Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
Both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have taken a page from Michael Bloomberg's campaign playbook, and they really need to continue doing this right up until the election (no matter which one of them becomes the nominee). Because more than anything else, it clearly shows the difference between having a sane adult as president and what we've got now.
The stock market is now officially in bear market territory. Thus endeth the longest bull market in history, which lasted for the 11 years from just after the Great Recession's end until now. For those unfamiliar with the terms, the "bear market" designation is defined as: "losing 20 percent from the market's peak." Less than a month ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 29,500. Today it closed right around 23,500 -- a loss of roughly 6,000 points. And we may not have hit bottom, although with the current volatility it's tough to tell.
Nobody, it seems, has come up with a name for today's round of primaries that is catchy enough so that everyone starts universally using it. Some call it Mini Tuesday, some call it Super Tuesday II, but no matter what you call it, the time has come once again to toss our darts at the wall in an effort to try to predict the outcome of the six races being run today in the 2020 Democratic primary race.
Roman Emperor Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned. It's a myth. Violins (or "fiddles") wouldn't exist for another 1,500 years or so, making the very concept impossible. That's not to say Nero might not have blatantly ignored a flaming crisis, of course, it's just quibbling about the literal meaning of the maxim. Now, American Emperor-With-No-Clothes Donald Trump didn't fiddle while the country was hit by a pandemic, either. Instead, he played golf. Twice. That's right -- in the midst of a huge crisis, Trump spent the entire weekend playing golf.
The stock market is crashing daily, a pandemic is sweeping America, a tornado in Tennessee just killed two dozen people, so of course First Lady Melania Trump decided to reassure the public with a message designed to calm people in these perilous times. The message? Don't worry, everyone -- the construction of the new White House tennis pavilion was still on track. No, seriously -- you just can't make this stuff up. She even donned a hard hat (in order to look fabulous) while making this tone-deaf announcement.
I know, I know -- it's way too early for this.
Still, it's fun to speculate about, so we're going to push right ahead anyway and engage in some ridiculously-early ponderings of who should be chosen to round out the Democratic ticket this time around. If you are horrified of even the prospect of such meanderings, I'd advise you to do something else with the next 10 or 15 minutes of your time. There's always plenty of cat videos out there to watch, after all.
The 2020 Democratic presidential nominating contest is ending as it began. If you look at the polling over the entire course of the race so far, Joe Biden led almost from beginning to end. Up until the voting actually started, Biden was the clear favorite to win the nomination. Indeed, there really was only one other candidate -- out of a total field of 29, mind you -- that showed the strength to even be competitive with the former vice president, and that was Bernie Sanders. Bernie held onto second place in the polling pretty consistently, and this remained almost unchanged from beginning to end. Only one other candidate ever even rose into the ranks Bernie and Joe occupied, but while Elizabeth Warren enjoyed a big spike upwards (briefly snatching first place away from Biden), it almost immediately fell back to where she was really only challenging Sanders for second place. For all the media swooning over this candidate or that (this week it's Beto... no, no, it's Mayor Pete... wait, Kamala's looking pretty good!... hey, how about Amy's debate performance?), none of them ever saw their poll ratings live up to the lavish attention bestowed upon them by the media. The entire race, from even before Biden announced right up until the Iowa caucuses, was really one between only Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Which is where we now find ourselves, once again.
Welcome back again for our continuing series where we attempt to pick the winners of all the 2020 Democratic primary contests. This is really the second part of a two-part article, as yesterday I discussed at length the shifting nature of the contest after three of the moderate candidates dropped out (Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar). Today we're going to forego the "big picture" analysis altogether and just dive right in to the state-by-state predictions.
A week ago, I wrote an article about what I considered the most important upcoming factor in the Democratic presidential race, which was who would drop out and when would they do it. That question is now at least partially answered, as the third candidate since South Carolina voted has just officially exited the race. This leaves four major candidates (and Tulsi Gabbard) still in the race. But how the loss of Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar will affect Super Tuesday is really anyone's guess at this point -- which makes predicting the outcomes a lot harder.
File this one under: "If I doesn't laugh, I thinks I'm gonna cry!"
President Donald Trump, that noted stable genius, apparently has the answer to the coronavirus. Here's how an article in today's Washington Post began:
Trump administration officials are holding preliminary conversations about economic responses to the coronavirus, as the stock market fell sharply again on Friday amid international fears about the outbreak, according to five people with knowledge of the planning.
Among the options being considered are pursuing a targeted tax cut package, these people said.