The Democratic presidential field is down to two old, white males, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Though they are said to represent two polar-opposite wings of the party, on one issue, they are in complete agreement. They both have solemnly pledged to destroy millions of blue-collar jobs across Middle America's oil patch.
You've heard it so often that you may well believe it's true: President Donald Trump's second term would be a disaster, for the Democratic Party, for the United States, for democracy itself. "The reelection of Donald Trump," warns Nancy Pelosi, "would do irreparable damage to the United States."
Super Tuesday has finally served its intended purpose for the first time since it was invented for the 1988 presidential cycle, 32 years ago.
A week ago, the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death's door.
Joe Biden’s challenge on Super Tuesday was to build on his victory in South Carolina and defend the other Southern states from incursions by Bernie Sanders. Not only did he accomplish that, but Biden was William Tecumseh Sherman in reverse -- using the South as a springboard to move North in force.
The rumblings from the Beltway are ominous, my fellow Americans. As the U.S Supreme Court prepares to rule on President Donald Trump's termination of the Obama administration amnesty and work permits for 800,000 young illegal immigrants sometime between now and June 2020, all the usual open-borders special interests are lobbying for a "DACA deal" in Congress.
South Carolina mom Debra Harrell worked at McDonald's. She couldn't afford day care for Regina, her 9-year-old daughter, so she took her to work.
After Joe Biden's blowout victory in South Carolina Saturday and the swift withdrawal of Tom Steyer, "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the decisive day of the race for the Democratic nomination, Super Tuesday, is at hand.
Why in the world is the federal government, 20 years into the 21st century, continuing to pour tens of billions of tax dollars into little-used mass transit rail projects? In a digital age with increasingly popular and affordable door-to-door ride-sharing apps such as Uber and Lyft, universal use of cars by all income groups and the revolution of smart driverless vehicles around the corner, subway systems and light rail are as old-fashioned as the rotary phone. The federal government and urban planners in at least 25 cities are frantically spending money to lay down tracks that, in 10 or 20 years, they will have to rip right out of the ground.
Sanders vs. Biden may be determined by who breaks through on the other’s turf.
— Joe Biden’s victory in South Carolina re-established him as the main challenger to Bernie Sanders.
— There is some indication their battle could break on regional lines, with Sanders fighting for inroads in the South and Biden for access to the North. Biden’s task on Tuesday is protecting the six Southern states from incursions by Sanders (and perhaps others, including the unproven Michael Bloomberg).
— Sanders will lead in delegates after Super Tuesday. The question is by how much.
— Texas, both Southern and Western, is the most interesting state to watch on Tuesday.
Watching panicky corporate-owned Democrats twist on the devil's fork of Bernie Sanders' "political revolution" is almost as much fun as it must have been for my mom and her fellow villagers to watch Vichy collaborators and Nazi sympathizers being executed by the resistance at the end of World War II. (That, Chris Matthews, is how you do a Nazi-to-2020 metaphor.)
Bernie Sanders' victories in the inaccurately counted Iowa caucuses, the crisply conducted New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses have made two things clear.
Not until well into the Democratic debate Tuesday night did the COVID-19 coronavirus come up, and it was Mike Bloomberg, not a CBS moderator, who raised it:
"The president fired the pandemic specialist in this country two years ago," the former New York mayor said. "There's nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he's defunded the CDC."
How our Electoral College ratings might change if he becomes the presumptive nominee.
— If Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders, they would, initially, start off with somewhat of a penalty in our Electoral College ratings.
— Sanders’ policy prescriptions and rhetoric may complicate Democratic prospects in the Sun Belt, where the party’s recent growth has been driven by highly-educated suburbanites.
— Given the composition of the 2020 Senate map, which features more Sun Belt states, Sanders’ relative strength in the Rust Belt — assuming that even ends up being the case — nonetheless doesn’t help Democrats much in the race for the Senate.
"We're full, our system's full, our country's full!" That was President Donald Trump last year at our southern border.
"Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families." That was Trump in January 2017 at his inaugural address.
Good for Mike Bloomberg.
During his first debate, he slammed Bernie Sanders by saying: "We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work!"
The U.S. Energy Information Administration just announced some spectacular news that should be banner headlines across the country: The price of natural gas has fallen to its lowest February level in 20 years. The data shows that natural gas prices fell to $1.77 per million British thermal units. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gas has plunged by some 80% since its high of $13.60 12 years ago. The price is down 90% since 2005, when prices hit nearly $20. (Quick: Can you think of anything else that now costs one-tenth of what it did 15 years ago?)
Sen. Bernie Sanders may be on the cusp of both capturing the Democratic nomination and transforming his party as dramatically as President Donald Trump captured and remade the Republican Party.
Last April, we noted that despite the ever-growing Democratic presidential field and delegate allocation rules that can string out a nomination fight, there was the possibility of a single candidate getting an early grip on the nomination because of the frontloaded calendar. By the end of St. Patrick’s Day, states awarding more than three-fifths of all the pledged delegates will have voted. We here at the Crystal Ball are big fans of the wisdom of the late Yogi Berra, and we used one of his gems at the time to sum it all up: “It gets late early out there.”
