motherjones--2020-02-12--The Democratic Primary Is About to Get Wild After New Hampshire

Sorry , New Hampshire .
A conventional rule of American politics is that the Granite State imposes order on the presidential campaign , with one of the top two finishers in its first-in-the-nation primary always going on to snag the nomination .
But not this time .
At least not in terms of smoothing out the bumpy process .
Bernie Sanders , the US senator and democratic socialist from next-door Vermont , achieved an impressive victory , placing first with , as of current vote totals , 26 percent .
And former small-town mayor Pete Buttigieg , the first openly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bid , scored an impressive second , collecting 24 percent .
The surprise was Amy Klobuchar ’ s late surge that landed her in third , 4 points behind Buttigieg .
Both Elizabeth Warren ( 9 percent ) and Joe Biden ( 8 percent ) were smacked with worse-than-expected results .
Though the New Hampshire numbers will boost the campaigns of the top three , this primary has not diminished the chaos of the race .
Instead , it has demonstrated the Democratic Party , as it seeks to find a champion who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fractured .
Our reporters fanned out to victory parties for the top three Democratic finishers for this edition of the Mother Jones Podcast , “ How Bernie Sanders Won New Hampshire.
” Listen : That conclusion is not a dig at Sanders .
It is statement of math .
Look at the past winners of competitive New Hampshire primaries .
Last time , Sanders won with 60 percent of the vote ( to Hillary Clinton ’ s 40 percent ) .
Eight years before that , Clinton beat Barack Obama 39 to 36 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took 38 percent to Howard Dean ’ s 26 percent in a five-way contest .
Al Gore in 2000 triumphed with 50 percent to Bill Bradley ’ s 46 percent .
Typically , the New Hampshire winner crosses the finish line with a vote count between a third and three-fifths of the electorate .
This year , Sanders emerged victorious with a quarter .
Sanders is coming out of New Hampshire with a smaller slice of the vote than any other Democratic winner in the primary ’ s history .
( Jimmy Carter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
That means a large majority of the Dems and independents who voted in this contest do not prefer to see Sanders become the party ’ s standard bearer .
In previous cycles , the victories were more decisive , with the successful candidates having won over a much larger chunk of the voters ( in this highly non-representational state ) .
Of course , the winner ’ s vote take was lower this year partly because there were more credible candidates .
But in 1992 , with five top-tier candidates in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senator from next-door Massachusetts prevailed with 33 percent .
( Bill Clinton placed second with 25 percent . )
And in 1988 , Michael Dukakis pocketed 35 percent , with none of his five rivals gathering more than 20 percent .
So even in full-field competitions of the past , the victor had a stronger showing than Sanders ’ 2020 take .
The bottom line : There was a winner , but Sanders does not at this point hold a dominant position within the Democratic cosmos .
With no single candidate staking a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vote , there is plenty of incentive for other candidates to stay in the hunt .
This may be especially true since the two leaders at the moment each trigger questions among some voters about their electability .
Sanders would be the first Jewish and socialist presidential nominee of a major party , and Buttigieg is a gay nominee with modest political experience .
In her concession speech , Warren , looking for a path forward , warned that the Democratic primary could descend into bitterness among “ factions ” in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dramatic loss in the backyard of her home-state Massachusetts her campaign was “ best positioned to unite our party.
” In other words , she ’ s not going anywhere .
Biden , who fled New Hampshire before the votes were even counted , presumably is going to try to hang in there through the upcoming Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary .
And Klobuchar has a gust of wind in her sails .
( New Hampshire did break the backs of Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet , who each fared poorly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
A sharp battle of factions—Warren might be correct about that .
This race could become a bloody crawl to Super Tuesday on March 3 , when Michael Bloomberg and his hundreds of millions of dollars appear on the ballots—and then perhaps a different bloody crawl toward the convention in Milwaukee this summer .
The New Hampshire and Iowa results—and national polls—suggest that Sanders has a solid core of support of about 25 percent .
( Buttigieg ’ s die-hard bloc is harder to assess at this point . )
And if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around , this one-in-four slice could propel Sanders to place first in many of the primaries and caucuses to come .
But that ’ s not necessarily enough for Sanders to take a commanding lead in delegates .
In the GOP , the first-place finisher in many primaries snag all the delegates .
( That rule benefitted Trump in 2016 . )
In the Democratic contests , all states award delegates on a proportional basis .
That would make it tough for a candidate who wins primaries with smaller percentages to acquire a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buttigieg are projected to earn the same number of delegates out of New Hampshire . )
After New Hampshire , Sanders and his devotees can declare that—and celebrate that—he ’ s the leader .
But can Sanders , with his call for a political revolution , coax other Democratic voters into his camp ?
For years , Democratic strategists have contended that Sanders has a high floor but a low ceiling .
He rattles centrist , moderate , and corporate Democrats .
And it was common to hear non-Sanders voters in New Hampshire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the “ democratic socialist ” label will doom him and the party , should he become the nominee .
Those non-Sanders voters have been divvied up mainly between Buttigieg , Klobuchar , Warren , and the free-falling Joe Biden .
How many of them can Sanders reach ?
His advisers maintain he will expand beyond his robust base by making progress with African American and Latino voters , who will play big roles in the next face-offs in Nevada and South Carolina .
But Biden is counting on black voters to keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has also aimed organizing efforts at voters of color .
Then there ’ s Bloomberg .
He is the X-factor of the Democratic contest and engaging in an intriguing political science experiment .
Can a billionaire dump all that money into a race and buy a seat at the table ?
Will his presence further divide the non-Sanders voting bloc and actually help Sanders preserve a plurality ?
Will the former Republican mayor of New York City become the first choice of Dems who crave an alternative to Sanders ?
In that event @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a vicious battle between the anti-billionaire socialist and an actual billionaire .
There ’ s a lot of supposin ’ going on in the immediate aftermath of New Hampshire .
This election did not afford the Democrats a major sorting out , and they may now be slouching toward a race in which the front-runner consistently comes in first with only 25 to 30 percent of the vote .
What will happens if the number-one delegate-grabber only grabs a third or so of the delegates ?
There will be plenty of time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ summer to cook up and ponder all sorts of possible scenarios .
As voters headed toward the polls in New Hampshire , political reporters , who had spent many hours with the state ’ s undecided voters , repeatedly proclaimed the race was volatile .
It was .
( See Klobuchar ’ s rise and Biden ’ s collapse . )
The opening primary crowned a front runner , but it did little to remove the volatility from the contest .
Here comes a wild ride .

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Sorry, New Hampshire. A conventional rule of American politics is that the Granite State imposes order on the presidential campaign, with one of the top two finishers in its first-in-the-nation primary always going on to snag the nomination. But not this time. At least not in terms of smoothing out the bumpy process.
Bernie Sanders, the US senator and democratic socialist from next-door Vermont, achieved an impressive victory, placing first with, as of current vote totals, 26 percent. And former small-town mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate to mount a major presidential bid, scored an impressive second, collecting 24 percent. The surprise was Amy Klobuchar’s late surge that landed her in third, 4 points behind Buttigieg. Both Elizabeth Warren (9 percent) and Joe Biden (8 percent) were smacked with worse-than-expected results.
Though the New Hampshire numbers will boost the campaigns of the top three, this primary has not diminished the chaos of the race. Instead, it has demonstrated the Democratic Party, as it seeks to find a champion who can defeat Donald Trump, remains intensely fractured.
Our reporters fanned out to victory parties for the top three Democratic finishers for this edition of the Mother Jones Podcast, “How Bernie Sanders Won New Hampshire.” Listen:
Listen to the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
That conclusion is not a dig at Sanders. It is statement of math. Look at the past winners of competitive New Hampshire primaries. Last time, Sanders won with 60 percent of the vote (to Hillary Clinton’s 40 percent). Eight years before that, Clinton beat Barack Obama 39 to 36 percent. In 2004, John Kerry took 38 percent to Howard Dean’s 26 percent in a five-way contest. Al Gore in 2000 triumphed with 50 percent to Bill Bradley’s 46 percent. Typically, the New Hampshire winner crosses the finish line with a vote count between a third and three-fifths of the electorate. This year, Sanders emerged victorious with a quarter.
Sanders is coming out of New Hampshire with a smaller slice of the vote than any other Democratic winner in the primary’s history. (Jimmy Carter placed first with 29 percent in 1976). That means a large majority of the Dems and independents who voted in this contest do not prefer to see Sanders become the party’s standard bearer. In previous cycles, the victories were more decisive, with the successful candidates having won over a much larger chunk of the voters (in this highly non-representational state).
Of course, the winner’s vote take was lower this year partly because there were more credible candidates. But in 1992, with five top-tier candidates in the contest, Paul Tsongas, the senator from next-door Massachusetts prevailed with 33 percent. (Bill Clinton placed second with 25 percent.) And in 1988, Michael Dukakis pocketed 35 percent, with none of his five rivals gathering more than 20 percent. So even in full-field competitions of the past, the victor had a stronger showing than Sanders’ 2020 take.
The bottom line: There was a winner, but Sanders does not at this point hold a dominant position within the Democratic cosmos. With no single candidate staking a claim on more than about one-fourth of the vote, there is plenty of incentive for other candidates to stay in the hunt. This may be especially true since the two leaders at the moment each trigger questions among some voters about their electability. Sanders would be the first Jewish and socialist presidential nominee of a major party, and Buttigieg is a gay nominee with modest political experience.
In her concession speech, Warren, looking for a path forward, warned that the Democratic primary could descend into bitterness among “factions” in the party, and asserted that despite her dramatic loss in the backyard of her home-state Massachusetts her campaign was “best positioned to unite our party.” In other words, she’s not going anywhere. Biden, who fled New Hampshire before the votes were even counted, presumably is going to try to hang in there through the upcoming Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary. And Klobuchar has a gust of wind in her sails. (New Hampshire did break the backs of Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet, who each fared poorly and announced the suspension of their campaigns.)
A sharp battle of factions—Warren might be correct about that. This race could become a bloody crawl to Super Tuesday on March 3, when Michael Bloomberg and his hundreds of millions of dollars appear on the ballots—and then perhaps a different bloody crawl toward the convention in Milwaukee this summer.
The New Hampshire and Iowa results—and national polls—suggest that Sanders has a solid core of support of about 25 percent. (Buttigieg’s die-hard bloc is harder to assess at this point.) And if four or so other major contenders stick around, this one-in-four slice could propel Sanders to place first in many of the primaries and caucuses to come. But that’s not necessarily enough for Sanders to take a commanding lead in delegates. In the GOP, the first-place finisher in many primaries snag all the delegates. (That rule benefitted Trump in 2016.) In the Democratic contests, all states award delegates on a proportional basis. That would make it tough for a candidate who wins primaries with smaller percentages to acquire a majority of delegates. (Sanders and Buttigieg are projected to earn the same number of delegates out of New Hampshire.)
After New Hampshire, Sanders and his devotees can declare that—and celebrate that—he’s the leader. But can Sanders, with his call for a political revolution, coax other Democratic voters into his camp? For years, Democratic strategists have contended that Sanders has a high floor but a low ceiling. He rattles centrist, moderate, and corporate Democrats. And it was common to hear non-Sanders voters in New Hampshire repeat the fear that Sanders’ embrace of the “democratic socialist” label will doom him and the party, should he become the nominee.
Those non-Sanders voters have been divvied up mainly between Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Warren, and the free-falling Joe Biden. How many of them can Sanders reach? His advisers maintain he will expand beyond his robust base by making progress with African American and Latino voters, who will play big roles in the next face-offs in Nevada and South Carolina. But Biden is counting on black voters to keep his political career alive, and Warren has also aimed organizing efforts at voters of color.
Then there’s Bloomberg. He is the X-factor of the Democratic contest and engaging in an intriguing political science experiment. Can a billionaire dump all that money into a race and buy a seat at the table? Will his presence further divide the non-Sanders voting bloc and actually help Sanders preserve a plurality? Will the former Republican mayor of New York City become the first choice of Dems who crave an alternative to Sanders? In that event, the Democratic nomination contest could turn into a vicious battle between the anti-billionaire socialist and an actual billionaire.
There’s a lot of supposin’ going on in the immediate aftermath of New Hampshire. This election did not afford the Democrats a major sorting out, and they may now be slouching toward a race in which the front-runner consistently comes in first with only 25 to 30 percent of the vote. What will happens if the number-one delegate-grabber only grabs a third or so of the delegates? There will be plenty of time between now and the convention in the summer to cook up and ponder all sorts of possible scenarios.
As voters headed toward the polls in New Hampshire, political reporters, who had spent many hours with the state’s undecided voters, repeatedly proclaimed the race was volatile. It was. (See Klobuchar’s rise and Biden’s collapse.) The opening primary crowned a front runner, but it did little to remove the volatility from the contest. Here comes a wild ride.


motherjones--2020-02-12--Andrew Yang Suspends His Campaign

Andrew Yang Suspends His Campaign

Andrew Yang ended his presidential campaign on Tuesday night as polls closed in New Hampshire , capping off a run that transformed a mostly-unknown entrepreneur into a digital celebrity .
Though Yang will not be the Democratic nominee , his campaign achieved a success and dedicated following that multiple US senators , governors , and House representatives were unable to muster .
Yang proved an engaging campaigner who clearly enjoyed running for president , with a verve his crowds and competition could feel as well .
His concise , single-issue message pushing universal basic income broke through the political noise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw in technological automation and called for cash payments to combat a coming , dystopian wave of unemployment .
From the outside , Yang ’ s unlikely success—he continued to qualify for debates into February and raised tens of millions of dollars as higher profile candidates faltered—looked like a fluke .
Yang , who mounted the most successful presidential primary campaign of any Asian American in history , showed he could command large crowds , who donned gear bearing his MATH slogan , short for “ Make America Think Harder.
” Online , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build an army of true believers .
Yang ’ s strong showing may be more a glimpse of the future than a one-time accident .
Yang , steeped in the culture of Silicon Valley , tapped into a pool of online support that future candidates would be remiss not to seek .
At 43 , Yang campaigned as an enlightened techie , costumed in a campaign ball cap and stars and stripes soccer scarf .
He skateboarded , crowd surfed , and paced stages with the swagger of a confident bro .
His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men , who get their news from podcasts , YouTube , and Reddit .
Yang connected with people who didn ’ t feel that they had a place in the current economy , warning that as automation continued their sense of displacement would only grow worse .
In this way , Yang ’ s support had echoes of Bernie Sanders ’ —a dedicated online following rooted in communities that were young , concerned about their economic future , and often male .
At the heart of Yang ’ s campaign was a simplistic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yang argued that the country was already deep into an automation revolution that will eventually cost millions of Americans their jobs as truck drivers , call-center workers , health care administrators , and even lawyers are replaced with artificial intelligence and robots .
The solution , Yang argued , was a $ 1,000 check per month for all Americans , funded by a form of a sales tax .
Yang ’ s single greatest achievement was putting the idea of basic income—which has been embraced in different forms by both progressives and conservatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sanders and Elizabeth Warren , the two most progressive Democratic candidates , campaigned on taxing the rich and redistributing their wealth , Yang ’ s so-called Freedom Dividend would have been more regressive in both funding and allocation .
Progressive advocates suspiciously viewed Yang as having disguised a regressive set of economic policies in Sanders-style rhetoric .
One tell-tale sign that Yang ’ s proposal dovetailed with libertarian economic policy : he wanted his universal basic income to replace much of America ’ s hard-won social safety net .
While Sanders stumped against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took on the rigged system , Yang trained his fire on big tech companies , pointing out how they ’ ve extracted wealth from towns and cities , and stashed it overseas to avoid taxes .
But unlike Warren , who advocates for regulating giants like Facebook and Amazon with New Deal-style anti-trust measures , Yang ’ s approach to reining in big tech was more hands-off .
“ It ’ s not like breaking up these big tech companies will revive Main Street businesses around the country , ” Yang argued in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Using a 20th century antitrust framework will not work .
We need new solutions and a new toolkit ” —one that , according to his proposals , hinged on cooperation over aggressive regulation , once again suggesting Yang ’ s progressive rhetoric masked laissez-faire policy details .
Yang himself eschewed ideological classification and instead falling back on nominally apolitical frames of math and rationality , saying that he was simply seeking 21st century solutions to modern problems .
In Iowa , about 5 percent of Democratic caucus-goers indicated Yang was their first choice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not exceed that number in New Hampshire , showing his strong online following didn ’ t translate into huge electoral wins .
But his campaign remains a warning shot to Democrats and Republicans .
Yes , an outsider candidate can marshal the power of online organizing to develop a cult following that can raise real money and outlast more conventional strategies .
And he did so in a way that hints at the allure of a message tapping into Americans ’ anxiety about technological progress—even if the proposed solutions he laid out to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ultimately be too small to stop it .

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Andrew Yang ended his presidential campaign on Tuesday night as polls closed in New Hampshire, capping off a run that transformed a mostly-unknown entrepreneur into a digital celebrity. Though Yang will not be the Democratic nominee, his campaign achieved a success and dedicated following that multiple US senators, governors, and House representatives were unable to muster. Yang proved an engaging campaigner who clearly enjoyed running for president, with a verve his crowds and competition could feel as well. His concise, single-issue message pushing universal basic income broke through the political noise as he warned about the threat he saw in technological automation and called for cash payments to combat a coming, dystopian wave of unemployment.
Yang’s greatest achievement was putting the idea of basic income on the national radar.
From the outside, Yang’s unlikely success—he continued to qualify for debates into February and raised tens of millions of dollars as higher profile candidates faltered—looked like a fluke. Yang, who mounted the most successful presidential primary campaign of any Asian American in history, showed he could command large crowds, who donned gear bearing his MATH slogan, short for “Make America Think Harder.” Online, his supporters generated countless memes, helping build an army of true believers.
Yang’s strong showing may be more a glimpse of the future than a one-time accident. Yang, steeped in the culture of Silicon Valley, tapped into a pool of online support that future candidates would be remiss not to seek. At 43, Yang campaigned as an enlightened techie, costumed in a campaign ball cap and stars and stripes soccer scarf. He skateboarded, crowd surfed, and paced stages with the swagger of a confident bro. His message spoke to voters, particularly young men, who get their news from podcasts, YouTube, and Reddit. Yang connected with people who didn’t feel that they had a place in the current economy, warning that as automation continued their sense of displacement would only grow worse. In this way, Yang’s support had echoes of Bernie Sanders’—a dedicated online following rooted in communities that were young, concerned about their economic future, and often male.
At the heart of Yang’s campaign was a simplistic, libertarian-style solution to economic struggle. Yang argued that the country was already deep into an automation revolution that will eventually cost millions of Americans their jobs as truck drivers, call-center workers, health care administrators, and even lawyers are replaced with artificial intelligence and robots. The solution, Yang argued, was a $1,000 check per month for all Americans, funded by a form of a sales tax. Yang’s single greatest achievement was putting the idea of basic income—which has been embraced in different forms by both progressives and conservatives for decades—on the national radar.
Whereas Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the two most progressive Democratic candidates, campaigned on taxing the rich and redistributing their wealth, Yang’s so-called Freedom Dividend would have been more regressive in both funding and allocation. Progressive advocates suspiciously viewed Yang as having disguised a regressive set of economic policies in Sanders-style rhetoric. One tell-tale sign that Yang’s proposal dovetailed with libertarian economic policy: he wanted his universal basic income to replace much of America’s hard-won social safety net.
Progressive advocates suspiciously viewed Yang as having disguised regressive economic policies in Sanders-style rhetoric.
While Sanders stumped against the “billionaire class” and Warren took on the rigged system, Yang trained his fire on big tech companies, pointing out how they’ve extracted wealth from towns and cities, and stashed it overseas to avoid taxes. But unlike Warren, who advocates for regulating giants like Facebook and Amazon with New Deal-style anti-trust measures, Yang’s approach to reining in big tech was more hands-off. “It’s not like breaking up these big tech companies will revive Main Street businesses around the country,” Yang argued in one of the autumn debates. “Using a 20th century antitrust framework will not work. We need new solutions and a new toolkit”—one that, according to his proposals, hinged on cooperation over aggressive regulation, once again suggesting Yang’s progressive rhetoric masked laissez-faire policy details. Yang himself eschewed ideological classification and instead falling back on nominally apolitical frames of math and rationality, saying that he was simply seeking 21st century solutions to modern problems.
In Iowa, about 5 percent of Democratic caucus-goers indicated Yang was their first choice; the earliest returns suggest he will not exceed that number in New Hampshire, showing his strong online following didn’t translate into huge electoral wins. But his campaign remains a warning shot to Democrats and Republicans. Yes, an outsider candidate can marshal the power of online organizing to develop a cult following that can raise real money and outlast more conventional strategies. And he did so in a way that hints at the allure of a message tapping into Americans’ anxiety about technological progress—even if the proposed solutions he laid out to the havoc wrought by Silicon Valley would ultimately be too small to stop it.


motherjones--2020-02-12--We Asked Pete and Bernie Fans if They’ll Team Up to Beat Trump

Following former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg ’ s narrow win over Sen. Bernie Sanders ( I-Vt. ) in last week ’ s Iowa Democratic caucuses , the two presidential candidates are duking it out in New Hampshire : Sanders slammed Buttigieg for accepting campaign contributions from billionaires , and Buttigieg said Sanders ’ policies skew too far to the left .
Mother Jones digital producer Mark Helenowski caught up with Buttigieg and Sanders supporters on the trail this week to find out what pushed them to support one candidate over the other—and whether they ’ d vote for their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theme emerged , no matter what the voter ’ s current predilections : the need to unify the Democratic party to take on President Donald Trump in November .
Thomas Angell , a 21-year-old student and Sanders supporter , said that the senator alone had the support base to win .
“ To actually beat Trump , we can ’ t just be opposed to Trump , ” he said .
“ We have to offer something else .
He actually believes in something incredibly concrete that we can all get around.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ” pins—pointed out that the senator tends to perform well in polls that pit him against Trump .
But others Mother Jones spoke to , including Phillip Benkert , a 65-year-old retiree , think Sanders ’ policies would do more to divide than to unify .
“ This country ’ s splitting into pieces , and you need to bring the suckers together and not go over there , ” he said , gesturing to his right , “ or over there , ” he added , gesturing to his left .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a centrist candidate , ” Donald Marcus , a 73-year-old retired veterinarian , agreed .
“ I don ’ t see why the Democratic Party can ’ t figure that out.
” But to unseat the president , Democrats will have to rally around their nominee , even if he or she isn ’ t their first choice in the primaries .
Most of the New Hampshire Democrats we spoke to said they would do just that .
“ I don ’ t care if it ’ s somebody who just got out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ Anybody but 45 .
”

Following former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s narrow win over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucuses, the two presidential candidates are duking it out in New Hampshire: Sanders slammed Buttigieg for accepting campaign contributions from billionaires, and Buttigieg said Sanders’ policies skew too far to the left.
Mother Jones digital producer Mark Helenowski caught up with Buttigieg and Sanders supporters on the trail this week to find out what pushed them to support one candidate over the other—and whether they’d vote for their candidate’s opponent. One common theme emerged, no matter what the voter’s current predilections: the need to unify the Democratic party to take on President Donald Trump in November.
Thomas Angell, a 21-year-old student and Sanders supporter, said that the senator alone had the support base to win. “To actually beat Trump, we can’t just be opposed to Trump,” he said. “We have to offer something else. He actually believes in something incredibly concrete that we can all get around.” Multiple Sanders supporters—some sporting “Bernie Beats Trump” pins—pointed out that the senator tends to perform well in polls that pit him against Trump.
But others Mother Jones spoke to, including Phillip Benkert, a 65-year-old retiree, think Sanders’ policies would do more to divide than to unify. “This country’s splitting into pieces, and you need to bring the suckers together and not go over there,” he said, gesturing to his right, “or over there,” he added, gesturing to his left.
“You’ve gotta have a centrist candidate,” Donald Marcus, a 73-year-old retired veterinarian, agreed. “I don’t see why the Democratic Party can’t figure that out.”
But to unseat the president, Democrats will have to rally around their nominee, even if he or she isn’t their first choice in the primaries. Most of the New Hampshire Democrats we spoke to said they would do just that.
“I don’t care if it’s somebody who just got out of an insane asylum,” Marcus said. “Anybody but 45.”


motherjones--2020-02-12--Trump Is Blowing Up Native Burial Grounds to Build His Wall

Contractors hired by Customs and Border Patrol began blasting ground last week in areas of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument , the latest step in President Donald Trump ’ s $ 646 million plan to build a 30-foot wall along 63 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border .
While the border wall construction has been controversial every step of the way , the construction in Organ Pipe Cactus is happening at Monument Hill , which contains burial grounds with cultural significance for the O ’ odham people , who have lived in the borderlands before it was divided between the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , chairman of the Tohono O ’ odham Nation , just east of Organ Pipe Cactus , decried the entire project as senseless destruction of ancestral land .
“ The Tohono O ’ odham Nation is adamantly opposed to the construction of the 30-foot , fortified border wall , which would irrevocably harm cultural sites , sacred sites and the environment , ” Norris said in a statement .
“ It is all the more tragic that billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on an empty campaign slogan that will do little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Customs and Border Protection confirmed the activity .
“ The controlled blasting is targeted and will continue intermittently for the rest of the month , ” a spokesperson said in a statement .
CBP says that they will have an “ environmental monitor ” present during construction , but Norris said that federal agencies have not consulted with the Tohono O ’ odham Nation before beginning construction , as federal policy requires .
Trump ’ s border wall represents the latest chapter of an ongoing saga between the Border Patrol and the Tohono @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1990s , the O ’ odham people ’ s location on the border has placed them squarely in the middle of conflicts between law enforcement , migrants , and drug cartels .
As The Intercept ’ s Ryan Devereaux explained in his November 2019 coverage of border wall protests , life changed for the O ’ odham people with the arrival of a new border enforcement policy called Prevention Through Deterrence .
The strategy redirected migrants away from larger cities like El Paso and San Diego , and into remote desert areas like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The people living there did what they could to assist the influx of migrants showing up on their doorstep , but then Border Patrol arrived : In relatively short order , O ’ odham lands became occupied territory , crawling with Border Patrol agents , penned in with vehicle checkpoints and monitored 24/7 with the latest in surveillance technology .
As the interdiction industry put down roots , an economy for getting past the border guards ballooned .
On the economically struggling Tohono O ’ odham Nation , the allure of potentially easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the cycle of arrest , felony conviction , and incarceration that plays out in communities across the country , including those far from the border .
In 2009 , the Associated Press reported a sixtyfold increase in the “ percentage of suspected drug smugglers arrested by Tohono O ’ odham police who are tribal members ” over the preceding two decades .
“ The jump is due to a surge in recruiting that stems from the growing number of Border Patrol agents on the Tohono O ’ Odham Nation and the recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of the 75 miles of international border , ” the AP noted .
More enforcement meant more illicit activity , which required more enforcement — it was self-sustaining cycle with real-life consequences for the O ’ odham people .
“ Growing up , we reached a point where we didn ’ t know we had rights , ” Ortega explained .
O ’ odham people have been joined by environmental activists in opposing the construction at Organ Pipe for the threat it poses to cultural sites as well as natural resources .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of the only water sources in the desert area , which has been made vulnerable by the pumping of groundwater to mix concrete for the border wall .
The nation has asked CBP to create a two-mile buffer zone around Quitobaquito , according to reporting from the Arizona Republic .
Laiken Jordahl , a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity , has been on the ground at Monument Hill monitoring the construction ’ s progress .
He says that in the six months that the wall has been under construction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huge ” amount of damage , including the felling of giant saguaro cacti and attempts to wall off the San Pedro River .
“ The Trump administration is operating with total lawlessness and no regard for tribal sovereignty , ” Jordahl said .
“ This is a total desecration of Native land .
”

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Contractors hired by Customs and Border Patrol began blasting ground last week in areas of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the latest step in President Donald Trump’s $646 million plan to build a 30-foot wall along 63 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border. While the border wall construction has been controversial every step of the way, the construction in Organ Pipe Cactus is happening at Monument Hill, which contains burial grounds with cultural significance for the O’odham people, who have lived in the borderlands before it was divided between the United States and Mexico.
Ted Norris Jr., chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, just east of Organ Pipe Cactus, decried the entire project as senseless destruction of ancestral land. “The Tohono O’odham Nation is adamantly opposed to the construction of the 30-foot, fortified border wall, which would irrevocably harm cultural sites, sacred sites and the environment,” Norris said in a statement. “It is all the more tragic that billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on an empty campaign slogan that will do little to address border security challenges.”
US Customs and Border Protection confirmed the activity. “The controlled blasting is targeted and will continue intermittently for the rest of the month,” a spokesperson said in a statement. CBP says that they will have an “environmental monitor” present during construction, but Norris said that federal agencies have not consulted with the Tohono O’odham Nation before beginning construction, as federal policy requires.
Trump’s border wall represents the latest chapter of an ongoing saga between the Border Patrol and the Tohono O’odham Nation. Since the 1990s, the O’odham people’s location on the border has placed them squarely in the middle of conflicts between law enforcement, migrants, and drug cartels.
As The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux explained in his November 2019 coverage of border wall protests, life changed for the O’odham people with the arrival of a new border enforcement policy called Prevention Through Deterrence. The strategy redirected migrants away from larger cities like El Paso and San Diego, and into remote desert areas like the Tohono O’odham Nation. The people living there did what they could to assist the influx of migrants showing up on their doorstep, but then Border Patrol arrived:
In relatively short order, O’odham lands became occupied territory, crawling with Border Patrol agents, penned in with vehicle checkpoints and monitored 24/7 with the latest in surveillance technology. As the interdiction industry put down roots, an economy for getting past the border guards ballooned. On the economically struggling Tohono O’odham Nation, the allure of potentially easy money trapped more than a few people in the cycle of arrest, felony conviction, and incarceration that plays out in communities across the country, including those far from the border. In 2009, the Associated Press reported a sixtyfold increase in the “percentage of suspected drug smugglers arrested by Tohono O’odham police who are tribal members” over the preceding two decades. “The jump is due to a surge in recruiting that stems from the growing number of Border Patrol agents on the Tohono O’Odham Nation and the recent construction of steel vehicle barriers that line most of the 75 miles of international border,” the AP noted. More enforcement meant more illicit activity, which required more enforcement — it was self-sustaining cycle with real-life consequences for the O’odham people. “Growing up, we reached a point where we didn’t know we had rights,” Ortega explained.
O’odham people have been joined by environmental activists in opposing the construction at Organ Pipe for the threat it poses to cultural sites as well as natural resources. The national monument also includes Quitobaquito Springs, one of the only water sources in the desert area, which has been made vulnerable by the pumping of groundwater to mix concrete for the border wall. The nation has asked CBP to create a two-mile buffer zone around Quitobaquito, according to reporting from the Arizona Republic.
Laiken Jordahl, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, has been on the ground at Monument Hill monitoring the construction’s progress. He says that in the six months that the wall has been under construction, they’ve seen a “huge” amount of damage, including the felling of giant saguaro cacti and attempts to wall off the San Pedro River.
BLAST WARNING SIGNALS sign & dead saguaros at Organ Pipe as the Trump administration blows up a sacred mountain for the #BorderWall. pic.twitter.com/wvO5DvyDkT — Laiken Jordahl (@LaikenJordahl) February 12, 2020
“The Trump administration is operating with total lawlessness and no regard for tribal sovereignty,” Jordahl said. “This is a total desecration of Native land.”


Frontrunner

You don ’ t see a lot of political rallies like Bernie Sanders ’ election-eve extravaganza at the University of New Hampshire .
It was the first campaign event I ’ ve ever been to where a candidate ’ s staffers had to struggle to get people to stop crowdsurfing .
It was also the first political event I ’ ve been to where cops rushed the stage to confront one of the headliners .
Unusual , for sure .
But what was so unprecedented about the event on Monday at the university ’ s ice-hockey arena , officially called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOTV Rally , ” was the sea change it portended .
In front of 7,500 supporters , Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , a few people dressed up as fire emojis , and The Strokes , Sanders was making a statement not just about how well he would do in the primary here , but what kind of victory it would be .
Listen to Tim Murphy describe Bernie Sanders ’ journey to frontrunner status , from inside the roaring Sanders celebration party , on this special New Hampshire primary edition of the Mother Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he predicted .
Sanders would deliver the highest turnout in the history of the first-in-the-nation primary , and he would win on Tuesday .
And then he would just keep going down the line .
He ’ d win California on March 3 , and then the Democratic nomination , and then in November he ’ d win the whole damn thing .
Sanders was getting ahead of himself , but it ’ s not such a crazy prospect right now .
After his victory on Tuesday , Sanders has become something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would have seemed like a joke : Right now , Bernie Sanders is the closest thing the Democratic presidential race has to a frontrunner , and he ’ s done it with a campaign operation that is its own kind of statement of the country he wants to build .
Sanders ’ narrow win in New Hampshire capped one of the wildest weeks in the recent history of the Democratic party , a chaotic seven days that blew up the equilibrium of the race , put the previous frontrunner on the ropes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what up until then had been a fairly mild contest , and left the nominating system itself a broken mess .
When I first caught Sanders in Manchester on Thursday afternoon , at a campaign office off a shopping center north of downtown , he was as close to pissed as the post-heart-attack , kindler-gentler Bernie seems to get .
He , not Pete Buttigieg , was the true victor in Iowa , he declared ; he trashed the caucus process and the fallout , said that it had been “ very unfair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was looking forward to being in a place that calculates its winner by adding up votes .
Some voters I spoke to in New Hampshire were less kind .
It was a “ clusterfuck , ” I was told in West Lebanon .
Sanders supporters raised questions about the app that had failed on caucus night , alleging that perhaps Buttigieg himself was somehow involved .
And it was a kind of existential debacle .
Campaigns poured tens of millions of dollars into the state , logged thousands and thousands of man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moved there , and some candidates dropped out when they failed to gain traction .
I took a stats class in college and one day a stack of our exams was set on fire by a disgruntled grad student .
We would never truly know how well we did .
Iowa was sort of like that .
But amid all the chaos , there was a lot about Iowa that was knowable .
As he would do in New Hampshire , Sanders spent the final days of that race boasting about turnout .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in college towns and ag centers , and walk outside to address the spillover .
Sanders didn ’ t stick around for the Super Bowl at his own Super Bowl party—his “ Super Bowl…thing , ” he called it—but he stuck around long enough to say he wanted “ to create the highest turnout in the history of the Iowa caucus.
” It was a promise in service of an argument ; in turning out his voters , he would deliver up for the party and the media an irrefutable argument for his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t materialize in Iowa—it was about on par with 2016—though turnout in New Hampshire came pretty close .
So far Sanders hasn ’ t expanded the electorate quite like he ’ s promised to do , and his success in the general election ( if he makes it that far ) could hinge on his capacity to change that .
But he ’ s engendered real loyalty in his supporters that has helped him weather an up-and-down campaign .
No one raises more money from more people , and in the first two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to summon more people to do the work on the ground of getting out the vote for him .
Their work meant that while Sanders didn ’ t realize all the gains he ’ d envisioned , he didn ’ t fall off either like some of his colleagues .
Sanders set out to build and consolidate his coalition by “ centering , ” as Ocasio-Cortez likes to put it , the kinds of working people who stand to benefit from his economic agenda .
In October , I caught Sanders at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowa , the same weekend he ’ d led a series of high-profile rallies with Ocasio-Cortez—big flashy events at an arena , a college campus , and a conference center .
The man who introduced him , to a crowd of a few dozen people off a two-lane road , wasn ’ t a nationally prominent politico or a state rep or even a county commissioner .
His name was Steven Zimmer , he told the room .
And he was a gas station clerk at Hy-Vee .
The local politics website Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ field team included “ an Olive Garden server in Iowa City , a Bettendorf brewery worker , a North Liberty Hy-Vee clerk , an Iowa City cashier at Lowes , a St. Kilda ’ s bartender from Des Moines , an Ottumwa security guard and a records store worker from Sioux City ” —and relied on those staffers to organize their own networks with meetups and other events .
Sanders featured Amazon warehouse workers in advertisements and crashed a Walmart shareholder meeting to advocate on behalf of employees , who rewarded his work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the top employers of Sanders small-dollar donors .
The campaign itself , in other words , was a reflection of the message .
This was the operation that staked out a meat processing plant in Ottumwa at midnight in the hopes of persuading enough voters , some of whom were immigrants from Ethiopia* , to turn out for him at special mid-day satellite precinct—the campaign ’ s commitment to principle merging with an attention to detail .
In Waterloo , Iowa , I met a field organizer for a rural county whose previous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Target distribution center .
Now he was at a union shop—the first presidential campaign to have unionized , in fact .
Working for Sanders , he told me , was the only job he ’ d ever had where he could actually use his health insurance .
Such an ethos instills a real loyalty among his supporters .
Some of the same volunteers who descended on Iowa to knock doors for him moved on to New Hampshire a week later .
At a canvassing kickoff in the small town of Plymouth , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White Mountains , nearly everyone I spoke with was from out of state—a professor from New York City , a student from Westchester , a supermarket seafood clerk from New Jersey .
They had organized themselves , chartered buses and carpooled , and kept going up I-93 when the office in Manchester told them the city was full .
Sanders brought on stage his campaign director in the state , Shannon Jackson , to rattle off the stats .
They ’ d knocked a door every four seconds , he said .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sam Jaffe from Bushwick , who had arrived in the state after five days in Cedar Falls , Iowa , where he ’ d help deliver Black Hawk County ( but failed to convert his host ) .
“ I would never go up to New Hampshire in February to canvass for anyone else , ” he said .
He had to skip Nevada , though—he was running out of vacation days .
Sanders emerged by holding his own while the man who was supposed to beat him fell apart .
The Vermont @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , but heading into Iowa , there was a working theory that the Democratic primary might end up rather tame after all .
Biden led the polls there for months in the summer and again in the final weeks , trotted out key endorsements—Reps .
Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne , Tom and Christie Vilsack—and threw the full weight of his resources into the state .
Perhaps Biden would win Iowa , and then he would win New Hampshire , and then he would win Nevada , and of course he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would soon be over .
He ’ d break the back of Sanders campaign early on , shed the pesky Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren , and render unnecessary the whole notion of Michael Bloomberg ’ s centrist airlift .
This was a season of optimism , and it ’ s never more in abundance than when professional Democrats are trying to paper over the weaknesses of a flawed candidate .
Biden didn ’ t just lose ; he lost in a way that gave the lie to the most insistent argument he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Whatever that word meant , exactly , it was the subject of ads and stump speeches and debate monologues .
It was an effective argument , up until the moment it wasn ’ t .
Campaigns are still powered by people , and in Iowa , Biden ’ s lack of an organization was exposed .
The campaign had to scramble to bring volunteers in from out of state to manage its caucuses and knock on doors .
The Washington Post reported that some of them simply didn ’ t show up .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hit the viability threshold in precinct after precinct across the state .
Biden switched gears a bit in New Hampshire .
He started to emphasize what he would do in office a bit more , and he took some shots at Buttigieg ( whom he had largely ignored ) and Sanders .
He called the Iowa results a “ gut punch ” and promised supporters they ’ d get a feistier Biden this time around .
Nobody messes with Joe !
Still , it was tough going .
He went home midweek to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his crowds were smaller when he came back .
( Amy Klobuchar ’ s just kept growing . )
At Saturday ’ s McIntyre–Shaheen 100 Club Dinner , a party fundraising cattle call that filled an arena in downtown Manchester , Biden supporters were almost invisible , cloistered in a corner and struggling to start the simplest of cheers .
As the campaign spiraled this week , Biden ditched his election-night party in Nashua for an early trip to South Carolina .
Advisers played up the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was never supposed to be his problem .
Biden had previously said he could win both of those states , and he has built his political brand—a no-malarkey Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton—around winning back older and working-class white voters in swing states .
His performance raised the question : how exactly ?
Skepticism about Biden ’ s ability to take on Trump—his selling point for months—haunted him in New Hampshire .
I heard it and over and over as I spoke with undecided ( or recently decided ) voters in line to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before a town hall in Lebanon : “ At one point I thought he was the most likely guy to get elected , but now I don ’ t know.
” Now the campaign enters a much larger and far stranger map .
On Saturday , while the rest of the field braved the icy roads of New Hampshire , Bloomberg lurked just out of the picture .
As polls showed him gaining in the critical Super Tuesday states of California and Florida , and drawing close to even nationally with Biden among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frenzy of organizing events in Massachusetts , which votes on March 3 .
That ’ s the strangest thing about the Democratic primary so far : the idea , proposed by Bloomberg , that none of it actually matters .
The paths by which Sanders and Bloomberg could win the nomination have always depended on the scenario that ’ s played out so far .
Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar will have their say , of course , and Biden is drawing a line in the sand down the road .
But right now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two people who have never held elected office as a Democrat—a lifelong independent who has shattered small-dollar fundraising records and trashes billionaires , and a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat who has shattered spending records simply by being a billionaire .
If it holds , it would be the starkest contrast the same party has offered since the civil rights re-alignment .
You can get lost in the numbers and the war-gaming , the endless hypotheticals spiraling off an extremely small set of data points ( thanks again for that , Iowa ) .
Being a frontrunner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cracked up to—just ask Joe Biden .
But it ’ s worth taking a step back to remember that this is Bernie Freaking Sanders we ’ re talking about .
In 1969 , a few years before Sanders stood up at a local meeting of the Liberty Union Party in Plainfield , Vermont , his 2-year-old son Levi in his arms , and volunteered to run for office , he wrote an essay for a short-lived alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman .
Sanders was trying to make a go of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and he wasn ’ t very good at it .
His writings in the Freeman , in which he criticized compulsory public education and suggested that some women fantasize about rape , have been a headache for him as he ’ s risen in national politics .
He was in a weird place , personally and professionally , and the focus of his politics has , truly for everyone ’ s good , moved from the psychoanalytic to the structural .
But there was a thread in his writing back then that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a picture of change .
“ The Revolution is coming and it is a very beautiful revolution , ” he wrote .
“ The revolution comes when young people throughout the world take control of their own lives and when people everywhere begin to look each other in the eyes and say hello , without fear .
This is the revolution , this is the strength , and with this behind us no politician or general will ever stop us .
We shall win !
” A lot has changed in four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but this vision hasn ’ t .
In New Hampshire , as in Iowa , his ads feature a line from his speech in New York City last October , his first rally since suffering a heart attack—what his supporters call the # BerniesBack speech .
“ Take a look around you , ” he said , “ and find someone you don ’ t know , ” and then ask yourself : “ Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you ’ re willing to fight for yourself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Durham , it was an idea invoked by the closest thing he has to proof of concept , Ocasio-Cortez , whose rapid ascent reflects the growth and reinvention of the movement over the past four years , from a coalition doomed by its demographics ( or at least by perceptions of its demographics ) to the No .
1 choice of non-white Democrats , according to a Monmouth University poll .
While thousands watched in Durham , far more tuned into the livestream of the event , which the campaign had turned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the names of contributors as their dollars rolled in— $ 11 from Juliette P. , $ 12 from Adam C. , $ 3 from Tse P. The show wrapped , an hour later , with an appropriate dose of chaos .
The Strokes ’ frontman , Julian Casablancas , was upset that the second half of their show had played out with the overhead lights of the arena turned on .
This , he told the crowd , was the police ’ s fault , and so as the fundraising ticker crept closer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the familiar chords of “ New York City Cops.
” “ Holy crap they ’ re doing it , ” someone wrote in the live chat .
One last crowdsurfer rode the wave and rolled onto the stage , dropping in front of Casablancas , and when a security guard stepped in to haul the man off , Casablancas threw up his hands .
“ Come up on the stage , y ’ all !
” The front row obliged—the barriers holding them back had been removed in an unsuccessful bid to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the crowd and the band were as one , the people had taken control , the establishment had been overthrown .
As they approached the final chorus there was a cop at Casablancas ’ side , gesturing , trying to get his attention , but the band just kept playing , until the last chord hit and he turned and walked off .
This was the revolution , and for the moment , at least , no one could stop it .
*Correction : This story originally misidentified which country workers in @ @ @ @ @

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You don’t see a lot of political rallies like Bernie Sanders’ election-eve extravaganza at the University of New Hampshire. It was the first campaign event I’ve ever been to where a candidate’s staffers had to struggle to get people to stop crowdsurfing. It was also the first political event I’ve been to where cops rushed the stage to confront one of the headliners.
Unusual, for sure. But what was so unprecedented about the event on Monday at the university’s ice-hockey arena, officially called the “Bernie Beats Trump Concert and GOTV Rally,” was the sea change it portended. In front of 7,500 supporters, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a few people dressed up as fire emojis, and The Strokes, Sanders was making a statement not just about how well he would do in the primary here, but what kind of victory it would be.
Listen to Tim Murphy describe Bernie Sanders’ journey to frontrunner status, from inside the roaring Sanders celebration party, on this special New Hampshire primary edition of the Mother Jones Podcast:
Listen to the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast: Subscribe using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
New Hampshire would make history, he predicted. Sanders would deliver the highest turnout in the history of the first-in-the-nation primary, and he would win on Tuesday. And then he would just keep going down the line. He’d win California on March 3, and then the Democratic nomination, and then in November he’d win the whole damn thing. Sanders was getting ahead of himself, but it’s not such a crazy prospect right now. After his victory on Tuesday, Sanders has become something that for most of his political career would have seemed like a joke: Right now, Bernie Sanders is the closest thing the Democratic presidential race has to a frontrunner, and he’s done it with a campaign operation that is its own kind of statement of the country he wants to build.
Sanders’ narrow win in New Hampshire capped one of the wildest weeks in the recent history of the Democratic party, a chaotic seven days that blew up the equilibrium of the race, put the previous frontrunner on the ropes, injected fresh paranoia and ill will into what up until then had been a fairly mild contest, and left the nominating system itself a broken mess.
When I first caught Sanders in Manchester on Thursday afternoon, at a campaign office off a shopping center north of downtown, he was as close to pissed as the post-heart-attack, kindler-gentler Bernie seems to get. He, not Pete Buttigieg, was the true victor in Iowa, he declared; he trashed the caucus process and the fallout, said that it had been “very unfair” to him personally, and that he was looking forward to being in a place that calculates its winner by adding up votes.
Some voters I spoke to in New Hampshire were less kind. It was a “clusterfuck,” I was told in West Lebanon. Sanders supporters raised questions about the app that had failed on caucus night, alleging that perhaps Buttigieg himself was somehow involved.
And it was a kind of existential debacle. Campaigns poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, logged thousands and thousands of man hours organizing there. Some candidates fucking moved there, and some candidates dropped out when they failed to gain traction. I took a stats class in college and one day a stack of our exams was set on fire by a disgruntled grad student. We would never truly know how well we did. Iowa was sort of like that.
But amid all the chaos, there was a lot about Iowa that was knowable. As he would do in New Hampshire, Sanders spent the final days of that race boasting about turnout. He would go into claustrophobic campaign offices in college towns and ag centers, and walk outside to address the spillover. Sanders didn’t stick around for the Super Bowl at his own Super Bowl party—his “Super Bowl…thing,” he called it—but he stuck around long enough to say he wanted “to create the highest turnout in the history of the Iowa caucus.” It was a promise in service of an argument; in turning out his voters, he would deliver up for the party and the media an irrefutable argument for his own electability.
That turnout didn’t materialize in Iowa—it was about on par with 2016—though turnout in New Hampshire came pretty close. So far Sanders hasn’t expanded the electorate quite like he’s promised to do, and his success in the general election (if he makes it that far) could hinge on his capacity to change that. But he’s engendered real loyalty in his supporters that has helped him weather an up-and-down campaign. No one raises more money from more people, and in the first two states, no one has been able to summon more people to do the work on the ground of getting out the vote for him. Their work meant that while Sanders didn’t realize all the gains he’d envisioned, he didn’t fall off either like some of his colleagues.
Sanders set out to build and consolidate his coalition by “centering,” as Ocasio-Cortez likes to put it, the kinds of working people who stand to benefit from his economic agenda. In October, I caught Sanders at a youth enrichment center outside Charles City, Iowa, the same weekend he’d led a series of high-profile rallies with Ocasio-Cortez—big flashy events at an arena, a college campus, and a conference center. The man who introduced him, to a crowd of a few dozen people off a two-lane road, wasn’t a nationally prominent politico or a state rep or even a county commissioner. His name was Steven Zimmer, he told the room. And he was a gas station clerk at Hy-Vee.
The local politics website Iowa Starting Line reported that Sanders’ Iowa field team included “an Olive Garden server in Iowa City, a Bettendorf brewery worker, a North Liberty Hy-Vee clerk, an Iowa City cashier at Lowes, a St. Kilda’s bartender from Des Moines, an Ottumwa security guard and a records store worker from Sioux City”—and relied on those staffers to organize their own networks with meetups and other events. Sanders featured Amazon warehouse workers in advertisements and crashed a Walmart shareholder meeting to advocate on behalf of employees, who rewarded his work in their own way—Walmart is one of the top employers of Sanders small-dollar donors.
The campaign itself, in other words, was a reflection of the message. This was the operation that staked out a meat processing plant in Ottumwa at midnight in the hopes of persuading enough voters, some of whom were immigrants from Ethiopia*, to turn out for him at special mid-day satellite precinct—the campaign’s commitment to principle merging with an attention to detail. In Waterloo, Iowa, I met a field organizer for a rural county whose previous job had been loading tractor trailers at a Target distribution center. Now he was at a union shop—the first presidential campaign to have unionized, in fact. Working for Sanders, he told me, was the only job he’d ever had where he could actually use his health insurance.
Such an ethos instills a real loyalty among his supporters. Some of the same volunteers who descended on Iowa to knock doors for him moved on to New Hampshire a week later. At a canvassing kickoff in the small town of Plymouth, an hour north of Manchester in the White Mountains, nearly everyone I spoke with was from out of state—a professor from New York City, a student from Westchester, a supermarket seafood clerk from New Jersey. They had organized themselves, chartered buses and carpooled, and kept going up I-93 when the office in Manchester told them the city was full. Sanders brought on stage his campaign director in the state, Shannon Jackson, to rattle off the stats. They’d knocked a door every four seconds, he said.
In the back of the room I met Sam Jaffe from Bushwick, who had arrived in the state after five days in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where he’d help deliver Black Hawk County (but failed to convert his host).
“I would never go up to New Hampshire in February to canvass for anyone else,” he said.
He had to skip Nevada, though—he was running out of vacation days.
Sanders emerged by holding his own while the man who was supposed to beat him fell apart. The Vermont senator never subscribed to this view, of course, but heading into Iowa, there was a working theory that the Democratic primary might end up rather tame after all. Biden led the polls there for months in the summer and again in the final weeks, trotted out key endorsements—Reps. Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne, Tom and Christie Vilsack—and threw the full weight of his resources into the state. Perhaps Biden would win Iowa, and then he would win New Hampshire, and then he would win Nevada, and of course he would win South Carolina, and then it would soon be over. He’d break the back of Sanders campaign early on, shed the pesky Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, and render unnecessary the whole notion of Michael Bloomberg’s centrist airlift. This was a season of optimism, and it’s never more in abundance than when professional Democrats are trying to paper over the weaknesses of a flawed candidate.
Alas.
Biden didn’t just lose; he lost in a way that gave the lie to the most insistent argument he’d offered for his candidacy—electability. Whatever that word meant, exactly, it was the subject of ads and stump speeches and debate monologues. It was an effective argument, up until the moment it wasn’t. Campaigns are still powered by people, and in Iowa, Biden’s lack of an organization was exposed. The campaign had to scramble to bring volunteers in from out of state to manage its caucuses and knock on doors. The Washington Post reported that some of them simply didn’t show up. On caucus night, Biden failed to hit the viability threshold in precinct after precinct across the state.
Biden switched gears a bit in New Hampshire. He started to emphasize what he would do in office a bit more, and he took some shots at Buttigieg (whom he had largely ignored) and Sanders. He called the Iowa results a “gut punch” and promised supporters they’d get a feistier Biden this time around. Nobody messes with Joe! Still, it was tough going. He went home midweek to sleep in his own bed, and his crowds were smaller when he came back. (Amy Klobuchar’s just kept growing.) At Saturday’s McIntyre–Shaheen 100 Club Dinner, a party fundraising cattle call that filled an arena in downtown Manchester, Biden supporters were almost invisible, cloistered in a corner and struggling to start the simplest of cheers.
As the campaign spiraled this week, Biden ditched his election-night party in Nashua for an early trip to South Carolina. Advisers played up the whiteness of Iowa and New Hampshire in explaining away their defeat. But that was never supposed to be his problem. Biden had previously said he could win both of those states, and he has built his political brand—a no-malarkey Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton—around winning back older and working-class white voters in swing states. His performance raised the question: how exactly?
Skepticism about Biden’s ability to take on Trump—his selling point for months—haunted him in New Hampshire. I heard it and over and over as I spoke with undecided (or recently decided) voters in line to hear Buttigieg. As one voter told me before a town hall in Lebanon: “At one point I thought he was the most likely guy to get elected, but now I don’t know.”
Now the campaign enters a much larger and far stranger map. On Saturday, while the rest of the field braved the icy roads of New Hampshire, Bloomberg lurked just out of the picture. As polls showed him gaining in the critical Super Tuesday states of California and Florida, and drawing close to even nationally with Biden among African-American voters, his campaign held a frenzy of organizing events in Massachusetts, which votes on March 3. That’s the strangest thing about the Democratic primary so far: the idea, proposed by Bloomberg, that none of it actually matters.
The paths by which Sanders and Bloomberg could win the nomination have always depended on the scenario that’s played out so far. Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar will have their say, of course, and Biden is drawing a line in the sand down the road. But right now it’s a collision course between two people who have never held elected office as a Democrat—a lifelong independent who has shattered small-dollar fundraising records and trashes billionaires, and a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat who has shattered spending records simply by being a billionaire. If it holds, it would be the starkest contrast the same party has offered since the civil rights re-alignment.
In Waterloo, Iowa, I met a field organizer for a rural county whose previous job had been loading tractor trailers at a Target distribution center. Now he was at a union shop—the first presidential campaign to have unionized. Working for Sanders, he said, was the only job he’d ever had where he could use his health insurance.
You can get lost in the numbers and the war-gaming, the endless hypotheticals spiraling off an extremely small set of data points (thanks again for that, Iowa). Being a frontrunner isn’t always what it’s cracked up to—just ask Joe Biden. But it’s worth taking a step back to remember that this is Bernie Freaking Sanders we’re talking about.
In 1969, a few years before Sanders stood up at a local meeting of the Liberty Union Party in Plainfield, Vermont, his 2-year-old son Levi in his arms, and volunteered to run for office, he wrote an essay for a short-lived alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman. Sanders was trying to make a go of it as a freelance writer at the time, and he wasn’t very good at it. His writings in the Freeman, in which he criticized compulsory public education and suggested that some women fantasize about rape, have been a headache for him as he’s risen in national politics. He was in a weird place, personally and professionally, and the focus of his politics has, truly for everyone’s good, moved from the psychoanalytic to the structural. But there was a thread in his writing back then that sounds familiar today. He was painting a picture of change.
“The Revolution is coming and it is a very beautiful revolution,” he wrote.
“The revolution comes when young people throughout the world take control of their own lives and when people everywhere begin to look each other in the eyes and say hello, without fear. This is the revolution, this is the strength, and with this behind us no politician or general will ever stop us. We shall win!”
A lot has changed in four years, to say nothing of 51, but this vision hasn’t. In New Hampshire, as in Iowa, his ads feature a line from his speech in New York City last October, his first rally since suffering a heart attack—what his supporters call the #BerniesBack speech. “Take a look around you,” he said, “and find someone you don’t know,” and then ask yourself: “Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?”
On stage at the rally in Durham, it was an idea invoked by the closest thing he has to proof of concept, Ocasio-Cortez, whose rapid ascent reflects the growth and reinvention of the movement over the past four years, from a coalition doomed by its demographics (or at least by perceptions of its demographics) to the No. 1 choice of non-white Democrats, according to a Monmouth University poll. While thousands watched in Durham, far more tuned into the livestream of the event, which the campaign had turned into a telethon of sorts, posting the names of contributors as their dollars rolled in—$11 from Juliette P., $12 from Adam C., $3 from Tse P.
The show wrapped, an hour later, with an appropriate dose of chaos. The Strokes’ frontman, Julian Casablancas, was upset that the second half of their show had played out with the overhead lights of the arena turned on. This, he told the crowd, was the police’s fault, and so as the fundraising ticker crept closer to the target, the band broke into the familiar chords of “New York City Cops.” “Holy crap they’re doing it,” someone wrote in the live chat.
One last crowdsurfer rode the wave and rolled onto the stage, dropping in front of Casablancas, and when a security guard stepped in to haul the man off, Casablancas threw up his hands.
“Come up on the stage, y’all!”
The front row obliged—the barriers holding them back had been removed in an unsuccessful bid to stop the crowdsurfing—and for the final minutes, the crowd and the band were as one, the people had taken control, the establishment had been overthrown. As they approached the final chorus there was a cop at Casablancas’ side, gesturing, trying to get his attention, but the band just kept playing, until the last chord hit and he turned and walked off. This was the revolution, and for the moment, at least, no one could stop it.
*Correction: This story originally misidentified which country workers in Ottumwa had emigrated from.


motherjones--2020-02-12--Trump Congratulates Barr After Intervention in Stone Sentencing

President Donald Trump praised Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday for intervening to reduce Roger Stone ’ s sentencing recommendation , a move that came after Trump complained on Twitter that the initial recommendation , put forward by the Justice Department ’ s own career prosecutors , had been too severe against his longtime political adviser .
Four prosecutors who had worked on the Stone case have since withdrawn .
It was the latest in an extraordinary series of fast-moving developments surrounding Stone ’ s sentencing this week for obstructing a congressional investigation .
The burgeoning scandal has since renewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to use the Justice Department to bend to Trump ’ s various political demands , as new reports show that Barr has seized control over a number of legal matters significant to the president .
On Monday , career prosecutors at the department released a filing memo recommending a sentence of up to nine years for Stone ’ s crimes that included making false statements to Congress , obstruction of justice , and witness tampering .
Hours after the memo ’ s release , Trump tweeted his displeasure .
“ This is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wrote .
“ The real crimes were on the other side , as nothing happens to them .
Can not allow this miscarriage of justice !
” Sixteen hours later , the Justice Department released a new filing calling its previous recommendation “ excessive , ” and four prosecutors who had worked on the case abruptly withdrew .
But Trump didn ’ t stop there .
Amid the shock over Barr ’ s intervention , the president on Tuesday attacked the federal judge who had presided over his former campaign manager Paul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later in the night to accuse the four prosecutors of political bias .
Democrats are now demanding an investigation into the Justice Department .

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President Donald Trump praised Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday for intervening to reduce Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation, a move that came after Trump complained on Twitter that the initial recommendation, put forward by the Justice Department’s own career prosecutors, had been too severe against his longtime political adviser.
Four prosecutors who had worked on the Stone case have since withdrawn.
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020
It was the latest in an extraordinary series of fast-moving developments surrounding Stone’s sentencing this week for obstructing a congressional investigation. The burgeoning scandal has since renewed questions over Barr’s apparent willingness to use the Justice Department to bend to Trump’s various political demands, as new reports show that Barr has seized control over a number of legal matters significant to the president.
On Monday, career prosecutors at the department released a filing memo recommending a sentence of up to nine years for Stone’s crimes that included making false statements to Congress, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. Hours after the memo’s release, Trump tweeted his displeasure. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” he wrote. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Sixteen hours later, the Justice Department released a new filing calling its previous recommendation “excessive,” and four prosecutors who had worked on the case abruptly withdrew.
But Trump didn’t stop there. Amid the shock over Barr’s intervention, the president on Tuesday attacked the federal judge who had presided over his former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s case before moving on later in the night to accuse the four prosecutors of political bias.
Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people?) who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started? 13 Angry Democrats? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020
Do you realize intimidating judges is the behavior of failed-state fascists? Just asking! https://t.co/kcEzirsGUF — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 12, 2020
The impeachment sequel is really coming together quickly. https://t.co/O9m9SIEG0u — Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 12, 2020
Democrats are now demanding an investigation into the Justice Department.


motherjones--2020-02-13--Why Did William Barr Pick Pittsburgh to be Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine Conduit?

The top federal prosecutor in western Pennsylvania was thrust into the news on Monday when Attorney General William Barr confirmed to reporters that the Department of Justice had set up an “ intake process in the field ” to receive information related to Ukraine , former Vice President Joe Biden , and his son Hunter , that has been gathered by Rudy Giuliani .
While the Washington Post has reported that Giuliani , a private lawyer to President Trump , has already used Pittsburgh-based US Attorney Scott W. Brady ’ s office to communicate with federal law enforcement officials , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comment on any aspect of the Giuliani matter , refusing to answer questions about how the office was selected for the role , whether any investigation is underway , or how it will navigate the deep political waters it finds itself swimming through during a contentious election year in the perennial swing state .
Both Giuliani and the FBI field office in Pittsburgh also declined to comment .
Kerri Kupec , a spokesperson for Barr , did not respond to a request for comment .
News of Brady ’ s new assignment was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department reversed a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone , a Trump ally found guilty on seven counts related to lying to Congress , triggering a string of prosecutors to resign from the case .
“ Attorney General Barr is disgracing our rule of law by diverting law enforcement resources away from legitimate law enforcement to investigate debunked conspiracy theories , ” Sen. Bob Casey , ( D-Pa. ) told Mother Jones when asked about the Pittsburgh arrangement .
“ After the Senate impeachment trial , some of my Republican colleagues said the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his behavior .
Clearly , he has done neither.
” David Laufman , a former CIA analyst and federal prosecutor who most recently served under Trump as the top counterintelligence official at the DOJ , tweeted Monday that “ there is nothing normal about the Attorney General creating a special ‘ intake process in the field ’ for info relating to claims advancing a White House political narrative—particularly for someone reportedly under criminal investigation.
” Rep. Jerry Nadler ( D-N.Y. ) , chair of the House Judiciary Committee , sent a letter to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the arrangement , describing the move as a “ significant departure ” from traditional channels of gathering information and launching investigations .
Nadler ’ s letter pointed out the apparent contradiction between last September , when the DOJ claimed Barr had not communicated with Giuliani on Ukraine , and Barr ’ s acknowledgement of the process on Monday .
The letter also referenced claims by Lev Parnas , a Giuliani associate indicted by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York on campaign finance violations , that implicate Barr in the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Biden family .
Nadler asked Barr to respond to a series of questions about the “ intake process ” by February 25 .
On Wednesday , Democrats released a letter confirming that Barr will testify before the committee on March 31 .
“ In your tenure as Attorney General , you have engaged in a pattern of conduct in legal matters relating to the President that raises significant concerns for this committee , ” the letter read , citing the Pittsburgh arrangement as one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discuss .
Before his confirmation as US Attorney in December 2017 , Brady was the head of litigation for Federated Hermes , a Pittsburgh-based investment firm .
He ’ d also taught constitutional law at the University of Pittsburgh and served as an assistant US attorney in Pittsburgh from 2004 to 2010 .
Prior to that role , he clerked for Thomas Hardiman , a federal appeals court judge who was reportedly on Trump ’ s short list for the Supreme Court ahead of his selection of Brett Kavanaugh .
Brady has donated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican politicians over the years according to federal election records , with $ 5,200 going to Sen. Ben Sasse , the Nebraska Republican who once drew the ire of Trump supporters by trying get someone else to run as the party ’ s nominee in 2016 .
When asked about Barr ’ s arrangement with Brady , a spokesperson for Sasse confirmed to Mother Jones that the two are friends dating back to college , “ but the first he heard about it was when the news broke.
” In September 2019 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US Attorneys , to the Attorney General Advisory Committee , a body that regularly gathers in Washington to consult with the attorney general on policy and management issues .
John Huber , the US Attorney in Utah who , after pressure from Trump , was tasked by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions with reviewing the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation , served on the committee into 2019 .
The Post reported in early January that that investigation didn ’ t turn anything up and was quietly dropped .
The “ intake process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from traditional norms meant to protect the appearance of independence between the DOJ and the White House .
Going back to the Watergate era there have been concerns about federal law enforcement , which is formally part of the executive branch , being deployed to benefit the president ’ s , or his party ’ s , political ends .
After Richard Nixon , under President Jimmy Carter , Attorney General Griffin Bell worked to install procedures to insulate the DOJ from White House political pressures .
Those restrictions were relaxed under President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ infamous 2006 firing of seven US attorneys for political reasons at the hands of Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez .
In 2009 , Attorney General Eric Holder issued a new set of policies attempting to reinstitute stricter guidelines for contact between the White House and the DOJ regarding pending or potential cases , writing that it “ is imperative that the Department ’ s investigatory and prosecutorial powers be exercised free from partisan consideration.
” Concerns about the erosion of those lines flared once again in May 2019 when Sen. Kamala @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during Senate testimony whether the president or anyone at the White House asked or suggested that he open an investigation into anyone .
Barr looked to the ceiling , stammered , and said he was “ trying to grapple with the word ‘ suggest . '
” He said , “ There have been discussions of matters out there…they have not asked me to open an investigation.
” When pressed on whether investigations had been “ hinted ” or “ inferred , ” Barr said , “ I don ’ t know.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process was routed through Brady .
The Pittsburgh-based US Attorney ’ s office is known for its work prosecuting high-profile cybercrime cases , particularly under former US Attorney David Hickton , who resigned after the 2016 election .
Barbara McQuade , a law professor at the University of Michigan and the former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan , said Wednesday that the cyber expertise Hickton helped establish in Pittsburgh—complemented by a similar skill set in the city ’ s FBI ’ s field office—could be behind the office ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seem to be more of a case of public corruption .
But she speculated that the true value of the arrangement could be that it ’ s a way for Barr to look like he ’ s “ appeasing Trump a little bit , but not really doing anything too unusual , and getting it out of DC so he doesn ’ t have to deal with Giuliani directly.
” “ ‘ If Rudy ’ s got information , you call Pittsburgh , ' ” McQuade said , describing the setup .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything with that information.
” While there ’ s likely a channel set up to share information more widely , she says “ it may just be a place for this information to go and die.
” “ I imagine when he got the call , ” McQuade says of Brady , “ he was not happy to receive it .
I ’ m sure there are thousands of other cases he ’ d rather be spending his time on than this .
It ’ s fraught with peril , and political.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department of Justice has outsourced politically sensitive investigations to US attorneys outside of DC .
Beyond former Attorney General Jeff Sessions ’ tasking of Huber to reexamine the FBI ’ s investigation into alleged corruption within the Clinton Foundation , in 2019 , Barr assigned John Durham , the US attorney in Connecticut , to investigate the origins of the FBI ’ s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections .
His findings have yet to be released .
“ I look forward to Bull Durham ’ s report , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the one I look forward to .
”

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The top federal prosecutor in western Pennsylvania was thrust into the news on Monday when Attorney General William Barr confirmed to reporters that the Department of Justice had set up an “intake process in the field” to receive information related to Ukraine, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, that has been gathered by Rudy Giuliani. While the Washington Post has reported that Giuliani, a private lawyer to President Trump, has already used Pittsburgh-based US Attorney Scott W. Brady’s office to communicate with federal law enforcement officials, a spokesperson for the prosecutor declined to comment on any aspect of the Giuliani matter, refusing to answer questions about how the office was selected for the role, whether any investigation is underway, or how it will navigate the deep political waters it finds itself swimming through during a contentious election year in the perennial swing state.
“Attorney General Barr is disgracing our rule of law by diverting law enforcement resources.”
Both Giuliani and the FBI field office in Pittsburgh also declined to comment. Kerri Kupec, a spokesperson for Barr, did not respond to a request for comment. News of Brady’s new assignment was quickly overshadowed on Tuesday when the Justice Department reversed a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a Trump ally found guilty on seven counts related to lying to Congress, triggering a string of prosecutors to resign from the case.
“Attorney General Barr is disgracing our rule of law by diverting law enforcement resources away from legitimate law enforcement to investigate debunked conspiracy theories,” Sen. Bob Casey, (D-Pa.) told Mother Jones when asked about the Pittsburgh arrangement. “After the Senate impeachment trial, some of my Republican colleagues said the president had learned his lesson and would change his behavior. Clearly, he has done neither.”
David Laufman, a former CIA analyst and federal prosecutor who most recently served under Trump as the top counterintelligence official at the DOJ, tweeted Monday that “there is nothing normal about the Attorney General creating a special ‘intake process in the field’ for info relating to claims advancing a White House political narrative—particularly for someone reportedly under criminal investigation.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Barr Monday expressing “serious concerns” about the arrangement, describing the move as a “significant departure” from traditional channels of gathering information and launching investigations. Nadler’s letter pointed out the apparent contradiction between last September, when the DOJ claimed Barr had not communicated with Giuliani on Ukraine, and Barr’s acknowledgement of the process on Monday. The letter also referenced claims by Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate indicted by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York on campaign finance violations, that implicate Barr in the president’s scheme to get the government of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Biden family. Nadler asked Barr to respond to a series of questions about the “intake process” by February 25.
On Wednesday, Democrats released a letter confirming that Barr will testify before the committee on March 31. “In your tenure as Attorney General, you have engaged in a pattern of conduct in legal matters relating to the President that raises significant concerns for this committee,” the letter read, citing the Pittsburgh arrangement as one of the key concerns the members wished to discuss.
Before his confirmation as US Attorney in December 2017, Brady was the head of litigation for Federated Hermes, a Pittsburgh-based investment firm. He’d also taught constitutional law at the University of Pittsburgh and served as an assistant US attorney in Pittsburgh from 2004 to 2010. Prior to that role, he clerked for Thomas Hardiman, a federal appeals court judge who was reportedly on Trump’s short list for the Supreme Court ahead of his selection of Brett Kavanaugh.
“I’m sure there are thousands of other cases he’d rather be spending his time on.”
Brady has donated a little less than $10,000 to Republican politicians over the years according to federal election records, with $5,200 going to Sen. Ben Sasse, the Nebraska Republican who once drew the ire of Trump supporters by trying get someone else to run as the party’s nominee in 2016. When asked about Barr’s arrangement with Brady, a spokesperson for Sasse confirmed to Mother Jones that the two are friends dating back to college, “but the first he heard about it was when the news broke.”
In September 2019, Barr appointed Brady along with eight other US Attorneys, to the Attorney General Advisory Committee, a body that regularly gathers in Washington to consult with the attorney general on policy and management issues. John Huber, the US Attorney in Utah who, after pressure from Trump, was tasked by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions with reviewing the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation, served on the committee into 2019. The Post reported in early January that that investigation didn’t turn anything up and was quietly dropped.
The “intake process” arrangement is just the latest deviation from traditional norms meant to protect the appearance of independence between the DOJ and the White House. Going back to the Watergate era there have been concerns about federal law enforcement, which is formally part of the executive branch, being deployed to benefit the president’s, or his party’s, political ends. After Richard Nixon, under President Jimmy Carter, Attorney General Griffin Bell worked to install procedures to insulate the DOJ from White House political pressures. Those restrictions were relaxed under President George W. Bush, leading to the infamous 2006 firing of seven US attorneys for political reasons at the hands of Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a new set of policies attempting to reinstitute stricter guidelines for contact between the White House and the DOJ regarding pending or potential cases, writing that it “is imperative that the Department’s investigatory and prosecutorial powers be exercised free from partisan consideration.”
Concerns about the erosion of those lines flared once again in May 2019 when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) famously asked Barr during Senate testimony whether the president or anyone at the White House asked or suggested that he open an investigation into anyone. Barr looked to the ceiling, stammered, and said he was “trying to grapple with the word ‘suggest.'” He said, “There have been discussions of matters out there…they have not asked me to open an investigation.” When pressed on whether investigations had been “hinted” or “inferred,” Barr said, “I don’t know.”
It’s unclear why the intake process was routed through Brady. The Pittsburgh-based US Attorney’s office is known for its work prosecuting high-profile cybercrime cases, particularly under former US Attorney David Hickton, who resigned after the 2016 election. Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and the former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said Wednesday that the cyber expertise Hickton helped establish in Pittsburgh—complemented by a similar skill set in the city’s FBI’s field office—could be behind the office’s selection, although the Biden affair would seem to be more of a case of public corruption.
But she speculated that the true value of the arrangement could be that it’s a way for Barr to look like he’s “appeasing Trump a little bit, but not really doing anything too unusual, and getting it out of DC so he doesn’t have to deal with Giuliani directly.”
“‘If Rudy’s got information, you call Pittsburgh,'” McQuade said, describing the setup. “They may or may not even do anything with that information.” While there’s likely a channel set up to share information more widely, she says “it may just be a place for this information to go and die.”
“I imagine when he got the call,” McQuade says of Brady, “he was not happy to receive it. I’m sure there are thousands of other cases he’d rather be spending his time on than this. It’s fraught with peril, and political.”
This is not the first time the Department of Justice has outsourced politically sensitive investigations to US attorneys outside of DC. Beyond former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ tasking of Huber to reexamine the FBI’s investigation into alleged corruption within the Clinton Foundation, in 2019, Barr assigned John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections. His findings have yet to be released.
“I look forward to Bull Durham’s report,” Trump has said. “That’s the one I look forward to.”