Elizabeth Warren Hammered Over Ethnic Indian Claims

At the New York Times, "For Warren, Bad Blood Over Ethnic Claims":

Karen Geronimo, a member of the Mescalero Apache tribe in town for the Democratic convention, knows what she wants from Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate from Massachusetts: a blood sample.

“Someone needs to make her take a DNA test,” said Ms. Geronimo, whose husband, Harlyn Geronimo, is the great-grandson of the legendary warrior Geronimo.

The still-simmering controversy over Ms. Warren’s self-proclaimed American Indian heritage has chased her from the campaign trail in Massachusetts to the convention hall, resonating with a small but vocal constituency: American Indian Democrats.

During her academic career, Ms. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, identified herself as a minority, citing her one thirty-second Cherokee blood, a fact that Republicans pounced on to try to portray her as an opportunist and a fraud. The line on her résumé does not seem to set well with some Indian members of her own party.

“If you’re going to be Native, don’t just be Native on paper,” said Lexie LaMere, a Nebraska delegate and member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. “What’s troubling is that she’s shown nothing in her history of being involved in Native American issues.”

Mr. Geronimo, wearing a “Native Americans for Obama” button, said he was disappointed when he first heard of Ms. Warren’s claim.

“She needed leverage to further her career and started digging,” he said. Ms. Warren brushed aside reporters who asked about the concerns on Wednesday, saying: “I’ve answered those questions. I’m here to talk about what’s happening to America’s working-class families. That’s my job. It’s my full-time job.”

Still, she may want to avoid bumping into Indians around the hall. Jim La Pointe, the great-grandnephew of Crazy Horse and a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, had a test in mind for Ms. Warren.

“I’d like to hear her speak her native language,” he said with a sly smile.

VIDEO CREDIT: Legal Insurrection.

Elizabeth Warren Staffer Attacks Conservative Blogger Anne Sorock!

I would say "I can't believe it," except I totally can!

An aide to Elizabeth Warren swatted Anne Sorock's camera out of the way --- that is a physical attack on a citizen legally in her rights to video a congressional candidate in public.

This video is gold! No wonder the Daily Kos thugs are out to destroy Anne!

See Legal Insurrection, "Elizabeth Warren dodges questions at Netroots Nation – security guards block me":

As I was leaving the conference, I saw Warren once more as she entered a nearby hotel. I asked her if she’s a “role model to women of color?” Her staffer obstructed my camera and Warren ignored my question once again.

She physically obstructed the camera, with a swatting motion. That is serious!

PREVIOUSLY: "Daily Kos Targets Conservative Blogger Anne Sorock."

Elizabeth Warren Admits She's 'Concerned' About Senate Bid

Actually, she admitted she was concerned while whining about how the Fauxcahontas scandal distracts from how Republicans are "hammering" middle class workers, or something.

See The Hill, "Warren admits she's 'concerned' about her campaign in wake of heritage controversy."

But it gets worse.

Warren may have issued yet another whopper yesterday, about how her parents "eloped." See Michael Patrick Leahy, "Exclusive: Eloped? Elizabeth Warren's Parents' Married in Religious Ceremony." It's not clear if Warren's parents married in church or in a private religious ceremony. Ed Morrissey has a big post up on this: "Warren: My parents had to elope because my mother was 1/16th Cherokee, or something..." (Via Memeorandum.)

And see William Jacobson, "Oh Elizabeth, there you go again."

More later...

Elizabeth Warren Too Far Left?

You don't say?

At LAT, "Does her healthcare plan make Warren too liberal to win?":

Does her healthcare plan make Warren too liberal to win? https://t.co/0qpF0wp73A

— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) November 8, 2019

WASHINGTON  —  Among her many proposals, an interviewer asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which three would she like to sign into law first?

Her anti-corruption plan, an end to the Senate filibuster and a wealth tax, the Massachusetts senator responded Thursday to Angela Rye, the liberal activist and CNN commentator.

Notice something missing?

Warren never wanted health care to dominate her campaign. After a week in which her detailed, sweeping Medicare for all plan has done exactly that, she’d still prefer to focus elsewhere.

The issue threatens significant harm to her presidential ambitions. Her inability to escape it provides a clear lesson in the power that activists wield to box in candidates on issues they care about.

THE ACTIVIST TRAP

In 2018, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) gave clear instructions about healthcare to her candidates: Put Republicans on the defensive; focus on GOP efforts to wipe out protections for people with preexisting health problems; don’t get drawn into a debate over Medicare for all.

That strategy worked: Democrats swept to a majority in the House, capturing 40 seats — one of the largest electoral waves since World War II — and healthcare played a major role.

That game plan remains available to the Democratic presidential candidates; the Trump administration has given them plenty of ammunition. For example, administration lawyers in July asked a federal court to declare the Affordable Care Act invalid — protections for preexisting conditions and all — and a decision in that case could come any day.

Instead, the candidates have largely done the opposite of what Pelosi recommended. They’ve occasionally attacked Trump over his efforts to take health coverage away from millions of potential voters, but they’ve more often gone after each other on their respective plans to expand coverage.

The path they’ve taken illustrates a key dynamic that shapes primary campaigns, often regardless of candidates’ wishes, said Patrick J. Egan, a political scientist at New York University who studies the way parties define themselves to voters through ownership of specific issues.

“Both parties’ coalitions include single-issue activists” who “propel policy agendas and major legislation that contributes substantially to the party’s brand,” Egan said in an email.

That can help a party cement its position because the public generally trusts each party more on the issues it “owns,” such as “terrorism and crime for the Republicans and the environment and health care for the Democrats,” he said.

But that can be a two-edged sword. Activists “wield an immense amount of influence in party primaries” because they can help marshal volunteers, grassroots donors and energy, Egan noted. At the same time, however, they push policies that are “often more extreme than the public wants” — huge tax cuts for the wealthy, in the case of Republicans, for example, and Medicare for all in the current Democratic debate.

What’s the evidence that Medicare for all is “more extreme” than voters want? Some of the best information comes from a new study of voters in four key electoral battlegrounds — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — that the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report released Thursday.

Trump carried three of those four states in 2016 and almost surely needs to win them again for reelection. Currently, he’s deeply unpopular in the states he won: 57% disapprove of him in Wisconsin; 58%, in Michigan; 61%, in Pennsylvania, the survey found. Across the four states, half of voters say they “strongly disapprove” of Trump.

The poll also found Democrats have an edge in enthusiasm in those states and that Trump is the biggest motivator for voters.

Another piece of good news for Democrats: Health care ranks with the economy as the most important issue for voters in all four states, and a majority of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled the issue.

The bad news? A majority of voters in those states also say that a national Medicare for all plan that would eliminate private insurance — the sort of plan Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders advocate — would be a “bad idea”: 56% in Pennsylvania, 58% in Michigan, 59% in Wisconsin, 60% in Minnesota.

Even among Democratic voters, Medicare for all is not a top priority: About 60% of Democrats in the four states call it a good idea, but that’s notably less than the support for proposals such as a path to citizenship for undocumented residents or a ban on assault weapons.

Warren’s a smart politician, and for months she steered as clear of the healthcare debate as she could. Even as her advocacy of highly specific policy ideas fueled her steady rise in the Democratic race, she demurred when pressed on the specifics of healthcare.

“No one’s raised it,” she told reporters early this year when asked why she hadn’t released a specific healthcare plan. The consistent message from Warren’s campaign was that Medicare for all was “Bernie’s issue,” not theirs...

More.

Elizabeth Warren Viral Speech on Class Warfare

Doug Ross has the epic takedown: "Elizabeth Warren, Totalitarian Moron, Translated."

I don't recall conservatives denying that the nation's social contract provides the foundation for entrepreneurial attainment. Conservatives just want less of it. They'd do even better. Warren's speech is a huge straw man, but progressives love this stuff. Not just because they're so stupid, but because they'll swallow anything that gives them greater pretense to other people's money.

Also at The Week, "Elizabeth Warren's 'kick-ass' class warfare rebuttal."

'Elizabeth Warren is a liar and a Democrat, but I repeat myself...'

See Robert Stacy McCain, on Elizabeth Warren, "Cherokee Princess Fauxcohantas."

Also at Daley Gator, "REMEMBER KIDS, LIBERALS ARE FREE TO LIE. BUT IF YOU EXPOSE THEIR LIES, THEN YOU ARE A HATER!"

I hella blogged this story at the time. I particularly love how real Native Americans pissed all over the lying Elizabeth Warren. Here's Twila Barnes, for example, "No Pity for Warren."

So, yep. Democrats are epic liars. Racists too, but you already knew that.

Democrats Sic Identity Politics on Their Own

It's come to this.

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "The left has handicapped its ability to debate policy, even among themselves":

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, we'd have a condescending president who looked down on his female critics as "little ladies" who didn't understand how the world works. And they were right! I voted for Romney, and, well, keep reading.

Sure, we wound up with President Obama, not with Mitt. But that didn't change how things turned out. Just ask National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill. Right before Obama's trade bill cratered in the Senate last week, Obama complained that its chief Senate critic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., didn't understand the real world. O'Neill then chalked Obama's attitude up to sexism.

O'Neill told The Hill she took issue with Obama calling Warren by her first name during an interview with Yahoo News published May 9.

"Yes, I think it is sexist," O'Neill said. "I think the president was trying to build up his own trustworthiness on this issue by convincing us that Sen. Warren's concerns are not to be taken seriously. But he did it in a sexist way."

O'Neill said Obama's "clear subtext is that the little lady just doesn't know what she's talking about."

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined the chorus, also suggesting Obama's remarks were sexist, and then refused to apologize. Now some are tittering over Obama's supposed "seven-year history of sexism." This caused Twitter humorist David Burge to joke: "NAACP president: NOW president's critique of Obama's critique of Elizabeth Warren is racist."

Well, that's fair. The worst aspect of Obama's presidency has been the willingness of some defenders to characterize any and all criticisms of his policy or style as racist. With Warren (despite her denials) revving up for a potential 2016 presidential campaign — and already with Hillary Clinton's effort — we're seeing a new line of argument: That any criticism of a female politician is sexist. Apparently, the only kind of politician you can criticize on the merits in America nowadays is a white male.

The Democrats' tendency to argue identity politics over policy is more awkward when it's aimed at other Democrats. As The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin comments: "Is the 'war on women' being waged by the White House, or have Democrats become so accustomed to demonizing their opponents that they can't engage in civil debates even among themselves? It does not speak well of the Democrats' ability to persuade and lead. But it does portend a non-stop stream of gender bias claims in the 2016 presidential election."

Ugh. I'm dreading it!

Keep reading.

The Nightmare of Democrats' Leftist Agenda

From VDH, at American Greatness, "Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing":

Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing https://t.co/xaeT0qah87 pic.twitter.com/MFOmBoTeFp

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) October 22, 2018

If the New Democratic Party was smart, it would do what the old Democratic Party did long ago: always sound centrist if not conservative in the last weeks of a campaign, get elected, then revert to form and pursue a left-wing agenda for a year or two—and then repeat the chameleon cycle every two to four years.

But although many Democrats in Trump states still dance the old bipartisan two-step, lots of blinkered progressive wolves don’t even bother to put on the sheep’s clothing.

Evidently, the new progressive and radical Democratic Party is far more honest—or perhaps far more hubristic—than in the past. So what now looks and sounds like a wolf is a wolf. Democrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from 2016. Or rather, they still believe it is 2008 all over again, with a host of wannabe Obamas on the 2020 horizon, all appealing to identity politics, Maenad feminism, and neo-socialism. The hipster theory is that 30 percent of the present electorate will always vote en masse for unapologetic progressives, and that bloc number, due to changing demography and persuasive street theatrics, soon will grow to 50 percent of all voters.

More to the point, the strategy of hating Trump 24/7 and fueling the 90 percent negative media coverage of the president had seemed to be a winning hand—given that Trump has usually below 45 percent approval in most polls, and pundits promised a huge blue wave neutering what certainly would be Trump’s last two years in the White House.

Yet the result of a progressive wolf baying proudly like a left-wing wolf is that as we head to the 2018 midterm, progressives may soon blow what should be, by history’s analytics, a big win for the out party in any president’s first term.

Man-Made Disasters
As the economy kept booming and things overseas calmed down, the Democrats found it harder to run a campaign strictly against either the ogre or the incompetent Trump. So they stayed on the offensive and did not bother to hide their agendas of open borders, “Medicare for All,” abolishing ICE, identity politics quotas, radical feminism, abortion on demand, and climate change hysterias. And they were quite lupine in their sincerity even as the public insidiously began to tune them out.

The first disaster was disrupting senate confirmation hearings, on the part of both senators and paid operatives in the gallery. Hysterics by Senators Cory “Spartacus,” Kamala Harris, and Richard Blumenthal soon gave the impression that Democratic stalwarts were unhinged.

After all, somehow the Democrats had managed all at once to 1) lose the vote on Kavanaugh; 2) to ensure that the Bushite Kavanaugh likely would become so radicalized by the horrific treatment meted out that he would not follow the usual David Souter liberalizing trajectory, 3) unite Republicans and more or less end the Never Trump factionalism, 4) go on record of opposing due process of law and rejecting the entire political and cultural tradition of American jurisprudence, and 5) so discredit their opposition to a court nominee, that next time around everything they do and say about a nominee will be seen as mere go-through-the-motions leftist boilerplate.

The second disaster was condoning and indeed empowering street thuggery. Cory Booker, Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder went full Maxine Waters in parroting the new incivility and seemed to think most Americans enjoy pampered protestors getting in the faces of their opponents to scream, yell, and in general go berserk. It is never a wise thing to be in alliance with young Bacchants shrieking as they scratch the closed doors of the Supreme Court or rude young activists swarming someone at a restaurant and screaming obscenities in a nasal voice.

Most Americans wondered, what in the world would the frenzied anti-Kavanaugh protestors have done if they had broken down the court doors and plunged into the swearing-in ceremony: scratch Mrs. Kavanaugh and the two Kavanaugh girls, or rip apart Brett Kavanaugh as if he were a young King Pentheus? Progressives seem to think it is cool that the street mobs are now the paramilitary wing of their own party.

Immolated by Identity Politics
A third mishap was senator Elizabeth Warren’s amazingly stupid ploy of releasing her DNA ancestry test before the midterms. The Massachusetts Democrat somehow adduced that a person with about a 1 percent likelihood of being an indigenous person (more likely from Central and South America than from the American plains) somehow was proof of her long-feigned minority status. That Warren worked in cahoots with newspapers to massage the gambit, as refutation of Donald Trump’s “Pocahontas” ribbing, backfired when it took the media two retractions to get down the basic math of Warren’s infinitesimally tiny Indian bloodlines.

The reaction was obvious: if someone can cajole a minority billet for careerist purposes based on a 1-percent ancestry, then every American can be anything he wishes. And when everyone is everything, then no one is anything—and the racial basis for diversity set-asides is dead.

In Warren’s logic, how can the average African-American be authentically black with an average white pedigree 25 times greater than her own Indian heritage that she used to authenticate her status as a “person of color” academic? And how weird it is that Warren identifies with the 1 percent of her ancestry, rather than the 99 percent of other various tribes and races—and then claims that she does so not necessarily for any careerist advantages when such advantages are well established.

The timing was even worse, as Boston was also the contemporaneous scene of a landmark lawsuit lodged by Asian groups against Harvard University’s disingenuous racial restrictionist admission policies. Harvard, every bit as intellectually dishonest as Warren, conjured up all sort of personality and character issues to stereotype and demonize Asian applicants for admission, as a way of nullifying their academic records of achievement and thereby reducing their percentages of racial spoils in order to help more “diverse” Hispanics and blacks.

So what will Harvard now do, subpoena its own esteemed law professor Elizabeth Warren to lecture jurors about how minorities like herself would lose out when there are too many Asians? At some point on the horizon, voters are going to conclude that the diversity monster is devouring itself and making a mockery of common sense...

Still more.

Too Many Freakin' Democrats in the Race

It's up to 25 candidates, which is a laugh-riot lol.

At Hot Air, "Democrats Now Say They Have Too Many Democrats Running."

And at LAT, "What time is the Democratic presidential debate? Who gets to be on stage?"

And, "Democrats’ presidential hopefuls jockey to outdo one another with pre-debate promises":

Everyone has a plan for everything: 2020 Democratic candidates roll out policy proposals in advance of the presidential debates. w @evanhalper https://t.co/uvSboYV13N

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) June 24, 2019

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders burnished his socialist bona fides – and sought to one-up progressive rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — with a $1.6-trillion plan to pay off all the country’s college debt, an idea that could be more of a boon to the rich than the poor. Joe Biden, the former vice president and leader in current polls, rolled out an immigration plan.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee built out his framework for a future free of fossil fuels. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke set out a multipart plan to improve services, including healthcare, job training and mental health support, for veterans, financed with savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And several candidates took fresh aim at the criminal justice system.

The collective policy plans of the 2020 presidential hopefuls were already so voluminous, aggressive and, in many cases, expensive that it’s been tough for some candidates in this crowded field to muscle their vision into the spotlight.

But in these days leading up to the first Democratic debates in Miami, they’re trying extra hard.

They’re following the pattern set by Warren, who has distinguished herself with her policy prowess and has been rewarded in recent weeks by a notable rise in polls. Warren has so many detailed plans for so many issues that the logo emblazoned on her campaign merch is “Warren Has a Plan for That.” As those plans gained traction with voters, pundits stopped mocking her professorial obsession with policy details, and other candidates began trying to emulate it.

The media have been put on notice that Warren will unveil yet another new plan on Tuesday.

In some cases — forgiving college debt being the clearest example — the flurry of policy proposals has taken on the feel of an arms race.

Warren offered the race’s first detailed proposal on college debt, saying she would forgive as much as $50,000 for up to 42 million Americans. Sanders loyalists were eager to remind voters that it was the Vermonter who first carried college affordability from a fringe issue to a central focus of American politics, when he began promoting the topic as a presidential candidate in 2016.

On Monday, Sanders promised to go beyond Warren’s plan by canceling all $1.6 trillion in outstanding college debt held by Americans, regardless of income. He acknowledged the plan could benefit some people who do not need the help but said he and the lawmakers who co-sponsored the plan with him believed in “universality” — that higher education should be a guaranteed entitlement for all Americans, along with Social Security and Medicare.

“Our response to making sure this does not benefit the wealthy is in other areas,” Sanders said, “where we are going to demand the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.”

The debt forgiveness would be bankrolled by a transaction tax on Wall Street, under his proposal. That tax aims to discourage speculation by traders, and Sanders notes it has been endorsed by scores of economists, although some of them have proposed using the money for other purposes.

Many liberal economists had already critiqued Warren’s version of debt forgiveness on the grounds that it would make income inequality worse. Sanders’ plan, which would give even more of a benefit to upper-income families, would rank even more poorly on that scale.

Families with incomes under $68,000 would receive only a third of the subsidy under the Warren plan — despite the plan’s provisions that exclude people with top incomes — according to an analysis by Brookings Institution economist Adam Looney.

The Sanders plan would benefit the economically better-off even more, as it has no income caps. A 2015 study by the progressive think tank Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University concluded such an approach would widen the racial wealth gap by 9% because so much of the gain would go to wealthy white Americans.

Sanders’ proposal nonetheless drew applause from many on the party’s left. And the criticism that moderates in the party have directed his way — on college debt and other issues — has been good fodder for firing up Sanders’ supporters.

Being called an “existential threat” to Democrats by the leaders of Third Way, the center-left think tank — which has no such harsh words for Warren — has proved a potent talking point for Sanders. And also a fundraising pitch...

Liz Cheney Slams Elizabeth Warren as a 'Laughingstock'

You gotta love it!

At WaPo, "Rep. Liz Cheney says Elizabeth Warren is a "laughingstock" for having claimed Native American ancestry."

CNN’s Jake Tapper: “What about the language the President uses and the joking references to genocide against Native Americans?”

Rep. Liz Cheney: “Elizabeth Warren has made herself a laughingstock, and I don’t think anybody should be surprised that’s been the reaction to her” pic.twitter.com/15VbWPFLq4

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 10, 2019

Elizabeth Warren Accused Bernie Sanders of Calling Her a 'Liar on National TV (VIDEO)

Most people are with Bernie on this, but it hasn't been disproved to me that Bernie's not a misogynist, as much as I like the guy.

The Bernie Bros mimic their model.

In any case, at LAT, "Can a woman win the presidency? Democratic debate delves into sexism in politics."

And the Other McCain, "Elizabeth Warren’s Media Helpers Try to Revive Her Campaign at Bernie’s Expense":

Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate was so white that Antifa would punch it in the face, and moderators for CNN made it clear who they favored among the six white Democrats assembled on the Des Moines stage. We haven’t seen the memo from CNN chief Jeff Zucker, but it was obvious that the assignment was to (a) attack Bernie Sanders and (b) boost Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps many Sanders supporters — who saw their candidate get cheated out of the 2016 nomination by DNC insiders working for Hillary Clinton — will now agree with President Trump’s assessment of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

Who Is Elizabeth Warren? Sean Hannity Covers Massachusetts Senate Race

Let me recommend folks go over to the full Fox New video here.

Michelle Fields is easier to look at than the screen image of Elizabeth Warren at Fox's upload, ha!

And compare Hannity's segment to competition's: "MSNBC's Chris Matthews Interviews Elizabeth Warren: Completely Ignores 'Fauxcahontas' Scandal, Offers to Help 'Minority' Candidate Instead."

Elizabeth Warren Wins Massachusetts Democratic Nomination

The state's Democrat big wigs rammed this nomination through at the party convention.

See the Boston Herald, "Elizabeth Warren knocks Marisa DeFranco off primary ballot."

Also at Big Government, "Nominee! Dems Circle Wagons For Embattled Warren."

And at Legal Insurrection, "Results of Massachusetts Democratic Convention":

Now it’s on the Dem leadership as Warren’s drip-drip falsehoods about her family history and her personal narrative continue to play out.

RELATED: At the Boston Herald, "Records: Prof profited by buying, selling homes." (Via Memeorandum.)

This lady is utterly morally bankrupt. She's got a lot to answer for and ultimately she owes the voters a huge apology. The drip drip of this campaign continues. It's going to be extremely interesting.

Leftists Want Elizabeth Warren Over Hillary Clinton in 2016

Warren gave the keynoted address today at Netroots Nation and the overwhelming consensus of attendees is Warren over Clinton for president in 2016.

Well, almost the overwhelming consensus. Communist John Nichols of the Nation, at the video, wants socialist Bernie Sanders, heh.

And at Politico, "Dem base: Fine with Hillary Clinton, pining for Elizabeth Warren."

Bernie Slides in New L.A. Times Poll

He's sliding downhill, that is.

Of the top candidates, Bernie's fortunes have been hurt the most this last few months.

At LAT, "Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows":

Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows https://t.co/gSqcytnysh

— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) July 29, 2019

WASHINGTON  —  As Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare for their second round of debates this week, a new poll finds that half of likely primary voters have changed their minds since the spring, highlighting how unsettled the contest remains.
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead in the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times nationwide poll, while three senators, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, are essentially tied for second place. That marks an improvement for Harris and Warren and a decline for Sanders since April, when the poll last tested the Democratic race.

More notably, about half of the voters in the poll have changed their preferences since the April survey -- a reminder that at this point of the campaign, most voters don’t have firm commitments.

Voters at this stage of the campaign are “corks on the water floating around,” said Mike Murphy, the longtime Republican strategist who is co-director of USC Dornsife’s Center for the Political Future, one of the sponsors of the poll. That’s particularly true for voters nationwide, who have less exposure to the candidates than voters in states with early primaries.

The volatility has a limit, however. The vast majority of voters who switched since April moved among the top four candidates or between them and undecided status. The mass of candidates languishing at 1% or lower hasn’t benefited.

Biden continues to lead the poll, with 28%. Harris was at 10%, putting her in an effective tie with Warren, also at 10% and Sanders, at 11%. An additional 25% said they were undecided when presented with a list of 25 people who have declared they are running.

Beyond the top candidates, the poll found only Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas having more than 1% support. Buttigieg’s support has grown since April and now stands at 5%, while O’Rourke’s has shrunk to 3% -- all shifts within the poll’s margin of error.

“When your front-runner is at 28% and undecided is at 25%, it’s a pretty fluid race,” said Jill Darling, the poll director.

Unlike some other public opinion samples, the USC/L.A. Times poll surveys a panel of more than 7,000 members, tracking their views over time. Polls using the panel can look at how and when specific voters have changed their preferences.

In the primary contest so far, the first round of debates in June appears to have played a big role in changing minds. Harris, in particular, gained support among people who watched the debate, during which she forcefully challenged Biden over his nostalgia about working with segregationist senators early in his career. The exchange appears to have boosted Harris without doing long-term damage to Biden, who gained roughly as many supporters as he lost.

People who reported that they watched the debate -- about 3 in 10 of those who said they planned to vote in a Democratic primary -- were more likely to have switched than others. But even many voters who did not watch the debate changed their minds.

That churn has affected candidates in different ways. Biden and Sanders do best among voters who have backed the same candidate all along, while Harris and Warren, who each gained lots of new followers, do better among those who have changed their minds. About 7 in 10 of those backing Harris and 8 in 10 backing Warren were converts since April, the poll found.

Sanders sits at the opposite extreme -- about 8 in 10 of those backing him now also backed him in April. That’s both a strength for him and a weakness.

The Vermont senator has a solid core of supporters, many of whom grew attached to him in 2016 when he ran against Hillary Clinton. One indication of that: He did best among the roughly 1 in 4 voters who neither watched the June debate nor heard or read about it.

Outside of his core support, Sanders has been losing backers, and unlike other candidates, he has picked up relatively few new ones. Almost half the supporters he had in April have moved elsewhere.

About 1 in 10 former Sanders backers now say they’re undecided. Twice as many, however, now back Biden.

That’s a reminder of another important fact: Voters aren’t as ideological as analysts sometimes make them out to be.

Sanders has staked out the left-most position in the contest. Warren shares many of his policy views. Biden has defined himself as a centrist. But nearly three times as many former Sanders backers moved to Biden as moved to Warren.

Biden and Sanders both do better with non-college educated voters than with those who have graduated from college...

Democrats Move Left --- Frankly, It's Just All Out in the Open Now

It's not like the Dems haven't been a far-left extremist party. It's now that they're not afraid to come out as the crypto-Marxists they truly are.

At LAT, "This is not your father’s Democratic Party: Debate shows how leftward it has moved":

The Democratic Party opened its 2020 presidential debates with a remarkably policy-focused exchange that illustrated how consistently to the left they have moved. For the night, at least, this was Elizabeth Warren’s party.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who entered the debate with momentum behind her campaign, set the tone and dominated the early part of the debate, which focused on economic policy.

“When you've got a government, when you've got an economy that does great for those with money and isn't doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” she said. “We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.”

Even those of her rivals who don’t fully share that assessment declined chances to put themselves at odds with Warren. Instead, they sang from the same hymnal of left-wing economic populism declaring the need for broad reforms of the political and economic system.

“It is time we have an economy that works for everybody,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, after minimizing his differences with Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.

The shift in the party goes beyond economics. As the debate made clear, it includes gun control, abortion, climate change and immigration, among other issues. On each of those, candidates took positions to the left of those embraced by either of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was barely mentioned by any of the candidates.

Rather than Clinton’s call for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” for example, the debate featured candidates stressing that the universal healthcare plans they backed would include public funds to pay for abortions for poor women.

On healthcare, only two candidates — Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — raised their hands when asked who would favor fully abolishing private health insurance plans in favor of instituting “Medicare for all.” But even those who favored a more moderate approach, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, for example, said they preferred a new government health insurance option for all — an idea that was considered too radical to pass when Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act less than a decade ago.

On immigration, former Obama Cabinet official Julián Castro pressed for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, making that a civil rather than a criminal offense. While Castro was correct in saying that the Trump administration had used the criminal law in a far more aggressive way than its predecessors, the law that makes unauthorized border crossings a criminal offense has been on the books for decades. Eliminating it is a move popular with some activists.

At least three of the candidates — Warren, Booker and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio — share Castro’s view. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke disagreed, and the clash between the two Texans over decriminalizing the border made for one of the night’s most intense moments, but it was notable that the disagreement came on a proposal that went far beyond anything that the Obama administration, in which Castro served, ever talked about.

And there was broad party consensus on gun control, an issue that Democrats for years shied from. Booker’s proposal to require gun licensing goes significantly further than what gun-safety advocates have dreamed of proposing.

The leftward tilt of the party did give some candidates pause.

“We have a perception problem with the Democratic Party that we are not connecting to the working class,” said Ryan, who represents the Youngstown, Ohio, area. “We have to change the center of gravity from being coastal elites and Ivy League.”

Klobuchar took a veiled swipe at Warren’s promises to enact broad changes in the political and economic system.

“I don’t make all the promises others up here make,” Klobuchar said. “I’m going to govern.”

But others argued for going further left, notably De Blasio, struggling for a breakout moment and calling the primary a “battle for the heart and soul of our party.”

“This Democratic Party has to be strong and bold and progressive,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren Scolds Chris Matthews for Tough Questions

At Breitbart "'STOP THIS!' ELIZABETH WARREN SCOLDS CHRIS MATTHEWS FOR TOUGH QUESTIONS."

Video is here.

Good on Chris Matthews. Warren's a liar and hypocrite. Blames everything on the Republicans. What a loser.

This is Elizabeth Warren's Party Now

A great piece, from David Harsanyi, at the Federalist.

Plus, at Politico, "Senator suggests gender played into Obama-Warren spat."

And at Twitchy, "‘Popcorn time': Sherrod Brown accuses president of sexism toward Elizabeth Warren," and "‘So. Much. Butthurt.’ WH awaiting apology from Sherrod Brown for suggesting Obama’s sexist."

Also at WSJ, "Senate Deal Gives Trade Bill New Life."

Elizabeth Warren Cut Off from Speaking Against Jeff Sessions Because She Violated Senate Rules

Heh.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "THE TRAIL OF (CROCODILE) TEARS FROM THIS WILL BE ENDLESS."

ADDED: At USA Today, "Why Elizabeth Warren was accused of 'impugning' Jeff Sessions."

What the New Socialists Want More Than Anything is to Punish the Rich

Radical leftists are looking to fulfill Marx's vision in the 21st century: Expropriate the expropriators!

Here's Jerry Z. Muller, at Foreign Affairs, "The Neosocialist Delusion: Wealth Is Not the Problem":

The neosocialists are descended from Rousseau. They downplay poverty and fetishize equality, focus on wealth distribution rather than wealth creation, and seem to care as much about lowering those at the top as raising those at the bottom.

The movement’s signature policy proposal is a wealth tax, an annual levy on household assets. Touted by economists such as Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, all associated with the Paris School of Economics, the concept has been embraced by both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senators from Vermont and Massachusetts, respectively, who are running for the Democratic presidential nomination. At first, Warren advocated a two percent tax on households worth more than $50 million and a three percent tax on billionaires. Later, pressed on how she would pay for her proposed universal health insurance, she doubled the billionaire tax to six percent. Sanders’s plan starts at taxing $16 million in assets at one percent and tops out at an eight percent tax for assets exceeding $10 billion.

The radicalism of this approach is often underestimated. Many people conflate wealth taxes with higher income taxes or see them as mere extensions of a similar concept. But wealth taxes are fundamentally different instruments with much broader ramifications for economic dynamism and individual liberty.

The main effect of a wealth tax would be to discourage wealthy individuals from holding demonstrable assets. Any individual or household within shouting distance of the threshold would have to get its assets valued annually, imposing costs and creating a permanent jobs program for tax lawyers and accountants, whose chief responsibility would be to figure out ways around the law, including moving assets abroad.

A wealth tax would dramatically curtail private investment. The higher people rise on the economic ladder, the more of their resources go to investment instead of consumption. Those investments, in turn, often fuel innovative, risky ventures, which get funded in the hopes that they will eventually produce still greater gains. A wealth tax would upend the incentive structure for rich people, causing many to stop funding productive economic activity and focus instead on reducing their tax exposure and hiding their assets.

Warren contends that calculating one’s wealth tax would be as easy as calculating one’s property tax, but that is ridiculous. Take a firm that has a market value but no income—a frequent situation for startups but also common for established firms in various situations, such as a turnaround. Rich investors in such firms would have to sell their shares to pay the wealth tax or force the companies to disburse cash rather than invest in the future. Either way, the tax would discourage investment, reduce innovation, and encourage short-term thinking.

A wealth tax, finally, would force everyone whose assets were near its minimal threshold to give the government a full accounting of all those assets every year: homes, furniture, vehicles, heirlooms, bank accounts, investments and liabilities, and more. The result would be a huge expansion of the reach of government into citizens’ lives, a corresponding reduction in citizens’ privacy, and the accumulation and storage of vast amounts of highly sensitive data with few safeguards to prevent their misuse.

It is not only successful individuals who draw the neosocialists’ ire; it is also successful companies. If a firm grows big enough to become famous, it becomes a potential target of vilification; if it grows too big, it becomes a target for destruction. Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, accordingly, have all pledged to break up Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

Here they can draw on a venerable antimonopoly tradition in American political culture from the trustbusters on, rooted in the assumption that the further away you move from Smith’s ideal of perfect competition among many small firms, the more the public is hurt. The economist Joseph Schumpeter, however, argued that Smith had greatly underestimated both the dynamism of capitalism and the role of entrepreneurs in driving it. Capitalism’s manifold benefits didn’t just happen; they were created, by a relatively small group of people responsible for introducing new products, services, and business methods. Entrepreneurs sought the big profits associated with temporary monopolies and so were driven to create whole new industries they could dominate.

Large companies, Schumpeter realized, acted as engines of innovation, plowing back some of their profits into research and development and encouraging others to do the same in the hopes of becoming an acquisition target. He would have been delighted with Silicon Valley, viewing technology giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft as poster children for the enormous benefits to consumers that entrepreneurs generate.

Companies such as Amazon and Walmart, meanwhile, maintain their position through furious competition in service and price, contributing to the virtual elimination of inflation in the American economy. And yet it is precisely these dynamic, successful, customer-oriented companies that the neosocialists want to tax heavily, burden with regulations, and cut up for parts.

Still more.

Image Credit: The People's Cube, "Chiquita Khrushchev: 'We will bury you!'."