Give Mini-Mike all your delegates, or Sanders will be the nominee!

Michael Bloomberg's chief strategists are warning the other Democrat candidates that if they stay in the race until Super Tuesday, Sanders will have an insurmountable lead. Read the whole thing here.

Field organizers for Sanders

FOUR @BernieSanders Field Organizers recorded praising Republican “re-education” gulags, violent revolution, and murder of political opposition:pic.twitter.com/Al1tb2jI4P

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 30, 2020

They are going after those rich white people!

Net worth-

Nancy Pelosi: 100 million
Elizabeth Warren: 10 million
Joe Biden: 5 million
Bernie Sanders: 2.5 million

I love how the party that claims we need to go after rich white people is conveniently run by rich white people.

They think their voters are stupid!

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) May 25, 2019

Are Biden and Sanders too old to be president?

In the Washington Examiner, Byron York writes,

But there is a much simpler point to be made about Biden and Sanders. They are too old to occupy the nation's highest office, not because they are out of touch or because their records are out of line with today's sensibilities, but because they are just too old.

For those who respond, "Well, what about Trump?" remember: If the president serves two terms, he will leave the White House at 78, the oldest ever in office. But that is the age Biden would begin his presidency. And Sanders is a year older.

Read more here.

Why do Trump and Sanders have the wind at their backs?

Tyler O'Neil asks at PJ Media,

...Did you ever wonder why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have the wind at their backs? Two words: Barack Obama. This is an "outsider" election because people are fed up with the status quo. The economy is in bad shape, despite the official Democratic line of denial. Race relations have taken a nosedive under our first black president.

Read more here.

Trump backs out of debate with Bernie

You may have heard that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are going to have a debate. Not happening. Statement by Trump four hours ago:

"Based on the fact that the Democratic nominating process is totally rigged and Crooked Hillary Clinton and (Debbie) Wasserman-Schultz will not allow Bernie Sanders to win, and now that I am the presumptive Republican nominee, it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second-place finisher," Trump said in a statement.

Read more here.

Will Trump win Sanders supporters, if Hillary is the Democrat nominee?

Is it possible that Bernie Sanders might one day come out to endorse Donald Trump? Ashley Parker and Jonathan Martin write in today's New York Times,

On a range of issues, Mr. Trump seems to be taking a page from the Sanders playbook, expressing a willingness to increase the minimum wage, suggesting that the wealthy may pay higher taxes than under his original proposal, attacking Mrs. Clinton from the left on national security and Wall Street, and making clear that his opposition to free trade will be a centerpiece of his general election campaign.

...Mr. Trump’s approach has scrambled longstanding assumptions about how the two parties can position themselves in a general election fight, and could augur at least a short-term shift in how a Republican presidential nominee campaigns. Until Mr. Trump’s successful campaign, unwavering support for free trade and the business community, a robust American presence in the world, and a commitment to deep tax cuts have been articles of faith for the modern Republican Party.

But Mr. Trump, who has also made attacks on illegal immigrants central to his campaign while vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare, is plainly going to run as more of a Sanders-style populist than as a conservative. And this approach suggests that the 2016 campaign will not be decided in the increasingly diverse states that represent the face of a changing nation — Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia — but in the more heavily white Rust Belt, where blaming trade deals for manufacturing job losses provided resonant themes for Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders during the primaries there.

Mr. Trump recently offered a taste of his coming line of attack on the campaign trail in Oregon, where he praised Mr. Sanders for highlighting Mrs. Clinton’s ties to the country’s largest financial institutions. “She’s totally controlled by Wall Street,” Mr. Trump said, echoing a Sanders rallying cry.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, said he expected the presumptive Republican nominee to grow aggressive on the banks. “Who’s been tougher on bankers than Donald Trump?” asked Mr. Stone, suggesting Mr. Trump could appeal to some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters. “He’s taken them to the cleaners. I think he has a healthy skepticism and deep knowledge of bankers and how they operate. He’s going to be tough on Wall Street.” Mr. Trump has said that “the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder.”

If by abandoning the traditional Republican playbook Mr. Trump were to put Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Republican column, as some of his aides suggested, he would swing 46 electoral votes from states that have voted for Democratic presidential candidates since the 1980s.

The Times article quotes Arizona Senator Jeff Flake as saying,

“I think he’s more likely to take Michigan than he is to take Arizona,” said Mr. Flake, whose state is home to a fast-growing Latino population.

The unease on the right with Mr. Trump’s ideological positioning spans the party’s factions, alarming national security hawks, fiscal conservatives focused chiefly on promoting free markets, and the Christian right.

And even when he has hit Mrs. Clinton from the left, he has also shown a flexibility that has positioned him on both sides of some issues. He has called for a higher minimum wage, for instance, but has also said the issue should be left to the states rather than have a federal increase. On foreign policy, too, his cautious approach to nation-building and intervention has been juxtaposed by bellicose remarks and a promise to be tougher on Iran and the Islamic State.

Read more here.

Hillary and Bernie: bad lip reading

Did Hillary supporters take down Sanders’ Facebook pages?

Was there a cyber attack last night using the weapon of porn on Bernie Sanders supporters by Hillary Clinton supporters? Hot Air tries to get to the bottom of this here.

Sanders v. Trump: This may not be the debate you get, but it is the debate you deserve!

Did you know that among voters who shop at Whole Foods and yet feel guilty for shopping at Whole Foods, Bernie Sanders is winning 92% of the vote? Among voters whose primary means of transportation is a bicycle, Sanders is winning 88% of the vote.

Did you know that Donald Trump has the same policy on China as he does on women, which is that China is our enemy? Did you know Trump has a Mexican guy who reads the internet to him? "Wonderful guy! Hello Baca!"

Senator Sanders, the tree man in Seattle came down this afternoon, but how do you respond to this growing trend of tree dwellers? "As the only candidate for president who has himself lived in a tree,..." "It's a fantastic way to solve the housing crisis, by having people climb up trees, rather than cut them down!"

Donald Trump, how do you respond? "I promise you this. When I am president, we will get rid of every tree. We gotta use these nukes, we haven't used them in years!"

Senator Sanders, Why did the chicken cross the road? "...He crossed the road to bring attention to the crumbling infrastructure that chickens have to face everyday of their lives! If I am president, I promise I will spend billions of dollars on chicken wire..."

Mr. Trump do you have a reply? "Unbelievable, unbelievable. We should wipe em all out and use their eggs, just like women."

Sanders, Obama to have a private meeting tomorrow

Reuters is reporting that Obama has invited Bernie Sanders to meet with him in the White House tomorrow. You don't suppose the FBI investigation will be a topic of discussion?

Common thread

Mara Zebest observes at Gateway Pundit,

Rush Limbaugh has observed a common thread between the record crowds Bernie Sanders is drawing with another socialist drawing record crowds back in 2008.

Go here to read and hear what Rush sees as the common thread.

Ignoring the concerns of large numbers of voters

Glenn Reynolds writes at USA Today,

...as The New York Times recently noted, the benefits of this "recovery" have gone almost entirely to the rich. "In the first three years of the current expansion, incomes actually fell for the bottom 90% of earners, even as they rose nicely for the top 10%. The result: The top 10% captured an impossible-seeming 116% of income gains during that span. ... One percent of the population, in the first three years of the current expansion, took home 95% of the income gains."

Sanders' solutions might be ill-conceived, but at least he's talking about a problem that the incumbent, and the front-runner, are largely happy to ignore. And though, as an aged, openly Socialist, white male, he might not have been the dream candidate, Sanders draws enthusiastic crowds who are grateful that someone is speaking to their concerns.

Likewise, Trump. His signature issue is immigration. The GOP establishment likes open borders because its big corporate donors want cheap labor. (The Democratic establishment likes open borders because immigrants usually vote Democratic.) But many ordinary Americans — mostly, but not at all exclusively, Republicans — wonder what's in it for them. More immigrants means more competition for jobs, pushing wages down, whether it's at entry-level unskilled jobs, or at the higher-level tech jobs where employers abuse H1B visas to bring in cheap foreign labor.

Most GOP pols won't touch this issue, which pairs the risk of scaring off immigration-dependent donors with the added danger of being called racist by Democrats. Trump doesn't care, so he is willing to raise the issue anyway. And he has done so effectively: Two weeks ago, the immigration template involved stories about "DREAMers" who want to go to college; now it involves multiple-arrested undocumented immigrants who kill women. Trump might not be the ideal candidate of the Republican Party's discontented members either, but, again, they're grateful that someone is talking about their concerns instead of trying to bury them.

Both Sanders and Trump pose threats to their respective establishments. Sanders might be another Eugene McCarthy, who garnered tremendous enthusiasm in 1968 while sapping the energy of Democratic establishment candidate Hubert Humphrey, who went on to lose. Trump might turn out to be another Ross Perot, whose plain talk about deficits excited a lot of GOP voters who then saw George H.W. Bush as an unappetizing substitute.

In a democratic polity, you can't ignore the concerns of large numbers of voters forever. Both Democrats and Republicans are learning that lesson yet again.

Read more here.