The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
Twenty Questions: Here’s a quiz asking how much you agree on certain issues with each of the Democratic presidential candidates.
Pema Levy at Mother Jones writes—Warren Landed the Night’s Biggest Blow on Bloomberg:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) landed what may prove to be the toughest blow against Michael Bloomberg in the Nevada Democratic debate Wednesday night when she pressed him to release female employees who had accused him of harassment and discrimination from non-disclosure agreements. Bloomberg refused.
“Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?” she asked, standing beside him on stage.
Bloomberg began to respond, saying, “we have a very few nondisclosure agreements” when Warren cut in. “How many is that?” she said.
Allegations that he made sexist remarks and created a hostile work environment have dogged Bloomberg’s campaign. But Bloomberg, who has chalked up his past behavior to “bawdy humor,” has been unwavering in refusing to release multiple women from the confidentiality agreements they signed when settling legal actions against his company.
Warren dug the knife in on the debate stage when she argued that the behavior wasn’t just problematic but that it also undercut Bloomberg’s electability—the ability to defeat President Donald Trump that Democratic voters are searching for in their nominee.
Nathan Robinson at The Guardian writes—Michael Bloomberg was mercilessly attacked in his first debate – and he flopped:
Before Wednesday night’s debate, Michael Bloomberg’s critics had been furious with the Democratic National Committee for changing its rules to allow Bloomberg on the debate stage. But it turned out the critics should have been thanking the DNC. Bloomberg was absolutely terrible. His campaign may not literally have ended on the debate stage, but it’s hard to see how any viewer could come away believing his pitch that he is “the best candidate to take on Trump.”
Bloomberg was ill-prepared, uncharismatic, and unlikable. The other candidates ran rings around him. Elizabeth Warren sank her teeth in early, interrupting Bloomberg’s opening statement to point out how his long history of sexist comments about women made him a lot like Donald Trump. Warren landed even more brutal blows later in the debate, when she challenged Bloomberg to release women from the non-disclosure agreements his company had forced them to sign in sexual harassment lawsuits. Bloomberg mumbled some lame excuse about how the agreements were consensual, but was clearly caught off-guard, and Warren wouldn’t let the issue go.
Bloomberg looked feeble, and after the debate some Democratic bigwigs were already reportedly concluding that “Bloomberg isn’t the answer.”
Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post writes—Bloomberg’s best debate moment came five minutes before it started. Then things went downhill:
Mike Bloomberg’s best moment Wednesday night came about five minutes before the Democratic presidential debate started. It was when one of his ubiquitous television ads ran on MSNBC.
From there, things went pretty much downhill for him.
The former New York mayor who appeared onstage in Las Vegas with five other contenders for the Democratic nomination was not the confident and commanding figure that we are constantly seeing and hearing in the $409 million worth of television, radio and online advertising his campaign has produced.
Bloomberg seemed to disappear for much of the debate. When the camera caught him on a split screen as someone else was talking, he looked annoyed and, occasionally, lost.
Alex Shepherd at The New Republic writes—How Michael Bloomberg Owned New York Media. The billionaire is skyrocketing in the presidential polls—thanks to tricks he learned as mayor:
Bloomberg was first elected without much media scrutiny at all. When stories initially emerged about his long history of misogynistic comments and the climate of sexual harassment at his company Bloomberg LP, they did not get much traction. In the summer of 2001, Democrat Mark Green was the clear front-runner, and Bloomberg was considered something of an afterthought. “Every sign,” The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert wrote just before Election Day, “points to his being a Pantalone-like figure who is parted from a great deal of money and humiliated in the bargain.” But by the late fall, Bloomberg was narrowly leading in the polls—and the media was understandably focused on the September 11 attacks, not on the mogul who would be mayor.
Bloomberg deployed the same formula in his three mayoral campaigns that he is relying on now as he seeks the Democratic nomination: Spend so much money on advertising that it overwhelms any negative reporting. The amount of money he was tossing at the election was unprecedented, but the media largely ignored it. Voters’ opinions were shaped by a relentless ad campaign rather than stories about Bloomberg.
“The free media missed the story, and missed challenging the story being propounded in paid-for media partly because it found it awkward to talk about the overriding issue of the paid-for-media story, which was money,” Michael Wolff noted two weeks after Bloomberg won his first election. “The commercials, or his ability to afford them, was, in some sense, the Bloomberg platform. They were his credentials. Precisely because he could buy this time, he was taken seriously. The Times didn’t scrutinize him because they would have had to scrutinize what, to their minds, legitimized him. Money was the record he was running on.”
Jumaane Williams at USAToday writes—Michael Bloomberg is not the candidate who can beat Donald Trump:
Wherever you’re reading this, there’s probably a Bloomberg ad running alongside it.
These ads have amplified, across the country, a Bloomberg who was an ally of teachers and education equity, was dedicated to expanding affordable housing, was a champion of the working class and will build on those successes to “rebuild America.”
Bloomberg, the Great and Powerful.
Take it from someone who lived under Bloomberg, who served with him, who fought against him — if you look behind the curtain, as I hope millions will in tonight's debate, that image begins to melt away.
His advertisements hide his failures on housing — the termination of Section 8, the capitulation to a real estate industry that led to rents rising and neighborhoods falling, the drastic increase in homelessness that was met with an oblivious response. Mayor Bloomberg’s policies created an affordable housing and homelessness crisis in New York City that has extended and exacerbated far beyond his tenure, creating a city that is the most expensive it has ever been.
Becky Z. Dernbach at Mother Jones writes—No, Amy Klobuchar Is Not Responsible for Minnesota’s High Voter Turnout:
In her opening shot at Wednesday’s Democratic primary debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) claimed credit for Minnesota’s high voter turnout, citing it as evidence of her ability to beat Donald Trump. “I am the one on this stage that had the highest voter turnout of any state in the country when I led the ticket,” she said.
It’s true that Minnesota topped the list for voter turnout nationally in 2018 when Klobuchar ran for re-election. But Minnesota voters also led the country in voter turnout in 2016, when Klobuchar wasn’t on the ticket. (That year, Minnesota regained its regular position on top of the chart from a blip in 2014, when it fell to sixth.)
“For nine election cycles in a row, Minnesota voters turned out to the polls more than any other state in the nation,” MinnPost reported in 2016. “In fact, the state actually holds the all-time record for turnout, when 78 percent of registered voters showed up to cast a ballot in the 2004 election.” Minnesota has led the nation in voter turnout since 1980, according to MinnPost. Klobuchar wasn’t elected to statewide office until 2006.
Covering Climate Now writes—Making the 2020 elections a climate-emergency story:
Four years ago, ahead of the 2016 elections, there was climate silence. Only one of the hundreds of questions journalists asked during Democratic and Republican presidential debates addressed climate change—and that was one more than in 2012, 2008, or any of the preceding presidential elections—even as scientists, activists, and governments around the world implored Washington to help contain the gathering crisis. The nation’s major news organizations treated climate change as a virtual non-issue, and voters acted accordingly, electing an unabashed climate denier who as president has seemingly delighted in boosting fossil fuels and trashing environmental protections, including the Paris Agreement signed by virtually all of the world’s governments, which pledged to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”
America’s journalists must do much better in 2020.
There are promising signs so far. Network television—which continues to attract the largest audiences in media, in an era with no shortage of options—is showing new interest in the climate story. The press as a whole seems increasingly aware of climate change and its dangers, even if most outlets still refrain from echoing the thousands of scientists who now call it an “emergency.” Opinion-leading outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and National Public Radio, continue to improve their coverage, while outlets that emphasize climate coverage as part of their brand, such as The Guardian, PBS NewsHour, and Bloomberg, which recently launched Bloomberg Green, continue to light a path for the media writ large. Overall, however, the climate story remains marginal on the American news agenda.
Cindy Polo in the Miami Herald writes—Florida wants tougher abortion laws, but do victims of rape, incest, trafficking even matter?
In the United States, we have seen state legislatures across the country put forth a wave of anti-abortion bills frighteningly similar to the law in El Salvador. Although just days ago we commemorated the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it is clear now more than ever that Republican-led state legislatures are trying to strip away a person’s right to make their own reproductive health choices. Florida is one of those states.
A few days into the 2020 legislative session, several bills were filed that would take away reproductive healthcare for millions of people. HB 271 would make it a third-degree felony for anyone who “knowingly or purposefully performs or induces an abortion” if a fetal heartbeat has been detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. In other words, anyone who has a miscarriage can be imprisoned for up to five years if the state persuades a jury that the miscarriage was caused by a deliberate act.
If enacted, HB 271 could criminalize people in Florida, just like in El Salvador. They would be stripped of any right to terminate a pregnancy if they were raped (including if the rape victim is a teenager or child), or even if their own life were endangered. In addition, anyone who suffers a miscarriage could be charged with a crime.
Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer writes—House Dems can’t just ignore Trump, Barr crimes. Here’s 3 ways to keep fighting back:
America is a hot mess right now. Rather than feeling humbled as only the third impeached president in U.S. history, President Trump — with the democracy-dies-in-broad-daylight help of his Roy Cohn-flavored attorney general, William Barr — has been emboldened to not just flout the established rule of law, and 233 years of constitutional norms, but to boast about his various high crimes and misdemeanors on Twitter. [...]
But House Democrats — the one branch of American government not either all or partially under the thumb of Trump — seem to be on the Manfred-Collins futility track of resigned compliance, after impeaching the president yet winning over just one lone Republican vote. The New York Times reported this week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have agreed that the strategy between now and the November election will be to push an agenda around health care and jobs — and forget all that impeachment stuff.
“Health care, health care, health care,” Pelosi reportedly told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats, saying that the party’s strategy would be laser-focused in winning in the fall and keeping its current majority on the House side of the Capitol. Democratic strategists believe, after all, that largely ignoring Trump’s abuses of power and focusing on health care is how the party gained 40 seats and re-took the House in 2018.
This notion seems wrong on several levels.
Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—Bernie Sanders and the Non-Voter Revolution:
A new study of non-voters by the Knight Foundation confirms everything I thought I knew about the prospects for winning a presidential election through heightened voter mobilization. Whatever the intrinsic merits of increased civic participation as an electoral strategy for the Democrats against Donald Trump, it is highly dubious.
The report examined 12,000 “chronic non-voters in America, across the country and in key battleground states.” Their bottom line finding is that if all these people went to the polls, the Democrats would increase their popular vote margin and lose the Electoral College even more decisively than in 2016.
Of all the battleground states, my home base of Pennsylvania had the worst numbers. Trump leads here with non-voters by a 36 percent to 28 percent margin. This is consistent with my impression that most of the untapped vote in the Keystone State is composed of white voters who have little to no higher education. A similar situation holds for Virginia, Florida, and Arizona. Of the nine battleground states where the study questioned non-voters, only Georgia showed an advantage for a generic Democrat over Trump that is outside of the survey’s margin of error.
Another suspicion of mine was confirmed too; Bernie Sanders would fare best among this group largely because he’s not perceived as a typical Democrat and his calls for systemic change match the sentiments of non-voters. It’s this sentiment that explains why Trump does so well with this group and it’s also why more conventional politicians, like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, have little appeal to them.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Will Trump scare some sense into the Democrats?
While the Democratic presidential candidates tear each other to pieces, President Trump is sending a message to the country: The rule of law means nothing to him. He will weaponize the federal government to his own political purposes, and things will only get worse if he’s reelected.
Trump has said many awful things, but here are his most chilling words yet: “I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”
Trump as “the chief law enforcement officer” is akin to putting the Houston Astros in charge of policing cheating in Major League Baseball.
It should worry Democrats that as the dangers posed by four more years of Trump (and two more years of a supine GOP Senate) become clearer, their presidential race may be coming down to a choice between a billionaire and a democratic socialist. “ ’Tis the final conflict,” as “The Internationale,” the old anthem of the left, put it. It’s hard to imagine a confrontation more likely to shatter the party.
The New York Times Editorial Board inquires—When Donald Trump Is the Law, Guess who benefits?
“I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” President Trump said on Tuesday.
The alarming thing is that he’s right. The nation’s founders put the president in charge of the executive branch, which is tasked with enforcing the law. That is a remarkably broad power, and it can be easily abused. So it’s worth asking: What does Donald Trump understand the law to be?
Well before the events of the past week, Mr. Trump supplied a pretty good idea: The law is something that applies to his adversaries, not to himself or his friends. He regularly turned to the courts to harass and intimidate employees, critics and contractors. But when it has come to his own perceived advantage — whether he was violating federal fair-housing laws to keep black renters out of his apartment buildings, playing shady games with his tax returns, sexually assaulting women, defrauding students of his “university,” raiding his own charity, buying the silence of alleged mistresses on the eve of an election, running his global business empire out of the White House, or thwarting the will of Congress by using foreign aid to advance his re-election — Mr. Trump has always seen the law as just another set of rules to be bent, if not broken.
Americans, meet your chief law enforcement officer.
Victoria Pfau at the Los Angeles Times writes—Sacramento’s army of interns deserves to be paid:
There are interns in almost every office at the Capitol in Sacramento, and very few of them are paid. They answer phones, write press releases, research legislation and track constituent requests. The privilege of gaining experience — and an advantage in their later job hunt — will cost most of them hundreds, even thousands of dollars in living expenses and lost wages from the paying jobs they forgo. Work experience when you’re starting out is theoretically more valuable than a paycheck, but that doesn’t make it any easier to pay rent, student fees or your lunch tab.
In 2019, California passed landmark legislation protecting workers’ rights by expanding collective bargaining and addressing worker misclassification and workplace harassment. Yet the unpaid interns that keep Sacramento lawmakers’ offices running are proof that state government’s commitment to labor rights comes up short inside its very own walls.
No state agency tracks internships, paid or unpaid. Some universities and nonprofits sponsor paid public-service internships; assembly members and senators may, on their own, pay interns as well. But most of this work, especially at the district office level, is unpaid; some internships don’t even include academic credit. [...]
In 2018, the advocacy group Pay Our Interns convinced Congress to pass legislation that created a fund to pay House and Senate interns. Until then, in Washington, as in Sacramento, paid internships were rare, a constant casualty of budget cuts.