The Smoke Eater For March 3, 2020
Stupid Tuesday, election fuckery, and a pound of flesh.
Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for Tuesday, March 3, 2020, and this is the world we live in.
Quick Hit
* Biden's big day * Stupid Tuesday * Down ballot races * Brian Kemp was full of it * Predicting election fuckery * Peter Baker shit the bed and now we all have to offer up a pound of flesh to the news gods *
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Stupid Tuesday
Today Americans in 14 states will decide which loud, obnoxious geriatric white guy they want vote for in the Democratic primary after Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the 2020 race and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. It's highly likely that after today a definitive frontrunner will emerge, as today offers the largest single-day delegate haul -- 1,344 in all -- roughly a third of all total delegates in the 2020 Democratic primary.
By most accounts, this morning's narrative is that the race is a binary choice between Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, an aging hippy, and Biden, who suffers from foot-in-mouth disease. Math nerds argue the last minute consolidation of moderates behind Biden puts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a cold-blooded murderer, in a unique position to pick up votes from people who just aren't attracted to old white guys who yell at everyone. The most reliable data this morning suggests the race is now a toss-up, but everything is in flux after after the Democratic party threw a life preserver to Biden.
If you want to drive yourself crazy, Vox explains we're unlikely to get a good idea of where the race is heading until AFTER polls close in California tonight. Both Texas and California make up the lion's share of votes today, but there's a good chance voters from the East Coast, Midwest, or South could surprise the punditocracy. My advice: Don't stay up late, and avoid social media (unless you're sharing cute critters).
Side Note: This is a screenshot of every campaign email I got yesterday. Almost all the Biden emails are press releases. There aren't any emails from the Sanders or Klobuchar campaigns, their campaigns have never responded to my inquiries (and I'm not going beg). RIP inbox.
Loud Noises
ICYMI: John Oliver explained single-payer health care systems, as proposed by senators Sanders and Warren, and why the potential political fallout would be better than the life threatening logistical terror of our current multi-payer system.
ICYMI: Fareed Zakaria explained why Sanders vision of a massive social safety net is based on a failed scheme proposed by Denmark in the 1960s, completely ignores how the modern European tax structure disproportionately affects the poor and middle-class, and works in conjunction with an economic system built upon the types of free trade policies Sanders abhors.
Vox has a handy guide for all the candidates in the event that you're still sitting on the fence. All the guides include video summaries (except Bloomberg).
[ Biden / Warren / Sanders / Bloomberg ]
There Will Be Blood
Down ballot primary races in some key states have the potential to reshape the map for 2020 with populist candidates mounting challenges to moderates on both sides of the aisle. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is trying to return to the Senate, but first he has fight a local Bible-thumping former sportsball hero with a Trump fetish, and an alleged pedophile. Over in Texas, a couple of progressives are hoping to unseat Blue Dogs and moderates in the House, while a bakers dozen hopefuls clamor to challenge Republican Sen. John Cornyn. In California, a couple of whackjobs with a tendency to furiously stroke their own egos are gunning for the seat once occupied by former Rep. Katie Hill.
Election Fuckery
Los Angeles County has a new voting system designed and owned by the government, but there's so many security flaws that, according to Politico, any close election is likely to fuel claims of fuckery. Additionally, the company that built the system has dubious ties to the Venezuelan government, and allegations of fuckery in the 2016 Phillipines elections. The county says it's fixed the most glaring problems, but security geeks argue there are far too many flaws and vulnerabilities, like the ability to alter ballots, that the whole system is "disqualifying.”
Yamiche Alcindor reports that even though North Carolina voters will get the benefit of paper backups to verify their ballots, there's concern about election fuckery in the Tar Heel State thanks to wide spread disinformation campaigns.
The RNC has rekindled a relationship with a data firm that suffered a massive data breach in 2017, ProPublica reports. The RNC says it takes voter information security "very seriously," and discontinued work with the company, Deep Root Analytics, after it suffered what some geeks considered "the largest known data exposure of its kind," affecting almost 200 million people Americans. Financial records show the company seems to have just slapped on a new coat of paint, shuffled some suits, and collected cash from the RNC via a shell company for the better part of 2019. The new company says it offers "a new product" that is separate from its "traditional TV analytics work."
The Georgia attorney general's office has closed a case opened Republican Gov. Brian Kemp while he was still secretary of state -- overseeing the very election he was running in -- that alleged (without evidence) that the the Democratic Party tried to "hack" voter information days before the election. At the time, Kemp claimed his office had learned of a "failed attempt to hack the state's online voter registration and My Voter Page." The claim wasn't without merit as geeks warned the security of Georgia's election systems was comparable to a rusty sign on an old barn that read, "No Girls Allowed!" The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the state AGs office found that "there were some vulnerabilities with the state's online voter registration system," but concluded, "those issues were corrected." Additionally, the AG has opted not to file charges on the Georgia resident who blew the whistle on their crapware.
One More Thing...
Yesterday the New York Times ran a piece about how some of their reporters think about the paper's commitment to impartiality. As is the case with most things in the 21st century, people began ranting on social media about what journalists should and shouldn't do. Much of the ire seemed aimed their chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, for saying he was so committed to impartiality that he didn't vote.
First of all, this is a stupid and overly thought out position. Voting is your civic duty. There's a debate about whether or not a journalist should openly subscribe to a political ideology (let alone donate to a campaign), but that's a debate between newsrooms and editors, and its conclusion should be clearly expressed to the readers.
Second, don't ever tell a journalist what to do. Journalists are strange and stubborn folk (and miserable drinking companions). We spend much of our time locked in our own minds trying not to screw up. Most of us are not paid enough to deal with a sea of faceless voices threatening to rape us, and/or our mothers, and/or our dead relatives, and/or our pets because some jackass on the other side of the country misquoted a city arborist. We're all keenly aware that anytime one of us screws up in the slightest there's a sea of assholes bellowing about media bias across the political spectrum.
A good journalist is a civil servant. We do shit work, for shit pay, and constantly get shit on. We lay our lives on the line to bring you the information you need to make rational decisions. A good journalist has opinions because they're human, but they should be hard to figure out because that's point.
Any idiot can pick up a pen and a camera and call themselves a journalist, but creating public trust is as much an art as it is a science.
OK, now here's a warm and fuzzy critter video: Baby Gorillas!
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