Joe biden

Minnesota Nice Wasn’t Enough. Neither were Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s center-left positions and bland presentations. And so, today, she left the race for president. Why?The immediate reason is that her chances of winning anything on Super Tuesday were grim. The only exception was her home state, and it was far from certain. Klobuchar’s failures at the ballot box meant she had no plausible path forward. Her donors would stop giving and her backers would begin blaming her (and other also-rans) for blocking Joe Biden, who they now see as the only center-left candidate with a shot at the nomination. Biden’s huge victory in South Carolina and Bloomberg’s disastrous debates cemented that position. Party insiders are desperate for an alternative to Bernie Sanders.

It’s Joe Biden’s turn to be president, so let’s give it to him and see if he can remember where he left the nuclear football and what the codes are. He’s been waiting long enough: he was born in 1903. And he just oozes presidentiality, doesn’t he? I don’t know if it’s Joe’s facelift, his hair implants or his false teeth or the way he walks like he’s on castors, but geriatric Joe looks the picture of youthful vigor, especially in the aviator shades that make him look like he’s waiting for a cataract operation or has advanced macular degeneration. For there’s nothing degenerate about Joe, is there, or the health of a party and political system that would recommend him as the next president of What Remains of the United States? I’m all in favor of old people.

At the time of writing, Joe Biden is on course for an approximately 30 point victory in South Carolina. Not that he won with 30 percent of the vote; rather, he is beating his nearest competitor (Bernie Sanders) by approximately 30 percentage points. That's a truly romping win — but ironically, given his many many decades on the political scene, the American elite media has never known quite how to cover the Biden candidacy. First, if you are a consumer of online political news and commentary, you might have noticed the conspicuous lack of virtually any vocal Biden supporters on social media.

At one point in tonight’s Democratic debate in South Carolina, Mike Bloomberg referred to the other candidates as ‘contestants’. The evening certainly felt like a raucous gameshow. The moderators had no control whatsoever. Everybody had a good time. There will be some nice parting gifts, such as nominations to secretary of State or other offices, should there be a Democratic win.Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is dead — it has been for weeks — but she insists on dragging it around and sticking its rotting corpse in the faces of the other candidates. She’s not happening and no ‘selfie line’ (actually just a photo line) is going to change that.

Unlike the previous snoozers where all the candidates pretended to like each other, the debate in Nevada ahead of their caucuses, was exciting. It’s what happens when six politicians, picked to be on a stage together, stop being polite and start being real. But it’s unlikely to make a blip of difference. For one thing, most of the candidates didn’t do what was in their self-interest. Joe Biden had one real job — take the nomination away from runaway train Bernie Sanders. Instead, he let the Mike Bloomberg media campaign get into his head. Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot in Nevada and he isn’t on the ballot in the next contest in South Carolina either.

While a successful politician in many ways, Joe Biden’s attempts to become president are marked by quite a severe flaw — he cannot enter a town hall without saying something stupid. What would American democracy be without Joe Biden garlanding astonished voters with insults and imprecations of every kind? God bless that man. Biden has been making a fool of himself at these events for so long now that I’m fairly sure Alexis de Tocqueville observed this phenomenon in a celebrated passage from his Democracy in America (1835):'I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers — and it was not there...in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there...

Joe Biden has blown it. His era is over. The obsequies for his campaign are pouring in. Michael Hirsh in Foreign Policy thus announced today that Biden’s vaunted experience on the foreign stage has turned out be a lead balloon: 'It appears many voters across the spectrum don’t want a restoration of anything—including, apparently, US global leadership and the decades-old status quo that Biden is identified with.'Maybe so. But to conclude that Biden’s campaign is finished may be wholly premature. For a start, Biden is in a place where voters may start to admire his gumption and grit at continuing a campaign that looks to be on life support. A comeback story, like the one Amy Klobuchar is currently enjoying, happens to be something that the media feasts upon.

Now that ‘entrepreneur’ Andrew Yang has ended his presidential campaign, can we all admit what a sad commentary on the millennial generation it was? Yang was a policy quack who instantly won a cult following among young people who had never before taken the slightest interest in politics — in the other words, low-information voters. Yang seemed pleasant enough on the debate stage, and when he’d take a break from his pop-socioeconomic jargon — ‘fourth industrial revolution’ — he occasionally voiced some simple truth, like the importance of valuing the contributions of stay-at-home mothers, even though they aren’t included in measures of GDP. But such common sense was not the core of his campaign, the snake oil was.

If you're after a real fight, come to Manchester, New Hampshire on a Friday night. An idyllic Catholic college smothered in snow was the setting for the 895th (I think) Democratic debate, the most pugilistic yet. It all unfolded in the arena where St Anselm College usually play basketball and Joe Biden delivered the first dunk, going after Bernie Sanders for not costing out his ambitious Medicare For All proposal. In the last week, following the Biden campaign has been like watching a 16-year-old Labrador on its last legs: it seemed as if it would be more humane if someone put it out of its misery. Biden has ramped up his efforts in the Granite State since his debilitating display in the Iowa caucuses.

The results from Iowa are still trickling in, but however much confusion there is in Des Moines, the choices that lie ahead for Democrats are clear. There are some questions the party’s leaders and voters can’t put off answering for much longer. How long will they prop up former Vice President Joe Biden? Whoever is ultimately crowned the winner in Iowa, Biden was among the losers — a distant fourth place finish from the nominal frontrunner and establishment favorite in the kind of state he is supposed to be able to win back from President Trump. We’ve seen establishment candidates survive weak showings in the early states only to right the ship in a state like South Carolina before, usually on the Republican side. But nobody has had to do so from such a position of weakness.

Small wonder that Joe Biden skedaddled out of Iowa as fast as he could to New Hampshire. It looks like generational change, once and for all, is coming to the Democratic party. If the numbers hold up, Mayor Pete is headed toward a confrontation first with Mike Bloomberg, then Donald Trump.Even if Bernie Sanders comes in second, it has to be counted as a disappointment for him. Sanders was counting on a triumph. Instead, he will head to New Hampshire with his claim to be attracting masses of new voters looking about as hollow as Donald Trump boasting about his towering IQ. Turnout in Iowa appears to be about where it was in 2016. The socialist elixir is something that even many Democrats aren't willing to quaff.

By impeaching Donald Trump on December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives declared that the offenses contained in the articles were among the most grave ever committed by a US president. As every squawking TV and Twitter pundit now knows, this was only the third impeachment ever in US history. The House taking such a dramatic step was a clear signal that it believed Trump’s actions were so uniquely grievous that they warranted a measure as extreme as impeachment.

The Senate leaders have stated their positions clearly and constantly. Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democratic minority, is demanding that John Bolton testify. Mitch McConnell, who leads the Republicans’ narrow majority, responds that the Senate already has enough evidence to vote. If more was needed, the House should have gotten it when it had the chance. Anyway, the House managers have repeatedly boasted they have 'overwhelming evidence'. The president’s lawyers add that, if any witnesses are called, they want to call some, too. They want to hear from former Vice President Biden, his son Hunter, the whistleblower whose complaint started the impeachment, and Rep. Schiff and his staff, who apparently worked with the whistleblower.