Friday, December 27, 2019

Mayor Pete and 'the Bradley Effect'

Depending on which poll you trust, Pete Buttigieg (D) wavers between a whopping 24% in the Iowa State poll, and hovering around 7 to 9% in most of the other polls of late.  Should Mayor Pete pull off a major upset and win the Iowa caucus in February, he could be a serious challenge to the other mainstream Democrats (also called Socialists) in the field.

Then again, it's that faith that you put into these polls.  If we all recall, Donald Trump 'had no path' to the Oval Office just a month out from the elections.  No chance, no way, no how.  The polls had Hillary Clinton ahead by double digits, and yet that's not the way it went, not even close.

I suspect that back in 2016, if a pollster asked you if you supported Donald Trump, you would tell them that you did not, lest your house get egged, toilet papered, or worse, set on fire by Antifa or another Democratic organization which is prone to violence.  But left alone in that voting booth, all by yourself with just that chad waiting to be punched without anybody knowing, you knew what to do.

Same thing happened to Mayor Tom Bradley (D-Ca) who ran for the California governor's seat against the ultimate victor in 1982, George Dukmejian (R-Ca) and yet Bradley lost despite a huge lead in the polls right up to the day of the election.  The subsequent 'Bradley Effect' was applied to a white vs black contest, and the results of polling that had respondents indicating they would vote for the black and yet did otherwise, responding that they would support the black candidate out of fear of appearing to be racist to the pollster should they lean the other way.  

This effect can widely be applied to any number of electoral dynamics, such as the Trump/Clinton tilt in 2016, or in this case, not wanting to appear to be anti-gay and indicate support for openly gay candidate Mayor Pete, but once in that booth pulling another handle than the one they told the pollster.

Mayor Pete and his supporters are clearly suggesting the the U.S. is ready for a gay president.  I suspect they are wrong; most of the U.S. voters are not actively against the gay movement, but it is a very noisy, vocal and hostile constituency and to slight this crowd in any way will invite undesirable effects onto those foolish enough to oppose this movement publicly.  Better to just bake their wedding cake and shut up.

We will certainly see in a few weeks how this all plays out, but my guess is that Mayor Pete and his gay movement will fall by the wayside with a distant 5th or 6th place showing in Iowa despite the polls.  

The 'Bradley Effect', or something akin to it will surface, and Mayor Pete will diminish from the front page to become a footnote down the road, similar to the late Geraldine Ferarro (first woman to be tapped for U.S. Veep).  We are still waiting for that first woman to show up on the winning ticket.

And the first gay president is a long way off as well.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Michael Bloomberg ain't the guy...

...not even close.

Yes, he may have bamboozled and flim-flammed in addition to having bought his way into three terms as mayor of a liberal pinko large town, but if he thinks that his bazillions of dollars will buy his way into the heartland and the presidency, he is sorely mistaken.  He thinks he's the voice of moderation among commie pinko socialists.  Yes, he's slighly more moderate than Ho-Chi Minh, leans just a tad less left than Mao Tse-Tung, and is slightly to the right of Josef Stalin.  He's as much of a moderate as Fidel Castro.

Don't get me wrong, I fully encourage him to spend as much money as he sees fit and watch it swirl down the toilet.  No amount of money can buy bad politics in Fly Over Country.  It will not affect any of The Great Unwashed.  The Dirt People out here aren't having any of it.  Just ask Jeb! how much it costs per vote to convince people that your bad policies are good for them.

Michael Bloomberg has been surrounded by yes men for who knows how long.  And those shameless butt smoochers surrounding Bloomberg all to a man agreed that he could buy his way into the Oval Office.

Not a chance.  He also assumed that since The Donald could do it (he didn't spend anywhere near the Old Crone in the last election), so can he.  Nope.  The Donald is a showman.  Little Michael is not.  The Donald can hold an audience.  Little Michael stutters in a monotone with his hems and haws, the guy is no public speaker.  The Donald is 6'3" tall.  Little Michael isn't.  The Donald has led a nation out of a liberal malaise, and Little Michael hasn't.

Sure, all of these things taken individually can be shrugged off.  Added all up, Little Michael stands no chance of even getting the Democrat tap as candidate.  The guy is just a grown-up Baby Yoda.  A toad, and Americans don't elect toads to national office.

In addition, Little Michael's policies are the stuff of certain defeat: grab all of your guns, close all the coal plants, and ban Big Gulps and Juul e-cigarettes, in addition to easing that Green New Deal in under the rug.  

Not the stuff that has mobs of admirers begging to sign up for any of that garbage.

But he is certainly free to throw away great big huge gobs of cash chasing the dream.  This is The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, he's free to blow as much serious scratch as he wants. And he has it to spare.


Friday, December 6, 2019

Republicans could have impeached Obama on lots of 'high crimes and misdemeanors'

So this is now the standard for impeachment: the party out of power doesn't like the guy in the Oval Office, but controls the House: since they hate the presidents' guts, he's gotta go.  Write up the articles of impeachment here (fill in the blank, doesn't matter, we'll get some lawyers and pinko professors to argue the details).

The impeachment bar is now so low, that if a sitting president sneezes without saying 'excuse me,' he's out.  Impeach the sumbitch.

This standard, however low it is currently, was more than adequate to impeach Barry on any number of crimes/misdemeanors that Barry Obama had committed during his 8 years of regime:

* Fast-n-Furious - any 2nd year law school student could write up reasonable impeachment articles on this one, the guy's hare brained scheme on getting rid of the 2nd Amendment got people killed.

* IRS Scandal - again, that same 2nd year law student could argue this with credibility when Barry and his minions were weaponizing the IRS against their opponents.

* Pallets of cash to Iran: a no-brainer high crime and misdemeanor giving aid and comfort to our enemy.

* Tapping the phone lines of then-GOP candidate Donald Trump at his NY Trump Tower residence.  Sure, he only had about a year left in office, but still...

* Weaponizing the Justice Department assets against his opponents, as I am pretty sure that the culprits with their fingerprints all over this high crime and misdemeanor (Stryzok/Page/Comey/McCabe/Brennan/Clapper, just to name a few) would invariably rat Barry out as the master mind once the screws were put to them

And the list of high crimes/misdemeanors is long and lots of bad things that Barry had a hand in didn't make the above list, chief among them was that almost everybody in the GOP ranks hated Barry's guts.  They loathed the commie pinko.

But they didn't impeach him, although they could have given today's standard, they could have impeached him ten times over...