Dec
22
2019

The Phony Campaign

2019-12-22 Update

'Tis the season to be jolly, and we'll try to keep it that way today. Pictured at right: the Pun Salad Manor Wine Cave, which makes staying jolly much easier *.

Looking at this week's standings:

  • Biggest increase in win probability: Wheezy Joe. Because, apparently, he is currently the least-despised candidate on the D side. According to a book I recently read, this is pretty much how Warren Harding got elected in 1920.

  • Biggest slump in win probability: Mayor Pete, who's now tied among the oddsmakers with Mayor Mike. That wine cave thing really stung, I guess.

  • Phony hit count leader: Still Mayor Pete, who's been showing real staying power at that position.

This week's results:

Candidate WinProb Change
Since
12/15		 Phony
Results		 Change
Since
12/15
Pete Buttigieg 4.4% -1.7% 2,550,000 -1,480,000
Donald Trump 49.8% +1.0% 1,970,000 -470,000
Hillary Clinton 2.6% -0.6% 754,000 -100,000
Joe Biden 14.1% +1.6% 515,000 +35,000
Bernie Sanders 8.9% +0.2% 473,000 -62,000
Elizabeth Warren 6.3% unch 226,000 -57,000
Michael Bloomberg 4.4% -0.7% 76,400 -43,600
Andrew Yang 2.0% -0.2% 43,200 -5,800

Warning: Google result counts are bogus.

  • The President, as is his wont, deployed his favorite p-word in a Tweet.

    You know that tired saying about dogs chasing cars: they wouldn't know what to do with one if they caught it? That's kind of how I feel about Pelosi and her party: they caught their "car" in voting to impeach President Bone Spurs… and now they can't seem to figure out what to do next.

    It also reminds me of that South Park Underpants Gnomes strategy:

    Phase 1:
    Collect underpants
    Phase 2:
     ?
    Phase 3:
    Profit

    Phase 1 was "Impeach Trump". So, check. Except the Dems seem to have even less of an idea about both Phases 2 and 3.

    (Phase 3: Pence?)

  • Once again, I was not paid a lot of money to watch the Democrats debate, so I did not. But Megan McArdle was, and she was tickled by Bernie's demand to speak because Amy Klobuchar "took my name in vain".

    Even as a fully-confirmed Lutheran, I was always a little weak on what it meant to take a name "in vain."

  • At Reason, Corey A. DeAngelis documents (yet another) instance of phoniness: Elizabeth Warren Fails Her Own Public Education Purity Test.

    At last night's debate, Warren declared her desire to "do even more for our public schools" with a "historic $800 billion investment." Though the phrases "charter school" and "school choice" did not come up on stage last night, Warren solidified her anti-choice stance in a previous debate when she said "money for public schools should stay in public schools, not go anywhere else." And she told the president of the National Education Association last month that families should stay put in their failing public schools.

    That was a purity test that Warren and her family cannot pass. In October, I discovered that Warren sent her son to elite private schools starting in the fifth grade. Less than a month later, Warren was caught on video speaking misleadingly to a voter about her decision to send him to private schools.

    Corollary: Senator Liz prattles on about the corrupting influence of money in politics, but she never mentions the teacher unions as an example.

  • Back to Bernie, his home state VTDigger reports: Sanders takes aim at Biden, Buttigieg in heated debate. Specifically, the wine cave thing:

    While the Sanders campaign had criticized Buttigieg earlier this week for recently holding a private big-money fundraiser in a wine cellar — going so far as purchasing the domain www.peteswinecave.com — the Vermont senator went on the attack on the stage in Los Angeles.

    “Now there’s a real competition going on up here,” Sanders said. “My good friend Joe, and he is a good friend, he’s received contributions from 44 billionaires. Pete on the other hand, is trailing, you only got 39 billionaires contributing.” 

    That's a slick move, buying a phony domain. Unfortunately, it takes you to a Bernie-contributing site, not anywhere amusing.

  • The Issues & Insights Editorial Board asks and answers the burning question: How Crazed Is The Left? Its New Villain Is … Pete Buttigieg. Skipping right to the meat:

    “He’s phony,” Adam Jentleson, a now quite far-left ex-senior aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, tells CNN. “He’s been validating Republican lines of attack consistently in ways that, if Warren and Bernie were the nominee, will give Trump a lot of footage to use in ads against them.”

    In fact, with the all-too-willing help of the establishment media, Buttigieg might be exactly what Democrats need to defeat Trump next year – a nominee perceived as a moderate who defeated two candidates of the left, Warren and Sanders, but whose radical plans actually don’t stray that far from theirs, either in cost or in revolutionary effect, thus placating the party base. Buttigieg also has a (probably practiced) Obama-esque earnestness, which some find charismatic, others sanctimonious.

    But a counterpoint (of sorts) is provided by …

  • … Kevin D. Williamson of National Review: Pete Buttigieg Bores Americans, Which Should Make Us Proud.

    God bless the pointy little head of Pete Buttigieg, the insufferable and smug embodiment of what’s left of bourgeois values and McKinsey-certified respectability among Democrats. Not since David Brooks was ensorcelled by the crease in Barack Obama’s slacks has simple propriety seemed so remarkable.

    Mayor Pete has one or two things in common with Barack Obama. Barack Obama was the first African American elected president, and Buttigieg, if elected, would be the first gay man elected president. That parallel puts some light on a basic fact of American life that is routinely ignored: Every minority-rights movement models itself on the civil-rights movement led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., but in reality there is no group of Americans — including other Americans who have been oppressed and marginalized and who have legitimate complaints about civil rights and justice — whose experience is really like that of black Americans.

    Kevin is, as usual, pretty insightful on this stuff.

* Pun Salad Manor does not actually have a wine cave. What it has instead: a leaky washing machine. Calling someone tomorrow.


Last Modified 2019-12-23 4:31 AM EDT