A new Economist/YouGov poll, out yesterday, shows Bernie with his first national double digit lead in their extensive surveys of American voters.
• Bernie- 30%• Status Quo Joe- 20%• Elizabeth- 16%• Bloomberg- 11%• Mayo Pete- 9%• Klobuchar- 4%• Tulsi- 4%• Steyer- 1%
The poll also shows there are two candidates who large pluralities of Democrats do not want to see as the nominee-- Bloomberg (44%) and Tulsi (43%). When asked who could probably beat Trump, Democrats thought Bernie's the most likely.Just as Pelosi was telling reporters that she is comfortable with Bernie as a potential nominee and that she doesn't think he would jeopardize the House majority, the NY Times published corporate shill Thomas Friedman's latest anti-Bernie screed favoring the status quo, the plaintive whine of the economic royalists. "If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that? That’s all I am thinking about right now. My short answer is that the Democrats have to do something extraordinary-- forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before. And that’s true even if Democrats nominate someone other than Bernie Sanders."The South Carolina debate was too horrible to write about. All you had to know was that the Democratic Party sold all the tickets for between $1,750 dollars to $3,200 to understand why it was such an anti-Bernie/anti-Elizabeth audience, booing and screaming like animals-- the Bloomberg Bros in action. And speaking of Bloomberg, one of the debate "highlights" came from an oligarch slip of the tongue... "All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough... I, I got them."Well, Bloomberg didn't buy them all of course, but he did buy the ones who vote like Republicans. The one he's 100% responsible for-- literally she would NOT have won without Bloomberg money's last minute sneak attack-- was Oklahoma Blue Dog Kendra Horn. Horn beat GOP incumbent Steve Russell 121,149 (50.7%) to 117,811 (49.3%). Russell won massively in Pottawatomie and Seminole counties but in Oklahoma City, Horn scraped by and that's where most of the voters live. Horn out-spent Russell $1,184,294 to $885,831. But what won the election for her was a last minute $430,481 independent expenditure (TV advertising) by Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC. This was the Bloomberg ad that inundated Oklahoma City TV the week before the election, which had nothing to do with Congress, that killed Russell's reelection chances:Horn, of course, m immediately started voting with Republicans against anything and everything that smacked of progressivism. Within a month of being sworn in, she already had an "F" rated voted record! Today there are only 2 Democrats-- fellow Blue Dogs Anthony Brindisi and Joe Cunningham-- who have worse records! Since getting into Congress, she's voted more conservatively than conservative Republican Thomas Massie and her record is more similar to Republican Brian Fitzpatrick's than it is to even almost any Blue Dog other than Brindisi and Cunningham. The Democratic Party would absolutely be better off without her. To Horn, union organizing and raising the minimum wage are communism.In 2016 Bernie won the Oklahoma primary 174,054 (51.9%) to 139,338 (41.5%). But Bernie didn't just win in Oklahoma, he got more votes than Ted Cruz, who won the GOP primary and more votes than Trump (130,141), who came in second. As you know Trump went on to eviscerate Hillary in the general-- 65.3% to 28.9%. Needless to say, while Oklahomans were voting for Bernie and for change, Horn was fighting with all her Blue Dog strength to back Hillary and the status quo. A week or so after the election in 2018, when I covered Horn's shocking win, I noted that "there was no blue wave in Oklahoma. Democrats did badly in virtually every race but the stunning OK-05 Oklahoma victory. They lost a net of 3 seats in the state House, where there are now 76 Republicans and only 25 Democrats. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Drew Edmondson carried only 4 of 77 counties, but one was Oklahoma County which makes up 90% of CD-05. Although he lost the state by a 12 margin, he carried Oklahoma County by the same margin. His coattails did wonders for Horn, who carried Oklahoma County by a 2% margin. She sounds exactly like someone who will go straight to the backbenches, make no impact and be defeated in the next red wave, if not before."Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC spent $38,123,497 bolstering Democrats in 2018 and not a nickel was spent on a progressive. Bloomberg was lying when he said he elected 40 members. 21 of the candidates he spent money on won. Only 2 of the 21 don't have "F" scores. These were the House races where they spent:
• Katie Hill (New Dem-CA)- $5,096,135 -- F• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- $4,459,937 -- F• Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)- $2,910,081 -- F• Steve Horsford (New Dem-NV)- $2,834,051 -- F• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MN)- $2,433,181 -- F• Haley Stevens- (New Dem-MI)- $2,220,429 -- F• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- $2,219,630 -- F• Lauren Underwood (D-IL)- $2,159,925 -- F• Jennifer Wexton (New Dem-VA)- $1,711,024 -- F• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)- $130,000 (+ $1,256,262 from Bloomberg's anti-gun PAC) -- F• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- $1,453,541 -- F• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)- $1,335,517 -- F• Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)- $1,320,323 -- F• Mike Levin (D-CA)- $1,061,877 -- C• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)- $999,171 -- F• Kendra Horn- (Blue Dog-OK)- $430,481 -- F• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)- $244,583 -- F• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- $130,879 -- F• Chrissy Houlahan (Blue Dog-PA)- $212,766 -- F• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- $646,755 -- F• Donna Shalala (New Dem-FL)- $162,289 -- C• Nancy Soderberg (FL)- $1,624,107-- Lost• Carolyn Long (WA)- $1,260,858-- Lost• Carolyn Bourdeaux- $1,050,921-- Lost
Bloomberg and his sleazy PAC didn't help any of the good freshmen of course-- none of the ones with "A"- or even"B"-rated voting records like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Andy Levin, Ilhan Omar, Chuy Garcia, Mary Gay Scanlon, Veronica Escobar, Sylvia Garcia, Deb Haaland, Madeleine Dean, Jahana Hayes... So when he said "all," he was lying, as he tends to do in a very Trumpian mode, the way entitled billionaires always lie. And when he said he bought 40, he was also lying. He only bought half that number. The shitty candidates in red are the ones who have already endorsed Bloomberg by the way.