The EU is on the verge of collapse — again.
You would think after it survived the euro crisis, commentators would be a little more conservative in their predictions. But no. Read more “American, British Media Once Again Predict EU’s Demise”
In a crisis, calls to do something, quickly, can be hard to resist. Politicians must still try.
On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are planning some of the largest peacetime interventions in the private economy to cope with the outbreak of coronavirus disease.
The stallers are not unreasonable. We can take a few days to debate how to spend trillions of euros and dollars. Read more “Democracy Must Be Resistant to the Coronavirus”
I haven’t blogged much recently. What little news there is other than the coronavirus outbreak seems rather less important. Since I’m by no means an expert on pandemics, I don’t have a lot to write.
I can tell you what’s happening here in Barcelona. Read more “Lockdown in Barcelona”
Media reports commonly describe American presidential candidate Joe Biden as a “centrist”. He’s not.
Michael Bloomberg is a centrist. Biden may be moderate compared to his Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. But compared to the more likely alternative, Donald Trump, Biden is decidedly center-left.
This is not just semantics. If a centrist wins the Democratic nomination, some of Sanders’ supporters may be reluctant to vote for him. A center-left candidate, which Biden is, deserves their support. Read more “Biden Is Not a Centrist”
Joe Biden is now the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in the United States.
Bernie Sanders argues he can defeat Donald Trump by convincing more Americans to vote. A self-declared socialist may lose some swing voters by campaigning on nationalizing health insurance and raising middle-class taxes, but he can make up for it, Sanders argues, by mobilizing young and working voters.
It’s always seemed unwise to me to bet on potential voters rather than actual voters. Now that skepticism has been substantiated. Read more “Sanders Claims He Can Raise Turnout. He Hasn’t So Far”
Why is the Democratic Party establishment in the United States scared of Bernie Sanders? Polls suggest the socialist from Vermont would do about as well against Donald Trump in a general election as his rival, Joe Biden.
I suspect there are three reasons:
The New York Times asked 93 of the 771 Democratic Party officials who will be automatically seated at the convention in July — the so-called “superdelegates” — if they would vote for Bernie Sanders if the socialist emerged with a plurality, but not a majority, of the pledged delegates.
Only nine said they would.
Sanders’ supporters are predictably up in arms, arguing the party “establishment” is conspiring to overturn “the will of the people”.
Some are threatening to sit out the election in November if their man doesn’t prevail.
Imagine being so safe and comfortable that you could stomach another four years of children being separated from their parents at the border and killed in detention, American citizens of color being harassed by immigration authorities, institutions being demolished, the rule of law turned into a dead letter and the liberal world order torn to shreds in the service of Vladimir Putin if the only alternative is voting for your second-best candidate. I’m not terribly well-versed in the rhetoric of the social-justice left, but I believe this is what they call “privilege”? Read more “Democrats Don’t Have to Take Sanders’ Delegate Complaints Seriously”
Democrats in the United States need to rethink how they elect their presidential nominees.
The problem with the current system is not just that two of the first four contests are caucuses, in which few voters can and want to participate; the first two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, are so rural and white that they hardly represent the Democratic electorate nationwide.
Iowa’s Democrats needed days to tabulate their votes this year, undermining confidence in the process. Nevada’s did better, but they still needed a full day to incorporate the results of four days of early ranked-choice voting into the outcome of the in-person caucuses.
The result: talented politicians of color, notably Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, felt they had to end their presidential bids before the first votes were even cast. Center-left candidates with little chance of winning the nomination, such Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, did reasonably well in Iowa and New Hampshire and are now making it harder for more viable moderates to break out.
By the time eighteen states and territories will have voted next week, on Super Tuesday, and 1,499 of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the nomination will have been allocated, the socialist Bernie Sanders, the top choice of one in four Democrats nationally, could be close to unbeatable.
Surely there is a better way? Read more “A Better Way for Democrats to Elect Their Presidential Candidate”
