"At this moment, the difference between the candidates is a chasm. There has never been a greater difference...."

"Take Biden's campaign positions. Farther to the left than any Democratic candidate in memory on things like climate. It's far better than anything that preceded it. Not because Biden had a personal conversion or the DNC had some great insight, but because they're being hammered on by activists coming out of the Sanders movement and others. The climate program, a $2 trillion commitment to dealing with the extreme threat of environmental catastrophe, was largely written by the Sunrise Movement and strongly endorsed by the leading activists on climate change, the ones who managed to get the Green New Deal on the legislative agenda. That's real politics.... This is not support for Biden. It is support for the activists who have been at work constantly, creating the background within the party in which the shifts took place, and who have followed Sanders in actually entering the campaign and influencing it. Support for them. Support for real politics. The left position is you rarely support anyone. You vote against the worst. You keep the pressure and activism going."

Said Noam Chomsky, quoted in "Noam Chomsky wants you to vote for Joe Biden and then haunt his dreams/The lion of the left on the pandemic, the election, the word Bernie Sanders needs to stop using, the Harper's letter, the 1619 Project, patriotism, and the greatest social movement in U.S. history" (The.Ink).

"Republicans were once despised because they were anti-intellectuals and hopeless neurotics."

"Trained to disbelieve in peaceful coexistence with the liberal enemy, the average Rush Limbaugh fan couldn’t make it through a dinner without interrogating you about your political inclinations. If you tried to laugh it off, that didn’t work; if you tried to engage, what came back was a list of talking points. When all else failed and you offered what you thought would be an olive branch of blunt truth, i.e. 'Honestly, I just don’t give that much of a shit,' that was the worst insult of all, because they thought you were being condescending. (You were, but that’s beside the point). The defining quality of this personality was the inability to let things go. Families broke apart over these situations. It was a serious and tragic thing. Now that same inconsolable paranoiac comes at you with left politics, and isn’t content with ruining the odd holiday dinner, blind date, or shared cab. He or she does this infuriating interrogating at the office, in school, and in government agencies, in places where you can’t fake a headache and quietly leave the table."

From "The Left is Now the Right/We laughed at the Republican busybody who couldn't joke, declared war on dirty paintings, and peered through your bedroom window. Now that person has switched sides, and nobody's laughing" by Matt Taibbi (substack).

Why Ann Coulter is trending on Twitter this morning (no, she didn't die).

ann coulter unintentionally endorsing elizabeth warren is the most hilarious thing i've seen this morning pic.twitter.com/aw14VPeJk4

— Elizabeth May (@_ElizabethMay) February 26, 2020

"I do not think that anybody — Bernie Sanders or anyone else — should simply get the nomination because they have 30 percent of the delegates and no one else has that many."

"Let’s say that he has 35 percent. Well, 65 percent he doesn’t have, or that person doesn’t have. I think that we have to let the system work its way out. I do not believe anyone should get the nomination unless they have 50-[percent]-plus-one.... A lot people in the race still, but they’ll be dropping off quick, because the money is running out. So I think you’re going to have the field winnowing fairly quickly. And you have most of the people who are not Bernie Sanders, are people who are moderates, and maybe they’ll work something out to get together and try to find that one person who can come up with the number of delegates. Maybe that’s one way to do it.... I just don’t think you can give the nomination to somebody who has 65 percent of the people that made a different decision."

Said Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, from his office at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, quoted in "Harry Reid says Sanders needs more than plurality to win Democratic nomination" (WaPo).

That sounds right to me, but there are times when I think it's becoming so likely that Trump will win that those who are trying to shape the future of the Democratic Party might prefer to let Bernie Sanders take the nomination and then go on to fail and fail big. That way, the left-wing extreme takes the blame, the loss can be massaged into the argument that the socialist move is a proven disaster, and the liberal moderates can reclaim control. If Sanders gets the most votes/delegates going into the convention, but the convention works out a way to give the nomination to someone else, the far left will rage on for another 4 years with a sense of entitlement that it's certainly their turn in 2024. And let's say that convention picks Pete Buttigieg, the shining new talent. Then, he'd be ruined for 2024. Save him. Let him age for 4 years. And give him a clear run at the presidency in 2024, after Trump is gone and after the Democrats prove to themselves that Americans won't vote for left-wing extremism.

"Pete Buttigieg is a liberal who makes people think he’s a moderate. Amid the 'Mayo Pete' and 'Pete is CIA' jeers of his left-wing critics, it can be easy to forget..."

"... what Buttigieg’s actual policy agenda is. That agenda would easily be the most progressive by any candidate for the general election in decades.... ... [H]e’s endorsed and promoted: A $15-an-hour minimum wage/A universal child allowance of at least $2,000 per child, and quadrupling of the earned income tax credit for single adults/'Affordable, universal full-day child care and pre-K for all children from infancy to age 5'/A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants/A Medicare buy-in open to all meant to 'create a natural glide-path to Medicare for All'/A cap on all student loan payments as a share of income, forgiven in full after 20 years/... DC/Puerto Rico statehood, banning gerrymandering, ending the Electoral College, and ending the filibuster/Expanding and reforming the Supreme Court to curb partisan rulings/Sectoral union bargaining where agreements apply to whole industries, not just individual companies/A carbon tax rebated to taxpayers in cash, plus a quadrupling of research and development funding for clean energy...  Sanders and Warren have performed a valuable service by making the objectively quite ambitious agenda of Buttigieg appear, by comparison, incredibly mild, a centrist approach to expanding the safety net. A perception of relative moderation will most likely help, not hurt, the eventual nominee.... Sanders would terrify and turn out Trump’s base, whereas Buttigieg likely would not."

From "Pete Buttigieg is more electable than Bernie Sanders — and more progressive than you think/The fourth in a Vox series making the best case for each of the top Democratic contenders" (Vox).

"The far left’s frustration with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on the rise, as liberal advocates and lawmakers fume that she hasn’t done enough to defend freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar..."

"... from attacks by President Trump and other Republicans and has undermined their policies and leaders, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Omar’s allies over the weekend were upset by what they viewed as Pelosi’s delayed response.... [L]iberals seethed that Pelosi (Calif.) and Democratic leaders did too little, too late. They were equally baffled by Pelosi’s quip seeming to dismiss Ocasio-Cortez during a CBS '60 Minutes' interview Sunday, suggesting her 'wing' of the party included 'like five people.'... The tensions underscore Democrats’ struggle to discern the best way to respond to Trump and the GOP’s attacks on their far-left flank, criticism frequently centered on women of color.... On Sunday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the other Muslim congresswoman, went so far as to accuse the Democratic leadership of using people of color to highlight diversity but ignoring them when it mattered — though she did not name Pelosi in the missive. 'They put us in photos when they want to show our party is diverse,' Tlaib wrote, retweeting messages claiming Democrats used women of color as 'props.' 'However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored. To truly honor our diversity is to never silence us.'"

From "Liberals’ frustration with Pelosi rises over her response to Omar dispute" (WaPo).

Also in WaPo, "Bernie Sanders’s campaign escalates fight with establishment Democrats in reprise of 2016 party rifts":

“I think this time around he wanted to make sure that people understood that he wasn’t just going to be a punching bag,” said Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir.... “He’s comfortable having the fight within the party or outside the party, in general. That’s Bernie Sanders.”...

“I think his tone in general is too Trumplike. It’s based on anger,” said Greg Hale, a longtime Democratic presidential campaign adviser who worked for Clinton in 2016. “We all need to be together and we need to have a positive message, not a negative message.”...

“Establishment Democrats have to stop holding him back,” said Linn Anderson, a graphic designer from Youngstown, Ohio, who attended a town hall Sanders participated in Sunday. Asked whether she felt there was still animosity coming from Clinton’s allies, Anderson responded, “Hell yeah.”

Over at the NYT, "‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum":

"This is what the Trump playbook looks like when it comes from the left."

This is what the Trump playbook looks like when it comes from the left. AOC is sucking attention away from every other politician with a "big ask" as a starting point of negotiations. You may now commence playing into her hands by screaming about how impractical this list is. https://t.co/BSpEPNbkfm

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 2, 2019

The Supreme Court gets back to the affirmative action question it sent back to the 5th Circuit.

Cert. granted in Fisher v. University of Texas.

The Fisher case had been relisted *five* times before the grant today. I think that, given the five relists, many people are probably a bit surprised by the grant. But this just goes to show you that you never know what's going on behind the scenes. 

ADDED: From the link, which goes to SCOTUSblog:

Fisher grant is yet another good example of why it makes little sense to think of the Court as "moving left" even though it IS accurate to say that the liberal wing of the Court has prevailed more often this year than in previous years. The question presented is whether a compromise position well right of the Harvard Plan approved in Bakke will be struck down.

Everything's moving left!

1. "The Roberts Court's Surprising Move Leftward." A NYT analysis — with charts depicting trends from 1946 to the present — of data from The Supreme Court Database (to which it tries, but fails, to link).

2. "Hillary Clinton is going to lose: She doesn’t even see the frustrated progressive wave that will nominate Bernie Sanders/Clinton's positioning on TPP is way too cute. When it passes with Dems' implicit support, grass roots will explode." An article at Salon.

3. ??? This is a trendwatch, so... more to come! (Maybe....)