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Corrections: When I said I have “sympathy” for whites proud to be white, I meant “empathy” for their sorry state

I said the black vote for Clinton in 2016 was 86-87%.  It was 89%.

I was wrong when I suggested that black Caribbean immigrants are more educated than average Americans, but was right when I said Nigerian, African immigrants were

I said Trump was involved with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, but it was Bear Stearns and FL Group; relevant passage from my eBook (general preview here) below:

“Let us also pause here to note Trump’s direct involvement with two major financial firms—Bear Stearns and FL Group—just before they failed and were the two major catalysts for the worst global economic crises since the Great Depression.  FL Group failed spectacularly in 2008, along with Iceland’s other major banks and funds.  The firm’s failure was a major factor in the collapse of Iceland’s financial sector, a collapse that served as a catalyst for the 2008 global financial crisis and America’s Great Recession.  Furthermore, since FL Group was a stupendously bad performer even by the standards of the 2008 financial crisis, and given its close (direct and/or indirect) ties to Kremlin-connected Russian money, one could also be forgiven for thinking that they were acting more out of Kremlin interests than business ones.  In the case of Bear Stearns, its collapse would be the first big domino on the U.S. side of the global financial crises and the catalyst for the U.S. Great Recession.  The Trump deals were not insignificant and were important factors in both firms’ collapses, so, it would not be without accuracy to say that Donald Trump played an important role in causing the economic crises that erupted in 2008.”

I said there were eight investigations into Clinton’s e-mails/server but that was really about Benghazi (and there were nine), which Republicans did their best to tie to Clinton’s e-mails

References: My piece on how the current media landscape lacks proper analysis-May 2016, 2018

In terms of far-left and identity-driven injecting their opinions/pressures into news reporting at The New York Times and the mainstream media and how media elites are generally unrepresentative, see Bari Weiss’s resignation letter, Andrew Sullivan’s penultimate New York Magazine column and two of his new Weekly Dish pieces

On lack of exit polling data in 2020: Florida, strength of Biden support with young POC in SC, MS

On Biden’s stuttering and “mental sharpness, a ”NYT Column and the key Atlantic article it references

On white conservatives thinking white people are the people being discriminated by others

On the 1994 crime bill, two pieces from Vox and D.L. Hughley’s comments

The “Brian gets it WAY before virtually all his competition” pieces mentioned or relevant:

On Trump as a “serious” candidate-August 10, 2015

On Bernie being a HUGE problem for Democrats and helping Trump-February 17/18, 2016 and March 11, 2016

On Trump and Clinton sealing the nominations-February 21/22, 2016

On Hillary’s e-mails being much ado about nothing-Oct 21, 2015, Aug 10, 2016, & Sept 23, 2016

On Americans not valuing experience or expertise as a bad can of worms-May 13, 2016

On Russia being THE story-July 30/31, 2016

On Trump’s insanely shady business ties with the Russian mafia- November 4, 2016, March 28, 2016, and July 27, 2016

On what I call the First Russo-American Cyberwar & 38,000 votes deciding election-Dec 7, 2016

On Biden looking good before SC– Feb 26, 2016

On Biden having it wrapped on before Super Tuesday-March 3, 2016

Other work of mine referenced or relevant: 

On Russian disinformation (Clinton e-mails overkill)-November 19, 2019 and May 26, 2020

On the Bidens and Burisma and disinformation-December 18, 2019

On why Bernie is incapable of achieving his goals—February 5, 2016 and March 20, 2020

On GOP no longer being a legit political party and Dems facing down extremism-Nov 13, 2016

On Comey letter just before the 2016 election-October 29, 2016

My coronavirus coverage-May 26, 2010 and later

On the post-WWII U.S.-led “neoliberal” order & lifting billions from poverty-August 26, 2020

On white racism in the U.S. against African-Americans-June 13, 2020 and January 7, 2015

On the resumes of Kamala Harris and Susan Rice, compared-August 8, 2020

On Benghazi-November 3, 2015

My old podcasts (2014-2016)

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 11, 2020 (see related articles: August 20, 2020: I Was Wrong about Harris. Why I Changed My Mind and How She Won Me Over and August 8, 2020: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala))

WASHINGTON and SILVER SPRING—In my earlier recent piece comparing the careers of California Senator Kamala Harris and former Obama Administration National Security Advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, I noted that I have been watching and really enjoying ESPN’s The Last Dance (the documentary series about Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls’s championship teams, especially their final championship run).  I noted that there are two main facets as to how a player gets selected for a team and how they perform: the first facet is the stats: the numbers that would be a on a player’s trading card; that is what I looked at in that last piece as far as Harris and Rice.  In this piece, I want to look at some of the intangibles, the second facet: the stuff that you would not get by looking at a trading card, but which speak more to personality and traits that are more about how you operate or fit on a team in ways that numbers cannot display.  And a lot of these intangibles can come across in informed first impressions voters get from seeing each for the first time.

First Impressions

I will begin first by just explaining how I remember being introduced and familiar with both Rice and Harris.

Rice

With Rice, I do not really remember anything specific.  I did not watch or read a lot of news in the 1990s in middle school or high school.  I was super busy in both: lots of activities (music, sports) and taking advanced classes throughout.  I also went to a fairly strict boarding school for high school (shout out to Canterbury), where TV-watching was quite limited (and when we had freedom to watch TV in the common room, it was usually sports and MTV that the other kids had on; I never, ever recall seeing the news on in the dorms.  If I had put the news on, I probably would have been physically driven out of the dorms) and where I was busy enough that I did not get to read the news too often, either.

I still followed politics a bit somehow in high school, but I can say that I have no recollection that I ever heard of or even saw Susan Rice when she was with the Clinton Administration or in the time that followed before she was with the Obama campaign.  I do not have any recollection of becoming aware of her existence during the 2008 election either, though perhaps I saw her on TV or read an article or few that mentioned her.  I do know that I became aware of her as our Ambassador to the United Nations.  I recall nothing specific between the first term and the Benghazi “scandal,” other than a few times she would have been speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the UN and I am sure I saw her other times in clips of other UN deliberations as well as press conferences, interviews, and in articles.  Each time, I remember seeing her calm, composed, knowledgeable, competent, sharp, and articulate, a solid representation of America to the world and a competent National Security Advisor, one of the only black women in American history to reach such heights in government and on the world stage representing America.  Until recently, I only had a vague—I had never digested her in depth or at length—but strongly positive impression of her, with no complaints that I can recollect; this was, in part, because I researched the Benghazi situation deeply in advance of Clinton’s marathon Congressional testimony of October, 2015, and realized that entire case against Hillary Clinton (and, by default, Susan Rice) in terms of the Benghazi fiasco, was, as I noted at the time, a cynical, disgusting, disingenuous, dishonest, witch hunt-like, purely political attempt to damage Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration before the 2016 election (check out my in-depth article examining this hearing for a dismantling of all the specious, misleading, and/or untruthful arguments put out by Republicans).  The first experience I ever had that really focused on Rice was watching while working out in the fall of 2019 an interview of her by Walter Isaacson for Amanpour and Company on the event of the release of her memoir.  I was incredibly impressed with her, and have since paid more attention to her and her interviews and tweets since her book tour started, and her public interactions have consistently been at a level that keeps impressing me at a very high level.

Harris

When it came to Harris, my introduction to her was very much at a time when I was glued into politics as a freelance reporter who was then focusing much more on American politics than I had previously, and, she was also being built up as a star; for these reasons, I ended up paying way more attention to her when I first came across her than I did with Rice.  I was still living in the Middle East, but had found, most disappointingly and quite sadly, that Trump and the U.S. election cycle giving me much more opportunity and paid way better than covering Syrian refugees, ISIS, Iraq, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I had been closely following the whole Trump-Russia saga, in particular, since July, 2016.  Thus, when there was a highly-anticipated hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee with key figures from the intelligence and law enforcement community, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had only weeks earlier appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia, Russian election interference, and any possible collusion between people around Trump with the Russian government or its intermediaries, I was highly interested. 

One of the Democratic senators taking part in the hearing was the newly-elected Kamala Harris from California.  Her win in 2016 was certainly met with some excitement, the second black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate and the first South-Asian (her father was black and her mother was Indian).

Full disclosure: I grew up near New York, and we East Coasters pay little attention to California politics.  So, I barely paid attention to her in the 2016 campaign, which was an extremely busy time for me when I was trying to cover the primaries and Clinton vs. Trump.  Thus, I was pretty excited about this hearing: in many ways, it would be Harris’s biggest stage yet, her introduction to the national scene, and it was certainly her introduction to me.  I remember hearing a lot of hype about how she could be the next Obama, presidential material, and the future of the party, so I was expecting to be mightily impressed and looking forward to seeing one of our brightest new stars of my left on the national stage in action.

Now, full disclosure: before you read my take on what transpired, you should know I watched the entire hearing live and closely (full video and transcript).  I was deeply interested in all the proceedings and was at least somewhat, sometimes very, familiar with the issues being discussed.  And I have to say that from the very beginning of her allotted time (video beginning with that here) during the hearing, I was shocked at how obnoxious, grating, and disappointing I found her performance to be.  From the very beginning, she was rude and grandstandy, first very briefly to Admiral Mike Rogers, cutting him off after asking him a question so that he asked, respectfully, “Senator, if you could, could I get to respond, please, ma’am?” He then tried to continue but she interrupted him again.  “No, sir. No, no.”

It looked like Harris was going to act like a Big Name prosecutor taking on a Hostile Witness, and almost immediately, she switched to question Rosenstein with the bulk of her time, confirming this impression with him, too.  She constantly interrupted him and cut him off, was rude and hostile, not yelling and haranguing like maniac and staunch Trump apparatchik Jim Jordan might in the House, not even raising her voice to the less-annoying-than-Jim Jordan-level of Republican Ted Cruz in the saucer-cooling Senate, but still clearly determined to stand out, show that she was being “tough,” demonstrate her stern courtroom prosecutorial demeanor, and make a name for herself with a figure like Rosenstein very much in the headlines.  And her whole premise was to act like she was leading an effort to protect Mueller from Trump Administration interference or from even being sacked to protect the president, citing a precedent where a previous Attorney General (AG) overseeing an independent, specially-appointed inquiry had pledged in writing to respect the independence of the investigation.  But in that case, the appointed head of the inquiry was a sitting U.S. Attorney that could be fired by the president, so there was a potential conflict in that he normally reported as a Department of Justice employee to the AG and served at the pleasure of the president.  In this case, Mueller was a retired and private citizen who was not part of the Department of Justice and did not have that conflict or reporting issues and could not be fired by the president and under law could only be fired under special, non-political, non-arbitrary circumstances by the top Department of Justice official overseeing the investigation (Rosenstein, because AG Jeff Sessions had recused himself).   Between that and the regulations of the particular law governing Mueller’s appointment—regulations that that did not apply to the precedent Harris was citing—Harris’s point was moot and so were her attempts to get Rosenstein, in a quite a badgering (do not worry, I apply that term often for male congressman) and hostile manner, to commit to a statement in writing like the one she cited earlier but that did not apply under circumstances that were quite different in relation to Harris’s line of questioning.

Rosenstein was very respectfully trying to explain this to Harris, but Harris repeatedly cut him off and continued to demand a simple answer to a complex question.  Sen. John McCain, who stood up more to Trump and Republican malfeasance and better than any other Republican senator during the Trump Administration, came to the rescue of Rosenstein, asking for Harris to stop interrupting the witness and to let him answer the question.  The Republican Chairman of the Committee, Senator Richard Burr, would join in, stopping Harris after she challenged even Burr him from repeating the same question in a hostile manner and permitting Rosenstein to make the above explanation about why a simple “yes” or “no” did not as answer given the different circumstances.

And by hostile, I mean hostile; again, I watched the entire over two-and-a-half-hours-long hearing, and nobody else acted in any way near the manner of Harris.  Only her’; everyone else—Democrat and Republican alike—was polite to the witnesses, did not repeatedly cut them off, used a respectful, non-badgering tone, and did not feel the need to be adversarial even though they found a great many things to be frustrating and concerning, but Harris adopted this adversarial tone from her very first question to the admiral and continued using it until her time was up.

There are two other reasons why this is incredibly obnoxious: despite pressure from the president to stop Mueller, Rosenstein had defended Mueller’s probe (it was Rosenstein who became alarmed enough at Trump’s behavior that he was the one who decided to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump, and it was also Rosenstein he who chose Mueller) and had given Mueller a lot of freedom, independence, and support.  Rosenstein is far from perfect and has had some problematic aspects of his time as Deputy AG ands since, but at this point he has been very much on the right side by deciding to appoint a special counsel, Mueller, and working to keep the integrity of Mueller’s investigation secure amidst considerable pressure to compromise it by Trump, Republicans, and right-wing media.  The other reason this is incredibly obnoxious is that I am certain Kamala Harris knew the law (she is an accomplished prosecutor and served as California’s Attorney General) and knew that her point was largely moot, not appropriate, and not fair to Rosenstein.  But she was determined to establish herself as a tough newcomer, to get attention, to rise above all her peers during her first major public hearing.  She was trying to trap both the admiral and especially Rosenstein into “gotchya” questions, embarrassing them and pushing them into a seemingly hypocritical trap to make the witness look like he hiding something unnecessarily in the case of the admiral and that he was not willing to stand up for the independence and integrity of the Mueller probe in the case of Rosenstein (which by all accounts up to that point and many beyond, he had).  So Harris knew she did not need to be overly concerned over Rosenstein at that point; she knew her clever attempt to prosecutorally box Rosenstein in like he was a defendant on the witness stand back in California was not getting at the heart of any major issues with the Mueller probe, knew that her actions were designed to generate a soundbite that would hopefully go viral, and knew she was engaging in self-promotion that was a subtle attack on the integrity of both Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers over a moot point, designed to make her look like she was a tough prosecutor who was taking a version of Law and Order to Washington.  In an otherwise cordial hearing, her contentious exchanges would stand out and get her attention in a situation where most junior senators would not behave this way.  You could smell presidential aspirations on her from a mile away.  And if you think I am making this up, this is exactly how Maya Rudolph satirized Harris on Saturday Night Live: always looking to create a media moment that would go viral on the internet, designed to get her attention and often show her as a tough ready-for-primetime prosecutor, regardless of the level of substance behind what she was saying.

Yep, that was my introduction to Harris: a woman clearly of great intellect, substance, and capability that chose to engage in grandstanding devoid of substance, misleading but guaranteed to get headlines.

I was deeply saddened; is this what the internet was doing to us, hollowing out our politics to be mostly hot air?  Was Harris going to use her office to be an effective legislator or focus on promoting herself in the media and on using her office to prepare a presidential run?  Would we be elevating the likes of Bernie Sanders whose “plans” were never in the realm of reality and whose central narratives and premises justifying his campaign were crafted on fantasy, thus pretty much dooming his campaign?  Were capable women of substance going to choose to play for meme and viral moments, hoping to base their campaigns on social media likes and shares?  Were these folks really going to be the future of the Party?

But the next day, it would get even worse, as Harris tried to capitalize on her events from the day before in an even more blatantly cynical attempt to create a viral, slogan-ready moment.  Because she had been interrupted by McCain and Burr—two men, two white men—there was an opportunity to frame their actions as sexist or even racist.  One thing is for certain: Warren’s viral “Nevertheless, she persisted” moment form just a few months earlier—when Republican male Senate colleagues had silenced Warren with a rarely used technicality regarding actions that “impute” fellow senators directly—was very much on Harris’s mind, and she clearly wanted to recreate that, especially the vibe of a woman standing up to powerful men.  It was almost like she could see Warren (whom I have been fairly critical of for various reasons) getting an edge over here for 2020 and she wanted to respond, and while Warren’s moment seemed relatively authentic, this would have a feel of being manufactured.  Harris’s plan was already implemented within two days of the hearing, with Harris was advertising stickers on Facebook with the words “courage not courtesy” you could get on her website—not on her Senate site, but kamalaharris.org (translation: she’s running.  Already.  In June, 2017).

Now, first off, there is a tremendous amount of sexism in the world, in America, in politics, in the Senate.  Of that, there is no doubt among rational, informed people.  And to be fair to Harris, it was smart politics.  Gimmicky as hell?  Cringingly forced and inauthentic?  Sure.  But definitely effective: most voters would not have watched the hearing.  Some—many—will have seen the clips of Harris and taken the image of her she wanted them to; most certainly would not have known much about Rosenstein or the special counsel regulations, and she was betting on that.  She had created her viral moment, though it would pale in impact and reach to Warren’s, and, I suspect, fell far short of what she was hoping, but it certainly got the attention of the media, some outlets of which tried to make it a sequel to Warren’s big moment.

I have watched Harris plenty of times since then, and, at least until the 2020 campaign—another story possibly for another time—most of her performances were much better that what I saw at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.  I would be wrong if I did not admit that this first major impression she made was strong, and that it made me more likely to read calculated political gamesmanship into some of her actions—I would say fairly—but that did not stop me from seeing her as capable, formidable, one of the top rising stars on the left, and a top-tier contender for the 2020 nomination, one of the few I thought that could compete with Biden if he was to run.

Yet still, once of the reasons I love Biden is his authenticity and positioning of substance front and center throughout his career.  As for “courage not courtesy,” just ugh.  I have written about the devolution of our politics for years and it has been happening for years, but once thing that was fairly consistent for some time was that, unlike the more unruly House, the Senate was supposed to be an elevated form of politics less prone to theatrics, more prone to comity, civility, cooperation, and compromise, with less heated rhetoric and more substantive deliberations, more removed from the passions and the whims of the masses.  There is an old, unsubstantiated tradition that Washington told Jefferson that the Senate was like a “saucer” that could allow “our legislation to cool.”  In the words of James Madison in Federalist “No. 62,” the Senate would be less “subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures” than the House.  But these days, this distinction is decidedly weakened and weakening, and I am not for that.  Today is all about “populists” on both sides smashing tradition and norms and going around institutions and political colleagues “directly to the people,” whatever that means.  Think Bernie Sanders’s mobilizing millions of people to take to the streets as a governing philosophy.  Far worse, think about Trump’s calls on his supporters to take to the streets if things do not go well for him.  Harris’s theatrics were by far nowhere near the worst I have seen in the Senate, not even close to second worst (Hello, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton!), but they were another step in a decline that seriously worried me.  And Harris, clearly, cared little for such tradition if she felt she could blaze a trail for her advancement.

A reasonable case can be made that this is what is needed at this time, that Harris’s calculation is what is needed against the Republican and Trumpian threat.  I thought to myself, Harris might have what it takes to win in the Internet/Twitter age, perhaps even what is needed to take on Trump, and she would have my support against him, but I do not have to like it.  I do not have to like how she treated DAG Rosenstein and Admiral Rogers.  I not have to like the premeditation to stand out tonally in a setting when it just was not at all necessary.  I do not have to like the calculated attempt to prepare sloganeering stickers within days.

But that does not mean I can not like or support Harris.

Rooting for (vice presidential nominee) Harris’s Best Self

As I write this conclusion, news is breaking that Biden has picked Harris.  My preference would definitely have been for Susan Rice.  But I point out these issues I have with Harris (before or after her being picked) not to denigrate her, not to turn people against her.  Harris if anything responds to the atmosphere in the moment.  She could very likely be our next vice president.  She would have my support as VP and should have all our support, has mine as a candidate for VP, and deserves our respect for earning this pick on the part of Biden.

To an extent, some of the concerns I have about Harris are mollified by Biden’s confidence in her in selecting her.  At the same time, I am still publishing this not just because I had written most of it before the pick was announced, but because I hope these concerns I have will be shared by others in a way where we push Harris to be her best self, not the disappointing campaigner we saw in 2019 and much better than the performance I saw in the hearing from 2017 I discussed above.

I have 100% confidence that Harris is more than capable of taking the higher road.  Even though I argued recently that Rice had better experience to be a VP, Harris’s experience is still impressive and contains much substance, much to be proud of, and she is both a safer and probably a better bet politically.  It is a sad testament to our current politics that a woman of color so accomplished and so talented would feel the need to play to internet/meme culture so strongly, though Peter Beinart makes a good case defending her in The Atlantic that, like Obama, as a black trailblazer in politics she has had to play it safer, in that article’s case, with her actions on criminal justice in California, actions which have been heavily criticized.  I hope, now that she has bested all but one man to be the second survivor of the Democratic primaries, that she will feel less pressure, feel more freedom, and feel confident enough in her selection by Biden to run more on substance and less on style and seeking viral moments (not that those do not help, but that is my preference as one of her supporters and one who wants to see our politics reelevated).  I hope that, if Biden wins, she can learn from someone like Susan Rice on foreign and security policy, follow Biden’s lead, be a great governing partner, and set herself up to be an amazing president of her own years down the road. 

And that is in part up to us:  it is no longer the Democratic primaries, and a much more moderate, national crowd is her audience; as her supporters or on-the-fence-voters, it is, in part, up to us to telegraph what we want from her, so lets us demand her very best, not clamor for internet gimmicks and viral videos.  I know that my complaints here were mostly about her style and how she operated, but these “little” things, the way you pursue your goals, the norms you respect and those you break, the tenor and tone you set, set all matter… just look at Trump!

Even as I am writing this conclusion, my emotions changed a bit.  Even as someone who was rooting for Susan Rice, I am happy and pleased with Harris (whom I saw as a much better-qualified candidate than Warren, both for president and vice president), and I am genuinely proud of Harris and of her selection by my candidate Joe Biden and my Democratic Party, the historic first woman of color on a major party ticket.  It is sad because of our insane coronavirus pandemic response that we cannot have a live event with a huge crowd welcoming Kamala Harris on stage with Joe Biden: both deserved that, especially Harris.  But that lost moment is the least of the slights and challenges Harris will face going forward.  I am now rooting for Harris, and confident she can help Biden win and govern.  She is immeasurably better than Vice President Pence and even more so (obviously) than President Donald Trump.

The pressure is on, but I hope and am confident that Senator Kamala Harris will rise to the occasion.  We, the people behind her, can help by pushing to keep substance front and center in a campaign that will contain a historic amount of nonsense from Trump, Republicans, the right-wing media, and the Russians.  But together and, yes, with Kamala Harris’s help, we can ensure that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn in on January 20^th, 2021.

See related previous article: Based on Experience, Susan Rice Is Easily—by Far—the Best Choice for VP for Biden (Sorry Harris Fans, that Includes Kamala)

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)  March 10, 2020 (this was written, if not fully edited, before results came in tonight); see related articles: The Best Guide to Super Tuesday (no, seriously): Biden’s Got This (and the Nomination), Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina, Sandernista Political Terrorism II: Sanders Derangement Syndrome, the Liberal Tea Party, & How Nevada Riot Pretty Much Sums Up Team Bernie, and The Sandernista Political Revolution Handbook: A Matchup Game of Bernie Sanders’ Talking Points & Those of His Fans/Supporters

WASHINGTON AND ARLINGTON—As I have noted repeatedly before, the lack of self-awareness among Bernie Sanders and his Sandernista would-be-fellow revolutionaries is among the most irritating of their (many) irritating traits.  In particular, at this stage in the quest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination (or, as many Bernie Sanders supporters would think of it, the quest to hijack, destroy internally, and replace the Democratic Party with a democratic socialist party), one thing that strikes me is how they constantly act as if they are the only group with legitimate grievances. This has been something that has long bothered me, but as Bernieworld becomes increasingly unhinged, they act as if they have a monopoly on disappointment, frustration, anger, and rage within the left.  They are indignant about how the media, other candidates, and other supporters talk about and frame them and their candidate, yet rarely pause to consider if, let alone acknowledge that, other candidates and their supporters have similar feelings directed at not just the media but back at Bernieworld (and, yes, the other major candidates, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have made clear that Bernie bros are in a category all their own on the left).  A group that in part lives off of their rage at what they term “The Establishment” and at any and all criticism directed their way—no matter how small—cannot seem to even fathom that they themselves may also cause offense, be unfair, should adjust how they speak and act towards others.  In fact, the mere suggestion of this seems to send them into even more rage, with their best reaction usually righteous indignation.

Reality, Ever the Enemy of Sanders and his Sandernistas

As is the case regarding so much with Bernie Sanders, his supporters, and Sandersism, there is their talk and then there is the massive gap between talk and reality. 

In 2016, his arguments were largely disproven by the dramatic way in which voters rejected their premises, with 3.7+ million more voters preferring Clinton, and this was with 14 states (28% of all states) holding caucuses, undemocratic and unrepresentative abominations that greatly depress turnout and overrepresent the enthusiastic and those without certain burdens (like having kids).  The net political effect of these caucuses was to dramatically inflate voting margins in Bernie’s favor, as Sanders blew Clinton out of the water in 12 of those 14 caucus states and only lost relatively narrowly in the other 2.  To ram this point home, in 2 of these states that Sanders won (Nebraska and Washington state) among the 12 of the caucuses he won, Clinton even won nonbinding primaries (or normal votes) that had far greater turnout.  Sanders, then, would have almost certainly have lost some caucus states he won if they were primaries (which happened in 2020 with Minnesota and Maine ditching caucuses) and his margin would definitely have been much lower even in the caucus states he won and also in those he lost.  In other words, the 3.7-million-vote margin of victory for Clinton over Sanders with voters would have been significantly larger with representative primaries than the numbers we have from 2016 would on the surface seem to suggest.

In 2016, Democratic turnout was dramatically lower (30.6 million) than in 2008 (37.1 million).  Basically,  Hillary Clinton—one of the top faces of the Democratic Party for decades—soundly beat Sanders because Democrats liked her for president much more than Bernie, and the idea that brand new voters were going to join the Democratic Party to shift it dramatically to the left into democratic socialist territory, that Bernie was going to be the inspiration for this high turnout and new voters flies in this face of these considerations.. Especially with young people, that turnout did not happen.  Instead, Democrats chose a far more traditional candidate (though revolutionary in her identity as far as her being a woman, the first major-party female nominee for president in American history) rather than an insurgent running a campaign that sought to overthrow the system as a whole.  Democrats actually like the Democratic Party, and Clinton garnered close over 3.7 million more votes than Sanders even with the caucus factor diluting Clinton’s margins.  So, while as a woman, Clinton could claim something of an outsider status, too, her politics were pretty institutional and mainstream in many ways and especially compared to Sanders.  Clinton was also one of the top faces of the Democratic Party for decades and handily outperformed Bernie with Democrats, so the idea that the American left overall hates the Democratic Party, hates its “Establishment” figures like, say, Hillary, or Barack Obama, or Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Whip Jim Clyburn, simply has no factual basis.  Bernie campaigned against the Democratic Party itself as well as its leaders, but it turns out Democratic voters like them just fine.  So the notion that Bernie Sanders himself is somehow going to drive historic turnout—when turnout was way down in 2016 from 2008 when Sanders was one of two major contenders in a race in which Sanders got beat by some 3.7 million votes even with dramatically lower turnout—is patently absurd and has no logical or empirical basis to support it.

For the sake of argument, though, let us even pretend that the exact same arguments were not made in 2016, plainly for all to hear, and that they were not dramatically disproven in a Democratic nomination contest that underrepresented Clinton’s support in the 28% of all state contests that held caucuses.  Let’s pretend we are in a brave new world (Sanders and his people like to make the claim that the electorate has dramatically changed in just the past few years) and look at how his political performance in contests so far in 2020 matches his claims; let’s see how much his bark matches his bite.

Premise/Assumption: People were tired of the Democratic Party and the way it did things.  Instead, they would choose a new, revolutionary campaign, one with which they could smash the “Establishment.”

Reality: There has so far only been one state where Bernie Sanders did not receive fewer votes than more proud-to-be-actual-Democrats Democrats combined: his home state of Vermont, the only state in 2020 thus far where he has received more than 50% of the vote. Despite the narrative that the alt-left “progressive” non-Democrat leftists would sell, the simple reality is that Democrats overall were happy with a number of candidates in the 2020 field and with the Party overall; Speaker Nancy Pelosi is popular with a vast majority of Democrats, too.  What’s better than polls and approval ratings, though, is votes, and with Sanders receiving less than 30% of the overall vote so far, voters have overwhelming preferred existing Democrats to those who want to smash the Democratic Party. In most states, Sanders has been in 20s, a few in the teens, and some in 30s as far as vote/caucus delegate percent-share, but in no states prior to today besides his home state of Vermont and Nevada has this threshold passed 37%. The American far-left loves Sanders, but, as I have pointed out before, this is a country where only six states have more liberals than conservatives. No, this is not a man building a broad movement that can succeed on a national level, just a fraction of a faction that can disrupt and destabilize the left but has little talent or ability beyond that.

Premise/assumption: Bernie Sanders is a generational transformational figure who will inspire turnout at historic, unprecedented levels; his claim to having this ability is the central premise to his argument of a.) how he can win the nomination, b.) how he can win the general election, and c.) somehow, without ever actually explaining it, how he will govern and how he will get his agenda passed amidst intense opposition (the oft-heard “millions of people in the streets” phrase).

Reality: Even when Bernie won states in this 2020 cycle—other than his own state of Vermont—loud and proud members of the actual Democratic Party (Bernie is still an independent) got far more votes combined (yes, even in California), often dramatically more votes when combined.  Where turnout is increasing, it’s increasing, generally, in states going strongly for Biden and dramatically so.  So Bernie has failed to do the very thing he claimed he, uniquely, could do, while Biden actually did it, not with phantom progressives but with actual suburban swing voters that are the real key to elections. And youth turnout was typically low; there was no #BernieSurge.  In every state contest so far, Sanders has received fewer votes (or state delegate percentages) than he did in 2016, and in most cases, the drop has been dramatic.  Even in his home state of Vermont, Sanders received an over 35% lower portion of the votes (50.7%) than he did in 2016 (86.1%).  The truth, then, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the narrative being spun by Sanders and his surrogates for, no matter how you slice or dice it, Bernie Sanders, is less popular and is receiving less support than he was four years ago in every state that has voted thus far.

And there are states Bernie won in 2016—Oklahoma, Maine, and Minnesota—that shifted decisively away from him in 2020.  In terms of states he lost in 2016, yes, he won Nevada and seems to have won California, but in both those cases—as in every case so far—he still performed worse than in 2016, and, in the case of California, significantly worse. In fact, as I noted before, Nevada was also a bit of a red herring in that, since it was a caucus, it overrepresented his support with nonwhites, just as caucuses overrepresent Bernie’s support in all groups, but the media and, it seems, the Bernie campaign, took the bait and thought Bernie just might have chipped into African-American support enough to topple Biden. In the end, non-caucus South Carolina put that nonsense to rest six feet under and then some.

How can we expect a candidate to mobilize a solid coalition to defeat Trump in November if he can’t even get that supposed coalition out to get him the nomination first?  How can we expect a candidate who claims to be able to mobilize millions of people in the streets to bring pressure to bear on opponents once he is president be able to do so if the very people he is talking about stay home when he is in the fight of his life to win the nomination?  How can we expect him to win when he’s losing support compared to what he had in 2016?

Super Tuesday II: The Last Formal Battle of The Sandernista Insurgency

The answer is: we can’t.

Polls have been wrong before (but not usually), so Bernie might have a miracle and stay alive in theory (that would be a miracle) or at least in a cosmetic sense.  But there are many recent polls that have Bernie being crushed tonight in just about every state or losing narrowly in territory like Washington state that should be favorable to him.  And while, yes, the pollsters missed big in Michigan in 2016, they’re at least good enough to be on the lookout to avoid similar mistakes based on the same errors. But the fact is that, just like in 2016, even if Bernie does win Michigan, he still won’t turn it around.  He will still lose big in other states and the delegate gap for him will only grow; it is just a matter of how quickly that gap will grow.

Once this becomes obvious after tonight, will Bernie lose and bow out gracefully, or will he lose and lead (or at least not try to stop) a Sandernista terrorist insurgency against Biden and the Democratic Party as they try to marshal their strength against Trump?  The fate of the general election may hinge on the answer to this question, but if 2016 is any indication, that will be bad news for Democrats, the country, and the world and good news for Trump, Putin, and selfish, nihilist anarchists

Bernie Sanders has fought for justice as he saw it his whole adult life. He has dedicated himself to trying to make the world a better place and fighting for many of the voiceless. He deserves credit for inspiring so many from such an underdog position back in 2015 when he first announced his presidential candidacy. But how you behave in defeat is often a defining aspect of how history passes judgement on your actions and a real revealer of character. Sanders was rightly called out for the way he went about losing in 2016, for dragging his feet and keeping up intense attacks on Clinton and the Democratic Party when it was clear he was not to be the nominee, substantively damaging Clinton in ways that helped Trump win the election, something I warned about throughout the 2016 election. This is truly the moment of truth for Bernie Sanders in the twilight of his career. Will he be associated with unproductive, scorched-earth tactics that tore the left apart at the moment when Trump threatened the survival of the American republic as we know it? Or will Bernie understand, and move hard to make his followers understand, that some things are bigger than your movement and your passion?

The formal war is ending, and tonight is almost certainly the last time Sanders can put up any serious resistance in a delegate-rich state.  His Waterloo will be Michigan.  The only real question is if Sanders surrenders gracefully like General Lee at Appomattox or pulls a Saddam Hussein and allows his forces to melt away in order to mount a vicious guerrilla campaign once the big formal battles are over.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006. He is currently in no way professionally affiliated with the Biden 2020 campaign, nor is receiving any compensation from it nor the Democratic Party nor any related super-PACs, campaigns, or other political groups involved in the 2020 nominating contests and elections.

See related articles: The Best Guide to Super Tuesday (no, seriously): Biden’s Got This (and the Nomination), Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina, Sandernista Political Terrorism II: Sanders Derangement Syndrome, the Liberal Tea Party, & How Nevada Riot Pretty Much Sums Up Team Bernie, and The Sandernista Political Revolution Handbook: A Matchup Game of Bernie Sanders’ Talking Points & Those of His Fans/Supporters

Correction appended: a comparison of turnout indicated the wrong election year in one of the mentions.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981.  He also just recently authored A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)  March 3, 2020; see my related article from before the South Carolina primary where I laid out the below scenario: Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina

WASHINGTON — There is talk that the global market selloffs, in addition to being about COVID-19 (coronavirus) may be something of, to use the economics term, a correction.

We can think about the upcoming Super Tuesday contests as something similar for the Democratic Party: a natural reaction to Sandersism (a virus in and of itself in many ways I have outlined before).

Because it looks like Bernie might have peaked in February, just like in 2016.

Pledged delegates are awarded in two batches, one awarded by state vote share and one awarded by vote share in Congressional districts, and the threshold is 15% for both sets of delegates.  And remember, it takes 1,191 delegates to get the nomination on the first ballot of the Democratic National Convention and thereby avoid a contested convention.

So far, only four states have voted and here are the delegate totals, with Biden barely behind Bernie:

Those crowning Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with a few-dozen delegates were fools.  If anything, February was like a wild-card playoff, a pre-playoff playoff.

Let’s just remember how weird Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada are: Iowa is the one Midwestern state without any serious metropolitan area.  New Hampshire also has very few people and is also without a sizable urban area.  Iowa and New Hampshire rank 31^st and 41^st in terms of population, and, as I have noted before, they are the 8^th and 6^th whitest states (while Bernie Sanders’s home state of Vermont is the second-whitest and second-least populous of all the states).  And Nevada, well, is Nevada…

Another thing to think about: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won South Carolina 73.5% to Bernie’s 26%.  This time around, the final vote-count was 48.66% for former Vice President Biden, 19.76% for Bernie.  But if we add the moderates in that race together and add Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie together, we basically get the 2016 Clinton-Bernie margins.  This is extremely bad news for Sanders, for it suggests that in many ways, Bernie has not grown his coalition much and that many states will break down in a way similar to voting patterns from 2016, when Bernie was not even close to matching Clinton for delegates in the end.

Warren still inspires passion and will continue to be a thorn in Bernie’s side as he tries to consolidate the “progressive” wing, but I imagine some Warren supporters who like Bernie, too, will see the writing on the wall (Warren is not likely to win any state today) and some of her support (though not a lot) may shift to Bernie in the face of moderate consolidation.

Finally, a note on former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg: he will not be a non-factor, but I really do expect, at the last minute, his numbers to fade, and, as in South Carolina, I expect undecided late-breakers to break overwhelmingly for Biden, especially with the latest developments.  I think it’s one thing for people to go into a survey and declare they prefer Bloomberg, but another to go in today and vote for him when it is clearly now becoming, for all intents and purposes, a two-person race and more and more obviously so.  I think in most states he will not hit 15% statewide (a crucial threshold for being eligible for delegates).  So, in every state where Bloomberg is polling decently, I expect him to lose a solid chunk of his support and for that shifting support to inflate Biden’s numbers beyond what the polling suggests.  Of course, this is the ex-factor, but data suggests Bloomberg voters are the least committed in the Democratic primary, so I’m sticking with being bearish on Bloomberg.

Breakdown of the 16-Super Tuesday Contests:

Now, let’s look at all the contests!  Each state/territory name will be followed, in parentheses, with the number of pledged delegates up for grabs (all charts are from FiveThirtyEight unless otherwise noted), with more delegates being awarded today than any other day, over one-third of the total pledged delegates in the Democratic nomination process (for comparison, check out delegate and vote totals from 2016 and the below maps):

American Samoa (6) and Democrats abroad (13)

One tiny U.S. territory and Democrats abroad are not U.S. states, so their contests get little attention and are kind of mini-wild cards.  That being said, American Samoa went decidedly for Clinton (even though it was and still is a caucus) and Democrats abroad went decidedly for Sanders in 2016.  With no polling data available, I would guess the best bet is something akin to what happened four years ago but substituting Biden for Clinton, but who knows, so do not place a strong bet on these relatively minor contests.

Who knows?

Vermont (16)

As far as states, only Alaska and Wyoming have fewer delegates.  Bernie should obviously win his home state by a very wide margin, the question is whether he will sweep or will Biden get a sizable minority of delegates in a way that would embarrass Bernie?  With only a few recent polls, there is not much data to go on, but Bernie will win and by a sizable margin.

Bernie wins easily, but can Biden get any delegates?

Maine (24)

Bernie trounced Hillary here in 2016, but this was also a caucus back then, and, as I have noted before, the abominations known as caucuses heavily favor Sanders by their nature, amplifying dramatically the voice of the passionate over pragmatic, colder voters; now, Maine has a more fair primary.  Bernie was way ahead in the polls here, but that was with Bloomberg doing well and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg doing well, too.  With Bloomberg fading and Pete and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar—both moderates clogging up Biden’s moderate lane—both dropping out and endorsing Biden, Biden might actually be competitive here.  Sanders should be favored but don’t count Biden out here, especially with Sen. Elizabeth Warren from nearby Massachusetts (perhaps now strategically, in a self-sacrificing way) clogging up Bernie’s “progressive” lane and Bernie’s polling average being under 30% even in the lead.  I imagine Warren’s staying power will be far larger here and in other states relative to Bloomberg, but if Bloomberg does well (which I am doubting), expect Bernie to win here.

Ostensibly great for Bernie, but Joe could surprise

Utah (29)

Sanders demolished Clinton here in 2016, but this was also a caucus, so, as with other caucus states that are now holding primaries, expect his numbers to be closer to earth.  There are only a couple of polls here, so the picture is murky, with Sanders generally having a healthy lead but not breaking 30%.  With a now-mostly consolidated moderate wing backing Biden, this state could go either way, even though Bernie seems to be favored by analysts, but I would bet a lot of that has to do with the 2016 vote.  Biden is much more open about his religious faith than Clinton was, so the deeply religious Mormons may appreciate this about Biden over the more secularized Sanders.

Toss-up

Arkansas (31)

Only a few polls have been out for Arkansas, but they showed way more people supporting moderate candidates and Bernie was not high on the list.  Bernie does not do well with Southern whites, and this is the state the Clintons led for years, so, along with having a sizable black population, this is not fertile ground for Bernie and Biden should do very well here.  Sanders, on the other hand, was clobbered here by Clinton in 2016.

Biden is a very clear favorite

Oklahoma (37)

Only a few recent polls had Biden and Bloomberg doing well, Sanders not so much.  With Bloomberg fading quickly, Biden should take from him in addition to adding support from other candidates who just left the race.  It is also a pretty white state (favoring Sanders), but is, more specifically, Southern white (which has not worked for Sanders).  Sanders might do better here than other Southern states, but that is a pretty low bar.  Yet Sanders did beat Clinton by 10 points, so don’t be shocked if he pulls off an “upset” based on limited data, especially if Bloomberg does well (though I doubt that will happen); it could be close.

Clear edge Biden, but don’t count Bernie out with so little data

Alabama (52)

This state has a very large African-American population, and, notably, Sanders skipped the 55^th anniversary of Selma’s Bloody Sunday this weekend, the only major candidate not to attend, which could hurt him with black voters even more, especially in this state, at a time when he desperately needs to make inroads with that community; skipping Selma this weekend is just one of many tone-deaf moves by Sanders throughout his career (hello Fidel!).  Clinton demolished Sanders here in 2016 and this year’s result does not look to be much different for Sanders.

Huge win for Biden here

Tennessee (64)

Clinton dominated Sanders here, and with a sizable African-American population, it is hard to see Sanders winning this time around, either.  Though some late polling had him close, with the moderates consolidating, Biden should win comfortably, even with bad weather and a tornado hitting Nashville last night perhaps depressing turnout.

Pretty big win for Biden

Colorado (67)

Bernie trounced Hillary here in 2016, but, here again, we have a state that abandoned caucuses in 2016 for a primary in 2020.  Yes, it’s a pretty white state Bernie did well in but, once again, Bernie is polling here on average under 30% (far below his support in 2016) and moderate consolidation makes this race competitive, as it’s hard to see where a massive increase in support would come for Bernie with the moderates consolidating.  If Bloomberg doesn’t tank, Bernie has a much better chance, but I seem Bloomberg tanking.

Toss-up

Minnesota (75)

Sanders handily beat Clinton here, but back then, the state had caucuses and now it is a primary.  He was basically tied in polling with Klobuchar here, but with her dropping out along with Buttigieg and both endorsing Biden, Biden will be competitive.  But since Klobuchar’s tying with Bernie is likely more because of her being a local than ideology, perhaps a decent amount of her supporters go left and buck her endorsement of Biden.  Don’t count Joe out but definitely an edge for Bernie.

Close but edge to Bernie

Massachusetts (91)

Bernie and Warren are neck-and-neck here, but Biden should finish well, too, with all that moderate consolidation.  And yet, Massachusetts is, literally, the most liberal state in the country according to Gallup (with Bernie’s neighboring Vermont being the third most-liberal) so you would think Bernie would be doing better here… Still, I suspect that, in fact, because of moderates consolidating, a number of Warren voters will shift to Bernie for strategic reasons.  Warren was even less popular than her home state’s Republican governor in the 2018 elections so favoring her here does not seem like the better bet.

Edge to Bernie with Biden having a decent third place

Virginia (99)

With Northern Virginia being the government and politics crowd, Biden in a known and respected pillar of DC, and I have it from an impeccable inside source that absentee voting in Arlington, VA, is twice as high as in 2016, with more absentee votes still being counted, and that’s solid Biden country.  The state also has a loyal and sizable African-American constituency that even stuck by Gov. Ralph Northam through his blackface scandal. Biden should win big, especially with Bloomberg fading and moderate consolidation.

Big win for Biden

North Carolina (110)

With a large African American population and great recent polling for Biden, for many of the reasons he will do well in other states, expect Biden to win big here in North Carolina.  Not any good signs for Bernie, unless you think Bloomberg will be competitive, which I don’t.

Huge win for Biden

Texas (228)

This is the third-largest delegate haul in the country, only behind California and New York.  Results from Nevada suggest that Bernie is dominant with Hispanic voters, and, until recently, the most recent polls had Bernie with a decent lead.  But few pundits have pointed out how the caucus system there may very well have overrepresented his support with Latinos (normally difficult to poll), just as they overrepresent Sanders’s support in general, as was clearly the case with African-Americans (28% for Bernie in Nevada versus a more representative 17% in South Carolina), and I suspect this will be the case with Latinos; while it does seems Sanders has made solid inroads with Latinos since Hillary Clinton dominated him with them in 2016, the Texas primary will be the first real test of this.  If I am correct and his edge with Latinos shrinks or even disappears in Texas (and other primary states), Biden should win Texas (even if Sanders does better than Biden with Latinos, expect serious support for Biden from them, too.  And while Latinos are a huge minority in Texas, there is a solid African-American minority of about 11% of the state’s population there (and a much larger portion of the state’s Democratic primary electorate).  And with Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and former Texas U.S.-Representative-and-Senate-and-presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke all endorsing Biden yesterday in Texas, Biden’s numbers will exceed his polling.  Hillary trounced Bernie in 2016 here, and with dynamics the way they are, it’s looking good for Biden, too, even if it may be fairly close.

Biden should win here, though the margin could range from slight to solid

California (415)

By far, the biggest prize in the nomination calendar has, until recently, looked to be decidedly pro-Bernie.  But with recent events, his recent dominant polling is deceptive, and a few late polls are already showing a Biden surge, which I thought was likely after South Carolina and especially likely after the Buttigieg endorsement, let alone the Klobuchar one; these surges in a few recent polls are data-points in favor of a much closer race in California.  Hillary won comfortably in 2016, and Biden has a real chance of catching Sanders.  Still, Sanders should be considered a favorite, especially considering how California is a state that has had massive amounts of early voting for some time during Sanders’s earlier peak, and Biden’s nadir, after New Hampshire and Nevada.  Still, those expecting a Bernie blowout of Biden are likely to be disappointed.  As I noted in my last piece, who gets the nomination would come down to California: if Bernie could blow out his competition there, it would be hard to catch him if he got nearly all its 415 delegates.  But, with Biden looking a lot closer and even having a shot at winning, it seems at best Bernie’s delegate lead there will be solid but not huge even as he is crushed in other key states in the South on Tuesday.  If early voting was less intense, it would look even better for Biden, but if Bernie wins by a more-than-modest margin, early voting will likely be the determining factor in that larger margin.  Bernie should win, but probably not by a ton, and Biden has a real probability of surprising, but especially with early voting happening in force expect Bernie to at least eke it out but probably do better than eke.  In the end, a good chunk of delegates should still go Biden’s way here either way.

Bernie should win, but not with the decisive win he needs, yet don’t count Biden out, either

Conclusion: Great News for Biden and Democrats, Bad News for Bernie and Trump

I was vainly trying to get this out last night, where I had the same overall feelings about how these races today would go, but new polling out this morning has only confirmed what my instincts were telling me as soon as Pete bowed out: Biden’s got this.

Looking at just about any state poll that came out before the last few days, you can add at least 10 points to Biden’s numbers, give-or-take, factoring in the Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorsements and that those endorsement will intensify an already increasing Bloomberg defection.  If you don’t believe me, Pete was averaging 10%, Amy 5%, in national polls as late as March 1^st, with Bloomberg at 15%.  That’s 30% combined, so don’t be surprised if Biden can even add 15-20% in numerous places to his numbers from March 1^st (10% is more conservative and I’m covering my ass to allow for early voting and human stubbornness, but it’s hardly unrealistic to think that one-half to two-thirds [or more!] of that bloc of support defect[s] to Biden on Super Tuesday votes cast today).  Add to all that the fact that there are serious percentages of undecided voters that will likely break for Biden as in South Carolina, and I expect Biden to do WAY better than his polling until just the last couple of days.

A few key points:

1. Bernie’s large edge with Latinos from Nevada will likely not translate to that degree since caucuses are not representative of larger voting populations
2. Biden should get a large portion of the (especially) Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and (even) Bloomberg support (even with him still in the race)
3. Undecideds should break heavily for Biden
4. California was Bernie’s one chance to run away with it in the delegate race and it is pretty clear that is quite unlikely now
5. Biden will crush Bernie overall in the South, making up for any difference in delegates between him and Bernie in California
6. States where Bernie will/could do his best are far smaller in delegate-count than the ones where Biden will do his best
7. Final Point: Biden should dominate Super Tuesday and should be on a clear path to the nomination after today

Thus, it very likely seems Bernie has already peaked and peaked early, just like in 2016.  His inability to win over African-American voters or less liberal whites means he, once again, was fairly doomed from the start if the moderate lane consolidated enough in time, which is exactly what happened this weekend.  There will be no revolution, and a nominee toxic to so many moderate and independent voters will not hand Trump an easy victory.  I’m already hearing anecdotally that more than a few people who voted Trump in 2016 will vote for Biden in 2020.

Thanks goodness for practical African-American voters, rescuing the left from itself two election cycles in a row.

I know I made a bold claim here as to the quality of my predictions, but my predictions in the 2016 cycle—from recognizing Trump as a threat way back in August, 2015, to seeing the Russian threat in July, 2016, from noting Clinton was obviously going to be the nominee after Nevada and Trump after South Carolina, to seeing how much of a threat Bernie Sanders and his supporters were as far as damaging Clinton, and in seeing Clinton as more vulnerable in the general election against Trump—proved to be far more prescient than most.

After tomorrow, the Democratic Party will very likely have fended-off an extremist hostile takeover and can present a sane, rational alternative to Trump that will not terrify many and will have broad appeal that can cut into Trump’s coalition.  There will be no risky revolution, but we have a shot to build on solid progress from the Obama years and other previous Democratic presidents, and, more importantly, a far better chance to stop a literal madman named Donald Trump—one with overtly fascist tendencies and operating extraconstitutionally—from destroying the American republic.  Exhale…

See my related article from before the South Carolina primary where I laid out the above scenario: Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006. He is currently in no way professionally affiliated with the Biden 2020 campaign, nor is receiving any compensation from it nor the Democratic Party nor any related super-PACs, campaigns, or other political groups involved in the 2020 nominating contests and elections.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981.  He also just recently authored A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)  February 26, 2020 (title modified to include Putin/Bernie angle March 30, 2020)

WASHINGTON — As the wounded, screeching animal that is the collective of the Democratic 2020 presidential hopefuls and, indeed, the Democratic Party itself, limps forward after the Nevada caucuses, I am filled both with a deep sense of dread but also have reasons for reasonable hope.

The Bad and the Ugly

First, the dread.

One almost has to admire the near-total lack of self-awareness of Bernie Sanders and so many of his followers.  Yes, countries are unique, but they do not exist in a vacuum, and as they march confidently forward, Bernie and his followers act as if they are not at all aware of the some fairly overwhelming global trends that are affecting Western democracies in particular but hardly Western Democracies alone.

The most prominent example is just from a few months ago, when a blithely confident Labour Party chief Jeremy Corbyn and his army of young and diverse Corbynistas were happy to condescend to all those questioning them as bad-faith, corrupted actors and never really prepared any serious answers to the valid concerns of those not on board as they sought to foist an ideology and scale and pace of change most Britons were nowhere near ready to accept.  The result was the worst electoral show for Britain’s Labour Party since 1935.  More than the following cases, the case of Corbyn and Labour in the UK should be a warning to Democrats, just as Brexit should have been a warning for Trump’s prospects in 2016, as I cautioned at the time.

Still, there are many more cases to consider.  We can look to Israel’s politics over the past two decades, which has seen its once mighty Labor Party fall to near political irrelevance, the same journey of the overall Israeli left.  Now, Israel is just days away from a third election this cycle in which, it seems, Israel’s left will be yet again be part of a failed effort to oust a rightist coalition.

The long-powerful French Socialist Party has likewise seen a crushing of its power recently.  In fact, all across Europe and beyond in places like Brazil, once popular leftist parties in democracies have crumbled and the far-right has risen.  While there are certainly some brighter spots for leftists electorally of late (e.g., Mexico, Canada), this collapse is stark and widespread, and not unrelated to Trump’s rise and current American political dynamics.  The collapse is also accompanied by a collapse of long-standing societal institutions—or at least a collapse in the public’s confidence in them—everything from government and organized religion to journalism and marriage to political parties and financial entities, even our faith in each other.  Such things had been stable for some time (sometimes a very long time), but in many ways now, we live in an era of dangerous declines in the very fabrics of society (in such a context, it is understanding, though still disturbing, that so many people have fallen on nationalism, ethnic identity, and/or fundamentalist religion).

It is within these contexts that Sanders’s would-be Sandernista revolutionaries have approached a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.  And let us make it clear that we are talking about a hostile takeover: in 2016, Sanders only won about one-third of registered Democrats running against Clinton, who was the preference of about two-thirds of registered Democrats.  The reverse was the case for their performance among independents who voted in the primaries and caucuses.

Again with the lack of self-awareness, they seem not to know in what “good” company they traverse.  For there is a massive international campaign—the primary mover behind which is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin, including Russian military forces and intelligence—designed to destroy democracy by destroying the political center (including the center-right and center-left) throughout the Western democracies, particularly the United States and within the EU.  This is not by just attacking mainstream political parties, but by boosting many far-right and far-left parties and candidates as well as secessionist movements (Brexit, California, Texas, Catalonia, Scotland, and Ukraine are among the most prominent).  The idea with the former is to help far-right ethno-nationalist parties (espousing politics similar to Putin’s own nationalist brand inside Russia) take power; in this context, boosting the far-left parties, which are almost universally unviable today, serves to weaken the center in the face of the far-right. With the latter secessionism, the idea is to literally break apart key European nations and alliances, destabilizing Europe and weakening its unity and that of NATO in the face of a Kremlin eager to expand its influence on the continent.  Especially with Trump’s anti-European and anti-NATO views—whereby the U.S. before Trump had been Europe’s biggest supporter against Russia—Putin’s support of him and others is helping to systematically weaken the post-WWII system set up by the U.S. that has brought about the greatest level of peace and prosperity in Europe since the height of the pax-Romana over one-and-a-half millennia ago.  This war on the political center contributes to a goal long-held by Putin: an overall global decline in democracy and the rule of law, happening right now to his delight.  And neither Bernie, nor his people, never, ever seem to stop to ask how things they say and do are advancing Putin’s exact agenda in their own quest to destroy the center.

So, basically, the world does not revolve around Bernie Sanders at all for the Kremlin, he is just one of many far-left “useful idiot” candidates the Kremlin favors not at all as an end, but as a means to a destabilizing end, whether in 2016 or now, as was just revelated to little surprise to those who have been following (Jill Stein is simply another, just less prominent, example).  Unlike Trump, with Sanders I do not believe that he solicits or accepts such interference (though, quite unhelpfully, he seems to be blaming the media for making a big deal of this when this is a serious issue, and he did, rather astounding and infuriatingly, also seem to blame Russia for the Bernie bro phenomenon; sure the Russians amplify, but Bernie bros are real).

What is even more remarkable is that nearly all of his supporters with whom I have interacted with online or in-person are “useful idiots” for the Kremlin, a term popularly attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to Lenin himself used to describe those who unwittingly propagate Kremlin propaganda because, simply, the believe in it.  These Bernie people basically dismiss the idea that Russia is boosting Bernie as “fake news” in spite of the detailed evidence for this (and much in the way Trump and Republicans do along with the Kremlin itself).  They deny it in spite of the obvious reality that a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, is an apologist for Fidel Castro and the 1979 Iranian hostage-takers, who broadcast Sandinista propaganda as mayor of Burlington, and seems to hate capitalism has close to zero chance of being elected president of a conservative, capitalist country with Electoral College and gerrymandered congressional voting district systems that strongly favor conservatives, that the Kremlin clearly wants Bernie to run against Trump so Putin can keep his favorite useful idiot in office.

These Bernie Supporters (I know these are not all of them, but still do represent a big chunk) do not like anything that does not fit the narrative that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are entirely to blame for the 2016 loss to Trump, so they are also usually all-too-quick to dismiss the clear reality that Russia interfered in 2016 at all to help Trump (journalistically, the incredibly selective, irritatingly myopic, and downright nasty Glenn Greenwald and his fellow Intercept folks Jeremy Scahill and Aaron Maté also fall into this useful idiot category).  They could care less about their role in the wider world or even the country: all that matters is their agenda and their crusade to see the center-left be obliterated by the Bernie left, they are not willing to even entertain the idea that they should adapt to add a larger spectrum of people to their camp, no, everyone else needs to join them and that is the only way they can see meaningful progress happening.  The very idea that they might do anything to appeal to people to their right, be they less liberal Democrats, independents, or even Republicans, offends then.  Sanders exudes this style from the top.

They do not care about the Democratic Party other than its utility to them as a vehicle to power; their aims are to hijack and destroy it from the inside out, not mold or remake, but to totally take it over and “bern” it down hence, they demand while offering no compromise.

And Sanders has practically won all three of first three states (technically two in terms of actual delegates so far but all three when looking at the popular vote in Iowa).  He is the overall leader in delegates and has all sorts of positive press coverage that comes along with winning.  He is the frontrunner by the main standards that count (delegates and votes), and his opposition for the nomination is fractured and far too numerous.  If Super Tuesday were held with the latest polls as the results, in many cases Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar would dilute the moderate vote so much so that Bernie would walk away with by far the most delegates and many of the moderates would be so weak individually they would not even receive any delegates (a candidate must get 15% statewide and in a state’s congressional districts to get any statewide or district-level delegates, respectively, and it is delegates that award the nomination).  A look at the current weighted polling averages in California, the state with the most delegates by far (415) at stake, makes how dire the situation of the non-Bernie Democrats is very clear:

So Bernie could be on a march to the nomination in what would be certain, barring some unforeseen calamity like an economic collapse orchestrated unwittingly by Trump, to hand Trump four more years in the White House, which could lead to the destruction of the American republic as we know it, as I have warned for years.

For this to sink in, ponder the actual distribution of political ideology in America:

Gallup has self-identified liberals at only 25%, while moderates are 35% and conservatives 37% of the population, and only six out of fifty states have more liberals than conservatives; Pew still has moderate and conservative democrats combined slightly outnumbering liberal Democrats in real life, though not in Twitter’s cesspool.

In other words, given the Electoral College and the fact that liberals are greatly outnumbered by moderates and conservative in general and even more so by states, it is truly madness to run Bernie Sanders in a national election.  Hypothetical polling should be ignored, as both Democrats and Republicans have avoided throwing the mountains of negative opposition research against Sanders because Democrats want to win over Sanders’ supporters and have Bernie play nice if they beat him, while Republicans want to see him do well against other Democrats so they can then fire point-blank at him during the general election, when they can see the whites of his eyes.

The signs so far are more or less that this will happen, that we are stuck with Bernie… until now.

The Good

For those Democrats reasonable, not myopic, and self-aware enough as to their relative strength and position in the overall Democratic and national electorate, and for other non-Democrats who dread Bernie as a choice against Trump, there are still reasons for hope.

1.) There are signs Bernie still is not winning many Democrats and his performance thus far gives ammunition to this idea

Looking at where contests have been held to far, it is important to note that the Iowa caucuses allowed same-day registration (meaning you did not need to be registered before you went to the caucuses), the New Hampshire primary was open (meaning you did not have to be a registered Democrat to vote in it), and the Nevada caucuses also allowed same-day registration.  In Iowa’s caucus entrance polls, only 20% of people identifying as Democrats were saying they were going to support Sanders.  In New Hampshire’s exit polls, only 26% of Democrats voted Sanders, and Democrats were only 52% of voters.  And in Nevada, only 30% of Democrats said they were supporting Sanders in entrance polls (and nearly one-fifth of voters were not Democrats).

The open quality of these contests, however, is not representative of the overall situation going forward, as a large chunk of upcoming contests have closed primaries in which only Democrats can participate, including New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania, the states with the second, fourth, and fifth most delegates up for grabs.  Most states also will not have same-day registration available, though a decent chunk will.  For Bernie supporters who are not loyal Democrats and disdain the party system, this means that unless they register early as Democrats in many places (a thought that would make a fair number of them sick), they cannot vote in the nomination contests.  Considering how at least 70% of Democrats in each of the first three states have not voted for Sanders, that is not a good sign for Team Bernie.

State registration deadlines

2.) From South Carolina forward, the overall territory of the contest is far less favorable to Bernie

Bernie does well and, in 2016, did well in three types of states: a.) states with open primaries, as noted above b.) very white states

Highest percent-white-alone states, 2019 U.S. Census data

and c.) caucus states (lots of overlap in b and c).  Sanders’ message in 2016 and his approach just did not resonate with voters of color, who overwhelmingly supported Clinton over Sanders; she easily won the most diverse states, which are also the most populous states.  So far this year (as before), the first two states were also two of the whitest: Iowa and New Hampshire are almost 91% and over 93% white, respectively, the sixth and eight-whitest states in the country (Bernie’s Vermont is the second-whitest state).

That gave Sanders quite a boost and hurt, say, Biden, going into Nevada.  But Iowa and Nevada are also caucuses, which are undemocratic abominations (as I have noted before) that, overall, dramatically depress turnout and favor certain privileged and enthusiastic groups over others and introduce social pressure by forcing caucus-goers to cast their votes publicly in front of their neighbors and force lobbying during the voting process.  The system is so chaotic, bad, and unrepresentative that in 2016 (besides this year’s obvious mishaps), when Washington State and Nebraska held non-binding primaries after the binding caucuses, Clinton beat Sanders in contests with dramatically higher turnout even though Sanders won the caucuses and, therefore, most of the delegates.  This year, mercifully, half the states with caucuses have already gone over to primaries, and only two states—North Dakota and Wyoming, tied for the least delegates of any state—and three U.S. territories are holding caucuses going forward, whereas fourteen states had caucuses in 2014 (twelve of which Bernie won by large margins and two of which Clinton won rather, and relatively, narrowly). Basically, in 2016, Bernie outperformed and dominated in caucus states.

In summary, this year the first two states were states with built-in advantages for Bernie, where he only won barely with the popular votes with about 26% support, and in Nevada, where he did far better, that was still a caucus state that inflated his support.

But Bernie will find South Carolina and the more populous Super Tuesday States a whole different ballgame, with far more diverse populations bestowing bountiful delegates in primaries.

3.) Dynamics are generally setting up to favor Biden and hurt Bernie and others

Apart from the aforementioned structural, geographic, and demographic reasons, other things are coming together to help elevate former Vice President Joe Biden and stall Sanders.

For one thing, apart from Sanders not having a terrible debate, everything else went about as well as Biden could have hoped for in the Nevada debate.  Biden easily had his best performance to date.  Yes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren stole the show, but she is competing mainly for other “progressive” voters with Sanders, not with Biden voters.  And she did Biden a huge favor by eviscerating the hapless former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has taken a lot of support from Biden within the moderate lane.  The other two moderates, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, tore into each other.  Warren also tore into each of them and even Bernie, and Pete went after Bloomberg, too.  Biden needed Klobuchar and Buttigieg and especially Bloomberg to take hits, and they did in dramatic fashion.  He needed Warren to do well to siphon off votes from Sanders and she performed better than anyone else.

In part as a result of these dynamics, Biden did far better in Nevada than in Iowa or New Hampshire, and though he came in far behind Sanders, he also came in far ahead of third-place Buttigieg in terms of delegates, with Klobuchar being shut out.  This was just what Biden needed going into South Carolina: a strong debate performance; a solid and clear second-place performance, a reminder of his relative potential strength compared to Buttigieg and Klobuchar in more diverse states; Warren hanging tough and keeping some “progressive” votes from going to Sanders; Bloomberg scaring the hell out of his supporters (some of the least committed in the race, along with Buttigieg’s voters) with that awful performance; and with businessman Tom Steyer—a virtual one-hit-wonder with high polling in South Carolina and nowhere else, except for some polls in Nevada but, encouragingly, he was a dud there—not even on stage, a reminder of his lack of a national profile.

Then came the South Carolina debate, in many ways a repeat of Nevada’s.  Bloomberg did not look as awful but still did not look good, and Warren was good but not as dominant.  Joe, though, had another of his best debates, the best one yet—a far more assertive and dominant Joe than we have seen—in which he was often the center of attention, and, helpful for Biden, everyone focused most of their fire on Sanders and kind of ignored Bloomberg for much of the debate.  Sanders was consistent as usual but also responded poorly and angrily—even to the audience!—when confronted.  For the most part Klobuchar and Buttigieg were fine but also non-factors other than solid attacks against Sanders, as was Steyer, who looked pretty bad when Biden brought up his $90 million investment into for-profit prisons.  This was an even more ideal debate, then, for Biden.

As if all this was not good enough for Biden’s chances, the legendary South Carolina politician, U.S. Rep. and House Majority Whip (the number-three Democratic leader in the U.S. House of Representatives) James Clyburn, endorsed Biden today, the next morning.  This was expected but is still quite welcome, as Clyburn is a titan of South Carolina politics, where he fought for civil rights in the 1960s and was arrested and jailed for his efforts.  Clyburn is a revered figure for many African-Americans, elected to Congress in 1993 and selected for the number-three leadership position for House Democrats back in 2006, which he has held in both majority and minority roles since.

When Hillary Clinton got his endorsement in 2016, Clyburn helped her to exceed her polls and beat Sanders by an even far larger margin than Obama beat her in 2008.

So just about everything Biden could reasonably hope for (save for Steyer dropping out) has happened in the run-up to South Carolina.  If Biden win and wins convincingly there, some Democrats who have flocked to Bloomberg and Buttigieg (who are, relatively, uncommitted to them in polling) would easily flock back to a winning Biden. Buttigieg has no path going forward without any serious black support and the weaker Klobuchar even more so for the same reason has no path forward, and after they are very likely crushed in South Carolina, pressure on them to drop out will be overwhelming.  If they are not myopic or narcissistic, they will heed the call and back their fellow moderate Biden to prevent Sanders form having a high chance of piloting the Democratic Party like the Hindenburg.

Only three of fifty states have weighed in, and there are also the District of Columbia and various U.S. territories to vote, too.  A candidate needs to win 1,991 delegates to win the nomination on the first-round ballot at the convention, and Bernie Sanders so far has a whopping total of… forty-five, 2.2% of the total he needs.  Biden is just a mere thirty delegates behind, which is nothing, an easily surmountable lead that Biden has a decent chance to overtake in South Carolina.

Even if Biden does not become the frontrunner with a delegate lead immediately after South Carolina, in big Super Tuesday states, Biden is already polling well or ahead (though far lower with Bloomberg’s rise) even before the events in South Carolina impact those numbers.  Bernie is doing as well as he is in Super Tuesday polls in part because of Bloomberg’s previous surge chipping support away from Biden and Bernie’s Nevada bounce.  But Bloomberg is falling and, if Biden does well in South Carolina, we can expect his numbers to go up at the expense of Bloomberg and also Buttigieg and Klobuchar.  If one or more of them can be convinced to drop and out and endorse Biden before Super Tuesday—just three days after South Carolina, when over one-third of all pledged delegates will be awarded—that would go even farther.  On that day, two of the four states with over 200 pledged delegates up for grabs—California, with the most, and Texas, with the third-most, of all states—vote.

As in 2016, Bernie may have peaked in February in 2020.

The Moment of Truth for Non-Sanders Democrats Is Now

Until recently, Biden was ahead in most of the larger Super Tuesday votes and was competitive, as we saw above, in California, but Bernie built up a lead that could drown Biden out in California (again, if candidates do not get at least 15% statewide and in individual congressional districts, they do not get any delegates), however, this is at Bernie’s current peak.  And Biden is still neck-and-neck or ahead in Texas.

A strong South Carolina performance could seriously stop and reverse the gains Bernie has been making in these states, but it may come down to California: if too many other moderates take away enough support from Biden so that he is below 15% and gets no delegates out of the whopping 415 delegates at stake there, that could be an advantage for Bernie that might be very difficult, maybe even impossible, for Biden to overcome.  However, Bloomberg is doing tremendous damage to Biden there in current polling and in many of the larger states, and if he keeps fading, this prospect could be mitigated.  Conversely, in Florida, (voting later on March 17^th) Bernie is flirting with not being viable delegate-wise at all, so that, too, with that state’s fourth-largest delegate haul of 219 delegates, could offset to some degree a poor Biden showing in California.

But if Biden beats Sanders in Texas and take fare more delegates than him, combined, in other Super Tuesday states—something that would require Biden gaining a lot in California in the short time after South Carolina—then he would be the frontrunner.

I would argue this scenario is the hardly to be dismissed, and I would bet on him being viable there, given that Biden’s main competitors in the moderate lane have a good chance of continuing to fall or may even drop out after South Carolina, but it certainly is a serious possibility that they will not fall enough and Biden could be shutout in California.  If that scenario happens it will remain to be seen whether Biden or Bernie gets the nomination, and it will come down to a long fight over each remaining state, much like Clinton vs. Obama in 2008.  However, Biden will need the resources to compete and do respectably against Bernie in less populous, rural, and whiter states, and, currently, Sanders is way outpacing Biden in fundraising, yet, if other candidates give way to Biden, it is reasonable to think a lot more fundraising will come to Biden.  If Biden clearly outperforms Bernie on Super Tuesday, just like with Clinton, it would be hard to see Bernie overtaking Biden.

Still, rather than Bernie running away with it on Super Tuesday, South Carolina should significantly alter the dynamics of this race to give Biden a huge boost and pressure his moderate rivals to clear the way for Biden to take Bernie on mano a mano.  It is very likely that this boost will make Biden competitive for most of the rest of the nomination process, but the main question is if dynamics before Super Tuesday will boost Biden enough in California to be competitive and take a big chunk of delegates from there—which would almost surely make Biden the frontrunner—or if Bernie will dominate California to the degree of shutting or almost shutting Biden out of delegates, which could lead to a protracted, scorched-earth campaign and maybe, perhaps likely, a Bernie win.

However, Bernie Sanders being Bernie Sanders, even if Biden is the clear frontrunner, I fear, just like in 2016, Bernie and his Bernie bros will fight tooth and nail even when it is clear Bernie would not be the nominee.  Either way, the party will likely be torn apart, but apart from Bernie being the nominee and getting crushed by Trump—by far the most likely outcome with nominee Sanders—the worst outcome would be Bernie dominating in California but still losing to Biden in a very tight race, thus making Biden’s challenge of uniting the Democratic Party that much more difficult.  Still, if Biden can limit Bernie’s delegate advantage in California or even beat him there (the latter of which looks unlikely unless several people drop out), he should be a clear favorite to clear the 1,991-delegate threshold.

So I would say, roughly, there is probably a one-third chance that Biden will be a clear frontrunner, a one-third chance it could be pretty unclear until the end (I would still favor Biden then), and a one-third chance Bernie could get enough delegates on Super Tuesday, especially in California, that he would be a clear frontrunner.  But with so many x-factors—especially the behavior and performance of Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren (whom we have not discussed much, but her exit would help Sanders significantly)—in the mix, it is hard to narrow things down to one most likely scenario.  In contrast, in 2016, polling made it clear even after New Hampshire that Clinton was a heavy favorite in South Carolina and, as I noted at the time, Nevada was Bernie’s last chance to win over the type of non-white voters he needed before South Carolina and Super Tuesday to be viable going forward.  It was clear with her win in Nevada that Clinton would be the nominee and that Sanders had failed to dent Clinton’s formidable majority coalition.  But, since there are so many more candidates in this 2020 race, the outcome could remain in doubt for some time.

Democrats who want to win in November who are currently backing Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Steyer need to realize that all they are doing is helping Sanders and to switch as quickly as possible to Biden.  In theory, with his fantastic ad campaign, Bloomberg could have been a viable alternative if Biden had continued to tank in Nevada and was more vulnerable in South Carolina.  Reality punctured that finely crafted image and possibility of Bloomberg’s with two far-from-good debate performances by Bloomberg.  If Biden had tanked, there would also have been a case for Buttigieg and Klobuchar remaining in the race, but with Biden poised for a clear South Carolina win, history will remember Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar for not getting out of the way and handing the nomination to Sanders if they persist in way that kneecaps Biden’s chances to overtake Sanders.  Sanders has a decent theoretical chance in South Carolina, but it seems very unlikely given the dynamics I have mentioned.

If there is one thing the anti-Sanders crowd can count on, it is the abilities of Sanders and his supporters to keep their high floor and low ceiling, sticking to their messianism, and doing little to nothing to win over those not already persuaded. Thus, Bernie will be easy to defeat if the moderate candidates consolidate quickly around Biden, but if Sanders is the nominee winning mostly 20-to-30-something % throughout, it will be because the other main non-Biden candidates could not put the country and the party before themselves even when it was clear they had virtually no chance to be the nominee, and it may be too late after Super Tuesday. At stake is not just the soul the Democratic Party, but the soul of the nation and its survival as a democratic republic.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brian interned for Joe Biden from September-December, 2006.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981.  He also just recently authored A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) February 3, 2020 NOTE: I will be adding links throughout the night, but for now I wanted to get my Iowa analysis out before the caucuses began in Iowa (5 minutes late, but oh well; Iowa analysis posted 8:05)

WASHINGTON—As the world of Western democracy may very be crumbling with the U.S. Senate all but endorsing election cheating and excusing tyrannical behavior, coupled with the concurrent formal withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (not to mention a host of crises in democracies ranging from India to Israel to Italy), we get to celebrate the very best of democracy with the Iowa Caucuses, the first official voting process that will allocate crucial delegates in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination contest.

Of course, that last part is fully sarcastic.

Caucuses: An Abomination

Caucuses are strange and foreign to most of us, as only a relatively small number of states hold caucuses in their party nomination contests, as opposed to primaries, which are for all intents and purposes what one would call normal elections and are the method of nominee selection in all non-caucus states.

Let’s be clear about one thing from the start: Iowa’s caucuses, and all caucuses, are abhorrent abominations of democracy.  As the dearly missed Christopher Hitchens wrote all the way back in 2007, a month before the 2008 Iowa caucuses:

I was in Des Moines and Ames in the early fall, and I must say that, as small and landlocked and white and rural as Iowa is, I would be happy to give an opening bid in our electoral process to its warm and generous and serious people. But this is not what the caucus racket actually does. What it does is give the whip hand to the moneyed political professionals, to the full-time party hacks and manipulators, to the shady pollsters and the cynical media boosters, and to the supporters of fringe and crackpot candidates. It is impossible that the Republican Party could be saddled with a clown like Huckabee if there were a serious primary in Iowa, let alone if the process were kicked off in Chicago or Los Angeles or Atlanta. (Remember that not Iowa but its “caucuses” put Pat Robertson ahead of George H.W. Bush in the race for the GOP nomination in 1988.) The process might be a good way for Iowa to pick its party convention delegates, though I frankly doubt even that. It is an absolutely terrible way in which to select candidates for the presidency, and it makes the United States look and feel like a banana republic both at home and overseas.

Hitchens also quite rightly pointed out that much of the problem is also in how caucuses are covered by the media, generally uncritically, respectful of the “tradition” they supposedly represent: “It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption—and the flagrantly anti-democratic character—of the Iowa caucuses.“

As opposed to primaries, where people vote in privacy and secrecy, often waiting briefly in a line to quickly cast a vote, free from any distractions or organized pressures or lobbying—at polling sites, campaigns, their surrogates, and campaigning are all legally required to be a certain distance away from the voting site—caucuses are open to all sorts of mischief.  The chief among these is that, in locations such as high school gyms all across the state, caucusers go to various spots to physically and visibly form blocs for their various candidates.  Members of each group go around to the other groups to try to convince them to switch groups for some time, throughout two rounds of voting, a process that last hours and in which there is virtually no privacy.

That’s right, your neighbors, girlfriends, wives, ex-husbands, teachers, mistresses, bosses, secretaries, your drug dealer, off-duty police officers, you name it, everyone in your community who participates sees what every other participant does, who they choose, who they are persuaded by, and the myriad of possibilities of small-town relationships and drama can all easily play out—(“Do I vote for so and so to impress my boss/girlfriend?  Do I want to be the only one in my union, office, or firefighter’s crew to vote for a particular candidate?  Especially in our extremely divisive times, what social (online or in person) wrath and consequences will I face for everyone seeing my vote?  What if two people with leverage over me are each lobbying me to switch to different candidate’s groups?).

The following excerpt from a recent article questioning Iowa’s “mythic” political status and emphasizing the reality of its ailing, fading qualities, is quite telling:

A couple of weeks ago, John Delaney was at a family restaurant in Muscatine, on the eastern edge of Iowa, because John Delaney was still running for president. He has been traipsing around the state longer than any other candidate, because he believes in Iowa’s magic: connecting with people here means plugging into the national oversoul.

Except it hadn’t been working.

“Your philosophy, your approach to the campaign — you’ve convinced me, and yet I don’t see the results in the polls,” said Davenport resident Charles Van Fossen, who’d driven down along the gray, slushy Mississippi River to eat with eight other Iowans and a bottom-tier presidential candidate.

“I don’t want to be in the corner alone” at the caucus, Van Fossen said. “I’m not afraid to do it, but I don’t want to be alone.”

Additionally, the most energetic or enthusiastic may sway opinion or exert a form of pressure disproportionate to their numbers.  Scandalously, Bernie Sanders won the 2016 Nebraska and Washington State caucuses—whose effects were binding for the state delegates—by moderate and huge margins, respectively, but Clinton won both state’s primaries—symbolic votes that did not allocate delegates but both which had far larger (over double the) turnout—by a moderate margins.

In other words, when people could more easily vote at any hour during the day instead of taking part in a far-lengthier, more time-restrictive process, far more people came out to vote in a process more representative of the will of the states’ overall Democratic voters and the results were the reverse of the caucuses.  When Bernie Sanders and his fans ignorantly complain of a “rigged” nomination process, it’s not hard to figure out why they are so blatantly hypocritical in ignoring the extremely unfair process of caucuses since caucuses favor his more passionate and privileged supporters (e.g., college students with free evenings and no jobs or kids). 

This gets to another point: the Iowa and many caucuses must take place in the evening and in lengthy sessions, preventing many people working night-shifts or that can’t afford babysitters or other child-care from participating at all; it discourages participation from the shy, sick, elderly, or disabled.  It is classist and discriminatory, then, in many obvious ways, and allows undue social and other forms of pressure to potentially influence or even change votes.  Participating in a caucuses is itself, then, a form or privilege, a large time commitment outside of working hours that effectively disbars many with serious commitments at the time of caucusing.

Again, all this this results in lower-turnout compared to primaries and, effectively, a far less representative and far more discriminatory process than primaries.

In many countries, voting for particular candidates and having such votes known can cost one jobs, opportunities, relationships, or even their lives; there are solid reasons our federal elections and most state nomination contests do not utilize the caucus approach, and for good reason.

Here in America, they should be abolished.

Another problem with the Iowa caucuses is Iowa itself.  While Hitchens was generous in his assessment of the character of the people of Iowa in 2007, in 2020’s more diverse America, it is clearly time for the party that is not the party of exclusivist white ethno-nationalism in America to finally discard Iowa from its automatic first chronological spot in the party nomination process.  By key combined metrics of race, ethnicity, and education, out of fifty states and the District of Columbia, Iowa is 42^nd out of 51 and New Hampshire—the second contest—is only 34^th (they are two of the whitest states in the nation) in terms of how much their states’ Democratic electorates are like America’s Democratic electorate.

One important thing to keep in mind is the 15% rule: candidates must get at least 15% of the vote to get any state pledges delegates.  In terms of pledged delegates—those earned by voting contests, the vast majority of the delegates awarded—there are a mix of state-wide delegates and delegates awarded in each congressional district.  So a candidate might not hit the 15% level statewide, denying them any state-level delegates, but still pass the threshold in one or more congressional districts, while a candidate passing 15% state-wide may miss that mark in one or more districts.  Furthermore, within each district are various precincts—the nearly 1,700 locations that are the caucus sites—each of which have the same 15% rule, that make up the district-wide totals.

So when caucuses-goers start caucusing and separate into their initial camps at gyms, churches, town halls, etc., after that and any shifts that happen after a period where they can lobby each other, their positions will then determine what is known as the first alignment, when the totals in the room are counted and any candidates meeting the 15% threshold are declared “viable.”  This is one of three-vote numbers that will be released tonight.  Before, for the second “vote”—the final alignment—anyone could change their grouping, but new rules for 2020 now force those viable candidates’s supporters to have their support locked-in, and if 15+% were undecided, they must also stay that way, discouraging fence-sitters from sitting on the fence in the first round.  Now, only those groupings that are under 15% can change their grouping in the second round, or they can also try to win over members of other smaller grouping or even back out of the process if they don’t like where things are headed.  These final alignment numbers after the second lobbying period will also be released, effectively giving two separate vote totals for the evening.  In addition, much like with the national Electoral College, each precinct has a weight based on Democratic turnout in both the 2018 governor’s and 2016 presidential general elections (not on turnout at this year’s caucuses), and these weighted numbers result in a determination of state delegate equivalents for each candidate, and those weights will determine how much of a say each precinct has at separate congressional district conventions in April and a statewide convention in June to formalize the assignment of district and state-wide delegates, respectively, but those numbers will be pretty clear from the initial state delegate equivalents totals determined on the night of the caucuses.

If this sounds like both a mess and nightmare, you are more discerning than many of Iowa’s state political leaders.  And, yes, it is quite possible that a different candidate will win each of the three metrics: two separate candidates claiming victories from the two separate vote totals, and a third different candidate claiming victory from the numbers of delegates projected from the state delegates equivalent numbers.  Let’s stay away from the possibility of a tie with any of these individual metrics and let it sink in that it’s quite possible that three different candidates will claim victory when the counting stops in Iowa.  Previously only state delegate equivalents were released, but now, we will have three numbers to wrestle with on caucus night.

Enough on the man-made catastrophe-quality of Iowa caucuses and caucuses in general; now, let’s look at what’s likely to happen.

What’s Likely to Happen Tonight

These may very well be the most competitive Iowa caucuses ever.  There are four candidates that are essentially tied or fairly close first based on the average weighted polling aggregates.  The media and campaigns are often disgraceful in their coverage of polling: one poll will be a headline or a talking point, and claims that those one poll’s numbers are the state of the race will be made.  Polling is, of course, imperfect; however, overall and taken together, they are usually very accurate, especially in American politics. 

Yes, not all polls are equal and even the best pollsters can make mistakes here and there, and all polls are not an exact measurement but a measure of probability.  This is where the factor of margin of error is critical.  Polls are usually accurate at a 95% confidence level, that is, 95% of the time, the same poll taken would yield the same results within the margin of error.  This means that, say, if Warren was polling at 15% with a margin of error of 3.7%, 95% of the time, this survey would produce a result of Warren’s support being 15% plus-or-minus the margin of error, a range of support (within any flaws of the that poll) of 11.3%-18.7%.  This means that any candidate within 3.7% above or below any other candidate has to be considered in a statistical tie with that candidate.  This also means that, even for candidates outside that margin, they can be closer or further away than that number next to their names, as that number just represents of the middle of the estimate range of their support.

Despite the myth that polls overall were “wrong” in 2016, the results were largely within the margin of error,both nationally and, to a lesser extent, at the state level.

The below picture represents Five Thirty Eight’s final weighted polling averages for Iowa just hours before the caucuses begin this evening (this is Nate Silver’s website, and he and it by far are the best at modeling U.S. election outcomes.

We have Vermont Sanders Bernie Sanders up front, at 22.2%, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 20.7%.  Since these are an average of multiple polls but would also clearly be within the margin of error (nearly always at least several percentage-points, with some variation depending on the poll), we can consider them both in a statistical tie but also give a clear tiny edge to Bernie since a large number of polls would have to be wrong in the same way for Bernie not to be a slight favorite.  Behind them are former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg at 15.7% and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren at 14.5%, both basically statistically tied for third but with and edge to Pete for the same reasons as discussed with Bernie and Biden.  Behind them and in fifth is Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at 10.1%, with no other candidate above 4% (businessmen Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer lead the Iowa bottom dwellers at 3.7% and 3.6%, respectively).  So Buttigieg and Warren are withing striking distance of first place, with Klobuchar as a longshot and the rest being able to be safely written off.

In addition to the polling numbers, Five Thirty Eight has released a model giving the probability of each candidate’s chances of “winning” (with three metrics this can mean different things to different people but, of course, delegates count more than the popular vote[s], as they will determine the nomination).  Sanders has a 43% chance of winning the most delegates, Biden’s 34%, Mayor Pete at 15%, Warren at 10%, and Klobuchar at 3%.  So while Sanders has the best chance of winning, at the same time, he is less likely to win the most delegates than he is to (57% chance someone else gets the most delegates).  By Five Thirty Eight’s reckoning as well as the prognosis of many, the results are highly uncertain.

A final factor: people have been changing their mind in Iowa these recent months, as the above graph makes obvious, and plenty have remained undecided.  In addition, people’s second-choice preferences have also shifted, and come election night, this second-choice preference is probably much less firm than the first-choice, and especially when seeing how particular camps are physically lining up with their relative strength, caucusers may think more strategically about switching if their candidate is not viable.

Let’s look at the situation for each of the five candidates with even a slight chance of winning as far as Iowa.

Bernie Sanders

Sure, the numbers look good for Bernie relative to everyone else, but there are reasons to worry if you’re a Sanders fan, too.  Most polls were not taken in the last few days but earlier, and it remains to be seen a.) any “normal” effects that might have happened if there were a lot more polls from just the last few days b.) any effects from the Senate impeachment trial itself, where Biden has been a focus of attention, and 3.) any effects from Sens. Sanders, Warren, and Klobuchar being torn away from campaigning in Iowa because they were legally obligated to sit in on the Senate impeachment trial of Trump over his Ukraine misdeeds and his blatant attempts to cover up and obstruct those actions.  Politically active Iowans famously value personally meeting candidates multiple times and those three of the five main candidates stuck at the Senate trial definitely ceded some in-person connection edges to both Biden and Mayor Pete. At the same time, they have all been campaigning in Iowa for some time and it was only a few days when they were off the campaign trail, though being absent so close to, and even the day of, the caucuses might still mean there will be a bit of a negative effect for them and a boost to Biden and/or Pete.

But now we must consider the reality of the very passionate, often toxic and gratingly obnoxious Bernie “Bros” (and Sisters).

Caucuses are an intensely personal group process, with lots of chances for clashes of personalities.  In the very midwestern Iowa with its very midwestern sensibilities, when we have that second round of voting in the caucus rooms—that aforementioned final alignment—rude, loud, angry, or aggressive Bernie Sanders supporters may very well alienate potential allies.  Buttigieg is right on the edge of viability, and Warren is just under it, with Klobuchar well under it; their combined support is about 40% statewide of the voters surveyed, on average, and all of them are at heavy risk of not having viability throughout the state.  Even if, say, Warren holds on and moves up above viability, that’s still 25% between Buttigieg and Klobuchar alone whose supporters will be up for grabs in many spots.  And, of course, even if Warren is above that 15% statewide threshold, being so close there will likely be a lot of places where she is still not viable.  As noted earlier, even the frontrunners Bernie and Biden still can fall short of viability in particular areas where they lack support, as support is hardly even for all candidates statewide.

Warren is easily the second most liberal/leftist candidate in the race, and a good amount of her support would fall into one of several groups: people who want more a more “progressive”, left-leaning agenda than Biden, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar and others represent, but who don’t want to go as far/hard as Bernie; people who want a more “progressive” style but don’t like Bernie’s style, that of his Bernie bros, and who feel a real allegiance to the Democratic Party; and people who really want a woman for the nominee (obviously these are not exclusive).  A big chunk, perhaps the biggest chunk, of her non-viable blocs would probably go to Bernie, especially if they put ideology first, but perhaps Biden and especially his fellow-moderate Klobuchar could also gain when the other factors are considered.  Still, a bad Warren night would be great for Bernie overall, while a good night for her could really hurt him.  Iowa is also not a terribly young state, and much of his support could be concentrated in areas where there are a lot more young people, a factor that could hurt him in more rural areas.

But when we consider the Bernie Bro factor, in the deliberative caucus situation, the obnoxiousness of many of his supporters may turn others off from switching form their non-viable candidates to his camp.  I think this is actually the unconsidered-x factor: with multiple candidates that will fall short of viability in many precincts, the key to Iowa may be the ability of caucus-goers to win over the support of other caucusers, with the second-choice issue factoring in in a way that we have not seen for some time.  In other words, the final support numbers for the top candidates could be far higher than the polling average, at least if they will be picking up large numbers of people from the non-viable candidates. 

And here is the key: Bernie’s strength is in the passion of his supporters who may be more likely and able to go caucus for him than supporters of others, but it may also be his Achilles’s heel if that passion taken as far as his supporters are often caught taking it turns off many other possible allies, which has basically been the Bernie Sanders & Fans Modus Operandi since 2015.

Like the other senators, though, Bernie may have lost a bit of steam with the impeachment trial physically sidelining him and its focus on Biden.

Bernie is also dividing up the progressive vote with essentially one other candidate (Warren), so he has less competition in his “lane” than Biden, who has to compete with Klobuchar.  Especially if Warren ends up not being viable—and she has been on a downward trajectory for some time—Bernie has the progressives all to himself in Iowa.

Still overall, Bernie has a good chance of winning at least one of the three Iowa reporting metrics, maybe even two or all three.

Joe Biden

Nipping on Bernie’s heels is Biden, but this, I would argue, for some of the reasons outlined above, is deceptivel.  For starters, there are a decent number major moderate candidates who likely will not be viable (Klobuchar, Bloomberg, and to some degree Yang, Steyer), and it seem only Buttigieg is a major threat, but he is also on the cusp of viability, and where his supporters are not viable, as with other moderates, it seems his people would move over more to Biden than anyone else.

So, with more moderate votes up for grabs from the non-viables, its seems Biden is far more able to grow his support than Sanders, and this is why the final polling standings can be quit deceiving.  As in the obnoxiousness of many Bernie supporters, and we can see factors favoring Biden over Bernie.  At the same time, if Buttigeig or Klobuchar did better than expected, if that does not come from stealing each other, that support could come out of Biden’s support.  Either way, Biden has more room for growth than Sanders when it comes to their polling position.

It remains to be seen what effect Biden’s being mentioned so much during Trump’s impeachment trial will have, but at least his physically being able to campaign in Iowa while the senators running were stuck in the Senate might give him a slight relative boost.

Biden may very well come in 2^nd in the first round of voting, then end up with the most votes because of the whole viability issues.  Biden should be favored to come in at least second but has a really good chance, perhaps a better chance with viability issues, than Sanders, though it’s possible Buttigieg could gain more from this than Biden.

Pete Buttigieg

Mayor Pete is a real wild-card, but he should do better than Warren, in part because, though they are both fighting for viability, Buttigieg may do particularly well in rural areas and give himself a boost in viability in a number of small precincts that way, and he has campaigned heavily in certain rural areas.  A key factor will be if late-deciders hoping for a moderate candidate will break for him or someone else.  Both his and Warren’s averages were sliding down overall over the past few weeks, so they are both at serious viability risk but whereas Bernie’s “progressives” might have more enthusiasm than Warren’s, Buttigieg in contrast to the much older Biden might be able to drum up more enthusiasm than Biden, but as something of a passionate semi-moderate myself, we should also not assume Biden has no enthusiasm.  I’d say Pete is probably safe as far as having to worry about Warren, and Klobuchar might be more of a threat to his support than Warren.

If Buttigieg is able to draw a lot of support from the other moderates who are not viable instead of Biden, he could get quite a boost and has a not-insane-chance to overtake Biden or Sanders or both if either of both of them have a bad night.  So Pete could be a distant third (and if he has a poor showing, a largely non-viable one), a close third or second, or surprise everyone and be a shocking winner.

Elizabeth Warren

Warren is not in an enviable position: with Bernie’s rabid following and the only other “progressive” besides Bernie, she has few rivals from whom to draw support, and she has been hemorrhaging supporters to Bernie ever since she peaked months ago, so the idea she will steal some of this thunder tonight is far-fetched.  She had better hope she meets that 15% threshold, or she could have an embarrassingly poor night.  With few ways to grow support, her best likely outcome is a strong third, especially with Klobuchar having a bit of a surge and capturing new support.

Amy Klobuchar

Klobuchar is one of the most steady debate performers this campaign season, but it hasn’t helped her much, except for a bit recently in Iowa, but that might be enough to keep her candidacy alive.  Without her recent Iowa surge and some key newspaper endorsements, it would have be right to write her off, but she has a tiny chance of pilling off of miracle, with some solid familiarity in Iowa since her Minnesota runs along nearly all of Iowa’s northern border.  Her cultural similarities to Iowans as a fellow Midwesterner, as well as being perhaps the strongest-performing female candidate contrasted to a faltering Warren, seem to be helping, but her surge may have stalled.  Klobuchar is still in an overall weak spot, but she might be able to peel off enough support from Warren to surprise people and end up fourth, or, with a lot of luck, even third, but it’s probably more likely than not she ends up fifth, surging too little too late.  She’ll have to beat expectations to remain alive in 2020, and even then remains a longshot.  But, perhaps, not for being someone’s running-mate… And that might temper her decision to stay in or leave, in an attempt to sell herself to the stronger candidates.  Whatever she wants, beating expectations significantly in Iowa would greatly boost her chances.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it really is a tossup between Biden and Bernie, with a smaller but decent chance for Buttigieg to surprise people.  Both Bernie and Biden could exceed expectations, too, and a lot of that has to do with if their chief in-lane rivals in the state—Warren and Buttigieg, respectively—are viable or not.  So there are a lot of moving parts, a lot of drama, and a lot of uncertainty.  Biden has more competition in his lane but also more to gain, while Bernie has less competition but less to gain.  Too much is uncertain for any firm predictions, and the night could be chaotic, but I’d say Buttigieg and Biden are more likely to beat expectations, with Warren in serious danger of doing quite badly and Bernie a favorite with some vulnerabilities few have discussed but still a slight favorite.  My gut tells me Biden might win because of the viability factor, but that’s just a slight gut feeling (and maybe I am biased since I interned for him in 2006 and he’s by far my top choice here), but I’m hardly making a strong prediction he will win, and with so much uncertainty, anyone making firm predictions should be written off as a pundit as much as, say, Tulsi Gabbard should be written off as a candidate in Iowa.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981.  He also just recently authored A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), March 7, 2019 (sad update March 8, see end of piece); reprinted in part by Al Bawaba March 10

AP

AMMAN — Sometimes commentary about Minnesota freshman Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar reveals more about the biases of the people commenting than anything about Omar.  She is much like her freshman sister-in-arms Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (dubbed AOC), with her every move receiving a highly disproportionate amount of attention, and we could say that, after Ocasio-Cortez and perhaps Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she has become the most polarizing figure on the left, at least in Congress.

I have read people of color, women, Muslims, and others tweeting that they are sick of criticism of Omar because, they say and/or clearly imply, she is only criticized because she is black and/or a woman and/or Muslim, not addressing—or even dismissing—the idea that her statements are problematic.  I’ve seen plenty of extreme, overblown criticism, too, with people deriding her as anti-Semitic or worse just for questioning U.S. policy towards Israel, just for criticizing Israeli policy, for wearing hijab in Congress, and even for what color hijab she is wearing (apparently, black cloth is terrorist-y).

The Need for More Productive Criticism

The one other Muslim in Congress, another freshman named Rashida Tlaib, took advantage of a teachable moment during the Michael Cohen hearing with the head of the conservative extremist Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows.  She criticized what she saw as a racist act when he produced a black woman who worked for Trump to stand behind him as proof that Trump could not be racist, and a fierce exchange ensued.  Tlaib was careful not to call him a racist during the hearing but stood by her comment that the act of producing a human black prop was racist.  The next day, Meadows and Tlaib “hugged it out” on the House floor. 

Critics of Omar should learn from Tlaib that we can decry her use of certain phrases that are clearly anti-Semitic but still overall give her the benefit of the doubt.  She has earned this, as, rather than remain defiant, she has eloquently expressed remorse and understanding for the pain she caused and has offered multiple apologies.

The Need for More Productive Understanding

Some of her defenders are correct in that being a Muslim black woman wearing hijab, Omar will be the target of criticism from some quarters no matter what, but it’s when she talks about Israel specifically that she has been getting into trouble, and the way in which she has talked about Israel has broadened the quarters from which criticism has been directed at her from extremists to the sane and fair-minded.

I grew up in Connecticut in a town with a large Jewish population.  Some of my earliest memories in school are from show-and-tell when some of the Jewish kids would talk about their grandparents escaping Nazi death camps—or dying in them—during the Holocaust.  In my English classes, a lot of the books we read through grade school were about the Jewish experience: Anne Frank’s diary, Number the Stars, The Chosen, etc.  Given what I learned growing up, as an adult I am uncomfortable even using the phrase “the Jews” in conversation or writing. 

My point is that being “woke” and aware about the specifics of anti-Semitism and its long, very-largely-Christian history (even in the U.S. ) was not something I learned by instinct.  Omar, on the other hands, grew up in Somalia until she was eight, fleeing war there in 1991 to refugee camps in Kenya, where she stayed until she came to the U.S. at age 12. When she came of age, Americans sympathized overwhelmingly more with Israelis than Palestinians (and still do, even if to a lesser extent), and, understandably, her heart was with Palestinians, with her fellow Muslims, at a time when few were speaking up on their behalf. 

The point here is that Omar is not from an environment and background like mine were one could expect her to be aware of the intricacies of anti-Semitic rhetoric or to make anti-Semitism one of her main causes.  At the same time, as a U.S. Congresswoman who plans to speak about both bigotry and Israel often, she needs to close her gaps in her understanding of anti-Semitism and adjust her rhetoric as soon as possible, or else see her platform, credibility, and ability to advance her causes severely diminished.  To her credit, she has repeatedly expressed a strong willingness to do this.

Omar also hails from the “progressive” wing of liberals in America, and they often have far too simplistic a view of how politics works.  From Bernie Sanders to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, these types tend to explain everything in terms of powerful interest groups corrupting politicians and media with money: the people would be united in supporting democratic socialism/”progressivism,” the Green New Deal, and Medicare for All (among other lofty ideas) if only, in their view, the special interests buying owning Congress and the press were held in check.  If you look at Sanders’s constant smearing attacks in 2016 against Clinton and how she was supposedly paid for and bought and controlled by special interest money along with most of the Democratic and Republican Parties, suddenly Omar’s quips about Israel buying and selling the American Congress makes a lot more sense in that context. 

The problem with that über-progressive/democratic socialist worldview is that it is rarely that simple on the scale they imply, and there are many other factors besides money at work with groups like ones as diverse as Congress.  This also goes for Jews and those who lobby to support Israel (most of the latter of whom in America are actually Evangelical Christians).  So part of the inaccuracy of some of Omar’s statements may well be at least partly explained by this oversimplistic worldview of how money controls politics, of black-and-white monolithic corrupting blocs, as opposed to traditional Western anti-Semitism about Jews, money, and control.

The Need for More Productive Engagement: A Way Forward

In the end, those who demand understanding from Omar about their outrage at her comments would do well to understand why she would, it seems, use these anti-Semitic tropes without being aware of their being dangerous or tropes, and her very appropriate apologies are solid evidence that she was not using them from a position of hate.  They would do well to not insist that her questioning the U.S.-Israel relationship or Israeli policy is “unacceptable” and instead offer respectful counterpoints to her critiques even while coming down hard on her clumsy and apparently clueless rhetoric.

For Omar’s part, she has made it clear she has made mistakes, want to do better, to hear people out and engage them (which she has done repeatedly) while still standing strong on her policy positions, which is a markedly different approach from President Trump and many Republicans who have been caught in similar situations, and for all her flaws, for this, Rep. Omar should be respected and held as an example of how to learn from mistakes so long as she follows through on her promises to do better. 

In a larger sense, defenders of Israel should call out criticism of Israel that is rooted in, or overtly, anti-Semitic while still making it clear that criticism of Israel in-and-of-itself is not inherently anti-Semitic, while critics of Israel should acquaint themselves with the long history of anti-Semitic tropes and rhetoric and take extra care and be extra cautious to make sure none of their criticisms even suggest the appearance—let alone partake in the serious trafficking—of anti-Semitism.  For an issue that is so deeply controversial, these would be minimum requirements in order to have a productive debate, and this goes for having that debate anywhere, not just America (I live in the Middle East, have for five years, and have spoken with many Arabs and Jews in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, and I can tell you that a strong majority of people on either side who live here use incredibly insensitive language when talking about the other side that would make Omar’s comments seem mild in contrast).

Especially with a clear historical link between words and violence, especially as growing extremist elements of an increasingly intolerant white American majority continue to become increasingly anti-Muslim and, over the last few years, have displayed a shocking rise in anti-Semitism (concurrent with similar rises elsewhere), disagreements over Israel need not make Rep. Omar and the American Jewish community—itself increasingly critical of Israeli policy and U.S. support for it—enemies.  Yes, Omar needs to do better, and if she can purge her rhetoric of anti-Semitic tropes and take pains to distinguish her criticism from those tropes, and if some of Omar’s Jewish and other critics can stop labeling all her criticism of both Israel and U.S. support for Israel as anti-Semitic and take her at her word that she wants to do better, they will find there are a great many issues on which they can be natural and productive allies.

UPDATE: March 8, 2019: Just hours after Omar, along with nearly the entire House (except for about two-dozen Republicans, including Steve King, who voted present), admirably voted for a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, white supremacism, and bigotry and racism in other forms and in general, she retweeted a vicious attack on Meghan McCain that also attacked McCain’s recently departed father, the late Senator John McCain, in a very distorted way, from Intercept far-left journalist Mehdi Hasan. Hasan’s tweet crudely attacked Meghan and her father after she cried and expressed clearly heartfelt worry on The View about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and what Omar’s recent remarks represent to her and millions of other Americans: he claimed her emotions were fake and then attacked her father for past (later-transcended) hostile feelings and words for his former Vietnamese tormentors and captors, claimed and and took a comment of his about Iran out of context, and (fairly) blame him for elevating the odious precursor to Donald Trump, Sarah Palin; none of these things had anything to do with Meghan’s views expressed on The View.

Now, I wish that McCain could have shown the same emotion for other forms of bigotry that have been omnipresent of late, and I don’t think she is hard enough on Republicans overall for their lack of action on racism, but that doesn’t invalidate her points or make me question the sincerity of them or her emotions. For Omar to retweet this horrible, unfair attack (the retweet is still up half a day later) after all that had just transpired in the preceding hours, days, and weeks, is really beyond me. I still think Pelosi’s understanding of Millennial quick Twitter-fingers and activist passions is the best explanation. but this retweet makes me have doubts for the first time and makes it harder for all but her most hardcore defenders to continue to defend her after we just asked those who harbor doubts about her or are more hostile towards her to be patient, to appreciate that she comes from a different background and is learning (as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes mentioned), that she can and and will do better, when just after it seemed she had weathered the worst of this scandal, she instead does worse and undermined herself and her defenders. I still count myself among these defenders and stand by my above arguments and analysis, and still ask others for patience, but this retweet undermines all of that and empowers Trump, republicans, Islamophobes, and other bigots; she need to take down the Hasan retweet, start a public dialogue with McCain, and do everything she can to think more carefully before she tweets and speaks and avoid anything like this in the future. If she does not, she will undermine herself, the left, and the noble causes for which she fights (including holding Israel accountable), and it will become far more difficult, if not impossible, for non-extremists to defend her. See me related Twitter thread here.

Retweeting that Hasan tweet was wrong, beneath a U.S. Congresswoman and especially a Democrat so passionate about bigotry who has suffered so much form it, and a huge step back for Omar. Please, Representative Omar, do better!! We’re counting on and rooting for you!

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), February 6, 2019

Pool/Getty Images

AMMAN—If you’re looking for a State of the Union summary, or a play-by-play, you can find many of these elsewhere.  What I am going to get into here today is the overall meaning of what happened last night, or, rather, the lack thereof.

Aside from the many (and diverse) Democratic women proudly attired in white to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the national success of the suffragette movement getting women the right to vote in America, what stood out to me as a highlight was not anything President Donald Trump said or did, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s so-called “sarcastic point clapback.”  To appreciate this moment, we must understand that this State of the Union speech transcended “normal” such speeches (which in recent years have already become increasingly pointless, even with a master orator like President Barack Obama at the helm) into the realm of the theater of the absurd.  I say this because Trump made a call for civility and bipartisanship when he has been, more than anyone else in Washington, the destroyer of bipartisanship and civility, even in ways we cannot have conceived of until he went there. 

Trump issuing a call on these issues would be like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman giving a joint speech on press freedom or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivering a formal address on limiting civilian casualties in war. 

Sure, we can all say “I would never be able to sit through such an absurdity,” but what if you had to?  What if a sacred office you held required you to be there? 

We don’t have to think about this in the abstract, but can just consider the case of Speaker Pelosi instead.

Throughout the speech, Pelosi showed a level of respect and decorum Trump has more often than not chosen to not show her or her office—with Trump routinely calling the Speaker of the House just “Nancy” in public, absent her title, while she refers to him more respectfully, generally with the word “president” in the mix—and at the slightest hint members of her caucus might have reacted more vocally than is the norm, she batted her hand at them to simmer down and they did.  One can recall the wholly unjustified example of Rep. Joe Wilson (R), SC, shouting and interrupting President Barack Obama in a 2009 joint-session of Congress with a scream of “You lie!” (Obama did not lie) and consider that, during Trump’s State of the Union last night, Democrats would have been justified on a factual basis of screaming all throughout his speech the very same at him, even if not on a basis of decorum.  I have written before that I am worried the left is allowing itself to be dragged down into the muck of Trumpism and extremism (most notably Bernie Sanders and his Sandernistas), but last night, I can thankfully say that that was not the case with the Democratic Party.  And to this warm feeling, we all owe a debt to Speaker Pelosi, who knew some of the more interesting personalities in her caucus would relish a Joe Wilson-type moment and thusly made decorum a central theme for the event for her Democrats.

And yet, here she was, standing right behind Trump as he called for civility and bipartisanship when he has been the largest obstacle to both.  On the one level, of course we should all embrace such a call. On another, the messenger does actually matter.  So Pelosi clapped in support of the statement, but in such a way that she let it be known that the gross irony of the moment did not escape her.  It was the perfect combination of class of subtle snark, one that allowed Pelosi to not be co-opted into the theatrical absurdity but even allowed her to fight it without disruption.

And yes, that is the highlight for me.  I could write about Donald Trump’s uninspiring, tired words, and uninspiring, tired delivery.  I could write about some of the most obvious lies and deceptions, including the total fantasy about illegal immigration on the southern border, how Trump tried to claim credit for Obama’s energy policy that made the U.S. the world’s number-one producer of both oil and gas before Trump was even elected, or Trump’s ridiculous claim that his election is the only reason we are not at war with North Korea.  Yet these topics are well covered by countless copycat articles published in the past hours.  Perhaps besides these lies, anyone who was there, who saw or heard him barely manage to deliver a laundry list of overall lies, would have been struck most of all by the unmemorable quality of the whole address, save for moments of absurdity that were not intended effects on the part of speaker.  I have expressed privately many a time before the cost of such a lack of great, or even decent, rhetoric coming from Trump as president, an office that more often than not has been essential in transmitting memory and history to new generations of Americans.  Sadly, today we live in an era where people are reading less and less, and especially less actual literature.  Our critical thinking skills are also sorely lacking and declining, and most Americans don’t even know their nation’s history (and truly, what better way for such a huge portion of Americans to show utter contempt for the societal value of language, thinking, reality, and history—together some of the hallmarks of fascism, I might add—than voting for Trump, a man who makes George W. Bush seem eloquent and intellectually curious in relative retrospect?).  Regrettably, for far too many Americans, one of the only times they will hear any of the words or stories of our Founding Fathers, past presidents, and other great American historical figures is when a current presidents quotes them or tells their tales.  Trump did none of this in his State of the Union speech: not once in his entire long speech did he quote one of the great Americans of the past, and apart from brief mentions of WWII, he did not discuss history.

Obviously, Trump’s damage is hardly confined to the rhetorical presidency and historical memory.  I have long been quite upfront about the threat Trump is to Western democracy in general and democracy at home in the U.S., so on the one level, there is nothing surprising in this speech being yet another step on the downward-spiraling staircase that is our current era (even if I can certainly imagine worse States of the Union from him in the future).  But we must not become immune to these moments and acts of decline, and I write that as much for me as for the audience.  But that fact of the matter is that this is no small task, for Trump’s relentless war of attrition on decency and reality wearies the souls of those of us who have souls left and creates a numbing effect that is a common biological survival mechanism for engaging in deadly combat, and make no mistake: we are in deadly combat for the survival of the West, for democracy, for America.  As Freedom House just starkly noted the same day of Trump’s big speech, “the current president’s ongoing attacks on the rule of law, fact-based journalism, and other principles and norms of democracy threaten further decline.” 

In the end, as much as I am a fan of the oft-ill-covered Nancy Pelosi, I cannot claim the night belongs to her.  No, the night was still Trump’s, his meaningless words put together in meaningless sentences in a meaningless speech.  The speech—as bad and badly delivered as it was—did not inherently carry the quality of meaninglessness, no; that quality was entirely a result of the man who gave it and the Administration that helped craft it.  It was not even the lies that defined this speech.  No, more than anything else, the speech carried with it the searing awareness that we are listening to words come from the mouth of a man who keeps few promises or oaths, lies constantly both compulsively and in a deeply premeditated fashion, capriciously changes his mind on any given issue repeatedly in both the short and long-term, reneges on deals even to the point of causing multiple government shutdowns, and that, ultimately, this is all a farce.

As the late and singular Christopher Hitchens noted, “there is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.” The problem with Trump is that we can damn well know he is not even engaging in this struggle.

In other words, this speech matters very little because more words from the mouth of that man will come that will surely contradict what was said last night (which contradicted who knows how many previous statements), and still more after that, to a point where we truly get to explore the word meaningless.  When the president’s words and actions change so rapidly that one must truly exert effort to keep track of, or define, a “position,” let alone a policy—on everything from the border “wall” to Syria—we really are in Game of Thrones’s Jon Snow trap, when Jon lamented: “When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies, and lies won’t help us in this fight” (video but big spoilers!).  We should lament, too, and, like Nancy Pelosi, solider on as gracefully as possible in dealing with that man, his words, and his actions, the meaning of which at times it seems no one, not even Trump himself, is capable of understanding.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcomeI

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 22, 2018

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981), September 11th-13th, 2018, and republished by Tuck Magazine September 24th; See my related Trumpism and Tribalism Run Amok in the Middle East for Small Wars Journal

Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports

AMMAN — As I write this while watching the memorial service at Ground Zero with mourners reading the names of those they and others lost seventeen years ago today, as we remember the horrors of September 11th, 2001, and their aftermath, more and more, it looks like 9/11 can be seen as a turning point, one in which the world went from becoming less tribal to becoming more tribal, and not at all in a good way.

Hell, even tennis has just exploded into tribalism. TENNIS!! A spat between a (THE) tennis superstar and a stickler-of-an umpire became just like everything else: tribes gearing up for war, trying to gain ground in their culture wars consumed by vitriol and hate. TENNIS is now Trump vs. his many enemies, the left vs. the right, Sunni vs. Shiite, black vs. white, Hillary supporters vs. Bernie supporters, men vs. women, Israel vs. Palestine…

How did it get to this?

*****

As the millennium celebrations approached, the world could celebrate an era of increasing international peace, cooperation, and prosperity not seen since the Pax Romana some roughly two thousand years earlier.

Flikr/Paul Mannix

The Cold War had finally ended, and the two most powerful countries in the world had engaged in a massive reduction of their military forces, including their nuclear arsenals, as the great rivalry between Cold War superpowers the United State and the Soviet Union had melted away to a new if rocky friendship between the U.S. and Russia even as the U.S. extended friendship and alliances to many of Russia’s former Soviet republics and satellite states.

Europe was becoming more and more united politically, economically, militarily, as well as more democratic. Longtime enemies Jordan and Israel had finally signed a peace treaty, and a difficult but important peace process between Israelis and Palestinians had begun under the Oslo Accords. Even the U.S. and Vietnam were beginning a new chapter of friendship. Bitter rivalries in Asia had given way to increasing regional economic cooperation, and after a century of hatred, Japan and South Korea had agreed to host the 2002 FIFA World Cup together. Democracy and freedom were spreading in Latin America and Africa too, where apartheid had finally ended in South Africa and other nations were making important strides away from dictatorship.

This era of optimistic globalization would come to a screeching halt as planes slammed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. 

*****

It took a tremendous amount of `both hatred and willpower to plot to plan and fly those planes into their targets on September 11th, 2001. I’d love to say that, overall, we Americans responded with love to overcome the hate. We did, if ever so briefly, but that quickly gave way even more intense partisan rancor, two grossly mismanaged wars, and profligate spending along with a resurgence of all the awful trends that continued and spiraled out of control into what we have now. 

America became incredibly divided well before the 2004 presidential election; while the numbers were not dramatically different from 2000, the level of rancor and acrimony was. And America had just invaded Iraq in 2003, under deceptive and misguided if at least partially well-intention pretenses, and mismanaged the occupation in such an incompetent way that it ripped open the ethnic and sectarian divides in Iraq in a way that would, over time, raise tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, and Sunnis and other minorities like Christians, and this throughout the Middle East.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exacerbated, but by no means created, these divisions, and the damage would be considerable. For a brief window, the U.S. seemed like it would be able to shape events as it desired, but that dream faded away to reality as soon as an al-Qaeda truck bomb killed dozens and wounded far more at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, including its all-star chief diplomat, the incomparable Sergio Vieira de Mello, that August; the UN pulled out soon after and Iraq, under hapless U.S. misleadership, descended in hell.

Yet the damage was hardly America acting by itself: particularly Syria and Iran—nervous about what American success in Iraq would mean for their regimes—were happy to let terrorists, insurgents, militiamen, other people and/or weapons enter Iraq by the thousands, caring little for the death and violence these actors and equipment would inflict upon the Iraqi people as long as they were undermining American interests there. This only further exacerbated tensions and problems already festering due to American incompetence to such a degree that Iraqi Shiites settled on an Iraqi Shiite strongman—Nuri Kamal al-Maliki—to feel safe, whose oppression of Sunnis was the largest single factor in the degree to which ISIS would experience success in Iraq. 

In a true case of chickens coming home to roost, ISIS—an offshoot of the breakaway former al-Qaeda group in Iraq that killed de Mello—added to the brutality of the Syrian Civil War, both directly in its own barbaric acts of mass murder and mass destruction but also indirectly in dragging less extreme factions closer to its brutality level and giving the regime of Bashar al-Assad and later its Russian allies all the excuse they would need to employ their own barbaric tactics against any and all resistance, pointing to ISIS and making little-to-no distinction between ISIS and Syrians simply fighting for their freedom.  The Syrian Civil War was itself one of a number of failures of the Arab Spring that have turned people against each other rather than uniting them, was already a horror-show of bloody sectarianism bringing out the worst in people all-around by the time ISIS had marched to the outskirts of Baghdad in mid-2014. 

Israel’s right-wing leaders, from the late Ariel Sharon to Benjamin Netanyahu, likened their conflicts with the Palestinians and with Hezbollah incorrectly to George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” just as Putin did with the Chechens, and prosecuted these conflicts with a ferocity that only empowered extremists in Hamas and Hezbollah (who do their part to empower extremity in Israeli politics) and has helped make the prospect for peace all but impossible for now, destroying Oslo and the peace process. 

The same increasing sectarianism and tribalism has led to a cruel callousness with which the Saudi-led coalition has prosecuted the war in Yemen and has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in a half-century.

Just to look at a few other major locations: India is increasingly a hotbed of religious violence, China is engaged in the mass-cultural and religious destruction of its Uighur Muslim minority in its worst oppression since Mao, a genocide against the Muslim-minority Rohingya is happening in Burma, the South China Sea is becoming an increasingly nationalistically confrontational arena, and ethnic and/or religious tensions are driving forces reigniting wars in central Africa, from the Central African Republic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to South Sudan.

While Americans were focused on the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, including two wars overseas, the Bush Administration and Republicans rammed through a disastrous series of regulatory and economic moves that more than helped set the stage for the 2008 global financial crises. The hardships caused, intensified, and/or perpetuated by the near-collapse of the global financial system created and/or facilitated a state where masses of citizens globally were experiencing regression in their well-being, fostering much of the instability, political division, violent conflict, and rage at the status quo mentioned above.

As people looked for easy targets to blame, economic setbacks gave way to even greater racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious resentment; too many non-whites blamed white people in general for their ills in an unproductive way, painting with a broad brush and alienating possible white allies while energizing angry whites, while, even more importantly, whites laughably and ignorantly looked at racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as the roots of all their frustrations. Racial unrest exploded across America over the past few years, and white identity politics, more so than the economy, have brought us Brexit and Trump, though obviously there are relationships between the two. At this point, tribal secessionism in Europe is rising, in Spain with Catalonia and in the UK with Scotland (both having enthusiastic Russian support).

In hindsight, Brexit in 2014 was an obvious herald of Trump’s triumph in 2016 (both dramatically and in determining ways aided materially and abetted by the Russians). By 2016, poor whites in Appalachia and elsewhere were told to check their privilege, while nonwhites moving into the suburbs and in other communities were told to go back to where they came from. The resulting election (with the help of a massive, concerted state-sponsored Russian effort), was the most racially polarizing since the Civil Rights era a half-century earlier, a “whitelash” (to quote Van Jones from election night) of white nationalism that revealed the depths of American tribalism and made American politics in many ways as banal as those of the former the Soviet Republic of Georgia and many other places consumed by ethnic division.

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

*****

Since Trump’s win, the world has only plunger deeper into tribal division. The U.S. presidency—the single largest public media organ in global politics—has gone virtually silent on human rights, tolerance, respect for other cultures, and appreciation of diversity, with the consequences far transcending the verbal arena. This is a dramatic swing considering that human rights have been a major theme of U.S. foreign policy (even with all its shortcomings) for most of America’s modern history regardless of which party was in the White House. Concurrently, the forces on the other side of those stances have only too eagerly filled the void, and often with the help of Putin’s Kremlin.

As I noted not long ago, small-minded tribalism was a major factor in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it is a major factor in the current unraveling of the West.

Regrettably, a tennis match is now—like everything else in the current cultural landscape—a frontline battle in a vicious global war of tribalism. This tremendous tribal tidal shift can be traced to 9/11, a tombstone not just for thousands of Americans and those who died in the ensuing misguided wars, but also for an era of humanity transcending petty differences. 9/11 is not just a time to mourn the dead, but what is to come, the petty creatures we have become, and the alternate world of lost opportunities: the what-might-have-beens if that glorious march forward—even with all its inconsistencies, bumps, and steps backwards—had continued without the slamming of planes into buildings and without the sad, counterproductive responses launched from what can be called, in hindsight, the ashes of hope.

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

See my related Trumpism and Tribalism Run Amok in the Middle East for Small Wars Journal

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse June 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 8th, 2017

Andrew Harnikfi

AMMAN — On one level, I can’t blame the media for having days-long count-downs and hyping today’s hearing as much as any anticipated domestic non-election event in living memory. And there certainly was a singular, unprecedented historical significance in having a recently fired FBI Director who was fired while investigating the associates and administration of a sitting president only a few months later come and testify publicly before Congress and under oath that, essentially, the president was a liar and directed that he as FBI Director back off said investigation. That is certainly a big deal to anyone who can appreciate reality, politics, the rule of law, and what makes the American system of government fairly unique in the world.

And yet, there was little new in today’s proceedings: Comey released his main account the day before, and even much of that and other relevant details had dripped out in media reports over the course of previous days, weeks, and months. These media outlets are not perfect, but are by and large credible, and the way these details were reported left only the most conspiratorial among us to flat-out deny their credibility. Still, even with Comey’s public testimony today, we still have a he said/she said situation (Comey said Trump was a liar, then Team Trump said Comey was a liar), and anyone who wants to believe Trump over Comey has seen nothing new today to incline them to believe otherwise: these were still private moments between two men that can’t be legally proven without some sort of recording.

While I give “credit” to the Republicans of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for being less nakedly partisan than many GOP senators serving on other committees, we still saw today plenty of evidence that Republicans, by and large, are finding ways to more subtly cover for Trump and shift the focus to leaks or Hillary Clinton’s email server woes (oh, McCain…) rather than to hold Trump accountable, and many other Republicans are being far less subtle. More importantly, we need to acknowledge that this hearing, for all its hype, is unlikely to actually change much, if anything, outside of experts and aficionados recognizing its unprecedented nature.

Not “the public” – Doug Mills/Twitter

For one thing, the media made much of the long lines of members of “the public” who were waiting to get a seat in the hearing room before the hearing. In the interest of full disclosure, I lived in the Washington, DC, area for some seven-and-a-half years, including spending four months interning on Capitol Hill, and the pictures and video of the lines made clear that these were not members of the general public; no, just looking at the outfits they were wearing, it was clear these were Congressional interns and staffers, media folks, and other DC politicos (there is a fairly narrow range of how such people dress for work and it is most certainly not the same as the rest of the general public). The point I am making here is, as interested as people like myself are in things like this, and as much as this was undoubtedly a hearing that generated far more public interest than usual, there are still going to be many people who either do no watch this or pay close attention. And most Americans have their mind made up about Trump at this point, one way or another; only a small sliver would possibly change their mind, and, despite all the hoopla about today’s proceedings, there is no reason to think that Trump’s supporters saw or heard anything today that would make them dramatically change their mindset, a mindset that believes the media, liberals, the government, and others are unfairly out to destroy Trump, regardless of the facts.

Sure, the president may see a dip in his poll numbers, but he has plenty of time for new outrages, distractions, even a war to make today’s events seem like a distant memory. I am nowhere near convinced that anyone who voted Trump or Republican in November won’t do so again because of what happened today, let alone switch to the left, or that people not already planning to vote for Democrats will now be convinced that, as of today, supporting the Democratic Party is the course of action to take. Bernie Sanders will not suddenly announce tomorrow that he will formally join the Democratic Party, nor will he stop slamming it or stop prioritizing his “movement” over registering Democrats and strengthening the Democratic Party. It won’t make anyone who voted Green or Libertarian in November even though they knew Trump was worse (or even if they didn’t) start supporting the Democratic Party. And it won’t change the minds of Trump supporters who already don’t trust the media, Comey, or the “Deep State” FBI over Trump.

However, in the near future, we may be able to test is there is any effect: the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional district, exit pollers have a chance to ask if today’s hearing affected anything. Yet even if Democrat John Ossoff beats Republican Karen Handel, that is hardly proof that this hearing made a difference, and I doubt it will do so; if he loses, it becomes harder to make that case, and the possibility that it did make a difference but that it still didn’t affect the final outcome would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow for excited liberals prematurely plotting Trump’s impeachment and reveling in visions of sugar plumbs dancing in a Democratic House.

What we saw today was a preview of what Special Counsel Mueller is investigating, but he has far more information that anything we saw in the reports leading up to today’s hearing or that was “revealed” in today’s hearing. But that investigation is a long way from being completed, and that investigation will carry far more weight and have far more substance than today’s hearing and, if anything is to have a serious impact, that will be what does.

People expecting today’s events to have major substantive effects are simply setting themselves up for disappointment. In our era of hyperpartisanship and alternative realities, it will take more than objectively damning and historically unprecedented sworn testimony from a non-partisan, career civil servant to sway hearts and minds, sadly, much, much more.

What we are generally hearing about as far as Trump’s people being investigated might result, eventually, in some resignations or criminal prosecutions, but that is just part (if more than just a tip) of an iceberg that still remains submerged and out of public view; no, if Trump is brought down, it will be because of his long-term business deals that involved laundering Russian money tied to Putin and the Russian mafia, as I’ve been writing about for close to a year now.

My pre-hearing predictions turned out to be spot on: today’s hearing was a big deal for history and the pundit class, but not myopic Trump voters and purist liberals whose grip on reality and objectivity loosened long, long ago.

See related work:

The Trump-Russia-Mob Connections Details You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 16, 2016

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 16th, 2016 Updated December 3rd w/ additional exit poll data

Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

AMMAN — Many people are perplexed as to how white people who apparently voted for Obama in recent elections voted for Trump in this one (Update 12/3: Clinton apparently mostly turned off these white voters to stay home or vote third-party, much less than to switch their vote to Trump; the below analysis still makes sense in that even the movement away from her supports its conclusions about race). Others say this proves those people can’t be racist, since they voted for a black president. The first issue is actually easy to explain, and the second assertion is easy to refute; both points lie in the same understanding of what happened in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Why Obama Was Acceptable to Some Whites, but Not Clinton

When Obama ran in 2008, he didn’t frame himself heavily as the first African-American president, and he didn’t frame his campaign as one what would give any special attention or cater to African-Americans, Hispanics, or other minorities. In fact, he engaged in what was mainly a post-racial, race-neutral campaign that many white voters found to be a welcome and inspirational message; many of them thought how nice it would be to move beyond the past and the issue of racism, in general, leaving conversations on the issue to history. In 2012, Obama stuck to not campaigning explicitly as a black president and to not paying any significant particular attention to the issues and needs of minority communities; his was a broad message, except in one sense: he certainly campaigned in a way that catered to the needs of women. But women aren’t a minority. And, again, a black man with liberal inclinations easily won minorities in roughly sharing their skin complexion and more or less sharing their general politics, and won well more than enough votes among whites with an uplifting message that, once again, avoided any focus on specific racial or ethnic minorities. And in his two terms as president, he did little to focus on minority issues apart apart from some action on immigration (blocked in the Supreme Court) and some fine speeches—as opposed to action—on race relations; the nation’s first black president did not even nominate a black person for the Supreme Court, instead nominating a Latina, a white woman, and a white man (the last almost certain not to be appointed).

We know that in 2016, Hillary Clinton, a white woman, ran a campaign that definitely catered to specific needs and issues of minority voters—even explicitly pushing white Americans to open their minds, eyes, and ears to the plight of people of color—and also basically ran to continue many of Obama’s policies that voters had validated in 2012; she practically launched her campaign with an amazing speech on race, boldly challenging America to do better by its communities of color, and made this one of her major issues throughout the campaign. She performed very well with African-Americans, although not quite as high as Barack Obama (which was never going to happen since she was not the first African-American major-party nominee, and this may have in part been due to a massive long-term GOP effort towards voter suppression in the first presidential campaign since key parts of the Voting Rights Act protecting minorities were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013), and did better with Latinos than any candidate ever better analysis is examined than exit polls, which are relatively poor at measuring Latinos.

The New York Times

Her white support fell and Trump’s went up, falling for her and rising for him sharply in key geographic areas in the Rust Belt: whites who had supported Obama stayed home and/or different whites that were motivated positively by Trump and negatively by Clinton came out and voted (obviously, a combination of these). Trump beat Clinton by 21 points (58%-37%) among whites, while Romney had beaten Obama with whites by 20 points (59%-39%), a 1 point decline for Trump but a 2 point decline for Clinton, not insignificant considering whites are 70% of the electorate. Trump’s victory included beating her by 32 points with white men (63%-21%), even beating her by 10 points with white women (53%-43%), and even beating her with college-educated whites by 4 points (49%-45%), including 45% of college-educated white women to Clinton’s 51%. Even though Clinton is on pace to receive at least the second-most votes in history of any candidate after Obama and has already now come in at least 1 million votes ahead of Trump, with millions more to be counted, the difference among white voters in key counties in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa gave Trump the electoral math he needed to triumph in the Electoral College and win the presidency.

Either way, the lesson is clear: in 2008 and 2012, racism in America had evolved so that enough whites out there were willing to vote for a black candidate. But in 2016, there were not enough whites willing to support a white woman who promised to give some special attention and resourcing to people of color. So, a black candidate is fine as long as that candidate isn’t asking white America to accept any responsibility, special attention, or resourcing for disadvantaged persons of color, to sacrifice anything for them or even to admit through any substantive action that people of color have it worse and deserve special attention; a white candidate that speaks “hard truth” about race and the need for special attention to groups of color who have been especially discriminated against by white people is a bridge too far for millions of white people in 2016.

As a white woman, Clinton could not take minority support for granted; she absolutely needed to court, and cater, to minorities’ needs and concerns in order to earn their support. As a black man, Obama did not need to to this, and could, more or less, take their support for granted; it was white America that he needed to aggressively court, on which his candidacy would rise or fall. In the end, Clinton’s gamble was that enough white voters would accept a white candidate who gave such special focus and attention to minorities; in the end, they did not, and she lost.

In other words, there are enough whites comfortable enough voting for a black president as long as that president doesn’t emphasize his blackness to them, doesn’t ask them to come down from their perch from which they can look down on minorities, or doesn’t suggest he will apply any particular energy to helping people of color.

*****

The New Racism

This is the new, modern form of racism; there’s plenty of the old, more obvious and outward racism, but the new racism is accepting of people of color so long as they don’t ask for justice and accept their place without seeking any government redress or leadership to help them with their problems. The new racism is pretending that those problems aren’t any worse than those, on average, faced by white people. The new racism is being willfully ignorant of how history, policy, and politics are front and center in the disproportionate suffering of people of color. The new racism is a total denial of white responsibility or agency in the suffering of people of color. 

Those espousing the new racism, some of them could support the black guy who sounded white and didn’t talk about black people much, but they deserted a white woman who wanted to continue the black guy’s policies because, in their view, she talked too much about people of color and wanted the nation as a whole to address their plight directly. 

The old racists—those who would burn crosses if that was still a thing and who hurl epithets in private and sometimes public—exist, and there are plenty of them. And the new racists and the old racists united, especially in key places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, and Michigan, and Florida; that is a major reason why Trump won, is probably the main reason why Clinton’s support among whites fell.

In case this is not obvious, they fled her to vote for a candidate who, if not openly espousing racism (and that itself would be a controversial assertion), openly played with racism, racial resentment, and undercurrents of racism and hired an outward racist to be one of the two most powerful people in his campaign in the closing months of the campaign, and has now named this person—Steve Bannon of the racist, despicable Breitbart News—as one of his two most powerful White House advisors.

In case it’s still not obvious, after Trump was elected, there was and still is open wave of hateful racism and bigotry hurled by white Trump supporters at various minorities, often graffiti and words, but also including some violent incidents, as if Trump’s election somehow validated such behavior: over 400 incidents in less than 6 days from Wednesday, the day after the election, through Monday morning alone.

Still not convinced? People of color overwhelmingly rejected Bernie Sanders and his unrealistic ideology and delusional proposals, though the younger people were, the more support he had with them. Sanders’ message was clear, consistent and extremely narrow: the political revolution, focusing on income inequality and punishing the wealthy and corporations, would bring about success for all, and Sanders repeatedly refused to articulate a message that allowed for specific programs for people of color, or that they were a special group that had suffered more than the white majority; rather, all were equal victims of the rigged system and the wealthy elites who ran it (on a side note, this system for him included the media, and Sanders and his apostles absurdly claimed that if only he and they could educate the masses and bypass media propaganda, they would unite and rise up, regardless of race or religion, and unite in supporting Sanders and his political democratic socialist revolution; this utter nonsense has been dispelled in so many ways, but perhaps most notably by the fact that the United States just elected a man who epitomizes everything Sanders campaigned against).

As was the case with Obama, white liberals loved this race-neutral message, language, and policy program, and flocked to Sanders by huge margins, preferring his one-size-fits-all approach that gave no special consideration to people of color and their special circumstances, and people of color were, conversely, repelled by this. In fact, when Sanders was peaking after New Hampshire, he was pressed by some of his supporters of color and black and Latino activists to make room for special consideration for minorities in his economic message; he adamantly refused, and thus he himself destroyed his own chance of winning the nomination by not adjusting this message before heading into the diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina and other diverse states of the first Super Tuesday, exposing Sanders’ narrow appeal and narrow constituencies for what they were: something that could win about 40% of participants in the Democratic nomination contests but that was incapable of winning that nomination or a general election.

And those who would make the argument that Trump’s win was more about class or economics are making an argument that simply doesn’t hold up, and obviously doesn’t hold up, because, while “working class” whites overwhelmingly favored Trump, people of color—”working class” or otherwise—overwhelmingly rejected Trump. Furthermore, Clinton beat Trump by 11 points (52%-41%) among all voters who made less than $50,000 a year and even beat trump by 4 points (49%-45%) among all voters who made less than $100,000 annually (UPDATE 12/3: Further fuel to the argument that this was less about economics and more about race: among voters who said the economy was the most important issue, Clinton beat Trump by 11 points nationally and in every swing state that Trump won: she beat him among those voters by 4 points in Pennsylvania, by 3 points in Ohio, by 8 points in Michigan, by 11 points in Wisconsin, by 3 points in Florida, and by 7 points in North Carolina, and even by 2 points in Iowa and 2 points in Arizona).

A Win for White Nationalism &, Therefore, Racism

In elevating Trump to the Republican Party presidential nomination and then to the presidency, Americans basically validated white denial and the concept that white victimhood is the most glaring, most deserving of attention of all ethnic and racial victimhoods; in other words, Trump’s wins were victories for white exclusivist nationalism, in hindsight hardly surprising as a wave of ethno-centric nationalisms takes over democracies all over the world, from India and Israel to Turkey and Hungary to Poland and Bulgaria. In Trump’s America, white Americans—as they see themselves—are a racial group like any other racial group in that they are oppressed and need to unite and fight for their rights or suffer the consequences; such delusion and denial of white privilege, such zero-sum exclusivist thinking, is not only now mainstream, it is a unifying thread for the vast majority of Trump’s voters, whether conscious or unconscious.

Some may say that what was here termed the new racism isn’t really racism at all. And those people are wrong. To willfully deny that there is racism today and that certain groups of people suffer from it today still, to deny that historical racism is still affecting certain groups today because of persistent generational effects that a racist system and racist institutions inflicted upon them have a long half-life and don’t simply vanish at the passing of a law, to deny that it is harder to be black or brown in America than it is to be white, to deny that white people have huge advantages over people of color even if they are poor themselves (admittedly a hard sell but still absolutely, demonstrably, indisputably true regardless the poor socio-economic condition a good many whites), or to accept any of these but to simply say that nothing should be done to deal with these past and present realities—in essence saying a big “who cares, not my problem,” which is de facto saying those people should just accept their inferior status and that we as a nation owe them nothing despite such a long, brutal history of and continuing mistreatment—is clearly racism. Stubborn and willful ignorance is also racism because that perpetuates inaction, which perpetuates a system that discriminates people of color and keeps whites at an elevated status. Such beliefs outlined here clearly favor whites over people of color, and stubborn and willfully advocating inaction on injustice for entire groups of people of color is basically pushing for continued white favor, privilege, and superiority no matter how you frame such beliefs. If you refuse to accept reality that people of color do suffer absolutely and proportionately from racism in ways that whites do not, or if you refuse to accept that basic ethics and morality means that justice is owed and continues to be owed to such people until the effects of racism are obliterated, then this is actually active support for racism and a racist system. And when a person votes in such a way as to perpetuate either of these dual refusals, if means that vote goes towards actively perpetuating the social and economic superiority of white people over people of color, to at least maintain or perhaps even expand the benefits, advantages, and privileges that whites currently enjoy over their fellow citizens of color.

The New Racism Is the New Normal (Democratic Fascism?)

As I wrote earlier, this is utterly banal and such ethnic and racial and religious politics are common all over the world today; conservatives in America are particularly fond of claiming America and Americans are exceptional, but in this, they are depressingly normal. What is clear is that many white Americans were ok with a black candidate who avoided making race a centerpiece of his candidacy and presidency but were not OK with a white candidate who wanted to push white America to be more racially conscious and put racial justice and racial inequality at the center of hers; even worse, over her they chose Trump, who ran the most racist campaign since archsegregationist George Wallace and whose raises the disturbing question of “Is he really that racist, or just using racism to win?” Either way, Americans of color are terrified, and they have every right to be.

Welcome to racism in American in 2016: a terrifying mix of the old and new that could lead to what I call democratic fascism. But more on that another time…

A comment I posted in the comment section shortly after publication:
More analysis, this from FiveThirtyEight, backing up the idea that Clinton lost in part because voters stayed home, not so much switched parties.

See related article: Republic of Georgia Shows Trump & His Fans Depressingly Normal: Just Another Ethno-centric Nationalist Movement

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Nevada Key: State-by-State Predictions for Election 2016: Barely or BIGLY, Trump Likely to Lose

It could be close, but it may not be: Democrat Hillary Clinton should still win at least 274 Electoral College votes even if she loses big states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, thereby defeating Republican Donald Trump on Election Day, and Nevada is the likely key; below, a state-by-state analysis of every competitive state.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 7/8, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 7th/8th, 2016

270towin

AMMAN — I wrote after the third debate that the election was over and that Clinton would win unless there was some kind of major Surprise. Then, FBI Director Comey spoketh… And it’s closer than many thought possible.

As we pass through the homestretch and near Election Day, the discussion inevitably turns to maps and geography more so than any other time in the general election, and Americans get to reacquaint themselves with states other than their own, the existence of which they tend to forget when there is not a presidential election at hand. “Who are these mysterious denizens in distant lands who look at the same sky we do, can agree we both seem the same color, and then agree on nothing else whatsoever?” many ask.

Well, here is your guide to the map, states, and math of the Electoral College that will determine who will be the next president of the United States of America.

In order for Trump to defeat the favored Hillary Clinton, he would have to win almost all the battleground states. Now, this is why Clinton is favored in every major statistical model, and the gold-standard in polling analysis, Five Thirty Eight, has two models—one taking into account only polls and another taking into account polls and a few other factors like demographics and economics; the thing is, it’s not as daunting a task to win for Trump as one might think, hence Five Thirty Eight’s models wisely have Trump at about a 1-in-3 shot to become president.

And keep in mind folks: our magic number here is 270.

The Locks:

First, we have the states that are locks, barring a polling disaster or a political miracle (for all states, the number in parentheses is that state’s—and DC’s—number of Electoral College votes):

Hillary’s got these locked down: Vermont (3), Massachusetts (11), Rhode Island (4), Connecticut (7), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Delaware (3), Maryland (10), Washington, DC (3), Illinois (20), Washington (state) (12), Oregon (7), California (55), and Hawaii (4), for a total of 182 certain electoral votes for Clinton.

Donald’s got these states locked down: West Virginia (5), South Carolina (9), Kentucky (8), Tennessee (11), Alabama (9), Indiana (11), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Arkansas (6), Louisiana (8), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (5, but only 4 are certain because the state splits its votes), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Montana (3), Wyoming (3), and Idaho (4), for a total of 116 certain electoral votes for Trump.

Locked electoral votes: 182 Clinton, 116 Trump

The Near-Locks:

For Clinton:

Then, we have states which look like they could be competitive in theory, but will not be unless something crazy happens: Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska, plus Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District; let’s go through each by which candidate is an overwhelming favorite and why.

Virginia (13): Before Obama won Virginia in 2008, the last time Virginia voted for a Democrat was in 1964, but since 2008 it’s been solidly blue, only sending Democratic U.S. Senators to DC since and reelecting Obama in 2012. Its main population growth has been in the DC suburbs, an area with a young, diverse increase in population mainly working for or contracting with the much-reviled status-quo “Establishment” government; they are the system and won’t vote for someone who advocates tearing it down. So while Clinton’s pretty steady lead is modest, don’t expect it to succumb to a Trump assault. Virginia will almost certainly stay in Clinton’s camp.

New Mexico (5): While Trump appears within striking distance in New Mexico, don’t let that fool you: only once since 1992, in 2004, has New Mexico voted for a Republican for president, and both of its senators and 2 out of 3 House seats are Democratic. Also, Clinton’s polling lead there has generally fluctuated between modest and good, but her lead has been steady. And, of course, Trump’s ridiculous comments about Mexican immigrants has riled up the normally relatively apathetic Latino bloc: Latinos—and Mexican-Americans especially—are coming out to vote for Clinton in record numbers, and New Mexico is fertile ground for this trend to keep it solidly in her column on Election Day. It should very much end up in with Clinton’s in the end.

Minnesota (10): Minnesota is the most liberal state not on a coast in the country: it hasn’t gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Nixon in 1972 and did so only two other times—each time for Eisenhower in the 1950s—since 1932. In addition, 6 of its 8 House (and both Senate) seats are in Democratic hands—the only state in between the coasts with such an imbalance in favor of Democrats other than New Mexico—and Minnesota polls have shown a consistent and generally sizable lead for Clinton there. Keep dreaming, Trump.

This gives us an addition 28 electoral votes that are almost certainly going to Clinton

28 near-lock + 182 lock = 210 in Clinton’s column total

For Trump:

Georgia (16): The polling has been mighty close in Georgia, but, for the most part, it’s been a consistent lead for Trump, if only a small one; but Democrats shouldn’t kid themselves: while Georgia is changing demographically and is becoming a more diverse state, the state-level political machine is very much dominated by Republicans, who have ensured that only about 28.5% of its House delegation is Democratic and both of its senators are Republicans even though nearly 45.5% of its voters voted for Obama in the 2012 election; the state system is clearly stacked against Democrats. There is a reason the Voting Rights Act (VRA) preclearance provisions were so focused on the South: white conservative southerners had used the state and local governments for generations there to disenfranchise southern blacks; with the conservative Roberts Supreme Court striking down the preclearance provision of the VRA, in 2013, overall in the South it is quite clear that Republican state authorities are engaging in systematic attempts to make it harder for people to vote in heavily Democratic and heavily African-American areas, with at least 655 polling locations closed since the Supreme Court decision in the six southern states where data is available. Georgia is not included in the available data-set, but Georgia can almost certainly be sure to be part of this trend and, especially with African-American turnout seemingly down compared to when Obama was running, it would take a miracle for Clinton to win Georgia.

Texas (38): Yes, a large number of polls show that Clinton is within striking distance in Texas (and, personally as a Democrat, I can’t wait for that state to go purple and then blue), but it’s not going to happen in 2016, barring some crazy miracle. And yes, while unlike African-Americans, Latinos will be turning out in historic numbers for Clinton, with Republicans firmly in control of the state (the state hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, only about 30.5% of its House delegation are Democrats and both its senators are Republicans both even though almost 41.4% voted for Obama in 2012) and trying to suppress voter turnout (at least 403 polling places have been closed in the state since the 2013 VRA decision), it would take something pretty crazy for her to top Trump in Texas.

Alaska (3): Though polls have shown a highly unusually close race in Alaska, and Five Thirty Eight’s models show Clinton with roughly the same chance of winning Alaska as Donald Trump has of winning either Wisconsin or Michigan, calm down, people, Trump is still up and it’s Alaska: this state only voted for a Democrat once, in 1964. Alaska is a diverse state, with Alaskan Natives/Native Americans a large portion of Alaska’s population—nearly 15%—and though they vote heavily Democratic, they have some of the lowest voter turnout rates of any group in the United States and hopes of Clinton taking the state would ride largely on the difficult task of turning them out. Don’t stay up late expecting Alaska to surprise anyone; it’s almost certainly going to be Trump territory.

Then there’s Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (1), which famously voted for Obama in 2008, but not in 2012; whispers of Clinton having a shot have been heard, but in the scant polling we do have, nothing showed Clinton to be competitive, and there is no other evidence that this will be the case. Yes, there’s so little data that anything is possible, but take it to the bank that this is going stay Trump territory.

This adds another 58 electoral votes that are pretty definite for Trump

So 116 lock + 58 near-lock = 174 total for Trump total

So, certain/virtually certain Electoral Votes: 210 Clinton, 174 Trump

Now, below is where it gets more interesting…

The Upsets-Are-Very-Possible-States

Departing from the above states, we have a number of states where one candidate is moderately favored but where an upset is quite possible: Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah, and Arizona. Let’s break them down by which candidates are favored.

Advantage Clinton:

Maine (4 at stake in total, 3 at stake for the 1st Congressional District and overall winner): Overall, Maine is surprisingly close, and while a few polls have it very close, most have given Clinton a healthy lead; still, Maine is a very white state, and the whitest states have been her weakest during the primaries against Sanders and are also her weakest during this general election at the same time, but unlike most very white states, Maine’s population is relatively well-educated, a trait that hurts Trump’s chances. It is not very populous state, so any swing can make a big difference; Clinton is still an overwhelming favorite, and the state hasn’t voted GOP in a presidential race since 1988, but don’t count Trump out. Trump is far more likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 electoral votes, from the state’s 2nd Congressional District (see further below), than he is to win the state outright.

Pennsylvania (20): While Pennsylvania has tightened in recent days, Clinton’s lead here has been averaging a very consistent moderate one, though one that has shrunken a bit in recent days. It’s not big enough to close the window on Trump but isn’t so small that it doesn’t make her a clear and substantial favorite. Yet possibly lower African-American turnout could mean Clinton doesn’t get quite the boost she is hoping for from Philadelphia.

Ballotpedia

And another point, and this is where we get into the whole early-voting situation and FBI Director Comey’s letters: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where there is no early voting and where only a specific set of reasons allow a person to absentee vote. Before Comey’s latest public statement, released yesterday, which exonerates (for a second time) Clinton of any prosecutable wrongdoing in her e-mails/server situation, I would have said that his previous incredible statement of October 28th—that new e-mails were found in the process of a possible sex-crime investigation on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which he apparently shared with top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, which may be relevant to the Clinton investigation but which neither Comey nor the FBI has begun examining, meaning there was no evidence to report yet (a statement that altered the race, hurt Clinton, and helped Trump)—could have led to a dip in Clinton’s support in general and especially in states that do not allow early voting, since very few people there would have been allowed to vote before that damaging statement from Comey came out, and since people voting on Election Day would have had this e-mail thing as likely the last revelation of the 2016 campaign and the piece of information most fresh in their minds in the voting booth. 

In other words, in a close race, that October 28th Comey revelation could have made it closer or even changed the outcome. With the new revelation exonerating Clinton from wrongdoing coming only 48 hours before Election Day, on one level, this probably reduces some of the damage from the earlier statement; but the fact is that that previous statement gave America a week of non-stop negative coverage of Clinton and this new one came so late it might not make much of a difference at all: people might even miss the information depending on how busy and engaged they were/are with just two days left (a further question that will be very difficult to answer is: how many people would have voted differently during early voting if they had known now that they know from Comey’s latest revelation and/or if they had never heard the previous Comey statement; that is a mighty difficult question to answer, yet it is still very troubling that we even need to be asking this question, much to the discredit of Comey and the FBI). Another thing to consider is that even though this is “good” news for Clinton, it is still news that keeps the spotlight on this e-mail/server issue, one of Clinton’s worst, and not the issues, not her positives, not Trump’s negatives. Especially in a close race that does not allow early voting, the whole FBI e-mail stuff is still what has colored the last stretch of the campaign, so even with the latest exoneration this stuff probably hurts, more than helps, Clinton.

Still, Pennsylvania looks good for Clinton, and the state hasn’t picked a Republican for president since 1988, but it doesn’t look that good for her, and Trump has a decent chance of winning, or failing that, quite a good chance of making Pennsylvania a very tight race and much closer than expected. Bet on Clinton, but don’t bet the house.

Michigan (16): Michigan is quite an interesting state; on paper, it’s generally shown a steady and moderate Clinton lead in the polls, but with a few exceptions. However, Michigan became one of the greatest polling disasters in polling history—and the greatest in primary history—during the Michigan Democratic Primary, when Bernie Sanders ever so narrowly upset Hillary Clinton; it was the surprise Brexit (so far) of the 2016 election season. There are plenty of reasons—lower black enthusiasm, higher white enthusiasm, anger at trade deals, etc., that Trump won big in the primary and Clinton lost to Sanders—to look at a Trump upset as a serious possibility in this state. Plus, the state-level government is totally controlled by Republicans. And oh, Michigan is another state without early voting and which is strict with absentee voting, raising the possibility of Clinton’s e-mails weighing disproportionately heavily on voters’ minds here. She is definitely favored, and Michigan hasn’t gone Republican for president since 1988, but the people at the Clinton campaign sure aren’t taking Michigan for granted; nor should they. 

Wisconsin (10): With a generally steady and moderate lead for Clinton, Wisconsin isn’t quirky like Michigan, and it isn’t as close in polling as Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean it is out of Trump’s reach: the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, with controversial Gov. (and former 2016 presidential candidate) Scott Walker at the helm. Conversely, if Michigan is possibly weaker for Clinton because she narrowly lost to Sanders there, it must be mentioned that former 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz trounced Trump in the Wisconsin Republican Primary; additionally, Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1984. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania are better bets for Trump, though he still has a decent, if smaller, shot at Wisconsin.

This adds 49 more electoral votes to Clinton’s column, probable but far from certain or even close to certain

49 likely + 210 lock/near lock = 259 looking good for Clinton overall

Advantage Trump:

Iowa (6): For a while it seemed like Iowa would be pretty competitive, but as the campaign draws to a close, the polling trends have moved decidedly in Trump’s favor; Clinton still has a shot, but that shot has become smaller just when she would have hoped the opposite would be true. Expect Trump to prevail in Iowa.

Utah (6): Utah undoubtedly has to win the novelty prize of “most interesting race:” For a while, the state was host a tight three-way race between Trump, Clinton, and independent conservative and one of the last true standard-bearers of the conservative #NeverTrump movement, Mormon Utahn Evan McMullin. Unlike the vast majority of conservative Christians—who have proven themselves little more than rank hypocrites in supporting Trump after harping so long on “family values” as an issue, Mormons have admirable actually demonstrated a fidelity to their principles and have never warmed up to Trump; in fact, they really don’t like him. But polls in the last few weeks have shown Trump with a moderate and steady lead, and Utah seems to be his to lose. Still, with many Mormons being so principled and passionate in their feelings against Trump, it’s quite possible that anti-Trump Mormons may turn out in higher numbers than expected and vote for their fellow Mormon. McMullin has been surprisingly impressive, and still has the ability to shock and be the surprise of the election, but it is still an uphill battle for him, and even more so for Clinton in a conservative state, no matter how close they are; expect Trump to win but allow room for a surprise.

IF McMullin does pull off an upset—hardly inconceivable—his victory could throw a monkey wrench into the whole Electoral College math in some interesting scenarios where neither Trump nor Clinton hit 270 Electoral College votes, sending the election… to Congress? See more at the end of my article (coming soon)…

Arizona (11): Arizona has only gone once for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1952: Bill Clinton, in 1996. This time around, there has been a mostly steady and moderate lead for Trump, though a few more relatively recent polls have it very close and a few even have Clinton up a sliver. It should still go Trump, except… as mentioned, there is a dramatic increase in Hispanic voter turnout this election, and this could put Arizona in play. But there is also an increase in white turnout, as well, which may even outpace the big bump in Latino participation. And Republicans control the entire state government, having at least 212 polling places been closed in the state since the 2013 Supreme Court VRA decision. Even with a Latino surge, with the polls the way they are, a competing white surge, the state dominated by the GOP, and a longer-term national Republican strategy of voter suppression already in place, Arizona is likely to remain with Trump.

This gives another 23 likely, but hardly certain, electoral votes to Trump

23 likely + 174 lock/near lock votes = 197 for Trump

So far, that’s 259 for Clinton and 179 for Trump

The Battlegrounds

Finally, true battleground states where things are most in doubt are Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada, as well as Maine’s 2nd Congressional District; we’ll divide these into leans and true tossups.

Leans Clinton

Colorado (9): Clinton had a good-sized lead in Colorado for most of October, but after the Comey announcement of October 28th, polling showed the race here tightening considerably. Still, even though the race is closer, she is shown to have a clear if slight lead, and the fact of the matter is that the demographics of Colorado are very much against Donald Trump, not just because the state is diverse, but because much of the white population is young and Millennial-heavy, profusely college-educated, and liberal. It may be a very close race, but this ground is not favorable to Trump, not enough to give him a victory without a lot of luck and a big surprise. Colorado is a state that has changed a lot and now seems firmly on a path that will keep it a blue state in terms of presidential politics for the foreseeable future.

Nevada (6) TIPPING POINT: The polling in Nevada—perhaps the most difficult state of all to poll for a mix of reasons—has been balanced out to being pretty much tied (not so much with actual ties but with a number of polls canceling each other out), and it would be easy to include it in the tossup category… Except that a lot of early voting data suggests that the race is basically over, that Latino and Democratic turnout has so exceeded expectations in favor of Clinton and without an increase in whites large enough to offset this, that the race can already be called for Clinton in the eyes of the most reputable authority on Nevada politics, Jon Ralston, especially considering that the vast majority (70%) of Nevada voters voted early in 2012.

So Clinton might have already won Nevada before Election Day, with the Nevada State Democratic Party and Harry Reid’s political machine delivering her a victory through an exceptional early-voting-drive effort; it would be fitting particularly for Reid, since it was arguably his machine that delivered Nevada to Clinton in the contest with Sanders, and, as I have pointed out, that was the point where Clinton effectively defeated Sanders for the nomination, even if many others did not realize this at the time. Yes, this would be quite a curtain call for Reid, set to retire after suffering a terrible head injury while exercising back on New Years’ Day in 2015.

Given what we know from early voting, it’s very hard to see Trump winning Nevada.

This means that looking at how uncertain other parts of the race are, considering how in-doubt Nevada was until early voting data came in and how Colorado was thought to be much less competitive than Nevada, if we look at the map and do the math, if we consider Colorado a state more secure for Clinton than Nevada, then we can basically say that Nevada is the tipping point, because it is with Nevada secure—the least secure of all the contests for her in which she is favored—that she has enough Electoral College votes to win the election regardless of who wins New Hampshire, North Carolina, or Florida, the outcomes of which are far more in doubt; Nevada in this case is the kingmaker, then, or, rather, we should say queenmaker.

So 15 electoral votes (with Nevada being the final 6) + the 259 we already gave to Clinton = 274.

Game over.

*****

But, let us finish our analysis:

Leans Trump

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (1): Polls previously had this very rural, extremely white part of Maine solidly in Trump’s camp, but over the last month is has tightened and now the polls indicate it will be a toss-up. But aside from very being white, it is also not as well-educated as the rest of Maine, making it fertile ground for Trump; thus, even with the numbers indicating a tie, in the end, the demographics suggest that Trump is more likely to prevail than Clinton.

Ohio (18): Ohio always seems to be a crucial state in elections: since 1804—its first election—the state has only failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate 9 times, and only twice in the 20th century, in 1944 (weirdly enough) and 1960.  But there’s a pretty good chance that Ohio will pick the loser in 2016, for the first time in 56 years. Clinton has a decent shot, but not a great one: for most of the last month, Trump has had a steady and moderate lead, but very recently a number of very close polls came out; if not for these polls, I would have had Ohio in the previous category. On one level, Ohio is mad about Bill Clinton’s NAFTA trade deal, plus African-Americans, as mentioned, have been coming out to vote in lower numbers than in 2008 and 2012, Ohio included; on another level, Clinton still managed to beat Sanders soundly here in the primary, while Trump was embarrassed by then-rival and sitting governor of the state John Kasich, who refused to vote for Trump and wrote in John McCain’s name in early voting. Still, the Republicans control the entire state government and Trump is definitely favored here: Clinton has about as good a chance of winning Ohio as Trump does of winning the whole election: according to Five Thirty Eight models, about one-in-three. It could be really close, but Trump should win here.

This means we have 19 electoral votes that lean trump

19 leans + 197 likelies, locks/near locks = 216 electoral votes for Trump

That’s 274 electoral votes for Clinton, 216 for Trump even before the most in-doubt races are factored into the mix, but let’s go into them anyway, since the above numbers are likely, but hardly guaranteed.

True tossups:

New Hampshire (4): Clinton had a relatively steady lead here, but polls tightened over the last week or so, and even though she still seems to have an overall edge in polling, there are many contradictory polls; given New Hampshire’s famous propensity for bucking trends and defying prediction, being independent-minded, and having a strong libertarian streak, it’s just too hard to predict this one. Clinton got crushed here by Bernie Sanders, and Trump dominated his opponents here on the other side of that primary, but the state also voted for Obama twice and voted for Kerry in 2004. The state is also overwhelmingly white, but also very educated. On top of it all, New Hampshire is one of those few states that does not have early voting and has strict absentee voting, begging the question of how the whole FBI/Comey stuff will play out. New Hampshire, you’re tough, and I honestly don’t have a prediction to make.

North Carolina (15): Going into the final few weeks, a number of conflicting polls emerged, with a majority showing Clinton with a slight-to-moderate lead, but a strong minority giving Trump a lead, and most of those a slight one; the final poll showed a tie. If this wasn’t confusing enough, North Carolina is a relatively educated state, with a strong number of college-degree holding whites and a large African-American population; conversely, white turnout is up in North Carolina and African-American turnout is down in the state after the GOP closed a number of polling sites, and the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, who have been exposed there as systematically trying to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” with voter suppression in a federal appeals court rulingfrom late July that struck down some of the North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to restrict voting, a ruling which a 4-4 deadlocked Supreme Court was unable to overturn at the end of August (had Scalia survived, he certainly would have made that a 5-4 decision overturning the federal appeals court ruling). The state voted for Obama in 2008 (the first time a Democrat won the presidential race there since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976), but then went for Romney in 2012, and with plenty of reasons for both campaigns to be optimistic and both campaigns to worry, it is unclear how the state will go once all the votes are counted in 2016.

Florida (29): Oh, Florida, it’s always crazy in Florida on Election Day. Polls in Florida have been a bit all over the place, about half showing Clinton with a small lead and half showing Trump with a small lead (plus one) tie. And there are reasons for both sides to be optimistic: Clinton is happy that Florida is a diverse state and that in its vibrant Latino community turnout is dramatically up in early voting, but the white vote is also way up, the Democrats’ lead in early voting is less than it was in 2008, and Republicans control the entire state government, a position from which they may be engaging in voter suppression, as Republicans have been apt to do this election cycle: after Hurricane Matthew hit, Republican Governor and enthusiastic Trump supporter Rick Scott did not even want to extend voter registration, but he was sued by the Florida Democratic Party and a federal judge forced him to extend the deadline. Thus, Florida, as usual, is also too close to call, give the polling and what I laid out.

I really think these last three states are just too close to call, so that’s 48 electoral votes that are anybody’s guess. But this still gives us a range:

Likely closest result: 274 Clinton, 264 Trump

Likely biggest gap: 322 Clinton, 216 Trump 

The Crazy Scenarios if Nobody Gets to 270

Then, there are the crazy scenarios with a realistic chance of actually happening, where neither Clinton nor Trump hit 270.

For starters, let’s say that the states go as I have predicted and say that New Hampshire goes for Clinton with North Carolina and Florida going to Trump, with the exceptions that Trump pulls off upsets in Nevada and Colorado: ladies and gentleman, we would be tied 269-269, and the election would go to the incoming Congress (more on that in a bit, and wow, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District would look mighty important in such scenario).

But then we have other crazy scenario: if Evan McMullin wins Utah (hardly an extremely remote possibility given what I laid out) there are a number of very close scenarios where candidates could be just a few electoral votes shy of getting 270, sometimes just a single vote (Maine’s 2nd Congressional District could be a kingmaker here if it went Clinton) . And, again, we go to Congress.

There are other scenarios where neither Clinton nor Trump reaches 270, but these are easily the most likely, the other being dramatically more remote but hardly impossible (scenarios involving less competitive states above the battleground tier, as outlined above).

I’ll avoid going into those since they are far more remote, but feel free to play with your own maps.

But, under the Constitution, when the election goes to Congress, the president is chosen by the state congressional delegations from the incoming House of Representatives class (extremely likely to be majority-Republican), with each delegation getting one vote: all of Texas’ congressmen are equal to Montana’s one congressman. They would be allowed to choose from the top three electoral vote receivers, and if McMullin’s Utah delegation could pull in other Republican states’ representatives who are hostile to Trump into a bloc, they could prevent enough delegations from picking Trump, who would need 26 out of the 50 delegations to win. Meanwhile, the Senate would select the VP from the top-two electoral-vote receivers for the vice presidency, with senators voting as individuals; if the House could not pick a winner with at least 26 delegations by the inauguration, the VP chosen from the Senate would become president; if Senate was deadlocked, the president would be the incoming Speaker of the House (likely Paul Ryan but not certainly so).

On top of all of this? A Bernie Sanders support who is 1 out of 12 electors in the Electoral College for Washington State, which a lock for Clinton, has explicitly said he will not vote for Clinton in the Electoral College regardless of how his state votes; if he stays true to his statement, then Clinton will lose 1 electoral vote. If some of the aforementioned wackier scenarios play out, this one obnoxious man may decide the fate of the nation, and perhaps Western democracy and the world…

About That Popular Vote…

With lots of close races, it’s going to come down to turnout. Can Obama’s personally hitting the campaign trail help to make up some of the gap between black turnout in 2012 and 2008 compared to reports of lower turnout thus far in 2016? Can Trump turnout whites in record-enough numbers to upset Clinton? Will Latinos, like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, wake up to their potential power and be kingmakers in key states like Florida, Arizona, and Nevada?

As for the numbers of popular vote, the best pollster in politics, Ann Selzer, just released a national poll which had Clinton at 44%, Trump at 41%, 4% for Gary Johnson, and 2% for Jill Stein; 1% did not know, 3% voted/intended to vote but not for president (think of this as the disgusted vote), and a whopping 4% did not want to tell their choice; as I wrote in my early October prediction of how voters might shift before Election Day (I seemed to have underestimated the collapse of Johnson and Stein, but my best guess from then was about Clinton 45%, Trump 43%, Johnson 6% and 2-3% for Stein, with about 4.5% undecided that I wouldn’t dare guess), I noted how I thought the vast majority of those who said they did not want to share their intentions were probably Trump voters; if I am right here, the popular vote margin could be very close; Clinton could even lose the popular vote while winning the electoral college, something that, given what I just mentioned, seems a more likely scenario that any would have thought previously (I didn’t say likely, just more possible). If I am wrong about those people who didn’t want to share their choice with pollsters, Clinton should win the popular vote by a small but clear margin, but perhaps the Latino surge will outperform these surveys and give Clinton more than a small margin in the popular vote; probably the main reason she will win by a larger margin if so, and, possibly the main reason she will win in general.

It’s also quite reasonably possible that the polls are off by “a normal polling error” across the board, kind of like with Brexit; if this is the case, we could see a decent-sized Trump win, but that could mean a Clinton blowout.

We’ll know very soon. Nothing to worry about here, only the fate of American and Western democracy…

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Trump’s flirtatious waltz with hints and threats of political violence cannot be ignored and should not be underestimated. Apart from echoing some of America’s own worst episodes in the South after the Civil War, such dangerous dancing brings to mind the lessons of the ancient Roman Republic, and how, after centuries of peaceful politics and peaceful transitions of power, one horrible incident of political violence begat many others in subsequent decades, culminating in civil war and the death of Rome’s democratic Republic; the Roman Republic far outlasted America’s republic (so far) even before that violence began, so anyone who thinks the United States is immune from a similar fate is suffering from a hubris that ignores history and human nature and the terrible consequences of precedent-shattering political violence.

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 23, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 23rd, 2016 (UPDATED 10/26 to further discuss race & politics in America)

AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

Silvestre David Mirys (1742-1810) – Figures de l’histoire de la république romaine accompagnées d’un précis historique Plate 127: Gaius Gracchus, tribune of the people, presiding over the Plebeian Council

AMMAN — We have already had people being punched at Trump rallies, clashes with police, a mini-riot by Bernie Sanders fans inside a Democratic state convention in Nevada and that Bernie Sanders himself all but seemed to fully excuse at the time, and now, a firebombing of a Republican HQ in a county in North Carolina.

Trump Fanning Flames of Unrest

In the midst of all this Trump has convinced many of his supporters that there is a global top-to-bottom conspiracy to cheat him of the election and that this election—which is only just beginning—is already rigged against him and, by extension, his supporters (never mind how astronomically impossible that such a rigging as he describes it would actually be happening). In fact, he has been so successful at this that almost 70% of Republicans believe Clinton can only win by cheating and half of Republicans would refuse to accept her as president. At the final debate, he even raised serious doubts about whether he would accept the results of the election, putting in jeopardy an unbroken tradition going back to George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson in 1796-1797 of a peaceful transfer of power between presidents and the loser accepting the outcome, even in hotly disputed or controversial elections like those in 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, 1960, and 2000. The day after the debate, he doubled down on this rhetoric and failed to alleviate the concerns he had raised the previous night, joking(?)/stating(?) that he would accept the election results “if I win.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump has been saying that there is a need for volunteers to “watch” polling places to make sure there is no “voter fraud” and is encouraging his partisan supporters to undertake this task that is supposed to be bi-partisan and non-partisan, and he and his surrogates are specifically suggesting monitoring of certain urban (code word for heavily-black) areas. In places like Texas and Florida, over 80% of Republicans think that voter fraud is a major problem, with zero evidence to support this but ample rhetoric from Team Trump and the GOP trumping reality yet again with their misinformation and disinformation.

Yes, angry, white, possibly-well-armed Trump supporters—people who number in the tens of millions, who are passionately convinced Trump is right and should be president, who are now talking of assassination, revolution, and coups should Hillary be elected—are already talking about descending upon minority-heavy polling areas on Election Day in an effort to make sure such shifty (in their view) minorities, prone to election malfeasance (in their view), don’t try anything funny; and yes, many of these people own guns and will show up openly armed because in many locations they will be allowed to do so, and yes, out of Trump’s tens of millions of devotees, we can certainly expect many thousands to show up as he has asked them to, and to show up in this manner, at polling places on November 8th, something that will more likely than not lead to trouble, especially in America’s increasingly racially-tense atmosphere. For those who don’t know their history, this was how white Southerners intimidated and usually prevented freed slaves and African-Americans from voting, from Reconstruction all the way through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Never mind that Republican and Democratic officials at all levels, including local election officials from both parties, have dismissed as absurd the idea that the election is rigged or that any local polling places are going to be compromised or part of a voter fraud scheme. Never mind that voter fraud is practically non-existent, and that campaigns claiming to want to deal with voter fraud are more about denying minorities the ability to vote than anything else (for actual voter fraud on a staggering scale, see Vladimir Putin’s Russia).

Unfortunately, this election is a moment of terror, and for many Latinos, Muslims, African-Americans, and others, it must on a personal level be a terror that far exceeds any emotions I have on the issue as a white male. I am not sure if state and local authorities are up to the challenge, are aware of what could really happen in a realistic worst-case scenario here: thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, maybe more, of Trump supporters, many who could be armed, are going to be seeking to either harass and intimidate people they falsely believe, with no evidence, are committing voter fraud—picking people out by skin color almost certainly—or maybe even just be flat-out seeking to disrupt voting in liberal precincts in an effort to suppress minority votes (again, nothing new in American history and something that has happened in living memory). Violence, riots, voter disenfranchisement—all are in the realm of realistic possibility on Election Day now. We have already recently seen what crowds and individuals can do when animated by racial animus, crowds on different sides of the debate, from crowds of mainly angry black citizens to crowds of paranoid police in a cycle that seems to have been reignited since Ferguson after decades of near dormancy.

I am not being hyperbolic. I am not being paranoid. And Donald Trump’s rhetoric to millions of his supporters that the election is being stolen from them and that they need to go “watch” polling places is not abating or going away; nothing inherent in American society makes it immune to internal violence or breakdowns of law and order. This is the reality mere weeks before Election Day, and I hope federal, state, and local law enforcement are planning accordingly; some are aware of these dire possibilities, but whether they are given the resources to deal with this possibility, or if their plans are competent, remains to be seen.

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Lesson’s From Ancient Roman Politics

Is this a Rubicon moment for America?

HBO/Rome

Not really a Rubicon moment, but more of a Gracchi moment.

By a Rubicon moment, I am using a colloquialism of a point-of-no-return when a drastic action is taken. This word Rubicon in this case refers to the moment in 49 B.C.E., when Julius Caesar crossed south over the Rubicon River with his army, a river which marked the boundary between a province where his army was authorized to operate and Roman Italy proper where it was not after the Senate left him a choice between what would have been an unjust prosecution at the hands of his political rivals on one hand and starting a civil war (only the second since the founding of the Roman Republic in 509. B.C.E. but also the Republic’s last, the Republic itself not surviving this final round) on the other. But the Roman Civil War that began in 49 B.C.E. was merely the culmination of a number of awful trends that started in 133. B.C.E.

We are clearly not at a Rubicon moment in America, the second most successful republic in history after Rome’s ancient one.

But, still terrifyingly, we may be approaching a 133 moment: the snowball which starts an avalanche.

What happened in 133? After the Romans’s version of the Revolutionary War that overthrew the rule of kings in 509. B.C.E., apart from some minor incidents early in Rome’s history as a Republic that are more legendary than anything certain, Rome essentially had three-and-a-half centuries worth of relatively stable, democratic republican government; political violence was a minimum or nonexistent, and nothing like an officially directed assassination, civil war, or use of the military to settle internal political disputes ever occurred. Sure, its democratic qualities evolved over time and like even modern democracies there were factors that favored elites, much like in the United States, which did not even begin with allowing all white adult men to vote, let alone blacks or women. In fact, some states in America did not even have popular votes in the first presidential election, during which all had property-owning requirements for voting for president if there were popular votes at all, requirements that were only gradually abolished in the coming decades, starting with New Hampshire in 1792, though a greater degree of democracy was practiced at the state and local levels. Still, it was not until 1856 that all white male citizens in America were finally able to vote regardless of property ownership, and that was only 14 years before freed slaves and all adult males were given the right to vote with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.

By 133 B.C.E., common Romans had long had an important role in selection of the Republic’s senior magistrates, and, in particular, there was one office that from Rome’s earliest days was created to be a sacred, inviolable protector of the people: the tribunate. The tribunes of the plebs (short for plebeians, the members of the lower class) were elected each year and could prosecute any other government official for abuse of power, as well as veto any government act, and introduce legislation of their own accord and even bypass the Roman Senate and go directly to the people’s assemblies to pass their programs, even though this was against unofficial custom. The most powerful political officeholders were the two annually elected chief executives, the consuls (think of America having to co-equal presidents elected every year), who presided over the Senate and had more power than any other elected officials. These two offices are important to understand when looking at the events from 133 on, and the below chart I created gives a good idea of how the Roman government operated:

It is also important to understand the seismic changes going on in Roman society at this period in its history. After well over a century of on-and-off-again conflict, Rome had finally succeeded in literally wiping its greatest rival Carthage off the map in 146 B.C.E., a Carthage that was just a shadow of its former self long before that final last gasp. As a result of Rome’s successful wars, a huge influx of slaves into Roman lands meant that many small freeholding farmers were put out of business as wealthy elites created huge estates run by slave labor and greedily gobbled up the land of small farmers. Rome had gone from a primarily small-farming Republic to an overseas empire dominated by large slave-owning landowners. Roman cities swelled with newly landless urban poor, many of them veterans and their descendants, veterans who had been unable to maintain their family farms fighting for years at a time in long, overseas wars; Rome’s elites were clearly leaving the concerns of the poor masses unattended. 

While Carthage and others were a threat, the different classes of Roman society were forced to work together in a spirit of pragmatism to fend off so many existential foes (this is similar to the moderation and bipartisanship exhibited in American politics during its Cold War with the Soviet Union). But a new political culture of selfishness, greed, and ambition, each rising to new heights, was emerging in Rome with the destruction of Carthage. There was just so much unprecedented power to be had that the stakes of and how far people were willing to go in politics had reached new levels; competition became much stiffer as a few of the most powerful elite families were drowning out the other lower aristocrats. Corruption grew by leaps and bounds as a result, and the tradition of the abstemious, stoic, small farmer ideal had become just that, that ideal further from being a reality than at any time in Roman history and that gap only about to get worse. In fact, it got so bad that the governing Romans began to be worried that the military was going to lose its base of recruitment, at that point limited to landowners. And decades later in the first century B.C.E., the interests of large multinational corporations called publicani helped to put so much money into the political system that Roman senators could not be trusted to fight for the people over their own and publicani pocketbooks.  

Even at the time, many contemporary Romans of the first century B.C.E. were aware that the post-Carthage culture of Roman elites of greed, corruption, ambition, scorched-earth politics, and extreme partisanship bieing placed over both the common good and a spirit of compromise; this new culture was at the heart of the disease which led to the death of the Republic (nominally in 27 B.C.E. but really in 49 B.C.E.); in the words of the ancient Roman historian Sallust, it was peacetime, not war, which undid Rome:

“Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity took over. the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity. For the aristocracy twisted their ‘dignity’ and the people twisted ‘liberty’ towards their desires; every man acted on his own behalf, stealing, robbing, plundering. In this all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated…self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity. For the aristocracy twisted their ‘dignity’ and the people twisted ‘liberty’ towards their desires; every man acted on his own behalf, stealing, robbing, plundering. In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated…

And so, joined with power, greed without moderation or measure invaded, polluted, and devastated everything, considered nothing valuable or sacred, until it brought about its own collapse.” ( The Jurgurthine War 41.1-10)

To place Rome’s rapid rise in perspective, consider that by 133, Rome had gone in living memory from surviving multiple existential threats from Carthaginians, Gauls, and Greeks, had gone from just controlling Italy, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and some of Spain’s east coast to dominating nearly the entire Mediterranean either directly or indirectly; specifically, 133 was year of remarkable fortune for Rome: the late King of Pergamum—a wealthy Greek kingdom in what is now Turkey un western Asian Turkey—had actually willed his entire domain to the Roman Republic, and it passed to Rome upon his death in 133. Rome had already grown dramatically in size, wealth, and power, adding most of northern Italy, all of Greece, most of Spain, most of Southern France, and much of Carthage’s old African holdings to its domains. But Rome’s Western territories were far less developed than the older, fabulously wealthy cities and kingdoms of the East. The addition of the Asian Kingdom of Pergamum to the Republic’s empire had Roman businessman salivating as the prospect of the profits from the riches of doing business in the Asian east.

The Gracchi and Rome’s Descent Into Political Violence

Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume- The Gracchi

The year this remarkable gift to Rome came about, one of the tribunes of the plebs that had won election for that year of 133 was an ambitious but high-minded would-be reformer: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, hailing from two very famous and elite Roman bloodlines. A champion of the masses, the Greco-Roman historian Plutarch has GRacchus giving a passionate speech in which he lamented that while the

“wild beasts of Italy have their dens and holes to lurk in…the men who fight and die for our country enjoy the common air and light and nothing else…The truth is that they fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others. They are called the masters of the world, but they do not possess a single clod of earth which is truly their own” (Plutarch Tiberius Gracchus 9). 

And this was the center of his program: doing something about the wealthy’s assault on the small-farm landowners who were disappearing as a class. But Gracchus was hardly looking to liquidate the rich: his proposal was to use a preexisting law that had been on the books for centuries that had long been unenforced, one which limited the amount of public land that any one individual could own. That limit was still quite large, but far less than what the ultra-wealthy had accumulated in the years of Rome’s great expansions, during which many Romans elites had used fake names to accumulate more than the legal limit. The excess land would be handed over to the poor, but in return for accepting this legal limit, all the legal-sized holdings would be formally recognized as legitimate and each son of these landowners would be given a portion of land equal to half the maximum size.

As would be expected, though, these wealthy landowners dominated the Senate, and they refused to go along with this compromise scheme even though the problems of ultra-concentration of land and wealth and the rapid rise of landless poor were all at a crises points.

Thus Gracchus, as was his legal-but-frowned-upon-and-untraditional right, called an assembly of the people and got his bill passed with the people’s enthusiastic approval. Equally as uncommon were for senatorial elites to orchestrate a veto of such a popular measure, but that the Senate did, co-opting one of the other nine Tribunes to veto Gracchus’ bill. Quite dramatically, Gracchus convened another assembly and had the people vote that tribune out of office: this dramatic move was extremely unprecedented, but was very likely still legal. The elites opposed to Gracchus were shocked at this move, and began a public relations campaign suggesting the Gracchus was out to make himself a king—just as offensive a suggestion to Roman sensibilities then as it would be to Americans today—and a portrayal Gracchus played into when he appointed himself and two of his relatives as the three-person commission to oversee the land reform. The Senate’s response to this was to refuse to allocate funding for Gracchus’s commission (if this sounds familiar to current U.S. politics on anything from Obamacare to the Zika virus, it should). In turn, Gracchus moved to get funding from future revenue from newly bestowed Pergamese lands in Asia, stepping into both financial and foreign affairs, policy spheres traditionally run by the Senate.

In pursuing his land reform and in its efforts to stop him at any cost, both Gracchus and the Senate were showing a willingness to discard centuries of compromise and precedent that had served Rome well, though Gracchus could at least in part be said to be acting on behalf of a Roman people and Republic in desperate need of land reform while the primary concern of the senatorial class was preserving their own power and obscene wealth. 

Against such odds, Gracchus did something no Roman as a tribune had ever done before: he made it clear he would stand for election again to serve a consecutive second term as a tribune, signaling to the Senate that it could not just stall in the hopes of outlasting him or hope to simply overturn his legislation when he was gone. A group of Senators, in part feeling this was a major step towards Gracchus moving to make himself king, and obviously acting to preserve their own power and wealth, marched on an assembly of the people where Gracchus was present and beat him, and hundreds of his supporters, to death; afterwards, other supporters of his were executed, imprisoned, or exiled without trial.

*****

This was a terrible turn for Rome: for hundreds of years and not since the earliest days of the Republic had anything even remotely like this happened, and even then nothing remotely this bad: tribunes were as a matter of religion sacrosanct and inviolable; to try to harm one was considered a terrible sacrilege. Elites, even members of the Senate, had resorted to settling a political dispute with mass murder, killing a major elected office-holder. And from this point, Rome’s politics would be driven by two main parties: the optimates—self-dubbed “best-men” who were the conservative leaders of the aristocracy and the Senate and generally acted against reform or anything that would redice their wealth and power—and populares—bold men from within the aristocracy who were willing to challenge the optimates, drawing support from the people with populist programs aimed helping the masses—and the conflict between the two would eventually destroy republican government in Rome altogether.

In order to prevent mass unrest, however, the Senate let much of Gracchus’ land law stand, but this was a temporary measure and the Senate stopped the reform in 129, to the dismay of not only Roman citizens; at this point, much of Italy was not so much directly controlled by Rome as by other Italians whom Rome considered allies and were not legally full Roman citizens, and it was clear to all that these Italians were the junior partners in the relationship; these Italians had not been consulted on the ending of the reform, to their consternation. This provided an opportunity for the murdered Gracchus’ younger brother, Gaius, who, it seems, sought to gain their support when they were shut out of the decision-making process by the Senate, apparently by supporting a bid to make many of them full Roman citizens. 

But when Gaius sought and won a tribunate for the year 123, this was only one of his many aims; he also ran for and won the tribunate for the next year, 122, without the cataclysmic reaction suffered by his brother for attempting the same thing. 

If Tiberius could be thought of as something of a Bernie Sanders of ancient Rome, then Gaius was going to take more of a Hillary Clinton-like approach, trying to build a broad coalition designed to appeal to many swaths of society instead of a more narrow populist program and to make it harder for the optimates to brush him aside like they did his brother. 

As such, Gaius Gracchus passed a law ensuring access to grain for bread to win over the urban poor; for the poor of the countryside, he suggested creating a new colony to settle people on the site where Carthage had once stood, in Africa; for an emerging middle-class of lower aristocrats and businessmen known as equites (who ran many of the publicani), he allowed them to bid for the lucrative tax-collecting contracts in the western parts of Pergamum’s former lands, now organized as the new Roman province of Asia (taxation was not undertaken directly by the government but was a task the Roman state contracted out to private companies); to this end, rather than have the bidding take place as would normally happen in the province itself (often abused by whichever Roman governor was there), Gracchus made sure it would take place in Rome, and instead of than splitting the taxation responsibilities for the province of Asia into multiple contracts, he made it a single contract for the whole province, an appeal to the support of the upper Roman business-class since only larger corporations could handle a contract on that scale (this move would have unintended blowback as it gave rise to the obscene growth in power of the publicani that would be such a huge problem for Romans decades later). 

On the legal front, he ensured capital trials could only be conducted through a law or people’s assembly, preventing the Senate from conducting trials by decree, and any senator or official who tried to bypass this restriction was subject to prosecution. He also brought equites into juries, so that the dominant portion of the pool from which judges and jurors in most civil cases were drawn were now equites over senators by a two-to-one margin; additionally, one of his allies passed a bill that made equites total replacements for senators on the juries of extortion courts that tried provincial governors and other senatorial-level officials for corruption (senators had generally avoided convicting their peers), and a permanent extortion court was established.

But in casting such a wide net, Gracchus made himself vulnerable as well; his wily Senatorial opponents used his effort to help Rome’s Italian allies against him, convincing many Romans that extending citizenship to these people would weaken the power of Roman citizens themselves, and the senators also used their individual patron-client ties with many of the non-Roman Italian to keep a good number of them from supporting Gracchus. They also preempted his attempt to win over the rural poor by having two of their own put forth bills to establish colonies. His support apparently undercut, Gaius lost an election in which he ran for a newly-unprecedented third tribunate in a row, and a fight broke out between some of his supporters and those of one of the current consuls, a consul who had bitterly opposed Gracchus and was a personal enemy of his; the fight resulted in the death of one of the consul’s supporters.

The Senate’s response to this was swift and unprecedented: it passed an emergency decree against Gracchus, authorizing the consul to do anything whatsoever to take Gracchus down: Gracchus and thousands of his followers were killed in a brief yet bloody fight and subsequent executions.

From the Gracchi to Caesar: the Cycle of Political Violence Explodes Into Civil War

Sadly, violence would come with frightening ease and regularity over the following decades.

Close to four centuries had passed in Roman history without violent episodes other than some disturbances early in Rome’s history, but after the deaths of the Gracchi brothers in 133 and 121, violence increasingly became a political tool, beginning mainly with the Senate’s optimates’ efforts to squash would-be reformers challenging their power too much for their liking, first in 100 and again in 91, both used against tribunes and the latter being used on a man pushing for citizenship for Rome’s Italian allies; the assassination of their champion sparked a rebellion by many of Rome’s Italian allies called the Social War (91-88), which was only ended by Rome’s granting of most of them the citizenship they had wanted to achieve through peaceful means. But an actual civil war between roman military units fighting for supporters of one generally popularis consul (Gaius Marius) against the forces and supporters of another optimas consul (Lucious Cornelius Sulla)—Rome’s first civil war in over four centuries of republican government (consider it took the United States only 85 years before it had its Civil War from 1861-1865)—broke out the same year (along with a major overseas conflict in Greece and Asia). The period of conflict between supporters of Marius and Sulla would not finally end until 72 (and that foreign war not ending until 63). 

But no rest for the weary: one ambitious popularis tried to overthrow the Republic after losing an election in 61, and he and his makeshift army were annihilated in 62. As the 50s unfolded, tension was constant and bouts of mob violence frequent, while the many pressing problems facing the Republic were left unaddressed by obstinate optimates who showed a total disregard for the Roman people. (Gaius) Julius Caesar would be their champion as a popularis, but his foes in the Senate would never forgive him; with a veteran army after his victorious war in Gaul, the Senate issued its emergency decree again in 49, basically authorizing tCaesar’s death because he would not step down from office; but this was after intense behind the scenes maneuvering in which Caesar’s supporters tried to negotiate a way for him to take up a new office when his term as consul expired, without which Cesar would be out of office and therefore open to legal prosecution, which his enemies were certainly planning for him. Essentially, they were daring Caesar to start a civil war or accept disgrace and prosecution and who-knows-what-punishment, in addition to an untenable political situation for the Republic and its citizens.

Caesar chose civil war.

By the time the wars which grew out of the civil war beginning in 49 ended nearly twenty years later in 30 with Caesar’s nephew Octavian defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Rome’s people were so exhausted by war that they didn’t mind that Octavian set up a dictatorship masquerading as a republic, and thus the Roman emperorship was born. There would not be another large-scale democracy or democratic republic with as much participation by the people until the United States of America grew to be a major power roughly 1,800 years later.

America’s Own Problems With Political Violence: Civil War to Civil Rights

Harper’s Weekly- October 19th, 1872

That time would roughly coincide with America’s Civil War. The war itself did not really end in 1865: during Reconstruction, the Republican-dominated federal government with its army acting as an occupying force put into place new state governments in the Southern states that had rebelled that enforced racial political and legal equality for freed slaves, but over the course of the next decade and then some, Democratic extremist terrorist white supremacists carried out insurgencies and violently overthrew almost all these governments, putting in place racist governments highly oppressive and violent to black Americans that lasted until the 1960s; southern whites finally negotiated the withdrawal of federal troops left in the only remaining states southern white insurgents had not violently taken over after the disputed election of 1876, an election, like so many others between 1865-1876, marred in the South by widespread violence, fraud, and voter suppression.

Harper’s weekly- “Of Course He Wants to Vote the Democratic Ticket:” White Democrats intimidate a black Republican,October 21st, 1876

With the exception of the election of 1948, in which many southern whites punished Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman for supporting civil rights for African-Americans and voted for racist third-party candidate Strom Thurmond, Democrats would continue to be the party of racists until John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson embraced equality for African-Americans in the 1960s, causing the parties to swap positions on issues of race, with white southern voters then defecting en masse to the Republican Party mainly because of racism, where they are now the Republican Party’s primary base. And, disturbingly, most of the states where today the state-level government is leading the charge in suppressing black and other minority voters are former “Confederate” states in the South.

America is fortunate that apart from riots and strikes, many of them race-based, there has been very few period of civil unrest since the 1870s, the main exceptions being the sporadic taming of the “Wild West” and later the Civil Rights Era’s 1960s and early 70s. But now, starting with the Ferguson riots in 2014 that was the first in a series episodes of racial unrest that have so far culminated in the dark days of racial tension of this very summer of 2016, we are seeing the most unrest this country has faced in more than 40 years.

Trump: The First Major Party Candidate to Stoke Unrest While Running for President?

And in the middle of all this is Donald Trump, the most polarizing major-party candidate since the election of 1860 that precipitated this country’s only civil war.

As history and even our own world today amply demonstrates, the sinister genie of political violence is prohibitively difficult to get back into its bottle once it has been unleashed; often, the attempt to rebottle it fails to succeed before the self-destruction of whatever state-structures were in existence, or before people turn to autocracy out of weariness of violence, with the violence itself often bred by a disintegrating public trust in major institutions. Most worrisome about Trump is that he is mixing subtle, implied threats of mass violence and/or intimidation with a very overt effort to obliterate trust in such institutions; just to recap, from the beginning of his candidacy and throughout, Trump falsely exaggerated how bad problems were with our institutions, even allowing for their increasingly problematic nature: first, he assailed the media and the party presidential nomination process as being “rigged” by elites to keep him down (that is, until he won and then stopped caring); added to this are his repeated allegations that the presidential voting system is rigged from top to bottom, with exhortations of his (largely white) supporters to be enthusiastic volunteer Election Day poll-watchers (in minority-heavy precincts), a task that only trained professionals are qualified to do (the parts in parentheses are understood even as candidate Trump does not emphasize them). Combined with his casual references to beating up dissenters at his rallies, his earlier threats/hints of possible violence (and his campaign’s preparations for intimidation tactics) were the Republican Party to try to deny Trump the nomination at its convention, his repeated musings as to what gun enthusiasts could show Hillary Clinton, especially if she were to be stripped of her Secret Service protection, and his stated desire to put Clinton in jail were he to be elected president along with his encouraging of chants of “lock her up” with crowds at his rallies, all Americans paying attention who have any sense of decency left should be feeling chills down their spines.

And yet for millions of Trump’s deplorable supporters, who are hanging on to every word in person at mass rallies, watching him on TV, or listening to him on the radio, they hear all this, easily understand all the implied subtleties about race and violence, and eagerly absorb every word joyfully, salivating at the very prospect of being able to assert their white dominance yet again on the political system, with far too many of these people also delighting in the prospect of political violence as a means to achieve these ends.

I wish I could say that I firmly believe such a prospect of political violence on anything other than a minute scale is a remote possibility, but I can’t; Trump’s recently far more sinister rhetorical turn is driving delusions and fantasies of violence in the heads of far, far too many of his flock, especially if that recent poll that had half of Republicans refusing to accept Clinton as president is even remotely accurate (and it probably is). I honestly don’t know what will happen, so extreme has Trump’s rhetoric become, so extreme have the views of many of his supporters been for some time, that I fear what will happen should this toxic mix boil over.

All Americans, regardless of political affiliation, in an atmosphere of increasing racial animosity and rumblings of political violence, should be afraid, and demand that Trump cease such rhetoric immediately, before it may be too late to prevent the unimaginable. But, as a consequence of all of this, we must begin to imagine the unimaginable, and prepare for the worst.

In some ways, that in itself is close enough to a 133 moment that we are in trouble regardless of what happens on and/or after Election Day.

Conclusion: A True Test for America, Its System, Its Leaders, Its People 

I want to also be careful here to note I am not arguing inevitability here: 133 did not make Sulla’s and Caesar’s civil wars inevitable, and Trump doesn’t make anything inevitable about today’s America. But each made and make, respectively, the possibility of really bad things happening far more likely: once such things occur in a society, they are far more likely to occur again than if society had prevented them from occurring at all in the first place.

Do I think Trump really wants to spark violence and riots? To undermine democracy? Maybe not, maybe it’s just bravado, but maybe not; either way, I do not think he appreciates or understands the raw hatred and emotion with which he is toying; in fact, the Republican Party did not realize how dangerous a game they were playing for decades stoking these fires, and Trump blew it all up right in the Party’s elites’ face. These forces are larger than Trump, and it remains to be seen if he can contain them, or if he even wants to. At the final debate, he said he wanted to keep us “in suspense,” and no matter what happens, we can all agree he has succeeded wildly on that front, and not for the good of our republic. The example of Rome’s self-destructive descent into civil political violence and strife is frighteningly instructive for our times, then, and should give us all pause, and we will have to judge ourselves very much on the basis of what happens over the next few weeks. In some ways, no less than the fate of our (and even Western) democracy itself is at stake.

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 16, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 16th, 2016

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

AMMAN — As much as the horror show of the second Clinton-Trump debate should bother us, on some levels the Pence-Kaine vice-presidential debate is more worrisome. I say this because that one has been acknowledged to be the more “normal” debate, and should remind us all of how dysfunctional our system is even without Trump and his candidacy. But, because of that, it is also one of the more instructive moments of this campaign season, even though the debate happened almost two weeks ago; in fact, its lessons’ importance do not dim with the passage of time, but only increase, and will be relevant for the foreseeable future.

See, the thing about the now-generally-spineless Republican Party elected officials is that we can see the next episode, should Trump lose, with breathtaking clarity: “WE REPUBLICANS LOST BECAUSE OF TRUMP. BLAME HIM. WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE WE ARE 100% FREE FROM ALL BLAME AND 100% OF THE BLAME IS ON TRUMP,” they will spout piously. But the largely uninspiring Pence-Kaine debate easily disproves that; it shows what is wrong with the Republican Party, it shows much of what’s wrong with our political system in general, and it even reminds us how thin the Democratic Party’s bench is.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Democrats

Now, a brief note on the issues with the Democrats before getting into the meatier awfulness of the other two topics. 

First, don’t get me wrong: I like Tim Kaine, and though I was at first disheartened by the pick of another white male, I knew Elizabeth Warren would have been a disaster in repelling centrist voters and in making it an all-female ticket (nothing wrong with that for me but America is still a backwards country), and I was really hot for Julián Castro and would also have been excited by Corey Booker, but after I watched Kaine speak once he was picked and learned more about him, I chided myself for wanting to be “excited” and realized that Clinton was right to pick Kaine, who had far more experience and who could credibly be said to be ready to be president more than most (and certainly far more than the younger and inexperienced Castro and Booker, give them time for goodness sakes! Patience!!); I realized my expectations as a liberal should not outweigh an ability to appeal to swing voters who are not as liberal as I am and to be ready to be Commander-in-Chief should disaster strike.  

In the debate, Kaine deserves some credit for acting like a kamikaze pilot aimed right at Trump: at the expense of his own favorability, he kept the focus on Trump throughout the debate even though it meant a “loss” to the man with whom he shared the stage, Mike Pence: suicide mission accomplished, Sen; Kaine. But on other levels, Kaine was lacking: he stumbled over his words more than a few times, his delivery was off, his attempts at humor fell flat. More than anything else, Kaine’s very presence was a reminder how thin the Democratic bench is, even if the Republican Bench is unquestionably weaker, especially in terms of substance. I remember thinking when Ted Kennedy died—the Last Lion of the Senate—there was no one else even close to him except perhaps for Biden, now aging and in the twilight of his political career. The Lionesses of the senate—Barbara Mikulski and Barbara Boxer—are both retiring this year, with only Dianne Feinstein left in their class, though Claire McCaskill can be said to be a good person to soon be of similar stature.  And Warren, whom I also like, is admittedly mostly talk and to the left of most Americans and is therefore not a viable national candidate for the same reasons Bernie Sanders is not. In the House, Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, Jim Clyburn, and other elder statesman will continue to serve well there, but that’s pretty much it for them as far as their career, and for the House. Booker and Castro are exciting, but that is a list of two people.

What the VP Debate Told Us About Republicans

Bench

As for the Republican bench, it was eviscerated by the one-two combination of Donald Trump and actual Republican voters this primary season. Newer, supposedly up-and-coming stars like Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio performed abysmally. Tom Cotton (who didn’t run) may have an appealing veteran background, but he, like many other GOP newcomers, is also an irrational extremist who will narrowly appeal to white male voters and few others in terms of demographics or gender, which, in the future, will not be a winning formula even if Trump shocked us all with how many legs this formula can still stand upon in 2016 with what at least convincingly seems like a Picket’s Charge last-gasp of American white ethno-nationalism.

GOP: Party of Fantasy

Now, as to the most serious problem… Especially on the Republican side, people were pining about possibly having the guy in the VP slot switch positions with the candidate on the top of the ticket. While that would spare us the possibility of a Trump cataclysm, it would, sadly, do nothing to alleviate the myriad problems facing our political system before Trump announced his candidacy. 

In fact, the Kaine-Pence debate reminded me of the Bush-Gore, Bush-Kerry debates from years past, minus all the personality and excitement; yes, these two came off blander than we thought was possible, but the recent debate was worse in so many ways. Back then, it seemed the two parties lived in alternate realities on many issues and couldn’t agree on basic facts about the state of the world they cohabited. Today, those divisions are only more pronounced and cover even more issues than before, making the partisanship of the Bush and early Obama years seem almost quaint in comparison.

During the W. Bush years, no mainstream Democrat argued that Bush was responsible for or created al-Qaeda. Sure, there was fair criticism that Bush’s policies were counterproductive and incited and enabled more terrorism—an objectively true claim, as even Bush realized this when he replaced Rumsfeld with Gates and had Gen. Petraeus totally reorient our strategy in Iraq to be (more effectively) population/civilian-centric—but no mainstream Democrat suggested Bush wasn’t actually trying to win the war, that he was the main reason for the rise of al-Qaeda, or, even worse, that he sympathized with al-Qaeda and Muslim terrorists. Now? Even Trump, the Republican nominee for the presidency, has implied or said such things about Obama and terrorists and ISIS, has even clearly said he believes Obama “founded” ISIS even when given chances to clarify, and he is hardly alone in making such statements or holding such beliefs, which have existed since even before Obama took office as president (a Quinnipiac poll from this summer found that over half of Republicans—and nearly one-third of all Americans—agreed with Trump that Obama “may sympathize” with terrorists!). And most Republicans think that it’s mainly Obama’s fault that ISIS has risen as far as it has, which flies in the face of logic and history.

Compared to the W. Bush years, there is even more about basic reality on which the two parties cannot agree, and, as usual, it’s the Republicans who have fantastically constructed an alternative false reality. Republicans today doubt the seriousness of climate change or even its existence and also doubt the validity of evolutionary science and other scientific consensuses, as they did back then; many still believe in the demonstrably false claims of trickle-down Reaganomics; today it is clear that Republicans also and/or increasingly believe in a fantasy of the state of and effects of illegal immigration, that there is not a racial disparity in law enforcement and the criminal justice system when there clearly is, that Obamacare is a total disaster even though it is not (even with its poorly understood problems it has made tremendous improvements), that Syrian refugees as being admitted currently to the U.S. pose a grave national security threat when they do not, that having a minimum wage or raising one is bad even though there is no evidence for the former and little that evidence the latter is true (as long as the raise is not stupidly high), that racism is an equal or larger problem for white people compared to African-Americans when this is flat-out absurd, that there is no discrimination against Muslims in America when there clearly is, that America is not on a steady if slow but also historic economic recovery when it clearly is, that the South was not exactly wrong during the Civil War and that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation (wrong and wrong), that voter fraud is a pressing issue of major concern when it is virtually non-existent, and, on top of all of this, Republicans trash the quality of the U.S. military when it is still by far the most powerful military in the world and is still being upgraded robustly.

Many of these gaps in reality were on full display in the debate between Pence and Kaine. In fact, throughout the campaigns, including the VP debate, the candidates on opposing sides have sounded like they are talking about two completely different countries when they describe America. On top of all that, Pence was in full-denial-mode when it came to Trump’s many verifiable insanities; either that, or Pence didn’t even attempt to actually defend or address some of Trump’s atrocious behavior.

VP Debate an Awful Look Into Our Political System’s Pre-Trump Deficiencies

So, in what would supposedly be something of a “dream” scenario for Republican elites (the same Republican elites that had unwittingly laid the groundwork for Trump’s hostile takeover), a debate where Pence, not Trump, would be the presidential nominee for their party—a nominee who would still be in denial of basic reality on things like climate change and racial discrimination and immigration and the state of the economy and would also deny the basic reality of much of the ugliness underpinning the Republican party—would be considered ideal.

So even taking Trump out of the equation, we find that we are lacking in key components necessary for a serious, substantive debate about our future and that one of our two parties is willing to perpetually deny reality and its own strong ties to dark forces like racism and anti-intellectualism and militarism and plutocracy. Without Trump, it is still impossible to have a fact-based, reality-situated discussion about our country’s policies and its future. Without Trump, we are still in trouble, and in very deep trouble. Without Trump, it is quite possible that Ted Cruz would be the nominee as he by far had the most delegates compared with any other Republican candidate (well over three times as many) besides Trump. Yes, defeating Trump’s historically awful candidacy is a necessary step, but if victory in that cause is achieved, the real work is only beginning and it will be oh-so-very-hard; the American political system was in dire straits even before he announced his candidacy, and nobody should forget that. Anyone who does, just watch the VP debate and that is all the reminder of this sad truth that anyone should need. 

And I would hope that without Trump lowering the bar to unprecedented depths that this problem would be something we would be discussing intensely; under Trump’s looming, groping shadow, I fear that discussion has been lost, failing to materialize as we try to put out an orange Trump fire all while missing the erosion threatening to send our house divided tumbling down a cliff over a longer period of time in a sinking collapse that would not be as sudden but would be as real a threat as Trump’s more dramatic and more immediate inferno of inanity.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

The run-up to the the second Trump-Clinton debate, the debate itself, and the debate’s aftermath expose the simple truth that our democracy is failing: the appalling spectacle was anything but a debate, and our society is currently incapable of producing a substantive debate or a substantive election because far too many voters abhor substance and seriousness. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, and it’s a large portion of the American electorate, among other things.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 11, 2016 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 11th, 2016

AP / John Locher

AMMAN — As I am forcing myself to write this, my mind, body, and what’s left of my soul is reeling from this campaign, and, in particular, the transpirings of and since this weekend, including the second debate between Clinton and Trump and its aftermath, and not just because I live in the Middle East and the debate started at 4AM my time.

There is so much that is deplorable in this election cycle that we could start from the very beginning, with Ted Cruz being the first major candidate to announce back on March 23rd, 2015, over a year-and-a-half ago. But I don’t have the heart to inflict more discussions of Ted Cruz on my audience after what I just witnessed this weekend. So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s start with this weekend.

What exactly happened?

Well, just days before the second general-election presidential debate between Clinton and Trump—given where the race is now, the most important debate in modern American history thus far in the most important election in modern American history—pretty much all that was discussed before the debate was a recording from 2005 of Trump, unaware that he was being recorded, talking about his sexual exploits with women that involved him bragging about extremely aggressive sexual behavior that he said he could get away with because he was famous, a conversation that included both language and discussion of behaviors that many found quite offensive. This burned out all the public discourse oxygen from late Friday though most of Sunday. Then, on Sunday night, Trump trotted out four women at a press conference just before the debate: two who have accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances, one who has accused him of rape, and one who as a twelve-year-old girl has accused of rape a man whom Hillary Clinton represented as a court-appointed public defender in the related trial and for whom she won a reduced sentence.

As for said debate, the moderators right away led with questions about the sex-talk scandal, and in response Trump opened it up with meandering mentions of a number of past Clinton scandals. Clinton spent much of the debate responding to Trump’s attacks and insults, including much talk about her tired, over-covered e-mail scandal. Trump basically threatened to jail her if he won. I won’t blame the moderators for the way all this transpired, but the format basically allotted two minutes for answers and the moderators were strict in trying to cut off candidates rather than open up a deeper discussion, with both candidates frequently deflecting tough questions (Trump more so, of course), and attempts by the moderators to make them answer when they didn’t want to were for naught (not sure how they could force answers). In the end, despite some discussion of policy, most of the second debate involved bickering, insults, discussion of scandals already oversaturated with media coverage, and Trump arguing with the moderators, and even when there was actual discussion of policy, it was not terribly deep. With so much at stake, this is what our system—our society, our people, our media, our political parties, our candidates—produced with an unprecedented election a month away. No truly in-depth discussion of education, poverty, taxation, the budget, race-relations, or jobs occurred, even if such topics were lightly touched upon.

The news cycles after the debate focused and continue to focus on the insults and personal attacks at the debate, Trump’s sexual recording scandal, Bill Clinton’s past sex scandals, the candidates’ demeanor and body language, America’s new favorite undecided voter named Kenneth Bone and his sweater, anything but the issues. For most Americans, then, this debate was one of the only chances to hear Trump or Clinton explain what they would try to do as president in detail with at least some force holding them accountable in real time; that did not happen.

Why Is This Happening?

Hillary Clinton is quite capable of talking at length about at number of substantive issues, but a majority of voters seem to respond to such talk with revulsion, boredom, and by not voting for whomever emits such talk. Add both the media’s and the public’s focus on scandals and, of course, Donald Trump into the mix, and it’s almost impossible to have any kind of a substantive discussion about anything, even if you replaced Hillary Clinton with Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking; even though one party has chosen a serious person of substance, the overall tone has been set by the lowest behavior of the non-serious and non-substantive, chosen by non-serious and non-substantive voters: essentially, roughly half the voters are dragging the other half down with them and has reset the political arena to match their own ridiculousness despite the maturity of the other half; the food fight on the debate stage turns said debate into a food fight by default.

That, dear readers, is what should terrify all of us: this is no way to conduct a campaign, a debate, an election, a democracy. Because without a doubt, the function of a political debate must be to give candidates who can demonstrate expertise and realistic plans on substantive issues of concern to American citizens the chance to do so while simultaneously exposing candidates who cannot not do so as being clearly unable to do so. And yet, so much about the current setup makes either action close to impossible to any meaningful extent (with the exception to some degree of the Democratic primary debates, in which Clinton’s depth shone through and found millions of more voters support and Sander’ naïve, shallow idealism fell flat for a strong majority of Democrats). But even worse is that in 2016, it seems anywhere from one-third to half of voters would not base their votes on a substance and reason even if the debates functioned the way they should. Yes, the media is certainly part of the problem, but as part of market-driven forces, news outlets are forced to a large extent to give consumers what they want. Newspapers that try to be substantive and in-depth are losing readers and money to less objective and less accurate bloggers and extremist cocooning outlets. The real problem is the American people: an increasing number are turning away from substance, whether it’s their politicians or their news. Many of the same dynamics that explain the rise of Trump and the Tea Party phenomena explain the rising popularity of Breitbart and Druge, basically right-wing media 3.0 after talk-radio (1.0) and Fox News (2.0).

In other words, even when it comes to the most important debate thus far in the most important election in modern American history, our system and our society—our people most of all—are not capable of having a substantive discussion and an informed weighing of issues and candidates. Thus, we get a debate is hardly a debate at all but becomes more about performance art and driving headlines and news cycles. No matter who wins, what has gone down this election cycle is a serious wound in our body politic that has it in critical condition, and Trump is a significant symptom but is not the disease itself, which is the mentality of a huge number of American voters who voted for this and got what they voted for.

This Living Nightmare Is Awful, But Not Hopeless

As this nightmarish and nightmarishly long election cycle winds down to its final, most awful phase, leaders of both parties need to figure out how to come together to promote people of reason, stature, seriousness, and depth, and to find ways to actually be leaders, to lead the American people in spite of Americans’ baser desires, to push the public to value substance over style, to do more than simply what an angry mob craves and wants by finding ways to elevate enough of us to save us and our country from ourselves, rather than simply be tools of self-destruction who are chosen democratically but are but tools of self-destruction nonetheless. As of now, I wouldn’t bet on this happening anytime soon, and if Republicans hold onto the House, we are likely to see extreme partisanship and gridlock on the domestic front even if Clinton wins; and yet, if Clinton is able to win and come into office with a Democratic House (I’m doubtful) and Senate (looking good), there is a chance that we can lead the country into a new, better era, one in which results will be achieved and in which results will trump the noise and propaganda and create a new, strong, and progressive majority that will pick up even some skeptics when it delivers these substantive results. Because it this doesn’t happen, I am not sure how long or how well our system can survive continuing like it has these past few years, and especially this election year. That hope—that opportunity—is worth fighting for.

Getty Images

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!