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Things are not going swimmingly for the Democrats right now.

President Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial, and he gave a State of the Union address that made Democrats feel like the hapless Japanese military as they watched Godzilla stroll through downtown Tokyo. His polling is up to historic highs (though in fairness, Trump's approval rating is historically low for a president's historic highs), and the economy is roaring.

Meanwhile, the only thing that could have made the Iowa caucuses more disastrous would have been an outbreak of the coronavirus. The Democratic candidate the White House fears the most Joe Biden appears to be tanking, and the candidate the White House most wants to run against Bernie Sanders appears to be pulling out in front.

What's going on?

I have a theory. Or rather, I'm persuaded by a theory I picked up from Denver University professor of political science Seth Masket, author of the forthcoming book "Learning From Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020." The Democrats can't figure out what to do next because they still haven't figured out what really went wrong the last time.

Every four years, one of the parties loses the presidential race. As the party pooh-bahs and political pundits play the blame game, a rough consensus quickly emerges about why the party nominee lost. Sometimes the most self-serving explanation wins out: It was all the candidate's fault. The election was winnable, and our ideas are great, but our nominee just couldn't make the sale.

But sometimes the postmortem is coldly empirical and data-driven. We failed to connect with suburban voters. We didn't turn out our base in Michigan or Ohio. We never came up with a good response to those attacks. And sometimes a consensus emerges that the party itself is ideologically out of touch with a majority of the electorate.

Bill Clinton beat the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, in 1992 for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones was that the party recognized that its previous two nominees Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis seemed too beholden to special interests and too committed to liberal orthodoxy. Clinton ran as a "different kind of Democrat" who went out of his way to shoot some liberal sacred cows.

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Twenty-four years later, his wife was the nominee. Hillary Clinton lost the election but not the popular vote. Were it not for some 78,000 votes in five counties four in Florida and one in Michigan Clinton would have won the Electoral College tally as well. Such a close election made it harder to understand what went wrong.

In statistical terms, this is white noise well within the margin of error. You can blame the Russians for Trump's victory, or you can blame the weather, or you can blame Clinton for snubbing the state of Wisconsin. In other words, you can pick whichever theory supports your idea of what the party should do next.

Clinton did not take her defeat well and spent much of 2017 offering self-serving theories about who or what was to blame, from sexist men and self-hating women to voter suppression and fake news to, of course, the Russians. This made a sober accounting of the Democrats' loss even harder.

And then there's the Bernie factor. Sanders lost the primaries in 2016, but it's like he never got the memo. He and his supporters took their surprisingly strong showing to claim a mandate for changes to the party (particularly in Iowa, which is one reason for the disaster there).

There's also the fact that Trump won despite most polls predicting a Clinton victory. This shock, Masket writes, "undermined many activists' longstanding beliefs about just what sorts of candidates are electable."

Add in the fact that the last winning Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, won not by running to the center the way Bill Clinton did but by turbocharging the turnout of the Democratic base, and you can see why many Democrats think that's a winning strategy this time around. That's certainly Sanders' bet. Indeed, for most of the last year, nearly all of the Democratic candidates were fighting in Sanders' lane and working under the same theory.

But Obama won in 2008 thanks in part to a severe economic crisis and an unpopular war. He was also a compelling candidate. None of that applies today. Actually, the situation is something closer to the reverse.

The Democrats desperately need a candidate who gives moderates and Trump-exhausted Republicans an excuse to oust an incumbent in a time of peace and prosperity. The Trump team understands this, which is why it's trying to bury Biden and boost Bernie. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they can't see it.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. He wrote this for Tribune News Service.

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Dems still haven't figured out what went wrong in 2016 - Newsday

If past is prologue, the losing team in Sundays Super Bowl will swallow its bitter disappointment and graciously offer its congratulations to the winners.

Our politics used to be like that.

After Vice President Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court, he expressed his disagreement and frustration, but declared that partisan rancor must now be put aside.

I accept the finality of the outcome, Gore said in a televised address. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.

He said he had telephoned George W. Bush, congratulated him and made a point of calling him president-elect.

A humble acceptance of election results has been a hallmark of our republic for more than 200 years and is key to the peaceful transfer of power. Before and after Gore, all those who were defeated licked their wounds in private while publicly bowing to the will of the people.

Except Hillary Clinton. Although she conceded to Donald Trump in November of 2016, she soon made it very clear that she did not consider his victory legitimate.

That launched the Russia, Russia, Russia hysteria and it was highly contagious. Some Democrats began to talk of impeaching Trump before he was inaugurated, and the last three years were defined by endless resistance to his presidency and attempts to drive him from office.

The minute one effort failed, another began. The pressure on Electoral College electors to switch their votes was succeeded by special counsel Robert Mueller who was succeeded by Ukraine. The allegations changed, but the goal remained the same. And still does.

We cant be sure what the next front in the war against Trump will be, only that there will be one. Look no further than the Dems bitter reaction to their defeat in the impeachment trial to know they still do not accept the results of 2016.

The Senate turned away from truth and went along with a sham trial, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed Friday after his push for additional witnesses was defeated. He said Trumps acquittal, expected to become final Wednesday, would be meaningless and has no value.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had boasted that the impeachment she engineered will last forever, denied the plain meaning of acquittal. No matter the outcome, Pelosi said, he will not be acquitted, adding: You cannot be acquitted if you dont have a trial.

There was a trial, an extensive one, but the fact that Trump won apparently makes it illegitimate. The cancer Clinton started has turned Dems into a party of deniers.

They see fairness only when they win. When they lose, the game was rigged.

Indeed, the impeachers already claim the results of this years election cant be trusted because Trump is a cheater. That was their rationale for wanting to force him from office and off the ballot for the rest of his life.

The impeachment dynamics illustrate how far the disease has spread. Only Dems supported the two House articles, but instead of acknowledging the break with historical precedent, Pelosi and Schumer demonized Republicans as partisan hacks for not supporting them.

This was also the first time impeachment articles did not allege actual crimes, yet it was Republicans who supposedly violated the Constitution. Similarly, Trumps refusal to comply with subpoenas his lawyers said were invalid proved he sees himself as a monarch.

Those and other juvenile accusations made watching the trial like watching a production of the college cancel culture, where the left, believing itself morally and intellectually superior, aims to silence dissent and invalidate the opposition. The smug and often false assertions of Rep. Adam Schiff suggest he mistook his participation trophies for signs of actual achievement, giving him an inflated sense of entitlement.

The truth for him is anything that makes Trump look bad. Everything else is a lie.

This is not to suggest the lefts outrageous behavior is an act. In my experience, the belief in their own virtue is genuine. For the Pelosies, Schumers and Schiffs, it is also a political strategy, but their self-righteousness is sincere.

Which makes it all the more troubling because it means they truly dont care about the obvious corruption of the Biden family, where son Hunter monetized father Joes government power.

Nor are they interested in revealing the whole truth about the FBI, CIA and other deep-staters who abused their power to try to tip the 2016 election and undermine a president. As long as a Republican president is the target, and especially when he is named Trump, the more corruption, the better.

So the war goes on. Already the cost to the nation is incalculable, starting with the waste of time, talent and intelligence on the impeachment hearings and trial. The effort was doomed to failure, yet to get there, thousands of government officials, from the president and his team to all of Congress, including lawyers, security, staffers and pages, were sucked into the void, with taxpayers forced to foot an enormous bill.

Far greater is the cost to the national psyche. Political polarization in Washington is tearing America apart, and the bulk of the blame falls squarely on those who refuse to accept Trump as their president.

Until they do, they are the worst kind of losers: sore losers. And they dont deserve to win a damn thing.

Just more liberal hypocrisy

Two excellent pieces in The Wall Street Journal demand attention. The lead editorial Saturday exposes another example of deception and hypocrisy involving Elizabeth Warren, this time regarding the money she made for years by leasing family land to oil and gas companies. As her political career took off, Warren and husband Bruce Mann quietly sold or transferred mineral-rights royalties to their children.

This matters because Warren promises to ban fracking and condemns fossil fuels in her quest for the presidency. Once again, in her case, whats good for me is not for thee.

The other Journal piece is a Friday op-ed from investor and philanthropist Michael Milken, who alleges The New York Times created a false narrative to discredit him and federal opportunity zones.

The headline, No One is Safe from Biased Reporting, captures his view of how the Times distorted the facts to fit its anti-business, anti-Trump agenda.

Its a compelling example of how far the Gray Lady has fallen.

De Blasio left himself out yet again!

The assault on the citys subway and bus system by antifa thugs was disturbing because of the widespread destruction and disruption of Friday commutes.

But nearly as disturbing was the absence of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Top police commanders were forceful with their condemnation, but the mayor was MIA in media accounts.

Then again, his being a no-show isnt news. Thats who he is and how little he cares.

More:
Hillary Clinton ended the practice of humble concessions: Goodwin - New York Post

Hillary Clinton still harbors thoughts about a rematch with Donald Trump. In a newinterview with Variety, the former first lady, secretary of state and two-time presidential candidate admitted that the outcome of the 2016 election still bothers her.

"I know you're not running for president, but do you ever feel the urge to think: 'I could beat Donald Trump if I were running,'" journalist Ramin Setoodeh asked Clinton.

"Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel the 2016 election was a really odd time and an odd outcome," she responded. "And the more we learn, the more that seems to be the case. But I'm going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee."

Clinton did not elaborate on any plans and also did not reveal which of the other Democratic candidates she would vote for. "I'm going to vote. I'm going to leave it at that. I'll definitely vote. I vote every time there's an election," she said."

This is not the first time she has alluded to the possibility of taking on Trump again whether jokingly, rhetorically, or otherwise. In October 2019, when President Trump tweeted that "Crooked Hillary Clinton" should enter the race, she tweeted back: "Don't tempt me. Do your job."

In a Novemberinterview with BBC Radio, Clinton said she thinks "all the time" about what it would've been like if she had beaten Trump and was president. When she was pressed on whether she would run again, Clinton replied: "I, as I say, never, never, never say never."

Clinton is currently promoting the Netflix docu-series "Hillary" about her 2016 presidential campaign, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

"I am telling everybody here at Sundance, everywhere I go, please, please go out and vote," she told Setoodeh. "And then, whoever the nominee is, support the nominee, whether it's someone you voted on or not in the primary process, because the most important responsibility we all have is to retire Donald Trump."

During the interview, Clinton also opened up about the criticism she faced as the 2016 candidate as well as the misogyny all women candidates face.

In his final question, Setoodeh asked Clinton about an inflammatory comment she made about Bernie Sanders:"Nobody likes him," she says in the documentary "Hillary."

"I feel like the context got lost, because you were talking about his time in Washington D.C. and how the press treated you versus him in 2016. Could you clarify that?" Setoodeh asks.

"I think we did that interview about a year and a half ago," she responded. "I wasn't thinking about the election by any means. I've said I'm going to support the nominee."

"But I do think it's important to look at somebody's record and look at what they've gotten done and see whether you agree with that or not," she continued. "I think that's what every voter paying attention should do."

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Hillary Clinton says she still feels the urge to beat Donald Trump, talks about 2020 presidential campaign in new interview - CBS News

Hillary Clinton said she still feels that she wants to beat President Trump after she lost to him in the 2016 presidential election.

"I know you are not running, but do you ever feel the urge that like, 'I could beat him?'" Variety asked the former secretary of state in a Monday interview.

Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel like the 2016 election was really an odd time and an odd outcome," the former secretary of state responded. "And the more we learn, the more that seems to be the case. But Im going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee."

Clinton, 72, has teased running in 2020 before. In October, the twice-failed Democratic presidential contender told a PBS reporter that she "can beat him again" in reference to Trump. She has also told Trump not to "tempt" her into entering the 2020 race after the president told her she should jump in.

[ Read more: 'She's the one that people don't like': Trump defends Bernie Sanders from Hillary Clinton insults]

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Hillary Clinton says she has 'the urge' to defeat Trump in 2020 - Washington Examiner

It was, to quote a certain Victorian author, the best of times and the worst of times at the Sundance Film Festival. Or, in the words of another one of historys great scribes: The players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

Those, of course, are the lyrics to Taylor Swifts Shake it Off. And while the song isnt featured in Swifts documentary Miss Americana most likely, as a result of a legal battle with Scooter Braun, who now owns the catalog of most of Swifts hits there was still plenty to see and hear. Miss Americana is packed with montages set to music, behind-the-scenes song writing sessions, surprising confessions and cameos from Swifts cats, Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey. The Netflix documentary, the most high-profile film to premiere at this years Sundance, delivers especially for the die-hard Swifties.

But there was also something funny about Miss Americana kicking off the latest edition of Sundance. The movie arrived at the festival having already secured distribution with one of Hollywoods biggest entertainment companies. And a mere week after it debuted to exclusively to the Park City crowd, it was already playing on Netflix to millions of streaming subscribers around the world.

That paradox are independent movies getting bigger or smaller? cast a shadow over Sundance. On the plus side, Sundance did see its largest deal ever, after Neon and Hulu splurged a whopping $17,500,000.69 (beating a record set four years ago by 69 cents) for Palm Springs, a comedy starring Andy Samberg in an updated take on Groundhog Day.

But that transaction also seemed to capture all the tensions of the Sundance market and by extension, the independent film business. What does it mean to have Hulu pay that much money for a movie? Will it really screen in a significant number of theaters? And even with that sale, which came together in a relatively leisurely pace, it was clear that the era of Sundance all-night bidding wars with traditional studios trying to yank titles away from one another are gone. But what new world order has been left in its place?

In the old days, a movie such as Palm Springs would have to gross $30 million domestically and $60 million globally to turn a profit. But Hulu doesnt rely on box office returns. Its more interested in attracting and retaining subscribers. That makes it more difficult for studios that still depend on ticket sales to make money to compete for films with these deep pocketed streamers.

I dont even understand these valuations, one distributor mused privately. I dont get how these tech companies are justifying these prices. Its a different business from the one that Ive been working in.

Elsewhere, the reception to movies was much colder. As Sundance crawls into its closing days, a majority of the 100-something titles that screened in the snowy theaters of Park City are still actively seeking distribution. Many agreed that the narrative features that played were not as strong as they had been in other years, nor as powerful as they need to be to break through the hurdle of getting moviegoers to buy a theater ticket.

Amazon Studios, which spent a hefty $40 million-plus last year on a slate Late Night, Brittany Runs a Marathon, The Report and Honey Boy that fizzled at the box office (the company claims they did well on streaming), remained active. It bought Uncle Frank, a road comedy with Paul Bettany, for $12 million and nabbed the Irish drama Herself. Searchlight Pictures shelled out $12 million for The Night House, a horror film with Rebecca Hall. And Sony Pictures Classics, which bought the Anthony Hopkins drama The Father before the festival started, also snagged distribution rights to The Truffle Hunters, a well-reviewed documentary.

Tom Bernard, the co-head of Sony Pictures Classics, said he felt that studios were more conservative in their bids than in past years. I think people came to their senses this year, he said. Youre not seeing the same sort of frivolous buying.

There also seemed to be cold feet, and not just because of the snow that had landed on the ground. Netflix, which is distributing the Swift film and the opening night documentary Crip Camp, didnt buy anything during the festival. As of now, IFC, Roadside, Bleecker Street, and several other players have yet to unveil any big pacts.

In addition to Miss Americana, there were other movies that landed with a splash. But they too already had homes. Promising Young Woman, a revenge story starring Carey Mulligan that received some of the best reviews out of Park City, will come out this spring from Focus Features. Zola, a drama about two exotic dancers, is already attached to A24. And Sony Pictures Classics pickup The Father is generating Oscar buzz for Hopkins performance as a man losing his grip on reality.

Not everything made it out of Utah alive. Netflixs other major title, Dee Rees drama The Last Thing He Wanted, starring Anne Hathaway as a reporter in the Reagan era, was met with savage reviews. One of the worst movies Ive seen in 20 years of Sundance, the Boston Globes Ty Burr harrumphed on Twitter.

On Friday night, the first official day of the festival, two premieres were obviously lacking something. First, Ironbark, a drama about a British businessman turned spy during the Cold War, screened at the Eccles Theatre without its star Benedict Cumberbatch, who was making a movie in New Zealand. Then came Worth, starring Michael Keaton as the lawyer in charge of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. He, too, was MIA, making an action film in Romania. Enjoy Sundance and go easy on the swag, he said in a message that co-star Amy Ryan read to the crowd, an acknowledgement that Sundance isnt just about the movies. Its also a great, big, branded happening that attracts everything from Dockers to Acura hoping to sell clothes and cars on the back of that indie cred.

What Sundance lacked in movie stars it made up for in one other high-profile figure. The biggest name in Park City hailed from the last presidential election. Hillary Clinton, the subject of Hillary, a four hour docu-series that will be released on Hulu, touched down in Utah, and gamely showed up for a series of Q&As, screenings and candid interviews. The former Secretary of State even grabbed dinner at Bangkok Thai, the favorite restaurant of critics and reporters who are looking get a quick meal between films. As the crowd erupted in applause, Clinton waved, genuinely enjoying herself in a crowd of so many movie fans.

Its a feeling that Hollywood should remember, or at least needs to recreate. If independent movies want to complete with all the other distractions out there buzzy TV series, video games, the Internet, the non-stop scandals emanating from the White House they are going to need to be, in their own way, cinematic events. As for the quiet, slow-burning subtlety that used to characterize some of the discoveries at Sundance, buyers might ending up saying shake it off, shake it off.

Link:
Taylor and Hillary Were Rock Stars at Sundance, but What About the Movies? - Variety