Ready The Clown Car: The First Batch of Democrats Are Ready To Announce Their 2020 Bids

At least I am bringing the beef. Rather than the same old nothingburger that so many other posters bring around here.

 

Here is a good article at the National Review that argues that Kamala Harris is marginalizing herself and her chances by playing to the far left wing of the party. This seems right to me.

Kamala Harris Is Undermining Her Campaign

The California senator had a golden opportunity to emerge as a formidable contender. Instead, she’s marginalized herself by pandering to her party’s extreme.

If there was a primary for the most self-destructive presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California would be the front-runner of the 2020 field. Instead of leveraging her profile as a pragmatic prosecutor who has distinguished herself in the Senate as a tough litigator of top Trump officials, she’s run a campaign that has embraced seemingly every half-baked idea from the party’s left wing.

Supporting Medicare-for-all legislation that would all but eliminate private health insurance? Check. Decriminalize sex work? On it. Reparations for the descendants of slaves? Let’s study it. Criticize Rep. Ilhan Omar for invoking anti-Semitic tropes that even the Democratic party leadership condemned? Hard pass. Voting rights for the Boston bomber? Let’s talk about it, at least before backtracking the next day.

{More at the link}​

Of course she will play the race card, no matter what. But her path to victory is not to out-left all of the other candidates. Whether she can change course at this point and repair her trajectory, I do not know. But she has the capacity to be one of the leading candidates for the Democrat party nomination this year if she does. If she stays on the path she has been on, she is very likely going to be an early out.

Don't get me wrong. I am not a Kamala Harris supporter. But based on the character of the Democrat left base and those who are likely to vote in the primaries, she could be a top contender for the votes of these people, if she would just get her act together.

 

Monmouth: Biden 33, Sanders 15, Harris 11, Warren 10, Buttigieg 6 | More

 

'Spirituality guru' Marianne Williamson has apparently satisfied the requirements for participating in the first debate next month.

Spirituality guru Marianne Williamson locks in 2020 debate spot

Marianne Williamson, a self-help author and failed congressional candidate running an upstart campaign for president, is virtually ensured a spot in the first series of Democratic debates next month. Williamson has met both thresholds of the Democratic National Committee’s criteria for qualifying for the debates: polling and fundraising. That’s after a Monmouth University poll released Thursday showed her at 1 percent — the third poll to do so this year, meeting the DNC’s low bar for qualification.

Williamson, a friend of Oprah Winfrey and a spirituality guru, has centered her campaign on a theme of love.

According to a POLITICO analysis, 19 candidates have met at least one threshold. Williamson joins Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O'Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang in the group of candidates who have met both, all of whom are virtually guaranteed to make it to the first debate stage. A maximum of 20 candidates will be on the debate stage, with the field split randomly between the first and second night.​

It appears that New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is having trouble making the cut. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has all but conceded that he will not meet the criteria for participating in the first debate.

 

James Carville is apparently a supporter of Joe Biden. He believes that Joe Biden represents "stability" and not generational change.

James Carville: Biden represents 'stability' not 'generational change'

Democratic strategist James Carville said in an interview that aired Sunday that former Vice President Joe Biden represents what Democrats have been familiar with rather than "generational change"

"Biden represents stability...but doesn't represent generational change," Carville told radio host John Catsimatidis that aired on AM 970 in New York.

"The field's going to wind down pretty quick I think," Carville said, referring to the two dozen people in the race. "It's really a question of Biden and everybody else and can Biden stay in the lead or does he falter and then one of these other people come charging from behind."​

Is that what Democrats want this time around? Stability and not change?

Carville goes on to make some insightful observations about Joe's ability to hang on and not falter, allowing one of his competitors to come charging from behind to win the nominations. This looks like a very legitimate concern, especially if Biden is going to run a campaign on a platform of "Stability".

 

Look over here! Democratic candidates struggle for recognition in outsize field

Some contenders are having a tough time busting out. Experts say that's what happens when there are too many choices.

 

The DNC is raising the bar to qualify for the third and fourth debates, which are scheduled to be held in September and October. Currently, only 8 candidates would make the cut:

DNC makes it more difficult to qualify for 3rd debate

Unlike the first and second rounds of debates, when candidates must cross either a donor or polling threshold to qualify, candidates will need to surpass both bars to make the stage for the third and fourth debates. For the September event, candidates will have to hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls, versus 1 percent in three polls for the first debates, and they will need 130,000 individual donors, up from 65,000.

Although the polling threshold increase is modest, it could represent a significant barrier for many candidates who have struggled to hit that mark in early polling.

According to a POLITICO analysis, just eight candidates have received more than 2 percent of support in four early polls: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas.​

 

Elizabeth Warren gets KO'd by radio host 'Charlamagne Tha God', probably permanently, when he confronts her about her attempt to claim to be a "Person of color', when she obviously isn't. Charlamagne suggested that Warren is actually the 'original Rechel Dolezal'.



Someone come flying in to Warren's defense if you like, but that looks like the most devastating political one liner I have seen since Lloyd Benson took down Dan Quayle with the observation that he is 'No Jack Kennedy".

Pocahontas apparently was formerly a registered Republican, and here struggles to explain that.



Seriously, she needs to get out. Now. Warren is finished.