Dem DeathWatch 2020

Buttigieg out, Steyer out, Klobuchar out. Only five left, maybe five-and-a-half if there is a brokered convention.

I always imagined Steyer was in some sort of Brewster’s Millions situation, but he really should have been out after Iowa.

It was a good time for Mayor Pete to get out of the race, considering he was heading for a drubbing tomorrow. Now his poor numbers can be chalked up to him being out of the race and he saves some dignity for whatever is next for him. Maybe a VP slot with Biden to allay stroke-out fears, but Pete doesn’t really bring any voters with him who weren’t going to cross their fingers and vote for Biden anyway.

Klobuchar never made any sense. She was running for a VP slot and got some spill-over nag and schoolmarm vote from Warren.

Of course, the conspiracy-minded among the Sanders’ supporters (all of them?) think Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out to boost Biden’s vote totals. Klobuchar is set to endorse Biden; Mayor Pete hasn’t so far.

Given that Sander and Biden are projected to come in one and two on Super Tuesday, I imagine this will also mean an end to Warren and Gabbard’s runs, especially if Bloomberg comes in third. But Biden is out of money and hasn’t had the stamina to campaign in the Super Tuesday states as much as he should have. If Biden drops to third or fourth, and Sanders gains enough of a delegate lead, Bernie could have a commanding lead, especially if he can ignore Florida before he blunders on Cuba again.

If Biden and Bloomberg hold on, they might be able to gather the delegates to trigger a brokered convention. Which might cause the Queen of the Vampires to rise from her Hulu-warmed crypt.


Speaking of women who want a double standard for their behavior…

Katie Hill, After the Scandal

“Any chance you could grab us a bottle of wine or something? Lol,” former California congresswoman Katie Hill texted. We settled on rosé. Hill and I had never met, but she was in the midst of a professional and personal crisis. It was 4:30 in the afternoon, and she would be going live on air with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that night. “ROUGH day,” she wrote. I brought wine as well as a bag of pretzels to Hill’s Manhattan hotel room. Wearing leggings and a hoodie, she took the wine and glanced down at her phone. An editor at the New York Times had questions about an op-ed the 32-year-old Hill wrote about contemplating suicide, one that’s set to publish the next day; they’d been going back and forth for hours.

This was in early December as Hill scrambled to form a new life after photos of her — some of which she said were taken without her consent — were published online in mid-October. One shows Hill nude, brushing the hair of a junior female campaign staffer, Morgan (referred to here only by first name), in a hotel room. In others, there is Hill naked, holding a bong, with a tattoo of an iron cross — a Nazi-associated symbol used by white supremacists — near her groin; Hill and Morgan kissing. The articles accompanying them include private text messages among Hill, Morgan, and Hill’s estranged husband, Kenneth Heslep, detailing a three-way romantic relationship, as well as a claim by Heslep from a since-deleted Facebook post that Hill had had an affair with her male legislative director, Graham Kelly.

8200 words, part hagiography and part apologia that #metoo shouldn’t apply to women because reasons. Also, these sort of chummy lifestyle pieces are rarely written about male sexual predators, right?


The Socialist vanguard who make $168k a month for being halfwits.

The Pied Pipers of the Dirtbag Left Want to Lead Everyone to Bernie Sanders

IOWA CITY — The people in the crowd were angry, and “Chapo Trap House” wanted them to stay that way. The five hosts of the popular socialist podcast wanted everyone to know they had all been lied to. About everything.

The media they consumed was fake news aimed to distract them from the only war worth fighting: the class war. Politesse, civility, even pleasure — those were tools of the neoliberal oppressor. The right answer is rage.

“That joy,” the Chapo co-host Will Menaker said to the crowd gathered in Iowa City on the eve of the Iowa caucus. “That’s good but it’s not as good a motivator when you’re really going to war as spite.”

“Let the hate feed you,” the co-host Amber A’Lee Frost added as the audience roared.

And it does. Especially toward other Democrats.

Supporters of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. are “gelatinous 100-year-olds.”

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg is “a bloodless asexual.”

“The gayest thing about him is he descends from an ethnic group that’s like a little toy dog,” Ms. A’Lee Frost said.

When Senator Elizabeth Warren’s name came up, the crowd made the sound of a snake hissing. She had accused Senator Bernie Sanders of saying that a woman could not beat President Trump, and so she is a snake.

“Yes, my sssssoldiers,” Mr. Menaker said.

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s run appalls them. “Beat him so badly that this midget gremlin won’t even have a shot even with a trillion dollars,” Mr. Menaker said.

“Kill him,” someone shouted from the audience. These were jokes, of course. Everyone was laughing.

It’s a great scam and they should ride if as long as they can. Each of them is grossing 400k a year and the overhead for three beardos and two women can’t be all that much: organic Cheetos, PBR, loperamide and abortion aftercare.


R.I.P. James Lipton, creator and former host of Inside The Actors Studio

As confirmed by The New York Times, iconic writer, actor, and teacher James Lipton—best known as the creator and longtime host of Inside The Actors Studio—has died. Lipton was also dean emeritus at Pace University’s Actors Studio Drama School in New York City, after having previously introduced the Actors Studio graduate program to New York’s New School. In addition, he had two distinct acting careers, one before transitioning into writing and teaching and one after he had become a pop culture figure due to Inside The Actors Studio. Lipton was 93.

I find few things so dull as actors talking about acting, so I didn’t see many episodes of Inside The Actors Studio over the years, but his attempts to give Lucille chlamydia were greatly appreciated.