Six on 2020 elections: Bernie Sanders and the Science of Smears 2020; After a Strong Jobs Report, Economic Questions Linger f
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... A factor that has certainly helped to keep inflation quiescent is stronger productivity growth. On Thursday, the Labor Department announced that, in the first three months of this year, output per hour worked in the non-farm business sector rose at an annual rate of 3.6 per cent, the highest rate since 2014.
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"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly threw his support behind Democratic hopeful Joe Biden on Tuesday, knocking others in the party by saying Democratic voters want a candidate "who can actually get something done" because "people can't eat rhetoric."
"I think what Democrats are concerned with, they want someone who can beat Trump, and I think Joe Biden is the man there," Cuomo told MSNBC. "(Voters) want someone who can actually get something done once elected. The Democrats' problem, I think, has been their failure to actually provide results in people's lives. People can't eat rhetoric."
"Trump did not create our bitter, broken politics, DiStefano says; instead, his rise is its most visible symptom. The upheaval goes much deeper than his 2016 election — and can’t be undone by turning him out of the White House.
“We have a whole political class that’s built on the old party system,” DiStefano, author of the “The Next Realignment” (Prometheus), out Tuesday, told The Post. “But now we’re in a realignment, when all ideas are up for grabs. And the political class thinks things still work like they used to.”
If Trump’s opponents want lasting change — and to avoid inflaming our widening divisions — they must lean into the cycle of realignment, the period of political destruction and rebirth that’s already underway, and offer a brand new framework.
But only one of the top-tier Democrats is starting to make such a case: Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind.
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The message has helped vault the millennial with the difficult name into third place in two recent national polls — and should give his rivals a hint.
“Buttigieg is beginning to offer a new diagnosis of our problems, acknowledging it isn’t 1932 anymore,” DiStefano said. “But any one of them has the potential to offer something new.”
"If you’ve been reading the liberal media and Left Twitter the past couple of months, you’d be certain of one thing: Joe Biden is hopelessly out of touch — too old, too white, too male, too handsy, too racist, too misogynist, too unwoke, and far too compromised by his past positions to be the Democratic nominee in 2020. Josh Marshall, while liking Biden, regarded him as “unsuited to the moment in almost every way imaginable.” Jamelle Bouie saw him as a repugnant variant of Trumpism: “For decades Biden gave liberal cover to white backlash.” My colleague Rebecca Traister recently called him “a comforter of patriarchal impulses toward controlling women’s bodies.” Ben Smith declared: “His campaign is stumbling toward launch with all the hallmarks of a Jeb!-level catastrophe — a path that leads straight down … Joe Biden isn’t going to emerge from the 2020 campaign as the nominee. You already knew that.” Michael Tomasky summarized the elite consensus: “Nearly everyone thinks [Biden] can’t win the nomination.”
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“Nearly everyone” — i.e., all my friends and acquaintances in the journalistic and political elite — also thought Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in to win the general election. But Biden has had an extremely good start to his third campaign for president. His announcement video was aimed at those on the left who see Trump as the tip of the spear of white nationalism, and to those swingier voters who simply want to return to normalcy, constitutional order, and, well, decency. That’s a message that rallies the base but also appeals to those who may be exhausted by the trauma of Trump. As an opener, perfect. Even, at times, moving."
"In immigrant communities often wary of government, a question about citizenship status will make people “less likely to fill out the census form or even answer the door when someone comes knocking,” said Guevara, who works for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
Those concerns have been heightened by Trump’s slashing rhetoric toward immigrants and by fears that census information could be used to find and deport people.
“Their first thought is, ‘Is this information going to be used against me?’” Guevara said, standing near rows of computers that will be staffed by volunteers trying to connect with prospective census participants.
Census Bureau chief Ron Jarmin said the agency is legally barred from sharing its information with law enforcement agencies, adding: “We are committed to ensuring that the data we collect are always protected.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing a legal challenge seeking to strike the citizenship question from the census form. During oral arguments last week, the court’s conservative majority appeared ready to allow the question.
The Trump administration has argued that it has wide discretion in designing the questionnaire and that the citizenship question is clearly constitutional because it has been asked before — most recently, 1950 — and continues to be used on smaller, annual population surveys."
