I know it might be an advanced concept for many, but perhaps the whole country could just vote on a single day like everyone else does?

Another powerful pre-boomer: Mitch McConnell.

In before the Gabbard fapping.

Speaking of Sha-Na-Na, the former lead singer “Bowser” has an interesting twitter feed. When I was a kid I assumed he was just some real NY italian. I didn’t realize he was playing a variation on Borat.

To go by Strauss & Howe (Generations, The Fourth Turning) terminology, Steve, the pre-boomers would be of the “Silent Generation”, who came after the “GI Generation”. If you want all this generational terminology wrapped up nicely, Strauss and Howe are your go-to guys.

Bloomsquirt.

Bloomberg is a finance guy. I don’t know why he thinks he has snowball’s chance in hell of winning the democratic nomination, let alone the presidency.

Of course Sanders is going to have a breakthrough with Hispanics. Socialism has long been popular among Latin Americans, and for better or worse we’ve successfully imported this political tradition.

I think barring DNC meddling Sanders is going to win the nomination, and he has a good chance of winning the presidency. Boomers, with their inflated pensions, stock portfolios and paid-off houses seriously underestimate the resentment out there. It might not happen this election cycle, but just as Tucker Carlson has been warning a reckoning is coming.

In glancing at the title, I was hoping this thread would be about the great college wrestling dual meet between Iowa and Penn State, in which the Iowa Hawkeyes finally beat the long-dominant Nittany Lions.

It was a great meet. Wrestling remains one of the few sports, incidentally, that is largely competed by – ahem – “heritage Americans.” And it hasn’t been commercialized as badly as that pozzed Super Bowl baloney I used to watch years ago.

But, no, this thread is just about some “politics.”

The whole generational thing is irrelevant, may as well be talking star-signs…
No, the only one’s silent here are not talking about Bloomberg’s ineligibility for the office! That being the press because of all that glorious money he’s spending with them.
He was knighted by the queen for God’s sake!

On October 6, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Bloomberg as Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his “prodigious entrepreneurial and philanthropic endeavors, and the many ways in which they have benefited the United Kingdom and the U.K.-U.S. special relationship.” As Bloomberg is not a citizen of the United Kingdom, he cannot use the title “Sir”, but may, at his own discretion, use the post-nominal letters “KBE”.

Is Trump holding this back in case he really wants the job? Why won’t Bernie, Joe & Liz bring up his disqualification.

1. I don’t understand how Harris didn’t have a better showing. She was everything a democrat candidate should be.

2. Ultimately Warren will be the next president

Candidates who’ve avoided the earliest contests and sought to establish themselves in somewhat later contests (e.g. the Florida primary) have not in the past performed well. See, for example, Rudolph Giuliani, who was leading in national polls in December 2007. The Giuliani plan was to make a splash in Florida. The comment of one of his staff was ‘we’re either the smartest guys in the room or the dumbest guys in the room’. I don’t think he won a single delegate.

Bloomberg is performing respectably in national polls, but he’s hardly detectable in the first half-dozen states which will be voting (NB, even Steyer has a significant bloc of respondents in one of these states). His problems are compounded in Iowa, where good performance has in the past been contingent on having boots on the ground; ads don’t cut it. (See John Glenn’s performance in 1984; he was running 2d in national polls but placed 6th in Iowa as he didn’t organize). Bloomberg has a constituency and would be a grave danger to Trump in a general election, but the process being what it is the smart money says he gets lost in the shuffle.

They WOKE up.

In this country, we tend to focus too much on the president and to talk endlessly about politics as a sport — especially as it relates to the president.

Witness this blog entry and comment thread.

A few minutes observing any so-called “news” medium” confirms this, while there is so much damage being done by the legislature and the courts.

This is just our version of having a king or a royal family to speculate about, write plays about, and complain about.

It is simple-minded, even when practiced by those of us who think we are so smart.

The Guardian has an article on how the Iowa caucuses are excluding hundreds of thousands of people, mostly felons and people with disabilities. Translation: Bernie is favored to win.

Good points.

Sadly, I came here looking for reactions to the Super Bowl… Even more simple-minded! panem et circenses FTW

In the Howe / Strauss taxonomy, which identifies ‘Boomers’ and the birth cohorts running from 1943 to 1960. The thing is, if you sort people by common behavior patterns in given cohorts (e.g. propensity to divorce, prevalence of drug use, prevalence of military service, perpetration of street crime, consumer tastes), the divisory line (if there is one) is a few cohorts earlier. The notable candidates on the other side of that divisory line were Ron Paul, John McCain, Michael Dukakis, Paul Simon, Gary Hart, Walter Mondale, and Ted Kennedy. Pat Buchanan and Jerry Brown are located right on the border.

Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, and Pat Buchanan make interesting case studies because of biographical curios. Hart was something of a perpetual student, in school for ten years. He married young, but didn’t have any children for the first seven years of his marriage. He had his wife over a period of 10 years abandoned the fundamentalist subculture in which they’d been raised (and in which his father-in-law was quite prominent) and his personal decadence thereafter was quite pronounced. Buchanan married somewhat late in life (at 33, I think) and he and his wife were infertile; he’s unusual in that his father had very pronounced and explicit views on religion, on politics, and on the conduct of mundane life and successfully imparted them to his children. Jerry Brown was another perpetual student who produced no children and never married until he was retirement age. NB, atypical in their cohorts, these three never had any military service (Brown and Hart had a series of graduate school deferments not available later and Buchanan was medically disqualified). The other seven men listed were all married with children in 1965 and all had a done a tour in the service.

I doubt it, all three are “War Babies.” They have more in common with the Boomers than the Silent Generation.

They didn’t grow up during the Great Depression. The War Babies were the biggest ringleaders of the 1960s Counterculture, often in-bodying the role of Peter Pan leading the Lost Boys. For the last 50 years they’ve politically surfed on the big wave which are the Baby Boomers.

I really believe Bernie will win but Wall Street will engage in some shenanigans like they did to him last time to prevent his nomination.

Bloomberg wouldn’t be the worst president ever but he hasn’t got a shot.

Slightly OT.

For whatever reason, the British journalistic class, and editors, most especially the BBC, have an absolute obsession with the US political cycle – devoting an inordinate amount of air time to it – often half a news program. In fact they are more interested in American politics than UK politics.
Of the internal politics of EU nations, the BBC, and the rest, have very very little to say, bordering on a complete black out. Thus, when Britain was in the EU, ordinary Britons knew next to nothing about their EU partners, and cared even less.

And this is the same biased BBC that has been bleating blue murder about Brexit for the past four years.

…while there is so much damage being done by the legislature and the courts.

Indeed.

But we spend a fair amount of time on legislative races; the presidency is a proxy for judgeships.

This reflects the large and growing importance of government in our lives.

Not to mention Nancy Pelosi.

If you can remember the 60’s, Mr Sailer you weren’t really there, but me, man…

…I remember Bernie yelling at some kid called Robert (Bob?) at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and pulling out the plug of his electric guitar.

Cat, I remember going to Biden’s office for help and him giving me the brush-off- some malarkey about ‘I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’. Blue Cheer!

Bloomberg? I didn’t know Andy Williams was still alive- and had changed his name..

Yours,
Mr Brown-Acid

Was Tulsi in there somewhere?

Someone give this commenter a star! 🙂

Does America have the world’s most protracted electoral process? Do we get much from the enormous amount of time we spend on it?

Imagine if the only elections in America were for city council, and positions above that were selected at random from holders of the position below (excluding anyone who had been removed from office due to crime). Would we be worse off?

Probably the favorite band at Woodstock of Biden, Bernie, and Bloomberg was Sha-Na-Na:

I was too young in the late ’60s to understand why, and I still don’t, but I pretty clearly remember that my older brothers (born ’47 and ’50) related to all the cutting edge late ’60s rock music played by early 1940s babies such as Hendrix, but my older male cousins, who were born between 1938 and 1944, just didn’t seem to relate to all that innovative hard acid-head stuff being composed by their contemporaries.

I checked with PiltdownBrother1 and he confirms my childhood recollection.

It’s been remarked before over here by Mr. Sailer that Woodstock was an audience of late teens and young twentysomethings listening to their older siblings on stage.

I wonder why that was.

Noteworthy that politicians have birth year clusters; a coming-of-age in a time when politics is seen as a Thing, I suppose.

Clinton; W Bush; Trump, all born 1946. Romney and Hillary: 1947. Dennis Kucinich: 1946.

Carter and HW Bush: 1924. Bob Dole: 1923. McGovern: 1922.

Ford, Nixon: 1913. Reagan, Humphrey: 1911.

P. Buchanan, J. Brown: “38. G. Hart, McCain: “36. Ron Paul: “35.

Paul Simon, Walter Mondale: “28.

Doesn’t matter Steve. A “black” quarterback just won the Super Bowl, so God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

Mahomes even laid out the reality for everyone in this quote: “For me, being a black quarterback — having a black dad and white mom — it just shows that it doesn’t matter where you come from.”

Indeed.

I wonder when the big surprise video or tape of President Trump doing something really bad will be released. You know they have something to spring on us, but when? The obvious answer is when it will do the most damage, but when is that?

They are “Silent” but just won’t shut up or retire gracefully.

By now it should be obvious that whoever is voted US president has no real power, it is essentially a ceremonial position (like the queen of England) where all meaningful decisions are blocked by an unelected blob. This being the case vote for the most outrageous candidate, at least one gets some entertainment out of that.

The long process is all part of the endless stream of propaganda needed to keep the secular religion of democracy going.

As far as what will happen, it looks like Sanders will win Iowa. The focus is then on how the rest of the field shakes out. Biden collapsing in the polls probably eliminates him from the race after New Hampshire. Warren finishing fourth or fifth ends her campaign most likely.

The amusing thing shaping up is the process will have an old Jewish socialist as the favorite to win the nomination. The party will then turn to one of the two Jewish billionaires to stop him. It’s getting harder and harder to not notice what’s happening in American politics.

Our protracted electoral process twice gave HRC the time she needed to thwart her handlers, gurus, and script-writers and and self-sabotage all over the national stage.

For that alone I am thankful.

From a grand tradition of Jewish actors playing Italian characters, generally making them seem repulsive. Jay Greenspan as George Costanza in Seinfeld, Henry Winkler as Arthur Fonzarella in Happy Days, Judah Friedlander as Frank Rossitano in 30 Rock. I’m sure there are many more.

Easy there 205… Only wrongthinkers would accuse Bloomberg of dual loyalty.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

If America took the prohibition of titles of nobility seriously there would be no esquires in “government.”

Bloomberg is running mainly because he despises Donald Trump, and is jealous of him as well. If the coronavirus sparks a worldwide recession (or anything close) the election will go to the Dems no matter whom they nominate. Might anyway.

1. He could renounce his foreign title.

2. Congress could grant its consent for him to keep it.

3. Not clear this is a title of nobility to begin with.

This is like Trump with the emoluments clause (same clause actually) – not really an obstacle, just a gotcha.

Along with many of my peers, I get called a boomer even though all of us were born after 1964. I think the epithet is just a way of trying to shut up older people because you don’t like what they’re saying.

An additional irony is that a lot of this name calling is happening online where people have no idea what you look like, much less how old you are.

Sha Na Na rocked, they schooled the hippies at Woodstock!

I think it is because we all feel more comfortable looking up to someone than worshipping someone your own age or younger.

For example, I was way more into following football 10 years ago then I am now….Mainly for the reading that it’s a bit awkward for me to go gaga over players who are my age

OT: The WaPo journo who got suspended for reminding everyone that Kobe most definitely did rape that 19 year old, quite severely, (They claim it was actually because she may have intentionally or accidentally doxed one of the Kobe fanboys attacking her on Twitter) has set the MeToo cat among the Jewish men born in New York between 1940-1960 powers that be at the Post.

The Washington Post's problems with sexism in the newsroom extend well beyond the suspension of a political reporter for tweeting, according to multiple current and former female staffers I spoke with — plus, a bunch of other stuff. https://t.co/rk1SCO9FFt @HuffPost

— Emily Peck (@EmilyRPeck) February 3, 2020

It’s not a title of nobility — for one thing, because it doesn’t come with lands. And also, Bloomie is not a Brit, and everybody knows about the famous American objections to the very notion of nobility… on paper anyway.

Nobody would take this as a serious objection, it’s just a decorative honor, a kind of international politeness, and anybody with a sense of humor knows that.

For instance, en France, Patti Smith is a “Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres,” but she doesn’t actually command anybody, except me.

Sortition! Yes!

This form of government had drifted out of my memory, until I read a story about a bloke who was going to suicide bomb DC.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-man-wanted-blow-himself-national-mall-election-day-n918771

That’s a pretty interesting thought experiment. You definitely can’t analyze it by looking at people who currently are on city councils. Parties & interest groups would have to spend their time and resources recruiting and electing a bazillion different councilmen, and this is how they would spend their time and resources. So the pool of city councilmen would change a lot.

It would be harder to fine-tune national politicians. You couldn’t really groom them. It would be harder to have kompromat on them. Presumably, even after all the effort by the swamp to select them, they would be more like the people they represent.

Of course, cheating on the random assignment would be massively incentivized, so maybe that’s where all the interest group effort would be spent.

A big story surrounding the Iowa caucus is the hilarious suppression of the Des Moines Register pre caucus final poll.

This is the first time this has _ever_ happened since the Des Moines Register started polling caucus-goers, and the mass media excuses are hilarious.

The “official establishment” version: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/481115-iowa-poll-snafu-leaves-democrats-guessing-on-eve-of-caucuses

The conspiracy theory version: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/bernie-mania-update.php

If the conspiracy theorists are correct and Biden finishes fourth, this will be one of the biggest upsets in American political history.

I was too young in the late ’60s to understand why, and I still don’t, but I pretty clearly remember that my older brothers (born ’47 and ’50) related to all the cutting edge late ’60s rock music played by early 1940s babies such as Hendrix, but my older male cousins, who were born between 1938 and 1944, just didn’t seem to relate to all that innovative hard acid-head stuff being composed by their contemporaries.

I’ve noticed the same, but most of the early Boomers I know didn’t take to the late 60s psychedelic rock.

In my experience pre Boomers or War Babies have a much, much better grasp of how society has changed, don’t fall for the narrative and grasp why post Boomer generations aren’t happy with the current generation.

I like Jim Goad’s take on taking ‘generations’ too seriously. The Strauss and Howe thing seems unfalsifiable to me.

https://www.takimag.com/article/generational-astrology-for-dummies/

At the Hop (1958) was 11 years old at Woodstock but sounds completely like it’s from another era.

Meanwhile the current garbage pop music of 2020 sounds identical to music from 1995-2005. Popular music innovation has been dead for at least 20 years.

Even more disgusting about our fallen age, there’s an awful trend of rerecording 1965-1990 hits with cheap pop-synth beat and extreme auto-tuned female vocal. Sometimes a black guy raps a little during what is supposed to be the bridge. Random example I was subjected to yesterday: Selena Gomez doing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)”

I think it’s analogous to Giuliani being made a Son of Italy by the Italian government after 9/11.

Everyone I have ever talked to who was actually at Woodstock says that Sha-Na-Na were absolutely ignored by one and all. It was as if Perry Como, Up With People, or a military band were up there. They went over like a klezmer band at a National Alliance convention.

OT:

Can we come up with a name for this style of journalism:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opinion/goop-gwyneth-paltrow-netflix.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

i.e., Here’s something we all openly mocked. But suddenly out of nowhere, we acknowledge that not only is mocking it wrong, but the mocking is patriarchical tool that goes back through all of human history and causes WOMEN to BE MURDERED!

The unexpected reversal of an opinion no one cared much about either way that is done with such magnitude that the previous position now amounts to not just bigotry but accessory to murder.

Quoted sentences in particular:

Yes, the rich, willowy blonde at Goop’s helm is an easy target…. The tsunami of Goop hatred is best understood within a context that is much older and runs much deeper than Twitter, streaming platforms, consumerism or capitalism. Throughout history, women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and MURDERED for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused, and confounded “the authorities.”

(EMPHASIS mine)

…So, you start with the headline, thinking, oh the conventional wisdom that Goop is kind of a joke for women with too much money to spend… and by the fourth paragraph, you see that you’ve been convicted of being accomplice to centuries of murdering the innocent, their anguished cries echoing through the timeless caves of the underworld each time you smirk while walking past a Goop pop-up shop.

@SteveSailer

OT but interesting. Is this peak ‘white liberal woman’? Quite a good income for the hustlers too. It beggars belief that people would pay 2 and a half grand to be lectured on how racist they are.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/race-to-dinner-party-racism-women

I agree with #3.

This is an honorary title, not a real title. It probably doesn’t count. Sort of the way Churchill was granted honorary US citizenship, but could still continue as U.K. PM.

Boomers born in the late fifties and afterward don’t remember the fifties. They remember the political assassinations, Vietnam and the protests, race riots and Chicago ‘68, the beginning of the divorce epidemic, Mom needs to get a real job, all that.

Good point and question. In general, I think it is good to remember that the transitions we are ascribing to generations are not instantaneous. You would expect a few early adopters to influence a greater number of followers. So perhaps exponential growth (with what kind of doubling time?). I think this would look a lot like what you describe. It is worth noting that exponential growth tends to look like nothing is happening for a long time then everything changes all of a sudden.
http://jonathanbecher.com/2016/01/31/lily-pads-and-exponential-thinking/

Looking at how presence/absence of older and younger siblings affected someone’s experience of generational transitions would make an interesting study. Not the only influence by far (consider parents/peers/community/church, rural vs. urban, as well as individual characteristics–particularly openness to new experiences), but probably important.

I wonder how much this generations phenomenon coincides with the introduction of radio and TV (especially national). I think those would substantially reduce the doubling time.

P.S. It is hard to describe the Silent Generation as persistent with respect to the presidency given that they have never had a president from their ranks. This election is probably their last chance.

Imagine if the only elections in America were for city council, and positions above that were selected at random from holders of the position below (excluding anyone who had been removed from office due to crime). Would we be worse off?

No, but Karl Rove, John Podesta and thousands of other swamp creatures would be worse off, and that’s what’s important.

As a Baby Boomer, I’m particularly struck by the persistence of pre-Boomers (whatever they are called: I don’t pay much attention to generational terminology).

If you don’t pay much attention to it, then why don’t you just call them “old people,” since that’s obviously what you mean.

The generational construct that has been promoted to the heavens is pretty laughable, so there is good reason not to accord it any analytical value, but interesting that you are still impelled to preface your remarks with a “boomer” self-identification.

Note how “the Silent Generation” is itself a sort of moral indictment and meant to be contrasted with the “boomers” on whose watch the culture was overturned and social justice was supposedly achieved.

The TV series Mad Men is all about promoting the notion of a bad, conformist “Silent Generation” being overthrown and supplanted by progressive, justice-seeking “boomers.”

It is comical in a distasteful sort of way that Matthew Weiner, who created Mad Men to show that the 1950s were all about misogyny, etc, was subsequently accused of telling Kater Gordon that she owed it to him to see her naked.

How we needed up with such a ridiculously drawn out process is a mystery, although I have a guess (below).

It’s sort of like how our current national pastime sport, tackle football (NFL, NCAA), has been rendered nearly unwatchable by endless commercials and minimal action. Is it a fluke or by design that the rules of the sport are conducive to never-ending interruptions? Compare our “football” to what rest of the world calls football: For all of its corruption and idiocy (anti-racism campaigns, etc) at least when you tune in to watch a match, you actually see, you know, an athletic contest, as opposed to “We’ll be right back” 867 times.

My understanding is that the rest of the world, even countries with equally corrupt political systems, has election campaigns of a month and then it’s (mercifully over).

What gives? I suspect having a Federal system where each and every state wants their say is a big part of it.

Tulsi got eliminated by a massive co-ordinated attack by the DNC elite. Warren’s foreign policy team got unveiled a few days ago and it really is Hillary Redux. Yang has an intriguing domestic platform but he bent the knee on foreign policy as well, showing he is spineless. Bernie has softened his message a lot compared to 2016. He even (shamefully) supported the coup in Venezuela. So he isn’t nearly as radical as he used to be, which is why he’s been getting somewhat better coverage. They still don’t trust him fully and would prefer a pliant puppet like Biden who can scarcely hide his Alzheimer anymore. Warren or Buttplug is the backup plan. Bloomberg trying to buy the nomination won’t work.

The latest poll out of South Carolina showed that Bernie is now just 5 percentage points behind Biden, and this in a state where the black primary population is huge. I’ve always maintained that as everyone obsessed over blacks, a white+hispanic alliance could easily best it. It’s the democratic version of the sailer strategy.

I don’t understand how Harris didn’t have a better showing.

I thought she was going places, too. As the person who checked all the boxes. But whenever she opened her mouth she seemingly had the mind of a 14 year-old.

I think Harris failed when, like Warren, she tried to trim her sails and tack center after having success being a radical socialist. The lefties sniffed them both out as inauthentic and dumped them.

The Lefties want a true believer this cycle. Not a corporate poseur. That’s why Sanders is their man.

Protracted Presidential elections are a feature. The Founders were not all that interested in efficiency at the national level, but more caution. We don’t elect the entire Senate in one day. The Electoral College gives states some pull in the Presidential elections. Change happens slowly by design. Liberteenies and radicals can moan all they want, rapid change in government has a lot of bad side effects.

The primary system has evolved as a kind of filter, it is very imperfect but it sorta works. Alternatives such as “letting a dozen party big shots pick all the candidates for a slate” have not worked out well either. The primary system is a vestige of Federalism and like someone said it gives borderline candidates time to show off their true nature. It’s a big country, and it’s not a big country like China is, either. So the process is cumbersome but less bad than alternatives.

It is probably the last national election that will feature credible candidates born before or during WWII, so enjoy the pageantry of history as it passes by. Bernie will probably do well in Iowa unless the Party screws around with the process to favor Biden; if that happens then it will have repercussions down the line.

Does Bloomberg actually have a strategy besides spending a huge amount of money on ads? What primary is he intending to win?

Doubt it. I keep seeing Bloomberg ads on Facebook saying that “Mike Bloomberg is the gun lobby’s worst nightmare.” I don’t know if it’s just that he’s shoveling so much money in that there’s no need to target a particular audience, but, at least to me and the people I know, that demonstrates bad mis-targeting through a platform that’s entirely designed to reach very discretely-selected target markets. That suggests to me he’s doing what you might expect a very rich and very out-of-touch person to do: just pour money into things without noticing actual results (or accounting for the fact that some of the results can be counterproductive). Based on some of the things I’ve been reading about his campaign, I’m guessing the pigs from the consultant class are definitely already feeding greedily at the trough. My following of the gun issue state by state suggests that Bloomberg gets a pretty low rate of return for all the money he spends, but he just tries to make it up in massive volume. For all the payola though, Trump may have punched him hardest this weekend by defining him as short.

I don’t see a path to victory in the general for Bernie and am straining to see one in the primary. Suburban, boomer types, Democrats and Republicans both, are repulsed by him, even if the kids they have living in their basements love him. Any hardcore socialist would be the best chance of pushing disaffected Republicans back into the Trump fold as well. Elizabeth Warren seemed to be the favorite among the gentry liberal Democrats I know but has the burden of any specific appeal she has being split with at least one other candidate (to socialists with Bernie, to feminists with Klobuchar, etc.) as well as the burden of being Elizabeth Warren. Blacks won’t give Bootygay the time of day. It’s an amazingly weak slate of candidates for the Democrats this year, perhaps one that provides a snapshot of a Democratic Party still in the middle of its post-2016, post-Obama and post-Hillary identity crisis. If it weren’t for Trump as a unifying enemy, I struggle to see what they’d have going for them.

My guess for a final result will be a Biden-Klobuchar ticket.

Pretty sure Churchill was only granted US citizenship a few months before he died in 1964.
He hadn’t been PM since 1955.

It is easy to understand why the cockroaches who run the campaigns want the country to be in eternal campaigning mode, but why do the politicians? Could it be that the quality of person attracted to politics now is much more interested in campaigning than actually doing the work required of elected office? I would say that is true for both Obama and Trump and most of the Democrats who ran this cycle.

I think barring DNC meddling Sanders is going to win the nomination, and he has a good chance of winning the presidency. Boomers, with their inflated pensions, stock portfolios and paid-off houses seriously underestimate the resentment out there.

Anyone the Democrats nominate has at least a 50/50 shot of winning. The increasing proportion of non-white voters has seen to that.

AEI panelist: Democrats wouldn’t be competitive today without diversity pic.twitter.com/b6QkG7z72W

— AN (@nationalisttv) February 2, 2020

They were the Big Kids. We always followed them around. They knew what was what, and didn’t lecture us. Until they did.

The standard theory is that Bloomberg is the fallback should Biden falter or if no one shows up at the convention with a delegate lock (to prevent a Bernie nomination).

That would be something like the old Athenian model of choosing executive officers by lot (i.e., something like real democracy rather than the pseudo-democracy we have now).

Maybe Bloomberg has the right idea. He reminds me of that Jeopardy champion who shook things up by working from the bottom of the board (high ticket clues) instead of from the top down like everyone else. Why bother with little states like Iowa and New Hampshire when you can make a killing on Super Tuesday?

Now that California has a super Tuesday primary, the delegate math is different from previous years. With his deep pockets Bloomberg might pull it off – he’s already saturating the airwaves here in Illinois, and our primary is 6 weeks away.

“Bloomberg is a finance guy.”

More accurately, he sells shit to finance guys.

But he’s also the ex mayor of New York City, which if it were a state would have a population and economy placing it as number [do your own Wikipedia lookup, I’m not your research assistant] and if it were a country, would have a GDP placing it as number [ditto].

If Trump were to lose, dear God, don’t give us a woke president. Bloomberg is one of the few unwoke candidates. Biden seems under remote control of his woke staff. Pocahontas has completely flipped out. Sanders seems like he’s starting down the Biden remote control path. Is Kerry woke? Maybe. Yang? He’s showing signs of “I’ll do anything to Win.”

From a 31 Jan 20 Pew poll as cited in Ha’aretz:

In the Pew poll, Sanders came in dead last among the four front-runners for the nomination among Jewish Democrats. Biden was the clear favorite, with 31 percent of those polled favoring his candidacy, followed by 20 percent supporting Senator Elizabeth Warren and 13 percent for former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Only 11 percent backed Sanders, who came in ahead of the other Jewish candidate in the race, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg – a latecomer who polled at 8 percent.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-pro-israel-u-s-jews-worry-as-sanders-surges-toward-monday-s-iowa-primary-1.8478838?=&ts=_1580746471225

Well, well–where’s the tribe’s love for their prodigal grandpa, Bernie? Just because 42% of American Jews in another Pew poll last year claimed to feel that Trump was too supportive of Israel doesn’t mean that they will vote for someone who, you know, actually criticizes Bibi.

Psst–I’ve heard that the Bernie Bros are not only misogynistic but anti-semitic too. Pass it on.

I thought she was going places, too. As the person who checked all the boxes. But whenever she opened her mouth she seemingly had the mind of a 14 year-old.

The US primary system is tough. People often complain that our elections take too long. People complain that some states have caucuses, others primaries, and that the elections don’t take place at the same time.

But the result of this is that whoever survives should be temperamentally prepared to become the president. People who aren’t up to the job are weeded out. That Harris bailed out well before the first vote shows how unsuited for the job she really was.

Thankfully we have such a system, and Harris was not foisted upon us with her undeserved hype.

Buchanan had an ROTC college scholarship which he lost after suffering heart valve damage from rheumatic fever. Years later, he had the damaged valve replaced. His career would likely have been much different had he become an army officer.

Traditionally, the Silent Generation is for those born between the years 1928 through 1945. The Baby Boom has always been listed as those born between 1946 through 1964. Bernie, Bloomberg, and Biden are all of the Silent Generation, while Warren is a Baby Boomer.

The old guys are Silent Generation. They’re all too old to be president in any functional sense. The problem is, leftwing Boomers have daddy issues, and they want someone to be their daddy so they can continue to feel babied and spoiled, and so they can goof off and not have to be responsible. So they keep trying to back someone who’s older than they are. Because leftwing Boomers are still mentally children, they vote for impractical, pie-in-the sky political and social policies and they want Daddy-President to give it to them and make everything all right.

Leftwing Boomers tried electing a magic negro to wave his wand over the USA and make everything bloom for them, and he failed to deliver. That cured them of ever voting for a black again. Harris flamed out badly, and Booker’s support is laughable. Boomers want their own bountiful, tribal Daddy back to make everything all right. The hostility to Sanders and Bloomberg on the part of many Boomer Democrats is because they sense these two are from the wrong tribe. Liberal WASPs realize they won’t represent WASP interests, and most liberal voters are still WASPS.

Boomers, at heart, don’t trust themselves to run things right, and they’re correct about that. They’ve made an appalling mess of our institutions.

Harris was the opposite. She was more a moderate in her previous actions, but she tried to talk hardcore lefty when campaigning, and the real leftists didn’t trust her. She kept getting caught in lies about her positions.

Art Deco has been writing some especially good comments recently.

My experience is the exact opposite. Early Boomers, those born 1955 or earlier, many of which have managed to get out of the work force with intact pensions, enormous 401ks, cottages and Audis, are oblivious to what has happened. We had a nuclear bomb drop on the industrial economy the last 25 years but it hasn’t affected them.

It’s the Boomers in their late 50s now who seem to sense that nothing is going right. Those with a few years left in the economy, terrified it will collapse.

I’m an election pollster. Ann Selzer who runs the Iowa Poll is universally respected as the best in the business and her integrity is unquestioned. There is zero chance any kind of political motivations factored in to her decision.

My best guess (based on info I’d rather not go into detail about) is that her call center, which she had previously been satisfied with, ran out of callers and subcontracted to another call center who lacked the same quality standards, without telling Selzer, and after it blew up she just couldn’t be confident that there weren’t other lapses and compromises arising from this or how widespread the problem was.

These leaked numbers don’t surprise me but she was right to kill the poll.

Late LOL here, Steve. Good one. Just got back on.

Actually Bernie is pretty damn old, right? Maybe he’s at the ass-end of the G.I.-tract …

… generation.

My older brother bought the Woodstock album in maybe 1970, and I’m pretty sure Sha-Na-Na had some of their music on it (it was a long time ago.) As a twelve year old who had no recollection of anything before the Beatles, I thought it was pretty cool. More masculine than the hippie stuff. Now, however, I’m amazed at how much their Woodstock performance looks like something out of a gay musical.

Unless Tom Steyer manages to buy the nomination, and win, the 1950s will again be shut out for producing a president. (This assumes Trump isn’t removed; Pence was born in 1959.)

The only other decades with no native presidents (can you be a native of a time rather than a place?) since Washington’s birth are the 1810s and the 1930s– and Dukakis, Hart, Paul, Buchanan, and Liz Dole are still with us. (Hell, so are Carter, Mondale, and Bob Dole from the ’20s!) And, of course, the 1970s and 1980s, but they have plenty of time.

Here’s a scary thought– someone born in January 1990 will be eligible next time around.

Yes, it’s an oxymoron, but here is a highly relevant trivia question:

What do Steyer and Pence have in common with all the female candidates, but none of the other men? Hint: they share this with Steve, and Scott Adams.

From CBS News:

“An Iowa poll, long considered the most credible in the state and closely watched by political campaigns, will not be released Saturday night as planned. The poll from the Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co was set to be one of the final Iowa polls ahead of the state’s caucus on Monday.”

Is this more Democratic Party skullduggery?

The Dems are clearly out to do whatever they can to stop Sanders. Would this poll have shown him ahead and therefore, in the Dem mind, threaten to promote a Bernie-is-the-victor aura going into the poll, perhaps ultimately magnifying his margin based on a band-wagoning effect?

I find the whole thing very suspicious, especially in the context of all the whining about how “unrepresentative” Iowa is.

It’s fascinating to see how parallel the the DNC efforts to stop Sanders are with the RNC’s failed attempts to derail Trump in 2016.

The voters are failing the government! We need a new electorate!

OT:

RIP Mad Mike Hoare

Sadly, I came here looking for reactions to the Super Bowl…

We watched the show this time.

Half-time had been billed as a show of empowerment for women. Two Latinxes! Well, it was a stripper show of butts and c*nts, so it was an honest display of female empowerment.

There was a football game, and some commercials too. We ate more fried food than we do in a year (which isn’t much.)

I’m not complaining.

Compared to Trump?

You betcha.

He’s only bad when he’s wrong, which isn’t often.

Mere facts are gold in this medium.

Forget the sixth extinction.

This is the sixth election since the “hanging chads” super-fiasco and its onramp to the New American Century.

What a rollercoaster ride it has been. Far surpassing any Ghost Train extravaganza.

We weren’t happy with Bill Clinton productions and the Freeh/Reno surveillance/shoot-the-civvie FBI. We didn’t know what would happen. Plus, the Internet has taken a turn for the worse.

Tits & ass & sultry glances? The sort of fempowerment I like.

But how do we know they aren’t trans?

Meanwhile Clown World Observer RT.com reports:

Drag queens ‘make history’ in Super Bowl advert as Corporate America toes the line on virtue-signaling

This week, the US marked yet another ‘cultural milestone’ as cross-dressing males were featured in an advert during Super Bowl LIV. Why are companies pandering to radical liberal agendas that risk alienating their consumer base?

This week I stumbled headlong into one of those jarring headlines, courtesy of The Washington Post, that was impossible to walk away from without medical attention: ‘Drag queens will make Super Bowl history in a hummus commercial.’ It’s these sorts of stories that make me remember exactly how long I’ve been away from home.

Someone out there can make a Jewish joke out of that, I’m sure.

How we needed up with such a ridiculously drawn out process is a mystery, although I have a guess (below).

Are you on a Kindle, too?

My understanding is that the rest of the world, even countries with equally corrupt political systems, has election campaigns of a month and then it’s (mercifully over).

I was taught that the UK’s parliamentary system was essentially a permanent campaign. Polls were constantly being taken, and when the government (i.e., administration) was doing particularly well, it would vote “no confidence” in itself and call an election. The opposition, and often the government itself, is perpetually in primary mode.

If you’re sick of constant politics, parliamentarianism is not where to go for relief.

Trump and Bloomberg are both weird exceptions to the rule.

The problem with American politics is a sociological one. Given the way our system works, you have to decide at a rather inappropriately young age that you are “leadership class,” and then you have to get into the game of promoting yourself as a leader, before you’ve had any time at all to do anything noteworthy, to build any kind of character outside your resume-building gig of climbing the ladder, to engage or involve yourself in any meaningful way with the lives of the people you seek to rule. Or even to seriously study philosophy, political theory and the history of religion or the history of science, in order to be in a position to speak with any sort of authority about what is good, what is knowable, what is not knowable, what is noble and what, maybe, is true.

Look at a guy like Pete Buttplug. He’s checked every single box that it’s possible to check, and yet he says and promotes ideas and things which are obviously false on their face. A teenage Mexican garage mechanic knows more home truths about American life than Mr. Buttplug.

Or look at the positively hateful shrike Hillary Clinton. This woman (?) has devoted her entire life to being a walking resume, and she has literally failed at every single thing she has ever put her hand to; and yet this perpetually wrong failure as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a fake assistant president, as a senator, as a Secretary of State, as a two-time loser presidential candidate, this absolute utter failure, this bitter alcoholic train-wreck of a human being, somehow still thinks we should listen to her opinions.

Go back to a Student Council, Pete and Hillary. The rest of us have a country to try and live in.

Continuing to think out loud, how about term limits? Are the people chosen in for life? Are they in for two or four years? If the former, then they become part of the swamp, de facto. If the latter, they will have no power at all—the unelected bureaucracy will rule. So, I guess the answer is somewhere in between.

the mind of a 14 year-old

That’s when the female brain reaches maturity. We (wise women included) are finaly coming around to that realization after 50 years (at least) of folly. Can anyone name a female candidate who does better?

They look a bit long in the tooth though. (Shakira (43); Hennifer (50).)

Cultural appropriation is acceptable when (((they))) do it.

The time would be 4 or 5 days before the general election.

This election is going to come down to turnout.

If Bernie gets screwed out of the nomination like he was in 16, his voters will most likely stay home. In 16, some stayed home but some voted Trump. I don’t think you will see as many Bernie supporters cross that line this time around.

Bernie is really Trump’s worst nightmare because of his populist stances, which overlap with Trump’s, at least Trump 16. Bernie will hammer him on his broken promises. Some Trump voters, particularly in the rust belt would come back to the Dems.

If Bernie survives and is the nominee, he becomes Trump 16. Upset special.

☆

The Giuliani plan was to make a splash in Florida…I don’t think he won a single delegate.

Not only did he fail to win a single delegate, his total percentage of the 2008 Republican Presidential primary vote, came to 2.8 percent.

But the result of this is that whoever survives should be temperamentally prepared to become the president.

I assume this is satire?

“Is Obama going to endorse Biden?”

No, but Obama will finally help Biden pick out a pair of sunglasses that best conceal early onset Alzheimer’s:

I don’t think it can be overstated just how much damage the Senates televised Trump impeachment proceedings have done to Biden. Joe is toast, Obama knows that. Hunter on the other hand, now has pretty good name recognition, and everybody loves a redemption story; maybe 2032 post gender reassignment?

FWIW, I’m really not too keen on making light of Alzheimer’s in general, and don’t have a visceral hate for poor Joe, but president for him is way beyond what principle, or is that ……pal, even Peter would consider advisable.

How the hell did they get a slot? They even had a TV show later, briefly. There ought to be a conspiracy theory about this.

It’s said that NY pols “don’t play well west of the Hudson” — and Bloomie doesn’t even play well west of the Hamptons. He is such a whiny gun-grabbing little wet blanket that “making it” to the debates might be the end for him, not the beginning.

To be fair, he does have successful real-world experience — very rare among this Dem field — and was not a bad mayor. He might not be too bad if the US had a city-manager form of government, with Bloomie as manager while we get to keep a strong personality like Trump as Prez.

If Coronavirus is serious enough that it causes a collapse in the economy because it’s that fatal, Boomers will likely put aside their second concern (muh 401k) for their first concern (never having to face their mortality).

They ain’t going to be pulling the lever for the party that insists America’s highest priority is More Sick Immigrants.

I want everyone who insisted Kamala Harris was a deadly threat to Trump to self identify this election cycle so we can all know the quality of your opinions TIA.

Pretty much a perfect ad to get people in Iowa pumped up pic.twitter.com/L8SBebT643

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 2, 2020

To go by Strauss & Howe (Generations, The Fourth Turning) terminology, Steve, the pre-boomers would be of the “Silent Generation”,

So Biden, Bernie, and Bloomberg are “Silent”?

Oh no, this does not mean they are silent, it only means they were silent, back in the day. Now they’ve grown up – and speak their minds. So – everything’s just smooth ‘n’ rolling’ with these guys. Relax. Take it easy: Sha – Na – Na-na!

Well it’s a damn good place to start. Just mildly discounting the very fact Bloomberg took a foreign title is enough for me. This isn’t birther-light, it’s a glaring example of what we must point out and not accept as Americans.

The left are losing their minds, calling President Trump; “Royalty”, or “A King”. “He’s abusing his Article 2 powers!” or “The president (sic) is a monarch now” etc.

Do you think Bloomberg could get a majority of the Congress to consent? Cortez? Tlaib? Sheila Jackson Lee or any of the other garden variety commies? I doubt it.

Wow! If this will not work (and it won’t) – nothing will (and it will!).

“Can anyone name a female candidate who does better?”

Desiderius, why yes, yes I can. London Breed, current mayor of San Francisco. Breed knows what is most important. That’s right, you guessed it, a shiny new basketball stadium:

London has the requisite bonafides to become the 1st SJW, POC, women president. She was raised by her grandmother. Her sister died of an overdose in 2006. Her brother, Napoleon Brown, was convicted of murder and is currently serving out a 44-year sentence (originally 42 years, but two years were added after Brown was caught doing heroin in prison).

At least the Italians got a little revenge in Barton Fink (compliments of the Cohen Bros, of course).

The Athenians avoided corruption in sortition by having a machine, a kleroterion, that randomly chose tokens representing people, and doing it publicly. Sort of the way our draft lottery worked.

Aristotle describes the process in his “Constitution of the Athenians”.

Most of the time, dropping out has to do with poll numbers and running out of money. The candidates who drop out before the voting starts are the ones who have trouble sustaining fundraising. The Democrats in this cycle had debate participation criteria related to getting a large number of suckers to give you money.

Scott Walker spent tons of money in the summer of 2015 because consultants were pushing him to do it and then couldn’t keep up with fundraising after the first debate and ended up dropping out. Meanwhile, Jeb still had plenty of cash when he dropped out after embarrassing showings in the vote New Hampshire and South Carolina. Based on the construction of the current system, donors play a large role in determining how long a candidate can go. It doesn’t have much to do with temperament.

OT:

https://nypost.com/2020/02/03/greta-thunberg-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize/

Does America have the world’s most protracted electoral process?

Yes.

Do we get much from the enormous amount of time we spend on it?

We? No, but the media and political consultants get beaucoup bucks. This is why they are so Anti-Trump; he deprived the US election industry of a couple billion dollars in 2016.

Bloomberg will run on gun control and open borders, both loser issues with most of the flyover electorate. He seems to be proposing a do-over of the Hillary campaign against Trump, without the kind of fanatical backing Hillary could count on to energize the left. Moreover, he is not a credible populist so he won’t get the Hillbilly elegy vote either. I think at this point Sanders is poised to win the nomination, and the old democrat guard will rally around him. If Sanders adopts a pro-US labor point of view, threatens the SiV league (Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Intel), and promises immigration reduction, he will be our next president.

Nightmare out-of-touch “okay boomer” piece about two suicidal cultists. In Birmingham, England, but totally applies here.
£6k = $7,893
£220,000 = $289,404
Just think, by becoming homeless and carless transients who must leech off their friends despite round the clock wageslaving, you too can go deeply into permanent debt in a ghetto!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7943991/Couple-reveal-bought-home-complete-master-bedroom-aged-19-20.html
But however for honest real talk though, why are young people unhappy?

OT but not OT

Women’s event disrupted by protestors. Must be Deplorables for sure?
Nope. Antifa!

The young Seattle Left attempting to disrupt a bunch of Boomer feminists over the issue of TERF’s and trans.

The Dem national convention might be pretty LIT!

If the conspiracy theorists are correct and Biden finishes fourth, this will be one of the biggest upsets in American political history.

The Klobe is surging, so Biden could actually come in 5th, LOL!

Poor Bernie, trying to get some black votes. What was he supposed to do when those fat black women grabbed his microphone?

Maybe body slam them and yell “outta my way, you fat black bitches”?? OK, unlikely but fun to picture.

Doesn’t everybody here secretly enjoy what a circus it is?

Speaking of Sha-Na-Na, the former lead singer “Bowser” has an interesting twitter feed. When I was a kid I assumed he was just some real NY Italian.

Like Steven Tyler?

From Bowzer’s Wikipedia page: “His nephew is Eric C. Bauman, chairman of the California Democratic Party."

The fakest thing about Sha Na Na is its name. In the period they were recreating, no group would have used a singular mass noun like that. It was always the Thisses or the Thats. Or the Joe Blow Combo.

The Kingston Trio or the Association was okay, as those are inherently plural, as are a Spoonful or a Cyrkle or Every Mother's Son more-or-less so. Various "Fives"– Dave Clark, We, The Count. But as late as 1966, the Who was pretty radically named.

https://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1965.htm

Within a year or two, you had Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Buffalo Springfield, It's a Beautiful Day, Procol Harum…

Around that time, the Hunt family revived one of the worst practices in sports– the singular team name. The Dallas Tornado was formed in 1967, and they had to correct reporters all the time. Names like that had apparently died out with the Providence Steam Roller of the leather-helmeted NFL. The Crimson Tide was grandfathered in.

Democrats wouldn’t be competitive today without diversity

On the national stage, without Hart-Celler the Democratic party wouldn’t even exist today.

A “black” quarterback just won the Super Bowl, so God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

Mahomes even laid out the reality for everyone in this quote: “For me, being a black quarterback — having a black dad and white mom — it just shows that it doesn’t matter where you come from.”

Not as simple as you think. I read an article last week about Mahomes being “controversial” because of some pro-law enforcement, pro-George Zimmerman (yes, THAT George Zimmerman) social media posts he made several years back.

Personally, since everything is going to get you cancelled no matter what (the only question is whether NOT celebrating gay pride month or Ta’Nieshi Coates half-birthday on Twitter gets you deplatformed this year, or in 2023) I’m going to recommend my my sons become social media outrage deflectors. Meaning, when some big shot has the Internet screaming for their heads, that’s the moment for them to do something completely legal yet way problematic and post it to Instagram, like shooting 3 lions on safari and then asking Twitter which 2 pelts least match the color scheme of his bonus room and should be tossed in a dumpster. “The name’s Abe Jr., social media deflector to the stars!”

They didn’t have to register for the draft.

What do Steyer and Pence have in common with all the female candidates, but none of the other men? Hint: they share this with Steve, and Scott Adams.

Penises?

Hilarious

Our protracted electoral process twice gave HRC the time she needed to thwart her handlers, gurus, and script-writers and and self-sabotage all over the national stage.

For that alone I am thankful.

What I really need to know before rocking the vote is whether a candidate has ever fat-shamed someone, but especially if that someone is in the professional entertainment industry and so is most at-risk.

If you watch that Bernie video, at the 6 second point, Trump is shown giving a speech at a podium and then suddenly jumping in panic as though Bernie is behind him. In real life that footage was taken from a real rally in 2016 when Thomas DiMassimo, probably a Bernie Bro, tried to race the stage to attack Trump.

For those who forgot about this event in 2016, here is a quick news @J.Ross