POPULISTS TRUMP OR SANDERS - A CERTAINTY?

Bernie Sanders has become the clear Democratic frontrunner. He promises cost free everything as well as a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions withIn a short while. His argument is that taxes on the rich will pay for it all while conceding that everyone earning over twenty - nine thousand dollars will also have to sustain a tax increase. Should he emerge victorious from the Democratic Primary, the country will find itself in a lose -  lose situation. If Trump wins American democracy as envisaged in the Constitution, is dead. In the unlikely event that Sanders triumphs the electorate will become even more disillusioned as there is no way he can deliver on any of his manifesto. Obama had a far more realistic approach to change and at the end of the long day achieved a significant Health Care improvement which exhausted his political capitol.  

When confronted on 60 Minutes as to how much his agenda would cost and how he would pay for it Bernie became irritated as he frequently does. It was obvious he hadn’t a clue. It is estimated that his health care proposal alone will cost thirty trillion over ten years and his bundle of commitments sixty billion dollars, which is three times the yearly sum spent on everything in the whole American economy. 

The only hope is a Hail Mary in the Democratic Primary. There are two possibilities, Vice President Biden and Former New York Mayor Bloomberg. The former is basking from an endorsement from the father of the Democratic Party in South Carolina, Jim Clyburn and an outstanding debate performance. Biden is the one that Trump is so terrified of that he went into an elaborate scheme, which got him impeached, to get dirt on him from a foreign government. 

It is an irony that the billionaire Bloomberg is exploiting the fact that a political candidate can receive or spend as much of his own money as he wishes. It would be poetic justice if he sinks the GOP after they had successfully backed the Supreme Court decision that ruled that money was equivalent to free speech!

POPULISM AMERICAN STYLE

 Currently the front runners for the Presidential Election, Republican, Donald J. Trump and Democratic, Bernie Sanders are both populists. Both make their appeal to those whom they perceive have been victimized by the “elites”. Both of them make no attempt to appeal to voters other than their target audiences in the belief that their turnout will guarantee their election. It is their way or the high way. 

Of course  populists are of differing political bents and appeal to differing constituencies. Simply put Trump is a right wing populist favoring authoritarianism and Bernie is, in the American context, way out left, but a declared constitutionalist. Inevitably they are demagogues who attract vast crowds and cult like followings. They are strong on rhetoric and promises and weak on how their extravagant agendas are going to get paid for or carried out.  A feature of their approach includes never ever apologizing.  However, Trump is the incumbent with a big advantage over Sanders. 

The assessment of  philosopher and theologian Jonathan Sacks keeps coming back to mind - that right wing populists promise a past that never was and those on the left, a utopia that can never be.

TRUMP WON AS A POPULIST -  CAN BERNIE?

It goes without saying that Donald Trump proved the populist theory right in 2016 with the help of an electoral college that was not representative of the majority vote, the Russian interference and James Comey. The latter broke every unwritten rule in the FBI book by announcing, close to election day, that Hillary was once again to be investigated for her e mails and neglecting to add that an investigation had begun into Trump’s campaign. Clinton has detailed how her numbers went South after that. Trump also benefited from Clinton’s hubris when she failed to visit crucial swing states that narrowly lost her the electoral college. Clinton has reiterated that Bernie never really rallied for her fully which added to her woes.  But it is what it is and look who is President now!

Now Bernie has none of these advantages and the question remains can he overcome a President who is on a roll and who is being assisted by an Attorney General who is helping him through the power of the Justice Department?

Jay H. Ell believes, like Trump and the Russians, that Sanders is unlikely to defeat Trump. 

WHY BERNIE IS UNLIKELY TO BEAT TRUMP

So why can’t Bernie win? He like Trump is benefitting from a packed Primary field. Consequently he is able to lead nationally with less than thirty percent of the Democratic vote - the Quinnipiac poll has him at twenty - five percent. No other candidate in the Democratic Primary is a “socialist" populist, all the others to a lesser or greater extent are varying degrees of left of center so he has that lane to himself. Although he has aced all three Primaries to date he has done so with at least ten percent less of the Democratic Primary voters than he did last time out. 

The fact that Sanders is the Democratic frontrunner when current polls indicate that seventy percent of the electorate declared they would not vote for a socialist is as a result of the bizarre lax American Party system as detailed by Jay H. Ell in his blog of February 1, 2020 - “Trump and Sanders and the US Political System”. 

Assuming that the Democratic base hang in with Sanders, regardless of their feelings about the candidate’s “socialism”, like the Republicans did with Trump, how much better can he do than Hillary? He is not promising to bring back the factories or mining jobs. Will those who switched to the Democrats in 2018 stay with Sanders? What has he said to the Republican suburbia that will keep them in the fold? Polls indicate that the latter are "very uncomfortable" with him. 

Bernie will attempt to convert health coverage to a single universal payer system.  However obscene the current system is, the certainty that one hundred and fifty million have with the current insurance will weigh heavily on them. Even Obamacare because of the perceived threat to the private insurance constituency cost Obama two legislative defeats. Then he has promised to wipe out student College loans - the College educated vote Democrat anyway. He will get rid of all fossil fuels including gas and nuclear energy. The latter are seen as interim even by the climate change enthusiasts and the move to them from coal and oil has resulted in a measurable decrease in the American carbon footprint over the past few years. 

Sanders when confronted with the numbers that indicate that over two thirds of Americans wouldn’t vote for a Socialist stated the same polls had him leading the field. He omitted to say the Democratic field with twenty - seven percent. No statement about consensus or coalition building was added to his counter. It doesn’t fuzz Bernie that at this early stage the down ballot Democratic legislators are already dissociating from him. He Just addresses his “Brothers and Sisters”.

HOW TO TRY AND STOP A TRUMP SECOND TERM

Joe Biden is the favorite of the Democratic faithfuls. He is finally finding his old fire and passion. A strong win in South Carolina, which appears on the cards, will give him a boost for Super Tuesday where close on thirty percent of the delegates are up for grabs. Even though Biden has no resources to speak of his name recognition is enough to make him competitive. He has experience in spades, the Obama connection and minority support.  Importantly, he has had connections to labor in the Mid West where the Presidential election was decided last time. But the youth are switched off as they are for Bernie and to a much lesser extent Mayor Pete. A major argument put forward by Jim Clyburn, who is also Majority House Whip, was that only Biden could ensure a down ticket victory thereby ensuring the House remaining and the Senate reverting Democratic. 

 If Biden doesn’t deliver then the last hope will be Mayor Bloomberg who is also in with a long shot. Some Democrats will have to swallow hard to support Mayor Bloomberg due to his former Republican involvement and some of his earlier policies as Mayor.

Joe Lockhart one of Bill Clinton’s Press Secretaries has exhorted the former New York Mayor to get stuck into Sanders, “like five minutes ago”. His belief is that Bloomberg has the only chance to represent the “moderate” wing. Bloomberg is joint second to Sanders in the Democratic national polls at the moment. Despite party reservations the upside is that he has taken the lead in the fight for gun control, is in the forefront in the climate change debate and is not an authoritarian. His attributes, management skills, and a coalition forming history, are countered by a checkered record. But his baggage is carry on compared to Trump’s suitcases. 

Lockhart has advised Bloomberg to spend his next four hundred million running against Sanders. Most importantly in this context he has the resources and infrastructure to challenge Sanders and then Trump. As Lockhart points out this may hurt Bloomberg and let another moderate candidate in - so what. It might also provide fodder for Trump if Bloomberg’s attack fails and Sanders wins the nomination. But that won’t hassle Sanders who publicly announced he is running against both the Republican and Democratic  “establishments” anyway. Also Bloomberg has pledged to leave his infrastructure in place for whomever wins the nomination. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Bernie at best represents thirty percent of the Democratic Party while the others between them number about seventy percent. By creeping paralysis and the way the party system works the odds are that he will win the nomination. By the end of March this contest will be all over bar the shouting. As the process continues not everyone will drop out and like Trump he will be the last man standing.

Jay H. Ell has seen this movie before when in the 2016 Republican Primary the other candidates were scared to take Trump on fully and frontally. So to pussyfoot around won’t stop Sanders. At least the candidates gave Sanders a full go at the Charleston debate. Bloomberg must change his million dollar ads from looking Presidential to attacking Sanders.

It is interesting to note that Sanders now opposes the involvement of seven hundred Democratic Super delegates who will participate in deciding who the nominee should be if no candidate gets fifty percent of the delegates on the first vote. Bernie is forgetting that this mechanism was heavily supported by him as he dragged the nomination fight on till July 2016 claiming it could not be over till they had had their say.

As the world moves right wing and nationalistic it is in only one election, Macron in France, where a left wing populist beaten a right wing populist. 

One thing is for certain after South Carolina, Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Steyger, as impressive as they are, need to get out of this race. If Biden is way ahead of Bloomberg on Super Tuesday the Mayor needs to call it quits and get behind Biden.  Elizabeth Warren has declared herself in for the duration. Her objective may be with her delegates to be the King Maker at what could be heading for a deciding convention.

But let Trump have the last word following the last contest, “Looks like Crazy Bernie is doing well in the Great State of Nevada. Biden and the rest look weak and no way Mini Mike can restart his campaign after the worst debate performance in the history of Presidential Debates. Congratulations Bernie and don’t let them take that away from you”.

AG BARR - TRUMP'S SUCCESSOR TO ODIOUS ROY COHN

Attorney General William Barr has burst into the public arena as the enforcer in chief of the President and his personal representative in court. Barr is joined at the hip with Trump who has been chastised by the courts as “Not being a king” and more recently as behaving akin to a head of a “banana republic”.  What appeared to be the last straw for the judicial officers in the NY Federal Office was Barr’s ongoing partisan interventions in Trump’s interests. Four career prosecutors withdrew from the Stone case when Barr, for obvious political objectives, unilaterally and unprecedentedly overrode their carefully constructed sentence guidelines .

No one else has been as important to Trump since the demise of his role model the notorious Roy Cohn. Cohn’s toxic influence has been the template for Trump’s predictable and continuing sociopathic behavior. What Barr has in common with Cohn is that they both slavishly served Trump’s questionable interests albeit in different arenas. Where they differed was that flashy Cohn relished being seen as New York’s premier fixer whereas Barr has pretensions to respectability which are in the process of being unceremoniously shattered. 

THE SNOWBALLING DECLINE OF BARR’S REPUTATION.

Barr has run into a storm where in less time than it takes to put out a newspaper eleven hundred former Justice Department bipartisan prosecutors and officials signed an online petition for him to resign. The numbers were doubled within twenty - four hours, including his former Deputy Attorney General, George Ayer, who wrote a detailed op - ed piece in The Washington Post as to why his colleague for forty years had to go. 

Barr had to know the avalanche was about to hit him because in an attempt to forestall it the Attorney General had taken the unprecedented action by appearing on network television to “complain” that the unprecedented  President’s unprecedented tweeting behavior was making it impossible for hm to do his job. Barr needn’t have bothered to go through the charade as no one believed his slick smooth narrative as in fact he was doing exactly what he claimed that the President was making it impossible for him to do, namely hampering the prosecutions of the President’s allies and initiating investigations against the President’s enemies.  

It is one minute before midnight and the crisis escalated to the extent that the Association of Federal Judges has called an Emergency Meeting to discuss what they obviously believe is a constitutional crisis.

IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS ROY COHN AND IN THE END IT IS STILL ROY COHN.

For the first two years in his Presidency Trump fantasized if only the major influence in his life, the infamous deceased Roy Cohn, could be his Attorney General.  In the era of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first Attorney General, who was right of Genghis Khan, had ethical standards recusing himself from the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sessions was the butt of abuse because he wasn’t loyal to the boss. Trump admitted that if he had known that  Sessons wouldn’t stop the Mueller investigation he wouldn’t have appointed him to the office.

The POTUS was reported to incessantly ruminate, “Where is my Roy Cohn”. Trump then watered down his objective in that he would be satisfied to have as head of his Justice Department a Bobby Kennedy or an Eric Holder whom he had misperceived as being subservient to Presidents John Kennedy and Barack Obama, respectively. In the end he hit pay dirt as he got his Roy Cohn in the personage of William Barr all dressed with respectability and none of the opprobrium of the shady Cohn.

There was no - one more influential in Donald Trump’s life than his former personal attorney Roy Cohn. It had all started off when Donald and his daddy were charged by the Justice Department for racial discrimination. Cohn advised the Trumps “To tell them to go to hell” and counter sue for a hundred million dollars. If you review Trump’s life thereafter it came from the Cohn playbook. 

So who in the hell was Roy Cohn?

ROY COHN DONALD TRUMP’S PERSONAL COUNSEL AND MAJOR LIFE INFLUENCE

Roy Cohn, Trump’s alter ego was bad, as in the song, “Bad, bad, (Leroy Brown), meanest cat in the whole damn town, meaner than a junkyard dog..”. He was the major player in the seamiest, sleaziest corrupt New York world which saddled the border where the underworld met the malleable political and judicial establishment. He had a long and extensive career starting way back when he was front and center in the unconscionable set up to get Ethel Rosenberg the electric chair. Then for thirty years he was part of the grease for favorable zoning rulings, evading taxes and getting you off charges. His clients ranged from Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Cardinal Spellman, the mob bosses and of course the Trumps. He gained national notoriety as the counsel to the bater and ruiner of reputations Senator Joe McCarthy where he ranted and raved as part of a duo. When McCarthy finally was disgraced by ethics charges in the Congress he carried on with his other activities as if nothing had happened. 

From the 1970’s through the eighth decade of the twentieth Century Trump relied heavily on the  influential wheeler dealer power broker of New York. According to Marie Brenner in her recent authoritative piece in Vanity Fair, Cohn claimed that Trump called him up to twenty times a day. He was central to much of Trump deals and his epidemic of litigation. Brenner quoting author Sam Roberts the triad of behavior that Cohn instilled in Trump was “Never settle or surrender”, “Counter attack counter sue immediately” and whatever the outcome “claim victory and never admit defeat”. Sound familiar?

However eventually Roy Cohn hit rock bottom, the homophobe, who was gay himself, was stricken with Aids. His misdeeds had simultaneously caught up with him and he was disbarred. However those who pitched up to give character evidence for him were part of the “whose who” of New York. Although Trump was one of them he all but abandoned his now dying powerless mentor. He could be of no further use to him. Cohn was variously quoted as reflecting that “Donald pisses ice water” and “Donald has ice in his veins”.

In an uncanny historical co incidence Cohn was involved with Roger Stone and Paul Mannafort. Stone is reported in Brenner’s article as recalling Trump’s response when he congratulated him on his Presidential victory, “Wouldn’t Roy love to see this moment? Roy do we miss him”. It is fair comment to say his Roy has returned in the form of William G, Barr who was about to deliver on the national scene what Roy had done for him locally. 

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR - ROY COHN’S SUCCESSOR  

It is hard to believe that Barr has been in office for only a year as he has changed the rule of law, given the Presidency the legal backing to become an autocracy and unashamedly served Trump rather than the people of the United States to who he had sworn an oath to uphold the rule of law.

Barr was prepared to do for the POTUS what Jeff Seasons refused point blank had done - intervene in judicial proceedings on his behalf.  He would be his Robert Kennedy or Eric Holder or even better his Roy Cohn. Nothing in Barr’s history or even in his “job application” or Senate confirmation hearing could have led anyone to have believed that within a year the disgust and criticism he would be subject to. Although traditionally favoring Presidential executive power he was highly regarded by those that had worked with in the Justice Department from the Reagan years onwards. He had been the Attorney General in Bush 41’s administration. In between these stints he had been a hot shot corporate lawyer and had become a multimillionaire in the process. 

The appointment of Bill Barr to be Head of the Justice Department was generally hailed by all political sectors and previous members of the Justice Department. The latter reassured doubters that whatever one might think of his politics he was an “institutionalist”. It is an irony that those defenders are now in the vanguard of demanding that he step down. The doubters were fueled by an unsolicited twenty page memorandum that he had sent to the Justice Department in June 2018. He argued, inter alia, that the Mueller obstruction of justice investigation was “grossly irresponsible” and “potentially disastrous”. That coupled with his duplicitous evasive answers to some of the questions at his confirmation hearing led a number of Democrats to view his memorandum to the Justice Department, with copies to Trump’s legal team as a job application. 

From then on it has been downhill. What shocked Jay H. Ell half way down that slope was the revelation from Lev Parnas that what had made Trump so threatening and powerful was the appointment of Barr. Now Parnas is a hardened operator and he offered that no one was scared of Trump till Barr pitched up. Rudi Giuliani’s associate the indicted Parnas argued that he had saved his life by going public with his evidence of Trump’s direct involvement of the ongoing shakedown of President Zelensky.

Barr openly, deliberately and with malice of forethought misinterpreted the conclusions of the Mueller Report. This action was that much more illegitimate in that he used the President’s political phraseology to exculpate him. This knowing full well that “collusion”was not a legal term. He announced that Mueller had not found “collusion”. What Mueller had concluded was that he could not prove a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. Barr ignored that Mueller provided evidence that the POTUS had sort and welcomed Russian interventions. That members of Trump’s campaign had held meetings with Russian operatives in order to coordinate with them on his campaign.  

With regard to the second component of Mueller’s report which had a strong case against Trump for obstruction of justice, Barr concluded the opposite in record time after Mueller had spent two years to come to this conclusion. Mueller who avoids publicity like an albino avoids sunlight publicized a letter that contradicted Barr’s misinterpretation. Barr then withheld the report for a month and finally once his narrative had become set in the public mind he released a redacted Mueller report.

Former Deputy Attorney General Ayer in his attack on Barr claimed that he had negated the post Watergate edict that America must be a government of laws not men. Barr the Cohn clone has given the legal opinion that Trump can defy Congress. In effect Barr has singlehandedly negated the sharing of powers by the three branches of government and all but paved the way for a dictator. Barr has even argued in court that Trump could not be charged if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.

Barr became more and more unhinged and told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Obama Administration had “spied on” the Trump campaign. Barr has spent the better of the his year in office attempting to prove that Trump’s “Deep State” theory was correct and that the conclusion of the entire Intelligence Agencies of America were involved in this conspiracy which resulted in the Mueller investigation. Consequently those that tried to cover it up were not really covering it up because it didn’t happen. The upshot of this is an attempt to indict those civil servants who came to this conclusion and initiated the enquiry into the foreign intervention in the 2016 election. Barr apparently is involved in Trump’s ongoing attempts to get foreign help in 2020 and Zelensky was cajoled to consult him or Giuliani in regard to connection with collecting dirt on the Bidens.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

This scandal is unravelling quickly as one of three co equal branches of Government, the Judiciary, feels threatened. They are in a unique situation as they have a proud tradition of upholding the rule of law. The Justice Department alumni  are unanimously calling Barr’s Justice Department a threat to impartial justice and have called for Barr’s resignation following the withdrawal in protest by the four prosecutors in the Stone trial. Judge Berman in sentencing Stone to forty months in prison stated that the outside attempts at intervention were comletely inappropriate - the truth still matters. The Federal Judiciary Association itself are holding an emergency meeting. 

A looming crisis is emerging between Barr and the Southern NY Federal Attorney General’s office over the President’s personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani. Barr has established a “special channel” for Giuliani to dump the evidence he has amassed against the Bidens from disgraced Ukrainians. This at the same time that the NY Attorney General Office is far into the criminal investigation into Giuliani. The background to these happenings is that Barr has made it quite clear that he will decide rather than career prosecutors on all matters involving Trump directly or indirectly.

As this crisis evolves, Trump is under increasing pressure with an expose of the bank, Deutsche Bank, where he allegedly did his laundering with Russian money, hitting the best seller list, 

Trump recent string of clemencies and pardons of those convicted for lying under oath or corruption seem to be reinforcing his definition of what is “perfect”. Also it is the precedent he is creating to subsequently pardon the Stones, the Mannaforts, the Flynns….

On all these issues it is hard to capture any Republican legislator on camera. They are all hiding in their offices. Jay H. Ell rather hopes they have learned a belated lesson. 

IT ALWAYS ENDS THE SAME WAY……

How Roy Cohn would have laughed, how Roy Cohn would have laughed as Trump told each and everyone from journalists to the Judiciary “To go to hell”. Barr who has also been told to go to hell himself following his public warning on ABC to Trump to quit tweeting. However, unlike Cohn, he fancies himself as a pillar of legal rectitude and respectability not the fixer that he is. To rescue what is left of his legacy and persuade the thousands of apolitical former members of the Department of Justice that his actions don’t belie his words, he will ultimately resign if Trump doesn’t call it quits. Trump will say he fired him. For the moment the obsequious members of the Trump Court are begging his Highness to stop interefering in the Justice Department. To be continued but if precedent is anything to go by and Trump has not “learned his lesson”, Trump will discard him as he even did Cohn.

All this means as Trump prepares to pardon Stone how important it is for the Democrats to get their act together.

AMERICA’S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS, THE DEMOCRATIC NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY AND THE MEDIA'S PRIORITY TO NAME A CHALLENGER

In the midst of America’s constitutional crisis where an out of control President, aided and abetted by his Attorney General William Barr, is disregarding every constitutional and other norm, the urgency to elect a Democratic contender to beat him in 2020 is weighing heavily on the majority of the electorate. As the crisis grows by the minute a Bush appointed Federal Judge delivered a scathing attack on the the President and the Department of Justice in their attempt to indict the former Acting Director FBI Andrew McCabe. Judge Warner’s summation was damning, “The fact that you have got someone at the top basically trying to dictate who should be prosecuted was like a banana republic”.

The Democratic nominee dilemma has been heightened by the fact that the consensus choice of many, former Vice President Joe Biden has received a jolt as a result of his lack of real commitment to the fight which not surprisingly has attracted relatively few small donors. His campaign at the moment is stuttering and Bernie Sanders is emerging with Mayor Pete Buttigieg who has a slight advantage in delegates. This has flung the contest wide open and precipitated the entry of billionaire former New York Mayor Bloomberg. 

In spite of all the above the media, of every shade, is prematurely obsessing on naming a winner of the Democratic race with only about one percent of electoral results to back their assessment. 

ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT PRESIDENTIAL RACES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

It is not hyperbole to characterize the 2020 election as one of the most pivotal in America’s history since the election in 1860 of Republican Abe Lincoln who was prepared to wage a civil war for  the idea of America that “All men were created equal”.  Today the issue is to decide whether or not the American Decleration of Independence and the subsequent American Constitution, which emphasized the need not to allow the President to have unfettered power, is still the current belief. At stake in this election are three of the central objectives of the Federalist Papers and the Founding Fathers - to create a balance of powers, to prevent foreign interference in elections and to ensure that the President would not become King George 1V.  

Donald Trump, with his Attorney General Barr and the Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s Republicans in the Senate, are in the process of negating all that Washington and Lincoln fought wars for - namely to create a sustainable democracy. 

In this milieu it is irresponsible for the media to play games, at this early stage, focussing on individual candidates without acknowledging the strength of various constituencies within the Democratic Primary. This at a time that every poll shows that the percentage of the electorate who believe that the country is on the “wrong track” is even higher than before the 2018 Congressional elections. 

The media’s response to the Democratic Primary contest in New Hampshire is a case in point as to ignoring who constituted the electorate that showed up and what policies the voters supported by their choices. 

THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION RACE HAS BARELY STARTED. 

It is fair to say that no one knows how the Democratic race will end. The stunned electorate have already witnessed the rapid rise in prominence of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota and the fall from grace of another front runner Elizabeth Warren in addition to Biden. There is even a distinct possibility that the race may only be decided at the Democratic Convention. At present the brittleness of the electorate is reflected by the rise and fall of candidates after a single debate performance. 

This Democratic Primary has a long way to go with only a few of the over four thousand delegates having been allotted. Yet the media have declared a winner Bernie Sanders who barely beat Buttingieg in New Hampshire and lost to him in Iowa. They see him as the probable winner in this horse race although he has markedly underperformed as compared to his 2016 results. He may well win, Biden may make a comeback, the new white knight on a white horse, Mike Bloomberg, may be eaten up alive in the debates, Elizabeth Warren with her unity appeal may suddenly resonate - anything can happen. 

So it would be far more constructive to resist the temptation to turn this into a horse race, especially when the horses are hardly out of the starting gate. The media should rather address the behavior of the electorate, particularly the independents, in the few encounters to dare, in the key swing states and the constituencies that the Democrats won in 2018.

SANDER’S NEW HAMPSHIRE VICTORY IS THE CENTRAL FOCUS OF THE MEDIA WHO WANT TO CREATE A YEAR LONG HORSE RACE 

Jay H. Ell has an admiration for Bernie’s life long commitment to his beliefs. He agrees for example that a single payer system is the most cost effective way to deliver health care. Having practiced in Canada, where this policy is firmly in place he can attest to the fairness of care for all citizens. However the majority of the electorate overwhelmingly reject the approach favoring insuring all via an expansion of Obamacare. To illustrate the toxicity of the approach is the fact that one of the reasons that the Unions don’t back “The Socialist” is that he wants to take away their employee subsidized healthcare. In short the Democrats should have a candidate who is representative of the majority of their voters. If Bernie can achieve that well and good.

For the moment the media have joined Trump in hailing Sander’s victory with twenty - six percent of the vote against a combined seventy - four percent among those who voted for the left of center candidates that represent the consensus of the Democratic Party. Not one outlet has focussed on the fact that this represents a massive swing against Sanders as compared to 2016 where Ssnders received a sixty percent vote in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is a State that neighbors his own and where he is regarded as the “favorite son”. 

Extrapolating from the New Hampshire victory the media have gone bonkers about the impact a probable lake over of the Democratic Party by “socialism” that this represents. Headlines scream “How Bernie Held Off Buttigieg and Klobuchar” without realizing the contradiction they are perpetuating. The latter two, whom there is virtually no daylight between them on policy, total forty - six percent of the vote, which represents almost double the percentage Sanders garnered. In fact Another metric that was ignored is the fact that the majority of those voters who made up their minds in the last few days prior to the election broke for Klobuchar and Buttigieg.

Another key fact ignored by the media in New Hampshire was the record participation in the Democratic Primary. in New Hampshire.This included the high percentage, of Independents, forty - three percent of the total. Thus with the priority of beating Trump in mind seventy - four percent voted for the moderate wing of the Party in a State that sentimentally favored the Vermont Senator. In effect this massive swing against Sanders was because the enlarged electorate were looking for a candidate to beat Trump. 

A narrative overlooked in the rush to crown a Democratic nominee was the revelation by a former Republican Office bearer that the fact that Trump has a such a high approval rate from Republicans is because Republicans have left the Party in droves. In the constituency that she was the head of in New Hampshire the GOP have lost twenty - thousand members. She and innumerable others want the current President out but they were not going to vote for Sanders. 

Jay H. Ell can go on and on but the point is obvious. The media that purport to want to maintain that their ethos to uphold the “idea” of America should not have as the central focus of their narrative a running headline as to who the winner of the Democratic Primary is till it is clear who he/she might be.

TRUMP HAS CONNED HIMSELF AND THE DEMOCRATS THAT HE IS INVINCIBLE

Donald Trump, who has conned the demoralized Democrats and the nation that he is invincible and that the voters love him as much as he loves himself, was confident that he could put New Hampshire in his column in 2020. After all Hillary Clinton had only won the State by two thousand seven hundred votes. The 2018 reverses the Republicans sustained in New Hampshire were irrelevant he argued. In any case they were before his great big victory in the Senate where fifty two out of fifty three Republicans had declared that he was above the law. 

Well let’s see how really well in he did in New Hampshire. This in light of the fact that he held a mass Nuremberg style rally the night before the primaries which included a Republican Party Primary as well. The Republican Primary had a turn out of a half of the number in the Democrat contest. Significantly in Trump’s Primary ten thousand brave souls came out in the cold to vote for Bill Weld for the Republican nomination. A total of fifteen percent, including “write ins” did not vote for Trump. In addition Trump was hoping that the Democratic, Bernie Sanders whom he has anointed to run against him would run away with New Hampshire Primary as he done with Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

Not an encouraging start for the invincible Trump who has wisely persuaded several of the Republican Establishment not to even have Primaries in several states. Bill Weld is however on the ballot on a number of Super Tuesday contests.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

There are several outstanding candidates in the Democratic Primary. At least fifty - five percent of the electorate want a candidate who can oust the current incumbent. This might mean that those with similar approaches might have to drop out in favor of those that are ahead in order to elect a nominee who has the best chance of toppling the current chief. 

Public servants have ruined their careers in an attempt to expose Trump’s perfidy. They have made the sacrifice that Republican Senators refused to make. Democratic candidates may be called upon to do the same. Several of the Democratic legislators who won in Republican constituencies and gave Nancy Pelosi a forty - one seat gain are terrified of Sanders being head of the ticket.

 A floor fight at the Democratic Convention would be devastating. Last time out Bernie’s supporters booed Hillary. Sanders didn’t shut them up. It was left to Sarah Silverman, a comedienne and a committed Sander’s supporter, to do so. Sanders himself if he doesn’t emerge as a clear cut winner of the Primary must not do what he did to Hillary at the convention and throughout her campaign. His ongoing unsupportive behavior towards her was once again revealed in an interview she recently felt compelled to give.

Needless to say the media should be following the narrative of where the electorate rather than ludicrously declare Sanders or anyone else the winner at this stage. The real fight starts March 3 on Super Tuesday when fifteen States go to the hustings. Maybe or maybe not there will be a clearer picture then. 

Trump, who is approaching his fifth thousand lie continually puts out how the Democratic Party discriminate against Bernie and how he would prefer to run against Mike Bloomberg rather than Sanders!

It is about time that both parties tightened up their membership criteria. At the moment the free fo all makes the electoral process meaningless. Just think that Trump would not have been President if he had to agree to the Republican Party Constitution. He ran against sixteen others. He even claimed at one stage that if he didn’t win the nomination he might stand as an Independent. Aa there were several contenders till late in the process he was floating around thirty percent of the Republican electorate till very late in the game. He then won the Presidency with three million votes less than Hillary Clinton. 

Bearing in mind the way the Electoral College is weighted towards the Republicans the Democrats cannot afford the luxury of their process dishing up a candidate who cannot keep the 2018 gains. 

The headline on the Nevada Caucus poll next week is “Bernie is way out in front with twenty - five percent”. The fact that the sixty thousand strong the Culinary Trade Union in Nevada have not backed a candidate and are in open warfare with Sanders over his health care policy has hardly been covered. What is going to be crucial in that contest is a prior debate as other than Biden and Sanders the other candidates are virtually unknown.

All this to the background of growing evidence that Trump and Barr have confirmed Federal Judge Reggie Walter’s observation that America is a banana republic where the jAttorney General protects the President’s criminal fiends and prosecutes and persecutes his political enemies. This makes the necessity to elect a candidate to beat all the more crucial.

POST TRUMP ACQUITTAL AND IOWA/NH, CAN BLOOMBERG WIN?

This past week has been a tumultuous week in American politics - the acquittal of Donald Trump as a result of the wholesale pathetic surrender of the Republican Party to create a dictatorial Presidency; the dismal performance of Joe Biden in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses; the sub par performance of Sanders in the latter event; the dramatic emergence of Mayor Pete and the doubling down entry of Michael Bloomberg to gain the Democratic nomination and the Presidency - all happenings, thundering down at once on the numbed American body politic. 

Donald Trump, after Susan Collins reassured us that he had learned his lesson, in response to Adam Schiff, who was "a hundred percent sure" that POTUS would carry on with his corrupt ways, fired fact witnesses in his impeachment trial. LIeutenant Vindman, Vindman’s brother who was guilty of being Vindman's brother and Ambassador Sondland were unceremoniously fired in a third world type retribution. Then to end a momentous week Trump’s former Navy Secretary Richard Spenser, a life long Republican, announced his support for Democrat Michael Bloomberg for President. 

A triumphant Trump gloated over a demoralized Democratic body politic as his under water poll numbers slowly crept up. Mitt Romney was the sole Republican Senator who bravely elected to be on the right side of history. You would have thought the party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan might have put up a bigger fight against a third world tin pot dictator taking over their Party. Post acquittal Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, has called the heads of his law enforcement agencies “scum”. The Republicans legislators have sold their souls for a mess of political pottage.  

The question hanging over this somber scene is whether or not Trump can be defeated in 2020. With former Mayor of New York Bloomberg entering the race in a desperate gamble to stop Trump it is obvious that he believes that Joe Biden, the current poll frontrunner,  is not up to the task. All this leaves the burning unanswered question - if Biden, the current leader in national polls is out of it, Sanders chanceless, and Mayor Pete being far more unknown than the unifying successful Democratic nomination winners, Obama, Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter ever were, can Bloomberg at this “late” stage emerge as the Democratic candidate who can beat Trump?

HAIL TRUMP

Trump, drunk with his absolute power having being confirmed, turned the usually unifying State of the Union address and bipartisan WhiteHouse Prayer Breakfast into his Nuremberg style rallies. The unedifying Prayer harangue followed a sermon by a Conservative Evangelical preacher who spoke at length that it was Christ’s message that you listen and love your political opponents. His craven Party cowered in silence lest the bully single them out as not being loyal enough. The POTUS is relying heavily on his incumbent status to once again give him an electoral College victory thereby reversing his 2018 thrashing at the polls. 

Trump has to agree with the Bloomberg assessment. Bloomberg seems to infer that between the efforts of Trump, Giuliani and a lackluster Biden himself that the former Vice President's fate is sealed. Trump is now focussing on Bernie. He has changed his on line advertising campaign to that the alternative to him is a Democratic Socialist. Nobody can argue with the uncanny accuracy of Trump’s gut. (His problem is his cognition).

Trump is far from having a clear run as several court challenges are nearing finality. Even with a Justice Department in tow there is Lev Parnas and Igor Froman, the Freedom of Information requests that the courts are enforcing and all those women and their sexual harassment claims. The Supreme Court are on track to rule on whether his finances should be released. Whether McGahn will testify or not on the POTUS’S blatant obstruction of justice in the Mueller investigation is wending its way to finality. His testimony will be additive to all the outstanding evidence on the Ukraine saga. Then there is Bolton and several others waiting in the wings to spill the beans in lucrative book deals. 

So teflon Trump has problems other than who his Democratic rival may be. He has one worry less in that there will be no opposition within the Republican Party. However the latter's cultish obsequience comes at the cost of the Republican legislative nominees having to defend his mad cap actions in purple states and Republican suburbia which switched in 2018. More and more will emerge on Ukraine and embarrass the Republican legislator candidates on their vote not to have witnesses and documents in the Senate trial.

At the end of the Trump day he is relying on running against a “socialist” and an electorate that when in doubt sticks with the devil that they know.

IOWA  AND THE FORTUNES OF JOE, BERNIE AND MAYOR PETE

Joe Biden

Joe Biden, who up to time of going into print is leading the Democratic polls nationally, finished up a sad fourth in the Iowa caucuses which really was reflective of his heartbreaking pitiful campaign. It is fair to say that in spite of his poll position he has engendered virtually no enthusiasm amongst the body politic having only a few donors. In Iowa he had no ground game and few volunteers but what was most disconcerting was that he squandered the public platform given to him, being at the center of Trump’s defense in the Senate termination trial. That gave him an ideal platform to give back what he got. Other than the lame repetition that the lengths that Trump went to smear him was obvious evidence that he was the candidate that the POTUS feared most, there was a silence.

The fact that he has not given as good as he has got is an ominous sign for a year long campaign. Trump will feed on this weakness like a cobra going for the neck. It will be the sequel to “Crooked Hillary” with Rudi on the sidelines feeding garbage from his corrupt Ukrainian prosecutors. Attorney General Barr is seemingly running cover for Giuliani instructing all Federal legal offices to get permission from him on indictments related to Ukraine. 

At best his performance to date is hubris but whatever it is it is not good enough. Jay H. Ell believes that this foretells that Trump would seize on this temerity and crush him. He was feistier in the New Hampshire debate but all in all it may be too little too late.

Bernie Sanders

Under normal conditions Sanders with name recognition and more small donor support than any other candidate should be positioned to take over as the candidate of the Democratic Party for the 2020 Presidential election. But these aren’t normal times. Sanders isn’t a Democrat. Also the number one priority of the Democratic electorate is a candidate who can beat Trump and grave doubts are already emerging.

Objectively Sanders had a disappointing showing in Iowa. He not only didn’t score a decisive victory, his overall delegate number was less than versus Clinton last time out. His expectation was that he would bring tens of thousands new voters so as to equal the record of two hundred and forty thousand attending the Obama caucuses in Iowa in 2008. Instead the attendance was about a hundred and seventy thousand which was similar to 2016 where he was defeated by a similar narrow margin by Hillary. To add insult to injury more of those that caucused for Hillary than for him in 2016 pitched up to caucus in 2020.

It is almost senseless to keep repeating the obvious that there is no way on earth in 2020 that he could win the American Presidency as a self proclaimed Socialist. Currently prior to Iowa he was running in second place to Biden in national polls at about twenty percent support. That is more or less his ceiling at the moment. (See Jay H. Ell’s last week blog, “Trump and Sanders and the US Political System").

Sanders is going to struggle to beat Buttigieg in New Hampshire. If that prediction is correct Bernie would have not racked up two clear victories that were expected to launch his campaign and persuade the Democratic electorate that he is the one to beat Trump. 

Mayor Pete Buttigieg

If anyone is a victor at this stage of the game it is Mayor Pete who some commentators are likening to Obama. He exites, he is new, he is articulate, he is charismatic and the consensus among white Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats is that he is the choice among the three front runners to beat Trump. Mayor Pete is also tough and authentic, being a declared member of the LGBT minority. His toughness was exemplified when he demolished a serious competitor in Beto O’ Rourke early on in the campaign and has stood toe to toe with all comers since then. 

Buttigieg has just moved up to be one percent behind Sanders in New Hampshire so his start has to exceed his highest expectations. Nationally, even at this stage, he is still behind the three time Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. If he can win in South Carolina where African Americans, who represent close on half of the Dems electorate and in Nevada where Hispanics are a sizable component of the body politic than he may well become favorite to win the nomination. 

 However, currently, his support among African Americans is even less than Sanders. He is thirty seven years old and his political experience is limited to being Mayor of a small town of a hundred thousand in Indiana. But as he successfully reminded the Mid West voters where he is a Mayor is in Mid West Trump country, Indiana. He has emerged from obscurity to being a serious challenger.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for whatever reasons, elected not to participate in the first four Democratic nomination contests. One of the leaks as to the reason was he was waiting to see how the center left Joe Biden would perform. Well he has not waited for all four contests to be completed. After Iowa he had seen enough and jumped in with a vengeance. While he was not on the ballot in the first two contests reporters attest that he was the elephant in the room, his name coming up again and again, as the best hope to beat Trump.

It is ironic that he is using his humungous sixty dollar billion fortune to put himself in contention. It always was only justified  by the Republican ideologues that “money was free speech guaranteed by the Constitution”. For a Democrat to use their bizarre logic to take the GOP on was never ever imagined. 

Bloomberg is saturating the media with incredibly well crafted adverts which to date have not belittled any opponent for the Democratic nomination. He is on target to spend a half a billion dollars at this early stage of the game. He has just put in place five hundred more staffers across the country to create an infrastructure that can take on the Trump/Republican machine. What is more he has declared whoever the Democratic nominee is that he will leave his infrastructure in place on his tab. 

At this stage Jay H. Ell will not discuss the merits of Bloomberg versus Trump but rather look at the numbers as to whether at this stage it is possible for him to win. This is because the common wisdom is that by only entering now he has already "lost out".

BLOOMBERG BY THE NUMBERS

The major benefit of participation in the first four contests for the Presidential nomination is the massive psychological advantage it gives the winner of being the presumptive nominee. Five of the last seven Democratic nomination winners won the Iowa caucuses. The benefits include being the flood of the ching ching of contributions from donors. (Many candidates who think they could still win have not the resources to continue). Money is no object for Bloomberg. 

The perception that that anyone entering at this late stage has lost too much ground is a misperception. There are a total of four thousand and fifty one delegates up for election in the Democratic Primaries of which only one hundred and fifty five or less than four percent are up for grabs in the opening four Primaries. 

Bloomberg is entering the Primaries on Super Tuesday, March 3, where there are fifteen states participating including delegate rich California and Texas.  Thirty - one percent, (twelve hundred and fifty - eight) of the delegates are the prize of Super Tuesday. In the rest of March there are another one thousand and ninety one delegates in contention - twenty - seven percent of the total that are in competition. So March, (fifty - eight percent of all delegates), really decides the primary. Bernie was running behind Hillary once the Primaries were over in that month and never ever seriously challenged thereafter. 

Most contestants emerging from the early contests in February haven’t enough money to organize and advertise in Super Tuesday. The latter occurs just four days after the completion of the South Carolina match up. The victors are hoping that the bounce that that they have received in the four February Primaries and the fact that several of the nominees have dropped out will help their momentum. Bloomberg was on track to lay out a billion dollars prior to the Iowa shambles and claimed he was going to double up as a result. He has already spent half a billion in infrastructure, advertising and appearances, focussing on Super Tuesday. So he does need not the initial primaries for financial momentum and name recognition. 

Now with three weeks to go Bloomberg is hitting up to fifteen percent in some national polls. So he definitely can be a contender. Bernie already is underperforming his figures against Hillary which was basically a two horse race. Biden, Warren and Klobuchar are likely to also have some of the spoils but are being left behind. That leaves Bloomberg and Mayor Pete. The former has to believe that he has a better chance of beating Trump than Mayor Pete otherwise he might have waited to see how South Carolina and Nevada went. 

In the unlikely event that Sanders is competitive and the seven hundred Democratic super delegates have to decide the Democratic contender on the convention floor they would certainly not go with Sanders.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Bloomberg is viable by the numbers. Jay H. Ell will blog at a later date as to what he believes his merits are and his chances are against Trump. If the race finally devolves around Buttigieg and Bloomberg the Democrat establishment super delegates are unlikely to tip the balance against whoever the front runner is. 

Just one further comment on the week that was - the hypocrisy being displayed by the Republicans attacking Nancy Pelosi for tearing up Trump’s speech is staggering to say the least.