Although the country is nowhere close to the next presidential election, twenty months away to be exact, yet my first Agita attack of the 2020 campaign season is expected at any time. I can feel it coming on.
To date, there are fifteen announced candidates with that many in the wings deciding whether to give it a Go. It is fair to say many of those contenders would settle for being a Vice Presidential candidate. The Dems are attracting that number of candidates in the belief that PT Barnum will be easy to knock off and under normal circumstances, that would be a correct assessment. But Quantity of candidates does not translate into Quality; hence, an Empty Suit Club (ESC) needs to be established to sort the cattle from the herd.
According to Real Clear Politics, Bernie is polling at 24% with less support than he garnered in 2016 with former veep Joe Biden at 29%. Does Bernie seriously expect those same people who defrauded him in 2016 to sit by as he takes the prize or even give him a fair shake? It’s not going to happen. Whether Bernie has schmoozed sufficiently with Perez or Wasserman-Schultz or the PTB (powers that be) to be acceptably docile remains a question. It may be that some of the party’s stalwart professionals, now that Russiagate has not delivered as intended, will resume blaming Bernie for Hillary’s loss. Some would almost rather lose again than let Bernie have the last word. In any case, it is difficult to believe that the Dems, the DNC, the MSM or whoever makes that final call will allow Bernie to win the nomination.
A recent entry into the ranks of the ESC is former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a friend of the oil and gas industry who is polling at 1%. Hickenlooper opposes Medicare for All and may best be described as a right-centrist. Attendees at the 2018 Builderberg conference had an opportunity to check him out (although his name was later scrubbed from the attendee list) and he must have impressed someone as he raised $1 M immediately after his announcement.
The latest ES candidate to announce with 8% support in the RCP poll is Beto O’Rourke, a rich kid who married another rich kid, who supports Medicare for America rather than Medicare for All and raised $6.1 M on his first day as a candidate. As a Congressman from one of the most Democratic districts in the country, O’Rourke is known to have frequently joined Republican votes on economic and environmental issues and has most recently joined AOC in scaring the hell out of ten year olds that the world will end in twelve years as the Green New Deal suggests.
Rounding out the Club with a noticeable lack of socio-eco-political achievement to benefit the public or in pursuit of peace are Sens. Booker, Gillibrand and Klobuchar with Harris promising to not attend AIPAC as she did in 2018 and Sen. Warren, who may be a marginal ESC member since, every once in a while, she has an innovative thought like breaking up the Big Tech companies.
Andrew Yang is a graduate of Philips Exeter, Brown University and Columbia Law School and supports a $1000 monthly basic income to offset the permanent loss of American jobs to artificial intelligence and advanced technology. In March, 2019, he qualified to participate in the June and July Democratic Presidential primary debates by fulfilling DNC requirement (which is meant to eliminate the riff-raff) by receiving 65,000 donations in at least twenty states. The DNC reserves the right to limit debate participation to twenty candidates.
South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg who is the only gay candidate among this politically correct field and has yet to formally announce although he has already qualified to participate in the upcoming primary debates with 76,000 donors. Will the DNC allow a non candidate who has met the donor threshold to participate in their first primary debate?
Where is #Metoo? Even though he is leader of a barely distinguished pack, it is puzzling that former veep Joe Biden is seriously considering a run in 2020. He must be living in a simulated reality to be unaware of the video clips on line displaying Joe’s affection for young girls, some of them in front of smiling parents who are assiduously avoiding his lecherous moves on their daughters. A Biden candidacy could be beneficial to opening a national discussion related to pedophilia by the country’s elite and give the priests a rest.
While Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi), a practicing Hindu, an Army Major and veteran of two tours in Iraq and a yoga practitioner, is polling at 1%, the MSM has done its best to diminish and belittle her non interventionist candidacy. To her credit, she continues to appear on Morning Joe Show, the View or Stephen Colbert where the agenda is to entrap her as a supporter of Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
While she is firm in opposition to ‘regime change wars,” she narrowly sidestepped the trap agreeing with the repulsive Meghan McCain that “there is no disputing the fact that Assad is a brutal dictator; there is no disputing the fact that Assad has used chemical weapons against his people. That is not something I’m disputing.”
As Gabbard well knows, the charge that Assad gassed his own people has been refuted by no less an authority than former US Defense Secretary James Mattis who has said there is ‘no evidence.” Perhaps Gabbard had a bad hair day in flubbing her lines but given the embedded support for war in the Democratic party, it will behoove her to step up her game, take the risk and tell the truth – even when face to face with the likes of McCain or Colbert.
In her recent standing-room-only appearance before enthusiastic students from the University of San Francisco, Gabbard linked domestic issues directly to the ‘cost of wasteful regime change wars’ ending with “I do not need the foreign policy establishment to tell me what to do” and that I am “not intimidated by stars on the shoulders or the military industrial complex.” With veterans in every audience, she recently gave repeat performances to full houses throughoutNew Hampshire.
With 44,000 donors, as Gabbard digs deep and finds the fortitude and inner grit to say what needs to be said, to be a strong voice for peace with no apology or equivocation, she will easily qualify for the debates.
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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
