Hillary clinto

Hillary’s coven wants you to like Kamala Harris

Americans are not fans of Vice President Kamala Harris, but Democratic strategists are convinced it’s just a messaging problem. If they could only explain to those silly voters why they should like Harris, then her dreams of winning the presidency in 2024 would be realized. That was the elitist arrogance behind a ‘crisis dinner’ for the Vice President last month featuring a legion of female Democratic strategists. Axios’s Jonathan Swan, who broke the story, astutely noted ‘it's telling that so early in the Biden-Harris administration, such powerful operatives felt compelled to try to right the Vice President's ship.

harris coven

Neera Tanden failed because Democrats couldn’t trust her

Neera Tanden will not be the next director of the Office of Management and Budget. The Biden administration quietly withdrew Tanden’s nomination last night, finally facing up to the daunting odds of her being confirmed. Accounts of this ill-fated nomination vary. Some on the right see Tanden as a sacrifice to distract from the greater threat of HHS nominee Xavier Becerra, described by Nebraska’s Ben Sasse as a 'culture war supersoldier'. The press, inclined to view the world through a Kremlinological lens, interprets it as an indictment of White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s leadership. Klain was by all accounts Tanden’s biggest supporter in the West Wing and shares many of her conspiratorial and bombastic tendencies, especially on Twitter.

neera tanden
dirtbag

The Democratic civil war has been a long time coming

Bernie Sanders has had an unlikely ally during the 2020 Democratic nomination race: Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly insisted that the Democrats are staging a ‘coup’ against Sanders, who, he has said, is the only Democrat with a real movement behind him. Some would argue that Trump is cynically encouraging the nomination of an unelectable candidate. I think this would be foolish, as Sanders is obviously more electable than the memory of Joe Biden, but it might be how the president thinks. I believe that another explanation for why Trump is vaguely sympathetic towards Sanders, though, is what they have in common. Don't shoot, Trump and Sanders fans. I am not suggesting that they are politically similar.

Where were you when you found out Trump won?

In the wake of a significant event, years or even decades down the line, we ask people the same question: do you remember where you were? When John F. Kennedy was shot; when the Challenger exploded; when the Twin Towers fell. Moments of terror, moments of tragedy. Do you remember? In the months leading up to the 2020 election, I've found that there's a new entry into this canon of unforgettable horrors: to a man, 2016 Hillary voters remember where they were when they found out Donald Trump would be president. One friend described getting on the subway in Manhattan, jubilant at what seemed like a certain Democratic victory — and then getting off in Brooklyn to find people standing shell-shocked in the streets. Another went to bed early, only to be awoken at 3 a.m.

election won

Why Joe Biden will win tomorrow

Joe Biden is going to win. I have been wrong before. I will be wrong again. And maybe I’m wrong today. But we do not have any significant data to suggest Donald Trump was ever in a position to win reelection, or that he is closing the campaign with any sort of momentum needed for a come-from-behind victory. Four years ago, we did have such data. In the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Hillary Clinton’s lead shrunk nearly six percentage points between October 18 and November 3, before ticking up a bit at the end. Her share of support throughout the duration of the general election campaign never reached 50 percent, an indication of soft support.

biden

Will we ever know the truth about Russiagate?

Writing in mid-October, anno domini 2020, it is sobering to speculate that when the results of a certain upcoming political contest are finally decided, an item that has captivated the public’s attention for nearly four years might be about to evaporate without trace. I refer, of course, to that great long-running entertainment, the Trump-Russia Collusion Delusion. As I write, the latest morceaux are the revelations from John Ratcliffe, the newly installed Director of National Intelligence, to the effect that Russian intelligence believed that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan ‘to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services’ during the 2016 presidential campaign. Why? Typical campaign dirty tricks, in part.

russiagate

The Democratic art of magical thinking

I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum. But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking. What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.

magical thinking

Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph’s funeral for satire

‘A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true,’ wrote G.K. Chesterton. Democrats seem to understand that point, though sometimes they are a little overeager to show they can laugh at themselves. Take the virtual Democratic fundraiser on Monday night. Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris was joined by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, along with — get this — Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, who play them on Saturday Night Live! Readers were presumably as stunned as Cockburn to learn that wealthy thespians enjoy sharing a stage with Democratic leaders.

satire

2016 all over again

I’m not an election prognosticator. I have no magic insight telling me what will happen on November 3, 2020. Frankly, I have zero idea. But what I do have is a great memory and some polling data that suggests Joe Biden’s media-assisted campaign is headed for an eerily similar crash landing to the one that happened in 2016. The media has once again sealed itself in a suffocating bubble, within which the impossible Trump victory can’t happen. The Democrats find themselves strapped to a low-energy candidate who is a bystander as social upheaval scorches battleground states. It has the look and feel of fall 2016. Democrats, start panicking now. First, Joe Biden’s poll numbers are starting to tighten.

2016

Cuckoo Q: are the QAnon crowd as crazy as they seem?

‘Have you guys been following 4Chan?’ asks Marjorie Taylor Greene in a 2017 video. A mysterious ‘patriot’ named ‘Q’, Greene explains, is prophesying the downfall of satanic ‘swamp creatures’ in Washington, DC, Hollywood and other liberal fiefdoms. Is Greene a kind of female Alex Jones? No: she is now a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia and, in all likelihood, headed for the House of Representatives. Only weeks ago, an investigation by Facebook discovered thousands of groups and pages, boasting millions of members and followers, dedicated to QAnon conspiracy theories. In July, Twitter banned more than 7,000 accounts associated with the movement.

qanon
kamala harris progressive

All pageantry, no progress: Wednesday night at the DNC

'I'm in love — but not with anybody here. I'll see you in a couple years,' Billie Eilish crooned during the third night of the Democratic National Convention. The teen vocalist was singing her new single 'My Future’, but the lyrics could just as easily be a rallying cry for the young progressives kicked in the teeth yet again by the Democratic establishment. Democrats love to boast about their youth support and the party’s future generation of leaders, but their convention displays a political party that is fully enamored with the past. It's not wrong for them to make the calculation that young people don't vote and thus they're better off trying to bring in moderates who sat out 2016 or held their nose and voted for Trump.

For the Democrats’ sake, I hope the DNC viewership is low

I almost gave tonight’s DNC performance a miss. How could they top the fey chap pretending to be a bat while miming to a poor rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s 'For What It’s Worth' as a collage of kneeling athletes in 'Black Lives Matter' t-Shirts flitted by behind him? It was...special. I’d say that the chap who tweeted that it was 'the moment Trump won reelection' was right, except that there have been so many such moments: positive ones like President Trump’s magnificent speech at Mount Rushmore last month, as well as negative ones like the Biden campaign’s pick of Kamala Harris as his running mate. One wag said that that decision was a huge in-kind donation to the Trump campaign. That sounds right to me.

democrats dnc

Will Trump win Minnesota?

Sen. Amy Klobuchar may have to eat her words after declaring last year that Donald Trump will 'never win Minnesota'. A new Emerson College poll released Tuesday shows the President trailing Joe Biden by just three percentage points. The poll has Trump within the margin of error, meaning the state is effectively a toss-up at this point. The President is reportedly planning to visit the state on Monday in an attempt to provide counter-programming for the Democratic National Convention, which was meant to take place across the state line in Wisconsin, and to capitalize on his recent gains in the polls. The prospect of winning Minnesota is certainly giddying for Trump, who frequently laments that he just barely lost the state in 2016. Hillary Clinton carried the state by a mere 1.

minnesota

Joe Biden should debate

Why would a benevolent God deny us the prospect of a debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump?As the first head-to-head between the two presidential candidates approaches, leading voices on the center-left have been making the case that Biden should not debate the President.In the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman argued that Biden should only agree to a debate if Trump released his tax returns and if there were real-time fact-checking. ‘That kind of debate and only that kind of debate would be worthy of voters’ consideration and Biden’s participation,’ wrote Friedman. ‘Otherwise, Joe, stay in your basement.

biden debate

The right’s cannibalism problem

The right has a cannibalism problem. It gleefully attacks and eats its own. The left silently watches Republican after Republican do their dirty work for them. John Bolton is just the latest example of this problem. Sitting astride their high moral horses, establishment Republicans talk wistfully about the integrity of the presidency and the perceived damage Donald Trump’s personality and style are doing to it — as if Bill Clinton had not already defined the presidency downward.The left never attacks its own leaders in this way, which is why they’ve managed to enact far more of their policies over the last 30 years. The left knew that a morally repugnant Clinton allowed for the placement of thousands of political appointees who got their wish list done.

cannibalism

Conscious coupling

Most of the podcasts that sell relationship advice imply that romance is synonymous with sex. The theory of that equivalency has been a theme in the arts for centuries: Shakespeare, Flaubert, Thackeray and Tolstoy all exposed its follies and truths. Unsurprisingly, the podcast hosts have a less poetic, nuanced note than the classic writers, such as giving the advice: ‘If you’re having a dry spell, listen to us or break up.’ Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo are a Christian couple who have married for 23 years. Perhaps surprisingly, their podcast, ONE Extraordinary Marriage, depicts sex and romance as interchangeable. Tony and Alisa, who couple on the page in their co-authored book 7 Days of Sex Challenge, start each episode with a ‘hug’.

anna faris coupling podcasts

Democracy in danger

The corruption of its democracy is one of America’s oldest yet most surprising habits. Edgar Allan Poe, it is believed, died after the ordeal of ‘cooping’: an informal exercise in getting out the vote, in which an often forcibly inebriated man was marched from booth to booth and made to vote for the same candidate each time. The voters of Massachusetts’s 4th District, compelled by a party machine to endorse Joseph P. Kennedy III, will know the feeling. Indeed, John F. Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 elections is said to have depended on the stuffing of ballots in the Chicago of Mayor Richard J. Daley — and possibly on the intervention in Cook County by the crime boss Sam Giancana. Kennedy went on to win Illinois by 8,000 votes and to take the White House.

democracy

Hillary Clinton tells the truth

After all the fakery of the 2016 election, the hot sauce in her bag, the ‘chillin’ in Cedar Rapids’, Hillary Clinton has finally told, ahem, her truth. And that truth is that she really hates Bernie Sanders. It’s a truth clear to anyone who had watched them during their last go-round. She bristled when she spoke to him. This nothing socialist from some state with three electors was trying to defeat her, Hillary Clinton, whose turn it was to be president. It was obvious. But then suddenly, when the 2016 primary was over, she needed him. His voters were angry. He had lost and it seemed like the fix was in. Hillary needed them to show up for her, so she put on her best smile and made nice with Bernie Sanders.

bernie sanders

Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to win

Why is Bernie Sanders running for president? The 70-some-year-old pop culture curmudgeon has gone through all the motions of showing up, dancing on Ellen and alongside Larry David on Saturday Night Live and the Today Show. He got a multimillion-dollar book deal and a new house out of his last presidential run, which was launched with the blessing of the DNC establishment as little more than a tune-up for Hillary Clinton. But something went amiss. Bernie caught fire, particularly with the loudest online contingent of the left, on college campuses and dirtbag alternative-media podcasters.

Warren’s dirty trick against Bernie proves she’s the new Hillary

The next time Elizabeth Warren offers you a beer, be sure not to turn your back on her lest she crack you across the back of the head with it. That's the message the Warren camp has sent out with the latest Liz-Bernie spat — just in time for the seventh (I know!) Democratic debate in Iowa tonight. Pulling a dirty trick worthy of Roger Stone, Warren's associates briefed CNN about a December 2018 meeting between the two senators, during which Sanders allegedly said 'he did not believe a woman could win.' Saagar Enjeti of The Hill lays out the apparent Warren strategy nicely: 'Progressives. Allow me introduce you to the media ecosystem that has bedeviled conservatives in the Trump age: Step 1) Leak a bullshit smear sans any real confirmation to CNN.

warren sanders hillary clinton