BIDENOMICS Going Globally. Dem Progressive Suffered Lack of Impromptu, Relevance

Today (Sept 8th) is Bernis Sanders' birthday

Mitch McConnell: 81 years old. Nancy Pelosi: 83 years old. Donald Trump: 77 years old. Joe Biden: 80 years old. Bernie Sanders: 82 years old (today is his birthday, September 8th, 4 days from now). Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein: 90 years old.

4 Days ago, Hours ago, “I think if he runs on a strong progressive agenda he's not only going to win, he's going to win by a strong vote," Sen. Bernie Sanders said on “Face The Nation” about President Biden, a solid sign that Sanders may not run for Primary Democrat 2024. With lead until 40-50 percent if compared with another GOP candidate, 2024 Election likely Biden v Trump again. 

The central error that most US pundits have made since 2015—and continue to make—is they analyze Trump through the prism of US politics. None of this makes sense unless you understand how authoritarian-style cults of personality work. That’s what this is. WSJ Latest Poll, Trump is the top choice of 59% of GOP primary voters, up 11 percentage points since April, when the Journal tested a slightly different field of potential and declared candidates. Also WSJ Latest Poll, although the candidates are only three years apart, 73% of voters said they feel Biden is too old to seek a second term, compared with 47% of voters who said the same of Trump. Two-thirds of Democrats said Biden was too old to run again.

Trump has paid Fabrizio Lee nearly $600,000 THIS YEAR for polling and travel expenses per FEC filings. Fabrizio Lee is responsible for the WSJ poll all over the major networks today.

Although WSJ-Fabrizio poll “lookalike” fabricated, Democrats wake up to red flags over Biden’s latest poll numbers.

Billionaire Leon G Cooperman was on the verge of tears while speaking about his concern about "the lefties" and their progressive outlook on capitalism.

"I've lived the American dream. I'm trying to convince people like [Senators] Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)—don't move away from capitalism. Capitalism is the best system," Cooperman said on CNBC's Squawk Box on Friday while holding back tears. "I get choked up when I talk about it because basically, my father came to America at the age of 12 as a plumber's apprentice. No education."

"I went to public school in the Bronx, high school in the Bronx, college in the Bronx. I started my career in Wall Street the day after I got my MBA from Columbia. I had no money. I couldn't afford a vacation. I made a lot of money. I'm giving it all back," Cooperman said before co-anchor Rebecca Quick stepped in as he choked up.

Since Senator Warren proposed a billionaire tax during her 2020 presidential campaign, Cooperman has been a vocal critic of similar proposals, suggesting that that making billionaires pay higher taxes would be unconstitutional and used his own fortune to illustrate what the implications of a wealth tax would be.

A Wall Street mogul, Cooperman built up Goldman Sachs' asset management division over his 25-year tenure with the investment bank before going on to manage his own hedge fund, Omega Advisors, which manages $3.3 billion in assets.

Newsweek reached out to Warren, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for comment.

Although Cooperman opposes billionaire taxes, the measure is supported by the majority of Americans. A Gallup poll from August 2022 found that 52 percent of Americans think the government should redistribute wealth through heavy taxes on the rich. Numbers that confirm earlier surveys, like a September 2021 Morning Consult poll that found 74 percent agreed with the statement, "The wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes," and a Marist poll from July 2019 that showed 62 percent of Americans saying a higher tax rate on income above $1 million is a good idea.

Democrats woke up Thursday to yet another poll showing a large percentage of voters are concerned about President Biden’s age and data that showed most GOP primary candidates fared well in hypothetical match-ups with Biden.

A CNN poll contained numerous red flags for Biden and Democrats. It found 46 percent of registered voters said any Republican presidential nominee would be better than Biden in next year’s election, and 49 percent said Biden’s age was their biggest concern about him as a candidate in 2024.

Biden’s overall approval rating in the poll was 39 percent, and just 74 percent among Democrats.

And in hypothetical head-to-heads, Biden is neck and neck with most of his potential Republican opponents, including former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) led Biden by 6 points in a theoretical general election match-up between the two, according to the CNN poll.

Some Democrats and Biden allies were quick to argue that it’s far too early in the 2024 cycle to put much stock in head-to-head matchups, that Biden has a strong track record to run on and that his campaign is already using resources to mobilize voters and run ads in battleground states.

But the reality is that the CNN poll is only the latest in a string of troubling surveys that show Biden’s approval remains stagnant and his age continues to be a concern for voters.

“These numbers are not good, and they’re consistent with most of the other polling that we’ve seen. The country is in a sour mood. He’s not getting credit for what I think is a fairly substantial list of achievements,” David Axelrod, a former Obama White House and campaign strategist, said on CNN. 

“And the reality is, if this were a referendum, he would be in deep, deep trouble,” he added. “There’s an expression in sports that, you know, sometimes you have to win ugly. And I think that’s what lies ahead here for this president and this White House.”

While a number of Democratic strategists and pollsters said they wouldn’t put much stock in the CNN poll alone, it is part of a larger trend of recent surveys that have shown voters are concerned about Biden’s age. The president is 80, and he would be 86 at the end of a potential second term.

An Associated Press/NORC poll also conducted in late August found that 77 percent of Americans and 69 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old for a second term, though 82 percent of Democrats said they would probably or definitely support him as the party’s nominee.

Vice President Harris, who this week traveled to Indonesia, sat for interviews with The Associated Press and CBS News. In both cases, she was asked about her readiness to serve as president, a nod to the persistent storyline about Biden’s age and ability to serve out a second term.

Harris said she is prepared to serve as commander in chief “if necessary,” but added, “Joe Biden is going to be fine.” 

“Let me tell you something: I work with Joe Biden every day,” Harris told CBS. “The work that under Joe Biden’s leadership our administration has accomplished is transformative. I think the American people most of all want a leader who actually gets things done.”

The CNN poll found that while roughly two-thirds of Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents want someone other than Biden as their nominee, the vast majority could not name a specific alternative, underscoring the reality that Biden is the party’s standard-bearer heading into the 2024 cycle.

Only a few fringe candidates are pursuing primary challenges against the president, and more high-profile individuals who seemed to flirt with entering the race, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), have since said they have no plans to launch a campaign, further solidifying Biden as the party’s nominee.

Even with his path cleared of a serious challenger, Democrats believe the White House and the president’s campaign will have to formulate a response to questions about his age, which show no signs of going away.

Jim Kessler, co-founder of the centrist think tank Third Way, said he was not concerned about the CNN poll broadly, but it underscored the reality that Biden’s age is top of mind for many voters and will be a point of attack for Republicans.

“I think they need to make an offensive case and a defensive case,” Kessler said, suggesting Biden and his team must make the argument simultaneously that experience matters, and that Republicans are going after Biden’s age because their attacks on his record aren’t landing.

Biden allies have also noted that polls at this time during former President Obama’s first term similarly showed the then-incumbent trailing prospective Republican challengers. 

They also noted that polling suggested in the lead-up to the 2022 midterms that a so-called red wave would lead to massive Republican gains in Congress, only for the GOP to fall well short of expectations.

“The Biden White House is not going to be rattled by this because their view is there are going to be 500 polls between now and Election Day,” former White House Communications Director and longtime Biden aide Kate Bedingfield said Thursday on CNN. 

“But there’s a lot of information that isn’t here,” she continued. “That’s a reminder that campaigns don’t happen in a vacuum. And it’s on the Biden campaign to make this election a choice and to make it about the contrast between what Republicans are offering and what Biden is offering.”

However, those beliefs are vastly different between Democrats and Republicans. In the Gallup poll, 79 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents supported a wealth tax, but only 27 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents backed the idea.

Cooperman, a longtime donor to Republican candidates, has described himself as an independent. In 2020, he told CNBC that he voted for Biden, saying "I voted my values and not my pocketbook. I'll be richer tomorrow if Trump wins. I'll probably be poorer tomorrow if Biden wins. But I voted my values.""

On Friday, the billionaire said that both parties were "lacking" and that he didn't think either Trump or Biden should win the presidency in 2024. He said it should be a candidate who can "come out of the woodwork," like Democrats Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama did in 2016 and 2008.

"I'm concerned about the lefties," Cooperman said. "They don't get it. What made me write the book is I have three terrific grandchildren, and I want them to understand the merits of capitalism, and I want them to be capitalists with a heart. I wanna see the system stay centrist. We have a very, very bad political system."

Cooperman published a memoir over the summer, called, From The Bronx To Wall Street: My Fifty Years in Finance and Philanthropy. Calling himself a "capitalist with a heart," he said all the proceeds from the book are going to charity.

"Show me a system that's superior to capitalism," he said. "I look at all these people coming up from South America...risking their lives to come to America, they get it and I want my kids to get it."

The image, used in ad after ad, stuck with Rhode Island Democrats: White House staffer Gabe Amo with Joe Biden, in the Oval Office. As early voting wrapped up, Democrats in the 1st Congressional District saw another potent image: Amo and Patrick Kennedy, their old congressman, who warned that Bernie Sanders-endorsed front-runner Aaron Regenburg would put the state’s defense economy at risk.

“We need someone who understands the way Washington works,” said Kennedy.

On Tuesday, Amo won his first-ever race by 3000 votes, ending this year’s Democratic primary season — and dealing the latest setback to his party’s left flank. Endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Working Families Party, and some of Rhode Island’s leading progressives couldn’t elect Regunberg, who also narrowly out-fundraised Amo. Former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who endorsed Amo early, declared victory over “pundits who dismiss Bidenism” as a Democratic Party force.

“I will be a vigorous defender of the president every step of the way,” Amo told Semafor in a pre-election interview. “He’s one of the finest public servants in our nation’s history.”

Progressives shaped the party’s last presidential primary and pushed many of their ideas into Biden and Klain’s White House. Now they’re limping out of 2023, and into the next cycle, with smaller ambitions, more divisions, and no one figurehead to rally around. For the first time since 2016, no Democratic incumbent in Congress has a credible primary challenger on the left.

There have been a few left-wing political triumphs this year, like the election of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. And Regunberg’s defeat came after his father-in-law put six figures into a super PAC, an optical disaster that hurt him and made it impossible for him to attack Amo effectively. But the infrastructure and ambitions left behind by the Sanders campaign are in flux, for several reasons.

One of them, demonstrated in Rhode Island, is that most Democratic voters are not in the mood to rebel; worries about the president’s age have not transmuted into angst about their party’s direction. Campaign polling ahead of the latest election found that a supermajority of primary voters were satisfied with Biden; the race unfolded as Republicans talked louder than ever about impeaching him. And one reason that Johnson prevailed in Chicago was that his opponent in the mayoral runoff, Paul Vallas, had disparaged Biden and Barack Obama.

It doesn’t help that the current issue set is less amenable to the left than it used to be. Under Trump, issues like inequality, protecting immigrant rights, and expanding health care helped them tap into goals that broadly united Democrats. There’s now much more internal party angst about border issues, even in deep blue cities, while on the economy, there’s a conflict between Democrats who want to sell Biden’s jobs agenda as a success, and leftists who see them papering over still-unsolved problems that demand radical change.

The Biden administration also mollified progressives, especially when it was being shaped by Klain. Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act preempted major problems with the party’s left; the Sunrise Movement, the youth-driven direct action green group that protested Biden in the 2020 primary, has alternated between outrage that the president won’t declare a “climate emergency” and back-patting over the 2022 passage of a climate bill.

“Without the movement for the Green New Deal, there would be no IRA,” Sunrise founder Varshini Prakash wrote in an email to donors last month.

That gets to a second reason for the left’s electoral struggles: Bitter disagreement about how to interact with the Democratic Party, or if there’s even a point in trying.

This was a factor, though not determinative, in Regunberg’s loss, and it’s played out more dramatically in places like Boston, where a local Democratic Socialists of America chapter moved to expel a legislator because — among other things –— he’d supported the Democratic nominee for governor. (Last month, by a 704-184 vote, national DSA delegates voted down a proposal to form “an independent political party with its own ballot line.”)

There’s more cynicism on the left about the progressives elected with the support of Justice Democrats, a group founded by Sanders campaign veterans and advocates like the The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur. That cynicism grew days into Biden’s presidency, when none of the House’s progressives heeded a call by some former Sanders influencers to force a vote on Medicare-for-All as a condition for re-electing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And the left’s incremental wins, celebrated by some allies, are dismissed by others.

In a recent interview with The Dig, a Providence-based socialist podcast, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was frustrated by the “binary” between revolutionary action and electoral politics that some leftists obsessed over.

“That creates this kind of cynical vortex,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who’d endorsed Regunberg in the campaign’s final week. “You can be very radical and do your thing, but you’re gonna be very small; or it’s this electoralism, where more radical movements and radical action is dismissed, and seen as naive.”

The constant suspicion that politicians who win elections will quickly join the old guard once in office is a growing problem. Uygur said in an interview that post-Sanders organizations had lost their influence through a combination of infighting and failure to deliver on the promise of their campaigns, as priorities like a $15 minimum wage died in the Senate.

“I don’t care about AOC or any of them,” said Uygur, who was ousted from Justice Democrats in Dec. 2017, after reporting emerged on sexist comments he’d made years earlier.“The squad is waiting for the Democratic Party’s permission? No, they need to be waiting for our permission: We are the outsiders, pushing the insiders. They were supposed to be a cohesive group, getting our priorities passed in legislation. And when it was crunch time, they blinked.”

They also faced massive opposition from the center-left and the right — a third reason for the left’s often-disappointing year. While the PACs that have spent millions to defeat left-leaning Democrats didn’t engage fully in Rhode Island, their involvement in earlier races had ground down Justice Democrats, which laid off most of its staff this year and is focused on holding its gains.

“We’re still actively in candidate recruitment, reviewing districts and possible candidates across the country,” said Justice Democrats communications director Usamah Andrabi, “while also very focused on protecting our incumbents who are under more serious threat from AIPAC’s right-wing primary challenge recruitment.”

Hours after the 2020 election, Democratic Party centrists went after the left for embracing unpopular slogans like “defund the police,” and they never really let up. And left-wing Democrats who won power faced opposition that sometimes overwhelmed them. In May, a democratic socialist who’d won a 2021 city council race in New York ended her re-election campaign, abandoning the “loveless land of politics”; on Wednesday, a Des Moines city council member who’d been elected on a “defund the police” message did the same.

Strategists with the Working Families Party and Our Revolution — one group that predated the Sanders campaigns, one that grew out of it — pointed out that their key concepts, like Medicare-for-All, still enjoyed majority support from Democratic voters.

But their branding has clearly been damaged. In 2018, Sara Innamorato was one of two candidates backed by DSA who won safe Democratic legislative seats in Pittsburgh. The other winner, Summer Lee, survived millions of dollars in attacks from centrist and pro-Israel groups to win a seat in Congress last year.

In May, Innamorato won the Democratic nomination for Allegheny County executive. Her Republican opponent did what came naturally: Blasted the “socialist” Democrat as a threat to the Pittsburgh region’s prosperity. Two weeks after the primary, Innamorato told a local CBS affiliate that she wasn’t a socialist at all. “If you look me up in the voter rolls,” she said, “you’ll see ‘Democrat’ next to my name.”

Jim Kessler, the executive vice president of the centrist Democratic group, said that the debate inside the party wasn’t over, but that the left had been losing influence. More people were voting in Democratic primaries; more of those Democrats wanted a Biden-shaped party than a left-wing one.

“The extremes have completely taken over the GOP, and there are a lot of voters saying: I want to make sure that at least one party is normal,” said Kessler. “After Dobbs, it’s clear to people that if you lose the wrong race, things can get very real, very fast.”

Some prominent leftists see the movement’s current slump as just a natural phase of a rebuilding period. “We had no socialist movement, then we had this guy, Bernie Sanders, vying seriously — twice! — for the most powerful office in the land,” said Micah Uetricht, the co-author of 2020’s “Bigger Than Bernie” and editor at the socialist magazine Jacobin. “Now, things are where you’d expect them to be for a movement being reborn.’

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