RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/06/12/bidens_balancing_act_

In poker, it’s known as a “tell.” It’s an inadvertent signal — perhaps rapid blinking or a raised eyebrow — that tells other players you have a good hand or bad one. Last week, when Joe Biden rolled out his new policy positions, he virtually shouted one out in the high-stakes game of presidential campaigning.

Biden’s first tell came on the issue of abortion; a second, lesser one came on environmental policy. Predictably, he moved to the left on both. That tells us something about Biden, the primary process, and the 21st century Democratic Party.

First, it says that Biden expects hard slogging to win the nomination. Publicly, the former vice president is positioning himself as the inevitable nominee, the obvious successor to Barack Obama. The key words are “obvious” and “inevitable.” The national polls, like those in Iowa, where he campaigned Tuesday, paint a different picture. They show Biden ahead, but hardly inevitable. About one-quarter of Iowa Democrats currently favor Biden, compared to roughly 15% each for three more progressive candidates: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg. That’s a strong lead, but the Iowa battle is just getting started, and it’s still wide open. The same is true in New Hampshire, the site of the first real primary.

To win in either place, Biden must stay abreast of the party’s leftward lurch. That’s what his “tell” is all about. But it’s a slow, awkward dance, weighed down by his years of moderate (and quite sensible) policy positions — all on video, all recorded in his Senate votes. His new policies won’t win over the party’s most ardent feminist and environmentalist factions, but he does hope to blunt their opposition and prevent them from coalescing around an alternative candidate.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-marx-brother-11560363050

Having parted ways with some non-Marxists who managed to infiltrate his 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders will attempt to clarify this afternoon that he is not like other candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in 2020. Edward-Isaac Dovere notes in the Atlantic that Mr. Sanders will be speaking in Washington this afternoon on “How Democratic Socialism Is the Only Way to Defeat Oligarchy and Authoritarianism.” Mr. Dovere reports that the speech topic is sparking laughter among Democratic rivals as Mr. Sanders “leans into socialism.” Adds Mr. Dovere:

Aides say the D.C. setting is an attempt to convey his seriousness on the subject. They want this to be a major signpost in his 2020 campaign, an opportunity for Sanders to lay out why he’s running with an argument no one else can or would make as forcefully, and to dare the rest of the field to oppose him. They believe this speech has the potential to re-center the dynamics of the race around him, and that the other candidates will regret any of their laughter and questioning…

Many readers may find it laughable that Mr. Sanders would attempt to position himself even further to the left than he did in 2016. But as a Journal editorial noted in April, there’s nothing funny about the extreme commentary from people who are now members of the Sanders 2020 operation. For example, current Sanders speechwriter David Sirota once wrote an op-ed titled “Hugo Chávez’s Economic Miracle”. And Mr. Sirota isn’t the only Sandernista who has lauded the Chavistas. Assessing the current Sanders team, the Journal observed:

Voters need to understand that they don’t merely admire Venezuela. By their own words, they want America to emulate it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/marcia-fudge-reads-constituent-le

Representative Marcia Fudge (D., Ohio) took to the House floor on Tuesday to share a constituent’s opinion that supporters of President Trump are “racist” and “just plain dumb.”

Addressing her colleagues during the House’s “Morning Hour,” in which lawmakers can speak for five minutes about a topic of their own choosing, Fudge read a letter written by Reverend Ronald Williams, the pastor of Mount Zion Fellowship in Highland Hills, Ohio, which cites a single political debate Williams recently had to disparage Trump supporters as a collective.

“It is glaringly apparent that many who support the present administration are either racist, steeped in religious beliefs, ignorant, or as my mother used to say just plain dumb,” Williams wrote. “They have chosen to support a president who has a proven record of being sexually condescending to women, will not oppose the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate organizations, is indecisive, condescending to anyone who challenges him, and hides behind his Twitter account rather than dealing with the real issues in our country and around the world. To put icing on this cake, he’s a proven liar.”

Williams goes on to argue that Trump’s election proves American democracy no longer exists, before questioning the religious convictions of “so-called Evangelicals” and chastising congressional Republicans for becoming a “Trump cult.”

After Fudge read Williams’s missive aloud, fellow Democrat Marc Veasey scolded her for relying on someone else’s words to impugn the character of the president.

http://www.startribune.com/ilhan-omar-s-credibility-takes-another-hit/511152612/

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is back in the news again, and not in a good way. The former state representative who won a seat in Congress last fall continues to be dogged by past missteps, this time eight violations of Minnesota campaign-finance law that will cost her nearly $3,500 in reimbursements and civil penalties.

So complex were the allegations that the state Campaign Finance Board spent nearly a year assessing the case, deposing staff people and former staff people, along with Omar herself. The investigation was broadened in October — just a month before her election to Congress — to look more deeply into the allegations. Board Executive Director Jeff Sigurdson said that between six and eight people were deposed separately.

In an October 2018 editorial, we called on Omar to more fully explain her travel and other expenses. We noted that the allegations “suggest a pattern of carelessness and/or self-dealing with legally restricted funds. Neither conclusion inspires the confidence voters deserve to have in someone they send to the U.S. House to represent them.”

It is even more disturbing, therefore, to learn that among the board’s latest findings was a troubling discovery that is far beyond its jurisdiction, but worthy of greater scrutiny nevertheless. Omar, for two years running, filed joint tax returns with a man she was living with but not legally married to. Complicating matters further, she was legally married to another man at the time.