"Interviews with dozens of Democratic Party officials, including 93 superdelegates, found overwhelming opposition to handing Mr. Sanders the nomination if he fell short of a majority of delegates."

The NYT got the interviews and reports:

[O]nly nine of the 93 superdelegates interviewed said that Mr. Sanders should become the nominee purely on the basis of arriving at the convention with a plurality, if he was short of a majority.

“I’ve had 60 years experience with Democratic delegates — I don’t think they will do anything like that,” said former Vice President Walter Mondale, who is a superdelegate. “They will each do what they want to do, and somehow they will work it out. God knows how.”

Mondale! I was just thinking about Mondale the other day. The context was: Who is the most boring major-party nominee for President I've seen in my life?

In recent weeks, Democrats have placed a steady stream of calls to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who opted against running for president nearly a year ago, suggesting that he can emerge as a white knight nominee at a brokered convention....

“If you could get to a convention and pick Sherrod Brown, that would be wonderful, but that’s more like a novel,” Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee said. “Donald Trump’s presidency is like a horror story, so if you can have a horror story you might as well have a novel.”

That's exactly what gets my "if Trump could do it" tag.

ADDED: I'm not saying boring like it's a bad thing. As I've said many times — and I have a tag for it — "I'm for Boring." And I voted for Mondale.



Sock it to 'em, Walter.

"President Trump’s political operation headed into 2020 with nearly $200 million on hand..."

"... according to party officials, giving him a financial war chest that vastly outstrips the resources of his Democratic opponents weeks before primary voting begins. Trump’s reelection campaign, the Republican Party and two joint fundraising committees together raised a record $154 million in the final three months of the year, party officials told The Washington Post, a massive haul they said was fueled by backlash to the House impeachment of the president. Of that, more than $72 million was collected by the Republican National Committee, driven in part by big checks from wealthy donors — a sign of how much of the moneyed class that shunned Trump in 2016 is now embracing him. Small donors also continued to give to the party and to Trump’s reelection campaign, which pulled in $46 million, far outpacing leading Democrats vying for their party’s nomination. Among them, the biggest fundraiser last quarter was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who raised $34.5 million. Since the impeachment inquiry began in September, the president’s campaign and RNC gained 600,000 new donors, officials said. In all, Trump and the RNC together scooped up a staggering $463 million in 2019, party officials said. In comparison, then-President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party raised roughly $220 million in 2011, the year before his reelection."

WaPo reports.

The news this morning is making me think of 1984. Not the book. The election. Remember that?



Biggest difference: The ex-Vice-President who got his party's nomination to fend off the hated, show-biz, imposter President... was so fresh-faced!

By the way, that man still walks the face of the earth, and he's not all that much older than Biden.

ADDED: Elizabeth Warren has finally revealed her 4th quarter number — $21.2 million, down from $24.6 million in the 3rd quarter and less than the others in the top 4.

"Anything as perfect and simple-sounding as this motto is always in danger of becoming a cliché..."

"...  but there’s nothing like putting it in the mouths of politicians to speed up that process."

What's the point of a catchphrase? You want it to catch on and then you want to control it? Speech doesn't work like that. Words have a life of their own. Phrases are born, have their narrative arcs, and sometimes they die — that is, they come to be regarded as clichés, and then no one wants to use them anymore.

The dispute at the link is over the Mitt Romney's use of “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose" from the TV show “Friday Night Lights.”

Hey, remember when Walter Mondale appropriated "Where's the beef?" from the Wendy's commercial? Where was the outrage?

"When will ‘The Kathleen’ Falk and Tom Barrett get their Walter Mondale on?"

Asks David Blaska, very intraWisconsinly, except to the extent that Walter was over there in that state that looms to our left.

Rush Limbaugh goes after Krauthammer.

On the occasion of Krauthammer's disrespect for Sarah Palin:

Krauthammer was on Fox the other day, I happened to see it. He said that Sarah Palin still doesn't cut it for him.  She's got good instincts but she's just not properly schooled.  And he said I don't mean schooled in the right places.  She's just not learned.  She's had two and a half years to school herself on matters of policy.  She hasn't done it.  She can't demonstrate it.  She's just not properly schooled.  And Tom Rowan, "Analyzing the Analyst" in the American Thinker, says why in the world do we sit here and bow down at the opinion of somebody that used to write speeches for Walter Mondale. 

Now, Rowan's theory is that people's pasts matter.  So here you have Dr. Krauthammer, who was a speechwriter for Mondale who obviously at a point in his life thought Ronald Reagan was a total idiot, you know, probably not schooled.  So Rowan's theory is, analyzing the analysts, that Krauthammer sees Reagan in Palin.  Wasn't particularly enamored of Reagan.  George Will was not an early Reaganite, for example, became a good friend and associate later on.  But this got me to thinking about this whole notion of who earns respect and why.  And Mr. Rowan, the American Thinker, said, why is it that everybody stops what they're doing and when Krauthammer issues an opinion that's it?...

Now, Krauthammer in many ways has acquired this respect because in many of the venues he appears he's the only conservative....

The segment at the link begins and ends with thoughts on Weinergate, by the way. Read the whole thing if you want to see how he weaves these themes together.

Another boring Democratic loser calls criticism of Obama racist.

"I don't want to pick a person, say, he's a racist, but I do think the way they're piling on Obama, the harshness, you kind of feel it. I think I see an edge in them that's a little bit different and a little harsher than I've seen in other times."

This time it's Walter Mondale, and you've got to at least give him credit for speaking in the most mealy-mouthed and boring way possible.

Jeez, I almost feel like calling it mush from the wimp.