And then there were four: Amy Klobuchar drops out

The South Carolina primary seems to be having a major impact on the Democratic presidential race. Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, has announced that she is leaving the race, joining Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer. She has endorsed Joe Biden.

I had thought she would stay in at least until tomorrow because her home state of Minnesota votes on Super Tuesday and she had been endorsed by a major newspaper there and she could go out having at least one victory to her name. But maybe her internal polling had shown that she would lose badly an so she decided to leave now so that she can continue to argue that she is a proven winner in her state.

This leaves just Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg still in it.

This pruning of the field will undoubtedly please the political and media establishment who seem to think that many candidates were splitting the anti-Sanders vote and that the supporters of the people who have dropped out will flock to Biden or Bloomberg and one of them will become their sole standard bearer and beat Sanders.

Where this leaves Warren is not clear.

What is also not clear is what this means for early voting practices. Those who had already voted for the three candidates who dropped out may be regretting their decision to do so.

Was Jeffrey Epstein working for the FBI?

Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison while awaiting trial for pedophilia, had earlier received an extraordinarily lenient plea deal for charges related to sex with minors, with one of the federal prosecutors who negotiated that deal, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, ending up as a cabinet member for Donald Trump. Questions had been raised as to why Epstein off so easily and most answers were that he had used his money to buy favors from influential people.
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Bye, bye Pete

Pete Buttigieg has announced that he is dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, joining Tom Steyer who dropped out yesterday.

Pete Buttigieg has ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two campaign sources confirmed the news to the Guardian and said the former candidate was on his way back to South Bend, his home town in Indiana, where he would speak later on Sunday night.
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John Oliver on Medicare For All

He does an excellent job of explaining what it is and addresses the three main criticisms that opponents make against it: that it will cost too much, that it will increase wait times, and that it will eliminate choice. He also makes the important point that that while Bernie Sanders calls it Medicare For All, his proposal is actually much better than Medicare now, covering eyeglasses and dental needs and not requiring any premiums.

This is something that everyone should see so that they can better argue against those who criticize the proposal or pretend, like Pete Buttigieg, who claim that they have a better one, whose faults Oliver points out.

Medicare For All is generally popular

Despite Bernie Sanders coming a distant second to Joe Biden in South Carolina, his signature proposal of Medicare For All did well there, winning majority support, making it four in a row. Why it did not translate into votes for him in that state is unclear since Sanders’s landslide win in Nevada was boosted by the popularity of Medicare For All. It will be interesting to see what role it plays in the Super Tuesday contests.

In Nevada, as in both Iowa and New Hampshire, about 6 out every 10 voters in both entrance and exit polls said they supported eliminating private insurance and creating a single-payer system like the one Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both support. Among Nevadans who supported a single-payer plan, according to entrance polls from Edison Research, 49% said they were backing Sanders — more than three times that of any other candidate. Even as the leaders of the powerful Culinary Union, the state’s largest, opted to publicly oppose Sanders’ Medicare for All plan without endorsing another candidate, he won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, and crushed other candidates among culinary workers specifically.

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Coronavirus epidemic shows the danger of having a lying, incompetent president

It is clear that what got Donald Trump’s attention about the coronavirus was that it caused a slump in the stock market, the only piece of data he seems to pay attention to and cares about. He is reportedly thinking of tax cuts as a response. His initial response was that it was a hoax, no doubt thinking that that comment would reassure and rally the stock market. Of course, the fact that he is anti-science and that vice president Mike Pence, the person he has appointed to oversee the government response, is also an anti-science religious nut who thinks prayer is a good way to treat epidemics, is not reassuring. Trump has also said, without any evidence, that things are under control, that a vaccine will be ready soon, that the virus is less dangerous than the flu and that the virus will disappear as if by magic come April with the arrival of warm weather.
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Joe Biden wins big in South Carolina

With about 3% of the votes counted, Joe Biden has been projected to win the South Carolina primary. Given that the result was called almost immediately after the polls closed, it looks like he will have a big margin of victory over the currently second Bernie Sanders.

Currently Biden has about 50%, Sanders 19%, Tom Steyer 12%, Pete Buttigieg 8%, Elizabeth Warren 6%, and Amy Klobuchar 4%. Michael Bloomberg was not on the ballot here, staking everything on the 16 contests to be held in three days time on Super Tuesday.

These numbers will change as more votes come in but usually not by more than a few percentage points.

The large margin of victory will undoubtedly give a boost to the flagging Biden campaign going in to Super Tuesday and revive the hopes of the Democratic party establishment that he can stop the rise of Sanders. It will be bad news to those who were hoping to pick up the centrist mantle from him if he should falter.

More candidates skipping AIPAC

There was a time when it was pretty much mandatory for any Democratic candidate for the presidency to attend the annual conference of AIPAC, the premier Israel lobby group, and proclaim their unwavering allegiance to Israel irrespective of whatever horrors the government there unleashes on the Palestinians. That has changed, thanks to pressure from grassroots organizations that include progressive Jewish groups like IfNotNow.

This year so far, of all the candidates, only Michael Bloomberg has announced that will be attending. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg have said they are skipping it. Joe Biden and Tom Steyer have still not publicly said if they are going but a Biden spokesperson said that he will go.

The increasing distancing of the Democratic party from the apartheid policies of the Israeli government is why the Israel lobby has stepped up its efforts at all levels to punish critics of Israel and to get colleges and state and local governments to act against the BDS movement.

Finally, an end to the war in Afghanistan?

The US and the Taliban have signed an agreement that will eventually, if all goes well, result in the removal of all US troops from the country in 14 months. The full text of the treaty can be read here. The main features are described in this report.

The two sides have long wrangled over the US demand for a ceasefire before the signing of the final peace agreement, which has four points: a timeline of 14 months for the withdrawal of all US and NATO troops from Afghanistan; a Taliban guarantee that Afghan soil will not be used as a launchpad that would threaten the security of the US; the launch of intra-Afghan negotiations by March 10; and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.
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Bernie Sanders is making all the right enemies

It turns out (surprise!) that the big corporate lobbying firms are getting really concerned about what the possibility of Bernie Sanders becoming president might mean for their clients.

Federal government lobbyists told The Hill Friday that they are increasingly concerned that a Bernie Sanders presidency could be “uncharted waters” for their clients given the Vermont senator’s history of antipathy toward big business and the role of corporate power in U.S. politics.

“In our lifetime we have not had a [presidential candidate] so openly hostile towards corporations,” said lobbyist Kevin O’Neill, a partner with D.C. firm Arnold & Porter.
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