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POLITICS

Klobuchar cancels Minnesota rally as protesters take stage

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/klobuchar-cancels-minnesota-rally-as-protesters-take-stage/ar-BB10C2SY?li=BBnb7Kz

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar canceled a rally in her home state Sunday after protesters took over the stage shouting for her to drop out of the presidential race over the case of a black teen sentenced to life in prison while Klobuchar was the county’s top prosecutor.

Klobuchar was scheduled to speak at St. Louis Park High School in suburban Minneapolis ahead of Tuesday’s Minnesota primary, which she is fighting to win and notch her first victory. But dozens of protesters entered the gymnasium, raised signs and chanted “black lives matter” and “Myon,” a reference to Myon Burrell, who was convicted of the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards.

An Associated Press investigation questioned Klobuchar’s handling of the 2002 case, in which Burrell was sent to prison for life following a police investigation some say was flawed. Klobuchar has said if there is new information in the case it should be considered — a response that some activists have said doesn’t go far enough.

Klobuchar has struggled to win support from black voters, a major problem for her campaign as she seeks the Democratic nomination. Her best finish in the first four contests was in New Hampshire, an overwhelmingly white state where she came in third. In both Nevada and South Carolina she trailed far behind the front-runners, failing to win a single delegate.

She has rejected suggestions she drop out of the race, saying she plans to compete at least through the upcoming Super Tuesday contests, when 14 states will vote and about one-third of delegates will be up for grabs.

Democrats, Progressives and Socialists Exposing the danger. Bruce Hendry *****

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/democrats-progressives-and-socialists-frontpagemagcom/

Starting today we are publishing in serial form an essay by Bruce Hendry on the existential crisis our nation is facing. The crisis has been caused by a dramatic shift to the left by one our two main political parties. Tragically, the leaders of the Democrat Party seem to have learned nothing from the social catastrophes created by socialist illusions in the past century.

By declaring himself a socialist – although “communist” would more accurately reflect his lifelong commitments – presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has done our country an enormous favor. When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, it ended a 72-year international civil war that liberated over a billion people from the chains of a totalitarian system. Yet there was a deafening and costly silence on the part of the victors over this historic result.

While millions in the former Soviet bloc gathered to praise President Reagan and America as the heroes of their liberation, western leaders were curiously mute. By the time the Wall fell, Reagan was no longer president. Under his successor, George H. W. Bush, there were no victory laps taken. No major events to celebrate the victory of the Free World or to drive home the lessons learned from this past – the bankrupting of whole continents, the engineering of famines in the Soviet Union, which had previously been the “bread basket of Europe,” the murder of more than 100 million people in peacetime for standing in the way of the socialist planners.

If you think Democrats and the media are politicizing coronavirus, you’re right By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/if_you_think_democrats_and_the_media_are_politicizing_coronavirus_youre_right.html

The media routinely call Trump divisive and controversial, forgetting that they are the ones stirring up the divisions and the controversy. Looked at objectively, Trump’s presidency is consistent with the American mainstream through Reagan. Indeed, even though some values have changed since Reagan’s time, Trump is still well within American norms. It’s the media that’s advocating for divisive and controversial policies, both at home and abroad.

Mostly, the media’s name-calling has been merely irritating. After all, people who wish to do so have been able to separate the wheat from the chaff. The habit, however, went from irritating to dangerous with coronavirus’s appearance on the scene. From the first day, the media decided to use coronavirus as a way to destroy Trump’s reelection chances.

To that end, the media has consistently lied about how Trump has handled the disease. American Thinker detailed some of those lies on Sunday. That post, however, pales in the face of an epic Twitter thread that Steve Guest, the GOP’s Rapid Response Director wrote on the same day. It’s a long thread because there are so many instances of the left’s rank dishonesty in politicizing the coronavirus, so this post will only repeat some of it. However, you really should read the entire thread if you want to understand how badly the Democrats and the media are gaslighting the American people:

You can find the entire Twitter thread here.

The Democrats and their media handmaidens are lying to you because they can. There are no consequences for what they’re doing. Democrat politicians keep collecting votes from hardcore supporters or from credulous members of the public and media figures keep their jobs. Indeed, the only thing that will make a leftist lose his or her job is daring to oppose leftist convention wisdom.

Bye, Buttigieg By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bye-buttigieg/

Pete Buttigieg is leaving the presidential race. His decision comes as a surprise; this morning, his campaign was still urging supporters to get out the vote on Super Tuesday.

A decent number of Buttigieg supporters are now up for grabs in the Super Tuesday states. Buttigieg is at 13.3 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average of Massachusetts, 13 percent in Colorado, 11.5 percent in Virginia, 9.5 percent California, 7.5 percent in Texas, 6.8 percent in North Carolina.

(As of Thursday, more than 2.7 million voters in California had returned ballots in early voting. Hope they didn’t vote for Tom Steyer or Pete Buttigieg.)

Last week, Morning Consult asked Buttigieg supporters who their second choice was and found them splitting pretty evenly: Sanders 21 percent, Joe Biden 19 percent, Warren 19 percent, and Mike Bloomberg 17 percent. If Buttigieg supporters do split that way, each of those four candidates would get another 2 to 3 percent, which could put some of them above the 15 percent threshold in certain states.

‘Mayor’ Pete Runs Out of Obama Speeches to Pilfer. Drops Out of Democratic President Race. By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/election/mayor-pete-runs-out-of-obama-speeches-to-pilfer-drops-out-of-democratic-president-race/

Mayor Pete Buttigieg has told his staff that he’s pulling out of – suspending – his Democratic presidential campaign.

The former South Bend, Ind., mayor had his campaign staff leak the news to media outlets Sunday afternoon. Buttigieg was expected to speak to supporters in South Bend Sunday night.

Fool and his money: Good riddance, Tom Steyer By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/fool_and_his_money_good_riddance_tom_steyer.html

Well, it’s over.

A couple of years and $250 million later, Tom Steyer’s presidential run has left him exactly where he started in the presidential race, at zero.

The poor wretched monomaniac of greenie virtue now goes the way of Jay Inslee, the qualified, but leftist, governor of Washington state who, like Steyer, was also global warming bore and washed out because of it. You’d think maybe Steyer would have noticed how unimportant this ‘sky is falling’ greenie cause was with voters by that point, but nope, Steyer continued to sell that snake oil to voters, thinking a barrage of television ads would make them catch on. He never had a clue.

Now he has his clue, $250 million dollars later, no delegates, a pathetic third place finish in South Carolina, prompting him to finally cut his losses, and exit the race.

Actually, he probably had some clues, given that he changed his tune to South Carolina’s voters from global warming to ‘racial justice,’ something he claimed “not enough people” cared about but, trust him, he did, in what was an obvious pander for the black vote in South Carolina. Turns out another old white guy, Joe Biden, got there first, succeeding in that machine pol way of his, through endorsements from old-line black politicians such as Rep. James Clyburn — gaffes, exaggerations, and all.

Goodbye, Liz By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/goodbye-liz/

She flip-flopped, fibbed, and pandered her way out of the race.

In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to describe the political scene:

A few years ago, there was a revolution against the intelligentsia. People said, “You know, those people, particularly on the coasts, are trying to tell us what to do.” They wanted a change. That explains Donald Trump. Now, people seem to have changed. This cycle, people want stability.

Have they changed so much? Bloomberg thinks the tides are turning in his direction. I’m not so sure on either count. If people wanted the intelligentsia, if they wanted someone on the coasts telling them what to do, Elizabeth Warren would be on her way to the Democratic nomination. Instead, she is soon to be packing up her campaign. Her job will have been to knife Michael Bloomberg before he could launch a sneak attack on Sanders on Super Tuesday.

Warren was clearly the favorite candidate of academics and journalists — the intelligentsia. Why? Because she was the quintessential “front row” candidate, to borrow a term from author and photographer Chris Arnade. The image of her campaign will be her on a debate stage, hand raised, ready with an answer — but losing support roughly every minute she speaks.

Charles Lipson:Four Takeaways from Biden’s South Carolina Victory After Tuesday, ALL the other Candidates will either drop out or become zombies unless they actually win something

https://spectator.us/four-takeaways-joe-biden-south-carolina-victory/

1) Joe Biden lives to fight another day, bloopers, gaffes, and all. But on Tuesday he needs to win a major state or finish a strong second to seize the spot as Bernie Sanders’s chief competitor.

Biden’s poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire meant the South Carolina primary was his last stand. His recent polling showed his lead was small and decreasing. So the stakes were high and the situation dire. But the former VP was right to go all-in for South Carolina, which he always called his firewall. His loyalty to President Obama and his endorsement by Rep. James Clyburn were crucial in a state with a large African American population. Clyburn, the highest ranking African American in the House of Representatives, is widely respected in his home state of South Carolina, and he revered in the black community. His backing and his political network helped Biden immensely. So did Biden’s relatively moderate positions, which are more popular among African-Americans than Bernie’s harsh radicalism.

2) Biden’s victory calls into question Mike Bloomberg’s basic ‘theory of the case’, which was that Biden was too weak to survive and would leave the middle of the field open after his candidacy collapsed.

Bloomberg was only half right. He was right that there is no strong, fresh candidate in the middle lane. Mayor Pete Buttigieg did well in Iowa but hasn’t caught fire and has little support among key minority constituencies. Amy Klobuchar hasn’t done well, either. For now, then, it looks like Biden is Mayor Mike’s main obstacle in that lane.

But Bloomberg was wrong that Biden would drop out quickly or that the former New York mayor’s huge advertising budget could hide his glaring defects as a retail politician. He was wrong, too, in deciding to debate twice before Super Tuesday. To call him a poor debater is a vast understatement. He was fairly effective in CNN’s one-on-one town hall last week, but he was dreadful in the multi-candidate debates, which were more like food fights than intelligent discussions of public policy. Bloomberg is, at heart, a corporate manager, and he sounds like one.

Democratic Majority for Israel Waves the White Flag in Presidential Contest Joshua Sharf

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/28/democratic-majority-for-israel-waves-the-white-flag-in-presidential-contest/

Jewish Democrats have let their distaste for Donald Trump warp American Jewish organizations’ responses to his overwhelmingly pro-Israel presidency. They have acted in the interests of partisanship over the people whose interests they are supposed to represent.

Word is that the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) is waving the white flag in the presidential race, will spend no more money on it, and will not endorse a candidate. DMFI had been running ads against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Democratic Majority for Israel does not intend to run any more televised ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . beyond the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, DMFI CEO Mark Mellman confirmed to Jewish Insider. “We don’t have plans to be further involved in the presidential race—against Sanders or anyone else, for that matter,” Mellman told a gathering in New York City earlier this week.

Instead, the group will focus on down-ticket races, supporting pro-Israel Democrats in the primaries and general election.

It’s hard to overstate how bad this news is for those who want a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. And given that anti-Zionist is usually only a thin disguise for broader Jew-hatred, it’s hard to overstate how bad this news is for American Jewry.

14 Crucial Questions That Bernie Sanders Surrogate Ilhan Omar Won’t Answer Ben Weingarten

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/28/14-crucial-questions-that-bernie-sanders-surrog

If Ilhan Omar is who Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders entrusts with Minnesota in 2020, America deserves a response to these burning questions about her past.

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., is perhaps best known for her antisemitic rhetoric, radically left-wing policy, and mounting allegations that she committed marriage and immigration fraud.

But as I argue in my new book, “American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party,” the sensational aspects of Omar’s story belie the fact that she is not only one of the most prominent symbols of the Democratic Party’s ascendant far-left base, but a powerful player in her own right. Her collusion with Islamist adversaries foreign and domestic, and alleged criminality and proven corruption, should send chills down the spines of Americans.

Ilhan Omar Is a Significant Democratic Player

Omar’s clout was demonstrated most recently when Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders tabbed her campaign co-chair in the all-important 2020 state of Minnesota. The congresswoman also recently introduced a battery of bills concerning foreign policy that senior Obama National Security Council official Ben Rhodes characterized as the “new progressive baseline.”

Lest we forget, this is a House member who, in spite of her known virulent antisemitism, blame America first positions, and potentially compromising background, retains a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which grapples with the most sensitive national security and foreign policy information and issues.

The party signaled a willingness to allow her to act with impunity, effectively condoning her rhetoric and behavior by refusing to censure her by name for her comments, specifically regarding the so-called Israel lobby, and her invocation of other antisemitic tropes.

Omar’s symbolic and substantive significance is summarized simply in the reality that a vote for Sanders is a vote for Omar and their shared agenda of socialism at home and submission abroad. Yet she has faced almost zero media scrutiny. She and her supporters attack as bigots the few who dare pursue her story. But it would be bigoted to treat her differently from any other politician on the basis of her identity traits.

In writing “American Ingrate,” I sought answers to some of the most vexing yet basic issues about Omar’s background, positions, and associations. I delivered a list of questions via email first to Omar’s chief communications staffer in September 2019, then to her general press account in December 2019, and again in February 2020 following the release of “American Ingrate.” Neither Omar nor her office ever responded.

Omar Should Answer These Questions