Wow, guys.

In Liza Featherstone's essay for Jacobin, "For Elite Democrats, Joe Biden’s Candidacy Means Ditching #MeToo," we are told about how the #MeToo movement is basically disbanding itself to avoid confronting Tara Reade's demands for justice.

and/or Debate Open Thread.

People will recognize this as the slogan of Bernie Sanders' campaign. "Not me, us," simply means that creating a new America will require our effort, and not merely the effort of a single politician. A political "us" is thusly constituted in his campaign. Here's Bernie Sanders, explaining what it means.

The Democratic Party Powers That Be seem to have staked everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, for the next four months on the notion that Joe Biden is a viable candidate.

The public typically likes to imagine that it is selecting its representatives out of some sense of "realism" about what is "realistically possible" given the "political situation." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the political field is littered with fantasy politicians, politicians that people think they are electing but who exist mainly as figments of the public's imagination.

I've been offline since Thursday to avoid seeing Joe Biden's smug face and the elation of the punditry that Bernie Sanders lost in all the ways.

The TL;DR version of this race so far:

Iowa: "the real story tonight is who comes in 2nd, and yeah, the voting was an unresolved clusterfuck."

New Hampshire: "the real story tonight is who comes in 3rd, and yeah, we want a Republican billionaire Hail Mary in this."

So Biden is surging in the polls.
Why?

What has happened to cause this surge?
The man who is running on 'electability' got crushed in Nevada.

This comes after underperforming the polls in Iowa and N.H.

This is starting to look like elder abuse.
The man belongs in a rocking chair, drinking juice, telling tall tales to his grandchildren.

This is so sad.

Here @JoeBiden says to the crowd in South Carolina that he is "running for the United States Senate" and that if they don't like him they can "vote for the other Biden."

The Great Handshake Freeze-Out of January 14 was the glacé cherry on a shit sundae of malicious, precisely calculated smears on Bernie Sanders. I initially thought that Elizabeth Warren brought some poltergeists from the Omnishambles Clinton campaign into the fold to advise her on gaining some momentum. I no longer believe that Warren was trying to only boost her polling numbers.