Bernie Sanders
Yeah, not much to say right this moment. I think this is a mistake; there’s a lot of flux right now. This isn’t an ordinary season, and he might have made it in, though, obviously, the odds were against him. I suspect part of Sanders’ reasoning is that, unlike Biden, he wasn’t willing to urge his followers to go vote during a pandemic and many states were making mail-in voting impossible.
Biden was always most likely to win, alas. There are a lot of people who want a return to the old normal, and Biden, for all his flaws, symbolizes that. Plus, for most people, he’s best known threw memes showing him as Obama’s best buddy (thanks, Onion).
Biden won’t be President for long, if he wins. He’s clearly in decline, even if he’s a figurehead, someone else will be running the show. Or they’ll just hand it to the vice president. His vice president pick is incredibly important, since that person may well be who is actually being elected as President.
As for Bernie, this was his last hurrah. Warren is seen as having betrayed the left; she won’t be able to win if she runs again. I would guess AOC is the heir apparent, but we will see.
Bernie lost because Democrats are actually conservatives (Republicans are reactionaries). Independents tend left, but don’t vote as much as registered Democrats. Likewise, the old vote more than the young, and there was heavy-handed engineering to shut down the votes of poorer or younger people. (For example, shutting down polling places in poorer neighbourhoods, leading to massive lineups in the few that remained. Same with campuses.)
Bernie was the only chance of having a good government in charge in the United States for the next four to eight years.
If Trump wins, we have another four years before a chance at someone decent. If Biden wins, it will be eight, as even if Biden’s VP loses in 24, he still takes up the running slot.
Either way, we’re out of time on things like climate change. We were already past the point of no return, we’ve now lost the serious possibility of mitigation.
So be it. Be well, all and take into account that, no matter who wins, the 20s are not going to be a good time unless you’re already quite well-off.
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Stirling S Newberry
Well be sorry.
Joan
Ugh. I knew there was a good chance of this happening, but still. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. Trump is going to win by a landslide.
Zachary Smith
Joan – https://www.ianwelsh.net/sanders-drops-out/#comment-112563
I’m not at all sure about that. Just an opinion, but I suspect Joe Biden/Charlie McCarthy could beat Trump if puppeteer (D) VP/Edgar Bergen comes across as capable. If I’m wrong, and Trump wins an honest election, then I figure the US deserves ever bit of what it gets.
Personally, I’ll never forgive Obama, HRC, Pelosi, Bloomberg, and the DNC for what they did to Sanders. Never.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brT6gXdhLWk
NR
Joan:
Don’t be so sure. A month ago, I would have said there was no chance Biden could beat Trump. But Trump has screwed up the COVID crisis so badly that even a weak candidate like Biden might be able to beat him. No way to know what will happen right now.
zac
…and now, The Deluge
Krystyn Podgajski
I have already moved on to a spiritual revolution.
Stirling S Newberry
Bet on the stock market for the time being.
Altandmain
Even if Biden wins, and he might because of how poorly Trump has responded to the coronavirus, he will not be a very popular president.
He’s clearly a hardcore neoliberal.
He is pro-trade, which will not go well in the Midwest.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-14/biden-s-nafta-vote-is-a-liability-in-the-rust-belt
He’s also been pro-finance and has hurt student debts.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/
There are other voters who might have otherwise stayed home – gun owners for example might come out specifically because of his views.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/joe-biden-told-an-auto-worker-youre-full-of-shit-during-a-tense-argument-over-guns.html
There are other liabilities he has, such as his apparent senility.
So Trump’s mismanagement of the virus may be his may well, “Trump card” if you will.
What’s worse may be that if Biden wins, he may set the stage for someone worse than Trump. He will be totally incapable of fixing the structural problems the US faces.
Ultimately, the Democratic Party probably doesn’t care as much if Biden wins or not. Fighting the left was far more important. As Jimmy Dore once noted, they would rather lose with an Establishment neoliberal than win with a left wing candidate.
https://twitter.com/jimmy_dore/status/1017423033223524352?lang=en
different clue
I’ve predicted in a few places now that the Democrats intend to lose election 2020. If they can’t lose it “fair and square”, they will throw it. They have two reasons, a big reason and a little reason. The big reason is that if they can assure Trump’s re-election in 2020, they think 4 more years of Trump will make so many people so unhappy that the Democrat will win by a landslide in 2024. They also plan to blame their 2020 loss ( which they will throw the election to make sure they lose if that’s what they have to do to lose) on Sanders and the SanderBackers. ” Look what you did!” . . . all the Mainstream Catfood Democrats will shout.
Take a look at this copy of a tweet I lifted from NaCap.
* * * * * * * * *
Amanda
@AmandaPresto
Reporter: Biden just attacked you online(in a tweet).
Trump: No, he didn’t. He doesn’t write that stuff. He has democrat operatives write that. … If he’s even watching this, he doesn’t understand what he’s watching.
* * * * * * * * *
Zang! ( as Hunter S. Thompson used-to would have said). That’s what Bernie should have said about Biden over and over and over again. But Bernie’s flaw is that he is too nice of a guy to be bad to bad people. He is good to bad people and it cost him some possible victories.
And here is a little free-lance video which Matt Orfalea made about Sanders, Trump and Biden.
I gather he was fired from the Sanders campaign because he wasn’t good enough to some very bad very not-nice people. And the Sanders campaign never used this video. Nor even did any surrogates while it still would have made a difference. Anyway, here is the twitter thread with the embedded video right at the top of it.
https://twitter.com/0rf?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1247198472576675848&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2020%2F04%2Flinks-4-7-2020.html
Anyone who watches the whole video in light of what Trump was quoted further upthread as having said to a reporter about Biden “attacking” him on Twitter should ask themselves:
is running a demented old fool who was a vicious two-faced double–crossing back-stabbing liar and a possible sex-assaulting rapist as well before he got demented . . . . the kind of thing that a party would do if it wanted to win an election?
The Democrats plan to lose election 2020 deliberately on purpose. You all can laugh at me if they end up winning anyway despite their best efforts to lose it or throw it.
Mallam
A lot of this analysis is incorrect which is understandable since it’s wishcasting. However, it helps to be clear headed and honest with what’s on the table to know the way forward. Independents do not “lean left”, certainly not more left than Democratic partisans. Non-voters are more like UKIP-lite: they like health care benefits, they don’t like immigrants much, and they’re relatively conservative compared to the respective demographics of people who vote (so a white non-college non-voter would like Medicare for All, but they really hate immigrants, so you probably don’t want them to come out and vote as its likely they’ll vote for Trump). The truth is that the electorate is just more conservative than you want it to be. No one is out there waiting for just the right leftist candidate to come out and vote and support. This has been demonstrated again and again. Biden won the poorer vote, he won the working class vote, he won the underclass vote. I’m not sure why you think telling your readers the opposite helps anything. Continuing to lose and be a thorn in Biden’s side is not going to increase your leverage when he inevitably wins, it just makes you look weak and demonstrates your supporters can be ignored. Luckily, Bernie understands this. Similarly, your read on Warren is warped by online commentary and echo chambers that has shown itself to just being loud.
The good news, and I guess it can be bad news since we don’t have much time, is that Bernie won voters 45 and younger, and he handedly won voters 18-29 by astounding margins. The left will come to power. It’s just going to take time, patience, and work. Older Gen X and Boomers are conservative generations. No one likes generational analysis, and specially on the left we shouldn’t want the generations to fight each other when it’s the rich who are the problem, but “class warfare” is expressing itself as “generational warfare”. True here, true in the U.K.
Hugh
As Democrats keep making abundantly, overwhelmingly clear, they do not want my vote and do not support anything I believe. So no, I will not be voting for their demented empty suit.
As for Sanders, I supported him on the issues. I did not per se support him. He may be gone. The issues remain. Can’t say I’m surprised. I would say the left would be better served by someone who knows how to raise a little hell.
It has been a truism of American politics for a couple of generations that people say they are conservative but then agree with most progressives on the issues. Open immigration is not a progressive issue. It is a neoliberal one. Lots of cheap, easily controlled through deportation, labor that can undercut the wages and benefits of US workers.
The coronavirus has fundamentally changed things, and it is only one of many disruptors to come. I expect both Trump and Biden in their different ways to try to get the toothpaste back into the tube. Both will fail.
Astrid
I am disappointed but not at all surprised. If Bernie looked like he could capture the votes to win, he would likely be dead by now. Still, I’m disgusted by how much he is sheepdogging for the obviously corrupt and evil Democrats.
I’m actually less pessimist due to the coronavirus. Yes, things could go badly in a major lurch down towards neofeudalism. But UBI and universal healthcare and MMT are now perculating to the surface. People have less to lose. Especially the young. Young doctors and nurses and other PMCers now realize that they are being thrown under the bus with their giant unpayable student loans. This crisis isn’t likely to end in 2 months, so what we see now isn’t indicative of things in 6, 12, or 18 months.
But no matter what, there is no easy way out. There was a window 1.5 generations ago. There’s no going back.
someofparts
“Personally, I’ll never forgive Obama, HRC, Pelosi, Bloomberg, and the DNC for what they did to Sanders. Never.”
I feel the same way. Bernie can play nice all he wants, but my days of voting for Democrats are over.
Eric Anderson
Refocusing:
Focus #1:
I’m doubling down on creating a space for my family independent from the system. Yup. I’m a prepper.
Focus #2:
Ludditism. My remaining efforts will be directed toward systemic downfall.
Time to dust off the Edward Abbey collection. If you haven’t read his more controversial works, perhaps it’s time you did.
That said, I’ve got garden to finish root-tilling.
Peace.
Eric Anderson
Mallam:
See my comment from the geopolitics post the other day.
“The merchant class will start the international resource wars. The question is, will the salt of the earth fight for them? Or, will they turn on them?”
So? Will these younger leftists fight for the establishment? Or, turn on them?
Dave Dell
70 years old. Bernie contributor/voter. From the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Not going to vote for Biden. I’m going to urge others not to vote for Biden. I largely agree with Hugh and Astrid but…
The time to show some leverage is this election and the 2022 mid-terms and the 2024 election, etc. Progressives have to emulate the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party and move the the party left over multiple elections. AOC for President.
I should add a caveat in that if the NeoLibs/Biden openly run on health care for all and screw the budget (MMT/Monetary Realist Econ type guy that I am) I could have my mind changed. I’ve got all the money in my wallet that says that won’t happen.
anon
Why it is still important for Bernie supporters to vote for him in the remaining primaries:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/05/bernie-sanders-path-to-victory-165161
“Many of Sanders’ allies have openly admitted that Biden is all but guaranteed to be the nominee. Still, some are urging him to stay in the race in order to collect delegates for the Democratic National Convention, which was pushed back to August because of the pandemic.
It is especially important to these Sanders supporters to maintain the rule changes they achieved in 2016, such as barring superdelegates from voting for presidential candidates on the first ballot. In order for his backers to have negotiating power, they said, Sanders needs to receive at least 1,200 delegates — he has more than 900 now — so they can introduce minority resolutions. They also hope that Sanders can push Biden to commit to progressive appointments.”
I also wanted him to stay in the race but he faced immense pressure from Democrats and the media to drop out. Given his narrow path to victory, I can see Bernie not wanting to be blamed for Trump’s re-election if he stayed in the race until the convention. Also, the guilt he’d have to live with if people were forced to go out during a pandemic to vote only to have Biden win anyway.
If the pandemic had hit the USA two months earlier, this may have been a very different race with health care for all becoming the most important issue of the primaries. Also sad to see the pandemic hitting marginalized communities the hardest who would have benefited from having Sanders in office.
We are only at the beginning of what will be years of health scares and financial ruin for millions of Americans. Count your blessings if you have a high paying job with good benefits because those who don’t are in for (another) very bad decade.
krake
Money people got their bag man.
Without strike, sabotage and insurrection that Americans are still too timid to execute this was always going to be the case.
If you hoped otherwise you are infected with the worst pestilence ever to take wing from Pandora’s nasty little amphora.
anon
I hate Trump but tweets like this one make me see his appeal. Trump is a master manipulator, and unlike Sanders, Trump has no qualms with calling out Biden and the DNC in order to win over some of Sanders’ supporters.
https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1247914464319504385
Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!
11:49 AM · Apr 8, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
Hugh
“They also hope that Sanders can push Biden to commit to progressive appointments.”
BWAAHAAHAA.
highrpm
@davedell,
pretty much my sentiments. the caveat of the neolibs/ biden fronting the progressive agenda — medicare for all, screw the budget, ubi, free college — is magical thinking. time for a major progressive party. (certainly i can’t forgive the centrist demo leaders for their corporate tap root. screw the neolib centrist demos and their front man biden. and if there is no viable progressive party in november, i’ll vote trump. i’m done with the demos party.)
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
What. Mallam. Said.
The robber barons of crapitalism should drink a toast to the Communists, for making revolutionary socialism look scarier and bloodier than the crapitalist status quo (whether or not it actually was). The enemies of crapitalism always have provided the best grist for the crapitalist propaganda mills.
Mojave Wolf
Pretty much agreeing with DC and Hugh above, w/the addendum that I now think all reasonable hope is gone for the future of the planet.
Agree w/the negative comments on Warren, and multiply the intensity a hundred fold,.at least. She appeared to be running for the sole purpose of making sure Bernie didn’t win by making him compete for the SJW/IDpol votes,.which he probably needed to win but catering to them cratered his support among all the independents and economically left but not in love with their own perpetual narcissistic outrage crowd, who were a much larger block that HAD to turn out for Bernie to win. Plus Liz and her campaign went out of their way to keep fanning the memories of hate among the “I’m with her” set, so just in case Bernie won the primary he’d have to win the general without a lot of those voted
Special thanks go out to the complete and utter idiots and/or sabatours in Bernie’s own campaign, who have recently spoke openly about their plan to win the nomination with 30% of the vote so there was no need to appeal to anyone beyond their hardcore supporters, because they claim to be so hopelessly stupid as to have assumed the oligarchy brown nosers would never set aside their differences. This is so blatantly idiotic and wrongheaded on so many levels I have to assume this part of Bernie’s campaign were actually on Team Neara Tandem.
I am pissed at Bernie as well, tho I shouldn’t be. While far sharper than most of his opposition, he may be getting too old for this, given what he’s up against. Have thought it the whole campaign but unwilling to say it till now, coz he was the only realistic hope in sight.
He hired a staff half of whom were apparently either incompetent or trying to lose (those are two different groups) and listened to the worst voices far too much. He failed to defend his allies and supporters against slander but rallied to the defense of his final enemy against truthful attacks from his own people. His policies were less good than in 2016 and his articulation of it was worse as well. He perpetuated the Russiagate nonsense even when it was used against him. He perpetuated the “Trump is uniquely evil” stuff despite it being obvious that Trump isn’t in the same league of badness as Busy/Cheney. By capitulating to all the DNC talking points, he appeared to be playing politics as usual and damaged his credibility as the honest guy who could be counted on to be himself and NOT play politics (which in Bernie’s case was the best politics to play). The race started as his to lose, but the horrible campaign plus Warren’s efforts combined with the entire MSM’s all out mission to discredit and destroy him meant he had to be great in person, and he was merely an okay spokesperson for his ideas, which wasn’t nearly good enough.
Sorry folks. I’ve been bitter for a while but trying to hold it in while a shred of hope remained.
There is no good option going to win in 2020, but I’d absolutely rather have Trump than any of the utter phonies claiming to be fo anything other than the furtherance of oligarchy.
Best hope for the non-domesticated part of the planet: Corona virus takes most of us humans out (this would obviously be bad for domestic animals and plants and any ecosystems or species depending on continued human maintenance, which is A LOT, and it would be bad for a lot of really good people who’d go down with the bad, so this is not something to be gleeful about even if you are a misanthrope)
2d best hope: blood in the streets. Most likely, this will make things worse rather than better, but even a .0001% of it sufficiently improving things is about a thousand times better odds than we have with our remaining crop of politicians.
Of whom, well, Tulsi could somehow both adequately explain the Biden endorsement AND be the fighting revolutionary we wish Bernie had been AND overcome the same forces that took Bernie down even tho he started 2020 in the lead and she’s trying to climb out of a crater filled with anti personnel mines and booby traps just to get into the picture or Nina Turner could pull off a minor miracle or Richard Ojeda could rise to power, or Tom Cotton or the Hawley dude could suddenly become pro choice environmentalists while keeping both their populist leanings and their base of support. Nina is the best bet of those to happen and that’s still not a good bet. I am NOT a believer in AOC. Nor do I see anyone else on the horizon likely to get traction, which will be much more difficult now, the powers that be having learned from their 2016 mistakes.
I shall now return to my pre Bernie 2016 viewpoint of “We are all doomed, and only magic can save us.”
Z
Prediction: In ten days, the self-renowned democratic party unifier and impulsive liar, Tweaky Liz, her of 3rd place in her own state, is going to be announced as Joe Biden’s running mate, which means she is the nominee because Sloppy Joe’s going to be put out to pasture within a month or two.
Z
Mojave Wolf
Of course the super long, super bitter comment painstakingly typed in my phone triggered the moderation software. That is…. Weirdly appropriate.
Eric Anderson
Z:
Agreed. The fix has been in for months.
different clue
@Astrid,
Sanders really believes that Trump and the Republicans are even more eviler and even more corrupter than the Democrats are. He really believes this. He really believes that the “most important thing” is to “beat Trump”. So much as one can accuse him of sheepdogging, I doubt that he feels that to be the case. Certainly not in any cynical way.
Eric Anderson
Good summary from Liz Breunig
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/opinion/bernie-sanders-campaign.html
KT Chong
Candidates drop out only when they run out of money.
Already told you guys Bernie, who had lost the momentum, would drop out soon because his supporters, who have lost their income in this coronavirus outbreak, have stopped making small donations to him. Bernie’s campaign has been laying off paid staff, which means he was running out of money
Tucker: Bernie Sanders may be the lamest revolutionary ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqlu_BF-3Z8
Ultimately, he was never going to win, because he simply does not have “it” in him.
Tom
Sad to hear, but he went woke and got broke. He needed to be pro-life, pro-gun, and anti-illegal immigrant and ripped into the other candidates as hypocrites and liars. Sanders was many things, the second coming of FDR he was not. He had multiple times he could have scalped Sleepy Joe by saying he was pushing Jim Crow while he, Sanders, was marching with MLK Jr and getting beat on by the cops. He failed to do this. Well, voting for Trump as we might as well burn the house down, it has black mold anyway and better we let Teflon Donnie torch it.
On COVID-19, we now know why HCQ with Zinc works. The virus is kicking out the Fe2 and Fe3 ions from the RBCs into the bloodstream. It kills by blood poisoning caused by the radioactive iron molecules dumped by the RBCs. This is why the lungs are getting glassed, and why intubation is actually the wrong treatment.
HCQ opens the Zinc Channels, and then Zinc binds to the SARS-COV-II virus and causes it to pop. This stops the virus from replicating and gives the body time to filter the iron out and replace the damaged RBCs with new ones.
Given our shortage of HCQ, our Medical Director is going to use quercetin which also opens Zinc Channels, especially for those that can’t take HCQ.
Teflon Donnie was again right, but for the wrong reasons.
Gaianne
KT Chong–
Tucker certainly makes a good case. Assuming Sanders’ goal was electoral success, he certainly–as Tucker says outright–should have learned from Democrat Party behavior in 2016 and modified his strategy and tactics accordingly. But mostly he didn’t.
Possibly electoral success was not his goal. But what was his goal? Has he built an organization that can win in the future? Seemingly not.
Perhaps it was getting people to talk about Medicare for All. But talk only matters if it lays the path for action. And that has not happened. And M4A is only one little thing–a good subsidiary goal, but only a tiny piece of the overall picture.
I am chasing my tail here–Tucker is basically right. For whatever reason, Sanders was unable to do what was needed. Nor is that surprising, merely very unfortunate.
And disappointing.
–Gaianne
different clue
So . . . its Biden. Well . . . let’s look on the funny side.
https://i.redd.it/ebk8fcoshnr41.jpg
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Sanders would have crushed the general, just as he would have in 2016. The low-information boomer reactionaries, like you, within the party refused to let that happen. So be it. Your party can burn for all I care. After casting my vote in my state’s still-to-come primary (for Sanders), I will be changing my registration to Independent and never voting Dem ever again.
Trump is going to kick your asses, and I’m going to laugh.
@different clue
The best meme I’ve seen in that style is the one with Lenin as Thanos.
“You couldn’t live with the failure of your electoral politics. And where did that bring you? Back to me.”
Hugh
“Sorry folks. I’ve been bitter for a while but trying to hold it in while a shred of hope remained.”
This pretty much reflects my feelings as well. My post mortem is that Sanders could not have foreseen the coronavirus, but he should have known that the Democratic Establishment was always going to sandbag him. I agree about Warren. But look what it took to take him down. First, the MSM either ignoring him or slamming him, then Warren, then about half a dozen alternatives who all flamed out, then Uncle Joke, then Bloomberg, and finally the Obama coup and the resurrection of Biden. I always thought Sanders should have run as the last of the New Dealers and the only real Democrat in the race. He should have made it about the people versus the corporations. He should have drawn lines and forced the Democrats to choose which side they were on. And he should have made it crystal clear that his supporters supported him on the issues, and that TINA was not an argument that was going to sway to them. Offer them something real or they will walk.
Oh, and I figure that Biden signaled a long time ago that he wanted Kamala Harris as his VP. She checks all the boxes and her seat in the Senate would stay Democratic no matter what.
Stirling S Newberry
I am sorry for America, but there are things to do. This is not the first time we have waited for a progressing candidate, it won’t be the last.
Ché Pasa
How could Bernie’s campaign compete with The Outbreak? Not even Trump’s daily rants at the clouds can do that. As for Old Joe, well, he’s essentially irrelevant given the crisis. Realistically, political campaigns are irrelevant for the duration, and every time somebody steps out to accuse some politician or political party of perfidy in the current climate, things go haywire fast. The politicians and their critics — at the moment — are “non-essential.”
Underneath it all, of course, the Bernie campaign stalled a long time ago. We can rationalize it as the consequence of DNC and Hillary perfidy or any other outrage we can think of, but it doesn’t really get to the root of the problem.
When we put too much faith in the individual, the Great Man, to solve or change things fundamentally, we’re bound to be disappointed. Even if he had, by some miracle, secured the nomination, and somehow by another miracle, won the presidency, it would have taken more miracles for him to fundamentally change much of anything in the system as it was. Under current conditions, he’s hamstrung almost completely.
Bernie ultimately failed to rally enough of his fans in the election that were held. There may be many more of them than we know, but they didn’t show up to vote, and now the whole concept of voting in an election is in jeopardy thanks to the Outbreak. I think Bernie understands this better than most. What do you do?
Wait it out and fight another day. Eventually, he’ll have to hand the reins of the movement to someone else, but that day hasn’t come.
We may not see the end of this tunnel for a good long time despite the media happy talk about “conquering the virus” and “bending the curve” and “random acts of charity (by celebrities)” and so forth.
The catastrophe is much deeper. It’ll take way more than an FDR-ish revival to re-build. If we can do it at all.
bruce wilder
Violence is coming.
anon
Trump, Tucker Carlson, and other conservatives (and independents like Glenn Greenwald) have pointed out the obvious about Sanders and the Democratic Party establishment since 2016. We may disagree with some of these people on politics but because they are looking at the situation as outsiders, they are going to be more blunt and on the mark than Democratic insiders and their supporters about what the Democrats have done to stop Sanders and his supporters from taking over the party.
I agree with Trump that Elizabeth Warren acted as a progressive foil. I haven’t figured out if she’s truly delusional and believed to the end that she had a good chance of winning, if she took super PAC money because of her delusions or/and having little to no principles, and if she truly dislikes Bernie Sanders so much that she made sure to use sex baiting tactics to ensure that he’d never win the remaining Hillary Clinton holdouts. I find Warren to be insufferable and untrustworthy, but the Democratic Party is so awful that I would have much rather preferred Warren after Sanders to any other Democrat who ran.
Tucker Carlson is correct. Sanders actually wasn’t revolutionary enough to go against the Democratic Party establishment. Glenn Greenwald also pointed out that Sanders was too deferential, always calling Biden his friend and that he was a decent man. Despite Democrats calling him too radical, Sanders’ problem was that he wasn’t radical enough and after decades in politics had become too chummy on a personal level with establishment Democrats. Sanders didn’t have it in him to go after the Democrats as an outsider. I like AOC but we shall see if she changes the longer she gets comfortable in DC. I believe she is a progressive more so than Warren, but AOC knows which side of her bread is buttered. I question her willingness to state the obvious about Democrats. She’s currently playing nice with the so-called Warren Democrats and she will have to publicly support Biden. There is only so much a progressive can say and do when running as a Democrat rather than an Independent or Green Party member.
Aqua Lung
Correct. America has been waiting for a progressive candidate forever, meaning one has never been forthcoming that ever had a realistic chance of overturning the social/economic/political order. Eugene Debs was such a figure and we all know what happened to him. FDR was a Patrician capitalist who saved capitalism from the evils of socialism by offering socialism-lite programs to stave off a revolt. WWII saved the economy and America from “evil socialism,” not FDR’s socialist-lite programs. So, if you’re hanging your tattered & soiled hat, if you can afford one, on a VIABLE progressive candidate and a progressive revolution, well, that hat will be hanging forever. It’s not going to happen. There is no VIABLE “left” or even “third way” in America. We’ll get what we get.
I mean, you have someone in this comment section calling themselves a “progressive” claiming they are going to vote for Trump because he’s a “progressive.” This commentator is a racist because they’re using an Asian screen name and they are most assuredly not an Asian but in fact a Bannon acolyte and other so-called “progressives” posting here give this imposter legitimacy and the time of day.
Do you know what I would do to this imposter if we were in person? I won’t go into details but it’s what any decent person would do to such a mongrel if they had a shred of credibility & conviction. If “progressives” can’t see when they’re being gamed, they’re impotent & feckless and no threat to the established order in any way, shape or form.
A traitorous cabal has seized the American government and Americans are needlessly dying because this cabal is purposely preventing the mitigation of this pandemic and life-saving PPE. William Barr and Mike Pompeo are stockpiling ALL of the PPE in this country in order to maximize the number of American deaths from this deadly virus. Cui bono on New York? Trump evacuated New York several months prior and then this. New York has been attacked and Trump is miraculously immune from this virus. Florida, despite the rhetoric, is largely unaffected in comparison to New York and Florida is Trump’s new home base versus New York. There is a case to be made that this virus was created and distributed by the cabal that seized America on a coup in 2016. It fits. Like a glove. Instead of disseminating the PPE to who needs it most, they have, for example, instead given, bequeathed, 1 million and counting masks to the IDF even though Trump claims you’re a pussy if you wear a mask hence that’s why he won’t wear one.
Biden and the Dems (Bernie & AOC included) are not the answer to this coup that’s taken place. They’re complicit. They delivered Americans to this cabal and continue to cooperate with it.
Considering the absurdity of the predicament. The insanity of it. The only logical person to vote for, someone who represents your interests much more so than the Dems and the cabal that has successfully seized America in a coup, is President Xi. Vote for President Xi come November. That’s my choice.
Aqua Lung
Violence is coming.
Violence is here. The purposeful mismanagement of this pandemic, and yes it is purposeful, is a form of violence. It is strategic, purposeful mass murder and since the murderers are in charge, they will never be held to account.
nihil obstet
We have not solved the problem of how to organize and mobilize large groups of diverse people to change the status quo. We can see the problem of doing it through a leader on whom everybody focuses. The leader will never be perfect, and everybody will point out different and contradictory faults. Without one, you end up like the Occupy movement, which consciously aimed at avoiding organizational leaders who could be misled or co-opted. The Sanders campaign started in 2016 and is still ongoing, having developed some awareness at least in the majority of Americans. The Occupy movement was obliterated after the federally planned and coordinated national raids. (Another notch on Obama’s screw-the-peasants revolver. I still think the Occupy movement was important in the way it changed how we think and talk about the ruling class and the rest of us.)
Since the 1980s, the ruling class has successfully blocked the development of rising leaders for a mass movement. Actually, it’s successfully blocked any rising leaders, so that we have the gerontocracy of 80-year-olds floundering to live out the dreams of their youth with the money they’ve accumulated from the soft corruption of influence using the public purse. I’d guess things are going to change rather abruptly within a few years, but I’m increasingly thinking it will be with violence and likely to end in fascism.
krake
Not leaders, enemies.
Aqua Lung
Why is Tucker Carlson’s name being invoked time and time again as though his opinion has any merit whatsoever? Why are you even watching Tucker Carlson? Tucker Carlson, right or wrong about any particular issue, is a thoroughly discredited conservative jerkoff. He has no legitimacy. You don’t need to quote him as some form of authority. Think for yourself and quit using self-serving pundits as voices of authority. In your own words.
Eric Anderson
Oh, for crying out loud. How could I have been so blind?
I’ve been thinking all along Biden’s VP pick would be Warren based on the dynamics of her seemingly inexplicable moves during the primary.
But I forgot about DC’s dynastic bent.
It’s going to be Michelle, which, cements my theory about Obama being the shadow president.
Stirling S Newberry
In real news, 6.6 million unemployment applications in the US.
Aqua Lung
Don’t worry, Stirling, Trump has assured us it’s artificial and everyone will be back to work in couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Passover. Apparently Trump had the appropriate lamb’s blood plastered around his door and the physical effects of the pandemic have passed him over.
metamars
Tucker Carlson had a show, maybe 2-3 weeks ago, wherein he claimed some insiders had told him that no way will Biden be the Democratic nominee. His dementia is a deal killer. IIRC, he said they were Biden campaign insiders – which I take to imply that they would not put that out there unless they believed it was true.
If that’s the case, then we can see why the Democratic fixers would be especially keen to get Sanders out of it. If Biden isn’t the nominee, then one would naturally assume that Sanders would deserve it. And thus, if he’s deprived of it, his supporters will be livid, and stay home on election day.
So, if the above is true, then the Democrats aren’t throwing this election, at all. They are going to pull some giant rabbit out of their hat.
I couldn’t help but think the worst about Cuomo’s motivations for foiling randomized, controlled hydroxychloroquine studies in NY THAT HAD ALREADY BEGUN*. Is Cuomo going to be the big rabbit? Once NY passes the height of their covid curve, if Cuomo starts attacking Trump on a regular basis (and the media dutifully headlines it), then I will assume that Cuomo is a rabbit candidate.
* The “anecdotal” evidence has been steadily mounting toward the 2,000 mark, if not more, so that Dr. Oz, e.g., has said that “anecdotal” isn’t an accurate descriptor.
Mark Pontin
Ian wrote: “If Trump wins, we have another four years before a chance at someone decent. If Biden wins, it will be eight, as even if Biden’s VP loses in 24, he still takes up the running slot. Either way, we’re out of time on … climate change. We were already past the point of no return, we’ve now lost the serious possibility of mitigation.”
This all strikes me as naive, Ian.
“There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen,” in the words of V. Lenin. We’ve entered an era of great discontinuities.
Five years ago, if you’d told the vast mass of people that, for instance, reality/game show host/ billionaire D. Trump would be U.S. president, and a mutated, emergent virus strain would have the so-called developed nations’ populations locked down and the global economy reeling, and that an avowed democratic socialist would make two serious presidential runs pushing universal healthcare and a $15 hourly wage in the world’s most exceptional kleptocracy …. well, most people would have laughed at you and told you that was science-fiction.
Bruce is right: violence is coming. Besides the catastrophic failures of neoliberal capitalism, other things are bubbling under that most people are completely unaware of — not just the stuff emerging as Siberia’s permafrost and the Antarctic melt, but also emerging technologies as disruptive as those of the Industrial Revolution or those of the latter 20th century as compared to those of the 19th century.
There’s too much energy and instability in the planetary system, both the human one and the physical one. From here on it only accelerates.
S Brennan
Sanders played his roll to perfection. Though, in fairness, Sanders was hobbled by his endorsement of Hillary in 2016, he still was able to clear the field and before folding like a cheap lawn chair…
And Bernie must have been tipped to the obvious…that Biden isn’t going to be the DNC’s 1st choice, just a patsy to be used…so why waste an endorsement when Sanders quitting changes the options..eh? The beauty of Sanders folding when he did is, that it gives the “DNC” ample time to see how the Convid-19 & it’s economic fall-out effects the political landscape while keeping their cards hidden.
Now, the really interesting thing to watch will be the party elites selecting the actual 2020 Pro-War/Globalist/Stasi candidate [D]. The answer my friends, is blowing in the political wind.
Eric Anderson
I’m telling you … they’ll stick with Biden and pick Michelle Obama as the great unifier.
Occam’s razor.
ponderer
Sanders never intended to be president. He was in charge of the veal pen and he did a semi-believable job of it. He, along with the gang of three, kept the Democratic Party in the iron grip of the DNC. The Democrats have no interest in the Presidency, they care about their own positions and the kabuki that keeps them rich. Its far more important for them to keep honest people out of the inner circle (and busy) than win any particular election.
The Republicans are gatekeepers for military, conservative, and religious leaders while the Democrats handle (true) socialists, and minorities in much the same fashion. Both share and hamstring workers since thats the largest group with common interests. Making sure potential leaders have something to spend their time on, but rigging the game to always fail the little guy.
Trump will easily win the 2020 election. The question is who will he support in 2024…
Oh and those of you looking for open borders can try again in 3 or 4 generations. Single payer health care will likely get done under Republicans in national interests. Oh the irony..
jessica
Those who are so sure single payer healthcare will get done seem to lack a systematic analysis.
Will the same players , that is the healthcare industry, who would have opposed this in a Sander’s run oppose this in a Trump run in the unlikely hypothetical he were to run on it and mean it? Does Trump but more importantly the Republican party need those donations for their campaigns? And can they run with the healthcare industry trying to torpedo their campaigns? With Trump they don’t even need to be low down and dishonest in torpedoing his campaign, like they would with Sanders, as Trump is objectively bad in many many ways. Is there a threat to the Republican down ballot of opposing the healthcare industry?
nihil obstet
The medical industry has a problem. Its basis is providing medical goods and services to individuals. As more and more individuals drop lower in the economic ranks, the medical market shrinks. Remember, a market isn’t just demand; there has to be ability to pay as well. How do you profit from poor, sick people?
Obamacare tried to service the so-called health care industry by providing enough public subsidy to keep the profits rolling. But medicine isn’t like armaments — you can’t make billions on contracts for planes that don’t fly or guns that jam, and the flim-flam is too obvious. In the medical sector, there are too many personnel to be paid and too many customers to placate. Obamacare stalled the falling profits for a while, sacrificing the smaller hospitals and service providers, but the market continued to shrink. So there’s a good chance that the actual goods and services providers may join to help single-payer.
The whole insurance industry is simply a leech, bleeding away money. The goods and services providers can make more money drinking directly from the public trough. I think that’s how we get to single payer.
Aqua Lung
nihil, pretty much the entire healthcare industry is a leech. Its purpose, what makes it profit, is treating symptoms of chronic disease so it can extend the lives of patients so patients can spend those extra years paying it an exorbitant increasing share of their net worth or income. It’s not about curing people. It’s not even about managing disease. It’s about exploiting disease and I believe we’re at the point of manufacturing diseases to exploit. It’s a disgusting spectacle from top to bottom. Parasitic. Unethical. Immoral. Horrid.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Actually, Benji, I can’t be found “within” any party, as I do not hold membership in any political party.
But thanks for playing, and please enjoy these lovely parting gifts. 😈