Elizabeth Warren’s “What Am I Moment”

I would gain a lot of respect for Warren if she endorses Bernie. To put it in the best possible terms, Warren is a pragmatist. She may really be a liberal after spending most of her life as a Republican, but she won’t risk rocking the boat to fight for progressive causes and candidates.

It’s obvious to me that Warren is not a lifelong progressive in the same way as Bernie and AOC are, where Bernie was fighting causes that were extremely unpopular and not yet mainstream, like LGBT rights, since the very start of his career. I predict that Bernie will be looked upon very favorably in the history books as a progressive leader of the early 21st century who fought for human rights issues that are considered unpopular right now in the USA, such as universal child care, health care, and free college. It’s a shame that Bernie was so much ahead of his time. He would absolutely become president at some point if he were 30 years younger.

Back to Warren, I have no idea what path she will choose. She knows that Bernie is better for the country, she knows that endorsing Biden over Bernie will ruin her reputation among the young progressive wing of the party, but she also knows that endorsing Biden in a race rigged for him could be the best thing for her political career if Biden can manage to win the presidency. She has a tough decision to make, but it really is about choosing her principles and what is right for the country versus potentially increasing her political power within the Democratic Party.

If Bernie wins, he won’t so it’s really not an if, he should put her in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) considering her proudly heralded roots.

I say no way she endorses Bernie and those responsible for cheating Biden to the nomination would never allow her as a VP pick. My guess is she’ll endorse Biden and support the scam.

First, there is nothing wrong with a politician being a politician. You can’t be successful in politics without being a functioning politician. The “consequential” politicians are the ones who
used their politicianal abilities to advance a particular vision or agenda. They are remembered decades after the fact.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with being not-a-progressive, so long as one does not pretend that one is or ever was a progressive.

I believe that technically Warren did not end her campaign, she merely “suspended” it. That way, she gets to “keep” her delegates voting for her in the first ballot, at least.

I predict she will NOT support Sanders in any way whatsoever. I can not predict whom she WILL support. But she will NOT support Sanders.

She will try selling her delegates to the highest bidder. Her poor political skills may lead her to wait too long before selling them. She may discover that the price for her delegates drops to zero. I imagine she will leave the world of elective politics and return to the world of Academe.

Warren is going to get primaried in Massachusetts and is probably done politically.

She’s not a good retail politician and she has terrible strategic judgment. Consider for instance:

[1] Her continual failures in her auditions to be somebody’s VP or cabinet member to figure out when and with whom she could successfully make a deal (e.g. her endorsement of Clinton in 2016 to get the VP nod, which Clinton then gave to T. Kaine; her failure to choose a side to throw her delegates to on Monday of this week, when it still mattered before Super-Tuesday’s result);

[2] Her stupidity in trying to get a leg up on Sanders in the earlier debate by bringing up something he said to her in a private conversation eighteen months before and (probably) misrepresenting it, creating a “he said, she said” scenario where neither could be proved right but she has the personal history of lying for professional advantage with the “Pocohantas” schtick while even Sanders’s enemies concede his honesty.

Apropos of which, there’s this —

https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/fcdllr/there_is_no_more_relentless_ruthless_a_nihilist/

audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Nq3RG8b84

Cornell: ‘I knew Elizabeth Warren when I was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She was a right-wing Reaganite. And the University of Pennsylvania had the most progressive law school curriculum in the country. And this is Elizabeth Warren. And I taught a first year class called income security. Elizabeth Warren said “there is no more ridiculous idea than national healthcare.” That’s the Elizabeth Warren I knew.

‘She was in her 30s at this time. She was the henchwoman of the right-wing takeover to destroy the left-wing curriculum. I taught Worker’s Rights, I taught the National Labor Rights Act, which doesn’t exist anymore, for the most part, it’s not taught in any law school in the United States, I taught Income Security, and I taught Jurisprudence. Elizabeth was against all those things. I don’t really know Elizabeth Warren personally, I just know her as a right-wing Republican.

‘And somehow or another, God came out of the heavens and turned her into a Democrat, probably at the very moment that Derrick Bell stepped down from Harvard because he would not work anymore until they hired an African-American woman. Now she couldn’t pretend she was Black, so she pretended she was African. She was Native American. That’s not what we call people who are Native Americans, because they’re First Nations people. Apaches and Cherokees were nations. There’s no such thing as a Native American. Elizabeth checked that box just as Derrick Bell was stepping down. She goes to Massachusetts and she becomes a Democrat.

‘There is no more [of a] relentless, ruthless, nihilist that I have ever met in my entire life. Not Elizabeth Warren. She’s right up there with Donald Trump. So I can’t really support her. She did succeed in destroying that progressive curriculum. And that progressive curriculum is, you know, it’s one of those life things that you hold onto, right?

‘So I don’t trust Elizabeth Warren as far as I can throw her. She has no policy, she doesn’t understand imperialism, and she has said she’s a capitalist. What she really is is a technocrat who clawed her way to Harvard. I mean, that’s where you want to end up, right? If you’re a law professor, you want to be at Harvard. Ok, she did that. She succeeded. But as President of the United States I wouldn’t even dream of supporting her. Because Bernie Sanders, whatever you think of him, like me, was chaining himself to schools to [de]segregate them. Was protesting against the Vietnam war. There are people who have held onto values for a lifetime, and those, Slavoj, are the people I trust.’

Warren will endorse when it becomes obvious who the winner is. That’s who she is.

Perhaps she endorses Bernie, but I doubt it. He’s not going to win and it’s not close at all, Ian. Look at the calendar. The map is worse for him than Super Tuesday, he’s consistently hitting 25-30% in every state (unless it’s in the south, and then he does worse). He’s abandoning Mississippi, and it’s possible he doesn’t reach threshold thereby getting 0 delegates. He’s going to lose Michigan. He’ll lose Pennsylvania. He’ll get crushed in Florida. He might win Washington and Michigan.

I had three red flags for him since IA, and so far all of them are raised:

1. Underperformance in California and Texas. Check. He lost Texas and he’s not built enough of a lead in CA to shut out Biden (which was probably the best insurance policy).

2. Keep Biden’s support in the North and Midwest relatively low and replicate NH. Check. Biden won MN and MA.

3. Biden romps in the South. Check. He did it in SC and it’s going to happen everywhere else. LA, MS, GA? Where does Bernie improve?

Warren will do what’s best for “the movement”, which is to influence those in power to enact her program. She negotiated veto power over a lot of Clinton appointments in the financial realm, a gamble she clearly lost, but a gamble you’d be an idiot to pass up. Clinton likes and respects Warren and would have heeded a lot of her advice. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the best path forward for her with Biden is because Warren and Biden don’t get along or like each other, and Biden is notorious for breaking promises when it comes to personnel recommendations (none of his aides or people are sprinkled throughout the government like Ted Kennedy’s were, because Biden sucks).

Rock and a hard place on this one and it’s lose lose no matter what she does. Let’s see I guess.

I voted for Warren for the Senate, since I firmly believe and still do that she is NOT progressive, but she is intelligent, especially on financial themes, and the US Senate is in dire need of correct guidance in that area. I do not think she ever should have run for president, especially with the lack of success for those from Massachusetts who think they should be president (Dukakis and Kerry). I think she’s where she is at present because of the way she handled the whole race. I mean she stated basically, that what good is running for President, if you don’t put out a lot of proposals. So does she believe in the proposals she put out? That’s a bit different from Sanders and the proposals he put out and how they are based on his beliefs.

I keep thinking: how could anybody be progressive and a professor at HARVARD at the same time? This is the school that just fired a lecturer because he gave a positive lecture on taxing the rich.

If she endorses Sanders I might consider voting for her again, but then again maybe not! She’s probably going to endorse Biden, and I will be proven right in my assessment of her politics(?).

dukakis and Kerry

Warren is not a progressive. If she had wanted to endorse Sanders, she could have when she withdrew. That would have made a statement. She has about 24 hours for her endorsement to mean anything to either Sanders or Biden. Clock’s ticking.

I agree Warren is not a progressive. She’s a moderate at best whereas Biden is a Republican in Dem clothing as many in the Dem establishment are.

I think another excellent running mate for Joe is another Joe — Joe Scarborough. Afterall, Biden said he wanted a Republican running mate and Scarborough’s a Republican and Scarborough has a hard-on for Biden.

Warren playing her contrived role of being wronged by Bernie so that she can support the guy who pushed the bankruptcy bill that she made her political career opposing.

Whatever Hillary wants her to do, she does.

Better off without her. If he would have made her his VP and he got into the Oval Office he’d have to keep a constant eye on her.

If Bernie somehow does win, he’ll certainly owe nobody anything, except the working class.

If I was Bernie and I lost, I’d just retire and walk away from the whole thing before putting any energy supporting Biden, or whomever else they run in his place.

Z

Note that when Liz dropped out she said that she is still in the fight. What does that mean? Waiting for the dems to tap Biden on the shoulder and say it’s time? You know the media, who supposedly ghosted her though it actually gave her fawning coverage and even worked with her to try to sink Bernie, would love that story line: Liz the billionaire slayer.

I still can’t see them running with Biden. He’s too embarrassing.

Z

None of this chit chat about Warren matters. The fix is in. Biden will “win” the nomination and run against Trump and Biden will lose. But even if Bernie were to win the nomination and go on and become POTUS, I will still wake up on Nov 4, 2020 in the most hated, evil and dangerous country in the Global Capitalist Empire. We are a nation of 300 million used car salesmen who don’t care that the USA has laid siege to many nations around the world with sanctions and if sanctions don’t work then we bomb or invade them into submission. People will continue to die and we the people(including me) are all complicit in this horror show.

Alan’s right. It amazes me, no it doesn’t really, how many continue to engage in American Exceptionalism. America’s very own state department would have rejected the Super Tuesday results and declared the vote on Super Tuesday a fraud. But this is America and that can’t and doesn’t happen in America, right? No, America is the exception to the corruption rule. Corrupted elections only happen in other countries, not and never in America. This analysis is commentary on Kabuki Theater and at this point, Bernie’s flailing is a joke. It’s ironic the CIA stigmatizes Bernie with the Castro label when in fact Bernie isn’t, and never was, fit to even hold Castro’s jock. Castro beat the sh*t out of the CIA and don’t think they have forgotten. Like the Jews, the CIA when it comes to Castro and Che and Cuba has a policy of Never Forget and Never Again. You don’t have a “movement” if you don’t have any clue what you’re up against and how to fight it, and yes, it’s a fight versus a resistance. A fight where we’re getting the sh*t beat out of us.

In China in Wuhan, there is video of Chinese state goons/thugs welding the doors shut of those ill with COVID-19 to keep them forcefully quarantined. I guess they were meant to stay in there until they died. We need to do the same when the wealthy pricks climb down into their McMansion spider holes to hide from Armageddon. Weld their doors shut so they can never surface again.

Maybe one day you all will realize, the only possible way out of this prison is to kill all the rich before they kill all of you. I suggest you start with the political class first, you know, Northern Virginia that went large for Biden, the political consultants especially and then on to Wall Street and Martha’s Vineyard and Silicon Valley.

I can see it now, in two to three weeks, maybe a little longer, Bernie will capitulate and tell his supporters, once again, “we gave it our best but our best wasn’t good enough yet again. Not this time but next time we will be successful because this is a movement.” Yeah, no, I don’t think so. There will be no next time. It was now or never. The time for a peaceful transition of power is over. There is only one option left. Will it be chosen? I highly doubt it.

Joe & Mika were live today again from their palace studio in Florida ecstatic that they’re dodging $600k in taxes as the rest of you peon nobodies drop like flies and wait in line for eight hours to cast a vote that will never be counted. I’ll know you all are serious when Mika & Joe are on the run and flee the country like Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family did in 1979 amidst the Iranian Revolution. Anything short of this at this point is a bad joke and can’t be taken seriously.

Castro never would have delivered the Cuban people into the hands of the sadistic filth that exploited the Cuban people for so long as Bernie will do in a few short, or long, weeks. As I said, Bernie isn’t fit to hold Castro’s jock so it’s a joke and an insult to Castro and Che and the Cuban Revolution to mention them in the same breath or conflate them in any way. As Lloyd Bentsen said long ago as though it was just yesterday, “Senator, I served with Fidel Castro, I knew Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Fidel Castro.”

(3) It’s satire.

Get serious, peckerhead, the “police” have their hands full what with a pandemic looming and they can’t even seem to handle the everyday grind effectively. Gabriel Fernandez is a good example. Everyone failed him, including and especially the police. The Palmdale Sheriff’s Department was too busy throwing people out of their foreclosed homes to be worried about an eight-year-old kid with bruises and cigarette burns and cuts and black eyes.

The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

https://www.netflix.com/title/80220207

Juxtapose Gabriel’s tragic torture and murder, his death, with that of Kobe Bryant. That’s America. John Edwards was correct in his assertion there are Two Americas. In fact, there may even be more than two but most certainly America is not united as one despite the propagandistic rhetoric to the contrary.

Ché Pasa, Liz didn’t crash and burn. She never got out of the gate. She never exceeded a speed that would result in a crash and burn. She was never a contender. She was a useful foil though, be it witting or unwitting on her part. If the assumption that Bloomberg’s dismal debate performances had an effect is true, Liz is as much responsible for that as anyone or anything. She handed his ass to him. Had she not, and instead handed Biden’s ass to him, Bloomberg would have performed much better on Super Tuesday, sans the fix, and Bloomberg’s more notable performance would have bled votes directly from Biden. So, Liz not only bled progressive votes from Bernie as the fake progressive she pretended to be, but she also prevented moderate votes from bleeding to Bloomberg from Biden. Thanks Liz. You’re the best. And the takeaway from her dismal performance by CNN & MSNBC with a straight face? Sexism. Unreal.

@450,
agree. & liz is a member of the system that fronts (as in the rocker “frontman” meaning) biden. what!?! a blantantly off/ old/ dead cabbage head creep. for POTUS? members of this system must qualify with varieties of socio-psycho. utterly disgusting.

Hey peckerhead, I’m not on the political spectrum so you can take that constraining and misleading abstraction you call a political spectrum and shove it up your polyp-ridden, constipated ass. It’s satire because it’s ludicrous on the face of it to believe the dispossessed, even if they had the inclination, have the capacity and means to “kill all the rich.” The point of the satire is deadly serious though, and that point is, there really are no options except to sit and watch and whine and take our medicine and support Bernie as he capitulates yet again to the powers that be.

Considering exit poll discrepancies with machine votes, “endorsements” sure do make for a handy mechanism to obscure likely vote rigging on Super Tuesday.

Exactly, metamars. Mallam told me I was crazy to say they didn’t matter when I pointed to Bloomberg as an example. He was garnering endorsements left and right, buying them really, and look, he’s no longer in the race and never really ever was. I said that to Mallam because that’s what one of the talking head consultants said on CNN or MSNBC, I can’t remember which and really they’re one and the same, a couple of weeks prior. Hey Mallam, I thought political consultants were the so-called experts in these matters, that’s why they get paid the big bucks, and this one in particular indicated endorsements didn’t amount to much when downplaying Bloomberg but then, what do you know, suddenly when it’s endorsements for Joe Biden, the same f*ckers declare endorsements now miraculously matter and meaningfully affect the vote.

@someofparts,

It can be tiresome, but it really only takes a minute or two.

Sometimes lonely people find a blog and offer everyone else an opportunity to feel their pain. ” Only the
lonely” . . . .

God made a scroll button.

@Chipper,

If various kinds of very bad, very not-nice people come to disrupt a blog for any of their very bad, very not-nice reasons or on behalf of their very bad, very not-nice groups or movements; all the constructive commenters can do is exert the self-discipline to not reply. All the constructive commenters can do is to scroll past the damage and keep finding and reading eachOTHER’S comments and responding to those.

If disrupters begin consuming so much actual bandwidth that the volume of it all begins to flood and then sink the blog, one hopes the blogger then has a way to mass-erase the disruption and quietly block all the computer-machine addresses that the various disruptions are coming from.

@Benjamin: I never said that I was a radical. I merely know of that rule of thumb regarding who advocates violence first, and I recognize its wisdom.

You’re correct that I see no particular virtue in beating my head to a bloody pulp against the neutronium wall of my fellow non-elite white Americans’ vacuum-skulled prejudices. Those Darwinian rejects would rather “die of whiteness” than accept any decent national health-care system which allowed non-white Americans, whom they hate more than they love their own lives, to use it right along with white Americans.

So be it. Let them reap what they have sown. I look upon them in much the same way as a Marvel Comics mutant who has decided that Magneto is right about the normals, after all.

All we can do is try to stave off retrogression, until enough states become sufficiently non-white that actual social progress becomes politically possible.

As for violent revolt?

https://i.imgur.com/hqrcrTu.jpg

@Ivory Bill Woodpecker

Except the obstacle is not whatever caricature of the average American you’ve conjured up in your mind. It’s the low-information dumbasses within the party who are throwing their weight behind a human vegetable. The general election will be a piece of piss; it’s the primary where Sanders might falter.

I doubt we will ever agree, Benjamin. Is there any further use in discussion?

@Ivory Bill Woodpecker

Oh, and yes. I am serious about a revolution happening. It might happen the day after the election, it might happen ten years from now. But the country is filled with misery, suffering, and premature deaths. If the existing government continues to not fix any of the underlying problems (and especially if they continue to make them worse, which any neoliberal administration, whether Democrat or Republican, will), at some point people will revolt.

Your sneering condescension won’t change that reality. You’re sounding like a Versailles courtier around about 1788.

I didn’t say anything about your wealth. I’m saying your complacence makes you sound incredibly out of touch.

@Ivory Bill Woodpecker

Like I said, you’re out of touch. You really seem to have no conception how much worse things have gotten over the last 40 or so years, and particularly the last 12.

You’re also extremely bad at history. FDR preempted a revolution, as I’ve already said. Now people like you won’t even allow that much of a compromise.

@Ivory Bill Woodpecker

It means it will be easy.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/piece_of_piss