Daily Archives: February 3, 2020

NEWTON, Iowa Democrats had a certain vision for this.

There would be boundless throngs braving the Iowa slush, aghast at the incumbent and roused by his prospective successors. There would be a presidential field that looked like the country. There would be unity, or something like it, burying intraparty squabbles beneath a heap of agreed-upon progressive policies or maybe even articles of impeachment to complete the job early.

And now, well.

From an event space in Newton, where a hand-countable crowd whispered anxieties about Joseph R. Biden Jr., to a union hall in Ottumwa, where the filmmaker Michael Moore filled in for a Washington-bound Bernie Sanders with talk of democratic socialism and Icelandic gender parity, the restless final Iowa days of this endless pre-primary campaign have less resembled a resistance fantasy than a kind of rolling low-grade anxiety attack for Democrats.

It is an angst both long in coming and amplified by recent events, coaxed by the ghosts of caucuses past and the specter of another unbearable failure, three years and three months after the one they swore they would be prepared to redeem this time.

Impeachment? President Trumps Senate trial has served only to sideline several would-be opponents tethered to the Capitol and overshadow the rest, while the president, buoyed by a likely acquittal, stormed into Iowa on Thursday to savage them all as the totally sick left before an audience that outnumbered any Democrats.

Unity? Supporters of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders have found themselves relitigating the quarrels of 2016, a feud revived by Mrs. Clintons recent assertion that nobody likes Mr. Sanders and exacerbated when a top Sanders surrogate, Representative Rashida Tlaib, joined some Iowans in booing the partys last nominee on Friday night.

And that diverse and talented field? The top remaining Democratic contenders are all white, mostly male and mostly old, encapsulated by Mr. Biden, the former vice president and long-assumed front-runner, who is wrapping up an Iowa campaign premised often on delivering somber addresses to small rooms about the soul of the nation and the relative strength of his swing-state polling. Some allies would consider Monday night a success if, even in defeat, he finishes ahead of Pete Buttigieg, the millennial former mayor of a small city in Indiana.

Theres two ways people get inspired, in my experience, Mr. Biden told voters in Newton during a wandering answer about climate change. One, by really inspirational people like the John Kennedys of the world or the Abraham Lincolns of the world. And others by really lousy leaders.

The lousy leader in this formulation seemed intuitive enough. Less clear was whether Mr. Biden had just conceded that the Democrats on offer were no Kennedys or Lincolns.

Seated in back, David Moseley, 72, said he had traveled to Iowa from Seattle to assess his options in person. He took his place in a gathering heavy on gentle applause and precarious digression as Mr. Biden moved through his remarks with a signature medley of not a joke interjection and Barack and I reminiscences.

We dont have a candidate that fits the entire coalition that we need, Mr. Moseley ruled.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, the play is going great.

Of course, much of the campaign strain has been born of healthy political combat, an ongoing debate over the partys direction and purpose. Mr. Biden and Mr. Buttigieg have argued that a big-tent enterprise requires consensus and restraint. Lets not choose between boldness and unity, Mr. Buttigieg told voters in Ottumwa on Tuesday, suggesting that he was offering both. Lets not choose between the right way to govern and the best way to win.

Mr. Sanders, the leader in recent Iowa polls, and Senator Elizabeth Warren have spoken with more urgency, insisting that the scale of the countrys ills demands significant intervention, a zeal that has informed the electricity of their rallies.

Kickass women win, Ms. Warren said to cheers late Friday evening, thanking her female surrogates after arriving in Des Moines during a break from impeachment duties.

Our campaign, Mr. Sanders thundered in Indianola on Saturday, is the campaign of energy.

In a state with a quadrennial tradition of nebulous energy metrics crowd size, lawn signs, the willingness of volunteers to slog through snow to reach one last door this years contest has been especially difficult to gauge.

There is still conspicuous passion, measured by the odometers of canvassers in Im a Warren Democrat apparel; the BOOT-A-TRUMP shirt at a Buttigieg rally; the blotted tears of a grateful, cane-shuffling Biden supporter after a hug from the candidate. Thats real, the man, Brian Peters, 59, said, nodding firmly.

But where the final Iowa stretch typically monopolizes national media attention and all but guarantees a major boost for successful candidates, recent days have passed under the cloud cover of impeachment and a global health crisis. The states eventual winner, who could generally expect days of momentum-sustaining news coverage, will instead run up against the State of the Union on Tuesday.

It is a fate somewhat difficult to fathom after over a year of Democratic obsession with getting this moment just right, with an all-consuming search for possible party saviors Oprah! Beto! Kamala! and debates so overstuffed that even two nights of 10-candidate forums could not accommodate the full slate.

I have Steve Bullock shirts! said Martha Viner, 71, from Albia, recalling the ill-fated campaign of the Montana governor. Im the only person.

The prospect of a muddled outcome on Monday has only encouraged a yearlong tendency toward punditry among both voters and candidates.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, addressing a group at a bike shop on Saturday in Bettendorf, appeared to set off on a cycling-based electability argument, recalling a trip on wheels once from Minnesota to Wyoming. That just shows you the grit I bring to this stage, she said.

Andrew Yang, the former technology executive, focused his case on a digital data point. Im the only candidate in the field that Donald Trump has not tweeted about, he told reporters at a session hosted by Bloomberg News, because he knows Im better at the internet than he is.

The top contenders have been no more subtle. Ms. Warrens team recently debuted signs reading, UNITE THE PARTY, implying that she is the only candidate who can connect its disparate factions.

And the campaigns of Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders have continued a running dialogue over voter risk tolerance.

This is no time to take a risk, one Biden ad narrated.

This isnt the time to play it safe, Mr. Moore, the filmmaker, advised in Ottumwa, speaking to Sanders supporters alongside two other Vermont celebrities: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, of ice cream fame.

Perhaps most striking, at events across the state last week, was the sense that any Democratic nominee might be left to manage an unwieldy coalition moderates, socialists, Trump-repelled independents.

Asked what it means to be a Democrat in 2020, caucusgoers drifted toward differing, if not always contradictory, definitions.

Looking out for people instead of corporations, said Lauren Strathman, 37, a Sanders supporter from Bloomfield.

Sanity, Mr. Peters, the Biden supporter, said.

It means we need to get out and vote, said Maureen OConnor, 61, from Waterloo, and get Trump the hell out of there.

And as Mr. Moore prepared to leave the union hall he had commanded with Mr. Sanders away in Washington, swaddled in a hoodie and a Hawkeyes baseball cap as Ben and Jerry scooped ice cream for guests, he wondered what a party tent should even look like in these volatile political times.

Democrats might well nominate someone who has long resisted calling himself a member of their tribe. In fact, Mr. Moore hopes they do.

Were going to elect somebody whos not officially a Democrat, he said, smiling a little. The flaps are off the tent.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting from Waterloo, Iowa, Nick Corasaniti from Bettendorf, and Astead W. Herndon from Urbandale.

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Democrats Had a 2020 Vision. This Isnt Quite What They Expected. - The New York Times

Rep. Gerry ConnollyGerald (Gerry) Edward ConnollyTrump, Democrats set for brawl on Iran war powers Overnight Defense: Iran crisis eases as Trump says Tehran 'standing down' | Dems unconvinced on evidence behind Soleimani strike | House sets Thursday vote on Iran war powers Democrats 'utterly unpersuaded' by evidence behind Soleimani strike MORE (D-Va.) will bring Hatice Cengiz, the fiance of murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, as his guest to the State of the Union on Wednesday.

Hatices courage to sit in the House Chamber Tuesday night should serve as a clarion call to the President that no matter how high it goes, Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for the murder of this loving father and fiance, respected journalist, U.S. resident, my constituent, and reformer, Connolly said in a statement Monday.

Congress has acted. Now too must the President, he added.

Khashoggi, who was born in Saudi Arabia but resided in Virginia, was killed in October 2018 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The CIA concluded about a month later that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi, who frequently criticized the Saudi government.

Connolly, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the Protection of Saudi Dissidents Act,which aims to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggis murder. The act would prohibit arm sales to Saudi intelligence for 120 days and every 120 days thereafter until Saudi Arabia meets certain human rights conditions.

The act would also require a report on whether Saudi authorities engaged in intimidation or harassment of Khashoggi or any individual in the U.S. Additionally, it would require the intelligence community to report on whether it fulfilled its duty to warn Khashoggi of an impending threat against him.

Trump will give the State of the Union address Tuesday, the same day the Senate is set to take a final vote on his removal. Trump is expected to be acquitted in the GOP-controlled upper chamber.

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House Democrat to bring Khashoggi's fiance to State of the Union | TheHill - The Hill

Take your mind back there. Miami. June 2019. Two nights, 20 candidates. A portrait of the Democratic Party in miniature assembled onstage, mics on, ready to debate.

They are U.S. senators and House members, governors and a mayor, a refreshingly human economic futurist and a self-help guru best known as Oprahs spiritual adviser. They are young and old, black and white and Asian and brown, wealthy and in debt, gay and straight, war veterans, hailing from all parts of the country. They are, as Democratic chairman Tom Perez proudly points out, the most diverse field in our nations history.

Feels like a lifetime ago, doesnt it?

There was a sense of possibility and optimism on that stage. Fast forward six months. The leading Democratic candidates are all white. Three are men, and three are older than 70. Meanwhile two old white billionaires are buying their way into contention by spending hundreds of millions of their personal fortunes. At this point four years ago, the top candidates for the Republican nomination were more diverse than the Democratic frontrunners today. Many politicians hailed as the Future of The Party Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julin Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto ORourke are gone, exiting the race before a single vote was cast.

They wanted a big, fluid, multicultural field they didnt get it, says Jeff Roe, a Republican political consultant who ran Ted Cruzs 2016 presidential campaign. They wanted a new generation of leadership they didnt get it. They didnt get any of the things they wanted.

Instead of writing the 5,000th story trying to predict the outcome in Iowa or New Hampshire, Rolling Stone asked dozens of people campaign staffers, volunteers, activists, pollsters, party officials, voters to reflect on the campaign so far. We wanted to know: What happened? Why did the Democratic primary get so white? Why have known brands and familiar faces led the pack? Why are so many Democratic voters undecided after a year of campaigning? Did the Democratic National Committee screw this up? Or is this what the voters wanted?

The daily assault of terrifying Trump headlines. The endless partisan combat in Congress. The toxic conversations on social media. Felt the urge lately to hurl your phone into the nearest body of water after it lit up with the latest push notification from the New York Times? Youre not alone.

Going into the 2020 primaries, Democratic voters are fueled by the most primal of emotions: fear and anger. Fear and anger about the state of the nation, the conduct of the president, the blind loyalty of Trumps Republican allies, and the uncertainty of what comes next.

They are the two most prevalent emotions out there, says a former senior staffer on a now-defunct Democratic campaign who requested anonymity to talk candidly about the campaign he worked on, the other candidates, and the DNC. They both have to do with Donald Trump: theyre angry at him and afraid hes going to win again.

Voters are also burned out by the events of the past three years. I think many Americans are exhausted by our politics, says Andrew Yang, the insurgent Democrat who has built from scratch perhaps the only true grassroots campaign of the 2020 race. Yang says he sees Trump fatigue as one of the reasons his message that the president is a symptom of bigger changes in our country and economy, including the rise of automation and artificial intelligence has resonated. There is the sense that Democrats are painting [Trump] as the cause of all the problems, and many Americans are just fed up because theres more of a focus on Trump than on their towns and cities.

Ellen Montanari, a progressive activist in southern California who has worked closely with Indivisible, says she believes Trumps madman approach is deliberate. He knows that by bombarding us with all of this, we cant concentrate, she says. Its a brilliant ploy. And its working. Montanari says she sees signs of burnout among the activists and volunteers she works with. She hears a common refrain from people she knows: I just want to go back to a world where the government is in the hands of grown-ups.

The challenge for the Democratic nominee is this: Can he or she transcend the Trump distraction machine and rekindle the energy seen in the Womens March, in the post-Trump explosion of grassroots groups, and in the 2018 midterm election?

When George Hamblen drives around southeastern New Hampshire, where he lives and runs his towns Democratic Party chapter, he sees far fewer yard signs for Democratic candidates than he did in years past. Yet the campaign events in his state are jam-packed. Warren, Amy, Tulsi, Mayor Pete, Yang they all draw standing-room only crowds, people spilling out into the parking lot.

Whats going on here? Its that pesky word: electability. No one quite knows what it means, but its what so many Democratic voters are seeking and holding out for.

Quite frankly, I would vote for anyone against Trump and a pulse is optional, Ellen Montanari, the southern California progressive activist, says. I just need to have someone in office other than him. Thats number one for me.

With fear and anger come a sense of caution, calculation, a belief that this is a time to vote with your head, not your heart. People are so scared of getting it wrong that theyre going to take every piece of information into the calculus of electability ultimately, the same former presidential campaign staffer says. Every poll, every town hall, every debate performance all of it gets added into an ever-shifting set of calculations by voters. Iowans are going to wait to make their decision until the day of the caucus, the former staffer says. Granite Staters are going to take Iowas result into account and then make their decision as they walk into the polling booth.

But what does electability look like? Is it experience? Policy plans? Charisma and confidence on the debate stage?

Talk to Democratic voters and you get the sense that electability means something different to each person, fluid and ever-changing, if it means anything at all. At this point I go back to Socrates: I know that I know nothing, says Chris Dueker, a New Hampshire voter who describes himself as progressive. I feel a lot of people are claiming that this candidate cant win, only my candidate can win.

My feeling at this point is I know I dont know and they dont know, Dueker adds. Electability is completely impenetrable to me. I say this with some humility. I would prefer a progressive, but maybe Biden would be the best candidate.

The shape-shifting concept of electability is one reason why so many candidates have enjoyed a brief bump in the polls only to lose their spot in the limelight to another candidate. The former senior campaign staffer says this was largely college-educated white voters basically shopping for the flavor of the month first Kamala, then Beto, then Mayor Pete, then Warren, and on and on. Its the very same people moving around, the former staffer says. Thats the fickle thing about electability: its self-reinforcing and self-defeating, as quick to materialize as it is to evaporate.

Becky Bond, a progressive consultant who advised Sanders 2016 presidential campaign and Beto ORourkes 2018 Senate run, says theres a paralyzed feeling among Democratic voters who recognize the stakes of the election and feel a responsibility to pick the right candidate. They dont want to make the wrong choice, Bond says. People are waiting and not getting fully invested behind someone until theres a nominee.

In late 2018, DNC Chairman Tom Perez unveiled the revamped rules for the upcoming Democratic primary debates. Perez pledged that the DNCs debate rules would give the grassroots a bigger voice than ever before and put our nominee in the strongest position possible to defeat Donald Trump.

Until Democrats pick a nominee and that person faces off against Trump, its impossible to say for sure how well Perezs reforms panned out. But a year later, whats beyond a doubt is that they did not empower the grassroots and they replaced old gatekeepers with new ones.

Because of these new rules, the most powerful people in the primary up to this point have arguably been the pollsters. Polls are, of course, a partial reflection of the electorate itself, but if 2016 taught us anything, its that polls can mislead, give false confidence, and miss entire chunks of the voting-age population. For the past year, campaigns lived and died by the latest Quinnipiac or Fox News or CNN poll; journalists built devoted followings around reporting on polls and interpreting the DNCs obscure guidelines for which polls did and didnt count toward the debate. And for voters, polls came to represent rightly or wrongly a proxy for viability, strength, the ability to beat Trump.

The DNC also required that candidates meet a threshold of individual grassroots donations to make the debate stage. Candidates and staffers say they understand why the DNC used this metric as a stand-in for grassroots support, but they complained that the donor requirement like the polling threshold gave a leg up to candidates who already had high name recognition and a preexisting network of small-dollar donors to draw on.

Candidates without both of those qualities entered the race at a disadvantage. Instead of spending money to build a field operation in Iowa or make an early play for Californias delegates, campaigns spent money to buy email lists to fundraise off of in order to meet an arbitrary donor target. Jenna Lowenstein, Cory Bookers deputy campaign manager, wrote on Twitter that on the day the DNC doubled the donor threshold to 130,000, she literally Control+A+Deleted a plan for a whole entire early game, early-state persuasion strategy, and used the money to buy email addresses instead.

West Coast governors such as Jay Inslee of Washington state and Steve Bullock of Montana might have suffered the most from the DNC rules. Both are highly accomplished politicians with progressive records that should make an Iowan swoon. Unlike U.S. senators, though, governors dont get to use nationally televised congressional hearings to boost their profiles or enjoy easy access to the bulk of the political press corps now located in Washington and New York. Despite having a compelling story to tell, Inslee and Bullock dropped out of the race rather than miss qualifying for the debates.

The thing that surprised me the most is that brand name meant so much in this primary, says Jennifer Fiore, the former adviser to Julin Castros campaign. There isnt a single top contender who didnt come into this with a major brand already identified in Democratic politics. It used to be that somebody new could really break out in a primary. Its where Obama came from, Kennedy came from.

The DNC provided more fodder to its critics when it recently announced it would eliminate the donor requirement for its February debate. Theres an argument to be made that it makes sense to adjust the debate rules after voting starts and include primary election results as a new metric for measuring viability. But the upshot is an old, white, self-funding billionaire in Mike Bloomberg will now benefit from new rules that help him get on the debate stage (if he bothers to show up) after a slew of younger candidates, candidates of color, and female candidates effectively saw their campaigns ended by a lack of cash and a failure to qualify for future debates.

Perhaps the best solution in the simplest one: Get rid of the debate requirements. Or get rid of debates altogether in the run-up to the actual primary. Stick to televised town halls for individual candidates or forums that highlight a single issue like climate or gun safety. Doing so would eliminate the cagematch faux-drama of the cable-TV debates and give citizens more of an opportunity to question the candidates themselves.

Sometime in early 2019, Jennifer Fiore, the former adviser to Julin Castro, had a conversation with a prominent political reporter. This person said to me, How are you going to handle it if Donald Trump starts dragging your candidate through the mud on Twitter? How are you going to handle the medias coverage of that?' Fiore recalls. She says she turned the question back on the reporter: How are you going to handle that?

The reporter had no answer for her. It was like I had asked this question that nobody had ever thought of, she says.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, there was a widely shared consensus that the media bungled the biggest story of a generation. A fixation on the spectacle of Donald Trump blinded us to the tectonic changes in American culture that delivered Trump the presidency. There was a brief period of hand-wringing. There were pledges to get out of our coastal bubbles and reconnect with Middle America. But this largely meant seeking out Trump voters in Rust Belt diners that is, applying the old model of doing things to a new reality. Instead, we needed a new model.

There was no 9/11 Commission for the press. No serious effort to reimagine how we cover campaigns and to try something new. That maybe instead of telling voters how to feel about whatever the latest breaking news was, we should shut up and listen to them. Its like a law of nature that you just move on to the next story, says Jay Rosen, the NYU professor and one of the most trenchant critics of American political journalism. Because of that, you dont have any real inquiry into what went wrong.

Sleepwalking into 2020 is how the Columbia Journalism Review headlined a recent oral history about the medias coverage of the current campaign. The most striking observation came from Ben Smith, the outgoing editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and a veteran political reporter. There was an odd resignation in what Smith had to say: The media has this incredible quadrennial habit of learning all the lessons of four years ago and applying them when the medium has already moved on, Smith said. Things keep changing, yet we fight the last war. So I think the media is totally prepared not to repeat the mistakes of the last cycle, like giving Trump endless livestreams and letting him use provocative tweets to dominate the conversation, but Im sure we will fuck it up in some new way we arent expecting. (Smith will soon join the New York Times as a media critic.)

Smiths critique was framed around changing mediums newspapers to TV, TV to online, blogs to Twitter, and so on but theres a bigger problem at play here.

The way NYUs Jay Rosen sees it, political journalists still have not defined what their mission and purpose is. Is success beating the competition with scoops that resonate mostly within the political class? Is it reading the tea leaves and predicting winners and losers? Is it regurgitating Trumps latest attack on Biden or Bernie?

Because thats what too much of political journalism still is. To what end?

Democrats need a plan to heal the country where is it?

If a Democrat wins in November, no matter which Democrat it is, the task before them will be a monumental one. Trump and his allies and every organ of the right-wing media will attack the new president non-stop. The level of racial acrimony and violence that were likely to see in 2021 will likely make the tea party pale in comparison, says Ian Haney Lpez, the director of the Racial Politics Project at the University of California, Berkeleys law school.

The new Democratic president, the Democratic Party, and the movement that elected that president will have to reckon with this. How do you begin to reknit the country back together?

Voters and activists recognize this. They say they want to hear from the candidates about how to win over not just allies but folks on the other side of the partisan divide. It might be unfair to ask the current Democratic presidential field to have offered a vision for unifying the country while theyre still competing for their partys nomination. But this question of healing the country is never far from mind when you talk to voters about what they want in a president.

Who is it that has that ability to reach out to Americans, not just to Democrats but to Americans? Ellen Montanari, the southern California activist says. Who is it whos reaching into the homes of everyday people? Who is it thats going to capture their imagination?

The point of a Democratic primary is to pick the best nominee. But in these extraordinary times, its not too much to ask that the first year of the 2020 campaign also point a way forward for the country, a path out of the darkness of the Trump era. There were glimmers of that kind of campaign in the spring and summer of last year, but those loftier ideas were soon pushed aside in favor of more practical concerns like polling numbers and small-dollar donors.

In a larger sense, the Democratic Party still feels trapped in 2016: the revolutionary left against Obama-era liberalism, wooing the white working class versus turning out loyal voters of color, and so on. Has the endless primary of 2020 and the choices made to shape that primary made it difficult if not impossible for a candidate to build the multiracial movement needed to defeat Trump and send hate back into hiding? Is this the best way to produce their nominee who can heal the country, an aspiration that feels more essential and imperative than ever?

Maybe its not the role of the endless primary to produce such a candidate. It should be.

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Are the Democrats Completely Screwing This Up? - Rolling Stone

MSNBC host Chris Matthews declared Monday that he's "not happy with the field" of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Matthews, a former speechwriter for President Carter, said he did not think Democrats had a candidate who could defeat President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump shares then deletes tweet praising Chiefs for representing 'Great State of Kansas' Ken Bone endorses Andrew Yang for president: '#YangGang all the way!' Loeffler works to gain traction with conservatives amid Collins primary bid MORE.

"What are my thoughts? Im not happy. Im not happy with this field. I think they have to find a candidate for president that can beat Trump," Matthews said during a panel discussion Monday on "Morning Joe."

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Chris Matthews (2/3/2020): "Bernie SandersBernie SandersSanders leads in Iowa ahead of caucus: poll The Memo: Trump threatens to overshadow Democrats in Iowa Kerry denies considering presidential bid: 'Any report otherwise is categorically false' MORE is not going to be president of the United States."#BernieWillWin pic.twitter.com/IRNGakzxKi

The telecast from Des Moines, Iowa, took place on the morning of the state's caucuses. Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has emerged as the favorite to win the caucuses.

But Matthews was pessimistic on Sanders's chances in the general election.

"Bernie Sanders is not going to be president of the United States," he said.

Mathews then compared the excitement around the Sanders campaign to that of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern, who lost in alandslide to President Nixon by a 520-17 margin in the Electoral College while only winning 35 percent of the popular vote.

Matthews, 74, did predict a win for Sanders in Iowa.

"I think he's gonna win big tonight, real big," said Matthews.

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Chris Matthews expresses worries: Democrats 'need to find' candidate who can beat Trump | TheHill - The Hill

Pressley rebuked Iowans who point to Obama as an example that Iowa and New Hampshire going first and second on the primary calendar doesnt put candidates of color at a disadvantage.

"You know what, people use Obama for everything: 'This is supposed to be our evidence of a post racial America,'" Pressley said in an interview, referring to the arguments made after Obama was elected. "Ultimately, whether we're talking about racial justice or leadership parity or political representation, it's not about these exceptional anomalies and one-offs. It's about system change."

Iowa community organizer Chelsea Chism-Vargas, who is mixed race and of Afro Latin descent, praised Castro, now a Warren surrogate, for bringing the issue of Iowas status to the forefront this cycle.

We shouldn't be first, this isn't fair, said Chism-Vargas, who is running for the Des Moines City Council. We want a better country and not just a better Iowa.

Iowa is expected to have six Spanish satellite caucuses in preparation for roughly 20,000 of the 194,000 Latinos living in the state to participate. But Latinos on the ground and activist groups are concerned it still may not be enough.

Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Hector Sanchez Barba, executive director of Mi Familia Vota, both said its time for a more diverse state that reflects the partys base and countrys makeup to go first.

Its an example of how imperfect our democracy is, Sanchez Barba said. The caucuses are totally intimidating and are not welcoming of communities of color, especially for Latinos and immigrants.

At a recent Biden event in Ankeny, outside Des Moines, two voters pointed out the lack of diversity in the room, which was almost entirely white.

Look at the crowd, said Vernon Naffier, a Biden supporter. We do not represent the nation very well. Wed like to see more diversity.

But Biden himself has a different, more favorable view of the caucuses here.

When I go around and people say, Why Iowa, why Iowa first, Iowas not that diverse, and its because yall take it seriously, the former vice president said at an event at the University of Iowa this week. You look beyond whats just happening in Iowa. You really do.

And Castro? Now a surrogate for Warren, he is taking a measured tone.

What Ive said is that theres going to be an opportunity after this 2020 process to think about how the DNC can improve the debate thresholds, the order of the states; were going to have that conversation after this 2020 process, right?" Castro said after an event for Warren in Ankeny this week. "But I think the people of Iowa take their role very seriously. Ive always acknowledged that, and I believe that theyre going to take their role seriously again this time.

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Iowa Democrats fear losing first-in-the-nation status - POLITICO

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is reportedly considering dozens of executive orders he could sign to go around Congress, and hes already promised to implement major parts of his immigration plan unilaterally if it stalls on Capitol Hill. Before dropping out of the race late last year, Senator Kamala Harris of California vowed to enact her gun-control agenda herself if Congress didnt act within 100 days of her inauguration. Even former Vice President Joe Biden, who has campaigned as a legislative consensus-builder and has been dismissive of his rivals plans to circumvent Congress, has proposed an aggressive use of executive orders.

This embrace of executive authority has disappointed, but not surprised, advocates who want to reverse a decades-long shift in power from a largely dysfunctional legislative branch to an ever more muscular executive.

Executive-branch circumvention of Congress is what everyone expects by now, says Philip Wallach, a senior fellow in governance at R Street, a libertarian think tank. It has been a decade since Congress last enacted a major new policy program, aside from a few big tax cuts and spending bills, he notes.

Read: The alarming scope of the presidents emergency powers

The past three presidents have tried to push the bounds of executive authority. In the years after 9/11, civil libertarians and some Democrats criticized the George W. Bush administration for its expansive interpretation of the presidents power to act in the name of national security. Republicans took President Barack Obama to court over his move to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants after Congress refused to pass a comprehensive bill providing a path to citizenship. (The Obama administration rejected an even wilder idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to obviate the need for Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling.)

Congress is at fault too. Over the years, lawmakers have written overly broad laws that have given executive agencies wide latitude to interpret and implement them as they see fit, argues Elizabeth Goitein, the director of the liberty-and-national-security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning think tank. Many disputes over such laws end up in the courts, leading to years of litigation, as has been the case with the Affordable Care Act, for example. Congress has essentially abdicated the job of lawmaking and has left that to the president, Goitein told me. Presidents have also taken to stretching the bounds of those delegations and going beyond what Congress has authorized.

Warrens advisers told me she views Congress as a partner, noting her support for repealing the authorizations of military force that were passed in 2001 and 2003 and that presidents have used to justify military actions across the globe in the decades since. But Warren is also a candidate who conceived of and built from scratch an entire federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that was designed to be insulated from congressional sabotage and oversight. For years, she has pushed the executive branch to be more aggressive about using its vast power to improve peoples lives. She has really thought deeply about how you can use all the tools of government to actually deliver for people, Bharat Ramamurti, the campaigns deputy director for economic policy, told me.

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2020 Democrats Are Already Giving Up on Congress - The Atlantic

The Trump administration has sided with Republican state officials in a lawsuit arguing that changes to the Affordable Care Act made by Congress in 2017 rendered its mandate requiring people to have health insurance unconstitutional, and that without the mandate, the law should fall. On that basis, a federal district judge declared the entire law unconstitutional in 2018, but an appeals court recently sent the case back to him for review.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from Democratic states to quickly consider the case; Mr. Trump and his Justice Department had made it clear to the court they were in no hurry to resolve it.

As Mr. Bloombergs ads blanket the airwaves, his Democratic rivals have spent most of their time going after one another, using health care as the vehicle to debate whether the party should nominate a moderate or a liberal seeking transformative change.

Lise Talbott, who works for a community health center in the Central Valley of California, in a congressional district that flipped to a Democrat in 2018 after a race dominated by health care, said she was surprised and disappointed that the Democrats running for president had not drawn more attention to Mr. Trumps support of the lawsuit to overturn the law.

The candidates seem to be in this battle over whos going to get us closest to Medicare for all instead of talking about the care and coverage we have now and could lose, Ms. Talbott said. And because the candidates arent talking about it, I think a lot of people have sort of forgotten.

Ms. Talbott, who supports Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, was active in helping defeat Jeff Denham, her districts former Republican congressman, after he voted with most other House Republicans in 2017 to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Denhams successor, Josh Harder, talks frequently about protecting the law, she said.

Like Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Trump seems to understand the power of warning people that they could lose something they like. At rallies and in speeches, he has repeatedly warned that the Democrats want to replace private insurance with a national single-payer health insurance program, or Medicare for all. (In truth, only Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and, to an extent, Ms. Warren, have embraced such a plan, with the other candidates calling for a public option that people could choose instead of private coverage.)

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As Other Democrats Feud, Bloomberg Hammers Trump on Health Care - The New York Times

Democrats were convinced they could buy Texas. But tonight they learned Texans arent buying the nonsense the Democrats are selling, said Austin Chambers, the president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, the national-party group dedicated to state legislative races. Texans sent a message loud and clear to the liberals in Washington: Were going to keep Texas Texas.

Read: Somethings happening in Texas

The seemingly small stakes of a local campaign in the Houston suburbs had nevertheless captured the attention of the Democratic Partys top presidential candidates, who used the race to demonstrate their commitment to Democrats broader goal of recapturing power in the states and making Texas truly competitive in 2020. The Democratic candidate Eliz Markowitz won endorsements from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg. Former Representative Beto ORourke, who nearly carried the district in his close Senate race in 2018, campaigned aggressively for Markowitz after dropping his own White House bid in the fall. Yet she not only failed to match ORourkes performance two years ago against Senator Ted Cruz; she fell short of the 43 percent of the vote that Hillary Clinton earned in the district in 2016.

In the aftermath of last nights election, both parties observed the unwritten rules of analyzing special-election results. To the party that won, the victory is a clear harbinger of bigger success. To the party that lost, the results mean absolutely nothing at all.

We always knew the race would be tough, Jessica Post, the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me this morning. She called the 16-point margin an anomaly, noting the unpredictability of low-turnout special elections. Post also blamed Texas Republicans for scheduling the election in the dead of winter and limiting early-voting periods.

She said Democrats had forced Republicans to spend millions and devote the full resources of their party to defend a district that as recently as 2012 went for Mitt Romney by 30 points. I think thats a win, Post argued. I think it shows Republicans are scared as hell.

Other Democratic operatives I spoke with this morning conceded that it was a stretch to call Texas a winnable state for the partys eventual presidential nominee in 2020. (These dampened expectations are a contrast to the hype that built up after 2016, when the nine-point gap between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Texas was smaller than the gap in Iowa and barely larger than the one in Ohio.) But they said last nights special-election defeat did not dim their hopes for winning a majority in the state House. There are, they noted, 15 districts more favorable to Democrats than the one they lost last night. And especially in suburban districts where voters have soured on President Trump, Democrats expect the higher turnout in November to boost their chances. Not having Trump on the ballot really hurt [Markowitz], said one Democratic operative with Texas ties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the race candidly.

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The Humbling of Democrats in Texas - The Atlantic

The Senate is not going to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and to all appearances the whole thing is nearly over. Acquittal is imminent, and supposedly serious commentators are on Twitter wailing in unison with Democratic activists. But what they are saying does not make any sense its contradictory. On the one hand, they say that the case against Donald Trump is open-and-shut: so utterly persuasive in objective terms that only the Senate Republicans bad faith has prevented them from admitting it. On the other hand, Democrats and the pundits dont trust voters to be persuaded by this purportedly airtight case hence all the lamentations about an outcome that will leave Trumps fate to be decided in November at the ballot box rather than having him removed early by vote of the Senate.

But if the case against Trump is really so strong, why isnt it a safe bet that voters will dump Trump? Should they be persuaded? Its not as if there hasnt been plenty of publicity for the allegations behind the impeachment effort. No doubt the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and the rest will have much more to say about them over the next nine months, too. Nobody can claim the voters havent been told. So again, why not trust them to do the right thing, if the right thing is really so objective and obvious?

The question has an easy answer, of course. The people hoping for the Senate to remove Trump are Democrats, but they arent democrats, and they think the American voting public already made the wrong choice in 2016. The case against Trump then was supposed to be equally clear he was a Russian puppet, as Hillary Clinton claimed, and a fascist or a nincompoop or whatever. There was meant to be no way he could have won the 2016 election. Yet he did win, fair and square and conclusively. (Unlike the case in 2000, when George W. Bush won the 2000 election only by the margin provided by Florida and its contested recount.)

Democrats have refused to accept the results of constitutional democracy ever since. They reflexively retreat to a belief that Russian election meddling handed the 2016 contest to Trump. And when you point out the problem with the Trump is obviously guilty, but we cant trust the public to vote him out narrative, liberals reflexively assert that interference will sway the 2020 election, too. After all, they say, what Trump was trying to do in Ukraine was an attempt to sabotage the 2020 election. Here again, however, theres a disconnect within the argument itself: just how was a Ukrainian investigation into Hunter Bidens ties to an oligarch-connected oil company going to affect the 2020 election, if its really so safe to assume that the young Biden did nothing improper?

The claim that Joe Bidens reputation would be badly damaged by the mere fact of a foreign investigation into his son is hard to credit, considering that Joe Bidens reputation hasnt been destroyed by his sons many well-known sensational scandals involving sex and drugs right here in this country. Is it at all credible that American voters would be mostly indifferent to Hunter Bidens colorful personal scandals but would be deeply troubled by some arcane Ukrainian corruption investigation?

This is not a plausible voter psychology. But what is psychologically all-too-plausible is that Democrats are in denial about what American voters want and why they rejected Hillary Clinton in a majority of states in 2016. Rather than admitting the painful truth, which is that the Democrats will always have a hard time winning states that add up to a majority of electoral votes so long as they field candidates like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Democrats prefer to imagine that James Comey handed the election to Donald Trump by announcing in October 2016 that an FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons emails was being reopened. If the Russians didnt elect Donald Trump, then James Comey did anybody but the American people. Because if the American people elected Donald Trump, it means they chose someone even as shocking as Trump over the respectable liberal agenda that Clinton embodied, and which Biden now champions.

The Democrats psychology is mirrored by that of the pundits, not just because the pundits tend to be Democratic-leaning but because the same fear of rejection applies to almost everyone in the pundit class. NeverTrump Republicans and neoconservatives could not, and still cannot, accept the idea that their program has been so thoroughly repudiated by the public that voters would rather have someone like Donald Trump in the White House than anyone who supports the Bush-McCain-Romney vision of the country.

The NeverTrumpers, neocons, and a great many progressive pundits stake their self-mythology, their very identities, on the idea that their programs are not controversial or controvertible, but are simply technocratically wise and uniquely morally in line with democratic ideals. They are concerned not only to get their own way, but to get their way without serious opposition hence the relentless demonization of their opponents as racists, sexists, homophobes, fascists, deplorables, authoritarians, a cult, illiberals, hicks, and even most ironically enemies of constitutional democracy. These are the supporters of the constitutionally elected president were talking about as the subjects of those epithets. You can believe that Trump is evil or stupid, and the unelected federal bureaucracy and Deep State are wise and benevolent, but at least be honest with yourself about your attitude toward Americans voters. If you dont think theyre fit for constitutional self-government, admit it.

And then we can move ahead. If the Constitution and democracy as we presently have it are no good, then what revolutionary changes must you recommend? Some progressives are quite clear about this: they want to make representation within the Senate proportional to population, as in the House, and would abolish or transform the electoral college. They want a plebiscitary democracy, not one moderated by federalism. If the problem with a democracy that can elect Donald Trump goes deeper than that, if the American people themselves, not the president, are the real problem, then let the NeverTrumpers and center-left pundits come right out and say so only a deplorable country, with a deplorable people, can elect such a deplorable president. Believe that, and you should drop the pretense of being a liberal democrat and embrace your true identity: an advocate of enlightened despotism, albeit under a despotic enlightened class rather than a single well-tutored monarch.

Donald Trump was elected to break the grip of such a class on our country a constitutional president to defy the extra-constitutional authority of the elite. His success in doing so has been limited, and it will continue to be. But his enemies recognize what he and the defiant public that voted for him represent a rebellion against their authority and a threat to the belief system on which their power depends.

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Impeachment has proved the Democrats are no longer democrats - The Spectator USA

Its easy to get lost in a sea of information about the likely outcome of a presidential campaign, from polls to stirring campaign trail reportage. As OZY sets out to bring you in-depth analysis of 2020 that you cant get anywhere else, we wanted to distill the noise into solid numbers that will give you insight into whats happening and what comes next.

So OZY teamed up with Washington-based Republican technology and data firm 0ptimus and its sister company Decision Desk HQ, which reports and analyzes election results, to present The Forecast. Launching today, The Forecastis an exclusive prediction model that breaks down polls, demographics, fundraising figures, historical trends and more to determine who will be the next Democratic nominee for president. (More on the methodology here.)

The Forecast is built on the back of the OZY/0ptimus model that was so good that it came within one House seat and one Senate seat of precisely nailing the 2018 midterms. After crunching reams of data, the model runs tens of thousands of simulations to determine the likelihood of each result. Its like simulating the Super Bowl with Madden the video game, says Scott Tranter, CEO and co-founder of 0ptimus, except if you were re-running simulations after major plays, every injury and every quarter, giving us continuous fresh insights and predictions.

So who have we got? After running the 0ptimus (Transformer-themed) computers red-hot all weekend to take in the latest results Bumblebee and Ironhide accrued some serious overtime our first Forecast finds

Joe Biden is the most likely Democratic presidential nominee but theres a better than one-in-three chance of a contested convention.

After running 10,000 simulations of the Democratic race, we found Biden to have a 37 percent chance of winning the nomination. The second-most-likely nominee is Bernie Sanders (18 percent chance), followed by Elizabeth Warren (8 percent) and Pete Buttigieg (1 percent). But theres a 36 percent chance no candidate gets a majority of delegates and this turns into a floor fight at the Democratic National Convention.

Biden was an early, if shaky, front-runner but for the better part of a year, hes held up. He has survived early attacks, mixed debate performances and the rise of other contenders (Warren in the fall, Buttigieg through the winter) to remain on top. And what may be most surprising is how Biden wins. Our model predicts essentially a three-way tie in Iowa, with Sanders projected as the narrow winner. It also has Sanders winning New Hampshire with a 10-point cushion, which could very well make Biden 0-2 in the crucial first voting states.

But Biden at this stage is projected to prevail handily in Nevada (+12) and South Carolina (+32). If he were to storm back and win the nomination despite not winning Iowa or New Hampshire, Biden would be the only Democrat other than Bill Clinton to do so since the modern primary system was born. Biden is doing decently across the board on virtually all factors. Hes not really weak in any one, and hes not blowing the doors off of any one, Tranter says.

Looking under the hood, The Forecast sees Biden as a strong candidate because of his high national and state polls, as well as a surplus of news media attention (a key factor in helping Donald Trump rise to the top of the heap in 2016). And while Biden lags behind many other candidates in total amount of contributions and number of individual contributions Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg all exceed him the former vice president remains close enough in those arenas to still be the front-runner.

That seems to be the story of the election, notes Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabatos Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia. Biden has been very durable throughout this process. While that durability may be tested if Biden loses both early states, it all depends on whether or not that has downstream consequences, particularly with the African American vote, and he loses his grip on South Carolina. Its certainly better for Biden if New Hampshire and Iowa are split, Kondik says, as our model suggests could happen.

One word of caution: The Forecast, and other models like it, are working with data available to us now data that could change a lot depending on who wins the early primary states.Once we get an idea of the strength of these candidates with certain demographics, the race gets easier to call, Kondik says. Probably the most important thing to rememberis what we have on day one will change considerably over the next four weeks, and certainly after Super Tuesday, Tranter says.

On that note, dont count out Sanders, who has the second-highest chance of becoming the nominee, according to The Forecast. Not only is he in the running in Iowa and a clear front-runner in New Hampshire, but Sanders has also had a number of strong polls in Nevada, which votes third. His strength with Latinos, a key voting bloc, could see him gain ground on Biden particularly if he ekes out an Iowa win.

Sanders remains the second-place person in our model, but the real wild card is the second place outcome. At this point theres a whopping 36 percent chance that no candidate earns the 1,991 delegates needed to win the first ballot at Julys Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. That outcome depends on several candidates hanging in through the spring, but Sanders has proven an ability to raise gobs of money from small donors, while Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have the personal wealth to hang around as long as they like.

With four viable traditional candidates, two self-funding billionaires and a very divided electorate, this year presents the best chance at a contested convention in a generation, says 0ptimus data scientist Alex Alduncin.

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Who Will Win the Democratic Primary? Our New Prediction Model Says - OZY