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Silicon Valley billionaires are looking well beyond Iowa.

Some of techs wealthiest citizens are pouring money into Democratic groups that are meant to back the eventual nominee, whoever that is. While its been obvious that Silicon Valley is ready to spend big to oust Donald Trump, the latest batch of federal disclosures this weekend revealed the clearest picture yet its financial firepower.

Those donations serve as a key reminder: Democratic presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren can bash Big Tech and Silicon Valley leaders all they want in the primary, but theyll need their money in the general election.

The candidates might want the backing of billionaires like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who gave about $2 million late last year to key Democratic groups, the records show. Hoffman donated $1 million and $250,000 to the primary super PACs supporting Senate Democrats and House Democrats, respectively. He kicked in another $250,000 to Fair Fight, a voter registration group helmed by Stacey Abrams, and an equal amount to a super PAC trying to mobilize the Asian American and Pacific Islander vote. Outside groups like these PACs file disclosures just twice a year, revealing the last six months of donation history this weekend.

Theres another essential player, the disclosures show: Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who gave at least $1.2 million in the second half of 2019 and is one of the partys most closely watched donors. A Moskovitz-led group, the Open Philanthropy Action Fund, donated $750,000 to Real Justice PAC, a group seeking to elect reform-minded prosecutors. Moskovitz personally gave $450,000 to a grassroots fundraising committee organized by the Democratic National Committee and at least $60,000 to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which will try to flip a key battleground state in November.

Hoffman and Moskovitz appear to be the two Silicon Valley leaders putting the most money into Democratic causes, according to the latest records. Other donors who were seen injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars into outside groups in just the last six months of 2019 are Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Silicon Valley powerbroker Ron Conway, and Steve Silberstein, a former software executive. Outside groups file disclosures just twice a year, revealing the last six months of donation history this weekend.

One particularly muscular group ahead of November is Acronym, and thats thanks in part to techs largesse. That makes sense, given that Acronyms focus is on edgier, digital combat with Republican campaigns. Advised by former Uber executive and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, Acronym raked in seven figures from some of the industrys most prominent venture capitalists, including a $1 million check from Sequoia Capitals former leader, Michael Moritz.

That gift was a sign of the times in its own right: It was, by far, Moritzs largest disclosed political contribution ever, and his first gift of any size since 2011.

None of the people mentioned so far have formally endorsed a candidate in the primary. This isnt necessarily out of the ordinary. Many of the biggest-fish donors across the country have, at least up to now, declined to weigh in on specific candidates, instead trying to funnel their dollars into equipping the eventual nominee with the best possible organizations.

Plus, the places for billionaires to spend the most money are not campaigns which are subject to $2,800 donation limits but outside groups, which have no limits at all.

Disclosures from candidates themselves primarily showed the same trend weve seen up to now: Tech leaders have largely organized around Pete Buttigieg, the young Midwestern mayor who has embraced Silicon Valley more than other candidates have. Among the ranks of Buttigieg donors at the maximum $2,800 level in the last three months of 2019 were: Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist who sat down privately with Buttigieg in September; famed venture capitalist John Doerr; and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham.

But in yet another sign of the times, one previous Buttigieg donor stood out on the fundraising reports of some of his rivals: Justin Rosenstein. Rosenstein was an early employee at Facebook and is credited with coming up with the Like button.

The two candidates he backed to the maximum amount? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom want to break up his former employer.

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Silicon Valley billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Dustin Moskovitz are funding the Democratic Party - Vox.com

Feb 6th 2020

IT WAS A devastating contrast. As the Iowa caucus turned into a fiasco (Democrats blamed the software), President Donald Trump hailed an American comeback in the state-of-the-union message and basked in his acquittal by the Senate over impeachment. With the economy roaring and his approval ratings ticking up, Mr Trump looks likelier than ever to triumph in November. Compare that with the Democrats after Iowa, in which no candidate won the backing of much more than a quarter of caucusers.

Democrats agree that ending Mr Trumps bombastic tenure is their priority. But their champions, now trudging round New Hampshire eking out votes before next weeks primary (see article), are starkly divided over what to offer Americans in his place. The left argues that America has stopped working for most people and thus needs fundamental restructuring. Moderates recommend running repairs. A lot rests on which side prevailsthe radicals or the repairers.

Any of the front-runners could yet end up as the nominee: the radicals, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; or the repairers, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden (despite his bad day in Iowa). So at a pinch could Michael Bloomberg, another repairer, who is spending gargantuan sums before Super Tuesday next month. But on every count the repairers have the better of the argument. They are more likely to beat Mr Trump, to achieve things and, most important, to do what America needs.

It is striking that all of the plausible nominees are campaigning to the left of President Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 (see Briefing). They all have ambitious plans on climate change; and, with the exception of Mr Bloomberg, are sceptical of free trade. Nevertheless, Mr Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, and Ms Warren, a capitalist, are distinctly more militant in both style and substance.

This is partly a matter of degree, as health policy shows. All Democrats want the number of Americans without health insurance, which has risen from 27m to 30m under Mr Trump, to be reduced, ideally to zero. The repairers would expand Obamacares market-based system until everyone was covered. Mr Sanders and Ms Warren, by contrast, would nationalise health insurance, revolutionising health care, a $3.8trn business accounting for 18% of GDP and which employs 16.6m people.

There is also a fundamental difference about the role of government. Take labour rights, for instance. All Democrats evoke a mythical golden age when people were rewarded fairly for a days work. The reformers would increase minimum wages to, say, $15 an hour and spend more on education and retraining. The radicals would force any largish firm to put workers on its boardMs Warren would give their representatives 40% of the seats, Mr Sanders 45%. Mr Sanders would require firms to transfer 20% of their equity to workers trusts. Both would create a system of federal charters to oblige firms to operate in the interests of all stakeholders, including workers, customers and the local community as well as shareholders. Such a government-mandated shift in corporate power has never occurred in the United States.

This radicalism is based on three misconceptions. The first is that Mr Trump showed in 2016 that you win elections through the fervour of your base rather than making a coalition. That is unlikely to work for Democrats in 2020. Presidential elections tend not to be kind to candidates who pitch their camp far from the political centre. Voters perceived Hillary Clinton as more extreme than Donald Trump in 2016, and it did not end well for her. In a 50:50 country, marginal handicaps matter.

Mr Trump would have fun with Mr Sanders, who wishes to double federal spending overnight and, perhaps more important to the president, honeymooned in the Soviet Union. It was no accident that in his state-of-the-union message Mr Trump pointed to Juan Guaid, the Venezuelan opposition leader who was his guest for the evening, and reminded Congress that socialism destroys nations. Few voters are hankering to own the means of production in suburban Philadelphia or Milwaukee, where the presidential election will probably be decided.

Another misconception is that a radical who did get into the Oval Office would accomplish much. Some Democrats say that the intransigence of the Republican Party means an approach built around compromise is worthless. The pursuit of incremental change, they reckon, is an admission of defeat at the outset. They are right that the two parties in Congress have forgotten how to work together. Todays Senate is likely to accomplish less than any other in the past half-century. Their idea is to take on Mr Trumps reality-TV populism with red-blooded economic populism. That might thrill activists and terrify Wall Street, but it would be both unproductive and self-defeating. Democrats believe in the role of government. They are condemned to try to make it work, not demonstrate that it cannot.

The last misconception, and the most important, concerns the substance of what the radicals would like to achieve. Ms Warren takes her faith in government to extremes. If she had her way, the state would break up, abolish or impose fresh regulations on about half of the firms owned by shareholders or private-equity groups. Mr Sanders would go even further. Both candidates treat private capital as if it operates with sinister intent, even as they embrace the state as if it were benign, capable and efficient. That is naive. Just as thriving businesses at their best invigorate and enrich, so government at its worst can be capable of heartless cruelty and indifference.

There are moments when the United States has required something like a revolutionbefore the civil war, say, or in the years running up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This is not one of them. Unemployment is as low as it has been since the mid-1960s. Nominal wages in the lowest quartile of the income scale are growing by 4.6%. Americans are more optimistic about their own finances than they have been since 1999.

Instead America needs repairinglowering the cost of housing and health care; moving to a low-carbon economy; finding a voting system that rewards consensus, not partisanship. For that, national politics needs to become boring again, not to be an exhausting, outrage-spewing fight between Mr Trump and the most extreme candidate the Democratic Party can muster.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The Democratic primaries will be a contest between radicals and repairers"

Read the rest here:
The Democratic primaries will be a contest between radicals and repairers - The Economist

About a half-hour before Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbards town hall here on Thursday, a guest at the Fireside Inn & Suites in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, ducked into the conference room to inquire about all the signs. When a volunteer filled him in, he sounded skeptical. Shes running forpresident?

Yes, and to hear some of the folks here tell it, she might even win.

Gabbards long-shot campaign has yet to take off nationally, and there are a lot of reasons for thattheres her strange familycult?; her public feud with Hillary Clinton; her failure to qualify for the last three debates; and the obvious fact that Bernie Sanders, who she backed in 2016, is still here and now may be the frontrunner. But Gabbard is holding down about 5 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, according to the Suffolk University tracking poll. Thats potential spoiler territory, with the first-in-the-nation primary just days away.

So wheres all that support coming from? If the crowd at the hotel was any indication, its a whole lot of Republicans and independents who supported President Donald Trump four years ago.

She has a lot of class, but shes sort of the Democratic Trump, said Anthony Stevens of Vermont, who was there with his fiancee, a Democrat who was still undecided. Stevens meant it as a good thingafter all, hed voted for the president four years ago. This time around he was looking for someone different (Trump does not have a lot of class). He liked Gabbards anti-war stance and was drawn, again, to a candidate who had clashed with her own party.

Shes got to feel like Rudolphthey wont let her play in the games, Stevens said, alluding to her exclusion from the most recent debates. (Gabbard has failed to meet the qualifying threshold for Fridays debate at the University of New Hampshire.)

A few seats over sat Bob Gill, a former Marine who is now a horse farmer in New Hampshire. He had also voted for Trump. Gill was still undecided, but liked Gabbard because he thought she might be the kind of voice who could maybe bring people back together. Plus, I like that shes looking to save some money on the wars and everything, he said. But he had no patience for the rest of the field, particularly the septuagenarians topping the polls in some of the Super Tuesday states. Id put them out to pasture, he said.

Sitting in the back, Lisa Buck-Rogers, an Air Force veteran and New Hampshire voter, told me she also supported Trump, but would most likely vote against him this fall. Gabbards criticism of American military actions struck a chord with her. I like how she feels about respecting our veterans and making sure their lives are spent accordingly. She likes some of what Sanders says, too, particularly on health care, but shes Gabby as long as I can.

Ask a voter what they like about, say, Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren, and you might get a range of answers. But the responses I got about Gabbard were unusually consistentwhat Scott Decker, a supporter from Burlington, Vermont summed up as anti-imperialism. Other candidates oppose foreign intervention to varying degrees, but it dominates Gabbards message, so much so that to these supporters, it supersedes the kinds of policies (like single-payer health care) they might consider a deal-breaker in the eyes of someone else.

Ken Rafferty, an independent from Lebanon, New Hampshire, voted for former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in the Republican primary in 2016, but he didnt vote in the general election that year. Im glad I didnt, because I never would have voted for either one of those guys, he said, referring to Trump and Clinton, though, in retrospect, Im kind of concerned about Trump. Rafferty disagreed with much of what Gabbard was pushing, particularly when it came to health care. But because of her criticism of American military action in the Middle East, and of her own party, Gabbard was the only Democrat hed even consider supporting.

Independents can vote in whichever primary they choose in New Hampshire, and Gabbard is leaning into her support from unaffiliated voters. At the town hall on Thursday, she asked, as she often does, for a show of hands from the Democrats in the room. There were maybe six of them, in a crowd of about 40. Another half dozen were Republicans, the rest independents. (Though unfortunately for Gabbard, many of these independents were from neighboring Vermont.) A few people in the audience applauded at the results.

For these Republicans and independents, it helps that Gabbard sometimes seems to have as much of a beef with the Democratic Party establishment as they do.

Anybody who is banned from the mainstream media and who gets shit from Hillary Clinton is my kind of person, said Decker, a Burlington, Vermont, resident who said who would also support Sanders in the general election if he gets there.

Gabbard knew right away that the DNC was fixed, Buck-Rogers said, referring to Gabbards decision to step down from her post as Democratic National Committee vice-chair in 2016.

Still, while Gabbard is happy to go on Fox News, engage Trump voters, and feud with her party, theres still one line she wont cross. During the Q&A that followed her stump speech, she took a question from a man in a Tulsi T-shirt, named Paul Woodman, who was sitting next to a man wearing a Fuck Trump pin. I voted against Hillary, which means I voted for Trump, Woodman told her. He just might do it again, if Democrats dont nominate the congresswoman standing in front of him. Gabbard was the only Democrat he could stomach, and he was convinced she wasnt going to get a fair shake from the DNC, even if she ended up with enough delegates to compete for the nomination. Have you ever consideredchanging parties or re-affiliating?, he asked.

She smiled, thanked him for the question, and tried to dispel, once more, the idea that theres no longer a place for her in the party. First of all: no

Excerpt from:
Trump Voters Have Found a Democrat They Can Get Behind in New Hampshire - Mother Jones

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg swung through Fresno on Monday, meeting with voters and delivering a campaign speech at Fresno City College to kick off early voting as the first ballots are being mailed to California voters.

California, as you know, has the most delegates, and were going to do everything that we can to win them, Bloomberg said. Were opening 20 offices, including one here in downtown Fresno.

Bloomberg said that he has over 300 staff members for his campaign in California and expects to have 800 by the end of next week.

Bloombergs Latino coalition group Ganamos con Mike was active at the event, and Bloomberg expressed his support for the Latino community.

The Central Valley issues are Latino issues, and Latino issues are American issues, Bloomberg said.

Immigration reform will be a priority in his presidency, Bloomberg said.

Getting it done means finally fixing our broken immigration system and creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million people who are living in the shadows in our country, Bloomberg said.

Another issue Bloomberg discussed was gun control, saying that it will be at the top of his agenda. He told the crowd about Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that he founded, which helped pass gun control laws in more than 20 states.

Unfortunately, disagreements in our country seem to end in death all too often, and we just got to do something about it, Bloomberg said. And there are some common sense steps I think we can take to reduce gun violence and save lives. The president wont take them, but I can just promise you, if I get elected, I will. You just have to do something.

Bloomberg continued on attacking President Donald Trump and said that his work and contributions in getting Democrats elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 was a key factor in Trumps impeachment.

At the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, I warned that Donald Trump was not fit for this office, Bloomberg said. In 2018, when I saw the Republican Congress wouldnt hold him accountable, I worked to help flip 21 house seats which made Nancy Pelosi Speaker and brought on the impeachment process. And now its time for the Senate to act and remove Trump from this office, and its obviously not going to do that, so well have to do it in November. You and I will get it done.

As far as his competition to win the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg took a shot at the other candidates for being career politicians.

Now let me be clear, Bloomberg said. My fellow Democrats in this race are all good people, and Ive worked with all of them. If one of them wins the nomination, God forbid, I will support them. But this election seriously is just too important to have the kind of divisions that we saw back in 2016. We just cant do that again. I think I offer a different choice and a different type of leadership. I didnt spend my whole career in politics, and I dont just make speeches.

The California presidential primary will be on March 3.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Excerpt from:
Bloomberg hits on immigration, gun control, and Trump in Fresno swing - The San Joaquin Valley Sun

David Anthony Jaramillo, 32, a Waco-based Marine veteran and former Veterans Administration employee, seeks to become the Democratic nominee in the November general election to succeed Republican Congressman Bill Flores in representing Congressional District 17. He pledges reform of veterans benefits, including prompt delivery of those benefits; comprehensive health-care benefits for all; and prison reform arising from his experience in the criminal justice field, including the Bill Logue Juvenile Justice Center. He supports border security, primarily through a virtual border wall bolstered by technological advances eclipsing any shortcomings in a physical wall. During our editorial board interview, we found Jaramillo concise, straightforward in his policy stances but with little elaboration or rumination.

QWhy are you running?

AMy time in the Marine Corps taught me many things and one of the most important things it taught me is never back down from something you believe in. I couldnt stand idly by watching whats happening in our government any longer. I want to fight for things such as health care for all, prison and immigration reform, VA disability and compensation reform.

QYour campaign bio says you were deployed to Iraq in 2005.

AThat was 2008. I actually went there before but not for a full deployment. I was on a full deployment to Iraq from 2008 to 2009, but I also went to Iraq [earlier], not for a full deployment.

QWhat can you tell us about the fight in Iraq that might add to a better understanding of the United States decision to invade it and how well we did? By the time you got there, we were obviously involved in a lot of nation-building that has been very controversial. Yet when I have talked with veterans who served in Iraq, thats one thing theyre very proud of.

What do you think we got right and what did we get wrong?

AWhat we got right was definitely being able to help rebuild the area, the [defense] forces out there. That way they can take care of themselves. However, this [U.S. involvement there] is going on 19 years and we actually have service members now that are being deployed that werent even born during the conflict. So to me its time to bring the troops home. Invest that money in local infrastructure and education and health care for our people.

QWas it a good idea to go over there in the first place? It has been suggested that in toppling Saddam Hussein we threw the balance of power out of whack in the Middle East, allowing Iran to grow stronger by virtue of eliminating Sunni leadership in Iraq in favor of Shia leadership. Does any of this make sense to you?

ANo, I understand what youre saying. Saddam was a dictator. He was a bad person inside and out. People like him and Osama bin Laden needed to get the power taken away from them not necessarily their lives. I mean, for Saddam Hussein, we left that up to the people. However, he was oppressing his own people. He was allowing things to happen that shouldnt happen out there. So doing that, we were able to make sure that we were safe, make sure we werent being attacked any longer.

QAfter eight years in the Marines, it looks like you decided to pursue a career in criminal justice. How did that come about?

AActually I had two things that I wanted to pursue in the future psychology, and that was to benefit veterans and children. I felt a good way to pursue that would be to get firsthand experience working at a juvenile justice facility. So I worked at the Bill Logue Juvenile Justice Center here in Waco at their bootcamp program. So I got to see the ins and outs of what happens on a daily basis and how, not in a negative way, but how theyre treated. And so I was able to see what exactly goes into rehabilitation efforts. So seeing that firsthand, I understand that we need more rehabilitation for the children as well as adults in the system.

QWhy then did you jump to the Department of Veterans Affairs?

AAgain, I wanted to work with veterans in some way, shape or form. I actually started off with health benefits. I was able to contact veterans, explain their benefits, what their doctor visits would be like, co-pays if there were co-pays based off of their disability rating. From there I was actually hired on at the regional office where I worked until I resigned.

QDid you reach any conclusions about veterans health care during that process?

Waco was one of the places that didnt get high marks initially in terms of prompt delivery of health care to veterans. I remember Congressman Flores talking quite a bit about it. Why do you think the VA has had a long struggle with this problem? We still hear from veterans about this.

AIts the lack of doctors thats causing the main issues. And the reason why we have a lack of doctors is because we cant compete with the private sector versus pay. So we need to be able to juggle that, to make a compromise in a sense, to be able to have more doctors. What I propose is that we actually make a contract with new doctors at medical schools and say, For five to seven years, based on your specialty work for the Department of Veteran Affairs, we defer your student loans. And after the five to seven years, well waive your student loans. That will leave a constant supply of doctors in the existing facilities and we can open up rural clinics. That way we can have veterans care.

QI noticed on your website you only have two topics under the heading of Issues health care and veterans benefits. Isnt that kind of narrow, given all the problems we face today?

AI do have more issues.

Another big thing is prison and immigration reform. For prison reform, we have become a country of investing in longer sentences when what we need to do is reduce those sentences and invest more in rehabilitation such as education and on-the-job training. That way when we send somebody back to society, they have all the tools necessary to make them a successful part of society. In immigration, we have less than 500 immigration judges currently working on a huge backlog, not including whats piling up at this moment. So what we need to do is, at the very least, hire more immigration judges. That way we can start tackling the backlog, we can start tackling the paper copies and electronic copies coming in for immigration.

QWhat do you think of the First Step Act signed by the president? Sen. John Cornyn helped craft it. We thought it was a significant step forward in criminal justice.

AI dont really have too many opinions on that. Can you go a little more into detail? That way Im making sure I know what

QThe First Step Act signed by the president generally expands rehab programs in prisons. There are specific programs to battle recidivism. And Sen. Cornyn has said that it actually draws a lot on Texas criminal justice models and how Texas manages prisons and prison populations.

QI mean, if youre not familiar with it, lets move on.

ANo, I am. I just want to make sure I was understanding correctly. Which is a great thing. We do need to invest in rehabilitation. However, were still pushing for maximum sentences and this is not just a local issue. This is nationally. So what we need to do is, on a national level, we need to do more to invest in rehabilitation. Again, on-the-job training, education for prisoners.

QOK. A recent survey confirms that health care is the biggest concern for veterans 53% of veterans said they had chronic physical conditions, 33% said they had chronic mental health conditions. The most common conditions were chronic pain, sleep problems, anxiety and depression. More than half said satisfaction with their own health declined within months of leaving the service. The study suggested its important for veterans to become readjusted to society quickly.

AI want to kind of go on both sides of active duty as well as the veteran side. While on active duty, we have a thing we call TAPs [Transition Assistance Program] and its kind of just, this is what happens when you get out. Its a program and its there to basically let you know whats going to happen about VA, about some jobs, if you want to do education. However, what it lacks is more of the preparation of the mental effects of coming out. So when you come out, and knowing from personal experience, you feel a little isolated from everybody because youre used to a certain routine. Youre used to having everybody around you whos gone through the same things. Thats a huge problem. We need to have more counseling.

QPresident Trump has been impeached over matters relating to the delay of security assistance funding to the Ukraine, which is an ally under attack by Russia. Lets put aside the impeachment. We can all agree to disagree on impeachment. Do you support the freezing of congressionally approved funding by this president and all presidents, Republican or Democrat, going forward?

ANo. If its for our allies, we have it allocated for a reason. Any change in that needs to be approved. We have checks and balances for a reason in our federal government.

QTheres been the suggestion made that presidents have the right to hold up congressionally approved funding to evaluate whether the moneys going to be applied in perhaps a corrupt manner or not.

AIt still strikes me as inappropriate. Any sort of change from the allocation of funds should be approved by Congress.

QYoure no longer working for the VA right now?

ANo, I had to resign due to [running for office].

QOh, thats scary. I saw in your campaign that you have two kids. How are you doing in terms of livelihood and health insurance?

AWe have a little nest egg built up and were watching how we spend money. I actually sold my car to help out.

QHas your wife come after you with a rolling pin yet?

ANo. I sat down before I did this with her and I said, This is something I need to do. I definitely need to help our veterans and our people. And she understood and she agreed. And she supported me.

QIs there a common theme that runs through your conversations with potential constituents?

AIts things like the infrastructure. If youve taken a drive through Mart lately, they have some pretty Grand-Canyon-sized potholes. And so they want their roads fixed. And also going to the rural areas, they want doctors. They want to be able to see a doctor without having to drive 40, 45 minutes to an hour to go see that specific doctor thats covered under their insurance. Thats the things we hear. Thats a common thing.

Interview conducted by Trib editor Steve Boggs and opinion editor Bill Whitaker. It has been condensed for space and edited for clarity.

Excerpt from:
Sacrificing for veterans, children and second chances: Q&A with Democratic congressional candidate David Anthony Jaramillo - Waco Tribune-Herald