Hey! There's a new Hampshire

I suppose that since I made a guess at how Iowa would go I should do the same thing for New Hampshire.  Making guesses is always a bad idea, of course, because you almost never get it right. And then everyone else who is also an idiot who did not get it right can plainly see that you are an idiot who is not getting it right.

What I did not get right about Iowa was, although, like everyone else on the planet, I've been expecting Biden to crater, I didn't think he would do that right away. I've also been pretty clear that I don't believe there's any way in hell the Democrats are going to let Bernie Sanders be their nominee so I'm thoroughly expecting them to fuck him over in any way possible. However I also did not expect that to happen right away.  But both of those things happened and now here we are!

So it's all happening so fast.  Before now the name of the game has been, what happens to all the party insiders after the inevitable Biden collapse? But I think at this point the answer is obvious. They've all been pre-bought by Bloomberg.  Assuming that Sanders doesn't stumble too badly in the months ahead, and assuming the Democrats can't hop on any of the other horses in the race and make them happen, we're more than likely headed for a brokered convention where Bloomberg would theoretically have the greatest advantage.  Would the Democrats really nominate him, though?  Boy would that ever be a hoot.

Anyway, the way it sounds watching the cable news is that Bernie is having a harder time in New Hampshire than he was supposed to.  Let's assume it doesn't go too poorly for him, though. Here is a reasonable assumption


Bernie: 25
Pete: 22
Amy: 15
Liz: 12
Joe: 10

Could be an early end of the line for Biden there. Maybe after this, Bloomberg can hire the remaining 15 percent of professional Democrats he isn't paying already. 

The politics grifter industrial complex

All of these "bugs" are features. It's how an entire class of politically oriented professional/managerial types sustain themselves.  And it isn't just a quirk of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the national politics grifter industrial complex.  It's not something that you just see on the cable news that operates at a great remove from you. It's here in your city fucking your shit up too. The rot in the national political expression is a function of the local level corruption from which the national parties are built.  And that's what we've been describing here in New Orleans for... well.. for a very long time now.

This McGowan person and the various Obama/Hillaryites who circled in and around her company are no different from the cast of amoral crooks circling in and around the halls of power in your home town.  The game is exactly the same.  Make yourself rich pretending your for-profit service or app or whatever can or should replace basic social welfare functions. 

Unlike most digital strategists, her operation is what the IRS classifies as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — meaning a majority of its funds must be used to promote “social welfare.” And yet, Acronym has a web of for-profit companies beneath it: a campaign consulting firm (Lockwood Strategy), a political tech company with a peer-to-peer texting product (Shadow) and a media company investing in local left-leaning outlets (FWIW Media). In the works is an apparel arm (Rogue Swag) that would be the first major liberal answer to conservative companies that skirt campaign finance laws by selling politically branded clothing over Facebook and elsewhere — spreading political messaging without having to report the spending.

It means the nonprofit Acronym is able to raise money, invest in for-profit companies to advance progressive aims and then return any profits back into its mission. “People don’t understand why I am creating a model that I can’t get very rich off of. Because I don’t own the companies; the (c)(4) does,” she says. And that’s a huge threat to political consultants’ bank accounts

The emphasis in that quote is mine because it is horseshit as anyone who understands how money laundering works can see.

[Update: For more on how the money laundering works, see Pareene here.]

But to return to the point, this isn't a new phenomenon. It isn't an aberration.  It's how things are done in the age of neoliberalism.  LaToya Cantrell expressed this quite emphatically to her supporters on election night 2017. 

 "I’m not talking now about taking from the rich and giving to the poor and all that kind of crap," Cantrell said at a victory speech Saturday night. "What I’m talking about is creating balance so everyone feels like they’re winners.

We can't tax rich people and use the money to provide basic public services anymore.  Instead we leave it to "entrepreneurs" to flatter "philanthropists" into funding a series of amusements, and shiny things that we pretend will mitigate the social ills caused by the lack of those services. The important people make more money that way. Especially when we subsidize the process through public-private partnerships.

As long as "everyone feels like they're winners," the con can perpetuate itself.  An associate of Irvin Mayfield once described this as "volunteer entrepreneurism."  We've described that in as much detail as we could muster quite a few times. Here is the one I'm thinking of currently.  It is the dominant ideology that is currently eroding your democracy. And the erosion begins here in your backyard.

Shadow government

I guess the first thing we need to dispense with is the notion that somebody "hacked" the Iowa results in order to change the number of votes or something.  Nobody is claiming that. The only places I've seen that argument appear, in fact, have been accusations of "conspiracy theory" coming from Dem Party hacks offering bad faith misrepresentations of what critics are actually saying. Don't listen to those people.

Here is what critics are actually saying about what's going on.

The Iowa State Democratic Party decided it would be a good idea to have caucus results reported via an app created by a secretive fly-by-night vendor named (apparently for the sole purpose of being hilarious) Shadow Inc.  This is a failure of basic integrity in that it follows an all too commonplace practice of handing out services contracts to consultants and cronies of various party insiders.  Which is to say it is a symbol of the very corruption that under-girds the party and which the Sanders campaign is running to dismantle in the first place.

State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow, a tech company that joined with Acronym last year, more than $60,000 for “website development” over two installments in November and December of last year. A Democratic source with knowledge of the process said those payments were for the app that caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locales.

Gerard Niemira, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is the head of Shadow. He previously served as chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Acronym, according to his LinkedIn page. In 2019, David Plouffe, one of the chief architects of President Barack Obama’s wins, joined the board of advisers for Acronym.

The introduction of Shadow's "bullshit" app is also a failure of basic competence in that it presented scores of caucus leaders with an unnecessary, unvetted, unsecure tool many of them were likely unprepared to use.

Reports suggest that the app was engineered in just the past two months. According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency. And even if the app was working just fine, reports suggest the roll out of the tool was bungled, to the point where those tasked with reporting via the app weren’t trained to know how to use it.

Most importantly, it is a failure of democracy because when the results are released (and again nobody is claiming or has claimed that the results will be anything but accurate) that result will then be tainted in the public's mind by the chaos created by the app. Ironically what's likely to happen going forward is when we do hear complaints about the accuracy of the results themselves they will come from the same *Russiagate* bleating centrist hacks currently accusing critics of spreading conspiracy theory.

In fact, one would be forgiven for thinking this is exactly what is being encouraged. As of this writing, the party has, for some reason, decided to publicize 62% of the caucus results and then pause there for a news cycle or two. At present, those results show Pete Buttigieg in what is loosely interpreted to be "the lead" although he does, in fact, trail if we count the popular vote. Anyway, it's been just enough time for several rounds of "Gee Whiz Mayor Pete is strong" takes to make their way around the cable news circuit.  If at some point in the coming hours (days?) we learn that Bernie has actually finished first, it just makes everything look that much more uncertain.


This is unfortunate because, in all honesty, it doesn't matter that much what the delegate count coming out of Iowa is. The only reason anybody pays any attention to what happens there at all is because it is the state that goes first. The only reason that is even significant is because, once upon a time, Jimmy Carter convinced everybody that a media narrative about "momentum" was more important than the substance of how many delegates were won from a small electorate not particularly representative of the country at large. In other words, the whole point of Iowa is tone setting and perception management. Otherwise nobody would give a shit.

And now, thanks to this clusterfuck, the likely winner of the caucus (Bernie) is denied the prize typically granted to the winner via the standard punditry. Instead that goes, a little bit to Pete, but mostly to chaos. So, you know, good for them.  The good news for Sanders is, his campaign isn't really about impressing pundits and generating narratives. Instead it will head to New Hampshire now where it has a strong showing in most polls and, of course, a teeming grass roots movement as fired up now as ever.

And then it's on to Nevada where they're trying to figure out the next cool caucus app now. Can't wait to see what they come up with.

Oh also how is Joe Biden doing? Has he dropped out yet?

Happy days are here

Excellent news for Louisiana's petro-based economy! - The Advocate Editorial Page, probably.

LONDON — The price of oil surged Friday on concerns that Iran might respond to the killing of its top general by the United States by disrupting global supplies of energy from the Mideast.

If sustained, the rise in oil prices could lead to more expensive car fuel, heating and electricity bills, stifling the global economy at a time when it is already slowing.

One thing I am thankful for during this particular cycle is that there is no cable news channel blaring in my household.  Just because the rest of America is being bombarded with war opinions from people who should be in prison doesn't mean you have to listen to it too.  Most people's TVs still come with an off button. Might as well make use of it while you still can.

Meanwhile, your Democratic Presidential candidates are weighing in. That includes those among them who have been a troop.

Mayor Pete doesn’t oppose the Trump administration assassinating an Iranian government official on Iraqi territory, he’s just not sure is was done in the best way.

This sort of response is why democrats might be the worst opposition party in history. https://t.co/G1ta3phb47

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) January 3, 2020

Pete is just going to accept, on its face, the premise that the US launching an assassination attack on a high ranking Iranian military and government officer is a justified action.  Anything he says after that is pointless. It would be one thing if it were just Pete. But it's also coming from every other Democrat to have weighed in so far.

Well.. not every one of them.

Sanders took a different tone, one drawn from a wing of the party that has opposed American wars since Vietnam.

“Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars,” Sanders said in a statement, after noting his opposition to the Iraq war and without mentioning Soleimani by name. “Trump promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one.”

Gotta love the way they write, "a wing of the party that has opposed American wars since Vietnam," as if that's a bad thing.

Apologies to the vultures, but the body has already been picked clean

Now that the body of the Kamala For President campaign has officially floated on out to sea, everybody wants to know who benefits. The immediate answer is nobody. The eventual answer might be a little bit different.

The immediate problem is there aren't very many Kamala supporters to divide up at this point. So there isn't much for any candidate to pick up now that she's gone. If Warren was the second choice among most Harris supporters as the polling seems to have indicated, most of those supporters had probably already gone over.  I wouldn't expect Warren to gain an obvious bump now that Harris is out. However it probably helps her down the road.

The game right now is about figuring out where the Biden voters are going to go after Biden inevitably implodes which is what everybody... including a lot of Biden supporters.... expects to happen at some point. Biden is the nominal front runner but his support is softer than conventional punditry suggests. It also is not monolithic. Conventional punditry assumes the majority of the voters considering Biden are "centrists" in search of a conservative Clinton style candidate but this ultimately may not be the case. Because the Biden campaign isn't really about anything besides name recognition, there are many different kinds of  Biden supporters who will end up making many different kinds of choices when the Biden campaign ends.  That doesn't mean the majority of them will land with the most ideologically comparable candidate to Joe Biden.  The Biden campaign isn't about ideology. Voters won't necessarily be drawn to their second choice for the same reasons they have been drawn to Joe.

The main reason the Biden campaign is associated with the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party has to do with its network of surrogates tied to the party power structure. Apparatchiks like Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond for example, are with Biden now because it's the professionally appropriate place for them to be. For the time being, the Biden campaign is the de-facto home of the institutional Democratic Party. A broad base of party insiders are hanging around it at the moment because it suits their personal ambition, or at least their general sense of obligation in some way. After Joe drops out, they're all free to move on, of course. But, unlike the free agent Biden voters among the general public, the party insider class is much more likely to land on a single second choice.

Early on, Kamala was a good bet to become the safe Biden replacement. She cultivated a similar appeal to conservatives and professional class Democrats. And she was never shy about courting wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists. Despite all this she never got it together for a bunch of complicated reasons. Last week's NYT feature shines a light on some of the inside baseball.  There were other problems as well with regard to the "messaging" and "positioning" that cynical political analysts like to fixate on.  But when you boil all of that down what you find is an elitist, conservative, corporate-friendly prosecutor failing to convince enough donors that she can lie her way around that effectively. When you think about it, it's pretty wild that the main idea behind Harris for President in the first place was that a lot of people liked the faces she made on TV during the Kavanaugh hearings. But then again, the current President is a game show host so who are we to say that this is any less valid as a marketing gimmick. Anyway it didn't work out.

Now that she's gone, the game is still about catching the windfall when Biden drops out. Kamala's goal was to be the obvious landing place for ex-Bidenites when the time came. But her campaign never demonstrated any growth as Kamala-curious Bidenites started kicking the tires on Warren instead. And in recent weeks, it looks like voters she might also have targeted began gravitating toward Mayor Pete.

But the bulk of the voters waiting to move are still tentatively with Biden. Which is why having Kamala out of the way is probably helpful to Warren down the road a bit. I also believe it opens up some possibilities for Bernie but nobody seems to want to hear that right now. Maybe we'll come back to that later, though.

Of course Bernie will never be the new favorite of the party insiders once Biden is out.  That is a thing that Pete and Warren are battling over behind the scenes. Expect that little campaign will only intensify now.