2019 A to Z Mashup

As you might expect from someone too lazy to pilfer an updated lead-in, I'm back with the lazy man's A to Z event, where I do just two posts of mini lists instead of posting a letter a day through April.  This year, I have decided to go on the theme of the 2020 Democrat Presidential candidates.  Amazingly, with a little help from Rolling Stone and Quartz, I have 26 people in various stages of running against Donald J Trump- however, the listings had to be adjusted a bit.  I started down the Rolling Stone list, using first letter last name.  If that spot was filled, then it was first name.  If that still didn't help, I looked through their bios for something, anything, to give them a letter- no stretch too small.  And the last guy got X because, well, he was the last guy.  So let's hit A to L this time, and M to Z next time (and when those will be, I don't know, b/c I have no idea when I am scheduling them, except not on Wednesday or Friday.  Likely not Sunday, either.  Maybe I'll put 'em up on Thursdays, since I never post on Thursday due to working on Time Machine.  Yeah, that works.  So I'll post this one on the 11th, and the other on the 25th.  Now that THAT'S settled...

A is for Stacy Abrams.  Stacy is a part time romance novelist, whose grasp of fantasy makes her a great choice for a Democratic candidate. She celebrated a 1992 run for Georgia governor by burning the state flag on the statehouse steps, which is always a good sign.  Quartz thinks it's important to list their social media following:  I don't really, so I'll combine her FB, Twitter, and Instagram and come up with a total of  1.011 million.

B is for Joe Biden.

'Nuff said.

C is for Cory Booker (first name).  Spartacus is yet another member of the "ethnically confused" brigade of Dem candidates.  Why do I say that?  Read this bit from the RS article:

Signature Apology: Booker’s crackdown on crime in his early days as Newark mayor conflicts with his more progressive approach to policing today. In his book United, Booker credits his then-chief of staff for delivering a wake-up call: “He told me that if I had so quickly forgotten my own life experiences, I had my head up my large black posterior region.”

"Black posterior"?  Now, I wonder whether I should question his racial confusion or which posterior his head was up.


D is for John Delaney.  John is the veteran of the campaign, having started a mere 5 months after Trump's inauguration.  A multi-millionaire successful businessman (which is strike one for the current Dem Party), his quotable quote is, " The primary is going to be a choice between socialism and a more just form of capitalism. I believe in capitalism, the free markets and the private economy.” That would be strike two.  And Quartz, doing a "who will like/hate this candidate" in their article, says:  Who will hate this candidate: Democrats who don’t think that reaching out to Donald Trump voters is the way to win in 2020.  And that will be strike three.


E is for Eric Swallwell (First name).  And ten points to me for not inserting an "ow" in the middle of his last name!  So far his only notable thing was "kinda" threatening to nuke gun owners who choose to defy gun control laws.

F is for John Hickenlooper (B/c he is part owner of Wynkoop Brewing Company out of Denver, which brews a concoction called "FOAB Arms Race Russian Imperial Stout).  A RUSSIAN stout?  This could be possible COLLUSION...  BTW, did you hear about the new drink called a "Russian Collusion"? Order it and the bartender hands you an empty glass.


G is for Kirsten Gillibrand.  To me, anyone who basically announces their candidacy on the Colbert show is questionable insofar as propriety.  For Dems, she includes in her past working for the tobacco companies in the era of suing them to ruination, voted against a "state-level" motor-voter law for illegals, and called out not only Al Franken but Saint Bill Clinton as the "#MeToo candidate".  She is going to be slaughtered in the debates, as Dems are good at eating their young in such situations.

H is for Kamala Harris.  Four words:  "Related to Jussi Smollett".  Four more:  "Preferred by Barack Obama."  That second set will likely make her the nominee.  It got Smollett back on his show, didn't it?


I is for Jay Inslee.  A climate change Chicken Little and Green New Dealer who is "supported by Bill Nye the Science Guy."  There's credibility for you!

J is for Julien Castro.  A legit Latino, he was Obama's HUD Secretary.  He says he's not going to take any PAC money to run.  In fact, he formed a PAC just to not take any money from other PACs.  He may well have been Hillary's running mate, but had to admit to making statements against candidate Trump while still HUD Sec, violating the Hatch Act. 

K is for Amy Klobuchar.  Her big thing is, she's a bully.  Even the left leaning news sites have run with the stories of what a fun boss she is to work for:

[T]he Minnesota Democrat ran a workplace controlled by fear, anger, and shame, according to interviews with eight former staffers, one that many employees found intolerably cruel. She demeaned and berated her staff almost daily, subjecting them to bouts of explosive rage and regular humiliation within the office, according to interviews and dozens of emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

She yelled, threw papers, and sometimes even hurled objects; one aide was accidentally hit with a flying binder, according to someone who saw it happen, though the staffer said the senator did not intend to hit anyone with the binder when she threw it. “I cried. I cried, like, all the time,” said one former staffer. (Buzzfeed through National Review)


Of course, this could make things really interesting.  Instead of going to the Electoral College this time, we could put her and Trump in the Octagon.

L is for Terry McAuliffe (Mom's maiden name is Lonergan.  Told you there'd be some stretches...).    Former Hillary campaign head and the Clinton Wing candidate.  As such, he and Hillary's brother Andy invented an "electric car company to manufacture cars for export to China" called GreenTech.  They collected money from Virginia (who had sniffed out a rat and was about to pounce when they moved the op to), Mississippi (who fell for it, never got a working factory out of it, and were POed when it went belly-up), and China (where 32 investors launched a $17 million lawsuit against the pair which, not surprisingly, I can't find anything new about.  You don't think Google is left leaning?  Try hunting up stuff on Dem candidates...). 

All of which leads to this tag line from the Capital research Center in a May 2018 article:

Nobody honest chooses to get involved with Terry McAuliffe.


Okay, that's half the candidate list!  Tune in on the date posted above (I'm too lazy to scroll up) and read part two then!