@Not Henry Kissinger

But this was before Bloomberg dropped out. Still, I think it's a similar ploy that they're using in a different way, now that both he and Warren have dropped out. The DNC playing the table for optimum effect:

"Bloomberg's Game"

We all know what’s coming. Bernie will likely have a plurality of delegates, but with Bloomberg’s help, the party can ensure that Bernie Sanders will not win the majority needed for a first-round victory. We know that, no matter how large a plurality Bernie has, on the second round of voting, deals will be made to combine superdelegates and other candidates’ delegates to elect a nominee other than Bernie.

That nominee, however, cannot be Michael Bloomberg, no matter how many delegates he has. Bloomberg cannot credibly be allowed to steal the nomination from Bernie, and he and the Democratic Party know that.

Stealing the nomination from Bernie for anyone will risk that radical rupture the party must try to avoid; stealing it for Bloomberg would guarantee that rupture. Bernie Sanders himself might withhold even pro forma support from Michael Bloomberg, and he certainly would not campaign for him as he did for Hillary. Bernie’s supporters would just leave the party, for good.

A large chunk of his voters will stay home, as Trump plays Mini-Mike’s racist, sexist, austerity tapes on a loop and wins by a landslide. The Democratic Party will be reduced to Pelosi, Schiff, and Schumer fishing around for Russiagate 4.0.

There must be a third candidate to whom the party can give the nomination, and it must be someone whom Bernie Sanders himself and a large chunk of his supporters might be persuaded to stay in the party and support.

There is only one such candidate: Elizabeth Warren.

Who else? Amy or Pete? Too ridiculous. Warren benefits from the fact that there are a whole lot of people who for a long time bought into the idea that Warren was on the same “progressive” side as Bernie. Though she’s largely destroyed that charade, there is still a remnant of Nation-type progs who promote it, and, with their help and MSNBC’s, she can resuscitate some zombie form of it. Bernie Sanders himself, I cringe to say, would support and campaign for Elizabeth Warren.

Nominating Elizabeth Warren—no matter how few delegates she has, getting the rest precisely from Bloomberg, et. al.—would still a lose a lot (most, I think) of Bernie’s supporters, and would also be a loser against Trump, but it carries the only hope of both stopping Bernie and preserving any semblance of “progressive” credibility for the Democratic Party.

We have seen, I think, the first act of this horror show in the Nevada debate, where Warren pivoted back left, leading the charge against outrageously sexist billionaire Bloomberg.

If I’m right, this will become the ongoing kabuki theater in the weeks ahead, in which Warren sets herself up as the non-socialist and therefore “effective” anti-billionaire candidate, luring “woke” professional-managerial “progressives” desperate for an “alternative” to Bernie.

This is the only way for Warren to revive her campaign and audition for the endgame: fake left, attacking Bloomberg and dragging on Bernie’s popular coattails.

Wow! Liz was tough. She’s back on our side! Did you see everyone tweeting about how we should consider her as Bernie’s VP again? She’s holding out a really nice apple.

But please watch Lawrence O’Donnell, after the “rough exchange” in which Warren smacked him relentlessly, pointing out that they had a “very cordial conversation…that was real” and “had absolutely nothing to do with everything else you saw on TV during the debate” Liz is socking it to Mike just as she did to Hillary, until she supported her. And Warren now has Hillary’s people running her campaign. Rough but cordial, these exchanges are.

Warren will really be Bloomberg’s +1. Given the 15% eligibility rule for delegates, the DNC will not want more than two other candidates, including Bloomberg vying for delegates against Bernie much longer. Bloomberg costs them nothing and can stay in forever, so the DNC will browbeat the other lame-ass candidates—Buttigieg and Klobuchar—into quitting quickly, and direct donors to Warren’s new Super-PAC. Re-energized by this money and her newly re-discovered anti-billionaire rhetoric—all of which just happened to appear as the prospect of a Bernie plurality loomed as inevitable—Warren will spend the rest of the campaign frontally attacking billionaire Bloomberg, while passively-aggressively sniping at Bernie’s “divisiveness,” and steering the critique away from class conflict.

Bloomberg and she will accumulate enough delegates to prevent a first-round convention vote victory for Bernie. Then, in the second round, the DNC will “persuade” Bloomberg and whoever else has delegates (and with bribes from him) to give their delegates to Warren. The party will triumphantly say “See, we’ve nominated the other anti-billionaire ‘leftist’.” Neither a billionaire nor a communist. Goldilocks.

Bloomberg will have spent a billion dollars to get Elizabeth Warren nominated, by being her whipping boy, and he will be happy to have done it. ‘Cause he will have “got done” what he wanted most: the defeat of Bernie Sanders and the leftist movement he inspired—in the Democratic Party, at least—and a tenuous preservation of the oligarchic party duopoly. Call it a sacrifice that’s a lesson to us all in class solidarity. Or call it chump change.

What will become of that leftist movement outside of the Democratic Party? Who knows, but it’s the right question to ask.

We’ll see quickly how it’s going to plays out. If Warren continues the rhetorical strategy from Nevada, money pours into her Super-PAC, and Pete and Amy drop out, it will become obvious that the process is unfolding toward the denouement I’ve suggested.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the road ahead to the nomination is less sinuous than I imagine. Maybe Warren won’t climb to the nomination on Bloomberg’s back, but will be crushed under his feet. Maybe Bloomberg will either run from the criticisms or really buy the whole thing up for himself. Maybe Bernie will stumble and not get a plurality. Maybe the Dems will come up with some deus ex machina candidate at the convention. (I’ve heard Sherrod Brown mentioned by a longtime Democratic operative.) But none of these outcomes will work as well for the Democratic Party’s purposes.

I think this Bloomberg-Warren Punch & Judy show, culminating in the victory of the strong woman against the arrogant billionaire is the only way the Democratic Party can both steal the nomination from Bernie and hope to keep any of his supporters (and possibly even Bernie himself) in the fold—or, indeed, to preserve any credibility for the two-party plutocratic system.

And the bonus: When Trump beats Warren, they can blame it on the people’s sexism rather than their rejection of the plutocracy. And, of course, mobilize #Resistance and #impeachment 2.0.

It’s a hell of a game, Snakes and Ladders.

#7.1

See, that's why C99 is the best.

Will credit when I finally get this thing finished.