My Take on the Democratic Primaries Past and Present (2016 v. 2020)
This post was prompted by bit JtC’s post the other day, but also by Politicians in fantasy and reality,” by Cassiordorus
Political parties and politicians sell a brand. Like any other product out there, they promote a version of themselves they think the voters will buy, and they attempt to create a picture of their opponents as a bad product, or, at the least, a worse product. As Cassiodorus noted in his essay, they project a fantasy that they hope voters will find more appealing than the competing fantasies available to them.
Thus, in 2016, we had the classic example of a fantasy politician in Hillary Clinton. She and her staff created a mythos around her as the “most qualified person ever to run for President.” Her campaign managed to sell that to Democratic primary voters because that myth never received a thorough examination by the media or her opponent as to what exactly made her so uniquely qualified to be President, other than her gender. Her policy proposals were, if anything, less specific than Biden’s are in 2020. She believed her brand would be seen as superior, first to the grassroots progressive activism of Sanders, and then to the GOP candidate she herself promoted with help from connections in the media, Donald Trump. As a result of her decision to rely on her branding, she promised very little of any substance regarding policy to voters. In large part, she marketed herself by (1)claiming she was the most competent person running for President, and 2) her identity as a woman, an emotional appeal primarily to female voters to choose her because of the the historical significance of electing the first woman President. She believed that would be enough to defeat the “deplorable, racist and sexist” (as her ads constantly reminded eberyone) GOP nominee, Donald Trump.
But she miscalculated the prevailing political marketplace. Many voters living with the crushing burden of an understated inflation rate (not taking account of rent increases and rising healthcare costs, for example) and jobs that pay ever less and less, were not interested in competency anymore. They got competency from Obama, but that did not result in many real benefits accruing to them. Instead, in 2016, they wanted a politician who offered up specific proposals, and like him or not, Trump did that, or at least his agenda was more specific than Clinton's.
She ostensibly ran on the most progressive platform in history, but her campaign rarely made much mention of that platform, much less make it the centerpiece of her campaign strategy. Indeed, once the convention was over, the platform adopted by her party was largely ignored by her campaign. She didn't do much to indicate what, if anything in that platform she would fight to make happen. Her campaign was not big on advancing major policy proposals that would benefit millions of struggling middle class and poor voters. Her campaign was all about what she wouldn't do (with one exception I'll get to in a moment): she wouldn't appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, she wouldn't build Trump's wall, she wouldn't have to get up to speed on how to do the job (remember she was the "most qualified"), she wouldn't tank the economy and she wouldn't be like Trump; in short, she wouldn't do anything that might upset the status quo.
The only specific promise she made was in the realm of foreign policy, where she promised she would be even more aggressive toward our adversaries, particularly Russia, than prior Presidents, including Obama, had been. Under her watch, not only would the “forever wars” continue, but they very likely would be expanded. This allowed Trump to position himself to her left as the candidate promoting diplomacy and cooperation rather than more military aggression. He failed to deliver upon that “promise” once elected, but in 2016, he offered a more reasonable approach to an electorate tired of wars that cost our nation, both in lives lost or damaged, and in the trillions of dollars spent wastefully on fruitless military conflicts. It came as a shock to most of us that Trump won, but in retrospect its easy to see why. Clinton misjudged the mood of the electorate, even though she was provided plenty of evidence by the success of Sanders’ insurgent campaign that voters were tired of politicians that did nothing to help them, while watching all the financial benefits from our economic activity continue to flow upwards to bolster corporate profits and increase the net worth of the most wealthy members of society. Trump’s brand of right-wing populism at least offered them something other than a continuation of the status quo, under which they were suffering.
So much for 2016. Notwithstanding the lessons that should have been learned from that failure, the centrist wing of the Democrats again chose this cycle to double down on the "We won't change much at all (except maybe around the margins), but we'll definitely not be as awful as that ogre Trump,” approach to retake the White House. This choice was, in my opinion, primarily dictated by the desire of those in power to keep corporate money flowing into the pockets of Democratic politicians, lobbyists, consultants and think tanks.
For a time, one highly touted establishment candidate, Elizabeth Warren, broke this pattern by trying to portray herself as a progressive (if not exactly anti-centrist). Her pitch was: “I'm just the same as Bernie on policy, but younger, better, likely to be more effective and a woman, too.”
However, she was unable to attract enough of the Sanders' coalition from 2016 precisely because her proposals lacked specificity. When pressed about her positions on issues important to progressives (like her Medicare for all proposal), she waffled. Whether this was an attempt to pick up white suburban voters while still holding onto some progressive support, or just a signal to the establishment that she was not really a threat to the party's existing power structure, her continual backtracking away from a progressive agenda and her inability to clarify what she did stand for, made her appear less credible to both progressives and centrists. She never generated much enthusiasm among large numbers of grassroots activists, the very people that she needed to volunteer to get out the vote for her. She also couldn’t match Sanders ability to raise money solely from small contributions (at least for the period when she was still officially foregoing financial support from SuperPacs funded by corporations and the wealthy).
Then there was the Bloomberg factor. Bloomberg entering the race, probably hurt Warren more than it did Sanders. Bloomberg's right wing, authoritarian record, his huge cash outlay to "purchase" the support of prominent minority politicians, and his barrage of TV ads attacking Sanders in my opinion operated to move undecided progressives to gravitate to Bernie and away from Warren. Bloomberg’s late candidacy, which was self-funded, was a clear sign the centrist establishment, which broke their own rules when it allowed him to buy a spot on the debate stage, viewed Sanders as the real progressive threat to their power, not Warren.
Sanders also benefited from never having deviated from his policies and positions, remaining consistently on message. Warren, who chose to follow the advice of former Clinton and Obama alumni working for her, triangulated away from her earlier more leftist stances on many issues, reverting to the identity politics Hillary Clinton herself had relied upon in 2016. In my view, Warren sealed her fate with many left-leaning voters when she chose to play the IDPOL card against Bernie. Her campaign chose to collude with CNN in a blatant ad hominem attack right before the NH primary, pushing the claim he was a sexist who told her in 2018 that women could not get elected President. Unfortunately for her, many progressive voters remembered one critical fact already in the public domain that countered this charge; i.e., that Sanders had asked Warren to run in 2015 to provide a progressive contrast to Hillary in the 2016 primaries, and he only entered the race after she refused to run.
Which brings us to the current status of the 2020 primaries. Just prior to Super Tuesday, several prominent centrist candidates simultaneously dropped out of the race in what can only be seen as a coordinated effort to stop Sanders’ momentum after his victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. This allowed centrist voters to coalesce around Biden. He has name recognition, strong support among older voters, and the benefit of “Obama nostalgia” attached to him as the former vice president. Ironically, Biden has also been very consistent in his messaging. His speeches and debate performances have not wavered from the time he entered the race. He's been making the case all along that he is the anti-Bernie. He isn't a wild socialist but a pragmatist who will restore "normalcy" to our politics, marking him as the one candidate who never even paid lip service to the progressive agenda that most of the other centrist candidates felt obliged to do.
In a country with a fair electoral system, with equal time provided to all candidates to make their case, and with a media that reported fairly on each of the campaigns, Biden would have been history long ago. But we don’t live in that country. Instead, we live in one where the Democratic, corporate and media elites have relentlessly gone after Sanders, being far more concerned about stopping him from winning the nomination (and lessening the money power's grip on the Democratic Party) than they have been in opposing Trump. Other than the bizarre and futile effort to impeach Trump over matters that were dubious, at best, and the over-hyped Mueller investigation, the #Resistance has accomplished next to nothing. Pelosi and company have generally given Trump what he wanted, because that is what their corporate sponsors wanted as well.
As the process plays out going forward, we will see ever increasing shenanigans by the party establishment that will mirror what happened in 2016. E-voting election fraud has already been seen in South Carolina and Massachusetts, reduced polling places in areas likely to vote for Sanders (Texas comes to mind off the top of my head), and other voter suppression tactics that Clinton, state party officials and the DNC employed four years ago to deny Sanders any hope of victory. See, Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries for examples of what's to come and what we've already seen repeated in 2020.
This blatant election interference by the party leadership to tip the scales against Sanders is coupled with the actions of a complicit media. In particular, corporate media that continually spins the narrative that Sanders and the grassroots activists that fuel his campaign are as dangerous to the country as Trump and his most extreme supporters, if not more dangerous (see all the comparison to Berners as communists, Nazi brown-shirts and infectious diseases). it will be difficult for Bernie to achieve a majority of delegates prior to the convention, especially since all the dark money SuperPacs and wealthy donors can now focus on funding Biden’s campaign. I'm already seeing a growing despondency on Twitter among Sanders' supporters and even some of his surrogates because the constant demonization they encounter online and from hack pundits posing as political analysts on CNN and MSNBC.
I won't say Sanders’ campaign is doomed – not yet. But it certainly faces more opposition, both from biased legacy and broadcast news media, and from the political establishment of the Democratic party, than any other candidate I've seen in my lifetime. The only person who came close was Jimmy Carter, when he ran as a relative outsider in 1976. But that was in a different era where money played a less significant role, and the broadcast media coverage was limited to the three major outlets, CBS, NBC and ABC, all of which reported on political races more or less fairly. Certainly, the Big Three as they were known, did nothing to actively support or attack one candidate, unlike the coordinated and biased manner of the today's media landscape, where all major corporate news outlets are conducting what is effectively a propaganda campaign dedicated to defeating one man: Bernie Sanders.
If the primaries play out as the establishment and media hopes, with Biden keeping Bernie from winning a majority of delegates, I believe that what JtC stated in his March 5th post will come to pass. In the short term, millions will abandon the Democratic party and Trump and the GOP will retain power. In the medium to long term, it’s difficult to see how the Democrats can survive the fate of the Whigs, the last major party to collapse because of fundamental differences among its various factions.
Comments
Bravo!
What an excellent essay. You hit on all the topics and this is a homerun. Now if only the voting public was able to view this it could change plenty of minds.
Marketing ?!?!
Okay, now that I have resolved a few critical issues I had with QM it is now time for me to turn my attention to constructing a time machine. I will go back and "off" the relatively small list of bastards that deflected the internet into its "current free market mode" at a critical moment. Then we (well ya'll, I will be dead) will be set to do what is needed to create a viable future.
RIP
Serious Question
I have no connections to what are considered "normal" channels of communication in what now passes as the InterNet.
Is there anyone (or better yet many) here that can get this out to the more general populous. Steven D has put together some very good quotable sentences.
RIP
Trump now has the opportunity to destroy the Democratic party
I don't know what it looks like when a major national party ceases to effectively exist, but this sure feels like it. The majority of support for the Dem party is in the states that Hillary did well, California, New York and Massachusetts. What would Trump need to do to take these states and crush the Democratic party? Strangely enough he would have to come at Biden from both the Right and the Left, very possible. Here's my list.
1- Resolve the Corona Virus pandemic competently and forcefully. We are going to have to isolate and quarantine cities and borders. He could do this.
2- Restore the economy. This is connected to #1. Also he could use this as an excuse to implement something like M4A. The number of Americans requiring medical attention will be staggering. If even one person is turned aside because they can't pay, it will be very bad news for Trump.
3- Get our soldiers out of the Middle East as he promised. He's starting on this, but he will be fought tooth and nail by the MIC. If he succeeds he will portray himself as actually in charge of the Executive branch of the US government. It will be the first time a president has done that in 75 years. It also creates quite a contrast to Biden, one of the major proponents of blowing up the ME.
4- Improve relationships with Russia and China as he promised. The virus pandemic and a Syria at peace being rebuilt not birthing refugees would do that. In addition, he could sign nuclear limitation treaties. He is already proposing a trilateral treaty with the three parties. Russia is all in, but China is not sure as they want some reassurance that the US will not use military force against them. A realistic US military policy in the Far East could do that. Imagine that we get new treaties banning intermediate nuclear missiles and limiting strategic warheads.
5- Provide some assurances that the right to choice will be respected. He needs to pander to his base and be opposed to all forms of abortion, but he could still reassure that Roe v Wade is the law of the land and these rights once granted should not be revoked.
6- Change his position on Global Climate Change. He must be hearing from Scientists, and faculty in US universities that his position in Climate Change is untenable. He could come at it from the standpoint that we need aggressive research and development of technologies, but don't need to shake up the fossil fuel industries. The truth is that that these energy industries are the only ones world wide that have the capacity to design and deploy solutions of the magnitude that we need, after all they designed and deployed the methods that created the problem.
The best outcome of all would be Bernie getting the nomination and the presidency. That would alter the Democratic party forever. If not then this would be a blueprint to ending the regime of the plutocrats of the Democratic party, especially Nancy, Chuck, Hillary, Joe, Donna, Barack, Adam, Debbie W.S. etc. Just typing that list makes me nauseous.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Truly excellent post Steven
Great analysis! Spot on!
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
Online meanness.
Jesus. Talk about snowflakes? And Dirtbag Left is a real nice moniker, maybe I make myself a shirt with that. Sorry, I feel a rant coming on...
As to meanness Liz, it is mean to lie to your supporters. It is mean to tell people who are struggling to even see a doctor or get treatment that you'll work "later" for a solution that might see them get healthy or merely to survive! To hold out that promise and then rip it away, why, that's not mean at all, is it?
It is mean to shout sexism when you know it is your POLICIES that are the problem, not sexism. It is mean to USE sexism as a tool to get elected when you do absolutely nothing for real women and children. Do you think the women who struggle to survive really care about your pretty speeches and promises when they mean nothing? Do you think those women really care about what I am quite sure will be your ongoing and extremely loud and overbearing accusations of misogyny being the reason for your losing an election? Do you think that matters to them when they struggle to feed their kids?
It is mean to tell other countries that the way they democratically VOTE does not count and you think your country has the RIGHT to overthrow the leader who was elected. It is mean to talk about "greening" America's wars, which are indeed wars of regime change to facilitate American multinational Corporate interests, while real people, MANY of them women and children, have their lives obliterated by America's beautiful bombs. And yes, it is indeed mean to watch your country install one more fascist corporate tool in a country with resources important to "American interests" while the people in that country get to face down the fascists with not only no help from the land of the free but a boot in the face if they dare protest the role of the land of the free in their latest round of subjugation.
It is mean to smear a man whose policy positions you basically plagiarize with empty accusations of "meanness" and sexism from his supporters (Who are voters, duh, did you not see what happened when your queen uttered that idiotic "deplorable" remark prior to the election?) and whatever other pejorative you can hurl at them merely for wanting the "barest of decent things in life" (H/t Naomi Klein) while you insult them with ugly smears for that cardinal sin of thinking they should have some say in what their government does. It is ruthlessly mean to harness your empty headed supporters, who do not dare ask questions regarding your actual policies because you know better after all, to declare that those voters who expect more than you are willing to offer up are dirtbags, Bernie Bros, misogynists, blah, blah, blah. Yes Elizabeth, it is indeed mean to divide and conquer a country regardless of what cute meme you use to do it, especially while you scream that only the "other party" does that when it is EXACTLY what YOU are doing.
The very height of meanness is endorsing one more flailing "centrist," who will not beat Donald Trump, when even you have to see what a whopper of a lie that is. And while you pride yourself on "going after" the latest oligarch to buy his way into your party, that proved to be one more piece of empty theater for those who think you'll really DO something. It is mean to play that kind of joke on the American people, but then again, you're now in the big club that's done that since forever so I guess you simply can't be held responsible for just going with it, after all, being an Insider makes you one of them with all the career perks that entails, surely THAT can't be "meanness," right? Meanwhile, real people die every day in a country without decent healthcare, without a living wage, and lets do not forget just how many die every day in America's National Interest in those wars you want to green up. And all this while the planet dies a bit more every day but you and your club propose more of the same, with a nice healthy dose of hate for the dirtbags who wish to at the very least address that glaring little problem and are rightly highly upset about it.
In short Liz, you are mean. You try very hard to hide it but it comes through very well in the obvious contempt you hold for the electorate. So really, who's the dirtbag here? Who is the deplorable? Who is in reality the misogynist?
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
All true
But its mean to point out someone's "choice" is a well-documented liar and has worked most of her life not for the people but against their interest, you see.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
@lizzyh7 Ryne Tipton's remark
Ryne Tipton's remark about Elizabeth Warren on Doug Henwood's Facebook profile bears repeating here:
So that's what you do -- create and support strategies for diversifying power. Remember Bernie's slogan "Not me, us"? Elizabeth Warren might sound progressive now and then, but she's ultimately "me, not us," most of the time. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' directive to vote for the nominee? Also "me, not us," another politician thinking of what her fantasy self looks like.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Here here
Bravo, lizzy.
Shades of Hillary's supporters who said that she is the biggest protector of women and children. Except for when she passed welfare reform. And black women and children after passing the crime bill that uncle Joe wrote.
Well done on the rest of your comment.
Awesome.
You have "mean" down to a Tee.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thanks Steve...
for fleshing this out. And thank you for being much more eloquent than I could ever hope to be.
Sometimes a short frank rant
is quite eloquent enough, my friend. You said what needed saying.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Another good one
I had one thought, though. In 2020 the DNC is taking pains to not be seen as the thumb on the scale pack of weasels it was in 2016. I think the "being seen" is the only difference. Warren was a party animal, with the same hired hands from campaigns past, the same list of donors, and the same strategies and advice. In some ways positioning herself between the centrists and Bernie she could have been formidable as a candidate. The island of reason between Wall st. greed and the crazy socialist revolutionaries.
I think she terrified Wall St., and all that easy democratic donor money, and I think when the going got dicey those old DNC hands had all the answers to reinvigorate her campaign.
You did an heck of a job outlining her backtracking and pretzel twisting into the safe dem candidate, but I wonder what advice she was given? Each shift brought her down a notch, each attempt to right that misstep made it worse. I wonder if she was approached about taking a position in Bidens administration to drop out, like maybe the Klob and MayoPete?
Biden was always the frontrunner, no matter what the polls said, or what public opinion was. Why was that? I prob. should be asking the DNC.
Biden was always
the frontrunner -- except for those days in Feb after he'd lost in IA, NH and NV. Then Bernie was the frontrunner -- and he should have played that up a lot more and taken down Joe once and for all.
Re Liz dropping out, she waited too long, and badly embarrassed herself with that 3d place in her home state. Her time to do the right thing, and endorse Bernie, was after her second poor showing in neighboring NH, and certainly after SC. Not sure why she waited, but perhaps b/c being human, the harsh reality of her lack of broad popular appeal was too much to accept.
super essay
you might consider writing for money!
lol
Just a slight disagreement
on a few points:
1) The emphasis, esp by many on the left, on issues and specifics -- this is way overblown. Mr & Mrs Middle America in Peoria aren't sitting at the kitchen table for hours pouring over the candidates specific proposals and scoring them. They are much more influenced by a candidate's overall theme and attitude and very broad policy emphasis. They are influenced by emotional appeals far more than policy specifics and logic. Build the Wall and Make Mexico Pay was less a policy than an attitude, in easy to recall simple slogan form. Ditto for Drain the Swamp -- let's bring the people together and finally kick out the crooks and those do-nothing govt bureaucrats. Make America Great Again was another simple slogan which resonated -- especially for the millions who have fantasies of what never was. These things will usually beat Dems impressive-looking but too-fancy and too-missing the point 14-point policy proposals.
2) On this, Liz didn't fall in the polls until she offered more policy specifics, on her M4A, which clearly tried to appease both the middle class (no extra taxes) and the political center (she would wait until her 3d yr to roll out a public option). The MSM was baiting her to get more specific, and she fell for it. I don't think elections are won with such specifics, and can actually harm a campaign as the candidate inevitably gets bogged down in explaining and defending the fine points. But she had billed herself, not very wisely but predictably as a former HLS prof, as the candidate with the Plans, and so she was almost obliged to get more specific. Just not a smart strategy.
3) Bernie and the Media: It was actually worse for Gore in 2000. In that one, Gore not only got constantly hammered in the MSM, criticisms coming from right and left and center, and often for anything the media could make up or wildly distort. That wasn't enough though, as the media also covered mightily for the haplessly lightweight GWB. It was a major double-whammy for Gore. He still should have run a better campaign, using BC and dealing with that head on instead of dancing around that overblown and ridiculous scandal. Had he done so, and more robustly embraced his global warming issue, he could have overcome all the media propaganda and gone directly to the voters and won.
With Bernie, there are similarities, but not quite the level of overt constant trashing of him. It's been negative for Sanders, just not to 2000 levels as I recall then. But there is the major coverup of his opponent and his obvious mental decline, which the MSM refuse to call clearly, along with a dozen other negative items. With Bush, the MSM affirmatively pumped him up and encouraged voters to consider him a better person as he would be a good guy to have a beer with, and not that wine-sipping fancy pants condescending elitist Al Gore. Today with Biden, the media clear the path for him more by their silence.
4) Roughly like Gore, Bernie, if he loses, will have to honestly deal with shortcomings in his campaign. Iow, it wasn't all a media/DNC conspiracy. Bernie seemed more interested in proving to everyone how much he likes his good friend Joe Biden. He's been too nice. Wouldn't he be sitting better today if he'd used the great momentum after the first 3 contests to finally dispatch one-issue Biden by playing up how it's obvious that with his wins in the first 3 contests, he Bernie with a broad base of support is the most electable candidate. Isn't the candidate who wins by definition more electable?
I detected a candidate kind of gliding along after NH and NV, reluctant to change tone or strategy as it had worked before. After NH and NV was also the time to begin to build bridges with some center-left power pols in the party, but as I understand he did not do this.
I just don't buy that this one was entirely stolen from him, although the DNC and MSM did show they continue to have clout, and not in good ways. I just think it was all surmountable with a smarter campaign.
And at this point, looking at a few more states in the south for Joe to build more of a delegate cushion, and assuming Bernie doesn't get any blowout wins, which he badly needs, I think it will be very difficult for Bernie to come back. Like 2008 for Hillary and 2016 for Bernie, after a certain point the candidate in the lead who has enough of a cushion cannot realistically be overtaken.
Correct on several points,
but completely wrong on He [Gore] still should have run a better campaign, using BC ...* and fails to include many related facts.
This drives me nuts; it's Clinton propaganda and for some inexplicable reason is also repeated endlessly by those on the left. Gore hasn't said much about his 2000 campaign (nor as much as he could say about how he was treated by BC for eight years), but he has said that the decision not to have BC out there more for him was based on a fact: wherever BC appeared in support of Gore, Gore's poll numbers declined. (And BC was quite active in stumping for Gore in AR -- how did that work out?)
Gore has also said that his primary fundraising was hampered by Hillary tapping and getting more from the Clinton/Gore large donors. Remember, 2000 for Democrats was still in the era of presidential federal funding and large donors. Gore's weak fundraising may have been a factor in his effort to wrap up the primary as early as possible. What he didn't/couldn't have known was that set the stage for two huge errors. First, he hit Bradley so hard in NH that it left too much bitterness in Bradley and his NH camp; neither of which Gore ever recovered from. (Recall that among political reporters, McCain and Bradley were their guys. GWB "let" McCain have NH and brought out the knives in SC. That's how Gore should also have played it.)
Second, team Bush opted out of primary federal matching funds. Thus, once he'd secured the GOP nomination, he could move into a quasi general election mode with primary campaign funds. Once Gore secured the nomination, his campaign was required to go dark until formally nominated at the DNC convention in mid-August when he could begin to tap general election funding.
*
Did you miss that when GWB was in quasi-general election mode, he was running against BC and his scandal and impeachment? Effectively tarnishing Gore for something he had nothing to do with? As GWB had been leading in the polling against Gore since the beginning of the electoral cycle in 1999 and a major factor in why he was losing was the BC scandal, his most rational option was to, as you say, "dance around" the issue to attempt to differentiate himself from that while not alienating the Clintonistas who electorally hadn't been popular enough to squelch that before the 2000 election.
Gore went into that election with a large polling handicap (due to BC), middling name recognition (a fact for most VPs), a weak donor base, and a hostile media. Yet, somehow, he actually won. Contrast that with HRC -- large polling advantage, near 100% name recognition, oodles of cash, and more than half the media constantly praising her. Yet, somehow she lost to a nincompoop who had never before run for public office.
Great essay Steven D
There's some breaking news out of Dallas that there will be a recount. That cheers me up a bit.
NYCVG
It would also be nice --
if the Texas people who were waiting in line to vote when the polls closed would be allowed at last to vote.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
I don't think Hillary missed this
She and the democrats knew that people were fed up with the status quo after Obama. But they just didn't care about it. If they were actually surprised by it then they wouldn't have planned on rigging the primary long in advance. Remember that Hillary lined up many delegates before she declared she was running. And she had planned on buying the DNC before that. But what cinched it for me was her selecting Kaine because she had no intention of throwing us a bone.
They aren't planning on changing a damn thing either. How do I know that? Because they are not actually against the things Trump is doing now. Pelosi isn't even trying to show that she cares about kids in cages or the dreamers. Every time she had a chance to stand with them she folded without a fight or breaking a sweat. The Resistance has been AWOL from day one.
I will say it. The democrats and every one of their donors will never let Bernie win. Starting with Iowa and seeing how they closed hundreds of voting places in areas where people would vote for Bernie they still have lots of tricks up their sleeves.
Biden only spoke for 7 minutes today at his rally and I'm betting that the next debate will be altered in some way to favor Joe. During his speech today he said that we can't get reelected. Or some word salad. Who the hell knows what he's trying to say.
"You know... that...THING!"
Biden will probably have majority of delegates come convention
The democratic party will not be ripped asunder with one event such as disputed convention. The establishment is working very hard to ensure Biden goes in with the most votes. Check out this link to a independent report about exit polls and results in MA--one of the "holy shit did Biden actually win MA" states. His next report is on Minnesota.
MASSACHUSETTS 2020 DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY Exit Poll Versus Reported Vote Count
The democratic party will more like slip into an abyss. And if Bernie supports Biden, after the apparent cheating, he will slip into obscurity as he will be what some on the Left have accused him of being sheep dogging progressives and young people into the democratic party where their ideas will simply rot away.
Here is an article on what awaits the democratic party which looked at the 2016 election.
The Boring Story of the 2016 Election
Replace Clinton with Biden.
Great essay BTW.
Let me pile on with
a compliment on your essay, Steven.
So well written.
You are wicked "smaht" AND can express yourself well with words.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Nailed It!!!
I sure hope Anonymous (or someone/something like that) doesn't hack the major corporate news sites and plaster this over every cybersurface therein like a 21st-Century Martin Luther!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Now to win the "Curveball of the Day" Award....
What DID the Whig Party believe in, and what were their divisions? I never did "get" the Whigs.
If the once-great Democratic Party dies of this, its blood will be all over, very specifically, the Clintons' hands.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
It's been moribund longer than that
The Democratic Party swallowed its own poison pill in 1968 (catapulting of non-campaigner Hubert Humphrey into the nomination) and again in 1972 (sabotage of McGovern campaign and institution of changes such as "superdelegates" to prevent the peons ever again having any real say in the results).
1976 (Jimmy Carter) was when they went whole-hog Corporatist.
It's been a death by a thousand cuts.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Hillary's allegiance
Most of us have noticed how far Hillary and the DNC have strayed from FDR's social goals and JFK's search for peace despite his restive intelligence agencies and military. There was a picture circulating of all the grim-faced "heroes" and "patriots" of Ukrainegate. It is not by coincidence that some of them have Ukrainian names.
I don't think that Hillary has strayed at all from her early political views. That is, she is still her daddy's daughter. She is still a right-wing Republican, a Goldwater Girl. When she "became" a Democrat in 1968 she actually was working for the winning side, the side that killed JFK and then infiltrated the Democratic Party, something necessary to keep control of power. When she joined the McCarthy campaign in early 1968 it was not to stop the war in Vietnam but rather to defeat RFK and his anti-Vietnam War movement. But the corridors of power had already decided to take more extreme methods to take care of their problem and the two biggest opponents of the war, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, had been removed from the political dialogue.
As the purpose for McCarthy running ended, Hillary then went to the Republican Convention in Miami (she did not hit the streets with the Yippies), then spent the summer of 1968 working as an aide for the Republicans in Congress, to include writing a speech about Vietnam for Melvin Laird, who in six months would become Nixon's Secretary of Defense, who mercilessly oversaw the bombing of Vietnam "into the Stone Age" as they called it.
From there it appeared she found herself in positions where she could observe and report back to her reactionary superiors, twice spending time around the legal defenses of the Black Panthers, as well as sitting on the Democratic legal team during Watergate.
From there it was merely a campaign to make Hillary and her husband look more Democratic. It takes a village to raise a child? It takes a government to cut aid for poor children, a government to slant the laws to put more poor children in jail, a government to allow the very rich to loot the rest of us and leave us holding the empty bag.
We all see Hillary as part of the same grifter class that seems to have risen to the top of our political world, and she is. But was her goal actually to become President or something more important? To destroy the Democratic Party.
There are coincidences and consequences. It's no coincidence that Hillary has followed the path she has followed, and there is no coincidence the consequences of this: the alienation of actual liberal thought.
So this may have been the plan all along, to be replaced by a Republican-lite party along with tiny wings of voters who dreamily think of peace and a square deal for the working class.
Sorry, folks. I have no solution to this. But I suspect the faster that Democrats get out of the backseat of the current Democratic Clown Car the better.
Bravo!!
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --