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Black Voters Won’t Deny Bloomberg the Nomination; Sanders and Biden Voters Will

Black Voters Won’t Deny Bloomberg the Nomination; Sanders and Biden Voters Will

By John R Guardiano on February 18, 2020

This is the third in a series of posts about the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential contest and the black vote. We previously examined Joe Biden’s prospects and Pete Buttigieg’s challenges. Here we consider former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chances.

So, can Michael Bloomberg win the black vote? Well, that depends on what you mean by “win the black vote.” Can he get a majority of black votes in a Democratic primary election contest that has a fractured electorate and multiple candidates?

No, he cannot. But then, no candidate—including Joe Biden, the candidate who polls strongest among black voters—seems poised or able to do that.

The real question is: can Bloomberg win a sufficient share of the black vote to deny Sanders and Biden the nomination short of a contested political convention in July? And the answer to that question, surprisingly, is: yes. At least that’s what his surging poll numbers suggest.

A Feb. 10, 2020, Quinnipiac University national poll, for instance, shows Bloomberg with an impressive 22 percent share of the black vote, behind Biden (27 percent), but ahead of Bernie Sanders (19 percent).

An NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released today (Feb. 18) shows Bloomberg winning 16 percent of the black vote nationally to Biden’s 31 percent and Sanders’ 28 percent.

Bloomberg chose not to compete in Iowa (Feb. 3) or New Hampshire (Feb. 11); and he won’t be on the ballot in Nevada (Feb. 22) or South Carolina (Feb. 29) either. Instead, he has opted to focus all of his time, money, and resources on the 14 “Super Tuesday” states that have primaries March 3.

No successful presidential candidate in American history has ever done this; but as FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich notes, “a handful of state polls that suggest that investment may pay off” for Bloomberg.

In Virginia, for instance, a new Monmouth University poll shows that Bloomberg is tied for first place with Sanders (they both have 22 percent of the overall vote) and holding his own among black voters, with a respectable 18 percent.

That puts Bloomberg in a tie with Sanders and behind only Biden, who is preferred by 37 percent of Virginia’s likely black voters.

Similarly, in North Carolina, a new WRAL News poll shows that Bloomberg has 25 percent of the black vote, second only to Biden’s 35 percent. That leaves him tied for first place overall with Sanders. They both have 22 percent of the overall vote versus Biden’s 20 percent.

Left-Wing Ire. A similar story is playing out more or less in other states with large numbers of black voters—Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, et al. Bloomberg is doing surprisingly well, and, as a result, is now a serious electoral force in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign.

This despite arousing the ire and opposition of the more progressive or “woke” elements of the Democratic Party. Leftists angrily denounce Bloomberg for what they say are his “racist” remarks and his “racist” record as Mayor of New York City.

Such vitriolic criticism has caused Bloomberg to backpedal politically, and to renounce some of his previous positions, while apologizing for some of his past remarks. Most notably, Bloomberg has disowned his previous support of “stop and frisk” police tactics, which helped to dramatically reduce violent crime in New York City.

But as Jason Riley observes in the Wall Street Journal, “if black lives matter, then New York’s former mayor has nothing to apologize for… If anything close to the crime rates of the early 1990s had persisted for another quarter-century,” he writes, then “tens of thousands more black men might be dead or incarcerated.”

Moreover, as Fox News’ Brit Hume and the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board explain, Bloomberg’s so-called racially insensitive remarks are factually true but politically incorrect. Big deal. Or at least they may be a big deal to “woke,” left-wing progressives; but as the polls suggest, ordinary black voters don’t seem overly alarmed or concerned.

“I don’t think his problem is that he’s racist,” says the New York Times Bret Stephens. “If he [Bloomberg] were, he wouldn’t have won nearly 50 percent of the African-American vote when he ran for re-election as New York’s mayor in 2005, or be drawing considerable African-American support today. “

Genuine grassroots black support, in fact, helps to explain why a significant number of elected black officials—including four members of the Congressional black caucus and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter—have endorsed Bloomberg.

Big Money. Critics charge Bloomberg, a billionaire worth an estimated $62 billion, with trying to “buy the election.” He’s already spent, after all, an unprecedented amount of money (more than $338 million thus far) on television, radio, and digital advertising.

As Business Insider’s Eliza Relman reports, that’s more than Obama spent on advertising in his entire 2012 reelection campaign, and we still have eight months to go before the Nov, 3, 2020, general election.

Bloomberg, though, has been able to turn this criticism on its head by noting that he has the money and resources needed to defeat Trump and will spend freely to ensure that Trump isn’t reelected.

Bloomberg’s desire to beat Trump and to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, has clearly resonated with Democratic primary voters, black and white, brown and Asian.

Limited Appeal. Still, we shouldn’t overstate Bloomberg’s appeal. For the most part, he still trails Biden and Sanders and will have trouble getting more than 25-30 percent of the primary vote, black and white, in any state.

That’s in part because the Democratic Party is now fractured with multiple presidential candidates; but it’s also in part because, even with his embrace of new left-wing positions, Bloomberg is still well to the right of most Democratic primary voters.

Woke, left-wing progressives view him with tremendous scorn and suspicion. His embrace of school choice, for instance, is anathema to them.

Plus: Bloomberg hasn’t yet been tested in the crucible of political combat. As we’ve noted, he sat out the first two primary contests and hasn’t appeared in any of the Democratic Party debates. Thus how he performs in his first debate tomorrow in Las Vegas will be telling and instructive.

I seriously doubt Bloomberg can win the Democratic presidential nomination, but if he fails, it won’t be because of a lack of black support. Bloomberg, as I point out, is holding his own there. Instead, it will be because he is a bridge too far ideologically for a party that has become increasingly woke and “progressive.”

Indeed, FiveThirtyEight gives Bloomberg just an eight percent chance of winning a majority of the pledged delegates. Sanders, by contrast, has a 40 percent chance of doing that; Biden a 10 percent chance.

Bloomberg’s only plausible path to the nomination is to do well enough to deny Sanders and Biden a majority of the delegates and thereby create a contested convention.

If he can do that, then he has a sim chance of winning the nomination—especially if, before the convention, he can get a dynamic and appealing African American woman (Stacey Abrams, say) to serve as his running mate.

But that’s a very big and unlikely if.

Next up, we’ll review how Bernie Sanders is faring with black voters, and we’ll examine his success—and failure.

Feature photo credit: NBC News.

What if Trump Used His Twitter Feed to Wage War Against ISIS?

What if Trump Used His Twitter Feed to Wage War Against ISIS?

By John R Guardiano on February 18, 2020

Many critics, myself included, lament the fact that President Trump tweets so much. In truth, though, the problem is not that Trump tweets so much; it’s that so much of what he tweets is embarrassing, juvenile, and blatantly detrimental to his own political interests.

But just imagine, if you will, a president who had greater self-awareness, self-discipline, maturity, wisdom, savvy, and political smarts. Why, such a president could tweet regularly and often, but to much greater political effect. I thought about this when reading an excellent piece by Thomas Joscelyn in The Dispatch.

Joscelyn is a senior editor at the Long War Journal published by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He notes that, according to fresh reporting by Martin Chulov and Mohammed Rasool in The Guadian, the Islamic State’s new leader is Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi, also known as Haji Abdullah; and he is not an Arab, but an ethnic Turkmen.

Salbi (or Haji Abdullah) became the leader of ISIS after their previous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, blew himself up in a U.S. military raid in late October 2019. And the fact that Salbi is not an Arab, but an ethnic Turkmen is a real problem for the Islamic State: because it calls into question Salbi’s legitimacy as a ruler in the eyes of the jihadists whom he’s supposed to lead and command.

Why is that? Because ISIS’s claim to legitimacy its based on the fact that its rulers supposedly descend from the Prophet Muhammad; but such a claim is dubious, Joscelyn points out, if in fact, Salbi is not an Arab.

An earlier leader of the Islamic State, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, had much the same problem, he notes.

Jihadist critics argued that no one really knew Abu Omar’s true identity or background, so it was absurd for anyone to declare their fealty to him. Bin Laden had to answer this charge in both his private correspondence and public statements.

There’s more to the story, but the point is that this could be a real problem for the current Islamic State, which split off from al-Qaeda. But thus far the U.S. and its allies have done little to exploit it.

“If the U.S. and its allies were adept at messaging—and, trust me,” Joscelyn writes, “they are not—this is the sort of apparent discrepancy that would be trumpeted far and wide as part of a counterterrorist media campaign.”

Internecine Jihadi War. This is a great and under-appreciated point. Internecine ideological disputes within the Jihadist ranks are intense and very real—and taken quite seriously by the Jihadists themselves. The United States should be doing everything that it possibly can to exploit these divisions and keep the Jihadists divided and at war with themselves.

This is especially important because, as Joscelyn observes, ISIS is not yet dead. Indeed, despite the loss of its territory, the terrorist group retains an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 combatants in Syria and Iraq combined, including “key veteran personnel” such as Haji Abdullah.

Haji Abdullah, in fact, “is a founding member of the Islamic State’s first incarnation, with his jihadist biography stretching back to the days of al-Qaeda in Iraq (circa 2003-04),” Joscelyn writes.

An American President who understood this (not President Trump, obviously) could use his Twitter feed smartly and wisely to wage war agains the Jihadists.

And there is no need for heavy propaganda or editorializing either. Simply tweeting out a link to this Guardian article, for instance, and mildly asking some fair and legitimate questions about the ISIS leader would do the trick.

Unfortunately, Trump would rather tweet in juvenile and idiotic fashion about what he last saw on Fox News or how he was wronged by the “Deep State.” But the problem is not Twitter, which, in the right hands, can be used well and to good effect. The problem is the man—or the adolescent in a man’s body—behind the tweet.

Feature photo credit: The Guardian

Buttigieg’s Inability to Win Black Support Probably Spells His Doom in 2020

Buttigieg’s Inability to Win Black Support Probably Spells His Doom in 2020

By John R Guardiano on February 17, 2020

This is the second in a series of posts about the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential contest and the black vote. As Joe Biden has observed, it is impossible for any Democratic presidential candidate to win that party’s nomination without significant support from black voters.

We examined Biden’s prospects in our last post. Here we consider the prospects of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg may be a once-in-a-generation political talent; but he has a huge political achilles heel: black voters don’t seem to like him much. As the New York Times’ Trip Gabriel and Richard A. Oppel Jr. report, Buttigieg’s problem with black voters

came to national attention on June 16, when a white sergeant fatally shot a 54-year-old black resident, Eric Logan. The officer’s body camera was not turned on, which was widely seen as a sign of lax standards in the department. Mr. Buttigieg found himself flying home again, regularly, to face the fury of some black citizens and the frustrations of many others.

In addition, there are legitimate concerns about Buttigieg’s record as mayor and the disproportionately adverse impact his policies may have had on African Americans. Again, the New York Times:

Reports of violent crime increased nearly 18 percent during the first seven months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018. The number of people being shot has also risen markedly this year, after dropping last year. The city’s violent crime rate is double the average for American cities its size.

More recently, adds Michelle R. Smith in the Associated Press:

Buttigieg, who spent eight years as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has tripped up in recent days as he was grilled about his record, including the racial disparity in marijuana arrests in South Bend and decisions that led to him having no African American leaders in his administration during a crucial stretch of his tenure in a city where more than a quarter of residents are black.

Finally, political analysts note that black Democrats are more religious and socially conservative than the Democratic Party as a whole. Thus they may be less inclined to support Buttigieg because he is a gay man who is fully committed to the LGBT political agenda and its corresponding infringement upon religious liberty.

This would explain why, last week, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh explicitly observed that Buttigieg is gay: Limbaugh seems to sense that, within certain segments of the Democratic Party, Buttigieg’s homosexuality and commitment to the LGBT political agenda may be an electoral vulnerability.

Regardless, the bottom line is this: a Feb. 10, 2020, Quinnipiac University poll shows Buttigieg with just four percent of the black vote nationwide versus 27 percent for Biden; and unless and until that number increases dramatically to at least 20 percent or more, Buttigieg doesn’t have a chance at winning the nomination.

What Buttigieg can do, and to some extent has done already, is listen to his black critics, show empathy and understanding, and forthrightly address their concerns with specific and concrete policy proposals.

His record as mayor, after all, is not all that different from other mayors, black and white, who have had to confront vexing problems surrounding police and public safety, drug use, and economic inequality in predominantly black and minority communities.

What is different for Buttigieg is that he is new and unknown. Most black voters don’t know him. The big question is: does he have enough time to build bridges and inroads with the African American community?

Probably not. The South Carolina Primary (Feb. 29) and Super Tuesday (Mar. 3) are both roughly two weeks away. Mayor Pete may be better suited to win in 2024 than in 2020. We’ll see.

Next up, we’ll consider the prospects of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Feature photo credit: Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images via FiveThirtyEight.

Who Among the Dems Will Win the Black Vote? Who Can Win the Black Vote?

Who Among the Dems Will Win the Black Vote? Who Can Win the Black Vote?

By John R Guardiano on February 16, 2020

African Americans still support Biden; but in lieu of his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, they’re reconsidering their options.

The American political universe is focused on black voters and whether they will rally to Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or Klobuchar in the Democratic Party’s presidential contest.

Black voters are key because, historically, they have voted overwhelmingly Democratic and will represent an increasing share of the party’s primary electorate in the weeks and months to come.

But there is real doubt and uncertainty about how they will vote and what might sway them. Very few African Americans, after all, have thus far voted, since Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly caucasian.

So it’s not as if we have real-world results by which to gauge or measure whom black voters will support.

Still, no one doubts that black voters will determine the party’s nominee. For numerical reasons alone if nothing else, they are too important a Democratic Party constituency.

Indeed, as Joe Biden put it on the night he badly lost the New Hampshire primary:

The fight to end Donald Trump’s presidency is just beginning… because, up til now, we haven’t heard from the most committed constituency of the Democratic Party: the African-American community…

I want you all to think of a number: 99.9 percent—that’s the percentage of African American voters who have not yet had a chance to vote in America…

You can’t be the Democratic nominee, and you can’t win a general election as a Democrat, unless you have overwhelming support from black and brown voters… It’s just really simple… It’s a natural fact. It’s true. It’s absolutely true…

All those Democrats who won against incumbents, from Jimmy Carter to a guy named Clinton to a guy named Obama, my good friend—guess what? They all had overwhelming African American support. Without it, nobody [in the Democratic Party has] ever won [the presidency]…

In short, to understand what has happened politically since New Hampshire, and what is to come, you have to understand the challenges and opportunities that exist for each of the candidates re: the black vote. Herewith a status update in a race that is still fluid and uncertain.

In this post, we’ll address Biden’s prospects with African American voters; and, in subsequent posts, we’ll do the same for each of the other Democratic presidential candidates.

Biden. As his aforementioned remarks indicate, and as we’ve explained here at ResCon1, Biden needs to win in South Carolina or his campaign is finished.

The good news for Biden, reports FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich, is that his “firewall in Southern states appears weakened but still standing.” A Feb. 13 East Carolina University poll, for instance, shows him with 28 percent of the vote in South Carolina versus 20 parent for Sanders.

Biden, moreover, “still has a strong lead (16 points over Sanders) among [the state’s] African American voters, a crucial voting bloc that has sided with the eventual nominee in every Democratic primary since 1992,” Rakich notes.

In fact, black voters account for roughly 60 percent of the Democratic Party primary electorate in South Carolina.

The bad news for Biden: he is losing ground in the Palmetto State and his rivals are gaining at his expense. “It wouldn’t take much more of a drop to put Sanders in the lead in our polling average ,” Rakich writes. “There are still two weeks until South Carolina votes, remember.”

“Interviews with two dozen South Carolina lawmakers, consultants and voters here suggests there are deep cracks in Joe Biden’s firewall state,” writes Maya King in Politico.

A February 10 Quinnipiac University national poll she notes, “shows Biden’s support among African-Americans at 27 percent—a 22-point slip from before the Iowa caucus.”

With bad back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden has lost the air of inevitability that one surrounded his campaign; and black voters, consequently, seem to be reconsidering their support and looking at other candidates.

The bottom line: Biden is still afloat politically, but he’s taking on water at an alarming rate, and his ship may yet capsize. All hands are on deck in South Carolina, which is do-or-die politically for him. He needs a very strong showing of support from black voters.

Right now, Biden has sufficient support from African Americans to prevail in South Carolina Feb. 29; but Sanders remains a formidable political foe, and billionaire Tom Steyer is “doing an incredible job” attracting the interest of Palmetto State black voters, says the dean of the state’s Congressional delegation and House Majority Whip, Rep. Jim Clyburn.

Next up, we’ll consider the prospects of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Feature photo credit: Demetrius Freeman/New York Times via Redux and published by ABC News.

Mitt Romney’s Public Rectitude and Foresight About Russia Are an Ongoing Indictment of Trump

Mitt Romney’s Public Rectitude and Foresight About Russia Are an Ongoing Indictment of Trump

By John R Guardiano on February 15, 2020

America made a big mistake when it failed to elect Mitt Romney President in 2012.

That thought occurred to me in light of the Senator’s courageous vote to convict President Trump on one count of impeachment (abuse of power), and in light of Russian’s ongoing and successful efforts to undermine U.S. national security interests worldwide, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

Romney, of course, was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump, and his logic for doing so is convincing and unassailable.

The President asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival.

The President withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so.

The President delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders.

The President’s purpose was personal and political.

Accordingly, the President is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust.

What he did was not “perfect.” No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values.

Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.

Romney also had the foresight and wisdom to realize eight years ago, before most elected officials and foreign policy analysts did, that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe.

“Who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors?” he explained. “It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.”

Of course, during their debate, Obama ridiculed Romney to great political effect:

When you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said “Russia.” Not Al-Qaeda; you said Russia. And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

“Every debate,” writes David Drucker, “has a defining moment—for instance, Ronald Reagan’s “there you go again” in his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter. In 2012’s debate on foreign policy, Obama’s barb, and Romney’s failure to recover, was it. Romney’s momentum evaporated in an instant.”

Many prominent Democrats, Drucker notes, have since acknowledged that Romney was right. Most notable among them: Madeleine Albright—a top Democrat on foreign policy, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, and an Obama supporter.

“I personally owe an apology to now-Senator Romney, because I think that we underestimated what was going on in Russia,” Albright said during a [Feb. 26, 2019], House Intelligence Committee hearing” as reported by ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett.

Russian Aggression. Of course, ever since Trump was elected, Democrats have talked incessantly about Russia’s attempt to interfere in our presidential election by sowing disinformation, animosity and confusion.

This, obviously, is a legitimate concern; but much more significant, I think, is Russia’s increasingly bold and brazen attempts to displace the United States as an arbiter of international affairs, while expanding its influence at our expense and the expense of our friends and allies.

The New York Times‘ Eric Schmitt reports:

Russia is intensifying a pressure campaign on U.S. military forces in northeastern Syria following the American withdrawal from much of that area ahead of a Turkish cross-border offensive last fall, American military and diplomatic officials say.

Russian military personnel have increasingly had run-ins with U.S. troops on highways in the region, breaking agreements between the two countries to steer clear of each other. Russian helicopters are flying closer to American troops.

And on Wednesday, a U.S.-led convoy returned fire after it came under attack near a checkpoint manned by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who are backed by Russia.

American officials say these actions by Russian personnel and their Syrian allies are devised to present a constant set of challenges, probes and encroachments to slowly create new facts on the ground and make the U.S. military presence there more tenuous.

About 500 American troops remain deployed in Syria with a mission to protect oil fields and help fight remnants of the Islamic State.

To be sure, Russia is a second-rate power with a weak economy and a weak military. However, it does have nuclear weapons and sophisticated niche capabilities in select areas such as electronic warfare and air defense.

And Russia has played its weak hand extraordinarily well. It also has embarked upon an ambitious military modernization to achieve its geo-strategic objectives, which include expelling the United States from the Middle East and separating America from its European allies.

Russia does not want a direct military confrontation with the United States, since that would be suicidal for them.

Instead, Russia aims to conduct an ongoing but low-level campaign of harassment of U.S. military forces: to make our presence in Syria untenable and force our withdrawal.

Unfortunately, the Russians are pushing on an open door. Trump, after all, has made clear many times throughout his presidency that he wants out of Syria, Iraq, and the Middle East more generally.

Trump’s weakness quite literally invites Russian aggression.

Obama-Trump Weakness. In fairness, Russia’s reemergence as a military and diplomatic power in the Middle East began under Obama, when he failed to uphold his red line on the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and then welcomed the Russians into the country to help settle the Syrian civil war.

But Trump has continued Obama’s policy of appeasement by abandoning U.S.-controlled-territory there, thus giving the Russians greater leverage and control over Syria.

And it’s not just Syria, but Libya as well, where American weakness and indecision have emboldened the Russians, enhanced their influence, and undermined U.S. national security interests.

“Russia first rose to prominence in Libya in September 2019,” notes Foreign Policy magazine’s Anas El Gomati,

after it deployed mercenaries to the front lines of Tripoli to back [Libyan warlord Khalifa] Haftar, sparking concern in the United States and Europe that the Kremlin had finally thrown its hat into Libya’s civil war.

Its presence in Libya was strikingly reminiscent of the decisive role it played in Syria, where it backed the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to brutal effect and essentially saved the regime from collapse.

“Putin is clearly angling for access to oil and military bases on the Mediterranean in a resource-rich country at the gateway to Africa and on NATO’s southern flank,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as reported by Guy Taylor in the Washington Times.

This is something that a President Romney, with far greater strategic vision and public rectitude than either Trump or Obama, never would have allowed.

Indeed, Romney in 2019 would have realized, just as he did in 2012, that Russia’s gain can only come at our expense; and that abandoning key allies in the Middle East and North Africa is both morally wrong and a recipe for strategic disaster.

He also would have realized, as he does now, that the public trust is sacred and must never be shredded for personal political gain. That, after all, is not putting America First; it is putting America to shame.

Feature photo credit: CNN.