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Solidarian Political Strategy

The 2024 Election, Part VI. The 14th Amendment Edition.

AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.

 

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of

 

President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

It is increasingly clear that the 14th Amendment is going to be used as a legal basis to challenge Donald Trump's ability to be a Presidential nominee this election.   

And legal scholars, weighting in, have read this language to bar his ability to do so.  Two non-profit legal groups have made it known that they are going to be filing suits.

I suppose we should list running, at the present time, in this sad show.

President.

Democrats:

Joe Biden; the incumbent.  

While a majority of Democrats and voters in general are disenchanted with the aged President, he will take the nomination absent something unexpected occurring.

Marianne Williamson.

Gadfly. Williamson mostly serves to remind voters that there are some real wackadoodles in the Democratic Party.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

As if Williamson wasn't enough of a wackadoodle. Kennedy is receiving attention, but his candidacy isn't likely to go anywhere.  Known for some unconventional views.

Republicans.

Donald Trump. 

The former President, who is facing multiple felony charges, but who has a large number of fanatic followers in spite of having nearly every deficit as a candidate imaginable.

Nikki Haley

In a normal election cycle, we could expect Haley to do well.

Vivek Ramaswamy.  

Youngest candidate, oddly tacking to the right of Trump on some things, and getting increasingly extreme as the election goes on.

Perry Johnson,

largely unknown businessman.  Age 75.  Because we need more old people to run for this office.

Larry Elder 

Conservative African American radio host.  71 years of age, and first time candidate.

Asa Hutchinson. 

Former Governor of Arkansas and conventional, non MAGA, Republican. Age 72.

Tim Scott.

African American Senator from South Carolina.

Ron DeSantis

Governor of Florida.

Chris Christie

Former Governor of New Jersey. Blunt anti Trump candidate.

Mike Pence.

Boring, if briefly heroic, former Vice President.

Doug Burgum

Governor of North Dakota who can't muster up enough courage to discuss Trump's coup.

Will Hurd 

Congressman from Texas.

Steve Laffey 

A politician you've never heard of but who is apparently on the New Hampshire ballot.

Ryan Binkley 

A Texas businessman and Protestant Pastor.

Green Party

Cornel West.  

West would be familiar to watchers of news shows and PBS from the late 20th Century, but his candidacy here nearly reduces him to gadfly status.

American Solidarity Party

Peter Sonski  

Sonski is a businessman who is the ASP's choice for President this year. The party is a Christian Democratic Party that ought to receive more attention, and would in a fairer system.

Lurking on the outside of all of this is No Labels, which in spite of the existence of third parties, threatens to launch a non-party third party run at the Oval Office.  Joe Manchin is continually mentioned as its potential candidate, although the Democrats desperately hope he'll stay in the Senate.

In terms of more local races:

U.S. Senate

Republicans

John Barrasso, maybe?

The long serving Senator has not announced if he's running or not.  Right now, because it's pretty obvious that Mitch McConnell is headed on to the next realm, he stands to potentially be Senate Majority Leader.

Reid Rasner.

Rasner has announced and is running essentially as a far right populist.  If Barrasso stays in, his campaign will be forgotten within days of the primary election.

September 3, 2023

The Heritage Foundation and others have worked out a Project 2025 as a plan to radically reshape the Federal Government should Trump come to power.

As the Heritage Foundation would have it:

The fourth pillar of Project 2025 is our 180-day Transition Playbook and includes a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency.  Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful. 

Pillar IV will provides the next President a roadmap for doing just that.  To learn more about Project 2025’s vision for a conservative administration, please read our recently published book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

September 7, 2023

Six Colorado voters have filed an action seeking to bar Donald Trump from running for election under the 14th Amendment.  The complaint is a phenomenal 115 pages long and is effectively a brief.

The relief sought is as follows:

This is the second such lawsuit that's been filed. The first was dismissed, although I haven't researched why.  Lack of standing would be my guess.

One of these suits is going to hit home and succeed.  Some might note that Trump is not likely to prevail in the general election in Colorado anyhow, but this would mean that Colorado's primary votes would go to another GOP candidate, should it succeed.

As noted, somewhere it will, and depending upon when it happens, this issue will have to go to the Supreme Court rapidly.  While predicting the ultimate outcome is hazardous, my guess is that there's a fair chance that the Supreme Court will ultimately hold that Trump is not qualified to run.

cont:

So on the same day a lawsuit was filed in Colorado, Secretary of State Gray wrote to the SoS of New Hampshire, stating:

How much sway Wyoming has with New Hampshire, or for that matter any state's SoS with another's, is an open question, but the direction of this seems clear.  Some state is going to find Trump can't be on the ballot and this will have to go to the Supreme Court.  That will determine the issue for every state.

Gray touches upon, but doesn't really answer, an important issue here, that being, how is it to be determined that a person was in an insurrection?  Being convicted of having been in one, under a statute that could give rise to that determination, is one thing, and in fact odds are good that Trump will have been by November 2024.  But that clearly isn't, I think, required by the 14th Amendment for the reason that Secretary Gray notes, the Civil War example.  Nobody was tried for the crime of having engaged in a treasonous rebellion against the United States following the Civil War.  Clearly at the time the mere presumption of Confederate service was enough.  As that's the only example, it would seem that presumption would operate here as well such that, if a SoS determines that Trump aided and abetted an insurrection, it would be up to Trump to prove that he did not.

The lawsuits will work differently, of course, as they have that as part of their allegations, and therefore That issue will be for them to prove at trial, or perhaps by motion.

September 11, 2024

Latest polls put Trump ahead of Biden in the General Election.

That presumes, of course, that they both win their nominations.  Democratic spokesmen fielded to the weekend shows are trying to brush it off by noting that the economy is strong, unemployment low, and there are 14 months left to go.  But it's a bad sign for Biden, no matter what.

This would suggest that both Democrats and rank and file (not populist) Republicans need to wake up.  If Trump takes the Oval Office, it will complete the conversion of the GOP into a right wing populist party which will have huge impacts on the country for the foreseen future, and certainly during the next four years.

If Republicans are to take him on, what they really need to do is to meet at this time and determine that those leaning into Trump should get out.  They're not going to do anything.  They need to get their field down as small as possible.

For the Democrats, they need to meet with Joe and propose a moderate substitute.  

September 14, 2023

Legislators have criticized a ballot initiative to limit property tax in Wyoming, noting that it would strip funding for schools.

They're correct.

A lot of the local anger over property taxes is frankly ironic. For decades, Wyoming communities have encouraged relocation into the state, which ipso facto brings in wealth and raises property values overall.  Indeed, many relocatees upgrade their dwellings by doing so.  Meanwhile, local government and infrastructure needs remain, if not in fact grow.

The solution is more distributist, localist and involving subsidiarity and solidarity, which was the case all along.

Vivek Ramaswamy vowed to cut the federal workforce by 75% by the end of his term if elected, which is frankly absurd.\

Mitt Romney has announced that he will not be running for reelection. This brought out the predictable assortment of Trump trolls condemning Romney for not being a Trump troll.  It also brougth the following comment from the former President:

There is something deeply weird about comments like this coming from Trump.  With all the attention to Biden's mental status, there's little with Trump, but something is off with him.

September 19, 2023

President Trump was interviewed by the new host of Meet The Press.

The interview is revealing for the way in which Trump has become so proficient at lying, he sounds credible while doing so, helping to provide some insight to why his followers believe him.  He spouts lies with such routine blandness that they sound like somebody repeating what he believes to be the truth.  If people only listened to Trump, you may well be convinced that the falsehoods reflect reality.

September 21, 2023

The Natrona County GOP invited WyoRino to a meeting they held to debate him/her/they.  Some members of the county's Republican Party have been in the crosshairs of the anonymous blogger.  Predictably, he didn't show up to the event, and so conservative Cowboy State Daily's not so conservative Op Ed columnist Rod Miller had nobody to debate.  From reading about it, some other populists did show up, however.

Now, one of the non Natrona County GOP legislators, Larry Craigo of Johnson County, is the subject of an anonymous mailer.  He's called that person/persons cowardly.

There's something interesting going on here.

Whoever is behind these efforts, and it of course may be a collection of people has spare money to devote to this effort.  I've seen a large vinyl WyoRINO banner locally, and WyoRINO bought a billboard here as well.

Spare cash, far right wing, those are the clues really.

Trump has announced that he's going to Michigan rather than the next debate.  This will likely be pretty scripted, as the UAW isn't exactly pro Trump, even if many of its rust belt employees share many of his non labor views.

Of course, Bernie Sanders has weighed in. . . 

Last Prior Thread:

The 2024 Election, Part V. Wooing the primary voters.

Related Threads:

The Post Insurrection. Part VII. The Insurrectionist.

This is why we can't have nice things. "You can't vote for a third party". Oh yes, you can.

This is why we can't have nice things. "You can't vote for a third party". Oh yes, you can.

This view is precisely why American democracy is so screwed up

No Labels, no fables, no third-party betrayals

All Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind Joe Biden.

Robert Reich is here to tell you, along with every other Democratic pundit, that if you aren't voting for Joe Biden, you are a traitor to democracy.  Indeed, he states:

Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green Party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.

That's BS.

Let's be frank, the Democratic Party's love of democracy was rediscovered during the insurrection.  At that point, it suddenly realized that anti-democratic forces are bad.  Prior to that, and even now, what it really is for is rule by Liberal Ivy League Educated Judges. 

The Democrats regard voters as besotted fools.  They have for years, with it really becoming apparent following 1973's Roe v. Wade decision. They still feel that way. They hate the thought that courts can't descend from wooden walls and tell the peasantry what to think.

One of the things that they hate the most about recent years is that the Supreme Court has torn down some totally defective prior decision and told the people that they'll just have to figure things out for themselves. The Court, for example, hasn't "taken away" a non-existent "right to abortion". There was never one. The Court could have decided, on natural law principles, that abortion is contrary to the laws of nature on an existential basis and declared a right to life, but it didn't do that, in spite of all the howling.  It just said that people, through their state legislatures, have to figure this out for themselves.

The Democrats hate that thought, and for good reason.  It means that in many places, if left to their own devices, people would decide all sorts of things that Democrats regard as individualistic rights aren't. And the reason is plain. The driving force of the Democratic Party essentially believes that if you regard yourself as a feline asexual Bhutanese princess, you should be able to force everyone else to agree with you.  Most people just don't think that way, however.  

That doesn't mean that Trump should be elected, either. The GOP has abandoned democracy in favor of authoritarianism, and that always leads to disaster.  The dirty little secret as to why Trump has so much support in the rank and file of the GOP isn't because most Republicans believe the election was stolen, no matter what they say, but rather than they've grown so disgusted with the Democratic Party and establishment Republicans that they no longer regard Democrats or establishment Republicans as legitimate, and therefore don't think they should count.  Indeed, we have gotten to where we are at as the Democrats regard voters as unwashed vulgarians who should merely be entertained with the thought their votes mean something, the country club Republicans regard the electorate as mindless consumers whose opinions don't count, and a certain section of that electorate just has  had enough of it. 

In other words, the Democrats viewed the electorate as too stupid to influence anything, and the Republicans viewed them as Walmart customers only.

That this may mean the end of American democracy is both parties' fault.

That either of those parties would now have the gall to suggest that parties that actually reflect people's views shouldn't be voted for is maddening.  If we'd had parties that actually reflected people's views all along, we wouldn't be here now.  And the thought that the diversity of political opinion can be summed up with two choices is flatly bizarre.

The argument, by either party, that "you must vote for us or else it's Trump" is an argument of last resort.  The challenge for the Democrats isn't to present Biden as the only choice to Trump, but to give the voters somebody they feel comfortable with. Somebody who isn't 80 years old and hasn't gone so far to the left.  The challenge for Republicans, which may be a party that is now too far gone, is to give us somebody who will really do conservative, but not fascist, things rather than just say they will.

And frankly, the challenge for American democracy is to make a choice between Republicans and Democrats much, much less important. Why aren't there members of the Green Party and the American Solidarity Party in Congress?   Why do the Paul's run as Republicans when they're really Libertarians?  Why does Bernie Sanders "caucus" with the Democrats when he should be looking for a Socialist to join him? These are questions that shouldn't have to be asked.

And the election results are in!

By not listed - https://www.solidarity-party.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117648194

The results are now in and, suffice it to say, what a giant surprise.  

Contrary to all expectations, Wyoming's voters, demonstrating independence of thought, rejected the creeping descent into fascism that the GOP was exhibiting, and the squirrel ball left group think of the Democratic Party, and wrote in thoughtful candidates instead.

First and foremost was the rejection of Harriet Hageman, the Republican nominee for the House of Representatives, who displaced Liz Cheney on the ballot.  Rethinking the matter, voters elected Ernst Sepansky, a member of the American Solidarity Party.

"I'm surprised and honored" stated Sepansky.  "Shoot, I didn't even know that most people knew I was running" Sepansky said, taking a break from his role as a sheep herder.  "I'll have to find somebody to tend the sheep, but I'll be happy to go back to D.C.  After all, I'm already used to smelly unthinking group think".

Rumor had it that Sepansky's employer, noting Hageman had come from a ranch as she frequently stated, was going to ask her if she'd like to return to more benighted employment while he is in Washington D.C.

The Secretary of State's position, in turn, was taken by independent Amanda Feliciano.  Feliciano, presently a clerk in Harriet Hageman's law firm, stated; "look, it isn't as if Harriet or Chuck know how to file a @#$@#$ thing in real life.  I've been filing these @#$#$@ UCC 3's for decades.  Little Chucky can get a @#$#$ job for the first time in his life".  

An effort to interview Mr. Gray failed as he could not be located.  Sources indicate that he'd wandered away from Casper, fearful that this might mean he'd have to send out resumes for employment.

Results were similar down ballot, as voters rejected right wing Republican candidates for the legislature who had only recently secured their nominations.

Voters, coming out of their polling stations, gave an early clue as to what they were thinking.  

Bob Edsel, an oilfield worker in Casper, was interviewed at the gas station after voting.  He stated "Look, I was going to vote for the Republicans, but I was pulling 'Ol Betsy, my new lifted diesel D3500 into the gas station for the third time on the way to work, listening to ol' Dr. John on the YouTube talk about how Joe jacked up gas prices, when a Russian drone missile took the darned filling station out.  I gots to thinking that Dr. John might not really be right about those 'ol fuel prices".

Katerina DeSantos spoke to us at her café job.  "I'm opposed to abortion, but I’m worried about a lot of social issues otherwise.  I spoke to my GOP candidate and asked him why he was in favor of the death penalty for parking violations, and he said it was in the Constitution. That was stupid."

A similar view was expressed by Ernst Darbonski about the school board election.  "Mom's for Liberty?  Liberty my @#$#.  One of those gal's came by my house and told me that I'd be able to educate my children with a Christian world view, and when I said I was Ukrainian Orthodox she urged me to convert to Christianity.  Ugh".

Kent Allred, the interim Secretary of State, indicated that he would certify the results.  He was going to decline to, and came into the office packing heat, but a State Trooper, after warning him he couldn't come in armed, shot him.

"Dag nabbit", Allred stated, "I just wasn't fast enough on the draw."

Well. . . a person can always dream.

The 2020 Election, Part 7

April 15, 2020 

And so now the Presidential election is in a new phase with just two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat.  And we have our long promised new thread as well.

The Presidential Campaign.

Well, actually that's not true at all, but that's how things will be perceived.  And as we're at that stage, we're starting a new thread.  And first things first, we'll address who is running.

The big two, as you already know, are incumbent President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Will Americans go for the Joe they know, or play the Trump card?

Right now, as is obvious to everyone, this election season has gone seriously off the rails due to the COVID 19 Pandemic.  This has caused a virtual suspension in the campaign and we really don't know, at this point, when it'll effectively resume.  Biden has been attempting that with some success recently by way of video conferences and appearances on news shows.  Bernie Sanders recent concessions put him on the front pages again as well. Be that as it may, the real focus right now is elsewhere, and that's a real problem for Biden.  Like Trump's approach or not, he's in the news as a the horse in the middle of the stream, so to speak.  Can most people, by analogy, even name the Presidential candidates who ran against Roosevelt during World War Two?

Beyond that, a problem that's looming over Biden's campaign is right now its not about anything other than beating Trump.  Biden's a serious candidate and right now a lot of Democrats are in fact really united behind that goal, but that's a goal that's negative rather than positive. Any candidate at all would suffice for a goal of that type, and that's actually the literal position a lot of Democrats are taking.

An essential problem with that is that it really isn't a uniting position for general voters.  Voters who are concerned with specific issues are basically being told not to worry about them, and that Biden will get around to them later, or not.  If all Democrats want is a placeholder for four years, and it seems that is all that quite a few voters in fact want, that's fine.  The actual platform will be, more or less, "we intend to do nothing at all".  However, as we're now in a genuine crisis, a "I'll occupy this chair for four years and check in with you then" is a risky campaign theme.  Indeed, as there were already really serious issues around before the Coronavirus, it was anyhow.  People can say what they will about Trump, but he does have stated positions on a lot of things.

To compound the situation for Biden, all of a sudden there's Tara Reade.

In 2016 Biden faced problems based on accusations that he had inappropriately grabby hands in regards to women. The accusations, however, were based on just weird touching of hair and the like.  Reade has accused Biden of a species of sexual assault.

It's not like Trump hasn't been accused of bad behavior in this area as well, but the accusations against Biden are really creepy, if true (we'll not repeat them here).  The problem is that they allegedly took place in 1995 and so much time has now lapsed that analyzing them appears to be nearly impossible.  Reade, who was then an attractive young staffer whose beauty was of the thin 1970s variety unfortunately shares a name that's phonetically identical to that of the actress known in large part for portraying a sex object, most famously, perhaps in The Big Lebowski where she played Bunny Lebowski.  She first came up in the election when Sanders supporters started mentioning her back channel in a bit of a desperate effort to derail Biden in favor of Sanders, but now the story is fully in the press.  There are those who flat out now state that they won't vote for either candidate due to their alleged past with women, even though the story is certainly still not really full developed in regard to this story.

I'm going to forego commenting on the truth or accuracy of the story as I don't know it.  If true, as with the claims against Trump, the should be disqualifying for office.  Unfortunately, they come so late as to make determining their accuracy difficult and it can't be the case that a mere accusation should suffice to discount a person. False accusations do occur.

True accusations occur as well, and that's how things ought to be judged, if they can be.

Recently, of course, we've seen a bunch of these and they've acquired a peculiar role in our society.  Overwhelming evidence of creepy behavior and perhaps sexual assault derailed the career of Harvey Weinstein who is now going to prison on a conviction of sexual assault.  Claims against Brett Kavanaugh, which were widely circulated by Democrats, failed to prove to be true and he was confirmed to the Supreme Court but with a tainted reputation.  Accusations against Donald Trump don't seem to have mattered to voters and now we'll find out more about this as we move along in regard to Joe Biden.  As noted, some Democrats, largely those who had supported Sanders, claim that they now won't vote in the election at all as there are no untainted candidates.

Not voting at all presumes that there truly are only two candidates.  The race isn't purely a two person race, of course.  There are third party candidates out there and we'll mention them, probably most of them, maybe all of them, for the last time.  It's unfortunate, however, in that the views of the population would be much better reflected in government if there really were viable third parties.

The Third Parties

Before doing that we'd note that there are years in which third parties get a lot of attention.  2020 isn't going to be one of them.  Third parties are going to get no attention whatsoever this year, and their candidates really show that.  Indeed, this year in particular will be an all time low in the fortunes of third parties in terms of elections since the 1980s.  They're almost completely off the map.

American third parties can be divided into serious parties and, well. . .wackadoodle parties.  Neither is going to get any traction this year, but we'll divide them that way ourselves and take on the serious ones first.

The Serious Third Parties

Libertarian Party

The Libertarians are the largest American third party. They hold their convention on May 21, in Austin Texas. . . if they're able to hold it.  Their candidate in 2016 was former GOP Governor Bill Weld, who ran as a failed Republican contender this year and who isn't joining the Libertarian fold this year. That makes all of the Libertarian contenders more or less unknown.  None of them are getting much attention and none of them is going to. One is basically running as a joke.

Weld's in again and out again role in the party is really emblematic of how the party is essentially collapsing.  Based on a rather hard line view of "liberty", the party really long ago split into two camps, one being conservatives who regard themselves as libertarians, but who often take a fairly black and white view of the U.S. Constitution, and liberals who take a nearly anarchic view of personal liberty.  The gulf between the two camps is gigantic.  For them most part, the Republican Party has become the home of the conservative Libertarians, perhaps best represented by Rand Paul.  Given that there's no real way to reconcile their differing views, for the most part the Libertarians have gone into other parties and won't be coming back. They're still fielding candidates this year, but in reality, 2016 was likely the peak of their role as a party and my guess is that after this election they'll no longer qualify to be on the ballot in quite a few states.

One of the Libertarian candidates is also the candidate for another minor party, so we'll cover that here. The candidate is Howie Hawkins, who made news the other day by proclaiming that Sanders supporters should now vote for him as he's the one who really espouses their values.  He's also the candidate for the Socialist Party USA.

The fact that one of the Libertarian candidates is also a Socialist Party candidate demonstrates the gadfly nature of third parties which keeps them from being taken seriously even when they get well established.  A person can't be a Libertarian and a Socialist and that seriously can't be taken seriously as they stand for diametrically polar opposites.  The Libertarians may very well nominate Hawkins but if they do, they will have nominated a candidate that's as close to being the very thing they despise as possible.  If they do that, they'll no longer deserve to be in the category which we've put them this year.

Green Party

The Green Party convention is in July.  So,  like the Libertarians, they haven't chosen a candidate yet.
Also like the Libertarians, their candidate last time, Jill Stein, is sitting this year out so they're also running unknowns.  They may very well have also passed their apex.

The American Greens have a history of slipping to the extreme left and taking positions that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with their claimed environmental emphasis, which keeps them from really becoming a significant party. They retain that emphasis, but they have a really bad track record of actually being able to proclaim it as they tend to take positions on things that divert that.  Having said that, in 2016 they drew a lot of attention in the race with Stein. This year they won't.

American Solidarity Party

The American Solidarity Party is a new party that drew some attention in 2016 for its effort to be a "third way" Christian Democratic Party, something the U.S. has never had but which a lot of European countries have.  It likely would have drawn little attention at that but the fact that it drew a fair number of Catholic thinkers to its fold who were disgusted with Trump and disgusted with the pro abortion policies of the Democratic Party caused it to receive some attention.  It managed therefore to get on the ballot as an established party in some places, including Colorado.

This year it has chosen California professor Brian T. Carroll and its Illinois Chairman Amar Patel as its candidates.  It would have been much better advised to reverse that order as a retired professor from California is a boring choice that's going nowhere whatsoever.  The party actually looked better in 2016 than it does in 2020, and if it keeps on this path, it won't be around in 2024.

This is a shame as, together with the Libertarian Party, the ASP is a party that should be drawing voters.  It's genuinely unique and a middle of the road party that's quite conservative on some things and quite liberal on others, showing that it's thought out a central theme on a philosophical basis.  For a new party, it did better than it should have in 2016 but my guess is that this year its gong nowhere at all.

Constitution Party

The Constitution Party is a very conservative party that tends towards a hard right penumbra reading of the Constitution that's often not justified by the text and history of the document. At the grass roots level it tends to assert positions that are often somewhat extreme.

The party is running coal executive Don Blankenship as its candidate this year.

This party has far less chance than normal, and it has no chances at all normally anyway, as Trump essentially occupied its field in 2016 and its supporters are largely gone.

Prohibition Party

It's hard to take the Prohibition Party seriously, I'll admit, but it's a party that once had fairly broad, if always minority, support.  With its former main issue, prohibition, long dead, and indeed the U.S. recently moving in the completely opposite direction, it's hard to believe that it's still around, but it is.

It's candidate this year is Phil Collins. This will be the last time you hear about this party here this year, I'm sure.

Reform Party

The Reform Party was a centrist party formed by Ross Perot for his Presidential bid in 1995.  It made a lot of news that year and was a serious third party that at one point some believed might be successful.

It wasn't, and like most third parties that come close and fail, it's nearly gone (anyone heard of the Bull Moose Party lately?).  It's candidate is Darcy Richardson.

A party like this, it should be noted, should be doing well as its a centrist party based on disgust with the Republicans and Democrats.  But it will receive no traction in the election at all.

Okay, now for the Wackadoodle Parties, of which there are a lot.

One thing that might be noted this year is the amazing flowering of a lot of tiny Socialist and even Communist Parties.  It's like being in a coffee shop in Berlin in 1919 to some extent.  Chances are high that most of the members of these parties would support any radical cause de jour, or on the other hand will turn into diehard Republicans or Democrats by the next election.

Bread and Roses Party

This is a minuscule "Socialistic" party whose founder, Jerome Segal, is its candidate.

This party stands no chance at all, but its interesting in that it shows the rise in popularity of Socialism in the United States, something that's actually extremely poorly understood by most of its supposed backers. The party named itself for the phrase used in a 1912 textile strike and tries to stand for "socialistic" things, but not socialism, and even claims its for limited government, which isn't possible with either of those things.

Like a lot of these fringe parties, this party has been careful to suggest its really supporting the Democrats, no matter what its otherwise doing.

Communist Party USA

The Communist Party USA had its heyday in the 1920s and 30s and its really just a lingering whacky element now.  It's running somebody, but it isn't even worth trying to figure out who that is.  FWIW, it's plat form this year is beating Trump, which no matter what they may think, sure doesn't mean the same thing for voters as voting the Communist Party into power.

Indeed, late in Bernie Sanders campaign he started to loose Democratic support due to his undefinsible statements about Communism being quasi nifty in some ways in Cuba.

Party for Socialism and Liberation

One thing about Socialist is that there's a million varieties of it, which always aids Socialist in explaining why all Socialist failures aren't really a condemnation of Socialist. They always represent "real" Socialism, which they maintain hasn't been tried.

There have been American Socialist Parties since the early 20th Century but they started fracturing in the 1910s and haven't stopped yet. This party is basically a Communist Party.  It's candidate is Gloria La Riva.  Leonard Peltier, currently serving two life sentences for murder, is her running mate.

Socialist Equality Party

What the crap, another Socialist party?  Well, of course.

This one is a Trotskyite Communist Party that is running Joseph Kishore.

Socialist Party USA

This Socialist Party is a Socialist, not a Communist, party, and its running libertarian Howie Hawkins, or maybe it's that Socialist Howie Hawkins is running as a Libertarian.

Well, never mind, this party is going nowhere and chances are that the Libertarians will suffer a net subtraction of support due to Hawkins.

Socialist Workers Party

The Socialist Workers Party is an old time Communist Party. Its running Alyson Kennedy as its candidate.  Like the Communist Party USA, it's day is long over.

Conclusion

This will be the strangest Presidential history in the lifetimes of any current voter.  Right now the Coronavirus Pandemic is the overarching theme and how well President Trump handles it, and the crash of the economy, will be the telling factor.  A hugely divisive personality, it's now those external crises that are first in the minds of the voters.  Factors that came up in the 2016 election and caused the Democratic Party to lurch left are now nearly completely mute and Trump is overseeing the largest expansion in the role of the government since the Second World War.  Factors that would have favored third parties getting at least some air time have now evaporated.  It's a two person race, but the issues are the effectiveness of what's going on currently and how that's perceived by voting public.  It's as if the race hasn't begun.

State Races

Aren't there some state races going on?

Why yes there are.

The big one is for the U.S. Senate seat being opened up by the retirement of Senator Enzi.  The contestants are:

Cynthia Lummis
Mark Armstrong
Joshua Wheeler
Robert Short

The Democratic candidates are:

Merav Ben-David
Chuck Jagoda
Yana Ludwig

The Republican primary winner is going to go on to be the Senator.  Cynthia Lummis basically  has that all sewn up now and her only real competition is Robert Short, a popular Converse County commissioner.  Short is very personable and easy to like, but Lummis has a history as a prior Congressman and that will be tough to beat.  The other two Republicans really don't figure into the race very much.

The Democratic nominee will lose in the General Election and right now its not clear who that nominee will be.  In practical terms, that choice will determine how unpopular the Democrats will be following the contest.  In Jagoda and Ludwig they have the opportunity to nominate candidates who would symbolize the far left end of the national party and, by extension, hurt their own party.  Jagoda probably isn't even eligible to run as he's a Californian. Ben-David is a University of Wyoming professor who stands no chance of winning, but who likely wouldn't hurt his party as the nominee.

The best thing that could happen for the Democrats would be if somebody else came in and declared, like Gary Trauner.  Probably no serious Democrat wants to be a sacrificial lamb, however.

And there's also a House of Representatives race, with Liz Cheney defending her seat.  She will win in the General Election.  The announced candidates are:

GOP:

Liz Cheney

Democratic Party:

Carol Hafner
Carl Beach.

Carol Hafner, who is a resident of South Dakota and clearly on the gadfly end of things.  From her based in South Dakota she last attempted to run in Alaska.  She's' on the party's far left and back marijuana legalization which, while it could come to Wyoming one way or another, isn't a winner of an issue for a House candidate.  Why she'd even bother to announce in Wyoming is a mystery.

Beach is a Wyoming native and has this nomination locked up unless another Democrat announces, a factor that he likely was well aware of when he chose to enter the race last week.  He's been involved in politics in a minor way before and was a Sanders supporter in 2016 when Sanders took the majority of Wyoming's caucus votes, but the party gave the election to Clinton anyway.  He's an educator who was born in Rawlins but who has split his time between Wyoming and overseas.  Forty four years old, he's personally attractive and should present well.  Irrespective of that there's no earthly way for him to beat Cheney.

Indeed Cheney, who really wasn't a universally popular candidate when she first ran, has grown into the job and has come more and more to take independent positions, sometimes breaking with President Trump (which always causes, oddly enough, a left wing Twitter storm when it occurs).  She apparently had her eye on the Senate seat and only reluctantly decided not to go for it after Lummis' election to that office became assured.  She'll have no difficulty retaining her seat.

Indeed, the overall state election really shows the sad state the Democrats have fallen into in the state.  Wyoming had a Democratic Congressman, Teno Roncolio, within the living memory of older voters, something that simply seems impossible now. The state retains some popular Democratic politicians, including former Governor Mike Sullivan, recent Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Mary Throne, and occasionally nearly successful businessman Gary Trauner, but it seems very unlikely that any of them will step forward to run.  And they can't be blamed as their chances are so extremely poor.  That fact, however, leaves the voters with no real choices and the races tend to feature candidates who fall to the extreme left whom don't seem to realize that they have no chance whatsoever and that they're further really damaging the reputation of their own party.  The further irony is that the lack of Democratic competition is hurting the GOP as well which has fallen to internal infighting as Republicans of the hard left don't see any reason that their party, which has traditionally been fairly independent and centrist in Wyoming, shouldn't go in that direction.  The further irony of that is that should that wing of the GOP be internally successful, which so far it has not been, it'd actually provide a strong incentive for the revival of the state's Democratic Party.

At any rate, if things continue in their present direction, the state race is basically over now.  Only the entry of a really well known Democrat into either state race, or a massively unforeseen event in the economy, is likely to alter that.

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April 16, 2020

On this past Monday, former President Obama endorsed his former Vice President's run for the Oval Office by way of a video broadcast.  The text of his endorsement reads:

Hi, everybody. Let me start by saying the obvious: These aren’t normal times. As we all manage our way through a pandemic unlike anything we have seen in a century, Michelle and I hope that you and your families are safe and well.

If you have lost somebody to this virus or if someone in your life is sick, or if you are one of the millions suffering economic hardship, please know that you are in our prayers. Please know that you are not alone because now is the time for all of us to help where we can and to be there for each other as neighbors, as co-workers and as fellow citizens. In fact, over the past weeks, we have seen plenty of examples of the kind of courage, kindness and selflessness that we are going to need to get through one of the most difficult times in our history.

Michelle and I have been amazed at the incredible bravery of our medical professionals who are putting their lives on the line to save others; the public servants and health officials battling this disease; the workers taking risks every day to keep our economy running; and everyone who is making their own sacrifice at home with their families, all for the greater good. But if there is one thing we have learned as a country from moments of great crisis, it is that the spirit of looking out for one another can’t be restricted to our homes or our workplaces or our neighborhoods or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government, the kind of leadership that is guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace.

That kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitals and mayor’s offices; it belongs in the White House, and that is why I am so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States.

Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made, and he became a close friend, and I believe Joe has all of the qualities we need in a president right now. He is someone who's own life has taught him how to persevere, how to bounce back when you have been knocked down.

When Joe talks with parents who have lost their jobs, we hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of having to tell his children that he had lost his. When Joe talks about opportunity for our kids, we hear the young father who took the train home each night so he could tuck his children into bed, and we hear the influence of Jill, a lifelong teacher. When Joe talks to families who have lost a hero, we hear another parent of an American veteran, a kindred spirit, somebody whose faith has endured the hardest loss there is. That is Joe. Through all of his trials, he's never once forgotten the values or the moral fiber that his parents passed on to him, and that made him who he is. That is what steels his faith in God and America and in all of us. That steel made him an incredible partner when I needed one the most. Joe was there as we rebuilt from the Great Recession and rescued the American auto industry. He was the one asking what every policy would do for the middle class and everyone striving to get into the middle class. That is why I asked him to implement the Recovery Act, which saved millions of jobs and got people back on their feet, because Joe gets stuff done. Joe helped me manage H1N1 and prevent the Ebola epidemic from becoming the type of pandemic we are seeing now. He helped me restore America’s standing and leadership in the world on the other threats of our time like nuclear proliferation and climate change.

Joe has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery, and I know he will surround himself with good people: experts, scientists, military officials who actually know how to run the government and care about doing a good job running the government and know how to work with our allies and who will always put the American people’s interests above their own.  Now Joe will be a better candidate for having run the gauntlet of primaries and caucuses alongside one of the most impressive Democratic fields ever. Each of our candidates were talented and decent with a track record of accomplishment, smart ideas and serious visions for the future, and that is certainly true of the candidate who made it farther than any other, Bernie Sanders. Bernie is an American original, a man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working people’s hopes, dreams and frustrations. He and I haven’t always agreed on everything, but we have always shared a conviction that we have to make America a fairer, more just, more equitable society.

We both know that nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change, and the ideas he has championed, the energy and enthusiasm he inspired, especially in young people, will be critical in moving America in a direction of progress and hope because for the second time in 12 years we will have the incredible task of rebuilding our economy, and to meet the moment, the Democratic Party will have to be bold.

You know, I could not be prouder of the incredible progress that we made together during my presidency, but if I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different; there’s too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards. We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that, and Joe understands that. It is one of the reasons that Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history. Because even before the pandemic turned the world upside down, it was already clear that we needed real structural change. The vast inequalities created by the new economy are easier to see now, but they existed long before this pandemic hit. Health professionals, teachers, delivery drivers, grocery clerks, cleaners, the people who truly make our economy run — they have always been essential, and for years too many of the people who do the essential work of this country have been underpaid, financially stressed and given too little support, and that applies to the next generation of Americans, young people graduating into unprecedented unemployment. They are going to need economic policies that give them faith in the future and give them relief from crushing student loan debt.

So we need to do more than just tinker around the edges with tax credits or underfunded programs. We have to go further to give everybody a great education, a lasting career and a stable retirement. We have to protect the gains we made with the Affordable Care Act, but it’s also time to go further. We should make plans affordable for everyone, provide everyone with a public option, expand Medicare and finish the job so that health care isn’t just a right but a reality for everybody.

We have to return the U.S. to the Paris agreement and lead the world in reducing the pollution that causes climate change, but science tells us we have to go much further and it is time for us to accelerate progress on bold new green initiatives that make our economy a clean energy innovator, save us money and secure our children’s future.

Of course, Democrats may not always agree on every detail of the best way to bring about each and every one of these changes, but we do agree that they are needed and that only happens if we win this election, because one thing everybody has learned by now is that the Republicans occupying the White House and running the U.S. Senate are not interested in progress.

They are interested in power. They have shown themselves willing to kick millions off their health insurance and eliminate preexisting condition protections for millions more even in the middle of this public health crisis, even as they are willing to spend a trillion dollars on tax cuts for the wealthy. They have given polluters unlimited power to poison our air and our water and denied the science of climate change just as they denied the science of pandemics. Repeatedly, they have disregarded American principles of rule of law and voting rights and transparency, basic norms that previous administrations observed regardless of party, principles that are the bedrock of our democracy.

So our country’s future hangs on this election, and it won’t be easy. The other side has a massive war chest; the other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth. On the other hand, pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real and what is important. This crisis has reminded us that government matters. It has reminded us that good government matters, that facts and science matter, that the rule of law matters, that having leaders who are informed and honest and seek to bring people together rather than drive them apart, those kind of leaders matter. In other words, elections matter. Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance and just plain meanness, and to change that, we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before. For those of us who believe in building a more just, more generous, more democratic America where everybody has a fair shot at opportunity, for those of us who believe in a government that cares about the many and not just the few, for those of us who love this country and are willing to do our part to make sure it lives up to its highest ideals, now is the time to fight for what we believe in.

So join us. Join Joe. Go to JoeBiden.com right now. Make a plan for how you are going to get involved. Keep taking care of yourself and your families and each other. Keep believing in the possibilities of a better world, and I will see you on the campaign trail as soon as I can. Thanks.

Some have regarded the endorsement  as coming rather late and frankly it did come so late as to really be symbolic more than anything else.  President Obama did nothing to help his former Vice President during the period where his campaign was in doubt, and frankly perhaps that makes sense.  By not saying anything until now, he reserved his statements for the party itself  Having said that, in spite of the widespread admiration that President Obama retains in the Democratic Party, the impact of the endorsement is probably minimal at best.

Yesterday Elizabeth Warren came in and also endorsed Biden.  It's interesting that she waited until Sanders did so first, removing all chance of Sanders being the 2020 nominee.  That also came earlier this week.

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April 19, 2020

Joe Biden won Wyoming's write in Democratic caucus.

While not a major electoral event, it is interesting in that in 2016 Bernie Sanders took the majority of Wyoming's votes, which were then fixed via the operation of the super delegates so that the state went for Clinton in the Democratic convention.  That showed at the time how popular Sanders was and how engineered, in a way, the Democratic process was.

This year Wyoming's vote shows how far Sanders' fortunes fell.  It was unlikely that he was ever going to take the state this year.

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April 28, 2020

New York's Democratic Party,  noting that this point its primary had become a "beauty contest", cancelled it, given the COVID 19 pandemic.

In other news, Jessie Ventura, one time Governor of Minnesota and former professional wrestler, indicated that he was "testing the waters" of a Green Party run.

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April 29, 2020

This is an election year that ought to be conducive to third parties.   I know that up earlier in this post I indicated you wouldn't be hearing about the third parties, probably, again before November, here, but that was only a probably.  Now you are hearing about them again.

The reason for that is that all of a sudden people are contemplating serious runs via third parties.

Now, that is likely something that the present third party candidates would find to be an insulting statement, but up until yesterday there were no third party candidates who could really be taken seriously. The Libertarian who has received the most press, for example, is also a Socialist, a political position that makes just about as much sense as being an Anarcho-Monarchist or a Constitutionalist Trotskyite or something.  It doesn't make sense and hence the candidate at an existential level also doesn't make sense, and is not to be taken seriously.  To make matters worse, the one new party in 2016 that was really interesting, the American Solidarity Party, is running two undoubtedly super nice people who have authored an article recently proposing a Jubilee in the Biblical sense, i.e., wouldn't it be nice if, like in ancient Israel (where it happened every seven years) all debts were forgiven, which may in fact be a nice thought but which doesn't seem to grasp that economics and finances have really changed over the past three millennia.

And all this in a year in which third parties really ought to have a chance, as noted, but which bears repeating.

Why would that be true?

Well President Trump has never received over a 50% approval rating at any time and, now seemingly forgotten, he received less than the majority of the American vote in 2016.  He was so unpopular within the GOP itself that there were, at first "Never Trumpers" in the party who vowed not to cooperate with him, although they fell in line, in no small part as they came to see what was at least the temporary wisdom (the long term effects are yet to be known) of Mitch McConnell's logic that Trump's victory could be used to accomplish a lot that the GOP hadn't been able to get done.  Indeed, McConnell is pretty crafty so it may be the case that he really didn't ever expect Trump to last more than one term, he hoped to get a lot done that would stick to Trump if unpopular but would be difficult to undo, and the establishment wing of the party would reestablish post Trump.  Indeed, that's my guess on his thinking.

Whatever it is, Trump has never been popular except in his base, where he's very popular.  Otherwise, a lot of Republicans feel pretty lukewarm about him at best, and some outright dislike him.  A large group of quasi Republicans that voted for him have loose attachments to him at best, and ironically are in the same political demographic that also likes Sanders.

Trump managed to overcome that in 2016 but he's been in trouble since that election due to the huge unparallelled negative reaction to him in the Democratic Party. We'll get to that in a moment, but if a new election had been held in December 2016, he'd likely have lost.

Trump has counted on the economy to carry him through in 2020, as well as McConnell's work on conservative causes, but now the economy is tanking massively due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.  Added to that, Trump has been at least somewhat under the microscope due to the Pandemic and has received a lot of criticism because of it.  I'd argue that very little of the criticism has hit in the public until perhaps last week, when hsi comments at a daily briefing provoked a large response due to their being such dangerous bad advice.  He briefly indicated that he wasn't going to do daily press briefings anymore, which is something that his staff has urged forever, but he didn't carry through with that.  At any rate, his comments hurt him and that damage may stick, if the Democrats exploit it.

All of which should mean the Democrats have a lot to exploit, as indeed they do.

But their candidate is Joe Biden.

Indeed, Democratic rank and file comfort with Biden is what caused him to surge and knock out the other candidates.  Declared a lost cause, he proved not to be, and overcame what was perceived at the time to be the inevitable victory of Bernie Sanders.  But there's a real weakness in this.

The Democrats turned hard left right after the 2016 election.  Biden isn't hard left, and he should start driving back to the middle, but it's unclear if he will.  If he drives to the left, he's going to scare independants and reluctant Trump supporters in the GOP, who may be willing to vote for their candidate rather than endure the thought of AOC being in the White House every day.

Indeed, Democratic leadership itself isn't inspiring for most non Democrats.  Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are ancient and disliked and a party that had a sound base would replace them for somebody half their age.  But they don't, suggesting the base is pretty thin.

And Biden himself has problems, some old, some new.

One is that Biden just has a tendency to come across as oddly goofy and not very smart.  A lot of this is apparently attributable to a youthful stuttering problem that's still with him. Such things are difficult to overcome and they tend to be misinterpreted by the public.  George Bush the younger had a speech problem as well, except apparently when he spoke in Spanish, that was similarly misinterpreted.  Because of their respective peculiar speech styles and public address, people with keen ears for speech are likely already dreading the though of a lot of Biden and Trump political discourse to come.

Maybe it won't come. Because of the Coronavirus this campaign is throwing back to pre 1900 conditions in which the candidates don't travel.  Biden occasionally issues statements, Trump just keeps on working at his job. That's just like what races in earlier times were like.  Maybe it'll stay nearly that way, which would be okay.

But it probably won't, and that means that at some point we'll start getting a lot of public speech and it'll almost certainly be occasionally odd from both men.

And to add to that, Biden now has Tera Reade.

When the Reade problem surfaced I didn't pay much attention to it, but now a person has to as it is getting a lot of press.  Some Democrats have indicated that they flat out won't support Biden because they are certain that Reade was assaulted by Biden.  Over time, the circumstantial evidence of that occurring has developed, but so has the circumstantial evidence that it didn't, and I'm not drawing any conclusions at all.

Nonetheless, this presents a real problem for Democrats as they've exploited such problems with other figures recently, the most notable being Brett Kavanaugh.  The Democrats have repeatedly taken the position that ot discount the accusation is to discount women in general, and now they cannot do the same as Reade.  So the accusations have to be given attention, and that has to come now.  Because of the age of the accusations, finding out the truth will be difficult at best, but as noted its slowly becoming evident that Reade at least complained of something to some people, but was silent to other people you'd expect to have said something, way back when.

Trump of course has his own problems in this area which once again, in an odd way, brings up the antiquity of the candidates.  As with Kavanaugh, there's a lingering sense that all of these men came up into their own in the post 1960s, post Sexual Revolution, pre 1990s, "boys will be boys" era in which the taint of the Revolution gave license to men to act their worst.  I'm not saying that any of these men acted that way.  I don't know.  I'm only noting that the problem exist.

All of which means that candidates from somewhere else, ought to do okay.

One of them I've already mentioned, that being Jesse Ventura, who is pondering running as a Green. That no doubt surprises some people as he has at least some prior non Green statements, but as we've also seen this year the older third parties aren't adverse to running candidates of convenience.  I can't see Ventura's bid being successful, but the fact that he's suddenly in the news does show something is going on.

Now Justin Amash is back in the news and it's pretty clear that he's going to run as a Libertarian.

Amash comes by that affiliation honestly as he was always really a Libertarian, even though he was elected to Congress as a Republican.  He'll likely get their nomination.

He's not likely to win for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that third party candidates just don't win.  Beyond that, the ultimate irony of the 2020 election right now is that the populist Trump is presiding over the most socialist set of economic programs the country has seen since the emergency measures of the Great Depression.  This would make a Libertarian surge this year surprising, to say the least, as its hard to see their economic platform being popular in this atmosphere.

Indeed, it really makes a person wonder what would happen if a candidate who really espoused ideas that are now fully in action was in the race.  That candidate would be Andrew Yang, about which there was some speculation on whether he'd mount a third party bid earlier on.  Yang discounted that at the time and he's endorsed Joe Biden, but the 45 year old Yang would make a lot more sense as the Green Party candidate than the 68 year old Jesse Ventura.  Indeed, if Yang were to run as a Green he'd be the first serious Presidential candidate the party ever had and he could do so honestly as the positions he held in the Democratic primary were in fact largely ones that the Greens espouse or would espouse.

None of which means that Ventura or Amash are going anywhere.  My predictions are they won't.  My further prediction, however, is that if the 40 year old Amash actually becomes any sort of serious threat in the election, and if that happened soon, we would seen Yang back in the race in some sort of a "draft Yang" pretext.  And if that occured, it would actually be possible that a four way split in the vote could leave any one of the four men in the Oval Office.

Indeed, the problems that Biden and Trump now have are such that third party runs this year should be serious problems for both candidates. But they will prove not to be, and both Ventura and Amash's campaigns will go down in minor voting defeat, providing another lesson on how inviolate the two party system is.  It'd really take a well known maverick from the existing two parties to mix this up, but that's unlikely to occur.  Indeed, the crisis that the country is enduring is likely to focus attention on the knowns more than ever, and the current knowns are the two septuagenarian candidates.

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May 1, 2020

Tara Reade in 1993 at age 29.

Rising press attention to Tera Reade's claims of being the victim of a sexual assault at the hands of Joe Biden back in 1993 caused Biden to finally come out with a formal denial of the claims.

Biden's failure to address them to date can be read more than one way, but the most likely explanation for them is that by addressing them he can't help but accidentally push them into the forefront  Failing to address them up until now was the wise course of action, as addressing them now also was.

None of this resolves the issue and the story will go on. But how it will go on is now the question.

Similar accusations against Bill Clinton did not derail his campaign for the Presidency back in, ironically, 1992, which actually plays into this a bit in terms of atmosphere.  That was before, of course, the Me Too movement seemingly redirected public attention in this area.  Also before that really got completely rolling, similar accusations did not derail the campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

An accusation of being crassly in appropriate did cause Al Franken to have to resign however in 2018 for conduct that was much less extreme (which is not to state that the claims against Biden are true).  The rise of the Me Too movement lead to the rapid downfall of Harvey Weinstein who of course was accused of serial icky conduct and whose fall would have likely have come in any era once exposed.  Claims against Brett Kavanaugh nearly kept him from rising to the Supreme Court that same year.

The Kavanaugh case is Biden's problem.  Democrats demanded an inquiry on Kavanaugh even though there appeared to be ample reason to doubt his accuser, who became accusers.  Furthermore, the passage of time made the investigation of the claims against him difficult at best.  Those demands, however, set the political bar with the position that the accusations were nearly proof of the claims and should be treated as such to some degree.  Franken's fall amplified that.  Franken's claims were submitted to a Senate process that resulted in his being investigated with the Democrats participating on that, as they had little choice but to do.

Now, however, Joe Biden is in the same uncomfortable position.

And that uncomfortable position has, as a strong element of it, that the Democrats have taken the position pretty consistently that a "right to be heard" presupposed a duty to believe, which truly are not the same things.  Biden himself took that position in regard to Kavanaugh, and as he took it there, he can't help but have it apply here.

Now, of course, a critical difference in the cases of Biden and Trump, vs. Franken and Kavanaugh, is that they were subject to different processes.  Franken and Kavanaugh were in positions where official investigations were appropriate as they were either office holders or seeking Senatorial confirmation for a position.  Biden and Trump, however, are appealing to the voters.

Which gets us to the next thing  The accusations, no matter their merits or demerits, didn't seem to impact the voters in 2016 and its frankly unlikely that they will now, which raises the question of the more vague judgment of the voters in this area is a good thing or a bad thing.
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May 5, 2020

To my surprise, the Tara Reade story is getting traction.  A former neighbor of Reade's has now come forward to support her, claiming that Reade had told her the story about in the mid 90s and was emotionally upset at the telling.

That sort of development really isn't surprising. That's how these events always play out. That doesn't mean that Reade is telling the truth or that the neighbor is.  Indeed, given the way human memory works, they could be flat out wrong and still not be lying, although if they aren't flat out wrong and still aren't lying, that would suggest that Biden did something, if not commit a type of sexual assault.

And the other thing that is now occurring is that Biden is tied up in the topic of releasing records, which is going to be a diversion until it occurs.

My sense is that given the passage of time and the apparent actions of Reade at the time, if something really occurred, any existing records are not going to show anything and that this will not derail Biden's campaign.  Having said that, it is going to drain off some votes.

All of that, of course, assumes that records really aren't there which would show anything, which is the high likelihood.  If the opposite is true, this will end up derailing everything.

Meanwhile, the Administration is politicising the pandemic to some degree by asserting that China is morally culpable for the outbreak. The U.S., it should be noted, isn't alone in this in that Australia is also doing the same and appears to be doing so fairly seriously.  The gist of the claims right now are as follows:

Nationally, the Administration is asserting that the Chinese bear fault for the Pandemic.  Secretary Pompeo stated on This Week that the virus is natural, i.e., not man made, which reflects the scientific consensus but he also claimed that it had escaped a Chinese lab.  The Administration is also asserting that the Chinese acted to cover up the developing epidemic in their country so that they could hoard supplies for their own people.

This comes at a time in which there's a feeling in the Administration that the formerly good economy, which had been what the Trump Administration was pinning is reelection hopes on, will not recover prior to the Fall, which seems to have been a hope, if almost somewhat desperate hope, in the Administration.  As that becomes increasingly unlikely, the Administration is turning its political attention to the PRC.  In the background, both diplomatically and militarily there's been increasing attention to the Chinese for at least a decade or more, so this is a development of a preexisting trend.
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May 8, 2020

Biden accuser Tara Reade has asked, which is really more of a demand, that Joe Biden drop out of the Presidential race.

More and more has been published about this accusation, not surprisingly, over time.  It turns out that early on Ms. Reade was talking to a variety of reporters and at least some held their stories as it evolved. While the custom has become to insist that the stories of accusers not be questioned, the evolution of Reade's makes it difficult not to do so.  The full blown sexual assault aspect of it is very recent, and early on nothing of that type was claimed.  She has supporters who claim to have been told the story early on, but such accusers nearly always do.

Reade is a Sanders supporter and her story has evolved during the history of the Democratic campaign.  Now she's demanding Biden withdraw from the race.  What would occur if that were to happen is unclear, but presumably his delegates would be freed and chosen delegates would go on to the convention, with all of them not yet fully chosen.  Sanders has the only organization capable of getting back up to speed and its not unreasonable to wonder if he'd be the nominee.

Nobody wants to believe that somebody would make up a claim of rape over something like this, but that's the uneasy reality. Some will do that. We don't know that to be the case here, but we should wonder about the unverifiable claims that have come on some controversial public figures dating back to Justice Thomas.  It seems unimaginable that some would tell lies in order to bring down a public figure, but some will.

We can't know and never will what is going on here.  But those who doubt Reade's story have good reason for doing so.

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May 11, 2020

We've reported before about infighting in the State's GOP.  Over the weekend it seemed to come to a head again.

An effort was made to block 59 of the Natrona County GOP's delegates from participating in the convention, which has been one of the counties that has not gone along with efforts to require unity in the party which has seen increased adherence to a certain type of conservatism. The effort failed, but not by much.  It had been passed as a resolution by the credentials committee.

The dispute came about as Natrona County's party enlisted the aid of the County Clerk's office to assist in voting that took place at the online meeting.  While voting at the meeting has now been subject to real questions in general, Natrona County's actions violated the rules that has been set out before hand and that nearly cost the county its position in the state convention.

The vote may have failed as well known Republicans in the state opposed it. Former Congressman Barbara Cubin called the party dysfunctional and compared its actions to the Politburo.  Cubin was seeking the position of the party's treasurer and lost to Harriet Hageman during the online gathering.  The vote generally resulted in the conservatives retaining their positions, or acquiring them, apparently.

Voting at the gathering has proven to be controversial with there being complaints it was done improperly and that a significant number of votes were not counted or given time to be counted.  Notably significant conservatives of the stripe currently running the party won positions while well known names countering them, with significant endorsements, failed in their challenges.  The voting was even criticized by at least one of the well known conservatives who noted that he received a ballot when he should not have.

The infighting has been discussed here before but it generally pits a type of tea party conservatism which has gained a large measure of control over the state's party against the old style Wyoming Republicans.  The latter remain numerous in the Natrona County and Laramie County branches of the party.  The irony is that that they reflect a larger percentage of average Republicans, most of whom don't participate in the party actively.  Indeed, one of the complaints of the party leadership is that a lot of Republicans, in its view, are actually crossover Democrats.

The Democratic Party has been all but dead in Wyoming since the Clinton years but efforts like this are causing some of the rank and file to really question the party. Gumblings like those made by Cubin can be heard among some average party members who are dismayed by the infighting and who don't support the hardline efforts. So far it hasn't lead to the party's overwhelmingly dominate position in the state from being challenged but as this keeps on it will have to start to have a detrimental impact in the party of some sort.

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May 13, 2020

AOC announced that she's on the Biden campaign's climate team.

Ocasio-Cortez is of course a controversial figure who had supported Sanders from early on and who was late to endorse Biden.   The position may signal an effort by Biden to win the support of her followers or may be genuine.  It'll be a lightning rod of sorts for some of Biden's opponents, but the extent to which it will influence undecideds in any fashion is a pretty open question.

Joe Biden himself appears to be getting set to attempt to run the first "front porch" campaign since William McKinley's last run, and McKinley had Theodore Roosevelt running around to help him at the time.

What the plans are, right now, is to run a principally cyber campaign, something that's never been tried.  In that context the support of figures who draw a lot of news attention, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez does that, may prove to be an asset for drawing attention, much like Roosevelt was.

While it still remains news, the Tara Reade story has gone from being a prime headline getter to back pages at this point.  The longer the story ran and the more it tended to change, the less credible it appeared, and it seems that its now past the point of being more than a distraction.

While polls at this point are of dubious value, to say the least, Biden is leading in swing states and there's now real concern that a Trump defeat will swing the Senate to the Democrats.

Swings in Congress have been a recurring story during this election.  Early on there was some suggestion that the GOP might gain in the House to the point of actually recovering it. That now is widely acknowledged to be impossible.  There was also a period in which there was concern in the GOP over down ballot Republicans, but that went away, only to revive and now be there once again.  Biden has made taking the Senate a feature of his campaign.

One place the reverse is happening is in Katie Hill's California Congressional District where Mike Garcia is ahead in returns over Christy Smith.  The special election, held yesterday, came about as Hill had to resign after explicit photographs of her were released.

I frankly never understood why Hill resigned in the first place.  Hill is an admitted bisexual and I don't know what the photos, released by a conservative blog, showed. She's admitted to have been in an "inappropriate" relationship with a male staffer, but frankly at this point in time, so what?

The so what part, apparently, is related to this being against the House Rules, the conduct with the staffer that is, after such a rule was passed as part of the MeToo Movement.

I don't approve, I'd note, of such conduct nor do I approve of revenge porn or sabotage porn or whatever category the release of the photographs was.  And I don't approve of her personal conduct. But at this point all it really does is serve to shed light on a general level of hypocrisy in the country in general.  If she's resigning, it shouldn't be because of a rule, but because people shouldn't do what she did, including being photographed nude, and that rule and rules to address that, ought to apply to everyone.  If they don't, she shouldn't be made to resign, and I don't think she should have.

Garcia is an example of something that I've noted here before, but which I've only heard a national pundit mention once.  He's a first generation American Hispanic who served in the Navy as a pilot. His father was a Los Angeles policeman.  He's married and has two children. Hill was a white Democrat with a messy personal life.  Smith was also a white candidate and was endorsed by Hill.

So what, you might ask?

Well, what this shows is that the long held Democratic belief that all Hispanic voters are perpetually Democrats is way off base.  In fact, Hispanics have only voted as Democrats largely for the same cultural identify and poverty reasons that the Irish and Italians once did.

Indeed, as a demographic, Hispanics look a lot like prior generations of Italians and Irish, who became Italian Americans and Irish Americans, except they're doing it more quickly.  Those earlier demographics married within their own ethnicities for a long time and retained strong ethnic identities as their economic fortunes rose.  Hispanics have intermarried, like Garcia, much more quickly and therefore their ethnic identity has not remained as strong as their economic fortunes rose.

Of course, in terms of economic eras, we're still very much in the entry stage of the Hispanic story. But Garcia shows plainly what the Democrats have simply refused to see. As a culture, Hispanics are much more conservative than the white Democratic base and once their economic fortunes begin to rise, and they very much have, they're highly unlikely to remain Democrats.  In this race the young Republican former Navy pilot, running on "the Constitution, Capitalism and Competition", is going to soundly defeat the Democratic Party of Hill/Smith, which seems strangely mired in the messy battlefield detritus of the Sexual Revolution and not standing for much.  Hill was basically a casualty of that Revolution and now will be remembered for not being able to keep her clothes on.  Garcia is likely to be remembered as one of the first of what will become a large number of Hispanic conservatives to start to reach high office.  He's more likely to be the face of Hispanic candidates of the future than AOC.

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May 21, 2020

Joe Biden won the Oregon primary earlier this week.

This is, of course, not a surprise, but it should be part of the posts here.

Within the past week the Democratic Party has decided to make health care the focus of its 2020 campaign.

FWIW, I disagree with the common national assumption that health care is a really huge deal with most American voters.  It undoubtedly is with some, but I don't think it ever has been with most of them, most of the time.  Young voters aren't really focused on it the way that the Democrats tend to think they are.  Older voters already have a government supported system in Medicare.  That leaves the middle, but in normal times that means that a lot of people actually worry about people messing with their employer provided plans, although there are fewer of those than there used to be.

The question this year is whether the Coronavirus and the massive recession its causing change that calculation.  It might.

Traditionally American voters have made big changes in directions during periods of crisis, the Great Depression providing perhaps the best example.  Things were done during the Depression that never would have been done in regular times.  The longer the Coronavirus Recession goes on, and the deeper it becomes, that may be true again.

The Democrats are starting to count on that, which builds on the fact that President Trump's real strength with voters outside of his base was on the economy.  Now the economy is in major distress and the question becomes to what extent that erodes his support.  It might not, on the basis that people probably aren't inclined to blame the recession on him, given the obvious role of the virus, but they might as well simply because that's a common thing to do during times of crisis.

Added to that, even if they aren't inclined to blame Trump for the recession, many voters may now feel that his prior record on the economy isn't relevant to what's current happening and that his record otherwise doesn't attract them.  It will attract some, to be sure, who have other issues which they give him credit for success on.  But for others it's likely that the problems the pandemic has brought, including the health care insurance loss that's associated with the loss of employment, will be paramount.  To many others who don't watch individual issues on a close basis, it will seem that he has no record.

That presents a real opportunity for the Democrats, and not just in the Presidential election, but down ballot as well.

Of course, it also present a classic problem for the Democrats as their internal argument will be how much to use the crisis to advance an overall left leaning agenda.  They'd be wise to be restrained but they've had a hard time doing that recently.

In any event, right now, Biden is leading in the polls, but it may well be way too early to give too much credit for polls.  The next major news flurry he'll receive is when he picks a vice presidential candidate.  He'd be wise not to do that too soon, however, as once he does attention is really going to focus on that person, particularly given the relatively high chances that whoever is the VP will end up being the President within the next four years due to the impact of natural aging, let alone natural aging in a stressful position, no matter which Presidential candidate wins.  Biden's VP stands a really good chance of being a lightening rod if that choice is well known.
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May 23, 2020

The Tribune featured an article on a new candidate for the Senate, Donna Rice.

When this thread was first started a month ago, the Senatorial candidates that had been announced in the GOP were:

Cynthia Lummis

Mark Armstrong

Joshua Wheeler

Robert Short

So now there's a fifth Republican candidate according to the Tribune, although that story wasn't quite up to date.

Rice is an unknown to Wyoming voters and her biography notes that she left Wyoming "several decades ago" to attended law school after graduating from UW, but her heart always remained in Wyoming and now she's back with her husband who are working on establishing a business.  The paper's article is, unfortunately, devoid of useful details otherwise.  While Rice was a lawyer, apparently, in Indiana, we're not even informed what kid of business she intends to operate here.

We're really not that well informed by the article on how her positions are different from Lummis'.  If they aren't in some notable way, her campaign will be completely pointless as running on having moved back to a state you left decades ago and then running for the U.S. Senate isn't an attractive platform.  A review of what little information Rice has up on her sites reveals that she's a very conservative pro-Trump candidate whose positions really aren't distinguishable, in print, from those of Lummis.  If that's the case, her campaign will go nowhere against another female lawyer who didn't leave the state to find work and who has been in the U.S. House.

One of the interesting things about what we're seeing in the GOP is that candidates tend generally, but not always, to run to the right of the front runner. We saw this pretty prominently in the Gubernatorial race in 2018 in which all of the candidates trying to beat front runner Gordon ran to the right of him.  The one candidate that didn't, at first, was Galeotos, who came around to that position and wrapped himself around Trump's flag.

Galeotos's effort sank his campaign, which should sound a cautionary bell for candidates this go around. There seem to be a general feeling that the state is so solidly pro Trump that associating yourself with Trump equals election. That's probably an incorrect assumption as what the races have actually tended to demonstrate is that the rank and file of the GOP remains conservative but independant, where as its leadership, on a county by county basis, tends to align in most instances with the President.

Lummis has strongly associated herself with Trump in the campaign and, as noted, is a woman lawyer who stayed in the state.  Basing a campaign on nearly the exact same issues but having left hte state for your career doesn't really make your campaign stand out.

One additional thing Rice is doing is noting that she's a Christian.

Most of the candidates who are running, if not all, in the GOP state races are Christians.  What this trend actually reflects is that a person holds conservative positions on social issues based on their Christian faith. There's nothing really wrong with doing this but its become very notable in since 2018.

In actuality, the field is beyond five at this point. The actual announced candidates, so far, are:

Cynthia Lummis

Mark Armstrong

Joshua Wheeler

Robert Short

Bryan E Miller
Patrick Dotson
John Holtz
Michael Kemler
Star Roselli
Donna Rice

I frankly don't know who a lot of these entries are.  Roselli is from Arizona and therefore that campaign is going nowhere. 

Miller is a retired Air Force officer who is running to the right of Lummis.

Holtz ran for Senate in 2018 and is trying again.

I can't tell you much about the remaining candidates, and chances are that during the election, you won't hear much about them.

In the Democratic field, the candidates are now:

Merav Ben-David

Chuck Jagoda

Yana Ludwig

James Kirk DeBrine
Kenneth R. Casner
Rex Wilde

If some of these names seem familiar, beyond the first three who have been announced for some time, that's because some of them have run before.  Whichever one becomes the Democratic nominee is going to lose to the Republican nominee, who is almost guaranteed to be Lummis.

The House race has expanded a bit as well, although Liz Cheney is sure to win it.  Cheney now has competition from Blake Stanley.

Stanley, like Rice, is running to the right of Cheney, who in fact has shown some independence in the House and who has risen to the status of being a major House figure.  Stanley also ran in 2018 and lost.  By this time, Cheney's position is fairly cemented to there's little chance that he will do better in 2020.

In the Presidential race Tara Reade's lawyer, who was associated with the Me Too movement, dropped her as a client  In doing so, he was careful to note that this doing so in no way reflected on whether her accusations against Biden are truthful, but then unless an attorney wanted to be sued for breach of the attorney client privilege, he'd have to say that.  That doesn't mean that is why he and Reade parted company, however.

Biden was in the news for another reason, that being one of his odd verbal gaffes in which, while being interviewed on a show with a largely black audience, for saying of blacks who support Trump that they "ain't black".

This will be something that goes nowhere, but it does point out that Biden is unusually prone to verbal gaffs and that some of them are downright odd. This is likely to become an unwelcome feature of this campaign to the extent it already isn't.

The Trump campaign spent some time last week trying to focus on the use of improper FBI techniques in regard to Gen. Flynn.  This story is also not likely to go anywhere and whatever occured it does not appear, as the President spent some time suggesting, that former President Obama did anything illegal, nor does it solve the basic problem that Flynn lied to the FBI.  It does point out, however that the Trump campaign, faced with a massive Coronavirus downturn in the economy and the pandemic itself, is feeling the heat of the polls, which show him behind with little way out.  There's still a long ways to go, of course, but the campaign was heavily relying upon a strong economy which no longer exists.

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A note on the colors.

Observant readers will note the inclusion of some colored text above.

The colors here are in the internationally traditional color scheme for political parties; red for the left and particularly for socialist parties, blue for the right, orange for Christian Democratic parties, yellow-gold for Libertarians, and green for Greens.

That doesn't square with the incredibly ignorant color scheme foisted upon the nation by some dimwit national television network several years ago.  The first person I recall using that color scheme is Chuck Todd, although I don't know that he came up with it.  I'm blaming it on Chuck, however, whose fails to generally live up to the standards that should apply to his occupation and who should accordingly be relegated to a third rate television market with a viewership of five.

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Prior related threads.

The 2020 Election, Part 1

The 2020 Election, Part 2

The 2020 Election, Part 3

The 2020 Election, Part 4

The 2020 Election, Part 5

The 2020 Election, Part 6