2020 presidential nomination

Cory Booker by Nancy Ohanian-by EmorejThe 1st miracle of the 2016 Bernie-supporting (& Stein-voting) Rosario Dawson has been to enable Cory Booker to sound sincere, in saying:

Marianne Williamson is not a member of the Inside the Beltway Club, and the Democratic establishment-- including their media allies and polling firms-- have largely blacked her out and pretended her campaign doesn't exist. (That said, she will be a guest on Morning Joe tomorrow.) When some random polls do include her, she always polls ahead of the 1% crowd, even U.S. senators like Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar and Reps like John Delaney and Julian Castro.

A couple of scholarsDo you know who Willie Brown, now 85 years old, is-- apart from having once been Kamala Harris' boyfriend and political benefactor? At one time he was the most powerful Democratic politician in California.

One thing Pete's got is the killer p.r. consultant, Lis Smith If you've never heard me railing about identity politics, you're probably just discovering DWT. If I were running for office I would tell people to vote for me because I support the Green New Deal, Medicare-For-All, a livable minimum wage, fair taxation, the re-institution of free state colleges and universities...

Is there any nice way to turn down an endorsement?Obama's endorsement is going to be meaningful for the 2020 primary. If, as I think is likely, he decides not to endorse, it looks like a slap in the face to Status Quo Joe. If he endorses Biden, it will be something but... not that much because... didn't he have to? But if he endorses someone else-- whoa!

Gillibrand rarely gets out of zero percent in any presidential polls and when she does, it's to briefly hit one percent before sinking back to where she richly deserves to be. Democratic primary voters don't want her as president (or vice president) but she doesn't want to see it. Awesome; she has earned the frustration she must be feeling now.

Biden still hasn't announced and people-- albeit not Wall Street-- are already sick of him. According to CNN polling, Biden's favorable numbers have been declining since people started looking into his actual record. In October of 2018 he was the favorite candidate of 33% of Democrats. That dropped to 30% in December and now stands at 28%.

One of my friends called the other day and reminded me that I had first met Barack Obama when he was a state senator, soon after I had discovered that he wasn't an Israeli Irishman. He was running for the U.S. Senate and conventional wisdom said he had no chance at all. He was in 4th place in an 8 person race. Some friends and I put on a fundraiser for him here in L.A. where his presentation stunned everyone in the room. I recall that it cost $75 to get in. After he was done speaking, there was not a single flat surface in the house that wasn't taken by someone writing another check.

Cory Booker by Nancy OhanianI was never much of a Cory Booker fan. Before he decided to be progressive-- for whatever reason and for however long his commitment turns out to be-- he was an unabashed Wall Street whore, a charter school fanatic and a loony Zionist.

by Thomas NeuburgerShort and dirty. Via David Dayen, writing at the American Prospect (emphasis added):