All things considered, Sanders did decently.
That said, that "all things considered" is pretty big. The New York Times reports that his campaign was largely unprepared for the multiple dropouts of Steyer, Klobuchar and Buttigieg, with the second and third then swiftly endorsing Biden, who was joined here in Tex-ass by Bob on a Knob O'Rourke.
That doesn't really surprise me. I've blogged and Tweeted before about how the campaign staff, which having plenty of enthusiasm, AND seeing some of the shenanigans of 2016, not just by national Democrats, but the Iowa party then over caucuses, the Nevada party over some specific voting issues plus, paralleling the party and not officially denounced by it as a lie, the chair-throwing claim, etc.
Per the old gray lady, Harry Reid called Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir before any of the dropouts, letting him know that he was going to endorse Biden. That should have been DEFCON 3 right there. Love him, hate him, or some of both, but nobody has ever successfully claimed that Reid doesn't know his way around the world of political machinations. His call for party unity for anybody who had an outright majority, issued a week ago, may have been the buttering up to ease the thrust of the shiv.
Meanwhile, Puny Pete, Klobberin Klobuchar and Bob on a Knob swapped old lies for new on Biden, as Newsweek shows the receipts.
And "considering" running ads in Michigan about Biden's NAFTA support, but still worried about direct attacks? Shakir and others need to either shit or get off the pot.
The ONLY good thing so far appears to be Sanders himself trying to wedge between other candidates' supporters and the candidates themselves.
Meanwhile, Biden's explosion coincided with Warren's continued implosion, as he beat her in her now-home state of Massachusetts. If she's still in the race as of the time these words hit cyberspace, it's purely due to petulance, presumably against Sanders. That ALSO said, Biden, not Sanders, winning Massachusetts is also a symbol Bernie needs to suck it up.
Politico reports that Sanders's campaign has a new game plan with a mix of harder elbows where needed and a kinder, gentler Bernie where needed. The piece goes on to reference the myth of the unchangeable Bernie by wondering if Bernie won't stubbornly go off script. He might stubbornly go off script. But, unchangeable? The Sanders of 1975 would probably laugh at the Sanders of 1998, or 2010, for pandering to gun owners, for example.
The bigger issue may be, per Eric Levitz, that as much as Bernie might like the underdog and outsider images, he overplayed his hand after the Nevada win. This is a must-read piece for all sorts of independent thinking left-liberals and leftists. Question: Per Politico's piece, can Sanders' campaign staff — and Bernie himself — incorporate some of these ideas into the new game plan?
And, following up on a Rolling Stone piece from last week about mediocre Democratic turnout? Sanders' youth movement was kind of a bust at the polls Super Tuesday, USA Today reports. I agree with a bit of analysis in the piece, too. This is why calls to further lower the voting age are stupid. IF, even by Sanders, youth voting surges can't be sustained, then let's not pretend otherwise. Maybe it's even time to resurrect the old #slacktivism tag while noting the old generalization that youth is wasted on the young.
Disagree?
Well, as Aristotle may have said about 2,400 years ago: "καταβηθι του χορτου μου" or something like that.
Texas level races
Related? Sorry, Sema Hernandez, but aim your sights a little lower in whatever your next race is. Kissing the ass of Bob on a Knob O'Rourke and the state Democratic establishment got you nowhere. I mean, you finished behind Annie "Mama" Garcia, for doorknob's sake. I am sure that I was at least partially right (as was Kuff, and deal with it, Brains) on your likely heritage-influenced results in 2018.
And, this time around, you raised less than $8K, despite basically never leaving the race after election day 2018, as of your last FEC report. Of course, the last FEC report on file isn't the last one that SHOULD be on file, as you missed two reports after that. It's also less money than Annie "Mama" Garcia raised. And, yeah, Brains had fun with post-election mocking, but, other than being more about Medicare access for all rather than Medicare for all, her platform was to the left of anybody else not named Sema.
Finally, a friendly reminder that NO Democratic Senate candidate was where they need to be, or said much about, Israel.
Othewr than Hegar? ConservaDem Henry Cuellar beat off his primary challenger. And in general, Democrats did "OK."
The Twitterverse and primary Fauxtrage
Next, a mix of actual outrage plus Fauxtrage on social media.
Jordan Charlton gets suspended from Twitter for accurately quoting Biden about "Super Thursday." Twitter eventually admits its mistake and unsuspends him.
But, the outrage has gone to Fauxtrage, and yes, I participated.
So, as I later said:
Twitter has been beaten up enough. #FreeJordan is a thing.https://t.co/nPafLjDOSJ— Super Dooper for #SuperTuesday 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) March 4, 2020
That said, why does it take Fox News to announce this?
Why can't the fuck-ups here at Twitter post that and pin it for a trending item?
For all the #DeleteFacebook people who remain on Twitter, this itself illustrates Twitter's own problems to a T.
Facebook corporately and Hucksterman individually are a moral cancer.
Twitter and Jack aren't big enough to be anywhere near the size to be such a level of moral cancer, but they're just fucking incompetent.
As for Jordan Charlton? Remember that The Young Turks dumped him over sexual misconduct allegations that ... kind of faded away but who knows?
Also remember that both he and TYT operate strictly within and inside the duopoly orbit.
Finally, remember that most Gnu Media have a high self-aggrandizement level. (Yet another reason why I don't favor a version of basic income like that promoted by Scott Santens.) That's reflected in the Fox piece. Charlton claims the outrage his fans generated got him out of Twitter jail after just 5 hours of a 12-hour sentence. Twitter claims it recognized the error on its own. The truth probably is somewhere in between, or at a triangulated third point.
I "threatened" Tuesday afternoon that, should I be around in four years, I would snooze my Twitter account during that election season. It sounds more and more tempting.
The post-mortem has me doing this even more.
Biden voters as well as Berners claiming conspiracy over ballot order when voting. Read Texas law, then read Aristotle above before commenting.
#RiggedPrimary then trending on Twitter.
No, no, no, if one means the sense of Gab-ber Jared Beck and his DNC Fraud Lawsuit. Going way back to Will Rogers being "a Democrat ... not a member of any organized party," Democrats are too disorganized to pull off a stunt like this. Crowdstrike letting the DNC get hacked when the Russians tried the same on the Republicans and, overall, failed. (They did; shut up.) NGP VAN letting the Bernie staffer in 2015 peek at stuff unknowingly also comes to mind. The idea that Democrats are organized enough to rig elections SHOULD be laughable after the Iowa caucuses.
Sadly, the actual likely conspiracy of endorsements has people not seeing straight beyond it.
And, speaking of conspiracy theories, it's probably easier, or "easier" to retweet this:
I "threatened" Tuesday afternoon that, should I be around in four years, I would snooze my Twitter account during that election season. It sounds more and more tempting.
The post-mortem has me doing this even more.
Biden voters as well as Berners claiming conspiracy over ballot order when voting. Read Texas law, then read Aristotle above before commenting.
#RiggedPrimary then trending on Twitter.
No, no, no, if one means the sense of Gab-ber Jared Beck and his DNC Fraud Lawsuit. Going way back to Will Rogers being "a Democrat ... not a member of any organized party," Democrats are too disorganized to pull off a stunt like this. Crowdstrike letting the DNC get hacked when the Russians tried the same on the Republicans and, overall, failed. (They did; shut up.) NGP VAN letting the Bernie staffer in 2015 peek at stuff unknowingly also comes to mind. The idea that Democrats are organized enough to rig elections SHOULD be laughable after the Iowa caucuses.
Sadly, the actual likely conspiracy of endorsements has people not seeing straight beyond it.
And, speaking of conspiracy theories, it's probably easier, or "easier" to retweet this:
Twitter is censoring Progressive accounts. I cannot retweet more than once every 5 minutes and I cannot follow anyone. There are many others this is happening to. @bourgeoisalien pic.twitter.com/ZkdqFmem25— Jacqueline Bouvier (@jackiembouvier) March 6, 2020
Rather than accept that you might have hit either an overall follow limit or a rate of new followers limit.
Such limits do exist, of course. And it took me 10 seconds of Teh Google to find that. As well as to find information that Twitter limits your daily Tweeting and breaks that daily limit into half-hour time blocks.
As of right now, Ms. Bouvier wasn't at the 5K limit, but at nearly 4,500, she may have been yesterday, or else she hit the new follower rate limit. The reality if, of course, that she wouldn't have 30K followers if Twitter were censoring her.
Per the embedded Tweet, it's most likely that, at or near the 5K limit (her numbers have changed since I first posted this) she was hitting her Tweeting limits.
There's the added irony, or hypocrisy, that Twitter has these limits to restrict paid human accounts and pure bots, and that many Berners in the previous week or two complained about Bloomberg buying followers.
I may wind up making this, with yet more material, into a separate blog post.
Per the embedded Tweet, it's most likely that, at or near the 5K limit (her numbers have changed since I first posted this) she was hitting her Tweeting limits.
There's the added irony, or hypocrisy, that Twitter has these limits to restrict paid human accounts and pure bots, and that many Berners in the previous week or two complained about Bloomberg buying followers.
I may wind up making this, with yet more material, into a separate blog post.
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