Loose Ends, Mostly on the Election Campaign

Wait—Mark Sanford was running for president? Somehow I missed him on the campaign trail. But now he will have more time for that other trail.

Is this real news, or the Babylon Bee (which is more accurate news these days): Hillary Clinton says “many, many, many people” are urging her to run for president again next year. As the Bee points out, most of these people are likely the voices in her head. But please please I wish she would run!

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan on how the insufferable wokerati will be a drag on the Democrats next year:

It’s no mystery why so many Democrats can no longer connect to the white working class. Progressives promise free college, free health care, free child care, and scream in bafflement, What’s wrong with you people? . . .

One of the biggest takeaways from the recent New York Times/Siena College survey of battleground states is that Elizabeth Warren is not connecting with the very people her policies are supposed to help. Trump beats her or runs even in every tossup state but one. The persuadable voters in these states, many of them working class, say political correctness has gotten out of control, and they prefer someone seeking common ground over someone with a militantly progressive agenda. . .

[A] word to Democrats: . . . Save the piety, the circular firing squad, the shaming on social media for after the election. Otherwise, the woke will wake next Nov. 4 to a tragedy.

About that Times/Siena College poll, a few standout findings:

The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016, at least so far. All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.

As a result, Democrats appear to have made little progress in reclaiming their traditional advantage in the Northern battleground states, despite their sweep there in the 2018 midterms. . . Nearly two-thirds of the Trump voters who said they voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 say that they’ll back the president against all three named opponents.

In particular, Warren will have a big problem with minority voters:

Dawn Marshall, an independent from Tampa, Fla., said that with the exception of Mr. Biden, the Democrats running for president are too left-leaning for her. “They want to be socialists, and this is not a socialistic country,” she said. “This is a working country where people go out, do the best that they can do, find jobs. I am so sick and tired of having to support other folks. We can’t be equal.”

Ms. Marshall, a telecom engineer who is black and Native American, would not seem to be representative of her demographic group. Yet nonwhite Biden supporters are likelier than white Biden voters to say they would choose Mr. Trump over Ms. Warren.

Bloomberg has a #MeToo problem, according to The Atlantic. But the real fun is that now Tom Steyer is the poor man in the race. Bloomberg is worth something like $50 billion, while Steyer is only worth about $2 billion. Still, cue Bernie. And pass the popcorn.

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