Matt Rourke/AP

Michael Bloomberg entered the 2020 presidential race wagering that Democrats needed an electable candidate, and that Democrat would be him. But Elizabeth Warren made the case during the debate in Charleston on Tuesday night that Bloomberg would be a that shakiest candidate Democrats could nominate to run against Donald Trump.

Shortly into the debate, the moderator asked Warren why she had said Bloomberg was the “riskiest candidate. The Massachusetts senator responded with a list of his campaign contributions to Republican officials. She began with South Carolina, host of the night’s debate.  “Who funded Lindsey Grahams’ campaign the last time he ran?” Warren asked rhetorically. “Mayor Bloomberg.”

Yes, you heard that right. @MikeBloomberg gave $250,000 to a super PAC to help reelect Trump's "buddy" Sen. Lindsey Graham. pic.twitter.com/iZt0xTgoyo

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 26, 2020

Warren then talked about the money Bloomberg gave to Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s (Penn.) reelection efforts in 2016, when he went up against a Democratic woman, former Clinton White House advisor Katie McGinty, who narrowly lost the race. 

There was another woman candidate he tried to knock out. “And guess what?” Warren asked rhetorically. “That was me,” referencing the donations Bloomberg gave to support her opponent in 2012, former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). She added Bloomberg had called her campaign platform a “sideshow.”

“The core of the Democratic Party will never trust him,” Warren said about his past support of Republicans. “The fact that he cannot earn the trust of the Democratic party means he is the riskiest candidate on this stage.”

Bloomberg, who was elected to three terms as mayor of New York City as a Republican or independent, leaned on that history in his rebuttal. “In an overwhelmingly Democratic progressive city,” Bloomberg said, “they elected me again and again.”

Bloomberg has a long history of donating to both Democratic and Republican candidates. The behavior has drawn the ire of activists who see Bloomberg as playing both sides in a way that harms their movement.

Bloomberg invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2018 midterms in an effort to return the House to Democratic control; several of the 21 candidates who received those millions have endorsed his run for the presidency. As Bloomberg explained that effort, he appeared to almost say “I bought them.”

"I bough … I got them." pic.twitter.com/cnWBySYmd0

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 26, 2020

Brian Cahn/Zuma

Early on Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, the notorious policing policy known as stop-and-frisk once again came back to bite former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And, once again, the billionaire candidate took responsibility for cutting the policing program by 95 percent.

But it’s not true. As my colleague Nathalie Baptiste reported of Bloomberg’s comments during the last debate:

“What happened, however, was it got out of control,” he continued. “When I discovered that we were doing many, many, too many stop-and-frisks, we cut 95 percent of it out.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden reminded him that it was then-President Barack Obama who sent a federal monitor to the city in response to stop-and-frisk abuses; the policy was eventually ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.

Sen. Bernie Sanders poses for a selfie in Denmark, South Carolina, in May 2019.Richard Ellis/Zuma

On Saturday afternoon, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign nearly filled a fellowship hall inside the First Calvary Baptist Church in Waverly, a historically black neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina. The rally was just down the street from where George Elmore, the plaintiff in the South Carolina Supreme Court case that led to the desegregation of the state’s primary system, once had his five-and-dime store.

Sanders wasn’t there—he was in Texas, preparing to address a horde of supporters who had gathered to hear him speak after what was expected to be a clear victory in the Nevada caucuses. Appearing on his behalf in South Carolina were Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and scholar-activist Cornel West, two powerhouse black surrogates who argued that Sanders could win over the state’s black voters, who compose a crucial 60 percent of the state’s Democratic electorate.

In Nevada, Ellison said, Sanders showed he has “real juice” in states with large communities of color. “In South Carolina, man, we’re going to break it out wide,” Ellison said, slamming the table as the room exploded in cheers. South Carolina’s Democratic primary will be held on Saturday, February 29.

Conventional wisdom has held that former Vice President Joe Biden, who’s been riding the coattails of the Obama coalition and his longstanding relationships with prominent Palmetto State Democrats, could rely on South Carolina’s black voters to resurrect his once-inevitable seeming march to the nomination. But Sanders has shown increasing strength in recent polls in the state, particularly after his strong showing in Iowa and his win in New Hampshire. That has sent chills up the spines of some establishment Democrats, who fear Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, would perform poorly against President Donald Trump in the general election.

During his speech in Columbia, West rejected fears that the socialist label will harm Sanders. “’Soviet,’ ‘communist,’ ‘Bolshevik,’” the ebullient West told the crowd, “that’s what they said about my brother, Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“Martin Luther King, Jr. called himself a democratic socialist,” West continued. “He said it because he loved poor people, he loved working people… It ain’t about an ‘ism’—it’s about the lens through which you view the world.” West added that Sanders’ candidacy was the “first time” since Jesse Jackson’s progressive, poverty-oriented 1988 run for the presidency that someone was championing the same message.

That faith in Sanders was notable coming from West, who had been an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama for not doing more for black Americans during his eight years in office. When a member of the audience asked West how a President Sanders could be held accountable in areas where he felt Obama had fallen short, West said black voters needn’t worry about that: Given Sanders’ “consistent” critique of Wall Street and the criminal justice system, he could be trusted not to betray their interests.

In his remarks, Ellison stressed that Sanders’ agenda addresses the specific concerns of black South Carolinians. Sanders, he said, would cancel student loan debt, which overwhelmingly burdens black borrowers. Sanders’ Medicare for All plan would provide long-term care coverage that would stop the “spendout” that drives families to empty their savings to qualify for Medicaid. And his criminal justice proposal would end the mass incarceration of vast numbers of black men and women.

Ellison said this agenda has struck a chord with black voters; recent polls show Sanders has eaten into the support of the black community upon which Biden has relied. And Ellison said it all stems from what Sanders stands for. “That’s an emotionally resonate thing,” he told me before he and West spoke. “That’s why I think Bernie is doing well in brown and black communities.”

Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

Bernie Sanders has won Nevada’s Saturday caucuses, notching another victory on his quest to secure the Democratic nomination. His campaign counted on a massive field organization to turn out early voters, especially among Latinos, but it appears he also won most of the key day-of caucus sites staged at major hotels and resorts along the Las Vegas strip.

While the complete outcome is not yet available, Nevada’s caucuses have not devolved into the complete mayhem that unfolded in Iowa, which, despite Sanders having had more supporters participate in the contest, ended with an indecisive delegate result between him and Pete Buttigieg. Now with clear wins in New Hampshire and Nevada under his belt, Sanders has solidified his place at the front of the pack seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination.

As Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy wrote after the Vermont senator’s win in New Hampshire, “Sanders has become something that for most of his political career would have seemed like a joke: Right now, Bernie Sanders is the closest thing the Democratic presidential race has to a frontrunner, and he’s done it with a campaign operation that is its own kind of statement of the country he wants to build.”

After coming under intense pressure from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has agreed to release three women from nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) they had signed in connection with comments the billionaire businessman allegedly made to them. “If any of them want to be released from their NDAs, they should contact the company and they’ll be given a release,” Bloomberg tweeted on Friday afternoon. He added that his company and campaign would no longer offer confidentiality agreements to resolve “claims of sexual harassment or misconduct.”

Bloomberg LP has identified 3 NDAs signed over the past 30+ years with women to address complaints about comments they said I had made.

If any of them want to be released from their NDAs, they should contact the company and they'll be given a release. https://t.co/bO9JpvSx1T

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 21, 2020

Bloomberg has a reputation for making disparaging comments about women and has faced allegations of making sexist and crude comments to women in the workplace. Details of several cases in which he was accused of creating a hostile work environment have remained private because of nondisclosure agreements, secrecy deals that are a common element of legal settlements as well as a tool for silencing women who make allegations of sexual harassment or gender discrimination.

Since at least December, Warren has been pressuring Bloomberg to release his former employees and colleagues from their NDAs. In a dramatic moment at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Nevada, she tore into the former mayor, framing the issue as a matter of electability. “He has gotten some number of women—dozens, who knows—to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace,” Warren said. “So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?”

“We have a very few nondisclosure agreements—” Bloomberg began.

“How many is that?” Warren pressed.

“None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” he continued, characterizing the legal documents as “agreements between two parties that wanted to keep it quiet. And that’s up to them.”

During a CNN town hall the next day, Warren didn’t let up—revealing that she had drafted a legal document she said Bloomberg could sign to release people from their confidentiality agreements with him. “I used to teach contract law, and I thought I would make this easy,” she said to laughter.

"I used to teach contract law. And I thought I would make this easy."

Elizabeth Warren opened her #cnntownhall by reading aloud a document to release people from Michael Bloomberg's nondisclosure agreements https://t.co/j8nidJ0nTL pic.twitter.com/eHMBjI4qyM

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 21, 2020

Bloomberg’s move on Friday is limited to three complaints about his comments, not about his actions or harassment allegations involving his company. It’s unclear who filed these three complaints, though one well-known NDA involves Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former salesperson who alleges that Bloomberg, upon learning of her pregnancy, told her to “kill it.”

According to the Washington Post, Elisabeth DeMarse, a former chief marketing officer at Bloomberg’s company, also signed a nondisclosure agreement. In 1990, DeMarse assembled a 32-page pamphlet titled “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg” that contained obscene and sexist quotes, including, “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s.” In her introduction to the booklet, Demarse wrote that they were “all actual quotes.” During his 2001 mayoral campaign, Bloomberg characterized the booklet as a “bunch of gags” and said he could not remember making the remarks. This year, his spokesman denied he made the statements.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich waves to his friends after giving a press conference at his Chicago home.Mark Welsh/Daily Herald/AP

In a Fox News interview this week, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley pushed back on criticism over President Donald Trump’s decision to grant clemency of Rod Blagojevich, the corrupt Illinois governor-turned-Celebrity Apprentice star. “The president is clearly against excessive sentencing, whether it’s Rod Blagojevich or Alice Johnson,” Gildley said.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump is touting his reputation as a criminal justice reformer, and that apparently means equating Johnson—a Tennessee grandmother who was sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense—with the politician who was convicted of to trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. At the urging of Kim Kardashian West, Trump commuted Johnson’s sentence in 2018, freeing her after 21 years behind bars. In an ad aired during the Super Bowl this year, the Trump campaign praised the president for freeing Johnson and for reuniting “thousands of families.”

The ad’s claims weren’t exactly wrong, but they weren’t exactly right either. To put it simply:

Yes, Trump granted clemency to Johnson.

Yes, Trump signed the bipartisan First Step Act, which was a major overhaul of the federal prison system, that same year. Thanks to the sentencing reforms in the act, more than 5,500 prisoners have had their sentences reduced or have been released early. 

But no, the First Step Act—which Trump’s Justice Department has actually resisted implementing—isn’t the same as presidential clemency. And, as USA Today put it, “Most of the people Trump has given clemency to did not look like Johnson.”

To date, Trump has given clemency to 33 people (though one of them was actually pardoned by Obama, but a clerical error meant Trump had to re-issue the pardon). Johnson is one of just a handful of African Americans who have been granted clemency, despite the fact that African Americans make up nearly 40 percent of the federal prison population. Just six people have been granted clemency for drug crimes. Instead, many of Trump’s pardons and commutations have gone to white men, often those with connections to Trump and the GOP.

As for the First Step Act, Trump’s support for the program may mean precious little. As Mother Jones reported earlier this month:

But as Trump claims credit for freeing people from prison, there’s one very big problem that he’s not mentioning: His Justice Department is actively pushing to send some of these same people back behind bars, and to prevent others from reducing their sentences—which greatly limits who can benefit from the law that Trump has touted as one of his signature achievements.

While the First Step Act has allies in the White House—including Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner—the officials tasked with implementing it are in the Justice Department. Attorney General Bill Barr, who leads the department, has reportedly raised concerns in private that the legislation’s reforms will drive up crime. And under his watch, the department’s prosecutors have argued that hundreds of incarcerated people applying for relief under the law’s cocaine sentencing reforms are not eligible, according to an investigation by the Washington Post. In some cases, Trump has even stood onstage hugging and congratulating people who were recently released under the law—even as the Justice Department was arguing in court to lock those same people up again.

John Locher / Associated Press

If you thought Elizabeth Warren was going to take a deep breath and change the subject after last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas…well, no. Before a packed room of volunteers at her North Las Vegas field office on Thursday, she picked up where she left off by ripping into the billionaire opponent who has given her campaign new life and a sense of urgency. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, she said, had “gagged” the women in his company, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“Last night was a lot of fun and I’ll tell you why,” she said, after an introduction from Reps. Joaquin Castro of Texas and Andy Levin of Michigan. “Because for me it’s about accountability. I have really had it with billionaires—regardless of party—who think that the rules don’t apply to them. Billionaires who think their money buys them something special. So, you know, they can call women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians and when somebody complains, [they] throw a little money at it and then put a gag in the woman’s mouth.”

That was a reference to non-disclosure agreements Bloomberg’s company signed with an undisclosed number of employees who complained of sexual harassment. Warren had challenged him on the NDAs at Wednesday’s debate in one of the night’s most memorable exchanges. Then she returned to the subject of stop-and-frisk, which several candidates broached at the debate and which has dogged Bloomberg for much of his political career—in part because his answers are misleading. For instance, on Wednesday, Bloomberg suggested the program had turned out differently than he had intended.

“It is not enough to decide in the hours before you declare for president that maybe stop and frisk was a bad idea,” Warren said. “And the part I listened to last night about the ‘unintentional’ effect? I’m sorry, they knew exactly what communities they were targeting, what human beings that they were targeting, and what color those human beings were. In case they missed it on day one, there were all those days afterwards when people protested on the streets, when people wrote, when people cried, when people got hurt and told their story. And the answer from the mayor was silence. Crickets. Right up until he realized, ‘gee I was planning to buy a presidency, and what could go wrong?’”

“Elizabeth Warren!” someone shouted.

Warren kept going: “He had the women all gagged so they couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything about sex discrimination, couldn’t say anything about harassment. Hmm. What to do about all those Latinos and African-Americans that got slammed over the hood, got slammed up against the walls? That got humiliated for doing what, walking while black? Uh, no. So he figures, what does it take? For a billionaire it’s like a big, big deal. He’s sorry. So we’re good now, right? And the answer is: not good enough.”

She suggested Bloomberg “give Mitch McConnell a call and see how telling this woman to sit down and shut up worked”—a reference to the Senator majority leader’s use of the chamber’s gag rule to block Warren from criticizing Jeff Session.

After a disappointing performance in New Hampshire and polls showing her lagging nationally and in critical Super Tuesday states, something needed to change for Warren. She would rather be polling better, of course, but in a significant way Warren’s fall from the top of the pack has been clarifying. It has put her back in the position she thrives in—grilling powerful men she believes have something to hide. Once upon a time it was Timothy Geithner, then it was the CEO of Wells Fargo. On Thursday morning, as she was roasting Bloomberg once more, readers of the the Las Vegas Review-Journal were opening their papers to find a full page ad her campaign had placed stating how much money the paper’s owner, Republican casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, would pay in taxes under her proposed wealth tax.

But the same urgency that’s sharpened her criticism of her opponents has also led her down a path she eschewed for months. After she wrapped up in North Las Vegas, she took a few questions from the press outside the office and was asked if she’d disavow a super-PAC that’s now spending money to promote her candidacy. Warren, whose own campaign site boasts that she “rejects super-PACs,” balked. Still, she found a way to pin even this reversal on the man of the hour, Bloomberg. Such a move, she explained, would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament against “multi-billionaires” who “could rummage around in their sock drawer and find enough money to be able to fund a campaign.”

Former US Attorney General Jeff SessionsJay Reeves/AP

In a new ad for his Alabama Senate campaign released last week, Jeff Sessions brags about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy he oversaw as attorney general. The ad touts the policy as proof of Sessions’ ability to “take action” on immigration and includes clips of the May 2018 speech in which he rolled out the policy. It conveniently leaves out the part where Sessions explains that “zero tolerance” meant family separation—that is, separating the children of migrants from their families.

Here’s the spot:

In the campaign video, we hear Sessions drawling, “I have put in place a ‘zero tolerance’ policy,” and, “If you cross the border unlawfully, we will prosecute you.” But the clip does not include what Sessions said a moment later in his speech: “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child may be separated from you as required by law.”

AG Sessions: "I have put in place a zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry on our southwest border. If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It's that simple. pic.twitter.com/WBSgQEQUrK

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 7, 2018

In practice, this policy led to the separation of more than 2,700 migrant families at the US southern border, contributing to the massive number of migrant children—nearly 70,000 in all, in 2019—being held in detention centers. As Mother Jones has reported since the crisis began in 2018, many were held in deplorable conditions without access to basic necessities or medical care. Six migrant children have died in federal custody since 2018.

But Sessions is counting on Alabama voters to think less about children in cages and more about how he “secured” the southern border to deliver him a win in the Republican primary on March 3. If he makes it past a crowded primary field—which includes the protagonist in this racist campaign ad—Sessions will look to reclaim his old Senate seat from Sen. Doug Jones. Jones, a Democrat, won the 2017 special election to replace Sessions when Sessions left for the AG role. So far, Sessions’ strategy in this campaign has been to cozy up to a president who doesn’t exactly love him back. The immigration ad is another way for Sessions to highlight his work with Trump, the man who said making Sessions his AG was the “biggest mistake” of his presidency. Trump has not endorsed Sessions for the seat. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) campaigns at the College of Southern Nevada on February 17. Brian Cahn/ZUMA

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) landed what may prove to be the toughest blow against Michael Bloomberg in the Nevada Democratic debate Wednesday night when she pressed him to release female employees who had accused him of harassment and discrimination from non-disclosure agreements. Bloomberg refused. 

“Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those non-disclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?” she asked, standing beside him on stage.

Bloomberg began to respond, saying, “we have a very few nondisclosure agreements” when Warren cut in. “How many is that?” she said.

… here's the moment where warren presses bloomberg on his past comments & treatment of women and his use of non-disclosure agreements.#demdebate pic.twitter.com/5wqGMM6VQd

— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) February 20, 2020

Allegations that he made sexist remarks and created a hostile work environment have dogged Bloomberg’s campaign. But Bloomberg, who has chalked up his past behavior to “bawdy humor,” has been unwavering in refusing to release multiple women from the confidentiality agreements they signed when settling legal actions against his company. 

Warren dug the knife in on the debate stage when she argued that the behavior wasn’t just problematic but that it also undercut Bloomberg’s electability—the ability to defeat President Donald Trump that Democratic voters are searching for in their nominee.

“This is not just a question of the mayor’s character,” Warren said. “This is also a question of electability. We are not gonna beat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many nondisclosure agreements and the drip drip of stories.”

John Locher/AP

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, made his debate-stage debut Wednesday night, and the other candidates were ready to pounce.

From the outset, Bloomberg’s rivals attacked his criminal justice policies. Under Bloomberg, the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy targeted people of color in the city and led to a disproportionate number of black and brown men being stopped, searched, and detained by police. To make matters worse for Bloomberg, his 2015 comments about the racist and controversial practice recently resurfaced and led to #BloombergIsARacist trending on Twitter, as I noted last week:

Bloomberg can be heard defending the policy during a speech at the Aspen Institute. “Ninety-five percent murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” he said. “You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city.” The former mayor then went on to say that all crime takes place in communities of color. “Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods,” he explained. “Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.” Bloomberg requested that the audio not be released. 

Although Bloomberg apologized for stop-and-frisk prior to entering the race, his support for the policing tactic loomed large over the debate. One of the moderators, NBC News’ Lester Holt, brought up his 2015 comments. “What does that kind of language say about how you view people of color or people in minority neighborhoods?” Holt asked.

Bloomberg did not directly answer, instead choosing to say that he was “embarrassed” about how the policy turned out. “What happened, however, was it got out of control,” he continued. “When I discovered that we were doing many, many, too many stop-and-frisks, we cut 95 percent of it out.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden reminded him that it was then-President Barack Obama who sent a federal monitor to the city in response to stop-and-frisk abuses; the policy was eventually ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.

.@ewarren, on @MikeBloomberg's apology for stop and frisk: “The language he used isn’t about stop and frisk, it’s about how it turned out. This isn’t about how it turned out, this is about what it was designed to do. It targeted black and brown men from the beginning.” pic.twitter.com/tTYXkYsIJo

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 20, 2020

Elizabeth Warren, who was highly critical of many of her opponents during the debate, also weighed in, criticizing the way Bloomberg phrased his apology.

“The language he used isn’t about stop-and-frisk, it’s about how it turned out,” she said. “This isn’t about how it turned out, this is about what it was designed to do. It targeted black and brown men from the beginning.”

Elizabeth Warren wasted no time jumping into Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate with a jab at former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who joined the other candidates for his first debate of the election season.

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,” the senator from Massachusetts said. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,” she added, as shouts erupted from the audience.

“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk,” she said. “Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another.”

Watch the video below:

Wow. @ewarren came out swinging at @MikeBloomberg tonight.

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” pic.twitter.com/3xoMOgU47S

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 20, 2020

Yomiuri Shimbun/AP

Earlier this month, Virginia lawmakers voted to eliminate Lee–Jackson Day—a holiday honoring Confederate generals—and replace it with a state holiday on Election Day. The legislation, which Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has endorsed, is being billed as a win-win, striking down a relic of the state’s racist past while simultaneously promoting an effort to boost voter turnout.

Swapping out an existing paid holiday for Election Day seems to be an increasingly popular idea elsewhere in the country, too. Election Day is already a holiday in several states, and six of the Democratic presidential candidates have said that they support making it a national holiday. Last year, the city of Sandusky, Ohio, opted for an Election Day holiday in lieu of Columbus Day, which many associate with oppression of indigenous peoples. Wilfred Codrington of the Brennan Center for Justice has suggested moving the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to Election Day to honor the civil rights leader’s dedication to democracy. This week, several public figures suggested replacing Presidents Day with an Election Day holiday. 

But would an Election Day holiday actually help get voters to the polls? The answer is far from clear.

Since 1845, Election Day has taken place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, because that was the most convenient time for rural farmers to travel to cities after completing their fall harvests. Election Day now falls in the middle of the traditional workweek, and advocates for a paid holiday say that it would give working people more flexibility to cast their ballots. They also suggest that it would shorten lines at polling places by reducing the number of people voting at the peak hours before and after the workday. And, while paid federal holidays legally apply only to government employees and public institutions, private employers tend to follow suit.

Still, there’s little indication that such a holiday would really boost voter turnout. An Elections Canada study of 61 democratic countries, for example, did not find any evidence of higher voter turnout in countries where election day was a holiday. And Joshua Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and author of Vote for Us: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting, warns that an Election Day holiday could have unintended consequences for low-income workers who might miss a day’s wages, or for parents whose daycares might close. The holiday would also fail to benefit emergency workers, hospital workers, and other employees who most likely would not get the day off, he said.

“The concern about Election Day as a holiday is it’s not clear that it will actually improve turnout, as opposed to just make it easier for people who are already going to vote anyway,” Douglas said. A better solution, according to Douglas, would be to enact universal vote-by-mail, which would allow people to fill out a ballot and return it at their convenience. This would solve the problem of long lines at polling places without forcing voters to rearrange their schedules. Colorado implemented that system in 2014, with promising results: A Washington Monthly study found that it increased overall voter turnout in that year by 3.3 percent. Similar systems are also used in Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii.

Luckily, the Election Day holiday isn’t the only reform aimed at making it easier for people in Virginia to vote. Lawmakers there recently approved no-excuse absentee voting, which Northam has supported. The state’s Senate has voted to repeal the state’s photo ID law, and lawmakers are considering bills that would enact automatic voter registration. “There are a series of things that, taken together, could rewrite the picture quite significantly,” Claire Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, said. “It’s a really exciting time here in Virginia when you think about it in terms of access to the ballot box and reversing a long history of mostly racially designed barriers to voting.”

Ted S. Warren/AP

It was a debate in 2016, and it rages today: Can a self-proclaimed socialist win a presidential election? Bernie Sanders and his supporters enthusiastically proclaim yes. But there is no overwhelming empirical evidence to support their view. After all, it has never happened before. And a recent poll shows that socialism, while popular within limited segments of the American public, still has a negative impression across most of the population. Sanders and his fans point to polls for the 2016 race and the 2020 contests that have showed Sanders beating Donald Trump. But these polls all have been conducted within an unusual context: no negative ads blasting Sanders for being a socialist. That is, Sanders has never been on the receiving end of a nationwide blitz of attack ads that denounce him for being a socialist and that assail him for additional unorthodox stances he has taken. 

This is why Sanders and his backers should at this stage welcome negative ads that attempt to delegitimize him. That would demonstrate whether they are right—and whether Sanders can withstand such a pummeling. 

Of course, this suggestion is made somewhat facetiously. No candidate has ever invited an assault on himself or herself. But that would be the only way to test the Sanders camp’s contention that his embrace of democratic socialism will not be a serious vulnerability, should Sanders bag the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. There is little doubt that were he to become the Dems’ standard bearer, Sanders will likely be met with half-a-billion dollars (maybe more) in ads that depict him as a wild-eyed socialist who honeymooned in Moscow and expressed out-of-the-mainstream opinions on sexual freedom and other subjects. In 2016 and the current race so far, Sanders has not had to confront such a blast. 

Sanders’ top strategists tend to wave off the socialism issue. Recently Jeffrey Weaver, a longtime Sanders adviser, told me this is no problem for Sanders. Republicans, he said, “call every Democratic a socialist, and they spend a lot of time fighting that charge. We’re not going to have that argument—whether you’re a socialist or not. Instead, Sanders can talk about how Donald Trump wants to cut Social Security and take healthcare away and give tax cuts to people who don’t deserve them.” Weaver is suggesting that Sanders can defuse this classic right-wing line-of-attack by conceding the point: Yeah, I’m a socialist. 

But is that being optimistic? Sanders can make this all go away so easily? Weaver insisted that Sanders could “ju-jitsu” the you’re-a-socialist slam by talking about Trump’s “corporate socialism.” He pointed out that when Sanders ran for US Senate in 2006, his GOP opponent took out ads that essentially called Sanders a friend of terrorists and child-molesters. (Sanders had voted against mandatory minimum sentences). Yet Sanders won. By that point, though, Sanders had represented Vermont in the House of Representatives as a democratic socialist for a decade and a half. 

In short, Weaver maintained that generously financed scare-ads would simply bounce off Sanders. “You go to the American people and take the money out of this. Bernie is one of the most well-defined figures in American politics. If you ask voters, what they think of him, they say, Medicare For All, he’s for the working class and the little guy. They don’t say he’s a socialist.” And in a dig at former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, he added, “Democratic socialism is far less problematic for people than taking away the soda they want to drink.”

But can any candidate just side-step the fight to define his or her public image? Even well-known hopefuls often have to deal with vicious campaigns that seek to influence how they are perceived by voters. Will an everybody-knows-I’m-a-socialist response do the trick, when ads raise questions about Sanders’ patriotism and assail his attitude toward free enterprise? Remember, these ads don’t have to be accurate. (They could, for instance, show Sanders praising Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega—years before Ortega, a leftist, went all-out authoritarian.) And while it is true that Trump and the Republicans will claim any Democratic nominee is a “socialist” who despises the American way of life, might such attacks hit harder if a Democrats retorts, “I am a socialist, but I’m a democratic socialist”? (Which to some might sound like Democratic socialist.)

Despite what Weaver argues, Sanders is probably not invulnerable in this regard. One recent Yahoo/YouGov poll noted that 62 percent of registered voters know that Sanders is a socialist. (Eighteen percent said he isn’t; a fifth were unsure.) But that poll also found that 47 percent had an unfavorable view of socialism, though only 26 percent had a positive impression. Meanwhile, 38 percent said that “socialism” is the same thing as “democratic socialism”—the label Sanders wears. (A quarter of respondents were uncertain if they are the same.) These margins do appear to give Trump’s ad-makers material to work with. 

In the absence of a negative fusillade, it’s impossible to state that Sanders will fare best—or even competitively—against Trump. It can only be a hunch. Other Democratic candidates have already encountered fierce Republican efforts to discredit them. Trump and his GOP handmaids turned Trump’s impeachment into a high-profile attack on former Vice President Joe Biden. Previously, Trump trained his tweeting firepower on Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But Sanders waltzed through the 2016 campaign with no barrage of negative ads from the Hillary Clinton forces. And though his Democratic rivals have taken jabs at him at the debates during the 2020 contest, there has been no bombardment. In one debate, when the Democratic wannabes were asked if Sanders’ democratic socialism could be a problem for their party in a general election, only Sen. Amy Klobuchar raised her hand; that was hardly a blistering denunciation. (Bloomberg, too, has so far gotten off easy. But that may change as he becomes a participant in the Democratic debates.) 

It’s long been an axiom of American politics that it’s better to be attacked earlier in a race than later. This gives a candidate time to figure out how best to reply and a chance to turn potential controversies into old news by Election Day. It also offers voters a chance to see how a candidate can perform under fire and handle the incoming. As of now, one cannot definitively determine if devoting hundreds of millions of dollars to vilifying Sanders as a socialist will be effective—or be a waste of money. If his Democratic foes were spending millions in such a manner, that might yield data that could be useful in assessing how the issue would play out in the general election. But that’s not happening. 

For Sanders and his team, the only way to prove that he can withstand such an onslaught and go on to victory is to…withstand such an onslaught. But that assault may only occur if Sanders becomes the Democrat to challenge Trump in the fall. So for the time being, the arguments and assurances that Sanders’ socialism is no liability for Trump to exploit are merely beliefs and wishes. And the head-to-head polls matching Sanders and Trump ought to be heavily caveated. The electability of a socialist presidential candidate in the United States remains one big political science experiment, the possible results of which—without a test run—are open to guessing and never-ending debate.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) upcoming reelection campaign will not be an easy one. For the first time since she was elected to the Senate in 1996, Collins faces tough competition as she seeks a fifth term, according to a new poll from Colby College. According to the poll, only 42 percent of respondents said they would vote for Collins, while 43 percent of respondents said they would vote for Sara Gideon, the Democrat who is vying for Collins’ senate seat. 

A lot of eyes were on Collins during the Senate’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump. As one of the Senate’s more moderate Republicans, Collins has not always followed party lines and broke with Trump and most of her Republican colleagues on issues like protecting the Affordable Care Act and funding the border wall. During her last election, in 2014, Collins cruised to victory with the support of progressive groups like the Human Rights Campaign, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the League of Conservation Voters. 

Much of the goodwill Collins had earned from the left eroded after she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Still liberals held out hope that she’d break ranks with the GOP during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. After all, Collins had famously crossed party lines and voted to acquit Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, and some hoped she would again do the same and vote to remove Trump from office. But Collins instead voted to acquit the president, saying that she thinks he learned a “pretty big lesson.”

Her vote apparently did not sit well with many of Maine’s voters, according to the poll. Forty-nine percent of respondents said she made the right decision in her impeachment vote, while 50 percent said it was the wrong one. But among independent voters, which make up 40 percent of Maine’s electorate, 39 percent said that they are now less likely to vote for her because of her decision to acquit the president. 

But perhaps the most revealing number from the Colby College poll, which was conducted between February 10 and 13, was how much support she is losing from women voters. According to the poll, 36 percent of women said they would vote for Collins, while 49 said they would support Gideon. And for women under 50, only 26 percent supported Collins, compared to 56 percent responding that they would support Gideon.

supergenijalac/Shutterstock

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick was among the last to arrive in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. And now he’s gone. After earning 0.4 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Patrick announced Wednesday that he would end his longshot campaign.

Patrick joined the race in November 2019; most of the other candidates had announced their bids by April. And, with neither the name recognition nor the massive wealth of former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who also entered the race in November, Patrick’s campaign was lackluster from the get-go.

“Having delivered health care to 99% of Massachusetts residents, nation leading student achievement and energy efficiency, responsible budgets, and the highest bond rating in Massachusetts history, I believed and still believe we had a strong case to make for being able to deliver better outcomes,” Patrick wrote in an email announcing the suspension of his campaign. “And having shown through legislative initiatives, economic recovery, natural and man-made disasters, and a terrorist attack that we can lead by asking people to turn to each other instead of on each other, I thought we had a pretty good case for a better way as well.”

Fernanda Echavarri / Mother Jones

While Bernie Sanders locked down a primary win in frigid New Hampshire, a group of student Berners in the exact opposite corner of the country spent their evening celebrating and recruiting others to join their outreach efforts ahead of the big prize: Super Tuesday.

“What do we want? Bernie! When do we want him? Now!” chanted a group of roughly 80 to 100 students at the University of California–Los Angeles, holding up Bernie 2020 signs in both English and Spanish. The campaign event—one of several planned this week in Southern California—was smaller than I’d expected, perhaps due to midterms or what some students called “freezing” weather. (It was in the mid-50s.) But the folks I talked to were all-in, listing similar reasons for supporting Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination: climate change, student debt, free college tuition, universal health care, and immigration reform.

Not surprisingly, the main theme of the campus event was the role of young people will play—on Super Tuesday, and beyond. FiveThirtyEight has predicted that Sanders could clean up in California; as Nate Silver pointed out on Twitter, that prediction is “a fairly big reason” why his organization’s model currently has Sanders as the frontrunner. The speakers encouraged the crowd to mobilize for the next three weeks to win Sanders the nomination, and then to stick with it throughout what promises to be a long campaign to defeat Donald Trump. 

“Political is personal,” emphasized Joseline Garcia, the student organizer manager for the Sanders campaign in California. Throughout the event, the 25-year-old daughter of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants hyped up the crowd in her Bernie shirt, cowboy boots, and black cowboy hat, leading chants and imploring students to hold their lit-up cellphones to the sky. When I pulled her away for a moment after the event, Garcia was quick to talk up Sanders’ popularity with Latinx students and noted that this younger cohort of Latinx voters would be vital in mobilizing older generations.

Take Garcia’s family, for example. “My mother is going to be voting for the first time,” she told me. “For Bernie.” 

Listen to Tim Murphy describe Bernie Sanders’ journey to frontrunner status, from inside the roaring Sanders celebration party, on this special New Hampshire primary edition of the Mother Jones Podcast:

Steven Senne/AP

Sen. Bernie Sanders has won Tuesday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary, according to multiple news outlets.

Tuesday marks Sanders’ second primary win in New Hampshire, which borders his home state of Vermont. Sanders defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2016 primary with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Sanders narrowly lost to Pete Buttigieg in last week’s Iowa caucus. Sanders won the most individual votes in the caucus, but lost to Buttigieg by two state delegate equivalents. Following a week of intense competition between the two candidates, Buttigieg came in second and a rising Amy Klobuchar finished a close third.

Former vice president Joe Biden came in fifth, as the results stand now, a markedly poor result for a candidate who prides himself on name recognition. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), previously considered a front-runner in the race, placed fourth. Because neither candidate looks on track to hit 15 percent in the state, neither Warren nor Biden will gain any delegates out of New Hampshire, per CNN.

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang dropped out of the race Tuesday night, as did Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.

"This victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump." – @BernieSanders pic.twitter.com/PT6vRE4EQO

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 12, 2020

Our reporters fanned out to victory parties for the top three Democratic finishers for this edition of the Mother Jones Podcast, “How Bernie Sanders Won New Hampshire.” Listen:

Anders Hellberg of Stockholm, Sweden, attends a get-out-the-vote rally for Elizabeth Warren in Rochester, New Hampshire.Daniel Schulman

When he stepped to the microphone at Monday’s get-out-the-vote rally for Elizabeth Warren in Rochester, New Hampshire, Anders Hellberg apologized for his accent.

“Some people seem to think I have one, too,” the candidate quipped in reply.

Hellberg hails from Stockholm. He is 68 and publishes nautical guidebooks. And it is probably safe to say he is Sweden’s biggest Warren superfan. “I came here from Europe for you,” he told Warren. “I’m going back tonight.”

He’d flown in on Friday and spent the last few days following Warren from campaign stop to campaign stop as she barnstormed New Hampshire ahead of the state’s primary on Tuesday. At one of his first events, when Warren’s campaign said she would not have time for one of her famous selfie lines, Hellberg wondered if he might have to settle for a photo with Warren’s golden retriever, Bailey. “I didn’t travel all the way around the world for a selfie with Bailey—but I’ll take it,” he said.

He needn’t have worried. By the time he left the Rochester Opera House on Monday afternoon, en route to Boston’s Logan Airport to catch his return flight, he had collected his third photo with Warren. He also got the opportunity to ask her a question at the rally. Noting that he had two stepsons with autism who require full-time care, which is funded by the Swedish government, Hellberg wondered how she planned to help American families caring for disabled loved ones. (“That’s what Medicare for All is all about,” Warren answered.)

Political tourists have flocked to New Hampshire to see the candidates up close. I’ve bumped into people from California, Florida, New York, and many other locales—but Hellberg was the first person I met who had taken a transatlantic flight in order to check out the first-in-the-nation primary. 

“I’ve been following American politics since the ’60s, and I would say that never, ever has the country had a candidate like Elizabeth Warren,” Hellberg told me. “She’s absolutely outstanding.” 

Warren, it turns out, is not the only 2020 contender who can point to passionate Nordic support. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has apparently won over Danes by slamming President Trump on the campaign trial for canceling a visit to their country because its leaders rebuffed Trump’s outlandish proposition to purchase Greenland. (“He blames the entire kingdom of Denmark. Who does that?”) At a campaign rally on Monday in Exeter, Klobuchar brought up her “strange cult following of Danish people.” The New York Times‘ Nick Corasaniti, who was on the scene, reported, “and they were here, along the wall, waving back when mentioned.”

Pete Buttigieg, meanwhile, has a Norwegian constituency, owing to the fact that he taught himself the language in order to read the work of the author Erlend Loe in its original form.

Warren, for her part, can use all the support she can get in New Hampshire. After her third-place finish in Iowa, recent polls show her slipping into fourth or even fifth place in New Hampshire. Hellberg admitted that he was concerned about her chances. “The American people,” he said, “will be not so smart if they choose another candidate.” 

Elizabeth Warren, left, and Amy Klobuchar, right, stand on stage before the start of a Democratic presidential primary debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. on Friday, February 7, 2020.Charles Krupa/AP

Three weeks before Iowa caucus-goers put their confidence in two men, the New York Times placed its confidence in two women: Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. The paper of record explained its highly unusual decision to endorse two candidates by delineating what editors perceived to be the two visions emerging in the Democratic field: a “realist” one that called for a return to a “more sensible America,” and a “radical” one that called for upending existing political and economic systems. Klobuchar, cast as the “realist,” and Warren, painted as the “radical,” were “the most effective advocates for each approach,” the Times said.

Some New Hampshire voters, down to their final moments of decision-making before they head to the polls, also think that Klobuchar and Warren are the field’s two best candidates. But these voters are drawn to them based on their personal and professional similarities, not their ideological differences.

“They’re both very bright, have a lot of experience, and have accomplished a lot,” Nancy Turkington, a doctor who works in Lebanon, New Hampshire, told me at a Warren event there Sunday night. “And I think they both have been very thoughtful about the feminist agenda.”

Susan McAtavey, who I met at Pete Buttigieg’s rally in Dover on Sunday afternoon, told me she was also considering Warren and Klobuchar. “I would love to have a female candidate—I’m not married to the idea, but I’d love that,” McAtavey said. Though she considers herself to be progressive and believes Warren aligns more closely with that vision, “I’m always impressed with how well [Klobuchar] does in debates,” McAtavey said. “I don’t know, I love Klobuchar.”

In conversations with these Klobuchar-Warren fans—across two events in New Hampshire yesterday, I met 10—it became clear that these are the résumé readers of the Democratic coalition. They like the two senators’ records of achievement, often citing Warren’s establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Klobuchar’s oft-touted record of passing more bills than her fellow senators in the race. They also cite Warren’s line from the January debate, when she told viewers that only she and Klobuchar had won every election they’d run in, while the male candidates present had lost 10 elections between them.

Voters’ familiarity with these accomplishments is perhaps attributable to the fact that women candidates have to flog those achievements harder. As my colleague Pema Levy wrote last month, a persistent side effect of sexism is that voters are often more skeptical of women’s competency, a dynamic that requires those candidates to “work harder to prove their competence to voters more skeptical of their readiness,” Levy wrote. Whatever the reason, it’s made a difference for voters I spoke with who like both Klobuchar and Warren. “They have records,” Mark Soza, an undecided voter I met at a Joe Biden rally in Gilford, New Hampshire, told me. “That’s very persuasive.”

To be clear, plenty of voters are still thinking about ideological differences. At the Buttigieg rally in Dover, several New Hampshirites told me they’re choosing between Buttigieg and Klobuchar because of those candidates’ more moderate stances; at Warren’s event in Lebanon, there were plenty of Warren fans who see fellow progressive Bernie Sanders as their second choice.

But voters looking beyond ideology told me they find fault in both Sanders and Buttigieg, the male candidates whose platforms align most closely with Warren and Klobuchar, respectively. Turkington told me she didn’t care for Sanders because he’s “not willing to compromise.” As for Buttigieg: “It’s incredible to think a mayor from a small town can compete with these senators who have accomplished so much.”

The question remains, of course, whether these candidates’ records and voters will put either candidate over the top. Warren finished third in Iowa with eight delegates and Klobuchar finished fifth with just one. Recent New Hampshire polls leading up to the nation’s first primary have found both candidates oscillating between third and fifth place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, and sometimes Joe Biden.

Michael Bloomberg speaks to gun control advocates at a rally in Aurora, Colo. in December.Thomas Peipert/AP

Most of the action in the presidential race is in New Hampshire right now, but campaign surrogates for Michael Bloomberg spent the weekend traveling throughout Virginia to highlight his record on gun violence prevention. And gun rights activists were out in full force to show how much they hate the former New York City mayor.

A statewide Bloomberg bus tour wrapped up Sunday evening in the DC suburb of Arlington, a Democratic stronghold in the Old Dominion, which votes next month on Super Tuesday. There, dozens of Bloomberg volunteers and supporters—including DC mayor Muriel Bowser—were met with fierce opposition from more than 100 gun rights activists who crashed the event and attempted to prevent attendees from getting inside. The demonstrators disrupted speeches and harassed people on their way out. 

Here in Arlington, Va. for a @MikeBloomberg campaign event with gun control activists and DC mayor @MurielBowser, hundreds of gun rights activists are here in protest, blocking attendees from getting in. pic.twitter.com/l5MgFhwcjx

— Matt Cohen (@Matt_D_Cohen) February 9, 2020

It was a tense scene, especially considering that Bloomberg was nowhere near it—he was campaigning in another Super Tuesday state, Massachusetts. It highlights the unique position that Bloomberg, a billionaire, occupies when it comes to gun control issues in Virginia. Of the many philanthropic enterprises that Bloomberg has his hands in, gun control is probably the one for which he’s best known. He founded and largely finances the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, which had a big presence in Virginia during last year’s elections, outspending the NRA and helping to flip the state legislature blue for the first time in decades. As a result, state lawmakers are fast-tracking gun control laws, much to the ire of some gun rights activists, who held a massive 2nd Amendment rally in front of the state capitol in Richmond last month. 

At Sunday’s campaign stop, though, the commotion outside did not muddle the message from the gun control activists who spoke. “I could lay down and take it, but I’d rather fight,” said Brenda Moss, a Moms Demand Action volunteer who lost a son to gun violence. Moss—along with Bowser and Bloomberg senior adviser Debbie Weir—was one of several speakers to briefly address the crowd before protesters who had snuck into the rally jumped onstage and grabbed the mic. Campaign staffers promptly blasted Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” to drown them out as they were escorted from the event. The rally concluded, with Bloomberg volunteers and supporters mingling for the remainder of the evening.

Though Bloomberg’s late entrance into the already crowded Democratic race was first met with skepticism—especially his peculiar strategy of skipping the first few states and focusing on Super Tuesday—he’s starting gain more traction, thanks in no small part to the massive amount of money he’s spent on his own campaign. And the message and enthusiasm among campaign volunteers and supporters that I met at Sunday’s rally was uniform: Bloomberg is the only candidate with the resources to take on Donald Trump, they argue.

“This is the first time I’ve been excited about a candidate since Obama,” one Bloomberg campaign volunteer told me. Another volunteer said he likes Bloomberg because “he is exactly what Donald Trump is not, but exactly what Donald Trump wants to be.” Still, all the Bloomberg supporters I talked to Sunday said they’d vote for whoever ends up getting the Democratic nomination—a stance that echoes Bloomberg, himself, who has promised to fund a massive independent effort to support whoever receives the party’s nomination.

More so than any of the other Democratic candidates, Bloomberg has become a polarizing figure in Virginia. Protesters outside Sunday’s event held signs that compared Bloomberg—who is Jewish—to a Nazi and chanted “sic semper tyrannis” as security guards escorted out attendees who were ready to leave.

A couple of protesters snuck in and tried to crash the event, campaign staff tries to play them off to…. Fatboy Slim. pic.twitter.com/fE0uSADfMg

— Matt Cohen (@Matt_D_Cohen) February 10, 2020

Tom Speciale, a US Army reservist who is running for the GOP nod to take on Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), was one of the protesters who crashed the Bloomberg event and attempted to speak from the podium. When I caught up with him afterward, he said he didn’t like the former New York mayor’s “socialist values.” I mentioned to him that an actual socialist is the current Democratic frontrunner. Speciale shrugged. “They’re all socialists,” he said.