Editor’s Note: Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: Bernie, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Biden (barely) — the killer B’s — plus the surging Amy Klobuchar are essentially the only ones left standing in the Democrats’ race for the presidency following a New Hampshire primary that left two candidates, Biden and Liz Warren, on life support and produced a result that hardly settled the issue of just who the Democrats are and how they intend to present their case for unseating President Donald Trump. And not through fake Russia collusion or overreach to the max with impeachment over a phone call and likely more investigations and more impeachment. No, through an actual election, which, despite their three-year crusade to throw Trump overboard and much to their misfortune, will include Trump on the ballot.
Bernie Sanders has been victorious in the first two contests and may well be headed for another win in the Nevada caucuses next Saturday (Feb. 22), which makes him the undisputed frontrunner at this point, with the clever young Mayor Pete tugging at his coattails. And the Democrat establishment isn’t even trying to hide its horror at the prospect of Bernie, the self-proclaimed socialist, heading the ticket in November. Listen to the man who helped engineer an eight-year run for Bill Clinton in the White House, old-timer James Carville, in a state of open panic, starting with the black vote.
James Carville: The African-American voter is central to the Democratic Party. It’s their largest constituency. It’s not a bunch of urbanists running around on Twitter, as you would think, if you read The New York Times … I know ten times more African-Americans than most people I know, and they’re looking for somebody that can come in and not just excite them but talk about things that really matter to them in everyday life. They’re not interested in socialism, and the revolution, and all that foolishness you hear. They’re interested in somebody that’s going to come to them and articulate a vision as to how they fit into this country. If we go the way of the British Labour Party that … if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. We’re going to be the British Labour Party, and we’re going to be out in some theoretical left wing La La Land.
Tim: Corbyn and Sanders, separated at birth and equally toxic to their party brands. In case you weren’t paying attention, Corbyn and his Labour Party were walloped in a landslide for the conservative Boris Johnson back in December, securing the final consummation of Brexit.
Now, almost lost in the meltdown of Biden right out of the starting gate — a disastrous fourth-place finish in Iowa, followed by a cataclysmic fifth place and 8% of the vote in New Hampshire — was an almost equally disastrous performance by the woman who reached the top of the polls in the fall and has been collapsing ever since. Warren famously attacked Bernie at a debate, claiming he said a woman couldn’t win the election, starting a big feud between the two progressive camps. But incredibly the fake Indian senator came out after getting crushed in New Hampshire and called for everyone to play nice.
Elizabeth Warren: The fight between factions in our party has taken a sharp turn in recent weeks, with ads mocking other candidates and with supporters of some candidates shouting curses at other Democratic candidates. These harsh tactics might work if you are willing to burn down the rest of the party in order to be the last man standing.
Tim: Which is exactly what Senator Warren wants to be, the last woman standing, even though she’s got no chance but will stay in the race anyway. So let’s recap. Now that she got all nasty with Bernie, she wants the nastiness to end. And after she tried to kneecap Bernie by calling him something he clearly is not, a sexist, she wants to stop others from burning down the party, all the while so blissfully unaware of her own breathtaking hypocrisy.
So everything that’s happened to date has played right into the hands of the stealth billionaire, Mike “Don’t call me Michael” Bloomberg. Can you imagine if Trump at 71 years old said, “Hey, start calling me Don.” Bloomberg, skipping all four contests in February as he bombards the airwaves with hundreds of millions in ads aimed at the 14 states on Super Tuesday, March 3, was hoping for exactly the kind of chaos that has now emerged. But this week, someone unearthed a head-shaking dehumanizing statement from years ago by the mega-billionaire about his signature stop-and-frisk policy, which came under severe fire during his 12 years as mayor.
Mike Bloomberg: We put those cops where the crime is, in minority neighborhoods. So, this is going to … One of the unintended consequences is people say, “Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana, that are all minorities.” Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.
Tim: So let’s see where this leaves us. A guy with unlimited money who violated the most basic civil liberties of blacks and Hispanics is running for the nomination of a party defined by social justice warriors and hatred of wealth. Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up. And he could actually win in this field of mediocrities, dinosaurs, and extremists. But as Donald Trump Jr. put so eloquently this week, the former mayor is missing one critical asset.
Donald Trump Jr.: He’s been buying his way through all of these things. The one thing that Mike Bloomberg can’t buy is personality. He can’t buy heart. He can’t buy that connection with real people that Donald Trump has.
Tim: But as Don Jr.’s father points out, what’s just as bad, or even worse, is that upon entering the presidential race, Bloomberg immediately apologized for the very policy that was central to his administration for 12 years.
Donald Trump (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
President Trump: When a man is with stop and frisk his whole life, and then he decides to go Democrat, and he goes to a church, and he’s practically crying, it looked like hell. He’s practically crying, saying what a horrible thing he did. I think that’s so disingenuous. You know what I’m talking about, fellows? That was so … Bloomberg, look, he’s a lightweight. He’s a lightweight. You’re going to find that out. He’s also one of the worst debaters I’ve ever seen, and his presence is zero.
Tim: Again with the presence, the personality, zero. So what are Bloomberg’s chances really? Well, we present the views of a guy who holds no water for Trump to say the least. In fact, he hates Trump personally so much that he doesn’t even care that Trump has done so many of the things that he and his fellow Trump-deranged Republicans claimed to be in favor of their whole lives. He’s Steve Schmidt, virulently Never-Trump Republican, on MSNBC.
Steve Schmidt: The first thing that Mike Bloomberg has to have happen to move forward in this race is for Biden’s argument around electability to completely collapse, and we’re there. If you can’t beat Mayor Pete, and you can’t beat Bernie Sanders, and you can’t beat Amy Klobuchar, you lose your standing to claim that, “Hey, I’m going to beat Donald Trump.”
Tim: But it gets even worse for the Democrats.
Schmidt: Donald Trump has the largest cash advantage in American political history … against every conceivable Democratic opponent and the party, which is inept and bankrupt. And nobody should underestimate the importance of what happened in Iowa last week. It was a disaster of a magnitude that beggars my ability to describe. The Republicans have a light-year distance in the technology gap between their side and the Democratic side.
Tim: They have less than nine months to try to narrow that gap, and a good way to start would be to decide who exactly they are as a party. Liberals, socialists, social justice warriors, woke, mainstream billionaires, anti-billionaire, what? It seems like a steep uphill climb. But then, let us not forget what seemed like an impossible dream for Trump just four years ago became America’s new reality.
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