just awful.

    It sets an extremely low bar for him in the next debate.

    Also … my guess is Bloomberg hopes Comrade Bernie wins Nevada by a large enough margin to force either REMF Pete or Vice President Ukraine or Senator KlobberHer or Lying Squaw or some combination out of the race. But no so large as to become ‘unstoppable’.

    Of course Bloomberg can spend $10 million a day until the dem convention and barely dent his fortune. Maybe he doesn’t care.

  6. They quote a 20 something who wants free stuff.
    Bernie looks strong in NV.
    Sigh.
    https://news.yahoo.com/sanders-puts-democratic-front-runner-113012714.html
    In the final result of a caucus at the famed Bellagio hotel on the Las Vegas strip, Sanders finished with 76 votes, Biden had 45 and no other candidate ended with a vote.

    Workers at the hotel, who are members of the Culinary Workers Union, streamed out of the caucus after backing Sanders despite their leadership expressing reservations about his healthcare plan.

  7. “Both parties (as of now) with candidates off the reservation.” – LeClerc

    A lot of people have noted that the DNC and RNC are just running different subdivisions of the same reservation.

    Check out my comment here for the full argument, but in terms of the impact on America, any Democrat winning is 2020 is a loser for the country, but a big winner for the politicians.

    https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/02/20/fighting-the-left-content-vs-process/#comment-2481229

    AesopFan on February 22, 2020 at 6:58 pm said:
    “Leftists disguise their desire for power as a desire for justice.”

    Whereas, politicians disguise their desire for money as a desire for helping their constituents.
    An eye-opening essay for anyone still not clued in.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/22/legislative-business/

  8. “Of course Bloomberg can spend $10 million a day until the dem convention and barely dent his fortune. Maybe he doesn’t care.” – Tuvea

    We bought our house in a Denver suburb 16 years ago.
    The prior owners were a very idealistic liberal couple.
    Today, we got two campaign ads from Bloomberg addressed to them.
    We have NEVER gotten national Democratic ads before (local candidates panhandle everyone, of course, but they have not been addressed to the prior occupants, only to us or the ubiquitous “resident”).
    That’s some deep diving into the voter data, just not deep enough to get the change of address.
    Takes money to do that.

    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-20/op-ed-running-against-bloomberg-isnt-easy-i-know-i-was-his-opponent-in-the-2001-new-york-mayoral-race

    Three weeks before the New York mayoral election in November of 2001, I got a call from Mark Mellman, the pollster working on my race against Michael Bloomberg.

    “Well, I have good and bad news. The good news is that I’ve never had a client 20 points ahead this late in a campaign who lost. The bad news is that Bloomberg is spending a million dollars a day — not a month but a day — and gaining a point a day.” I quickly did the math and shuddered.

    But he’s still clueless about what his Party actually stands for.

    Finally, in the event that Bloomberg secured the nomination, would liberals embrace him if Trump is the alternative? Here, there’s no maybe, even for a Warren supporter like me. After four years of watching Trump try to destroy democracy, the answer is yes.

    Some glaring examples from the economic sphere, where a lot of people who almost certainly have been voting for California’s insane policies for decades are discovering that the politicos have now come for them.
    Not that the LA Times has noticed.

    https://fee.org/articles/why-the-movie-industry-is-fleeing-california/?utm_source=ntnlrvw&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=nationalreview_partnership

    https://www.ab5facts.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-ca-government-democrats-what-were-you-thinking

  9. In case you were wondering…
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/22/national-security-adviser-robert-obrien-white-house-was-never-provided-any-intelligence-briefing-on-russia-election-effort/

    Former Acting DNI Joseph Maguire did not brief the white house prior to taking Shelby Pierson, the person in charge of evaluating intelligence regarding election security, to lead the presentation to the house intel committee (HPSCI). That’s the key takeaway from a taped preview of National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien on Face The Nation.

    Sending shockwaves through the intelligence community, now Acting DNI Grenell has asked the intelligence community, including Shelby Pierson to produce the underlying intelligence within her briefing. It is reported that Pierson and the alliance of intelligence around her are going bananas.

    And what’s up with the IC simultaneously “assessing” that Putin is backing both Trump AND Sanders?

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-schiff-spar-nevada-caucus-russia-bernie-sanders

    There’s been some speculation that the Russians think Sanders is most likely to lose to their presumed BFF, Trump.
    And if he does win, that’s okay with them too.

    Here are some observations worth noting, from Doc Zero:
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1230848378503933954.html

    Let’s dispense with the collusion nonsense by clearly recognizing that every major power hostile to the United States would objectively be FAR better off with any of the Democrat candidates in the White House than Donald Trump. It’s not a close call, either.
    All of those hostile powers are daydreaming about crippling the U.S. with the eye-rolling insanity of Democrat open-borders policy or the Green New Deal. The GND would be a checkmate win for China, making them undisputed industrial masters of the 21st Century.
    Every hostile power dreams of the social chaos and divisiveness Dem policies would inflict on America. Every one of them wants us to return to globalist sellouts of American interests, a weak labor market, high taxes to finance inefficient and corrupt government.

    Every one of them wants resurgent American nationalism and patriotism dead and buried. Every one of them would vastly prefer dealing with U.S. officials who think intellectual sophistication requires disliking their own nation and putting the concerns of other countries first.

    Trump looks happy to have The Bern as his general opponent, or is just stirring the pot.
    https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/trump-tweet-bernie-nevada-win.jpg

  10. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dan-gainor-medias-russia-obsession-returns-enables-anti-trump-journalists-to-boost-establishment-dems

    The Democratic presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas Wednesday night was so bad that the media returned to a reliable script – Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

    By the end of the week, the media were reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was trying to help the campaigns of both President Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

    A Washington Post story was headlined: “Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.”

    It was the perfect twofer story – the success of both Trump and Sanders was suddenly suspect. Journalists got to support establishment Democrats either way.

    Lefty HuffPost tried to spin the news the only way it could with the headline: “Russia Wants To Help Bernie Sanders And Donald Trump. Only Trump Is Helping Russia.”

    For refutations of that last sentence, see any unbiased news story of the last 3 years (there are a few).

    And Gainor’s money quote: “If you hadn’t watched news for two years and saw this fiasco, it would be like nothing had changed except the date.”

  11. AesopFan,

    Thank you for the very interesting links.

    Tomorrow I will pray that if Senator Sanders is the nominee that the moderates in the a Democrat party won’t support him.

    While I am totally committed to President Trump I feel that while a Bloomberg administration would not be good for the country, it would not be the unmitigated disaster of a Sanders administration.

  12. Setting aside accuracy, nuance and common sense, the Left thinks Trump = Hitler and the Right thinks Sanders = Stalin.

    Won’t the election be fun. If by fun, one means tedious, moronic hysteria and endless Communist vs Nazi memes.

  13. As a NV resident in the northern part of the state, I was struck by two things: turnout for the caucus (which lasted a week) was larger than expected and peaked at an earlier part of the week. That is, there were reports of long lines at the caucus points in and around Carson City on the first two days of caucusing, but not so much this past Saturday (the last day of caucusing). It makes me wonder if Warren would have done better in the results had the debate taken place before the first part of the caucus, so voters could have seen her savage Bloomberg before they started voting. As it turned out, the debate took place after the first two days of caucusing, and turnout was lower after the debate than before it.

    It is said here that the culinary workers union was a major force in Bernie’s success. The culinary workers union went against the wishes of Harry Reid, who was hoping their union-supplied health care benefits would cause them to vote against Bernie’s single-payer health care.

    Harry Reid has also historically been against the use of a caucus, but he changed horses at Obama’s request during a previous Assembly session, when he called the Speaker of the NV Assembly and related Obama’s desire that they kill an assembly effort to move to a primary election instead of the caucus. We were close to moving to a primary election, but the NV GOP was on the fence on the question and the NV Dems decided at the last minute to oppose that move. I am guessing that Obama thought it would be easier to manipulate the results of a caucus than an election.

    Finally, NV has had a large number of new voters move into the state. Many of them came from CA (although I suspect they are mostly upper middle class and retired, so probably not predominantly Democrat) and a lot are Hispanic immigrants. The NV Department of Motor Vehicles has a motor voter law now that registers everyone to vote when they get a drivers license, without checking their citizenship very well, so that has influenced the political climate in the state.

    Clark County (Las Vegas) is the home of many of these Hispanic immigrants, and it has turned majority blue. A union with 58,000 members represents a huge bloc of voters in a largely rural state like NV, and they reportedly turned out in very large numbers during the past week — especially yesterday, the last day of voting. Still, I was surprised that AP and Fox News called the state for Bernie around noon yesterday. I presume it was based on exit polling, but perhaps they were reading the reports from the iPad tally machines.

  14. This whole Russian hysteria seems to be an open source version of work by one James Jesus Angleton.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton

    James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 11, 1987) was chief of CIA Counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975. His official position within the organization was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence (ADDOCI). …. Angleton later became convinced the CIA harbored a high-ranking mole, and engaged in an intensive search. Whether this was a highly destructive witch hunt or appropriate caution vindicated by later moles remains a subject of intense historical debate.

  15. Funny comment seen on another blog:
    Klobuchar said this after finishing 18th in a field of seven in Nevada:
    “They’re counting the votes but as usual I think we have exceeded expectations.”

  16. Bless you, neo, for the “Alice in Wonderland” Youtube.

    I saw the movie as a child, but I mainly know it from the soundtrack which I played over and over on my portable record player. I’m not sure why, but it was my favorite song. It was so wonderfully jolly and insane.

    I didn’t know what a caucus was, other than something insane, and when I came of voting age I couldn’t figure out what a caucus had to do with politics, however, it seemed important for some American primaries.

    Researching “caucus” I find there are no easy answers. Maybe it goes back to Algonquin; maybe to Greek. But it became an American word and apparently Lewis Carroll was parodying the caucus process, such that in Britain a caucus race came to mean:

    (1) A laborious but arbitrary and futile activity; an activity that amounts to running around in a circle, expending great energy but not accomplishing anything.

    (2)A win-win system; a positive system in which everybody wins.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caucus_race

    Participation trophies! Old Charlie Dodgson (Carroll) was ahead of his time.

  17. What happened to Gabbard? Has she just vanished from the race? Did she decide to keep her powder dry for 2024?

  18. Running through some old posts at Legal Insurrection, this one struck me as still very relevant. RTWT, because it explains very clearly the underlying reasons why Trump won, and why his rallies are still bigger than anyone else’s.

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/11/research-guru-saw-trump-phenomenon-coming-before-anyone-else/

    This is the same researchers current findings.

    https://www.newamericanfrontier.org/report-2020-women-trump

    Outsiders, Together: 2020 Motivating Values of High-Intensity Female Supporters of President Trump
    Anne Segal and Benjamin Drazen

    February 20, 2020
    A B S T R A C T

    Researchers interviewed high-intensity female current supporters of President Donald Trump who were in attendance at a February 10, 2020, rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. The values-laddering intercept methodology was used to examine the attitudes and deep values of 27 women ages 25-45. Each values-laddering intercept interview obtained the surface-level reasons for their support of President Trump as well as the underlying values: “Community,” “Peace of Mind,” “Relatable/Anti-Elitism,” and “Exuberance of Freedom/Empowered.” Researchers also gathered data on how and why the women decided to attend the rally and their specific hopes for what a President Trump would deliver in a second term. These 2020 results were then contrasted with The Frontier Center’s 2016 study of the same profile of women.

  19. I was reading an article, linked by PowerLine, by a Dane pushing back a bit against Bernie’s constant references to the alleged “democratic socialism” of that country, and became curious about whether or not the Danish political/economic/social system (whatever it happens to be ideologically) is relevant to the US as a whole.

    The population of Denmark is currently 5,785,051.

    That places it roughly between Colorado and Wisconsin, which are 21st & 20th in size (2019 numbers).

    Will the Danish system (whatever it is) “scale up” to the entire 50 states, or even to each of the larger ones?
    Probably not.

    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0220/danes_reality_check.php3

    https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/denmark-population/

    https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population

  20. Will the Danish system (whatever it is) “scale up” to the entire 50 states, or even to each of the larger ones?

    You have to have operational rules of thumb which put some breaks on the degree to which resources are allocated by political actors. Health care is a commodity and requires real resources to produce. Bernie’s too much of an economic illiterate to grasp this. His corps of supporters is shot through with open mouths uttering ‘I want’.

  21. America is NOT a democracy, it was designed by the Founders as a Republic. To refer to democracy as the founding says yes to mob rule. Shame, shame.

    When history is forgotten we all fall down.

  22. Well, the dems in 2016 made a big mistake when they didn’t get behind Jim Webb. He would have won 2016. Fools.

  23. Disclosure: I know one (1) Dane and I’ve read a few articles. Denmark is getting more conservative, esp over the issue of Muslim immigrants. Danes are increasingly dubious that it’s their job to provide financial sustenance to them. Danes are noticing that Sweden’s Muslim ghettoes are getting out of hand and willing to slow movement at their border to a crawl in order to see who’s traveling and what they’re carrying.

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