Watch this video. It’s only 39 seconds. It’s worth it.
What’s interesting to me about this video is NOT what Bernie says, it’s the reaction. It’s how genuinely uncomfortable the people interviewing him (The NYTimes editors) are.
They really think he’s saying something terrible. Something awkward. Something embarrassing.
What is he saying? “I ignore the social niceties, because I’m concentrating on helping people.”
To the people running the most important newspaper in the US, and probably in the world, this is embarrassing. Sanders manner is embarrassing to them.
These are courtiers. These are people who know how everyone should act.
The problem with Sanders, to them, is less the content of his policies (though they despise those too), than his display: his manners. It’s not what he does, it’s how he appears while he’s doing it.
This is straight, fifteenth century Italian courtier stuff. Straight Louis the XIVth Versailles stuff.
These are broken people. They are influential, they have a tiny bit of power, but they are broken. The system has shaped them (no one gets near the top of the NYTimes without having kissed ass all their life) into the perfect servants to power. Their judgment is pure aesthetics; pure look-and-feel. It is nearly void of content. Yes, they oppose Sanders’ policies, but if they became the elite consensus, these people would adapt and defend the elite as fiercely as they do centrist politics.
Broken people. Courtiers. Empty of principle, knowing only aesthetics and the pleasure of being hangers on to power.
Money would be rather useful, as I don’t get paid by the piece. If you want to support my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
450.org
Note the body language of the still shot of the video Ian has attached to this post. You don’t have to even watch the video to know the tone and sentiment. It’s already visually that obvious. The NYT editors are so brazenly arrogant. They’re so smug and superior in their all-knowingness. Courtiers is too nice of word for them as stigmatized as that descriptor is already. They are ignorant ass wipers and when I type ignorant, I mean ignorant in the sense they are ignorant that’s what they are. They think they’re important in their duty to collect daily the emperor’s stool and inspect it for defects. I couldn’t be in a room more than a minute or so with these jackasses without my nuclear reactor melting down. Pathetic. Disgusting.
450.org
What you say here Ian permeates the entire Infotainment Industrial Complex to include sports and sports coverage because afterall sports is entertainment too.
Sports today is more about the optics and spectacle than it is about the substance. They have branded it to make it attractive to a wider audience and as a result, related to American football at least, women now watch football too so they can bond with their men. This has enabled marketers/advertisers to increase revenue and profit precipitously by playing to the selfish perverted base instincts of females pretending to like the game of football yet not giving a hoot about how the game is really played — all of its nuance and complexity.
How many years are we away from AI football? I’m betting a couple of decades if climate disruption doesn’t get us first and I hope upon hope it does but I wouldn’t hold my breath because the devil that’s created, and rules, this perverse reality seems to always get its way. Gee, I wonder why?
Hugh
The Establishment (rich and elites) that the NYT both represents and is very much a part of is hated by most Americans. The Establishment isn’t oblivious to this. It doesn’t care. They sense a moment. It is either them they are thinking or Trump. So they endorsed Klobuchar and Warren. Not just one candidate but two! And both women! How forward thinking. And both so pragmatic, that is ready, willing, and able to tell us why we can’t have nice things and why it is childish and unrealistic to fight for anything that benefits those of us in the lower 80%, like Medicare for All.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning Monday January 20th, it was a non-stop Bernie Sanders smackathon. He was taken to task for attacking Biden and Warren in one of those self-righteous and endlessly hypocritical Joe Scarborough lectures. That is it’s OK for Biden to lie about his foreign policy votes and attempts to cut Social Security, and it is wrong for anyone in the Sanders camp to point any of that out. It’s OK for Warren to sit on some disputed conversation with Sanders for over a year and then try to set him up in a hot mike gotcha moment, but it is wrong for Sanders to say it A) never happened and B) goes against everything he has said and done for the last 30 years. Then it was someone from the NYT editorial board pointing out extreme and unrealistic Sanders’ positions were. The Bernie Bros were resurrected and their perceived racism and sexism bemoaned. That Sanders has a hard core base only led to invocation of cults and comparisons (by Joe) to Trump MAGA supporters. To get the full effect, add a Greek chorus of tsk, tsk, tsks in the background. There was the typical Establishment hack who, of course, had written a book on the general terribleness of Sanders’ candidacy. And there was interpretation of how Sanders’ being ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire meant a lot less than met the eye, as compared to the giddiness exhibited when Mayo Pete looked like he was surging in them.
Off topic, as I pointed out a few days back, re the economy which these same Establishment neoliberals praise despite themselves, 2019 was the worst year for job creation in the last six. The real (inflation adjusted) earnings is out too. Seasonally adjusted (because I have never figured out how to get historic seasonally unadjusted data), real weekly earnings for workers in the lower 80% grew over the year by 0.1% and of all workers by 0%. The stock markets are only functioning at all because of a $120 billion a day in short term loans the Fed is making available to them as well as $60 billion a month in T-bill buybacks. To me who believes in things like math and reality, all this depicts an economy that sucks and is dangerously unstable, but to hear from our omniscient ruling class Establishment, these are the best of times.
Z
This is classic, Sanders said something during an interview that came out awkwardly worded about how all politicians will face voters’ prejudices and he mentioned that gender would be one of those and the ruling class’s media tried to twist it around to get it to mean that he thought that being a woman was a handicap for female politicians to overcome, or something along those lines.
Here’s Bernie retort to their ridiculous bs: “Please don’t play media games with me.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/er4nlp/please_dont_play_media_games_with_me_bernie/
Z
Z
The only reason our ruling class are basically running a PR campaign for Young Republican Pete and Amy “Eat from my Comb” Klobuchar, who both have absolutely no chance of winning the nomination, is to keep their campaigns funded and them in the race long enough to bring the democratic nomination process into the sleazy backroom, public not invited, super delegate deal. So there are always talks of surges … Pete surged 50% in his support in SC! (ahem, from 2 to now 3% of the vote) … when their support is so little, it’s nothing but noise. A three person swing from one poll to the next produces that.
The fact of the matter is though is that neither of them takes many, if any, votes from Sanders. There just aren’t many voters who are mulling over the differences between either of those two and Sanders in their decision on who to cast their vote for.
The power and force of the Sanders campaign is revealing the corrupt ties in the business interests of this country, and part of those business interests are the democrat politician-consultant-media complex itself.
What you see in the eyes of the NY Times staff in the Sanders interview is an awakening fear. What they fear is that they’re being exposed and becoming a much-hated mockery to the masses.
Z
Eric Anderson
Yup.
And again, I’ll just plop this down for the “How to Fix Fake News” skeptics.
This “journalist” should be tarred, feathered, and run out of the profession with pitchforks for the damage dome to the credibility of her peers: https://twitter.com/OrganizingPower/status/1218959777260326913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1218976450491101184&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2020%2F01%2Flinks-1-20-2020.html
But no. We need “Better Media Consumers.” TM.
Ten Bears
Young Young Republicans Pete ‘n Amy, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton of course of Nixon’s original Young Republicans. Beer is still an acquired taste, we have to talk ourselves into ‘enjoying’ it; tigers, zebras and hyenas don’t change stripes, and if you think The Times are “liberal”, you don’t read them.
450.org
Bloomberg is smart to avoid, nay circumvent, these arrogant ass wipers. You do yourself no service thinking anything positive could or would come from giving these creeps the time of day. Unlike Trump, Bloomberg won’t chastise them either. He’ll ignore them and I respect him for that. Give them no truck.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/14/bloomberg-new-york-times-edit-board-098924
My question to Bernie, or my challenge really, is, will he hang up his cleats and head out on the trail of revolutionary derision when the Dem Establishment cheats him out of the nomination again, or will he serve his followers/supporters up to these establishment vampires once again and pretend he wasn’t cheated yet again? Will his supporters once he’s cheated out of the nomination again vote for Trump out of spite just as the Dem Establishment will want them to do? We’ll see. Or, maybe we won’t see because voting isn’t transparent and who voted for who is not an exact science or a science at all.
anon
The NYT likening Bernie Sanders and his supporters to Trump and his ilk just sickens me. If Sanders were pushing a neoliberal agenda that made the NYT editorial board comfortable, they would have praised him for exciting the Democratic base. He would have gotten their endorsement. It’s his policies and, as you have pointed out, his resistance to playing the games that got them to where they are today that make them feel uncomfortable with Sanders. Self-reflection is the most difficult thing to do. Supporting Sanders would have likely gotten some of those folks in that room in trouble with their friends.
And you are absolutely right that you don’t get to that type of position in the NYT without a lot of ass kissing. I know a few people who got positions with the NYT straight out of school with very little journalistic experience. Of course, their parents have been written about in the NYT, so you know the type of people they are and the money they have. That’s how the game is played. Kudos to Sanders for not compromising on his principles.
Z
NY Times Dictionary
divisive (di·vi·sive)
/dəˈvīsiv/
def.: tending to cause disagreement or hostility between 99.9% of the populace and the 0.1% ruling class
ex.: “Bernie Sanders is a politically divisive influence”
Z
Ché Pasa
Has anybody seen video of the entire Bernie/NYT interview? It must exist somewhere. I’d be careful of making too much of the reaction shots — though they are illuminating. The editors of the clip may well have inserted generic reactions taken at different times, not necessarily even during the Bernie interview, intended specifically to get a rise out of Bernie’s supporters. Clicks, clicks, clicks, the “news” is a business… manufactured, manipulated.
Bernie is a New Yorker (former New Yorker) so is Trump, so is Bloomberg. What Bernie said in the clip is certainly nothing new. He’s been saying pretty much the same thing for decades. The Times has heard it many times, just as they’ve been hearing Trump’s trashing of the “Failing” NYT, and Bloomberg’s triumphalism about everything he’s ever done and outrunning the Times coverage on many fronts, not just business (and watching him amass more and more billions while doing it.) They know these characters very well.
From the Times’ perspective, they are characters, certainly in the context of their campaigns for the presidency. Each of them will get their due according to the desires and demands of the NYT narrative. Bernie is not worthy, Trump is an entertainer, Bloomberg is competition who should stick to his business and stay retired from politics.
If the election is down to Bernie vs Trump, how much you want to bet they’ll half-endorse Trump? The other half: none of the above.
nihil obstet
This is how the good Democrats I know, the liberals and even a few that I wouldn’t object to calling “left”, react to Donald Trump. Trump is, they insist, a totally new low in presidenting. Worse than launching a foreign war of aggression based on lies? I ask. Worse than Bush. Worse than Reagan supporting death squads with the proceeds of illegal arms sales? Well, they say, those were bad, but yes, Trump is worse. I think it’s all display — Trump’s vulgarity, crassness, unashamed lying, his manners. We certainly are a nation of conformists.
I would also note that Sanders’ refusal to display an appeasing demeanor means that the interviewers can’t use their own sneering attack skill set to dismiss whatever he says. They look as stupid as they are.
Z
The NY Times didn’t even place Bernie is the top four of their endorsements opting for Young Republican Pete and Cory Booker over Sanders.
https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-new-york-times-snub-elizabeth-warren-amy-klobuchar-endorsed-1483036
Z
Z
The Newsweek article about the NY Times comments on Sanders and Warren:
Indeed, The Times did not just endorse Warren as the superior progressive candidate, but it also eviscerated Sanders’ own reputation in the process, describing his once radical ideas as now mainstream, while admonishing his approach to politics as too “rigid” and “divisive.”
The newspaper’s editorial board further raised concerns around the Vermont senator’s health, noting that he “would be 79 when he assumed office,” and that “after an October heart attack, his health is a serious concern.”
Ultimately, the board said, “three years into the Trump administration, we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another.”
“Good news, then,” it said, “that Elizabeth Warren has emerged as a standard-bearer for the Democratic left.”
https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-new-york-times-snub-elizabeth-warren-amy-klobuchar-endorsed-1483036
Z
gnokgnoh
I don’t care what the NY Times thinks. Based on the following survey of 20 issues by the Washington Post, Washington Post survey, Warren and Sanders agree with each other on 12 issues, Warren has the more liberal (left) position on 4 issues, and Sanders has the more liberal (left) position on 4 issues. On many of the issues of disagreement, their positions are very slightly different; except for registering guns and adding Supreme Court justices, both of which are Warren positions. One major critique of the survey – there is no foreign policy issue listed.
From my perspective, the major critique of Warren is that she was once a Republican, and she’s beholden to neo-liberals in the Democratic party; in other words, she will tack right for the general election. The major critique of Sanders is that he’s old and crotchety.
Criminey, folks, I will happily and gladly vote for either one of them. The Sanders adulation and disgust with all other Democratic candidates (except 450.org and Bloomberg), including Warren, is weird. Would I be happy with Buttigieg, Biden, or Bloomberg as candidates? No.
But, as my Extinction Rebellion activist-niece in Holland said to me, “you vote with what you got, and a vote for Trump is a vote for the end of human civilization.” Everything comes down to climate change. Okay, Metamars, 3, 2, 1….
bruce wilder
Thank you for this observation. nihil obstet has already said how this applies to the “resistance” to Trump and why the unconcern with policy substance is so disturbing — I cannot add anything but concurrence. This phenomenon is the decadence of American politics (and I might venture, a consequence of Obama failing to enact a realignment and policy reversal when the time was right).
different clue
Thermonuclear war with Russia would end civilization for sure a whole lot faster than man made global warming might end civilization slower . . . maybe.
StewartM
Herman, I believe, spoke about the dangers of ‘meritocracy’.
To what extent that is true–we don’t have meritocracy. Of this ‘courtier’ behavior–I have two young Asian-American friends, both who did the ‘meritocratic’ thing and studied their butts off, and who did worked for the US government in a college internship during the summer in DC. Both of them stayed in dorm rooms during those summers, which in both cases housed college Congressional pages (nearly all white, male, and rich–see below–and many politically conservative).
Their tales are friggin’ nearly identical–the pages made coffee and showed visitors around, then after work hit the bars and partied their asses, off, often coming back to the dorms to puke their guts out in the door (one friend woke up to use the bathroom to see it all covered with puke). Then rinse and repeat the next day.
I mentioned ‘rich’–the cost of staying in the dorms was ~$1500 a month. While both of my friends worked at jobs that allowed them to cover this expense, the pages were only making $1000 *for the entire summer*. Ergo, they weren’t doing it for the cash. They were doing it for the ‘connections’, to meet the right people, to go out drinking to make the ‘right friends’, to begin their ascents up the corporate and political ladders. I likewise mentioned “conservative”–but at Harvard, more than DC (one of my Asian-American friends is a Harvard grad) there was the “liberal” version of the same.
And, if you recall Lev Parnas’s recent testimony about the Trump DC hotel, you see the same swamp, the same courtiers and power-seekers and ladder-climbers; only the adult version.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/donald-trump-washington-dc-hotel
Like any premium product, of course, access to the president is multitiered. Anyone can walk into the Benjamin Bar & Lounge, the airy lobby bar that occupies the central atrium of the Old Post Office Building. There you’ll find the lesser swamp creatures: lobbyists, lapel-pin-wearing association members who flew in to push for their issues, the wealthy white kids whose parents can subsidize their congressional internships—anyone who can afford drink prices that were jacked up twice in the five months between its soft opening and its owner’s inauguration. The promise of proximity to power, and an occasional glimpse of the president, also attracts B-list political celebrities on the fringe of Trumpworld: long shot GOP candidates hoping to snag an endorsement, low-level Trump political appointees trying to project importance, Fox News guests and castoffs (but rarely current hosts), Liberty University alumni reveling in bounties foretold by the prosperity gospel, and the holder of an exclusive Trump gold-card membership, Rudy Giuliani, who seems to hold court so often in the lobby that a photo with him seems like a hotel amenity. The lobby is probably the only place in the world where journalists might want to take a paparazzi-style photo of Sebastian Gorka, and hotel management is ready to block the shot.
In this light, I see Sanders’ reaction as one akin to my own. Disgust. It might be a New England thing, David Souter also got the hell out of DC and all its ‘fake friends’ anytime he could.
Carey
One important thing to consider, I think, is the The New York times speaks to and
for a tinier and tinier subset of the citzenry. Another is that the “Dems” want to
lose now, just as the “Reps” did with Dole ’96. And why not? Their Donor Class got
a fine tax cut from President Trump, and are increasingly influential in pushing
for war with Iran (“let’s you and him fight..”) courtesy of AIPAC; and then our
Corporate Dems can fund-raise off of Trump for four more years.. what’s not to
like, from their POV? Stopping *Sanders is the Dems’ Job One, Two , and Three*,
in 2020.
Sanders 2020
Hugh
Silly me. I didn’t realize until I started reading some of the articles on the NYT’s process that it was set up as a TV reality show, that is about as unseriously and fake as you can get (The Weekly on FX and Hulu). It’s a kind of what were they thinking reaction, followed by an Oh my God, this is how they think one.
There was a lot of criticism in the articles I read about the disconnect between the NYT Editorial Board choosing candidates as different as Klobuchar and Warren. Again no surprise to commenters here, this is actually something the Times selection process got right. There really isn’t a lot of functional difference between a conservative Democrat like Klobuchar and the Capitalist to Her Bones Warren. Indeed they could have thrown Biden and Mayo Pete into the mix. It still would have come out a vote for the status quo because that’s what the NYT is all about.
edmondo
I have no dog in this fight. I will probably end up voting for Trump again if it’s Senile Joe or our young Log Cabin Republican from Indiana but not to be concerned that you are nominating an 80 year old with a bad ticker to the Presidency is a dereliction of duty by any voter
450.org
All this focus on Iowa doesn’t even matter as far as beating Trump is concerned. Iowa will go Trump again in 2020 as it did in 2016. Farmers, despite being decimated by Trump’s insane policies, still are zealous Trump supporters. Bloomberg’s smart to skip the Iowa idiots and focus his efforts on delegates rather than voters directly. Same goes for South Carolina. It will obviously go Trump again in 2020. Bloomberg is smart to not concern himself with either state. His efforts and his money is better spent elsewhere. Like Texas which could flip and Pennsylvania. Michigan. Wisconsin. Florida. Bloomberg will beat Trump if he’s the nominee and he has the leverage to do to the Dem party what Trump did to the Republicans in 2016. He will force the Dems to go along. Then we can get on with the business of shuttering the remaining coal-fired power plants and ending fracking and shuttering gas-fired power plants. Hopefully, Bloomberg can be brought to see the light on Thorium so we can start constructing Thorium power plants concomitant to shuttering fossil fuel power plants. Bloomberg also has indicated he is committed to universal healthcare via the expansion of Medicare.
Ten Bears
Certainly be quicker than suffocating on our own flauta, dc. Nor would it slow or reverse the race to Venutian summer. A nuclear ‘winter’ would cool things for a year or two, but then accelerate the warming already in the pipeline. ‘Course, most of us will eat each other long before that.
Though I am reminded of Asimov’s Rs Gisgard and Daniel ‘turning the valves’ that drove humanity into space. There are 244 nuclear sites around the world littered with waste that left unattended will be unsafe – for ‘humans’ – to even walk through for longer than we have been ‘human’.
We are planet lice, cosmic crotch-crabs.
Ian Welsh
The weird idea that Biden will be noticeably better than Trump on Climate change is kind of bizarre and shows that XR is still delusional. In fact, a Biden victory in the general will block doing anything about climate for 8 years (because he will run, win or lose, in 2024 or pretty much pick who runs, whereas a Trump one will block doing anything for four years.
That’s just math.
Z
gnokgnoh,
First of all, the Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the rich, greedy bastard who Sanders publicly pressured to finally get him, one of the richest men, if not the richest man, in the entire world to pay his AMZN employees a minimum of $15/hour, are the ones determining what the questions are and are doing the grading on this survey of the candidates. I don’t trust them to be objective on this matter and neither do I trust Elizabeth Warren, who has already backtracked on her support of Medicare-For-All before she even began any move to the right in the general election, to make much of an effort to stick by her “principles”. Neither do I equate Bernie’s perceived weaknesses of being “old and crotchety” to Warren being “beholden to neo-liberals in the Democratic party; in other words, she will tack right for the general election”. I think those two weaknesses between the candidates are a matter between manner and substance with Liz Warren coming out on the short end of substance … I strongly agree with her having less substance … and I don’t put any value in having manners with and being polite to our sociopathic ruling class.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw4n7j/jeff-bezos-just-caved-to-activists-and-bernie-sanders-and-raised-amazons-minimum-wage-to-dollar15
At one point, on this website, I praised Warren and said I would vote for her if she was the democratic nominee, but after her latest lowlife stunt of trying to sink Sanders candidacy with her ridiculous and cynical insinuation that he is a misogynist I will not vote for Warren, who to me is just another Obama once you see past her bs, and she’s got a long history of dishing out that.
Z
Z
IMO, there’s effectively less difference between Liz Warren and Biden than there is between Warren and Sanders. She showed it in who she most aggressively went after: her supposed friend Sanders.
Her rise as a political figure came about from her criticism of the Bankruptcy bill that Biden championed and yet she hasn’t even attacked Biden on it in any of the seven democratic primary debates.
Z
Hugh
edmondo, an 80 year old with a bad ticker on the right side of the issues (actually 78) or an incredibly ignorant demented psychopathic narcissist (whose all of 5 years younger at 73). Is this some kind of trick question?
Z
Warren’s behavior after that debate tells you all you need to know about where her loyalties lay. She gave the man who pushed through the bankruptcy bill that supposedly upset her so much a friendly handshake (which is fine) and then ignored Bernie’s outstretched hand and basically tried to give his campaign a cheap kick in the balls by attempting to bait him into an argument when they were both being recorded.
Z
Z
The fact that Liz Warren changed from republican to democrat during the Clinton presidency tells you a lot about Liz Warren and the Clinton presidency.
Z
StewartM
Z,
At one point, on this website, I praised Warren and said I would vote for her if she was the democratic nominee, but after her latest lowlife stunt of trying to sink Sanders candidacy with her ridiculous and cynical insinuation that he is a misogynist I will not vote for Warren, who to me is just another Obama once you see past her bs, and she’s got a long history of dishing out that.
I think Warren may have started out from a good place, but I now wonder if there was some deal made if Obama (as I linked in a previous post) now has started trying to pitch Warren starting just last month to Wall Street donors. By contrast, Michael Moore was trying to get both of them to agree to support the other in the case of a brokered convention; to prevent the Centrist Dem ‘savior’ to arise from the ashes of either Biden or Mayor Pete falling short. But she may have cut a deal with the centrist Dems instead; everything you have mentioned would be consistent with that.
If so, I predict/hope her candidacy sinks like a rock.
anon
I recommend listening to the entire interview with Sanders and the NYT editorial board. I can’t believe they asked him about “cancel culture” (their darling, Barack Obama discussed this recently; how hip of him!) and who ever broke Sanders’ heart. Seriously, wtf kind of questions are that for a presidential candidate?
Hugh
I agree with the point that the early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are more conservative than the Democratic base and so not representative. So what is interesting about this is that Bernie Sanders the most progressive of the candidates, indeed the only progressive candidate, is doing so well in them.
I think before even the first vote is cast, the primary race has always been a contest between Biden and Sanders, between the Democratic Establishment and the Democratic base. But Biden is a very problematic, defective Establishment standard bearer. We have seen a succession of attempts to supplant him dating back to before he even officially entered the race: Beto, Kamala, Corey. The NYT pick of Klobuchar and Warren seems to me to reflect Establishment realization that Mayo Pete has peaked and desperation at the prospect that they might be saddled with Biden for the duration. So all it has left is to throw up the last two Establishment types and see which, hopefully, sticks. What this amounts to, as pointed out by some here, is that this has always been about anyone but Sanders.
KT Chong
Translations of what Bernie said to the NYT editors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPlYe6Rf3Tw
gnokgnoh
Ian, equating Biden and Trump on the issue of climate change is a false equivalency. Biden’s “ Clean Air Revolution ” is not nearly enough, by any measure, but it will be the least he should do in the face of a rapidly changing climate. Compared to Trump, there is no comparison. At a minimum, Biden is paying lip service to the issue. At a maximum, Biden will be forced by voters and climate emergencies to respond. I don’t like either option, but there is a difference. The point of my XR niece is not that she likes or approves of Biden, but that Trump is far, far worse.
I like Hugh’s description of Trump, “an incredibly ignorant demented psychopathic narcissist.” He has zero respect for a single citizen of this country, or even the idea of this country. That’s who a lot of commenters are going to vote for if anyone but Sanders wins the nomination. I realize that’s an ad hominem attack on Trump, but his incoherent policies, and, more important, what Congress is doing on Trump’s watch are incredibly destructive. Wow.
Stirling S Newberry
Turing: God out of Machine
Grotesquely ungracious officialese conundrum
Unapologetic disdain breeding nonsense,
(how careless prebsequently Oscar Wilde!)
Reverse genomics infanticide cyanide.
Computable number in adverse decidability
hyper-ration quokling nightmare foundling
criterion contraption declassification weaves algebraical
under pretensions originate obtuse savant fastidiousness
tubules.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/living-in-alan-turings-future
sleepy
@ Hugh
I live in Iowa. The dem base here is not conservative. Sanders tied Hillary in the caucuses 4 years ago. I suspect Sanders to do very well here this go around, and I also suspect he could carry the state against Trump. Keep in mind that from 1988 to 2016 a repub carried Iowa only one time–Bush in 2004. This is not Kansas or Alabama.
Sid Finster
The NYT would sooner endorse Adolf Eichmann than Sanders.
Hugh
sleepy, but the state largely is.
Trump won the state by 9.4 points, the largest margin for any state that had previously gone for Obama. Both Senators are Republican. The Congressional delegation flipped in the last election from being 3-1 Republican to 3-1 Democratic. The remaining Republican is the infamous rightwing racist Steve King. The Governor is Republican. The State Senate is Republican 32-18 and the State House is Republican 54-46. What am I missing?
anon
And on the heels of the NYT endorsement, Krugman’s latest attack on Sanders: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/biden-sanders-social-security.html
Herman
I have long said the same thing about the elite reaction to Donald Trump. A lot of the opposition to Trump comes from his boorishness and lack of taste. They see Trump’s gaudy casinos, his eating fast food, eating his steak well-done and with ketchup and his love of professional wrestling and it reminds them of the stereotypical redneck. The same is true of Bernie who has retained many working-class Brooklynite mannerisms.
That being said, I wouldn’t underestimate the real political and ideological differences between Sanders and the NYT crowd. By and large the NYT types have benefited from the last 40 years of neoliberalism and they basically want to keep things as they are with maybe a few minor changes here and there. I don’t think that these attitudes are entirely unprincipled.
Many people really do believe in neoliberalism as an ideology. Of course, there are material interests involved but that is true of Bernie’s followers and all people really, and there is nothing illegitimate about that. You would expect people to support ideologies that also coincide with their material interests, at least to a certain extent.
Bernie represents a return to New Deal policies and this is something that the upper middle class hates. They don’t want to share resources with whatever the modern equivalent of the hardhat would be (janitors?) because it would represent a reduction of their relative status. They prefer a subservient working class subsisting on temporary gig jobs and totally dependent on crumbs thrown down from the professional/managerial class.
thomas baumgarten
good old Menken said it all (again):
\”The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.\”-H. L. Mencken
best
thomas
450.org
Or the real political and idealogical differences between Sanders and Trump. It boggles the mind that ANYONE who truly believes in Sanders’ policies and is a true Sanders’ supporter could possibly choose Trump in lieu of Bernie. THAT makes no sense.
Trump is not the answer to neoliberalism. He’s a symptom of it. He’s the other fist rammed up the ass of the masses.
450.org
Iowa won’t go Sanders over Trump but it will go Bloomberg over Trump regardless of the fact Bloomberg skipped it in the primaries.
StewartM
anon:
Krugman doesn’t get it. He acknowledges that Biden, Obama (and he left out the Clintons) have all followed up their ‘we’ll protect SS” rhetoric by offering up SS on the chopping block. SS was only saved from that by plain dumb luck; in the 1990s by the Monica Lewinsky scandal and in 2010-2011 by Tea Party intransigence.
Why should Sanders have to apologize for pointing this fake-out that Centrist Dems like Biden have pulled before?
Hugh
Another day, another hissy fit on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Sanders is in first place in Iowa. So what’s the story? Sanders is doing it all wrong. His people are out of control. He’s being too critical of other candidates. Oh and even though he is in first place in Iowa. He’s actually in 5th place if you jigger the numbers sufficiently. And Sanders is really a lot like Trump, and so are his supporters.
They focused on Zephyr Teachout’s op-ed in the Guardian saying that Biden does have a corruption problem. Sanders walked that back, but Biden does have a corruption problem. Most in our ruling class do. Hunter Biden got a highly paid, do-nothing gig at Burisma because of his dad’s name. It wasn’t illegal, but it was corrupt. I guess that hits a little too close to home for those around the Morning Joe table, like Mika Brzezinski and Willy Geist, who got their A-level careers kick-started because of who their fathers were. But this kind of influence and connection permeates our Establishment. Trump is no different, or considerably worse. He would be lucky to own and operate a cheap motel if it weren’t for his crook dad Fred. And Don Jr.? He’d be lucky to be a manager at a Mickey D’s.
As for Biden père, Joe spent his whole Senate career being in the bag for the banks and credit card companies “headquartered” in Delaware. Is that illegal? No. Is it corrupt? Hell yes. And yes, Biden has tried to freeze Social Security or make cuts to it. He was hardly alone. Bill Clinton was working with Newt Gingrich to do it until his impeachment derailed the effort. We wrote volumes back in the day on Obama’s catfood commission whose main purpose was to legitimize such cuts. Pelosi tried to get the first formulation of the catfood commission through the Congress, but failed. She clearly had no problems with cutting Social Security either. Now, however, the Establishment media treats Sanders pointing out Biden’s part in this as a warrantless canard. And the crazy continues. Biden’s defense for his Iraq war vote is that he didn’t really mean it. And this wildly dishonest explanation is left unquestioned by the MSM.
What does this have to do with the NYT’s endorsements that fell so flat and are already disappearing down the memoryhole? Sanders ongoing and even increasing popularity has them spooked. Anyone but Sanders. And since the Times editorial board doesn’t think that Biden with his 40 years of sellouts is up to it, then Warren or even Klobuchar.
Hugh
Sorry, I meant to credit StewartM on the Social Security stuff. I would say a neoliberal Democratic hack like Krugman doesn’t get it, because his whole career was built on not getting it.
450.org
Is he though, Hugh? How do we know? When I searched yesterday, I found a publication, I can’t remember which and what poll they were quoting, that had Sanders well behind Biden and Warren in Iowa. This is the problem with polls. Despite the rhetoric, they are not a science. They’re highly inaccurate and accuracy doesn’t seem to be the point of them. Their purpose is to manipulate opinion, to manage perception, to sway outcomes and even then and at that, they’re a failure. The polls had Hillary winning and yet she lost. I simply can’t give polls any truck.
450.org
Here’s an example. I don’t believe this poll, by the way. I don’t trust polls period. But it’s foolish to eschew the notion that polls are intended to manipulate public opinion and behavior. Yes, I chose this example because it was a Bloomberg article and because the author is a member of the Epstein clan.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-20/biden-tops-iowa-poll-by-democratic-rural-group-campaign-update
450.org
If that’s their logic, then Sanders will win just as Trump did in 2016. IF Bernie had a compliant and acquiescent Dem party like Trump did when the rubber finally met the road. But when that time comes, if it does, Bernie won’t have what Trump had. He won’t have a Dem party that will capitulate to him and the popular will of the people. The Dem party would choose Trump and this is where Bloomberg becomes the ace on the hole and the Dem party spoiler.
Z
To those that don’t believe that Warren wasn’t throwing in with Biden when she went after Bernie, there’s no way that she would think that that attack would lead to her gaining the nomination herself. Her chances of winning the nomination outside of a dirty super delegate deal are cooked, Bernie’s supporters, which she’d need to win, aren’t going to switch to her after this shit.
This was a nasty below-the-belt attack on Bernie from the pro-market neo-liberals of which Lying Liz, despite her progressive branding, is very much a tool of.
Oh, and here’s her despicable friend Hillary chiming in right in time on a politician that is one of the most popular with the working class in this country:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/hillary-clinton-full-a-fiery-new-documentary-trump-regrets-harsh-words-bernie-1271551
Z
StewartM
Z, thanks for the HRC quote. I needed some black humor this morning.
(Note, in her fact-free world, Bernie “went after Elizabeth”, not vice versa, and HRC chimes in all about the things she ‘got done’–what? Iraq? Libya? Syria?)
Z
In regards to neo-liberal blowhard Krugman, I believe Naomi Klein illuminates it best:
https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/status/1219353045965922307
Z
anon
As an aside, I went over to The Confluence (they were big back in ’08 with Hillary supporters) for the first time in years last night, and boy, have they jumped the shark over there. I was a Hillary supporter in ’08, too. Then I saw a better candidate in Bernie Sanders.
I don’t vote based solely on gender or race, but it’s obvious that many of the PUMA types in ’08 have transferred their zealotry for Hillary to Elizabeth Warren, and continue to hate on Bernie Sanders. This despite Sanders having campaigned hard for Clinton in ’16 as opposed to Clinton being so bitter about losing the nomination in ’08, only attending a handful of events of Barack Obama. It’s sad that so many well-meaning people vote against their interest and in America’s interest because of identity politics.
Mandos
I couldn’t hope to find the exchange now, so you’ll just have to believe my reminiscence, but on some social media site a couple of years ago I witnessed a well-known-ish liberal journalist (or thinktankoid), in the midst of nerding out, give a fascinating explanation of his worldview in terms of Dungeons and Dragons alignments. For those not in the know, every D&D character has two-dimensional “alignment” representing their fictional worldview. On one dimension, commitment to order: “lawful, neutral, chaotic”. On the other dimension, their moral ends: “good, neutral, evil.”
Anyway, this journalist was saying that the Democratic party (he was a Democrat) is right now a coalition of “chaotic good” and “lawful neutral”, with the former as the more radical left, and the latter as the sensible centrists. And he strongly identified with “lawful neutral”—as in the moral ends of the outcomes mattered less to him than the fact that they were produced through Norms. So he detested what the Republicans stand for — “chaotic evil”, because they were producing outcomes that violated Norms, but balked at allying with the left (“chaotic good”) to unseat them, because he couldn’t see what was in it for him, ie, whether there would be Norms of some kind established afterwards, than meant that outcomes were evaluated in compliance to Norms and not to moral ends.
So, he said, if the left wants control of the wheel of the Democratic coalition, they need to demonstrate how the post-victory environment would still be based in Norms, and what Norms those would be and whether they would constrain future outcomes, including outcomes deemed “good”. As in, the Norms are an end in themselves.
I thought this was fascinating because it very explicitly confirmed a suspicion I had.
450.org
I agree with Stoller, Bernie lacks the killer instinct. It’s why he’s been a token progressive his entire career. He’s a political survivor but otherwise a feckless leader. Never apologize to an opponent, especially when what you’re apologizing about is true.
Imagine Bernie miraculously winning the Dem nomination (I guarantee he won’t) and apologizing to Trump and Trump supporters after Bernie’s staff calls Trump a narcissistic, cowardly, corrupt criminal. The only time someone should apologize to Trump is if they braindeadedly mistakenly referred to him as brave, honest and honorable. Anyone who isn’t a Trump supporter who refers to Trump in such glowing twerms SHOULD apologize.
Z
The Confluence is probably heavily funded by Hillary-backers so the person who runs that intellectually dishonest blog isn’t ever going to change her tune on Hillary.
A lot of these blogs are like that. I strongly suspect that OpenLeft was primarily funded in one way or another by “centrist”, read neo-liberal, democrats. Lambert Strether’s old blog Corrente the same way, though it was more democratically and weakly funded in that it wasn’t the case of one large backer. Lambert Strether was a huge Clinton-apologist before Yves set him straight no doubt. Probably FireDogLake as well, but it wasn’t as compromised as OpenLeft was and was more critical of the Obama presidency. Daily Kos has heavy “centrist” neo-liberal backing I’d imagine.
Z
highrpm
i’ll go with hil’s latest bernie take.
450.org
This is a signal to me that Texas would vote Bloomberg over Trump.
https://www.kut.org/post/texas-biggest-oil-and-gas-industry-group-accepts-role-climate-change
They’re anticipating a Bloomberg victory and getting out in front of it. If they were confident in a Trump second term, they never would have done this.
bruce wilder
Biden “would be infinitely more progressive” than Trump, says Krugman.
450.org
Corn Pop agrees.
https://imgur.com/a/QgSvqSp
Z
I’m far from convinced that a Biden and/or Warren Administration would be better than a second Trump term. Did Clinton or Bush Sr. do more harm? Obama or Trump? I’d say the democrat presidents are generally more dangerous because they generally represent the same sponsors and causes as the republicans do but are able to get the democrats in Congress to go along with them easier because they create narratives that provide the congressional dems with cover such as the sequester that was invented by the Obama Administration or the necessity of the Wall Street bailout.
Z
450.org
Z, what are you advocating? If Biden or Warren are the nominee, to vote for Trump instead? No dice. If Warren or Biden are the nominee, I will not vote. The only people who will get my vote are Sanders and/or Bloomberg. To vote for Trump is, amongst many other deplorable things, to vote for rape. The guy is on record stating he rapes women because he can and yes, grabbing a woman’s pussy is a precursor to rape and the action of a rapist.
Z
450,
I’d vote for neither a Biden and/or Warren ticket or a Trump ticket. But I can certainly understand people choosing Trump over those two. It’s not just what the candidate’s supposedly want to do, it’s what they can accomplish and I’d say there are plenty of issues people that place importance on that a neo-liberal democrat president can do worse damage.
Look at SS cuts, they’ll have a lot harder time getting through with Trump as president than they will with “Let’s all get along” Joe.
Z
nihil obstet
Centrist Democrats have taken up swift-boating in a really big way. That is, they attack their enemies’ strengths with lies rather than their weaknesses with truth. So the two big attacks against Sanders starting in 2016 were that he’s sexist and racist (Clinton had too many lapses into things like welfare “reform” targeting single mothers and calling young black men “super predators”) and that he can’t get anything done, especially because he wants only big big big sweeping changes. For that, I invite a reading of this twitter thread:.
I think Sanders has managed to do amazing political things as a democratic socialist in the neoliberal age of Reagan. I wish we had a fully supported Rosa Luxembourg, but since we don’t, I find sneering at his compromises short-sighted.
Z
IMO, out of the Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and Trump presidencies, Trump’s has been the least damaging, even going by first terms, and I don’t even see it as a close call.
Z
Tom
Well soon the moment of truth will arrive. If Sanders wins the first 3 Primaries, Warren and the rest are out and done, though Yang should be picked as Veep Nominee. Bloomberg is a nonentity.
From that point, Bernie just needs to win back the Rust Belt to clinch a win. However, unless he can bring the Red Wall with him, most of his work will be blocked by Congress. The only way to bring the Red Wall with him is to go pro-gun and pro-life and then turn around and bash the Republicans over the head on their hypocritical christian values.
Otherwise it doesn’t matter if he wins as the problems are structurally inherent to the system and we need the Red Wall to break with the Republicans to fix those issues with a New Constitution. They will only do that if the Democrats go Pro-life and Pro-Gun and kick the vocal minority in their party advocating abortion and gun control to the curb. Louisiana Democrats figured that out, its time for the National Democrats to figure it out.
450.org
Z, he’s entirely gutted the EPA and he has his sights set on ALL regulatory agencies. That is NOT better than Obama, as terrible as Obama was and Clinton was and would have been. His presidency has given a green light to racists and misogynists of all stripes to be all they can be. Look at the recent abortion legislation in Alabama and Georgia. It was inspired by a Trump presidency. I have a 21 year old daughter so it really MEANS something to me because it hits close to home. I do not want my daughter by force of law to carry a rape child to term and deliver it. I do not want my daughter’s life ruined by an unwanted pregnancy. There’s much more where this comes from as an example of just how deplorable a Trump presidency is and how much damage it’s doing, stock market gains be damned.
StewartM
Mandos:
So, he said, if the left wants control of the wheel of the Democratic coalition, they need to demonstrate how the post-victory environment would still be based in Norms, and what Norms those would be and whether they would constrain future outcomes, including outcomes deemed “good”. As in, the Norms are an end in themselves.
Silly argument, but one that illustrates that centrist Dems want tweaks, not real change. It shows how conservative the Democrat leadership class really is–they are frightened of change, even “good” change, just because it’s “change”.
What gave us Trump is that the current “norms” have been crappy for the vast majority of Americans. And guess what? Before Reagan, (and you can go back further to the first rollback of an important New Deal component, the 1964 tax cut) we had “norms” too–just different norms, and better norms for most people. If Bernie or even people more ‘radical’ than Bernie gained power and passed their agenda, we’d settle down to a new ‘normal’ and if it were indeed better (which would likely be the case) most people would happily adjust.
To counter using an example that an identity politics-based person would fathom, despite all the bruhaha about ‘gays in the military’ once that was over and done with notice how quickly the issue faded and how no one (even most right-wingers) don’t bother to mention it anymore. Medicare-for-All properly done would have the same result. Ditto with a permanent WPA, maybe coupled with UBI, to make unemployment a thing of history, or many of the things given by a Green New Deal. The only people who would never be reconciled to this would be our current 0.01 % leadership class, and if things were enacted properly (i.e., a 95 % tax on high incomes) they’d never have the power to change it back.
Stirling S Newberry
I am sure that Biden would be infinitely more progressive the Lucifer or Beelzebub. But a generation not confined the hell is not significant on the cosmic scale of things.
bruce wilder
At bottom, the problem is not the candidate, it is the organization of the voting polity: the institutions and processes by which we collectively judge and choose candidates and elect officials.
Electoral campaigns require motivating large numbers of people to think some party and some party’s candidate will act responsibly for “the country” and act (admittedly in a trivial way, to vote) on that thought. Realistically, it is more about reconciling people to the legitimacy of power exercised by officials, than about “choosing” those officials.
The U.S. has had bad government so long because the organization of the polity to vote is so weak and corrupted. The institutions that flood the mindspace of the electorate with reporting and opinion are absurdly feckless. That is being advertised in this video of the N.Y. Times editorial board, which has made its endorsement process into a reality teevee show (after much criticism of our reality teevee show prez for violating sacred norms of decorum). This is nothing new for the outfit that has long published Maureen Dowd’s column.
This is the system in which Trump is a ratings winner and the N.Y. Times focuses on Trump obsessively. This is the system in which Trump has been impeached (notably without being charged with a crime!) because that made-for-tv saga will distract and reinforce the negative brand assigned Trump. Because brand management is what our political operatives and pundits do.
450.org
Z, explain to me how Trump’s policy related to immigration isn’t doing damage. This is a crisis in the pipeline. Unfolding as we speak. The price of food will increase precipitously as a result of this. There will be no one to harvest the crops. They’re too busy counting their second amendment guns in their bloated arsenals and hanging with their militia buds as they salute a picture of Hitler on the wall. They don’t eat vegetables any way so I guess it really doesn’t matter to the lazy skinhead bastards claiming illegal immigrants are taking all of their jobs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-01/u-s-farms-need-more-immigrant-workers
The following is per the article.
In a study published in 2013, economist Michael Clemens analyzed 15 years of data on North Carolina’s farm-labor market and concluded, “There is virtually no supply of native manual farm laborers” in the state. This was true even in the depths of a severe recession.
Mechanization is not the answer either — not yet at least. Production of corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat have been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms, where robots currently do only a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they are automated.
bruce wilder
Milking on dairy farms was mechanized quite a long time ago. Attach to udder; detach from udder — that is all the hand work that is done and even that has been extensively refined.
Pay a decent wage, in the U.S. (and in Mexico and Central America) and then get back to me about supply of labor.
Z
450,
I’m not going to bother explaining anything to you. I don’t have the time and you obviously have bought into the Trump hysteria that he is an existential threat to this country and its blessed institutions.
Sure, if you want to dig into the details with Trump there is going to be plenty to sustain your belief that he’s the worst president. But if you don’t look into those other presidents I mentioned with the same zeal, then it’s not really an objective comparison, is it?
Z
different clue
Someone upthread mentioned the phrase ” log cabin Republican”. I once offered a modification of that phrase which injected some social class fact into the PR purpose of that phrase.
My modification was . . . ” log mansion Republican”.
I hereby give ” log mansion Republican” away to anyone who wants to use it.
Z
By the way, in regards to the Warren situation, I have seen some video of Warren well before her attack on Bernie in which a reporter asked her to confirm if Sanders asked her not to run and she declined to answer it, so apparently a rumor was out there in some form that he had asked her not to run during a private one-on-one meeting. I’ve read that recently that the Warren campaign is claiming that reporters had ran with the “Bernie said a woman couldn’t win” information and she just confirmed it. Anyway, it had to come from her in some form.
She also telegraphed her below the belt misogynist cheap shot by trying to make a big deal a day earlier that Sanders was “trashing her” based on a pretty minor incident involving his campaign’s replies to voters who were favoring Warren. Shortly afterward all this “Bernie said a woman couldn’t win” biz came out. She almost had to know that was coming and signed off on it. There’s nothing about how she reacted to it that indicated that she was regretful that it came out. It would have been easy to defuse if she wanted to. She didn’t.
Z
Z
The meme that the democratic party political-media complex is running with now is that Sanders’s campaign is a dirty campaign that is spreading falsehoods about good ol’ Gentlemanly Joe Biden when all they’re doing is battering Biden with the truth, truth that he doesn’t want voters to know.
How can Biden claim that he was not an ardent supporter of the Iraq War and hasn’t been a proponent of cutting SS benefits? He’s bragged about both!
I guess they believe that if they all lie together, they can’t get caught.
Z
Hugh
I was amused by Mandos’ “lawful neutral” Democrat who supported norms above everything. As I have said before, when the criminals write the laws, they can make crime legal, but they cannot make it not crime. Similarly, as I wrote above, someone (Biden, the Clintons in spades) can stay always or mostly on the right side of the law and still be endlessly corrupt. So some “lawful” neutral Democrat can in good conscience support a rigged system (the Norm) which just happens to favor him/her. How convenient. And from the viewpoint of many of us here, how typical.
As I said, a crime can be but does not have to be a violation of law. This is the meaning of crime in the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” A violation of law isn’t necessary. I would note that in not dispersing funds to Ukraine, part of the impeachment charges, the GAO held that the Impoundment Control Act had been violated. I would note too that Trump could and probably should have been charged with a great many violations of the US Code and I can give the relevant citations if anyone is interested. I would note that Trump has also multiply violated both of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses. A violation of either is not in itself a violation of the US Code, but of the Constitution but both provide grounds (high crimes and misdemeanors) for impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.
Re Hillary, just possibly as un-self-aware as Trump or a sack of rocks. Hillary lost the 2016 election because she was a shitty candidate who ran a shitty campaign backing shitty positions. And on top of that, she managed to lose despite getting 3 million votes more than Trump, a grotesque caricature of a human being. Did the Russians interfere? Sure. So did the Israelis. And did it have a significant effect on the election, as in change the results? No.
It is funny that Hillary criticized Sanders’ record because although Clinton had a big name and was a Senator from a big state (New York), her list of accomplishments in the US Senate was close to nil. Well, not quite. She did have some significant votes, as when she voted for the Iraq war and the (surveillance heavy) Patriot Act. Just to make sure I was being fair to Clinton, I googled her. I thought the top results on the page (on my way to her wiki) communicated a lot in themselves:
1. Hillary Clinton clarifies that she will support the Democratic nominee–even if it’s Bernie
2. Gabbard knocks Clinton’s jab at Sanders: ‘This isn’t high school’
3. Hillary Clinton defends ties to Harvey Weinstein: ‘How could we have known?’
So Clinton slams Sanders. He’s sexist. He didn’t do anything. But then lamely adds she will support him anyway, if necessary. At the same time, she invokes with regard to sexual predator Harvey Weinstein the hoocoodanode defense, except, as with Jeffrey Epstein, the only people in those circles who didn’t know were those who chose not to.
It reminds me of the biblical injunction in Matthew 7:5:
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
bruce wilder
NC has an interview with Matt Stoller that isn’t about anything we are discussing in this thread, but it had this gem of a quote from Stoller:
“The impeachment saga like every other panicky nonsense that doesn’t touch real money or power, is not about going after Trump. It’s about disciplining wayward Democrats who don’t share the collective delusion that everything was fine until Trump showed up.”
anon
Wooh! The establishment is really scared that Bernie has a shot at this folks. The knives have come out against Bernie day after day. Warren’s claims of sexism, the NYT non-endorsement, Krugman’s op-ed, and now Hillary coming out of the woodwork to bash Bernie. It’s been a busy week, folks. Just hope that the Sanders campaign is getting a huge spike in donations.
someofparts
So, do you know who was even more evil than Bernie? Jonas Salk, that’s who. Imagine discovering a cure for polio and not profiteering off of it! Now I’m sure he was an awful, awful sexist who would have said something unguarded to Hillary or Little Liz Lickspittle, and deserved the shiv in the back he got for being so trusting.
I remember being so pleased when women started showing up at job sites in management positions. It felt like a huge victory for social justice. Even though I did not benefit from it professionally, I was still thrilled to see it happen for other women.
Then I got to see how those women with their newly-won advantages acted, and they were sanctimonious sell-outs. They made it a point to let everyone know they identified with their male peers in management. It was always especially important to them to make it clear that they never had a shred of sympathy or solidarity with women who were still stuck in insecure, underpaid pink-collar jobs.
Since then I’ve watched those women appropriate feminism and give it the bad name it has today. As they see it, a real feminist is a woman who has as much financial success as her male peers and gets it by any means necessary. Betraying the vast majority of other women to do it is just the first step, the easy part. They have been doing that for over forty years so they have plenty of practice.
By the false logic of the parody feminism these ladies practice, it is an upgrade, a measure of progress as they understand it, that they now have the power to advance their personal advantages by betraying decent, vulnerable men. It was so unfair, and so sexist, to confine them to circumstances where they could only betray other women. In the right kind of world, they should have the right to betray anyone, male, female or Martian, to claw their way to power and wealth.
The example these women are following, since they got that first taste of the money and power previously only available to men, is the example set by their most ruthless male peers. When they are successful on those terms, using a female version of the cut-throat methods those male role models use, they consider it a victory for feminism.
450.org
Z has helped me make my final decision. So long as Bernie maintains Trump apologists and Trump supporters within his ranks, I do not support him. He doesn’t have a chance either way so it’s really just a moral gesture for posterity. Sanders has a moral duty and obligation to cleanse his umbrella of woke racists and misogynists who are trying to use him as a bait & switch foil to support Trump as the lesser of evils. For me, it’s Bloomberg or bust. Sanders is a dead deal. Bloomberg will enact sorely needed strict gun control legislation, he’ll shutter the remaining coal power plants and place a moratorium on gas power plants and fracking which is more than any other Dem candidate could or would do to include clueless Bernie, and he has committed to universal healthcare via Medicare expansion. Bloomberg has a plan to get it done and that plan is to use the same strategy Trump has been using to screw us all except Bloomberg will use that strategy for benevolence versus Trump’s malevolence. As we see with the impeachment proceedings, Congress can’t and won’t get anything accomplished. It truly is a quagmire of disfunction.
Bloomberg 2020
450.org
Aside from this being a blatant illogical strawman, thank you for ironically pointing out that my uterus is not in its proper place. Trump and the loaded term “hysteria” is an appropriate, nay perfect, combination like a horse and carriage considering he’s a racist, misogynistic rapist. I’m looking forward to my genital massage.
https://lithub.com/hysteria-witches-and-the-wandering-uterus-a-brief-history/
Z
450,
Hey, your heart’s in the right place for you: with the billionaires.
You both have similar concerns: cheap labor.
We all got different priorities though. Some people want to keep their full ss benefits they’ve paid into and some folks like you value their cheap, illegal immigrant labor.
I’m glad you’re not on my side.
Z
450.org
Trump’s a billionaire, or so he claims, and in your own words he hasn’t done nearly the damage the Dem establishment has done so yes, the billionaires it will be thanks to Bernie supporters who voted for Trump and set that precedent of voting for billionaires who buy elections. I’ll take the billionaire who’s not a pussy-grabbing incestuous rapist and can actually accomplish some positive things especially related to climate disruption and the environment. It may not be ideal and far from it, in fact, but Bloomberg is ten times the better candidate than the freak who’s in the oval office currently.
450.org
Hey Glenn, I agree Bolsonaro is a deplorable fascist and what he’s doing in trying to silence you is despicable and predictable. Same holds true for Donald Trump and yet all too often you partake in veiled apologia for Trump and your stance related to him only helps to normalize his paving the way for full-throated fascism in America and beyond. Maybe quit reacting to liberal stooges like Chris Hayes and his ilk and take your rage out on Trump and his supporters. Bolsonaro is what a Trump presidency engenders. Yes, neoliberalism planted the seeds for the reactionary rise of latent fascists like Trump and his supporters, but Trump is the fertilizer that wakes that latent fascism and inspires and emboldens the likes of Bolsonaro.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-brazils-nationalist-leader-built-a-bond-with-trump-and-won-his-support-in-amazon-fires-dispute/2019/08/30/b2ef676c-cb32-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html
Z
The steps recently taken against Sanders by our ruling class and their media have been as follows:
1. Once he got into the lead and they couldn’t ignore him or belittle him anymore, they debuted their rallying cry that Sanders would now have to finally face the scrutiny of the other front runners (as though he hasn’t faced the most from the very get-go). On your mark …
2. Send Warren out to sucker kick the man in the balls who probably has the most pro-feminist voting record on the Hill with misogynist insinuations based upon very vague context.
3. Have the women in the media kick in with Warren … especially those disgusting, spoiled women on the View, the sweethearts who analogize passing gas to the Warren-Sanders dispute … to display rich women solidarity against the nasty Sanders and his Bros, of which 60% are apparently transgender since 60% claim to be female.
4. Have the NY Times push the female solidarity theme further by endorsing two women. “And may the best woman win …”
5. Have Hillary publicly use Warren’s charges in the rollout of her new media bio-hagiographical account of the 2016 election as a lead-in to open up her old line of attack on him and pick at the old wounds from 2016 that the Clintonites opened up to divide the party.
6. Tie Sanders and his supporters to Trump and his misogynism. Use the already existing female energy and organizations opposing Trump and try to misdirect them towards Sanders.
The goal is this: dilute the vote by using feminism as a weapon against voters, and particularly women, in order to prevent Sanders, who is probably the most consistently pro-feminist vote in Congress, from winning the nomination outright and eventually going after their power and privilege. Instead, as expected, they’re going to try to drag the nomination process back into the smoky, corrupt backrooms with the superdelegates and then try to sell their snub of Sanders, who will probably have the most votes, to the public as Sanders isn’t a democrat anyway and shouldn’t represent the party.
They’re desperate because Biden ain’t going to make it … his mental state is deteriorating by the moment … and they know it, and he would be a very embarrassing candidate. Instead our corrupt democratic establishment-media class will try to roll out a “you go, girl” campaign with Lyin’ Liz the front woman getting the nomination the only way she can: through the superdelegate process.
I don’t think they are going to be successful unless they rig the democratic party primary vote. Sanders will win otherwise.
Z
Z
The Bernie Bro African-American woman in the video with the frizzy hair was the only one on the staff to endorse Bernie.
Z
Hugh
I agree with Z that the knives are out for Sanders now that it has been seen he is increasingly credible despite previous efforts to simply ignore him out of existence. The feminist angle has definitely been weaponized, and as someofparts points out, feminism has become about class. Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem know little and care less about the lives of most working women, or men for that matter.
Billionaires are part of the problem in this country. They are not part of the solution. They have not earned their wealth. They were just very good at stealing it from the rest of us. But the aggregation of this wealth is sold by them as giving them competence in areas where they have little or none. You see this in people like Soros and Buffett who are successful investors, but have almost no understanding of how an economy runs or should run. Ditto Bloomberg. Or others like DeVos and Bill Gates with no knowledge of education who nevertheless push to privatize it. I mean how ridiculous it was today. I heard part of Trump’s news conference in Davos. That guy is getting more seriously disconnected from reality by the day. He’s a terrible businessman, makes terrible deals, but because he has lied and cheated and inherited his way to wealth, that is seen as giving him credibility, even as he slings around words like GDP and unemployment rate or criticizes Fed policy, none of which he has the least idea of what they are.
450.org
And neither are politicians owned by those billionaires and owned by the billionaires’ managers who run the corporations part of the solution. The solution is revolution, or better yet evolution but that’s not going to happen because the ingredients for such just aren’t there and when it has historically happened, revolutions at least, they rarely if ever worked out according to plan.
Seriously, how do all think this utopia is going to manifest considering the constraints? It’s not going to miraculously manifest of its own volition so we must work with what we have. What we have is direct or indirect oligarchic rule. I prefer direct oligarchic rule at this point since that horse is out of the barn and it’s not going back in and I prefer to vote for the most benevolent oligarch. Bloomberg is that person.
Hugh
“I prefer to vote for the most benevolent oligarch.”
I do not.
Z
Tulsi is suing Hillary Clinton for slandering for insinuating she is a Russian asset.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/479320-gabbard-suing-clinton-for-defamation-over-russian-asset-comments
GOOD! About time someone took the fight to these Clintons.
Z
450.org
If you vote, Hugh, as it now stands and will until there is a revolution be it violent or non-violent, you are voting for a representative of the oligarchy. Che Pasa had it right. The oligarchy rules either way, be it directly or indirectly. We may not like that or like to admit it, but it’s the truth. So, assuming you vote, you are voting for the oligarchy but when you vote for a politician exactly which faction of the oligarchy you’re voting for is more of a mystery. When the oligarch runs directly, there is no mystery. There is no oligarchy hiding behind the politicians as their foils and puppets. Either way, the oligarchy rules. Considering that, who will you vote for if it’s a choice between Trump or Biden? If it’s a vote between Trump or Bloomberg? If it’s a choice between Sanders & Trump? Who would you prefer as the Dem nominee if Sanders is excluded by hook or crook, Biden or Bloomberg? I consider a preference an informal non-binding vote in this scenario.
Z
450,
When’s the last day you accept submissions for formal binding votes?
Z
different clue
One hopes that people who “will not vote” if Sanders is not anywhere on any ballot, will at least consider voting about interesting and worthwhile office-seekers and/or referendums and/or initiative items further down the ballots.
About Trump v. Biden on global de-warming . . . one could imagine a Leninesque reason for voting for Trump in that instance. Biden would substitute good words for good action in the teeth of rising heat and people would lose 4 more years being satisfied with the good words. Whereas Trump would megaphone his evil intentions even as the heat rises, thereby adding rage and hate to the building heat. 4 more years of Trump talk combined with some F6 and F7 tornadoes plus some Cat 6 and Cat 7 hurricanes, plus some bowling ball hailstones here and there, might prepare just enough people for a strong reaction against any more Trumpery after that.
About a vote for Trump being a vote for Rape, Trump merely bragged about the thought of it, so far as we know. Whereas Bill Clinton really was a rapist and his objectively pro-rape wife was his Enabler-and-CoverUpper-In-Chief in order to preserve his coattails in politics long enough for her to ride them into the White House. Which means that every Pink Pussy Hat ratfink who voted for Clinton or supports Clinton now is objectively pro-rape.
If its Trump v Biden or some such, I will either write Sanders in or leave “President” unvoted on, or maybe find some vanity third party to vote for. If the Convention is brokerised to give us literally Clinton or Warren, I will vote for Trump. ( Let us see if any ClintoWarrenite or Social Justardice Warriasshole can convince me to do otherwise.)
someofparts
I don’t think Steinem and Clinton are in the same category. Opposites really. Steinem is a feminist. Hillary is a liar cynically pretending to be a feminist.
different clue
I think Clinton really is a feminist . . . of a very particular kind. Clinton’s kind of feminism has been referred to as Goldman-Sachs Feminism, and Hillary is a Goldman-Sachs Feminist. Their particular concern has been breaking through the Tiffany Glass Ceiling keeping them from the positions of power and money which they feel their social class style and social class privilege entitles them to attain and possess.
Clinton’s particular Tiffany Glass Ceiling was the Presidency. She invited all her Goldman-Sachs feminist followers to identify her election as being their own proxy-validation. That is why she referred to those
” 18 million cracks in the Glass Ceiling”. She of course meant ” 18 million cracks in the Tiffany Glass Ceiling” and in particular . . . HERRRRRR Tiffany Glass Ceiling. Which she earnestly believes is the only Tiffany Glass Ceiling which matters, and is the only Tiffany Glass Ceiling which SHOULD matter to each and every one of her ” 18 million crack-makers”.
By the way, I just recently read that Tulsi Gabbard has decided to sue Little Miss Hillarrhoid over her slanderous libelous defamatory statements about being a “Russian Agent”. I have found a posted copy of a filing which describes Hilliary Clinturd with clinical and scientific accuracy. And here it is.
https://d3ba7j4nna908t.cloudfront.net/attachments/Tulsi-HRC_2020-01-22_Complaint_filed.pdf
Hugh
Gloria Steinem was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton. At one point she said that young women supporters of Sanders did so because “when you’re young, you’re thinking, where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.” In face of major blowback, she said her comment had been misinterpreted and/or she had misspoken and/or her comment had been taken out of context. The next day Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, followed up with her infamous “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/02/07/gloria-steinem-is-apologizing-for-insulting-female-bernie-sanders-supporters/
The point is that we have seen this kind of piling on before, as well as the after the fact “clarifications.” And please correct me, but I do not remember Steinem ever apologizing to Sanders. Albright for her part simply doubled down.
Also re “benevolent oligarch,” it’s an oxymoron. The only thing that billionaires like Bloomberg care about are themselves and their wealth. Anything beyond that is bafflegab for us rubes.
Z
450,
Sorry for being a jerk.
I’ll vote for the guy that our rulers fear the most: Sanders. They know whose the biggest threat to their power.
Z
Z
Shrewd move by Tulsi to help Sanders again. Just as Hillary is rolling out her attack on Sanders, Tulsi’s lawsuit points the spotlight on how unhinged she is: accusing a Major in the National Guard of being a Russian asset.
Z
Z
The Head PR Man for the One Percent is wringing his hands again at how the democratic presidential primary is proceeding: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/21/hillary-clinton-barack-obama-want-stop-bernie-sanders-can-they-actually-do-it/
I’m a bit astonished about how openly the Obama and Clinton camps mainstream this stuff to the media.
Obama better watch himself. If he comes out against Sanders he is going to piss off a lot of the youth in this country. But more importantly to him, Sanders has some prominent African-American backing that is likely to stop playing nice with someone who is trying to torpedo their candidate and their hopes and who they damn sure know deep down didn’t do much for their community and has taken them for granted every step in his career. He doesn’t want that. He’s not one of them, he’s never been for anybody but himself and his family. And if the black community took a sizeable turn on him, his overall popularity would plummet.
Z
Z
A lot of “progressives” road their righteousness about Bush straight into jobs in the democratic party media-propaganda complex.
Z
someofparts
Steinem did support Hillary publicly, didn’t she. Bias is insidious and I am not immune to it. She did so much good work for so long that I’m sorry to see her career end with blunders that discredit her.
Bill7
>Steinem did support Hillary publicly, didn’t she. Bias is insidious and I am not immune to it. She did so much good work for so long that I’m sorry to see her career end with blunders that discredit her.
Really? Steinem was CIA-owned, and told us, along with Madeleine Albright, that women were
required to vote for Clinton in \’16..
RepubAnon
The back-slapping and other pleasantries got Bill Clinton the presidency. It\’s why Joe Biden is in the lead.
To win, we need someone who can do both policy AND the folksy stuff.