I once vaporized a nationally known California politician’s entire donor database. All of it, including what looked like half of Hollywood. One wrong key stroke and it was gone. I can’t tell you what that first minute was like. Luckily IT had archived an older version and I was able to recreate it over the next few days.
Eek.
Bernie did great today and he did really well in Nevada last time too. I’m not sure if he matched today the numbers he got four years ago. But he was the only one this year who had an organization already in place. I would have been flabbergasted if he hadn’t done this well.
I don’t think you all appreciate just how catastrophically disorganized the Democrats are on the ground this year. Bernie’s ground game, as they call it, is a mess compared to say, Obama’s or even Jimmy Carter’s was 44 years ago. Yet Bernie’s is by far the best there is. There has been a complete breakdown in the way nomination campaigns are run this season. This is completely opposite the way that the Democrats ran their campaigns in 2018. You can’t even believe it’s the same party. I’m not sure what this means for the fall campaign.
This was only round one in Nevada, incidentally. Next round is the county conventions in March. The final round in April at the state convention. That’s when the delegates are chosen. Each round in 2016 was more bitter and angry than the one before. A lot of drinking was involved.
I think because nearly all the press are new on the beat the presidential election beat this year, they report each event as if it were the first time ever. I’ve never seen a campaign with so little sense of the past before. Indeed this might be the only thing you’ll see on the Nevada caucuses today that mentions 2016. It’ll certainly be the only one that mentions that until 1980 Nevada had a very competitive and very simple primary without any of this ridiculous caucus crap. I remember Jerry Brown won it in the wild 1976 campaign. But none of that ever happened apparently. Welcome to the Digital Age.
On now to South Carolina where Tom Steyer is likely to get the third most delegates. Like I said, welcome to the Digital Age.
I see why you’re a Sanders supporter I said to the Sanders supporter. You don’t have to insult me, she said. I said it wasn’t meant as an insult. I meant that based on your stated positions, I see why you support Bernie Sanders. Well it sure sounded like an insult, she said.
Politics has gotten so toxic on the Democratic side of the internet that I’ll be likely foregoing any comment here until safely after the convention. And it’s not even the New Hampshire primary yet. I had been planning to do a running commentary on this blog on the nomination race up through the last contest–the Virgin Islands caucus on June 7th–but damn, it’s the French Revolution out there.
See you in September.
Brick
I just looked at the 2020 Democratic schedule and only three states are holding caucuses this year. Iowa’s is still melting under the media glare. Nevada (36 delegates), if they’re using their traditional three step, three month process might see the same sort of press and social media cataclysm that leveled Iowa (41 delegates). I remember when Nevada used to have a primary. Wyoming (14 delegates) will likely be too late in the season and too small a game to notice. Only three non-state caucuses are happening this year: American Samoa (6 delegates), Guam (7) and the Virgin Islands (7), each of which might find themselves under the glare of media due to the magic of Twitter. It’s Twitter that fueled the hysteria over Iowa, incidentally. Every second—probably quite literally every second—a breaking news item was tweeted by a vast herd of reporters on the ground or in the ether. And just for old times sake the Northern Marianas will be selecting their six delegates to the Democratic National Convention at a territorial convention, just like in The Man Who Killed Liberty Valence.
What an excruciatingly dull time this is turning out to be. Everything is anger and agitprop, and the not particularly bright people on all sides have found their voices and shout down all shades of in between. You know what the news will say before you turn it on, you know what opinions people will have before they utter them, you know how every movie will end. Everything is political, objectivity is betrayal, shading is cowardice. I’ve always thought times like this would be exciting and brilliant, but no, it’s just angry and artless jabbering.
I don’t know how people can stand watching nomination debates. They are ludicrous. And then all the next day arguing on their finer points is even sillier. We have a president who is disintegrating with dementia and has absolute control of the workings of his Administration, a desperate impeachment battle that is an existential threat to that demented president, corruption beyond belief orchestrated by the Oval Office and being exposed daily if not hourly, a Mid East situation unraveling as fast as electrons can travel and fifty hydrogen bombs being held as pawns by the Turkish strongman….and we have people bickering over who said what in another almost entirely meaningless Democratic debate. A lot of woke people need to wake the fuck up.
Meanwhile at the Democratic debate…
I don’t know how people can stand watching nomination debates. They are ludicrous. And then all the next day arguing on their finer points is even sillier. We have a president who is disintegrating with dementia and has absolute control of the workings of his Administration, a desperate impeachment battle that is an existential threat to that demented president, corruption beyond belief orchestrated by the Oval Office and being exposed daily if not hourly, a Mid East situation unraveling as fast as electrons can travel and fifty hydrogen bombs being held as pawns by the Turkish strongman….and we have people bickering over who said what in another almost entirely meaningless Democratic debate. A lot of woke people need to wake the fuck up.
I thought Kamala said prepositions so I said mine are off, out and gegenüber just because we don’t have a gegenüber and if Chris Cuomo thinks he’s sorry, I’m getting hate mail from my high school German teacher.
If Trump were granddad we’d assume he was well into the dementia of Alzheimer’s. His behavior is so perfectly symptomatic. It would be by far the most likely diagnosis for a man his age. Why it is beyond the pale of decency to say so completely mystifies me.
His supporters will tell you he’s a genius, that he knows exactly what he’s doing. The rest of us think he’s making logical if evil decisions. But he’s not either. He is demented. Literally demented. He is not all there. He’s a vile man who’s become a vile demented man. Jimmy Carter, were he similarly afflicted, would be a sweet demented man. Carter is not so afflicted, though. But Trump is not far from the permanent care stage. Reagan too was afflicted. But he, personally, was a nice guy and not prone to being a public asshole. He had a fiercely protective wife and not one who detests him. And most importantly Reagan had a fully functioning and staffed administration. I may have loathed the Reagan Administration with every fiber of my being but they were a working executive branch. Even towards the end of his second term when Reagan really was not all there anymore he was mostly kept from view so not to impair the appearance of being an administration is full control of its executive functions. Now it’s the madness of King George all over again. King George III recovered from his first bout and reigned successfully for a long spell till madness swallowed him whole and he spent his last decades locked up in regal splendor stark raving bonkers. But Trump will not recover even temporarily. If nothing else kills him first, the Alzheimer’s will.
That shouting you hear is the 25th Amendment trying to get our attention.
Brick's Politics 