L-R Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Jack Black, Pete Buttigieg (screen captures)
It’s astounding… time is fleeting… and the 2020 election is here.
Jack Black teams up with Tenacious D and several guest stars to “Rock-y the vote!”
The music video is part of the Rock The Vote campaign that encourages young people to participate in elections.
Black and D throwdown this raucous take on the Rocky Horror Picture Show number “Time Warp” that encourages voters to make a “jump to the left” (and not a step to the right).
Joining in are former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, George Takei, John Waters, Susan Sarandon (the original film’s ‘Janet’), Sarah Silverman, Jamie Lee Curtis, and a host of other celebs who want to make sure you VOTE!
L-R Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Axios reports Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are both scheduled to speak on Wednesday, August 19, of the Democratic convention.
That’s the same night Joe Biden’s running mate will address the nation. The Biden campaign has indicated the vice-presidential candidate will be announced next week.
Two of the most influential women in Democratic politics, Clinton and Warren have the potential to turn out millions of establishment and progressive voters in November.
Democrats announced this week that their convention will be entirely virtual.
• InstaHunks: I love fitness guy Bremen Menelli’s (above) caption for this – “You have to know how to do both.”
• US News & World Report: A new study shows lesbian, gay, and bisexual members in the U.S. military are at higher risk for sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking. Researchers say that sexual victimization can trigger mental health problems such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, and suicidal behavior.
• The Advocate: An arrest has been made in the case of a gay man killed over 30 years ago. Police in the Australian state of New South Wales have charged a 49-year-old man with the murder of Scott Johnson, an American living in Sydney who was 27 at the time he died on December 8, 1988.
• NBC News: An unreleased White House report shows coronavirus infection rates are spiking to new highs in several metropolitan areas and smaller communities across the country. The 10 top areas, recording surges of 72.4 percent or more over a seven-day period, include Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; and — with a 650 percent increase — Central City, Kentucky.
• Politico: Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is reportedly emerging as a front-runner to become former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate in the 2020 presidential election. Major Biden supporters see her as the best fit, although Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a leading contender, too.
• NY Post: More insiders come forward to say Ellen DeGeneres isn’t all that nice. One former associate producer says one day, when she couldn’t find her eyeglasses and was unable to read a text on her phone, she called Apple CEO Steve Jobs in front of staff to complain iPhones should have “a bigger font.” Because she could.
• Talking Points Memo: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has been hospitalized due to the coronavirus. Russia has reported more than 232,000 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Tuesday.
• InstaHunks II: As I close this post, how about a quick peek down in Brazil? Tourism professional Kiko Riaze is pensive pondering quarantine life. Nice view, right? #YouKnowWhatIMean
L-R Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (images via campaign sites)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president today via a video message.
Noting that she hasn’t agreed 100% of the time with any lawmaker during her tenure in public life, Warren says she appreciates that when she and Biden haven’t seen eye-to-eye it’s evident he listens and hears other viewpoints.
She also points out Biden’s ability to empathize with others in times of crisis, something many have noted Donald Trump severely lacks.
“Empathy matters,” says Warren. “And, in this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective government.”
“Joe Biden has spent nearly his entire life in public service. He knows that a government run with integrity, competence, and heart will save lives and save livelihoods. And we can’t afford to let Donald Trump continue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of every American. That’s why I’m proud to endorse Joe Biden as president of the United States.”
In this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective government—and I’ve seen Joe Biden help our nation rebuild. Today, I’m proud to endorse @JoeBiden as President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/VrfBtJvFee
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts dropped out of the presidential race on Thursday, ending a run defined by an avalanche of policy plans that aimed to pull the Democratic Party to the left and appealed to enough voters to make her briefly a front-runner last fall.
Though her vision excited progressives, it did not generate enough excitement among the party’s working-class and diverse base, and her support had eroded by Super Tuesday. In her final weeks as a candidate she effectively drove former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a centrist billionaire, out of the race with debate performances that flashed her evident skills and political potential.
Addressing supporters and the press in front of her house in Cambridge, Ms. Warren said that, from the start, she had been told there were only two true lanes in the 2020 contest: a liberal one dominated by Mr. Sanders, 78, and a moderate one led by Mr. Biden, 77.
“I thought that wasn’t right,” Ms. Warren said, “But evidently I was wrong.”
When asked if she would be making an endorsement in the Democratic race, she demurred.
“Not today, not today. I need some space around this, and want to take a little time to think a little more.”
Remarks from @ewarren as she announces she is exiting the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination https://t.co/s7sef9dFn5
Senator @ewarren has made fighting on behalf of working families her life's work. Meeting urgency with moral courage, she’s the kind of leader Americans are fortunate to have, and I’m honored to have run alongside her.
.@ewarren is a fierce advocate for justice who has put LGBTQ equality front & center in her campaign. Forever grateful for her allyship, her advocacy, and her leadership. https://t.co/IeVBcHex46
It was quite the night for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign roared through Super Tuesday.
Biden handily won throughout the South (Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia), scored a big come-from-behind win in Texas, and scored surprise victories in Minnesota and Massachusetts.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) claimed victory in his home state of Vermont, as well as Utah, Colorado and, most probably the delegate-rich state of California.
At this time, Maine and California haven’t been officially called yet although the NY Times estimates Biden to pick up Maine and Sanders to come out on top in California.
As I reported earlier, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent nearly half a billion dollars in ads across the Super Tuesday primaries and only won in American Samoa. He dropped out of the race this morning and endorsed Biden.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), briefly the front-runner last fall, didn’t win a single state.
(graphic via NY Times)
According to an NBC News exit poll, LGBTQ voters “made up a disproportionately high 9 percent of the electorate in the Super Tuesday contests.”
The survey also showed that 42 percent of those LGBTQ voters cast their ballot for Sanders, and 22 percent supported Warren. Biden garnered 19 percent of the LGBTQ vote, and Bloomberg picked up 6 percent. Even though former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race on Sunday night, he still received 6 percent of the queer vote due to early voting in several states.
Scrolling through Twitter last night, the Sanders supporters were clearly angry at the results characterizing the night as being ‘taken away’ from their guy. Axios‘ Alexi McCammond reported hearing “sneers and anger about ‘the establishment'” at the Sanders rally in Vermont.
Next up are the contests in Michigan, Washington State, Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho, and North Dakota on March 10.
This is the current delegate count as of this morning according to the New York Times. This will change over the next few days as several states don’t have all their ballots in. For instance, in California mail-in ballots only had to be postmarked by March 3. So, they won’t be counted for a couple of days.
L-R Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete Buttigieg
If you follow politics on Twitter, you know folks can be absolutely brutal lobbing shade about this or that political candidate.
For some time now, some have noted that a cadre of supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can be rather vicious in their comments.
While Sanders has attempted to tamp down accusations that his supporters are any more sharp-tongued than other candidates’ followers, The Daily Beastreports one Twitter account that has spent months smearing Sanders’ opponents in a particularly ugly vein.
It turns out the account was being run by Sanders’ regional field director in Michigan, Ben Mora. As The Daily Beast’sScott Bixby wrote, “At least some of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ most toxic support is coming from inside the house.”
Using the Twitter handle @perma_ben, Mora was particularly ugly in going after openly gay Pete Buttigieg tweeting the former mayor of South Bend “is what happens when the therapist botches the conversion.” He also called Buttigieg “psychotic” for deploying to Afghanistan.
In another tweet, Mora told his followers he could “never trust Buttigieg because he combined the natural devious disposition inherent in gay men with a bloodthirsty careerist drive.”
The Sanders staffer also went after Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, tweeting, “Chasten Buttigieg has the vibes of a housewife whose slow burning repression is leading to an inevitable psychotic break, mark my words in 10 years he will go missing and then resurface in Ft Lauderdale after getting busted for running a meth racket w a bunch of Guatemalan twinks.”
Mora dragged Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) writing, “When [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren talks about how she knows she’s Native American because of her ‘high cheekbones’ where sis? Another lie. You look like shit.” He also accused her of being “an adult diaper fetishist.”
He mocked Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) comparing her face to “that optical illusion where it’s an old lady but also a young woman depending on how you look at it but with her it’s just two different old ladies.” Mora also said Klobuchar “looks like her name: pained, chunky, [and] confused origin/purpose.”
Mora didn’t keep his attacks limited to just his boss’s opponents.
He trolled the cast of Netflix’s Queer Eye as “neoliberals,” and said openly gay statistician Nate Silver “starts to make a lot more sense when you realize he is probably the ugliest gay man to ever live.”
Another tweet about Buttigieg seemed to allude that Mora might have been running a Twitter account with the username @FagsAgainstPete, which has since been shut down.
According to Bixby, screenshots of the tweets were shared with The Daily Beast by one of Mora’s followers hoping their publication would help Sanders to understand how ugly folks on his team can be.
Mora apparently joined the Sanders campaign last fall. He locked his Twitter account nearly six months ago so only folks who were already following him could see his tweets. But the avatar for the account clearly shows his face and links to his personal Instagram account.
Prior to the publication of the story, Bixby reports the Sanders campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the report.
The Sanders campaign has since announced Mora has been fired. A statement from Mike Casca, Sanders’ communications director, read, “We are running a multiracial, multigenerational campaign for justice where disgusting behavior and ugly personal attacks by our staff will not be tolerated.”
Sanders was asked about the tone of some of his supporters on Twitter last week during the Democratic debate in Las Vegas.
“I’m not going to tell you we don’t have some jerks out there,” Sanders said. “I do want to say to those folks: We do not want your support. If you think that what our campaign is about is making ugly attacks on other candidates, we don’t want you.”
Since the report went up on The Daily Beast, Bixby has tweeted he’s been on the receiving end of thousands of attacks.
I’m late getting to this but I wanted to put out a few thoughts about last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas.
First, welcome to the debate stage billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. After spending nearly half a billion on campaign ads, he finally got on the debate stage and had to face some heat.
And boy did he.
Within seconds of the beginning of the date, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who really, really needed a good night) ripped Bloomberg a new one.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Warren followed that up later when the issue of women who had sued Bloomberg were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. Warren was unrelenting.
Please enter Warren cross-examining Bloomberg on allegations of sexual harrassment into the “electability” record. #DemDebatepic.twitter.com/pO5PJjgtEA
Needless to say, Warren had that ‘good night’ she was shooting for. Over the next 24 hours, she reportedly raised over $5 million for her campaign.
Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg landed some blows on both Bloomberg and Sen. Bernie Sanders for their ‘polarizing’ personas as well as not really being Democrats.
Pete Buttigieg ripped into Bloomberg and Sanders, noting that after Super Tuesday “the two most polarizing figures on this stage” could be the only two candidates left competing for the nomination https://t.co/j3rgbDkAfnpic.twitter.com/ByJQMoaaEI
The other ‘big’ clashes of the evening were between Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Buttigieg. When Klobuchar was asked about a recent ‘oopsie’ in an interview when she couldn’t name the president of Mexico, Buttigieg pointed out she sits on important Senate committees that deal with Mexico. And, then Klobuchar started to unravel.
I’ll admit I was surprised to see Amy get so rattled, so unnerved. In the video below, her body language and voice really hyper-up as Buttigieg remains calm. At one point, Amy offered a snarky, “I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete.”
At another turn, she informed him that he hasn’t ‘been in the arena,’ apparently inferring the work mayors do isn’t important.
“Are you trying to say that I’m dumb? Or are you mocking me here, Pete?”
I actually have my own idea as to why Buttigieg garnered the attention he did from the start of the race.
He was the new unknown. An openly gay, Rhodes scholar, Afghanistan veteran unknown who not only is well-spoken but speaks seven languages. He was a new story for folks to lean in to.
Buttigieg turned in good debate performances. And did well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In any case, I think Klobuchar didn’t handle the moment well last night. She could have chosen to take a breath before responding. But, instead, she went on a rant that looked frantic. As an alternative, she could have just stated, in regard to the name of the Mexican president, “I was tired and the name slipped my mind. It happens to everyone.” And then, STOPPED TALKING. She would have served herself better, in my opinion.
Along the way, as no one was attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, he had one of his best debates of the primary season. It may help him do fairly well in Nevada and then next week in South Carolina. If Biden comes in second in Nevada, then wins South Carolina, he may recover some of his momentum.
Biden says look at the polls. He is the best equipped to beat Trump, and then stomps Bloomberg for stop and frisk. #DemDebatepic.twitter.com/DdNBy4oaMd
Sanders entered the debate as the newly-anointed front-runner for the nomination and nothing in the debate changed that.
It’s worth noting that NBC News sent out a press release announcing the event was the most-watched Democratic debate ever, averaging nearly 20 million total viewers across the two networks, according to Nielsen Fast National Data.
The one take-away I have from last night that I think is important is about ‘big-picture.’
There are four moderate Democrats currently competing for the same moderate Democratic voters. And as such, they are getting only about 12-15 percent support each.
Meanwhile, Warren kind of faded after her poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire leaving the progressive lane to just Sanders. Thus, his rise in the polls.
Each state’s contests divide up delegates proportionately according to the votes received. BUT – delegates are proportionately allocated to candidates getting 15% or more in a primary or caucus.
If you don’t get to at least 15% you get nothing. If only one candidate gets 15%, the allocation is effectively winner-take-all.
If no candidate meets the 15% threshold, Democratic Party rules state the minimum to receive delegates will be 50% of the vote received by the front-runner.
Check out the delegate count below after two states’ contests. Only five candidates have earned delegates to date. Buttigieg and Sanders have nearly 3x the number of Warren or Klobuchar.
According to reports, Klobuchar’s surprise third-place finish in New Hampshire was great news for her campaign, but she apparently hadn’t invested in any campaign infrastructure in Nevada having focused on Iowa and New Hampshire.
So, many don’t expect her to do well this week.
MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki looked at the polling in upcoming states and it looks pretty grim for many of the remaining candidates other than Bloomberg (who’s literally spending millions and millions), Biden, and Sanders.
Notice that Harris and Klobuchar aren’t even registering in double-digits. And Buttigieg seems stuck at the 11-12 percent level. That means no delegates from those states if these numbers are even in the ballpark.
Take a look at the California numbers. If Sanders walks away with 32% of the delegates, and Warren, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg fail to even be viable gaining zero delegates – Sanders begins to amass a delegate count that could be insurmountable.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg has been spending in other states like North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Arkansas – and it’s paying off for him. Now, after last night, we’ll have to see how those numbers stack up on Super Tuesday.
Finally, check this last graphic – Bloomberg is virtually the only Democrat with ads up in Virginia.
Needless to say, when you don’t win delegates, the campaign donations dry up. The next two weeks could very well boil this race down to two or three candidates.
With just over a week before the ‘first in the nation’ votes are cast in the Democratic primary for president, the Des Moines Register has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president.
Each of the remaining candidates campaigning across Iowa ahead of the caucuses could make a fine president. Each would be more inclusive and thoughtful than the current occupant of the White House. Each would treat truth as something that matters. Each would conduct foreign policy by coalition building rather than by whim and tweet.
The outstanding caliber of Democratic candidates makes it difficult to choose just one.
The Des Moines Register editorial board endorses Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses as the best leader for these times.
[snip]
Warren’s competence, respect for others and status as the nation’s first female president would be a fitting response to the ignorance, sexism and xenophobia of the Trump Oval Office.
She is a thinker, a policy wonk and a hard worker. She remembers her own family’s struggles to make ends meet and her own desperation as a working mother needing child care.
She cares about people, and she will use her seemingly endless energy and passion to fight for them.
At this moment, when the very fabric of American life is at stake, Elizabeth Warren is the president this nation needs.
RealClearPolitics’ average of polls shows Warren currently in 4th position in Iowa at 16.3 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden leads with 20 percent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) just behind him at 19.3 percent, and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg in third place at 16.8 percent.
So, it’s a horse race, folks. Just about anyone could win the Iowa contest, but remember delegates are assigned proportionately to how well candidates do in Iowa. It’s not ‘winner take all,’ so we’ll have to see how it all shakes out.
At this moment, when the very fabric of American life is at stake because of inequality, @ewarren is the president this nation needs, the Register’s editorial board writes. Read the endorsement: https://t.co/Ka6GaPoqybpic.twitter.com/8frGPhEwSN
