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.