The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
Let’s put angst aside for a day, and look at the case for Bernie Sanders. [This isn’t to tell you who to vote for, it’s for perspective. Bernie has not won the nomination yet, vote your choice.] It starts with Bernie getting the most votes. It also includes how often the pundits are wrong, and it goes from there. It will be twitter heavy, because written pundits aren’t doing enough of it. Let’s have at it, starting with a conservative:
There are the polls, which say we are winning:
Those are MSN polls here and here.
Here’s why the pundits are so often wrong:
🧐🤔. If that’s not humbling to a prognosticator, l I don’t know what is. Or, if not humbling enough, you could look at your own record (I figured Clinton to win a close race and was right about the popular vote but didn’t figure on Jim — to hell with you forever, bub — Comey.)
My motto for this election is nobody knows nothing™.
Kristina Karisch/ Washington Monthly:
Could Overseas Voters Be the Democrats’ Secret Weapon in 2020?
In a close election, they can tip the scales in swing states.
Democrats Abroad is the party’s official arm abroad. Every four years, it holds a “global primary” and sends delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Significantly, the group is virtually the only voter turnout drive focused on targeting liberal Americans living outside the United States. Its goal in 2020: to get a million overseas voters to cast a ballot.
That’s not an idea that comes from nowhere. Overseas voters have helped decide an election before. In 2000, both George W. Bush’s and Al Gore’s campaigns hinged their victories on a small number of absentee ballots in Florida that were mailed from outside the U.S.
As the New York Times reported in 2001, when Bush’s unofficial lead was around 300 votes at the start of the 18-day recount, the two camps relied heavily on overseas absentee ballots. Bush’s campaign tried to validate the highest number of ballots possible in counties he had already won while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties Gore was leading in.
It seems to have worked. The Times found that when faced with intense pressure from the GOP, Florida officials “accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state laws.” The analysis of 2,490 votes found that Florida accepted 680 questionable votes—either from ballots without postmarks or postmarked after Election Day; ballots mailed from U.S. cities and states; or even ballots from voters who voted twice. Bush ultimately won the Florida contest by 537 votes.
By “most votes,” I mean we now have Nevada to include, and it expands the data:
ABC News:
With help from Latino voters, Bernie Sanders hits the Nevada jackpot
Sanders also ran competitively in the state among unaccustomed support groups.
Latinos joined the Sanders brigade in Nevada, the most diverse state to participate so far, giving him 51% of their votes, a vast tally in a seven-candidate race. Sanders fell off sharply among blacks, to 27% -- yet that was good enough for second place to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 39% among blacks, Biden’s single best group. The Vermont senator won 29% of whites, easily first in this group.
Sanders won half of independent caucusgoers in the Silver State on Saturday, a core support group in his 2016 race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yet he won Nevada Democrats as well, with 31% support. While seven in 10 mainline Democrats voted for someone else, no other individual candidate won more than 20% of their votes, well under Sanders’ tally among party regulars.
NY Times:
How Bernie Sanders Dominated in Nevada
A multiracial coalition brought the senator’s long-promised political revolution to vivid life, for perhaps the first time in the 2020 race.
They showed up to Desert Pines High School in Tío Bernie T-shirts to caucus on Saturday morning, motivated by the idea of free college tuition, “Medicare for all” and the man making those promises: a 78-year-old white senator from Vermont. To dozens of mostly working-class Latinos, Bernie Sanders seemed like one of their own, a child of immigrants who understands what it means to be seen as a perpetual outsider.
For at least one day, in one state, the long-promised political revolution of Mr. Sanders came to vivid life, a multiracial coalition of immigrants, college students, Latina mothers, younger black voters, white liberals and even some moderates who embraced his idea of radical change and lifted him to victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
By harnessing such a broad cross-section of voters, Mr. Sanders offered a preview of the path that he hopes to take to the Democratic presidential nomination: uniting an array of voting blocs in racially diverse states in the West and the South and in economically strapped parts of the Midwest and the Southwest, all behind the message of social and economic justice that he has preached for years.
The center-left establishment will come on board:
But this is no time for self-indulgence and ego trips. Freedom is on the line. Good one. If you are considering Mike Bloomberg at all, how could you in the end not vote for Bernie in the general? Unity is a two way street, and the moderates are there for the asking:
Remember who we are running against:
Philip Rucker/WaPo:
‘Something has to be done’: Trump’s quest to rewrite history of the Russia probe
Seven months after Mueller’s marathon testimony brought finality to the Russia investigation, Trump is actively seeking to rewrite the narrative that had been meticulously documented by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials, both for immediate political gain and for history.
Turbocharged by his acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial and confident that he has acquired the fealty of nearly every Republican in Congress, Trump is claiming vindication and exoneration not only over his conduct with Ukraine — for which the House voted to impeach him — but also from the other investigations that have dogged his presidency.
There are people who don’t care. Don’t be that person:
(Liz is a Republican political consultant and counts as a pundit. Some of these folks are more Rexits than Never Trumpers.)
And one word of caution from Liz:
See whole thread so you can prepare for the inevitable.
That is all.
[ADDED:]
And in non-Bernie news:
Houston Chronicle:
Is the vaccine to thwart the new coronavirus stored in a Houston freezer?
The vaccine, developed by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers, effectively protected mice against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the virus from the same family that spread in the early 2000s. The vaccine never progressed to human testing because manufacturing of it wasn’t completed until 2016, long after SARS had burned out.
“It generated zero interest from pharmaceutical companies,” said Peter Hotez, a Baylor vaccine researcher and infectious disease specialist. “Because the virus was no longer circulating, their response was essentially, ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ ”