Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

Bernie Sanders will soldier on after losing four of six primary contests yesterday, including the state of Michigan.

Sanders to press on against Biden after primary losses

Bernie Sanders is staying in the 2020 presidential race and planning to debate Joe Biden on Sunday despite a string of recent primary losses, according to a person with knowledge of Sanders’ plans ahead of a Wednesday press conference.​

The Democrat left establishment leaders, including the heavily stacked Democrat left activist mass media, are pushing hard for Sanders to withdraw from the race. He apparently does not see Joe Biden as an adequate ambassador for the ideals that he and his supporters are deeply committed to promoting. So he is continuing his campaign, as is his right to do.

While Joe Biden currently appears to be well very positioned to win the nomination, with Bernie Sanders as his only significant remaining competition, it is still a long time to the convention and even longer to election day. It is no confident certainty that Joe Biden even makes to the convention, much less to election day, or beyond. He looks positively rickety.

So it appears to me that Bernie Sanders is smart to be patient and to stay in this race. Beyond that, stay tuned to the debate on Saturday, which the media is apparently doing all they can to try to protect and defend a very weak and vulnerable Joe Biden from any attacks by Bernie Sanders. How Bernie handles this will be very interesting indeed.

 

So the conditions for the next debate have been changed, with the location being DC instead of Arizona, and with no audience, all attributed to concerns about the Cornavirus.

This will make things interesting, because viewers will have to determine what is right and wrong, what is popular and what is not without the equivalence of a laugh track accompanying the debate to queue them how to perceive and to think about these things.

Two Democrats, Altered Fortunes, Empty Stands: Dynamics Shift in 11th Debate

The coronavirus outbreak, which prompted both Messrs. Biden and Sanders to cancel events in Cleveland on Tuesday, led the DNC to forgo an audience in the debate theater. There will be no background clapping or booing, as some debate audiences have done in previous rounds.

Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid, said that could make a “huge difference” for the candidates and viewers at home.

“The candidates are flying without a net,” Mr. Petkanas said. “They won’t get reactions for their jokes, for things that they think are really popular. It becomes a lot harder because you’re not able to gauge how things are being perceived, and viewers are going to be operating without the equivalent of a laugh track in a sitcom. They have to figure out on their own what’s popular and what’s not.”​

Of course there will be huge spin of the debate afterwards by the mass media, by surrogates from the candidates, etc. But first impressions will be left to the TV viewing audience to determine on their own.

Unless the DNC decides to actually include a "laugh track" that can be queued whenever it is deemed appropriate. It probably will not happen, but with this crew, nothing of this sort can be entirely ruled out.

 

In the RCP 'betting odds' average, Hillary Clinton is now in second place ahead of Bernie Sanders.

RCP 'Betting Odds' Average
89.2 - Joe Biden
06.7 - Hillary Clinton
04.5 - Bernie Sanders

Both Hillary and Bernie are in the single digits, but as we have seen in recent weeks, these polls have lately demonstrated the tendency to shift radically in very short periods of time. So, even though Joe Biden has what appears to be a commanding lead right now, it is no certainty that he wins the nomination, any more that it was certain that Hillary Clinton would defeat President Trump in the 2016 election - with similar or maybe even better odds being given by many for Hillary - or that Bernie Sanders would get the nomination when he held a respectable lead in this average just a few weeks ago.

 

Joe Biden has now indicated he will pick a woman as his running mate, if he wins the nomination for the Democrats. Presumably, that will be a person with a XX chromosome, and not someone with a XY chromosome (a man) who has decided to self-identify as a woman.

Representative James Clyburn (D-SC), who recently provided a key endorsement for Joe Biden a few days before the South Carolina primary which initiated the rapid consolidation of support for Biden, and the rapid abandonment from the contest by various other major competitors, thinks Biden's nominee should be a black woman.

James Clyburn on Biden picking a running mate: 'I prefer an African American woman'

Rep. James Clyburn urged former Vice President Joe Biden to pick a black woman as his running mate.

“There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president,” Biden said at Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate. Clyburn, who gave Biden a critical endorsement before the South Carolina primary, said there’s a “deeper bench than people realize” of black women who are qualified. "I'll never tell you who I'm going to advise him," Clyburn told Axios, "but I would advise him that we need to have a woman on the ticket, and I prefer an African American woman."

Clyburn, the House majority whip, is the highest-ranking black elected official in either party in Congress.

California Sen. Kamala Harris, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, Florida Rep. Val Demings, former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former national security adviser Susan Rice are all possibilities, Clyburn said.​

So, men need not apply and if James Clyburn gets his way, white people need not apply either. Identity politics is clearly alive and well among the Democrats in 2020.

Who is the first name on that list? Kamala Harris. And it does not get any better after that.

 

Tulsi Gabbard suspends presidential campaign, endorses Biden

 

Glenn Greenwald is asking, where is Joe Biden?



One might expect that the presumptive nominee for President for the Democrats would want to demonstrate what a leader he is during the current coronavirus scare. Apparently not.

So, where is he? It is a good question, actually.

 

What does it mean to you guys that Joe Biden is AWOL at this seemingly critical moment?