Bernie’s Road Forward

We have to admit that voters are stupid. They’re idiots who are easily mislead. They’re miseducated and misinformed. They’re easily manipulated & duped. This is not democracy. It’s a bad joke.

And the winner is? That’s right, Jim Jones. The eyes say it all, don’t they? They’re a dead giveaway. They’re the same eyes Putin donned when he was with Trump in Helsinki. Southern blacks have no idea what this pic represents. That’s a miseducated, misinformed voter. A 1/4 of a voter. The irony considering the Founders considered the slaves three fifths of a person and even that was a concession borne of a compromise, so they ever-so-reluctantly conceded that compromise.

https://imgur.com/a/sZsMj0X

Thanks for this post. I don’t have the stomach to check the legacy press on this. (It feels like I may never have the stomach to look at them again for any reason.) So I was in the dark about how bad it was because nobody I trusted was talking yet.

This is our American long march. Even if Bernie won, the organizing was going to continue. In fact, it has been going on since Hillary lost to Trump. This is not an organization that only comes together for a political campaign and then scatters. This is intentional movement building.

I’m going to let the primary process play out, but if Biden is the nominee (as seems likely), I will quit my position in the county Dem party. I’ve held my nose for far too many “centrist moderate” doormats as it is. Don’t have the stomach to join the Biden Death March.

i’m with you 450: biden’s a real sicko. his crazy pop-offs to folks asking him questions on the campaign fronts. oblique references to books he read and movies he watched in his childhood. huh? credit the southern states for giving biden this absurd delegate push. bernie has coherence going for him. on the podium. in the debates. and in his campaign organization. under fire, biden will shot himself down. still, i wonder that the masses may still prefer voting for the dead instead of bernie.

It’s close enough to be a race, and the Democratic establishment is scared straight over the prospect of a Sanders takeover of the party. They are fully aware of Biden’s shortcomings. They don’t care. Stopping Sanders was and is job number one. They would rather lose to Trump and maintain control of the party, ( and the privileges which control provides them ) than risk nominating Bernie and ceding that control.
As for Elizabeth Warren, she’s obviously being incentivized to keep running. There is dark money keeping her campaign afloat despite her having no chance at a first ballot nomination. Her continued presence in the race harms Bernie, as we saw in Massachusetts & Maine last night. She was promised something, we just don’t know what.
Power concedes nothing without a fight. Recent developments make this clear. It’s important to keep fighting. This is the most serious challenge the Democratic establishment has faced since 1968. And they are nervous.

These results are wacky, though. South Carolina had an unexpected huge turnout and that turnout wasn’t black voters because they can always be counted on to turn out to vote in the deep south. It was allegedly suburban white folks. I don’t believe it. Not in the deep south. No way. This has to be Trump supporters voting for Biden knowing Trump will trounce Biden in the general if the results are indeed valid and I’m not sure they are. This seems rigged to me. Hacked, even. If so, who did the rigging/hacking? The DNC? Russia? Israel? Same holds for Massachusetts. No way Biden wins Massachusetts ahead of Bernie and Warren. No way. This is really fishy. Minnesota, as well. Minnesota is a very progressive state. Paul Wellstone, anyone? This is not making any sense. The Russians would want Biden as the candidate to face Trump more than Bernie, so it would be in their interest to cheat him to the nomination knowing full-well Bernie’s supporters, me included, would never vote for Biden. The DNC could have knowledge of this and go along with it because they want Biden as the nominee anyway and for them, it’s anyone but Sanders even in the, and especially in the, general. This AIPAC Jewish publication telegraphed the strategy. It predicted a huge white suburban turnout in South Carolina. How could it have known? Perhaps it’s Israel gaming this for the very reasons I stated above. South Carolina wasn’t just Biden’s black firewall but it was also his suburban white firewall, or so we’re led to believe.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/can-joe-biden-survive-whitest-south-carolina-primary-in-a-decade-2020

Bernie Sanders is running a new ad talking up his relationship with Barack Obama and how he worked with the president to get things done. Wow, guess Bernie is an Establishment Shill, too!

In actuality, it’s good that he’s running that ad. He should have done it sooner rather than listening to people who think like commenters on this blog.

In actuality, it’s good that he’s running that ad. He should have done it sooner rather than listening to people who think like commenters on this blog.

Ads don’t work. Just ask Bloomberg. Plus, Obama isn’t endorsing Bernie and has nothing positive to say about Bernie. Who is Bernie supposed to be appealing to with these ads? Those who are already predisposed to Biden who Obama has effectively endorsed? It’s a desperate act of someone who is losing. It tells me Bernie is scared sh*tless he’s going to lose so he adopts the strategy of the guy being cheated by the DNC to the top of the heap.

Remember, folks, there is no tomorrow. It’s this election or no election ever again. The planet can’t wait another 25 years until the boomers kick off entirely.

But there’s the American part of the equation. I don’t remember us being this collectively stupid. Has it always been this way?

In a better America you’d think maybe we’d have creative idea progressives on one side, and staid fiscal conservatives on the other, and they’d honestly debate potential solutions to problems which the little people couldn’t solve themselves. Like in a good marriage I suppose. And the little people would be clapping for the most rational family solutions.

But for some reason this just isn’t the way it is.

I think of the time when the boss was going around giving out layoff notices. When he came over to our end of the building we were all huddled-terrified in the corner with the stronger ones pushing the weaker ones forward. I think modern Americans are more like that.

Maybe people think that with a senile boss their chances of survival will be better. Or maybe it’s a “fool me once, and you can always fool me again and again” kind of thing. Maybe campaigners need to keep the truth very very simple and just keep repeating it. Obama is the slick black con artist and Trump is the oily orange one, but otherwise both are con artists. This might work better than honestly debating complexity.

Lyin’ Liz is “reassessing” her campaign. Coming in 3rd place in your state is even too much for her fakeness to face down. Though there was a bright spot on the night, a tread of traction for her campaign: she did manage to beat Mikey $B in Massachusetts! Congrats, Liz! You placed in your own state.

Then she came in 4th in the state she was born in, OK, and also in TX where she lived for quite some time and taught at UT.

If Tweaky Liz decides to break her “pinky promises” to all those politically engaged five year old girls who have found such inspiration from watching their heroine repeatedly come in 3rd or 4th place, it’s a win for Bernie. At least he won’t have to deal with her sniping at him.

Liz Warren launched her political career by opposing the bankruptcy bill that Biden basically authored and Lyin’ Liz never even took a shot at him once for it during the whole campaign season. She is just like her fellow law professor Obama: they recognize a good opportunity to go contraire to political opinion and distinguish themselves, but have no principled belief in the causes they champion.

Bye bye, Lyin’ Liz. I hope you go. Through all your lies at least you shone the light on one truism: women are just as capable of being evil and deceitful as men.

Z

All things considered, I suggest it’s not a road forward, but rather a gauntlet.

https://imgur.com/a/AMnH6l9

It looks like Trump was correct about the stock market tanking. Bernie frightened Wall Street. The Plunge Protection Team was called in. It delivered Wall Street from Bernie’s pitchforks with a splendid Biden Super Tuesday performance that doesn’t add up but who cares if things add up anyway? Wall Street is happy happy today. There’s no COVID-19 to see here. Move along. People sick & dying from COVID-19 is good for business, Bernie is not. How could I have ever entertained the notion the stock market is based in reality?

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/us-stocks-march-4-2020

Hey Mallam,

I see that you’re feeling chippy and wise today. The market’s up, no coincidence between that and your uplifted mood, I’d imagine.

Z

Ed asked “So where is the movement building on the left at the lower levels?” and points to the religious right starting with school boards and the Tea Party gunning for Congressional seats.

My answer is: I have not seen it either. It is something I wrote about in 2013
Building a New Populist Movement
November 2013, World Futures 69(7-8)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263604424_Building_a_New_Populist_Movement

I helped found the Progressive Democrats of Orange County (PDOC) NC in 2017, with other people who were Bernie supporters, and disgusted by the Party leadership support for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Many of us were already involved on the local level, in the county Democratic Party, on various county boards and commissions. We have the support of most of the county commissioners, and probably about a third of the county Party activists. Unfortunately, I must report, PDOC has grown very little.

We have reached out to the DSA, and attracted the involvement of a handful of their members, including one DSA member who joined our executive team. But, the general feeling expressed at the DSA meetings I attended is that, as I’ve been told, “the Democratic Party is where idealism goes to die.” I found a similar response by the people involved with the local chapter of Our Revolution, including a rebuke for emailing their officers the weekly wrap up. I have never heard any of them talk about replicating the success of the Tea Party in terms of involvement in local government. Sadly, ideological purity does seem to be the primary concern.

Buzzard writes that “if Biden is the nominee (as seems likely), I will quit my position in the county Dem party.” I would strongly advise against this for now. The time may come when your resignation will have a useful impact, but I don’t think it will be before November.

Why? Look at the world strategic situation going into the election.

1. China’s economy has been shut down by the coronovirus, and the effects are just beginning to ripple through the world’s supply chains. If not managed competently, these ripples will push many national economies into recession. How much competent economic management is there is the world? Yeah, that’s what I think, too.

2. The financial system could blow at any moment. The Fed has been pumping trillions of dollars into the system for a couple months, but the point is, nothing has fundamentally changed in the way the financial system operates since the GFC. Money and credit are still overwhelmingly allocated to projects of speculation, regulatory arbitrage, and economic-rent seeking, rather than projects that actually create new economic potential, and employs people at good wages.

The left has yet to spell out an alternative other than an ill-defined “socialism.” The Green New Deal needs to be continually and repeatedly emphasized, especially as “an opportunity too big to miss.” The left needs to be thinking in terms of the Shock Doctrine – have policies ready to go when the crisis hits.

3. The elites’ response to the fragility of the financial system is to avoid fundamental changes, but they are constrained by the rise of China over the US as an economic power. China produced one BILLION tons of steel in 2019:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-iron-steel.pdf

That is ten times more steel than USA ever produced. I wonder how many people understand the significance of this one statistic. The USA economy has been deindustrialized, and its working class destroyed. The rise of China as a new industrial power cannot be tolerated by USA elites. Listen carefully for the drumbeat of war with China.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-us-war/594793/

Greg T points out “the Democratic establishment is scared straight over the prospect of a Sanders takeover of the party…. This is the most serious challenge the Democratic establishment has faced since 1968.”

And, “Power concedes nothing without a fight.” Which means this is time to redouble our efforts, not give up.

The Russians did it?
AIPAC did it?
The voters are stupid?

Come on, we can do better than this.

I’m with those of you who place the blame squarely on TPTB who see Sanders as a threat to their lifestyle. You can’t blame them. Exactly what are any of those parasites good for if they cannot filch a living off of a government service or entity?

You think I’m kidding? Imagine some of these “elites” trying any of the following tasks:

Running a crane to set high iron on a bridge.
Welding a truck frame that’s been damaged.
Taking down and rebuilding a faulty fuel injector.
Setting up a concrete pour for a wall or footing.
Reprogramming the shift points on a transmission during PT development.
Roofing a house…. any material.
Supervising an assembly line of any type.
Sizing and installing an HVAC system.
Etc, etc, etc, etc…… etc.

Hell I could go on for days listing the vital tasks our nation needs that not one in a thousand of these gals/guys could accomplish. These people are completely worthless in a society that valued building and making things. Maybe that should be the snarky response we should make when one of these arrogant smelt (small and economically insignificant) sticks their heads up: Learn to make something.

Ian told you why Bernie is being taken out. Absorb it and quit blaming the aliens for everything.

Will

If anything will make Liz break her pinky promises it might be this:

Warren drew only around 1 in 10 female voters in Massachusetts, according to exit polls. That was significantly fewer than projected winner Biden, who led with around a third of women, and Sanders with 3 in 10.

Around 1 in 5 white college-educated Massachusetts Democrats chose Warren for the nomination — less than the 3 in 10 who voted for Biden and 3 in 10 for Sanders.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/politics/elizabeth-warren-loses-massachusetts/index.html

Z

Warren drew only around 1 in 10 female voters in Massachusetts, according to exit polls. That was significantly fewer than projected winner Biden, who led with around a third of women,….

In auditing, we called this a red flag. Something is not right in Denmark. Rotting fish.

Liz’s dilemma: how to keep your staff together when they’re all just a bunch of Clintonite opportunists who have no loyalty to any political cause concerning her because she’s got no principles and is all about herself as well. You know her staffers are chomping on the bit to jump ship and hop onto Biden’s bandwagon and position themselves for jobs in his prospective Administration.

Z

Will, I said the CIA wants Trump as POTUS. I also said the oligarchs have no problem with Trump as POTUS because he is not a threat to their interests and in fact he has made them much wealthier with his generous tax cuts and deregulation. Trump is the perfect foil for the Democratic party. He’s their meal ticket. They play off of him. That’s why they are so hellbent to get him reelected.

@ Mel Re: “consumer approach to politics”

In the consumer approach to politics as marketing, consumers do not know what is in the package — that’s kind of the point. Wrap it up in cellophane, slap a colorful logo on it, and tout how wonderful it will be, but never, ever let them know your tacos are made with pink slime in place of meat.

Voters are not invited to investigate what is in the package, except in highly controlled and artificial “taste test” circumstances. Voters are encouraged to know very, very little about the “ingredients” or the methods of “processing” and to “judge” (so to speak) on the basis of brandnames, focus-grouped slogans and logos and color palettes, and little snippets of narrative wrapped up like time-release gelatin-covered hypnosis pills combined with lizard-brain emotional association (a picture of a sexually attractive person experiencing an orgasm on a sunny day in a park on “discovering” a new deodorant).

The political media, which is paid for by carrying this very advertising and the political campaigns, which are operated by professionals who are paid primarily thru taking a percentage commission on media buys and placements supplemented by kickbacks, are all geared up around keeping this process cycle profitably continuing with no effective quality control by a neutral party. (In actual consumer marketing, an advertising-free Consumers Report magazine is severely marginalized; in politics, the game may be even rougher.)

The resulting free-for-all claim and counter-claim serve to magnify the cognitive load on consumers, herding them into relying even more on brandname reputation. Consumers starved for reliable judgments of quality turn to pundits writing in a faux serious tone, putative “fact-checking”, political journalists doing theatre criticism and horse-race coverage. (The television networks delivering soap operas selling soap with sex are never going tell any truth that might interfere with their business model, even after the audience follows the pretty people, who have moved on to being influencers on Instagram.)

The most prominent pundits are worse than the 30-second spots in terms of inducing brain-death by means of retailing this crap messaging. How many times did Maureen Dowd complain about Al Gore’s sartorial choices? How many times did Dowd repeat that story of Romney transporting the family dog on the roof of the car?

What is Morning Joe for? Well, Morning Joe sells itself as being watched by Washington Insiders including Trump (‘natch), Chuck Schumer and other power players. CNN and Fox News are always on in most Congressional offices throughout the day. So, this “system” is a deep infection of politics, as policy design is subordinated to the demands of political marketing. People who prattle on piously about “polarization” and partisan bickering, but do not take account of this chaotic noise machine in their prescriptions for reform are deliberately missing the forest for the poison ivy.

When Sanders talks about building a movement, I presume he’s talking about social and political organization to route around this degenerate system, to inform and motivate people to actually know and appreciate “quality”. It is a huge undertaking and I do not think it has gotten very far.

That Biden won a bunch of states where he scarcely campaigned apparently on the basis of name recognition and two-day-old “momentum” is clear evidence that the Sanders campaign has not done the work it was set to do nearly five years ago. That the Sanders organization has not succeeded in overthrowing establishment control of the Party organization anywhere on the State or local level, nor promoted AOC or Tulsi candidates for Congress or State legislatures or the proverbial school boards (where, after all, the war for public education against billionaire-sponsored charter schooling is very much underway) is an indication that the Movement does not know what it needs to do or how to do it. (Here’s a hint: no phone banking please; get people to show up regularly in person somewhere and sit down and talk and learn in depth about actual issues [and not “issues” in the counterproductive left-identitarian sense].)

I certainly do not want to be guilty of depressing morale, but I also think the triumphalism after Nevada was unrealistic and misplaced. Populism, historically, has usually won (even when it has won) by losing; things are arranged by the powers-that-be to make that the only path up irrational on a cost-benefit calculation. It may very well be that Sanders succeeds not by conquering the degenerate Democratic Party that would purport to make the demented Biden President, but rather by making that “business model” cum strategy very clearly non-viable.

Morally, I do not think anyone can control the future, even though that is the putative aim of political campaigns and movements. (It is the great evil of politics that even well-intentioned leaders so often think they know what is the right course of action and choose to lie to get their way.) So, really, morally, what you intend as the end toward the accomplishment of which you apply means is less important that simply telling the truth. If telling the truth requires some pessimism, so be it.

That Biden won a bunch of states where he scarcely campaigned apparently on the basis of name recognition and two-day-old “momentum” is clear evidence that the Sanders campaign has not done the work it was set to do nearly five years ago.

It could be what you say, but it could also be cheating. For Biden to win those states considering he spent no time in them and devoted no monetary resources to them is yet another red flag.

MSNBC and CNN ran with the narrative Russia was trying to help Bernie get the nomination. Per that reasoning, are we to believe Russia said “oh my god, they caught us, I guess we should just back away now that we’re caught”? You’d be naive to believe that per their reasoning that Russia is meddling in the Dem primaries to help get Bernie the nomination. You continue to look for red flags. Red flags are popping up all over that indicate Biden’s sudden resurgence is a scam. It appears the Russians, and others no doubt, are rigging the Dem primaries in favor of Biden the Comeback Kid. You don’t eschew this notion, you run with it. Biden is a Russian Tool. The Russians want Biden versus Trump because they know Trump will trounce Biden. Trump will make mincemeat out of him. Russia will have a field day with Biden as the nominee. Think of all the dirt they’ve been holding back. In the least, Biden should hold a press conference and thank Vlad for his impressive Super Tuesday performance.

Learn how to fight, people, or lose. It worked for MSNBC and CNN — painting Bernie as a Russian foil, so it will work for us too painting Biden as the perfect Russian foil to “face” Trump in the general.

I expect the DNC will keep Warren in as long as Bernie is a threat. She siphons votes from Bernie. She will be rewarded by the DNC.

Remember, the other candidates have not dropped out. They have “suspended their campaigns.” Therefore, their convention delegates are still tied to them. If they drop out, the delegates are apportioned to remaining candidates, usually those who have gotten 15% in that state’s primary. DNC can’t let that happen.

Finally, I fail to understand why all state primaries are treated equally when it comes to sending delegates to the convention. My point is this. When is the last time South Carolina’s electoral votes went to a Democrat? Georgia? Alabama? Arizona? FDR was the last Democrat to carry North Dakota.

So why should states that have zero Democrats who have won a statewide race AND have not voted for a Dem for President in 4-5 election cycles have the same say as who will be the Dem nominee? It’s similar to a restaurant tailoring its menu toward the whims of people who never dine there.

Today’s Presidential elections are won or lost by how candidates fare in a few swing states. I suggest it’s time to weight each state’s delegates at the convention based on if a Dem has won a statewide race in the last X years and how many Presidential elections it has been since the state went for a Dem Presidential candidate.

“don’t turn a minor loss (look at the numbers) into a rout”

It was a rout. Sanders has lost all momentum (and his momentum in the first four states wasn’t particularly great to begin with). Snowballing wins is at least as important as the points value of the states.

On top of that, his entire canvassing strategy imploded in Texas. He lost a state he had put months of work and millions of dollars into, one with demographics highly favorable to him, to a guy who put essentially no resources into the state.

And yes, many voters are stupid. My thinking about banking on some sort of idealized trust of the voter has completely shifted in the last 24 hours.

They aren’t stupid because they’re genetically defective; I’m not some racist 19th century English imperialist. Stupidity is an activity, not a state of being. And it’s not an all encompassing activity either. I’m sure most of these dumbass voters are perfectly intelligent and competent at any number of things. But they are politically retarded. Yes, our culture and media encourages political illiteracy, but at the end of the day the internet (and libraries) exist. Political illiteracy is a choice. We need to own up to this and stop excusing voters for acting like easily manipulated children.

The black voters in South Carolina are particularly loathsome. The Dems cracked their whip via their BMC house negro of choice, and the voters fell in line. No amount of writing about context is going to make voting for the ludicrously racist Biden anything other than asinine.

And yes, I’m aware that I’m sounding like a Clintonite after the loss to Trump. The difference though is that then it was a choice between two demonstrable evils. Here it’s a choice between someone who is genuinely good, and someone who is absurdly bad, both on policy and in terms of sheer PR optics.

Hundreds of thousands of people, after months of concern trolling about how Sanders is too old and his health is suspect, have instead voted for a desiccated corpse who is only a year younger than Sanders, and who is very clearly losing his mind. That is stupidity, pure and simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83uYCo4PE3A

Bring her aboard to have her pound Biden on his bankruptcy bill would make some sense, not that she’s shown any inclination to do so thus far.

Z

New Bernie ad running in Florida features Obama:

https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/1235202301658386433

I despise Obama more than almost any human being on earth. But this is a good idea. It’s necessary.

Tony Wikrent above neatly laid out very serious short term risks to the world economy. Black Swan events like the Coronavirus will impact this race in ways not predictable. If Bernie’s people are smart, they will have a response to this mapped out and ready to go. This pandemic will worsen in the weeks ahead, and the ancillary effects will be severe enough to cause a grave financial and economic crisis, unless the Trump administration acts appropriately. I doubt anyone here expects Trump to respond appropriately. This could be an opportunity for Bernie and his movement to draw a sharp distinction from Joe Biden .

Bernie was pretty spirited in his press conference. Got a question about Warren, he said that he had talked to her a few hours ago and that she had to make her own decision on her campaign, but ignored a question as to whether or not he asked for her endorsement.

Came pretty hard after Biden contrasting him to what Bernie has stood for. Got into trade agreements, the bankruptcy bill, the Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, SS, and medicare-for-all.

Says he believes that once everything is all added up from last night that he’ll basically be in a dead heat with Biden, maybe even a few votes ahead. That’s more optimistic than what I’ve read elsewhere.

Didn’t even know that Mikey $B had left the race.

Hit heavy upon how different his campaign is than other ones. How historical it is. The working class core of it. The media resistance, the Wall Street resistance, and the political establishment resistance to it. And admitted that they weren’t getting out the youth vote as much as they had hoped. Admitted he hadn’t done as well with the African-American community than he had hoped, but stressed that he had done well with people of color overall.

Said he was heading to Michigan.

Z

We’re being conditioned to believe that we’re born to consume, that we are what we consume, and that our entire way of life is based on our being good consumers.

If you don’t have the means to be the status consumer you want to be, then you’ll just have to dog eat dog it especially if the jobs are too scarce and the re-education too expensive. It’s an incredibly selfish mindset leading to even worse of the same. And all of that downside for our descendants. Even if you go completely off grid, there are plenty of products available for you in that world for you to consume. Plus that’s hard work. And no Minecraft to play.

So then Bernie comes along and throws some uncertainty into everyone’s life mission to consume. I assume everybody else should know what I know, or even more. Surely they’re aware of Joe Rogan or AOC or even Steve Bannon and all the impending mindless consumption problems on the way. But maybe they don’t care to know more about them because whenever they’ve tried to consume them it makes them not feel very good. So they go and play Minecraft instead. The remember that once, kids only had solitare to play, only 5 channels on their TV. And no smart phones. So they feel grateful.

High integrity Bernie couldn’t penetrate bigtime consumer Texas as well as Crony Joe could despite all the difference in effort. Did he need to hire some (or better) corporate marketing experts? I’d sure hope that somebody might be able to better figure out why than I ever could.

So good potential news: Bloomberg dropped below 15% in TX with 97% of the vote in and it’s also only Biden and Sanders breaking 15% in CA thus far.

Z

What we saw in the last couple of days was the culmination of a rolling coup against Bernie Sanders. It may surprise you but I am fine with that. And if the Democrats beat Trump in November, I am fine with that too. But make no mistake: if you are an independent, a progressive, a Millennial, the Democratic party just told you that they don’t want you, that not only do they not care about your issues, they are actively hostile to them.

Despite a media which has alternately ignored, denigrated, and dismissed Sanders, Sanders was winning and doing so by the DNC’s own rules. In response, the DNC started modifying those rules, as when it let Bloomberg into the debates. And when that was not enough, the party heavyweights intervened, threw the rule book out, and told the party who the nominee was going to be. I think they could have spared us all a lot of wasted time, effort, and money if they had simply announced their choice of nominee a year ago and dispensed entirely with this rube circus charade of a primary process.

I have to admit I am of two minds. Part of me says, fight, knowing that those who control the Democratic party will not stop a Sanders’ victory no matter what the cost. They have already shown that they are willing to stand up a demented hack and contort and manipulate the process to ensure his selection, that they would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders. But part of me wants Bernie to say, Look the Democrats have shown that they will not allow reform within the party. So I am taking my candidacy out of the party so that we can continue to build our movement of working people, Millennials, independents, minorities, and progressives, in short all those who want real change and better lives for themselves and their children.

“will stop a Sanders’ victor” for “will not stop a Sanders’ victor”

What is Warren’s reason for staying in and not dropping out? Three reasons I suspect.

1: ) She must think highly of her intelligence and abilities to begin with to even try running at all.
How could she be so selfish and lazy as to deprive the nation of her superior intelligence?
Continuing to run is a sacrifice she makes for us all.

2: ) She is offended to see that grubby little Brooklynese slum-child still in the race and doing so
well. How dare he! Who does he think he is!? So spite and rage also propel her.

3: ) She hopes to keep drawing enough voter support away from Sanders so as to keep his dele-
gate numbers below that crucial 50% + 1 for the first ballot. She hopes to earn a rich
political reward from the nominee in return for having made sure that the nominee is NOT
Sanders. Never . Ever.

And there it is. My three reason theory of why Warren is still in the race and will STAY in
the race all the way to Milwaukee.

Some people are discouraged that Biden did so well in states he didn’t even campaign in. I’m encouraged by that because he is probably going to have to campaign in almost all of the rest of them.

Z

@someofparts @ian

The youtube that someofparts linked to claims that polls indicated the worst case scenario for Bernie was winning 8 states, but instead he won only 4.

Well, what do the exit polls say? Hopefully, they were not cancelled, like the CA exit poll in the 2016 race, when Bernie was threatening Hillary.

ian: a diary on this topic would be appreciated; Also, what confidence do we have in whatever organization(s) is conducting said exit polls?

Sorry, Bernie can’t beat Trump:

1. Bernie will need the young vote which, as seen, has not happened in Iowa, not in New Hampshire, not in South Carolina, and not on Super Tuesday. That is a trend.

Sorry, a pattern has emerged Bernie has NOT and will NOT increased youth turnout, regardless of what he say and claim about how we will need a historical turnout of first-time and young voters to defeat Trump, and how he can accomplish that. It will not happen, not for him.

2. A a lot of Americans aren’t ready for him or “socialism”. That is the way it is.

3. Bernie has been campaigning like crazy, and all that works did not increased youth turnout. Biden increased black turnout in places he did not or barely campaigned in.

Sorry, that tells you Bernie will not beat Trump.

@differentclue

Well, I searched for the string “exit poll” in this post + comments before posting. Z quotes CNN

“Warren drew only around 1 in 10 female voters in Massachusetts, according to exit polls. ”

So, the exit polls appear not to be completely dead. I say “appear” because, well, who the hell is doing the polling, and how much can we trust them? If CNN is running exit polls, e.g., I can’t take them seriously.

Warren is a former Republican and Zionist, she talks about Israel like she is a judean nationalists, the whole Israel lobby is there to throw Bernie off the race. The Dems will re-elect Trump before losing their donations money.

I might also try for Biden the name ” Dead Cabbage Walking” because it is easier to say and it sounds more punchy and bouncy and poetic. People can give it a try to see how it feels, if they like.

If DemCon 2000 nominates Senator Dead Cabbage Walking for President, I think they will nominate Hillary Clinton for Running Mate. She can run as being ” the brains behind the empty skull”. The Biden-Clinton ticket will be sure to sweep California and New York. And maybe some of New York City’s little bedroom-community states too.

Who: DNC Stakeholders
What: Political Strategy Meeting
When: 3/5/20 from 9AM to noon
Where: DNC Headquarters in The Clinton Room
Subject: How do we hide Joe?

Z

Bloomberg probably left the race not so much because his poor debate performances led to his weak showing on Super Tuesday but because he recognized the Obama-orchestrated power play against Sanders worked and the US is again safe for billionaires.

China (though I have no idea what the weather in Huawei was at the time), SF, Seattle, ocean cruises … it seems like all the places the coronavirus spreads have a lot of moisture in the air.

The viral load to break through the ordinary immune system hopefully requires you to either ingest it and or for there to be moist air conditions for breathing.

Z

Z, Huawei is a Chinese communications company. Wuhan is the city in China where the coronavirus outbreak occurred.

With community transmission, the horse is out of the barn and it is way too late to bar the door. The virus is already out in the general population. Nobody knows where it is, how long it’s been there, and where it can go next. This means massive testing, in the tens of millions, to get a grip on it. However, the CDC botched the rollout of the test kits, creating delays and a window for unrestricted spread.

And our for-profit healthcare system which excludes tens of millions with no or crap insurance is the opposite of what is needed to counter this type of public health threat.

Is it possible that Warren deals for a Biden VP nod possibly providing a backdoor to the Presidency if dementia/senility is encroaching into Biden’s life? There’s the Presidency for VP Warren should it happen within the four years.
Also, if that disease is progressing in him his family has seen it. They are in denial for the history books and should be ashamed of themselves for withholding that truth.

“I really do not get the lack of effective outrage on two-party effort to suppress the vote and/or manipulate the count. This is the kind of thing that ought to result in riots. Really.”

Yes yes yes. Any and all talk about the vote is based on nothing if the totals are clearly a fraud.

Hugh,

Thanks. I’ll note in my defense that I chose most of the correct letters but just had them confused into an incorrect order.

I hope you’re not right about the severity of this. I’d imagine that you hope that you’re not right either. But you could be. I know next to nothing about it besides what I’m putting together in my head. Thing is, THEY don’t know much about it either I suspect. There’s a lot of real-time learning going on. It’s not like they have a ton of clean, reliable data to look at in regards to isolating factors involved in it. That’s my suspicion.

If they are, or were, basing their alarm on data coming from a quarantined population living in crowded conditions, who had it in their food supply, and the weather was humid that could make things look worse than they actually are as far as danger and infectiousness. I don’t know if any of the conditions in Wuhan fit those I described and how the authorities got their stats.

There are some oddities that bring hope: the shocking lack of traction in Africa and the fact it hasn’t run rampant through here either. Yet. The fact that I read today that it’s three times less catchy than the common flu. Accuracy goes both ways though, of course, even the good news is prospective.

I 100% agree that the U.S. is ill prepared for it with our weak healthcare and social programs.

Z

This is the take on Lizard Warren that makes the most sense to me.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising

Also, diff clue, don’t worry about making up catchy names for Biden. Trump already has it in the bag. His name is Sleepy Joe.

@z: If it wasn’t Obama, and it almost certainly was, the other one I’d suspect would be Rahm Emanuel, but I haven’t heard anything about him being involved in it. But I would hardly be surprised if he wasn’t involved in some capacity and rather suspect he was the more I think of it.

Thanks tons, z. Early today I sent a group message to friends that I suspected Rahm was the go-between. The fact that he’s been under the radar the past several days seems indicative.

Grateful to have my suspicion/surmise at least brought up by someone else – I’m from Illinois and have been observing RE the past few years. He’s the quintessential man for all seasons here.

Alan Gross, who divides his time between Tel Aviv, Israel, and Washington, D.C. has come forward with an interesting story about Bernie Sanders visiting him in Cuba. It appears Gross was a Mossad agent who was caught infiltrating a sovereign country on behalf of Israel and was subsequently charged with espionage. NPR mentions espionage but fails to expound any further, leaving the reader to think that the crazy Cubans just jailed a poor old Jewish guy.

I imagine Gross is now acting as a Sayanim or else he is still active intel. Bernie is no friend of Israel.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/04/811729200/former-prisoner-recalls-sanders-saying-i-don-t-know-what-s-so-wrong-with-cuba

Let this be a wakeup call to Bernie that if you go Woke, you go broke. Identitarian Left Millennials are not voting in enough numbers and the way Bernie needs. Its stupid to pander to the Identitarian Left who eat each other over pronouns and engage in stupid cancelling of each other.

The focus should be working class voters and a pro-life, pro-gun message, and restoration of the FDR Union of Big Labor, Big Government, and Big Business. FDR was pro-life, pro-gun, strong border controls and deported more illegals than any other president in history. And keep the message simple.

Bernie does this, he’ll flip the Red Wall and can govern with near fiat. But he has to make the deal with the Red Wall to be pro-life and pro-gun and anti-illegal immigration.

But he won’t and will sell out. Pity, I had hope he might fight it out.

We’ll just have to wait for COVID-19 to wipe the entire slate clean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9FjX2b0SAk

I’m partial to the Sloppy Joe moniker myself, though I haven’t heard it used yet.

Z

Big endorsements coming out of Michigan from Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the conservative Detroit News. The fix is in and unfortunately most voters will blindly follow whatever is told to them by their leaders. It’s disgusting to see how the ruling class has been so vehemently opposed to basic human rights. I really hope that Sanders has a strong ground presence in these Midwestern states because Biden is pulling ahead based on establishment endorsements.

anon, yes, voters are stupid but there’s much more at play here. Consent isn’t being manufactured, it’s being forced. The news coverage is the propaganda papering over the cheating. It’s the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down but in this case the medicine is cyanide. There needs to be a proper investigation into this blatant vote rigging, but we know there won’t be. There are so many layers of deceit. So many hurdles for those like Bernie who don’t, and will not, cheat. First and foremost there is voter suppression and yes, the Dems are as guilty as the GOP of voter suppression. The people who had to wait the longest Super Tuesday because there was not adequate capacity for them to vote were those who clearly would have voted for Bernie. Meanwhile, in parts of town that clearly would vote for Biden, there was over capacity with drinks and snacks and hardly anyone showed up to vote and yet we’re told these soccer moms showed up in droves because they love Joe Biden that much. They’re all shampooing with Herbal Essence and getting in line for that famous Uncle Joe Sniff & Grab.

Then there’s the other hurdle, vote rigging. No way Biden wins Minnesota. No way he wins Massachusetts. No way he wins Texas. No way he got as many votes as he did in California. No way Biden pulled this off without doing anything more than breathing. This is massive cheating. The question is, who’s responsible? Is the DNC capable of pulling this off? Is it another actor/player and the DNC knows it and is going along because it serves their interests? I don’t know but we should know. As bruce said, there should be riots in the streets at this point. The CNN & MSNBC studios should be burned to the ground. Mika & Joe should be driven from their multi-million dollar homes and forced to flee the country because they most assuredly are part of the fix, be it witting or unwitting on their part.

But alas, America is not France. Hell, it’s not Singapore. You know what America is? It’s dead. Fyi, Bernie will capitulate once again (he’s already capitulating) as he’s always done and once again he will squash the aspirations of yet another generation (like Obama did) — the last generation, in fact.

From someofparts link. Our very own state department would not certify these results if it was a foreign country’s election. This clearly indicates massive voter fraud and the fraud is often times many times worse than what the exit polls indicate.

In Germany a high court ruled over a decade ago that electronic voting machines were unconstitutional and banned them from use. The same is true for the most highly ranked democratic systems in the world, BTW. Ireland, Finland, Canada have either scrapped or refused to use them in recording and computing national elections results.

My guess is Israel rigged it. They are all up in this game. Israel is the cybersecurity experts and we all know cybersecurity is just a euphemism for scumbag hackers. Here’s one such firm.

https://www.cybereason.com/press/cybereason-is-joined-by-veteran-fbi-dhs-u.s.-secret-service-and-arlington-va-officials-to-protect-free-elections-in-2020

The United States do not have free and fair elections — and they never have had. That’s part of why our elections are such an international laughing stock. The technical problems with the primaries and caucuses so far have been “minor” — depending on your point of view, of course. Machines are tricky, aren’t they? When has there ever been always reliable electronic voting devices? Never. And so far, every effort to solve the voting machine problems has tended to make it temporarily or permanently worse. After all these years trying, you start to think the problems are a feature not a bug. But somebody keeps getting rich off it, right?

Meanwhile, the obvious and continuous voter suppression efforts whipsaw the electorate, making them jump and feint just to cast a possibly bogus ballot. Or making it impossible. How convenient. For some, right?

In too many jurisdictions, still, votes cannot be verified. Paper trails generated by possibly “fixed” machines tell us nothing. And so it goes.

The fact that decades of effort to correct recent voting problems haven’t done so should tell us as clearly as anything that US elections aren’t meant to be free and fair and accurately counted. They’re meant to be simulations.

so far, every effort to solve the voting machine problems has tended to make it temporarily or permanently worse. After all these years trying, you start to think the problems are a feature not a bug. But somebody keeps getting rich off it, right?

That it might be at least partly deliberate is comforting in a way, but what disturbs me is that it is possible at all only because of a strange sort of stupid infecting the general population.

Hand-marked paper ballots hand-counted in public — that should not be a hard standard to explain, justify or insist upon, but apparently it is impossible to convince a great many people. And, because it is an argument that cannot be won in the court of public opinion, the bad actors have their way, their bad actions never called out for what they are.

Accusations of massive cheating to defeat Bernie are just more conspiracy theories unfounded. You know, the Twin Towers were hit by planes, not explosives.

Bernie has a ceiling of popularity. His base is wide across younger voters and Hispanics but shallow in turnout. Show me which states he wins against Trump better than Biden. I can’t find them. Biden can pull the suburbs to Democratic and that could tip the Senate and the presidency, as it did the House in 2018. Then there’s a fighting chance the Supreme Court doesn’t go full Nazi. Plus, the climate and environment have a chance.

The solution to technical problems with voting is paper ballots by mail. It works here in Washington and Oregon. And Colorado. And it drives more left voters to the polls. And higher turnout more broadly. Low tech voting assures democracy.

Common people have common intelligence. They know they’re not very innovative and will blindly follow their tribal sanctioned leadership as a survival strategy. So somebody else has to winnow out the sociopathic from the integrous from said leadership lest the common people get led off some cliff. It’s that way with capitalism and communism both.

That’s why I got pissed off at Mandos the other day. I stated the truth that most American blacks are clueless about MLK being a profound democratic socialist. I wasn’t pissed because Mandos was being ignorant. Hell, most blacks, on their list of all time black heroes with MLK right at the very top of most lists, are ignorant or dismissive of MLKs politics. It’s hard for them to imagine that Joe Biden would’ve never marched with MLK unless there was something in it for Joes own personal status.

Maybe Mandos talks that way because English isn’t his native language. Maybe human isn’t his native species. Maybe he hasn’t communicated with mouth and ears for a very long time because screen and keyboard is more convenient. I’m cool with that. These things happen and are readily forgiven.

I wasn’t pissed off because of Mandos ignorance or presentation style. It was his know-it-all hubris blocking out simple information that got me. In this critical time, allowing simple facts clearly presented to just bounce off ones head, after all Ian has posted, isn’t just annoying, it’s troubling.

Maybe he’s kept around here as a prime example of what can happen when intellectual honesty and basic common sense can be captured by the PTB. I’m far from the smartest guy, but personally, I think we should study this. I’m hoping that Mandos will submit himself to a battery of psychological tests so we can gain better insight into this pandemic of willful ignorance.

Of course, this excellent documentary implies/assumes the Dems would never hack their own primaries. They assume at their own peril. At our own peril.

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/kill-chain-hbo-documentary-voting-security-hack-trailer-962328/

Here’s an excellent article entitled How New Voting Machines Could Hack Our Democracy. My question is, what democracy?

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/17/how-new-voting-machines-could-hack-our-democracy/

The irony, boss, the irony.

Last week, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Amy Klobuchar, and Representative Mark Pocan (Democrat of Wisconsin) announced that they have opened an investigation into the “vulnerabilities and shortcomings of election technology industry with ties to private equity.” The reason the issue of private equity matters is that the top two vendors of these ballot-marking machines, Election Systems and Software LLC (ES&S) and Dominion Voting, account for more than 80 percent of US election equipment. They thus hold between them a near-monopoly on the industry, and their form of ownership means there is no way of discovering the details of who really owns them or even whether they are legitimate competitors.

Hey, Liz & Amy, maybe you should kickstart an investigation related to the massive hacking of Super Tuesday, you f*cking lying, cheating hypocrites.

When was the population ever given the option?

They have always had the option of calling, “bullshit” . . . on voting systems designed for rigging elections.

Also, on pointless perpetual war. Attacking countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 supposedly because of 9/11.

Also, on a health care system that costs twice as much and delivers worse results than that of any first world country.

Also, on any number of neoliberal economic prescriptions.

Now, obviously, most of the mainstream Media dedicates itself to gaslighting the population about these and other issues. And, sometimes, the voice of reason is able to break thru — as I think it has sometimes done on, say, cutting Social Security, though even there most people seem to think Social Security is somehow a fake program that cannot last and is “costing” the country, et cetera. We’ve all seen the millionaire talking heads who “moderate” the Dem Presidential Primary debates, ask stupid, tendentitious questions about how much more M4All is going to cost in taxes.

But, there are also voices at the margin, who are calling, “bullshit”. In a way, it is what many of us commenting here have hoped to see and hear from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard. But, there’s been a ceiling on their support, as well as a muffling of their voices. And, and when Bloomberg spent a half-billion of pocket change, he immediately got poll numbers as well as willing support from a lot professional apparatchiks in the Party.

I think there were active efforts at voter suppression and vote-rigging in the primaries, used to put a thumb on the scales. It is only a thumb on the scales, though, and the weight of that thumb seems directed at managing and manipulating the Media narrative rather than a wholesale, direct stealing of delegates. I am not defending it and the object is the same: cheat Sanders’ supporters out of the nomination. But, I am drawing attention to the central point of leverage, the strategic factor for this manipulation: a bloc of stupid, vicious and/or apathetic know-less-than-nothing voters, who are apparently living in some alternate dreamworld where nothing about politics matters anymore than which hockey team wins the Stanley Cup.

Apparently, these people can be reached en masse and stampeded by a Media narrative about who has “momentum”, but cannot be (or at least have not been) reached by months-long or years-long efforts “on the ground”.

I am exasperated by this phenomenon, which I see manifest among my own acquaintances. They seem caught up in some kind of trance state where they “forget” basic stuff (the U.S. has been in Afghanistan without a good result for 18+ years; Obama did not prosecute any banksters in the largest fraud-driven financial crisis in 70 years) or fail to process the implications. Biden is a walking demonstration of this phenomenon: who, really, can look at that demented, stupid man, and be reminded of his family corruption, his history of being wrong about foreign policy and economic policy for 35 years, and think, “wow, he would be so much better than Trump in so many ways! — he’s our guy, he’s so electable!”

I know the punditry and politicians will endorse him. And, he will be attacked by the Republicans, for all the obvious reasons. Trump himself is the clearest voice on the dynamics of the crooked way the Democratic Party is conducting the primaries!

So, I have two concerns: 1.) what is wrong with these (entranced?, stupid? vicious? “authoritarian follower”?) people? and 2a.) why does the Sanders campaign and “the Left” have so much difficulty creating a clear message, a clear critique? 2b.) why do Sanders or “the Left” fail to reach these people with a clear critique or message or argument or whatever?

In the propaganda wars, the Right sees an opportunity. Tucker Carlson has made this stuff his bread-and-butter — he’s really good at it. And, that is very frightening!

Biden will explode before the election. This is obvious. Whether he does so before the convention is an open question. If he does, Warren is waiting to become the Establishment alternative. That’s why she’s bugged out now, and is not endorsing anyone.

bruce, it’s simple. The Democratic party Establishment would rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie. As for Bernie, he should say, I call myself a democratic socialist. Your parents called us New Dealers. Heck, most of your parents and grand-parents were New Dealers. They knew what that meant. It meant being there for you, the working people of this country. Nowadays both parties race to see how much they can do for billionaires. That is how they measure themselves. Isn’t it time we brought the focus back to you, your concerns, your lives. Call it what you will that is where we need to be.

Wrap himself up in the New Deal every chance he gets. Remind people that Social Security and Medicare were democratic socialist ideas.

The question “why is something true” is not answered by the statement “you just don’t want to understand that it’s true.” I certainly hear, “Don’t try to address serious problems” as a defense of an inadequate status quo.

Willy:

In the magical land of Mandos, White Biden is closer to the economic interests of modern blacks than is White Sanders.

Eh? Who said anything about economic interests and who was closer to them? I sure didn’t!

And MLK’s teachings, philosophies, and struggles mean virtually nothing to modern American blacks because all of that stuff happened a long time ago.

Modern American black communities are heterogenous and complicated like any other large subsection of a large society. There are under no obligation to have the priorities or beliefs you patronizingly ascribe to them.

Through the first years of the 2000s, House Bill 676 with over 100 Democratic sponsors provided for Medicare for All. In 2008, the Democratic establishment went on a full out attack against any mention of the bill. In my county, the resolutions committee stripped a resolution calling for Democratic legislators to support it. A “discussion” of health care needs at state party headquarters to which grass roots Democrats were urged to come turned out to be a scripted press conference at which the audience was to cheer for the benefit of the press. Any attempt to call for HB 676 was cut off and no audience members were allowed to speak.

But somehow, with any mention of an obvious good suppressed, we can have “an intermediary phase that will look functionally like keeping the broken insurance system on life support. . .[which will] lay the cultural groundwork for wide-spread acceptance of M4A.” Next you need to explain why the elites use full-scale relentless propaganda to get wide-spread acceptance of what they want. Why don’t they do things that “will look functionally like” a broken system until suddenly the cultural groundwork changes for them. For that matter, why don’t minorities accept racism which looks functionally like discrimination until proper deference to the majority lays the groundwork for equality?

How do you know what most Americans think as opposed to what the rich do? Polls show that the majority of all Americans want Medicare for All and were showing that prior to the passage of Obamacare. It took people like you to tell us that we didn’t want it because of our culture.

In short, Mandos, anytime you start by thinking “this would have made sense” if you didn’t support the establishment, maybe you ought to wonder whether it does make sense despite your distress.

Okay, I just read nihil, who usually makes sense. The “cultural groundwork” for invading Iraq took all of about a year and a half. We went from not nation building and uniting not dividing to invading and converting nations within that space of time, with Dubya receiving 80%+ job approval after the fall of Baghdad.

It seems that sometimes “cultural groundwork” can be done very quickly.

Willy: the cultural groundwork for invading Iraq took much longer than that. It required decades of inculcation of the idea that the USA was World Democracy Police. Iraq does not happen overnight, the groundwork is laid much earlier by people who didn’t even know that there *would* be an Iraq war.

Black people are usually born into a particular racial-cultural gestalt in the USA, but that does not necessitate that they follow a particular set of heroes, beliefs, or ideologies. To believe otherwise is deeply patronizing and does the complexity and diversity of black life in America a disservice.

On Obama’s (or whomever’s) intervention:

Can we get the people who managed this prosecuted for, you know, “interfering with our elections”? I mean, this was orders of magnitude a worse and more impactful intervention than anything Putin could dream of doing.

I’m no fan of Trump, and would never vote for him, but if Trump actually did “lock these up” I’d not be sorry.

Bruce

So, I have two concerns: 1.) what is wrong with these (entranced?, stupid? vicious? “authoritarian follower”?) people?

Intellectual laziness. Bad (disinformation) sources (not just Fox, but more CNN/MSNBC for Dem primary voters. For African-Americans in particular, much of their electorate is older, female, and church-going (because of Biden’s crime bill disenfranchising younger male blacks!) who get their news from their congresscritter who assures them Uncle Joe is the best friend black people ever had. There is a direct comparison with these and the older poor whites (often men) who get their FOX fix). The result is that both groups can and do vote against what is objectively, their best interests.

and 2a.) why does the Sanders campaign and “the Left” have so much difficulty creating a clear message, a clear critique? 2b.) why do Sanders or “the Left” fail to reach these people with a clear critique or message or argument or whatever?

1) They have a lot of media headwind to fight against. In 2016, I recall a CNN slot dedicated to discussing “the Sanders phenomenon”. Who was invited? Why, some rightwing clown from National Review and Paul Begala FROM THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, who both proceeded to trash Sanders from their respective perspective. That’s why CNN calls “fair and accurate reporting”. And little has changed.

2) That being said, I don’t think Bernie is a great spokesperson. Yes, I think he is refreshingly honest and straightforward, and his values are wonderful for a politico (contrasted to Warren; he’s less interested in ‘fitting in with rest of the guys’ than fighting for what he believes, and not caring if he pisses people off when doing so). But he always doesn’t give the best answer.

For instance: today I just saw an interview of him on FOX where he was asked “why are you against billionaires?” with the interviewer talking about all the ‘wonderful things’ billionaires like Gates and Bezos has wrought and all the jobs they created. Sanders seemed to ignore the question and even acknowledged those things were ‘wonderful’ before going back to his stump speech.

Me, I would have countered differently–that Gates, for instance, invented essentially nothing himself (his non-billionaire employees did), what Microsoft marketed was largely repackagings of previous inventions, that Microsoft by its deliberate obsoletion of software forcing upgrades raises costs for all consumers, and that Gates got a lot of his wealth by monopolistic practices. I would then conclude that there was FREE, open, software comparable or better in quality and which WAS highly innovative, like Linux, which lowers costs for consumers because you don’t have to rush out to buy a new computer just because of an OS upgrade.

(I’m typing this on a Linux computer, now 12 years old, and still functioning perfectly ok on a currently-supported Linux distribution. Try that with a Windows box).