I guess the Iowa counting is done now. Here's how the establishment cheated Bernie. In the first round, he received 43,699 votes (24.7%) to Mayo Pete's 37,596 votes (21.3%). In the second round Bernie received 45,842 votes (26.5%) to Mayo's 43,274 votes (25.1%). As you know 43,699 and 24.7% are more than 37,596 and 21.3% and 45,842 and 26.5% are more than 43,274 25.1%. But the Iowa Democratic establishment awarded Mayo 13 delegates and Bernie 12 delegates. Sounds similar to how Trump got into the White House with 62,984,828 votes (46.1%) even though Hillary won 65,853,514 votes (48.2%). Except in the case of Iowa, the decision to cheat the winner had nothing to do with anyone but the Democratic Party. This should be the last time Iowa gets the first in the nation slot.So what happens in New Hampshire today?The Real Clear Politics polling average:
• Bernie- 26.6% with last minute positive momentum• Mayo- 21.3% with last minute negative momentum• Elizabeth- 13.1% with last minute negative momentum• Status Quo Joe- 12.9% with last minute negative momentum• Klobuchar- 9.6% with last minute positive momentum
The final Emerson tracking poll (Sunday) shows Bernie way ahead but doesn't pick up on the turn-around towards Mayo after a p.r. drubbing over the weekend. It also shows Klobuchar with the biggest moment, vaulting into third place, significantly ahead of Elizabeth and Status Quo Joe's whose campaign seems to have petered out entirely.A Boston Globe poll by Suffolk Sunday also had Bernie way ahead with 27% (up 3), with Mayo trailing with 19% (down 3), Klobuchar in 3rd place, closing on Mayo with 14% (up 5), Elizabeth and Biden each falling further behind with 12%.Politico's headline emphasized that the conservatives are brawling among each other while Bernie is "gliding" towards a win in New Hampshire. Holly Otterbein and Stephanie Murray noted that superPAC money from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party smeared Bernie to the tune of $800,000 in TV ads during the last week of the Iowa caucuses-- using GOP talking points and insisting he couldn't beat Trump. But... "Here in New Hampshire, the opposite has happened: The airwaves are free of anti-Sanders spots in the days before the first-in-the-nation-primary" while the conservatives, in their words, "shank each other," raising concerns-- if not panic-- among the pro-Wall Street Democrats who control the party machinery. One of them-- too frightened to speak on the record-- told Otterbein that "It’s fratricide at the moment. It’s super bad. Too many mods against Bernie and a fading Warren. Very, very scary," referring to corrupt conservatives as "mods."
Tom Steyer is largely training his advertising firepower onto Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. The former vice president is mocking Buttigieg’s experience and targeting him in a digital spot. Fighting back against Biden, the ex-mayor says he’s tired of being a punchline....Sanders, who is campaigning at 10 stops across the state this weekend, has been boasting about those establishment jitters on the trail.“We’re taking on not only the whole Republican political establishment and Trump, we’re taking on the Democratic establishment!” he said to cheers at a canvass launch Sunday afternoon. “And as some of you may have noticed, Democratic establishment’s getting a little bit nervous.”He drew out the word “little” jokingly, adding that he’s also up against Wall Street, insurance companies and the fossil fuel industry....Steyer is airing an ad on television in New Hampshire, which flashes images of Buttigieg and Biden as a narrator states, “We simply can’t afford to nominate another insider or an untested newcomer who doesn’t have the experience to beat Trump on the economy.”Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren also criticized Buttigieg on the debate stage Friday over his experience and racial disparities in his mayoral administration. And Biden’s team released an ad online Saturday, widely viewed to be the most negative spot by a 2020 candidate so far, which said that while Biden helped pass the Affordable Care Act, Buttigieg was installing decorative lights under bridges. It has more than 4 million views....A post-debate poll by FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that Sanders received the highest rating for his debate performance.Scott Ferson, a Boston-based Democratic strategist who is leading an outreach effort to engage independent voters in New Hampshire, said Klobuchar could gain from Buttigieg and Biden attacking each other."I tend to think it's sort of a pox on both their houses as they start doing this back-and-forth,” he said. “That always tends to benefit sort of who hasn't been touched, who's coming on strong, who's improving. And I think, frankly, who I've seen improve the most has been Amy Klobuchar.”Mark Mellman, president of the Democratic Majority for Israel, argued that his super PAC’s anti-Sanders attack ad in Iowa cut into his momentum. It said that a socialist could not defeat Trump and referenced his October heart attack.“He still has a chance to win the nomination. But without our ad, he would have come out of Iowa with a significant lead on every metric and would likely duplicate that result in New Hampshire and Nevada,” he said. “At that point he would have been very difficult to stop. In part because of our ad, he still has a real fight on his hands.”Mellman said that his organization “won’t be airing any ads in New Hampshire and haven’t made final decisions beyond that.”Already, there are whispers about attack ads being cut against Sanders so they can air in Nevada if he emerges from New Hampshire triumphant.“We expect that wealthy special interests will do everything to stop Bernie Sanders,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ senior adviser.
Also in Politico Monday morning, was a piece by Michael Kruse asking if the Democratic Party is now Bernie's. "He won the most votes in Iowa a week ago," wrote Kruse, "a result that seems clear in spite of the botched caucuses. He’s leading in more and more polls, at times trailing only Joe Biden, whose campaign seems to be wheezing. And he has become nothing short of a grassroots fundraising colossus, the possessor of a reservoir of resources that could let him run forever. In this panicky, high-stakes race to take on an emboldened Donald Trump in November, Sanders is positioned as well as, if not better than, any of his many competitors to be the Democratic nominee. That this man, who has spent most of his life spurning and disparaging the Democratic Party, who is only semi-nominally even a member of the party and who is reviled by some of its biggest names, could be by summer its titular head is a prospect few would believe possible. That is, if they hadn’t seen Trump do something similar in 2016: The ultimate anti-establishment outsider, the almost ridiculous choice in fact becoming the choice. The seriousness of Sanders’ chances can be measured in relation to the apoplexy he’s started to generate among stalwart operatives. Bernie Sanders? “Having him for president of the United States?” longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said when we talked last week. 'Are you fucking kidding me?'""Regardless, though, of what happens Tuesday and from here, Sanders, already more than any other 2020 candidate, has shaped the ideological tenor of Democrats’ lumbering primary process-- more even than he did in ’16," wrote Kruse. "His 'Medicare for All' proposal, the linchpin of his expansive progressive agenda, has served as the policy position around which the other top candidates have defined themselves. Add in the poll numbers for Elizabeth Warren, another left-of-center Democrat angling for giant structural change, and the upper tier of the Democratic field leans more toward Sanders than it does Joe Biden. And he has ensured his stamp will remain on campaigns still to come. By far the most prominent surrogate in the field is Sanders’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term, just-turned-30 congresswoman from New York City who could be his granddaughter-- and whom Sanders supporters and, in particular, his legions of millennials view as proof that all of this is not about just an individual but rather a movement that has altered the contours of liberal politics and is nowhere close to done."UPDATE: Dixville NotchDixville Notch, a very Republican town, gave the winless night to the most Republican of the candidates running in the Democratic primary. But don't worry, Dixville Notch's midnight primary only predicts GOP winners and never Democratic winners. Between 1968 and 2012, the candidate with the plurality of Dixville Notch's voters was the eventual Republican nominee for president. On the Democratic side, however, they usually get it all wrong and their winners wind up in the also-ran category. Bill Bradley won in 2000, for example and four years later it was Wesley Clark-- who received just 13% of the vote statewide and placed third in New Hampshire.
