UPDATED: Recommended Political Reads

For right now it's starting to look like the Dem nomination--contrary to all expectations until Bernie came out of the closet re Castro--will be Biden's to lose. Or perhaps will be the DNC's choice to assign amid a chaotic brokered convention. With that in mind, three good reads--links and brief excerpts:



The Coming Implosion of the Democratic Party (Roger Simon):

Two hurdles could interrupt Biden’s march to the nomination, however. One is obvious: his proclivity for gaffes, some of which indicate a deficit it’s not PC to talk about. Nevertheless, it’s clear the former veep is not a young 77. 

The second is more ominous: corruption. This is not just the Ukraine/Hunter/Burisma affair we have heard about ad infinitum. That’s bad enough. More important is China and Biden’s overly-friendly relationship with the communist regime (that also apparently enriched his son Hunter). 

We all remember the naive “China is not an enemy” comment the former vice-president made, scoffing at the possibility. He shortly felt constrained to walk it back. And that was before the coronavirus jumped the Pacific. 

Sanders could utilize this were he not so friendly to communism himself. The entire Democratic Party is caught up in this double-bind. They are the people who screamed “Russia, Russia, Russia” in alarm, practically until our ears fell off, while being the same people who proposed the Russian reset button only a few years before.

Why Trump Would Easily Beat Biden (David Catron)

Moreover, unlike Clinton, Biden would be facing an incumbent president with a far better funded, far more sophisticated operation than the 2016 Trump campaign. As CNN reports, “President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee jointly raised more than $60 million in January, setting the groups up with more than $200 million in cash on hand heading into the general election.” This dwarfs the fundraising of the DNC and Biden’s presidential campaign. Additionally, the Trump reelection team, led by campaign manager Brad Parscale, is already light years ahead of Biden and the Democrats in sophisticated online targeting techniques. 

Biden also faces another problem Clinton was never able to overcome — the scorn of Sanders’ supporters. Convinced that their candidate had been robbed of the 2016 nomination, many of the Vermont senator’s supporters sat out the general election. Even worse, from the Democratic perspective, more than 1 in 10 actually voted for Trump. After the election NPR reported, “Fully 12 percent of people who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries voted for President Trump in the general election.” Following Biden’s Super Tuesday comeback, the Independent’s Jared Yates Sexton reports that anger among Sanders’ supporters is as intense as their 2016 rage: 

... 

Trump faces no such schism in his party. Most of those who began as Trump skeptics have long since been converted by his impressive and growing list of accomplishments. There is still a tiny and rather pathetic group of “Never Trump” malcontents, but their influence is very nearly zero. Gallup reports that Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 93 percent. Meanwhile, Politico reveals, “His campaign is fine-tuning its get-out-the-vote machine months ahead of the general election — a daunting challenge for Democrats.” This has to be particularly worrisome for the Biden team, whose campaign has been as disorganized and undisciplined as their candidate’s public utterances.

NYT worried about losing black voters (Don Surber)

President Trump is playing the long game. Democrats are stuck in 2016. They are too hung up on having a plurality then. They think they just have to gin up turnout. What they fail to realize is they need some of his voters to flip. 

President Trump won without a majority or even a plurality of votes. While the president has reached out to the most stubbornly Democrat voting bloc, Democrats have failed to reach out to try to convert Trump supporters. Oh, they talk a good game about flipping Texas but their plan is to import voters from Mexico and California. 

As long as Democrats write off 46% of the electorate as too deplorable for their party, they will remain locked out of the Oval Office. 

[By not] challenging the president's base, Democrats liberate him to go after their base. And he decided to go after the toughest group to convert. Donald Trump dreams big. His success rate should alarm Democrats.

Chuck Schumer, Wise Guy (George Parry)

[The federal statutes against "threatening to assault a federal agent with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with an official investigation" and "the federal Obstruction of Justice statute, which defines “obstruction of justice” as an act that “by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice” both apply to federal judges.'] 

All of this came to mind Wednesday when I heard Sen. Schumer’s address to the pro-abortion rally on the steps of the Supreme Court in which he warned Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh that “you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” The “awful decisions” was an obvious reference to how the justices are expected to rule in the abortion rights case that had occasioned the rally. 

Is there any way to interpret these astounding remarks other than as an endeavor to influence a judicial proceeding? 

Schumer may have been threatening Gorsuch and Kavanaugh with impeachment. But for purposes of establishing criminal liability that is irrelevant. Under the statute, a threat of any kind made to influence their decisions in an ongoing case is prima facie proof of obstruction of justice. No threat of violence is required. 

The senator’s actions warrant either an arrest or, at the very least, a formal investigation for endeavoring to obstruct justice. They could also warrant similar treatment for threatening to assault the justices, since on its face Schumer’s remark regarding “what hit you” could also be understood as a threat of violence or as an incitement to the crazies who infest our bitterly divided society to take action. 

After all, as Schumer should be aware, it wasn’t that long ago that the Republican House of Representatives baseball team was gunned down by a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter.

UPDATE: Wow! Another great blog by Don Surber: Jennifer would have saved the party.