Benjamin Studebaker

Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things

Tag: Kamala Harris

September 27, 2019

The Left Press is Failing Bernie Sanders

This week, Elizabeth Warren overtook Bernie Sanders on the Morning Consult poll. This is the first time she’s placed second on Morning Consult. She’s now up a full point on the RealClear poll average, including 11-point advantages on Quinnipiac and YouGov. She’s up a point on Emerson too. Sanders hangs on to two-point leads on Harris and FOX News’ polls, but trails everywhere else.

Sanders led by 4 points as recently as June and 10 points as recently as May. He’s dropped from 23% in the average to 17%. In April, Warren’s campaign looked moribund. She polled at less than 6% and was getting obliterated in fundraising. We have screwed this up. But the good news is that we have time. Iowa isn’t until February. There’s four full months to turn this around. But if we’re going to do it, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and the role we’ve been playing in the race.

Read the rest of this entry »

July 23, 2019

The Left Cannot Win the Country by Campaigning Like Hillary Clinton

As Bernie Sanders sags in primary polls and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris surge, it’s time to talk about the big mistake we made after 2016–we tried to win over the Clinton voters.

The bulk of “the squad” comes from districts that voted for Clinton:

Read the rest of this entry »

July 14, 2019

Why a “Public Option” Isn’t Enough

I co-wrote a piece with Current Affairs’ Nathan J. Robinson on why Sanders’ Medicare-For-All plan is much better than Buttigieg’s “Medicare For All Who Want It” and the “many paths” advocated by Warren and Harris. You can read it here:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/why-a-public-option-isnt-enough?fbclid=IwAR1a7t85GSWJfo_WkPCtzoNdjBMp9XucPKx-tS86qnJQ0Xe3b_L14BO02bw

July 9, 2019

On Healthcare, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris Think You’re Stupid

Politicians are really good at fooling voters. Voters have jobs and kids and lives to lead. They are too busy to look very closely at things politicians say and do, and increasingly journalists are every bit as overtaxed and unable to do the job in their stead. We saw this during the Democratic debates. The moderators asked the candidates to raise their hands if they supported Medicare-For-All, and most of the candidates obliged. But several of the hand-raisers routinely deploy a rhetorical sleight of hand I call the “Many Paths” trick. It works like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

April 15, 2019

Bernie Sanders’ Tax Returns are Irrelevant

I’ve been seeing a remarkably large number of people making the argument that because Bernie Sanders is a millionaire, he is somehow a hypocrite. This is a very strange claim. Here’s why.

Read the rest of this entry »