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Bernie Sanders Election Bulletin, 2020

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[Mar 09, 2020] Sanders could beat Trump if he framed the contest as True Class Warfare

Mar 09, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Sirs;

Sanders is facing the fight of his life. This will show whether or not he has the "killer instinct" needed to prevail in the rough and tumble of American politics. If Sanders doesn't take the gloves off and attack Biden with everything available, and that is a lot of stuff, then he probably would lose to Trump in November. In my biased opinion, Sanders could beat Trump if he framed the contest as True Class Warfare. Trump talks a good "populist" game, but when we look at his actual policy moves, he comes across as a 'bog standard' Republican politico.

If it is Biden against Trump in November, the narrative control so far shown by the DNC will avail nothing against all the attacks possible against Biden.

As I said before, with Biden as the Democrat Party nominee, all Trump has to do to win is to somehow manage to not blow the world up.

[Mar 09, 2020] "What's the difference between a cannibal and a neoliberal like Senator Warren?"

Mar 09, 2020 | nymag.com

"A cannibal doesn't eat his friends."

[Mar 08, 2020] Biden and Sanders are in this late sevetees and COVID-19 is a serious threat for both

Sanders has a heart attack and now has stents so he is in real danger...
Mar 08, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
s , Mar 7 2020 12:43 utc | 121
Biden and Sanders are both campaigning actively and meeting voters in many different states. Plenty of hugs/handshakes. I am wondering what precautions they have taken against the coronavirus. Note they are both in their late 70's.

[Mar 08, 2020] How is it that Biden won so many states based on endorsements alone? No field offices, no real money, he barely visited some states, if at all and yet he won

Notable quotes:
"... How is it that Biden won so many states based on endorsements alone? No field offices, no real money, he barely visited some states, if at all and yet he won. ..."
"... Hillary had tons of endorsements everywhere, a field office in every state and major city, lots of cash, and she didn't win as many. This does not compute. ..."
"... The only difference is Biden is personally more appealing and approachable than Hillary. But still. Something fishy here. I'm wondering how many of those states had audit trails like hand-marked paper ballots and how many did not? ..."
"... The wide discrepancy between exit poll numbers and vote total percentages in some states seems a little fishy, too. Electronic voting machines: progress! (removing my foil bonnet now) ..."
Mar 08, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

David Carl Grimes , March 6, 2020 at 4:39 pm

How is it that Biden won so many states based on endorsements alone? No field offices, no real money, he barely visited some states, if at all and yet he won.

Hillary had tons of endorsements everywhere, a field office in every state and major city, lots of cash, and she didn't win as many. This does not compute.

The only difference is Biden is personally more appealing and approachable than Hillary. But still. Something fishy here. I'm wondering how many of those states had audit trails like hand-marked paper ballots and how many did not?

flora , March 6, 2020 at 4:50 pm

The wide discrepancy between exit poll numbers and vote total percentages in some states seems a little fishy, too. Electronic voting machines: progress! (removing my foil bonnet now)

Tvc15 , March 6, 2020 at 5:14 pm

I'll put the foil bonnet on Flora. DCG, the fishy smell is election fraud courtesy of the DNC. Unless we have paper ballots hand counted in public, I don't buy the miraculous Biden resurgence narrative from his supposed silent majority. Give me a family blogging break.

Cuibono , March 6, 2020 at 6:42 pm

I absolutely fail to understand why anyone would consider this idea tin foil. Who do we think we're dealing with here? These folks are playing to win and they will do anything and everything in their power to do so. The system is set up perfectly to support psychopaths

lyman alpha blob , March 6, 2020 at 10:01 pm

Me neither. That fact that the Democrat party has never even tried to address the problems with election integrity, even when they've had the presidency stolen from them, speaks volumes.

They allow a phony riot to stop the count in FL, then hardly make a peep when the Supremes anoint Bush in 2000 in a decision not meant to set precedent, and their response is the Help America Vote Act which foisted these easily hackable machines on us as a solution? The only reason you do that is if you want to be able to rig elections yourself.

After the debacle of the Iowa caucus this year and the unheard of swing to Biden this week, it sure looks like the fix is in.

Carolinian , March 6, 2020 at 6:31 pm

Please educate me–no seriously!–as to how hand marked paper ballots are so very different from machine marked paper ballots. If you assume that machine marked ballots–marked with the candidate's name (written in human readable English) and securely stored for a potential hand recount–are crooked then aren't you assuming that the entire election machinery is crooked and not just a vote tabulating machine? After all long before computers were invented there was that thing called ballot box stuffing.

Reply

flora , March 6, 2020 at 7:45 pm

Machine marked ballots have a middleman. Said machines 'phone home' to a central server, which may well be running a program that fractionally 'shifts' votes as needed to edge out a win for the estab preferred candidate (of either party). The 'red shift' in vote results after electronic voting has been noted by statisticians.

One interesting coincidence here is that I was going to link to some statisticians' work I know of, work that was easily available online as late as early January this year. When I search for the links now they are either gone or the links are warned off as 'suspect'.

flora , March 6, 2020 at 7:53 pm

Info easily found online. Here's one very recent story's take away:

"Some of the most popular ballot-marking machines, made by industry leaders Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems, register votes in bar codes that the human eye cannot decipher. That's a problem, researchers say: Voters could end up with printouts that accurately spell out the names of the candidates they picked, but, because of a hack, the bar codes do not reflect those choices. Because the bar codes are what's tabulated, voters would never know that their ballots benefited another candidate.

"Even on machines that do not use bar codes, voters may not notice if a hack or programming error mangled their choices. A University of Michigan study determined that only 7 percent of participants in a mock election notified poll workers when the names on their printed receipts did not match the candidates they voted for."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/vendors-push-risky-new-voting-machines-over-safe-paper-ballots/

Read the whole story.

Carolinian , March 6, 2020 at 8:10 pm

In the just past election are there any reports of ballots being printed out that had a different name than the one the voter selected to be printed? And if that did happen would it be anything other than accidentally pressing the wrong button? Surely if this "voters didn't look at the ballot" (which personally I greatly doubt) idea was really the cheating scheme then it would be highly likely to be exposed.

flora , March 6, 2020 at 8:14 pm

Re-read the part about the 'computer reads and tabulates the barcode information, not the english text printout'. A hack or middleman could fiddle the barcode printout/information (unrecognized by the human eye) , not the text printout.

flora , March 6, 2020 at 8:24 pm

Also consider that the fiddle works best if it's only a few percentage points different than expected, one way or the other. People then say of unexpected results, 'oh, it was really close, but that's how it goes, elections can be unpredictable', and accept the election results as 'the will of the people.' It's called "electronic fractional vote shifting". Really. It's called that. Fractional vote shifting.

Carolinian , March 6, 2020 at 8:35 pm

Right–without a doubt. But the reason it prints that piece of paper is for a later human audit by eye should a recount be demanded. In that case the barcode would become irrelevant. There is a paper trail.

That said, I would agree there could be secret ballot concerns about the way I voted. You feed the ballot into the counter right side up and unfolded with an election "helper" standing nearby.

Reply

flora , March 6, 2020 at 9:00 pm

One reason both parties prefer 'close elections'. A few points either way won't raise eyebrows. Won't raise a demand for a recount. (And, like compound interest, a 'few points' one way or the other in various elections, over time, can add up to large effects in political direction. imo.)

lyman alpha blob , March 6, 2020 at 10:12 pm

The problem is getting to the recount. My state does not allow recounts unless the machine tally is extremely close. So if you want to rig an election, just make sure your candidate wins by enough and there will never be a recount of those machine counted paper ballots.

I asked city officials for a few years to do recounts just to audit the machines, and was told it was not allowed under state law unless there was a close enough race – I believe the threshhold is in the low single digits. My wife later ran for office and lost by about 1% and I was finally able to get a recount. We counted all the ballots by hand and while the final outcome didn't change, what we found was that the hand recount tallied about 1-2% more votes than the machines had.

flora is right about the close elections. I find it very odd that in my younger days we had landslides fairly often and now every presidential election goes right down to the wire.

Tom Bradford , March 6, 2020 at 8:04 pm

OK. This is my experience as a counter in a UK General Election, where hand-marked ballot-papers are counted in public.

Each voting station has a sealed tin box. Arriving to vote your name is checked against the electoral role and you are handed a ballot paper. You go into a curtained booth with a stand-up desk and a pencil in a string and put a X in a box opposite the candidate you vote for. Outside the booth you fold your ballot paper and post it into the box through a narrow slot. When the election closes the box is delivered to – in our case – the town-hall – where the counters sit at tables three to a side with a team-leader at the head. One of the boxes is brought to each table, unsealed and the contents dumped into the middle of it. Each counter then snags a pile of marked votes and sorts them into piles as voted. Any uncertainties – where the vote isn't obvious – is passed up to the team leader for assessment. When all the votes are tallied – including the uncertainties – the total is compared with the note from the polling station stating the number of votes cast there, and if they don't agree the count for that box is done again.

All this is done under the eyes of representatives of the candidates who are free to move around the tables at will, and who in particular can watch over the team-leaders dealing with the uncertain ballot papers, but who are free to challenge any counter's tally.

Ballot boxes could be 'switched' between the voting station and the count, but that would only work if you knew how many papers were in the box per the count or could also substitute the tally signed off by the polling-station superintendent. Ballot-box stuffing wouldn't work as again the votes cast and counted for that box/station would not align.

Could it be gamed? I suppose, but it would take a massive effort and conspiracy – mostly at the polling-station/transit stage, tho' again the candidates can have observers there. The whole system is run by the local authority and most of those involved in the polling-station/count are local authority workers with their own political preferences so finding enough to suborn to fix the count would be a difficult, and politically dangerous operation. Even if one polling-station's box was corrupted in some way it would have little effect on the overall result, and if it stood out as atypical could invite investigation.

So no, it's not perfect, but I can't think of a better way of doing it.

Tom Bradford , March 6, 2020 at 8:15 pm

Ps. Each voting paper is numbered and taken from a book leaving a stub with the same number. So to 'stuff' or otherwise tamper with the voting papers in the box you'd also need to swap the actual voting paper book with a substitute bearing the same number system and I think, tho' don't quote me on this, books of ballot papers for the various polling stations are only issued on election day and at random.

Reply

flora , March 6, 2020 at 9:24 pm

Could it be gamed? I suppose, but it would take a massive effort

The 'massive effort' part is where computer voting can eliminate so much effort (when properly coded or uplinked), if you take my meaning.

Watt4Bob , March 6, 2020 at 8:40 pm

IIRC, in a nut-shell, some of the systems used have a bar code printed on the ballot at the time they are scanned into the system.

That bar code ' marks ', the ballot, and supposedly communicates the voter's intentions to the tabulating software that counts the votes.

The rest of the ballot looks proper to the voter, but the voter has no way of telling what the bar code means.

And from any IT professional's point of view, who cares what the ballot looks like, if the mark on your ballot, (the one that is counted) was not made by your hand (say, a bar code printed by a scanner), and/or, if there is a computer used to count the votes, that system is intended to allow falsification of election results.

Due to the lack of legal action on the part of either of our political parties, to refute the results of elections stolen by wholesale electronic election fraud, I can only conclude that election fraud is a wholly acceptable tool in their bi-partisan toolbox?

And yes, you're right, they've always stuffed the ballot box, think of electronic vote tabulation as the newest twist on an old trick.

The invention of electronic voting was intended to insure that voters can never vote their way to freedom.

Carolinian , March 7, 2020 at 8:45 am

So your argument is that we must have hand counted ballots because the machine marked version won't work because the recounters would have to hand count the ballots. Just to repeat, yet again, when I voted a ballot shaped piece of plain paper was printed with my candidate choice clearly printed along with a bar code, not qr. This then becomes the vote itself and it can be read by a scanner or by a human. If done by a human then it is utterly no different than if I had checked a box on a pre printed ballot.

And for all the objections cited by those above there are valid reasons for states to want such a system. Obviously an all manual system is very labor intensive and also subject to human error unless double checked by still more labor. You'd also have to print lots of ballots before every election while not knowing exactly how many will be needed.

If there are suspicions of vote machine companies–and there should be–a more logical approach might be to insist that all software is open source and that no machines are connected directly to the internet or have usb ports. Signs in the precincts should advise voters to check their paper ballot to make sure the correct choice is printed.

[Mar 07, 2020] Warren Urged by National Organization for Women Not to Endorse Sanders: He Has 'Done Next to Nothing for Women'

That art of betrail, demonstrated by notable ruthless female careerst.
Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

jo6pac , March 6, 2020 at 2:26 pm

What did Anita Hill ever do warren or now?

"Warren Urged by National Organization for Women Not to Endorse Sanders: He Has 'Done Next to Nothing for Women'

Eureka Springs , March 6, 2020 at 2:58 pm

There's always a tweet rebuttal for what fails us )

https://twitter.com/KatQannayahu/status/1235986901741395968

In 1995, Gloria Steinem, spoke of making @BernieSanders an "honorary woman" because his advocacy for women was so strong then, and has continued strong over the decades.

curlydan , March 6, 2020 at 3:33 pm

exactly. Look at the prime examples of how Biden treats women in the public sphere: treating Anita Hill like crap and nuzzling random women. And N.O.W. wants Warren to endorse Biden? Sheesh.

Titus , March 6, 2020 at 4:06 pm

And Warren wonders why she didn't get the votes. Does Warren think being a women per se means only she is capable of going something for women. How childish.

Lambert Strether Post author , March 7, 2020 at 2:01 am

Because when Sanders jawboned Amazon into raising wages, none of the workers who got the raised were women.

That's because to the PMC feminists of NOW -- another NGO to euthanize given how poorly they have performed as measured by their stated goals -- only PMC women are truly women. The working class is an undifferentiated mass without individual identities. That is, in fact, what the Bernie Bro " meme conveys. No female supporter of Sanders can possibly be a real woman, and even more revealing, Sanders supporters are coded male by default, a patriarchal semiotic that would drive NOW and its ilk, er, bananas in any other context.

Rhondda , March 7, 2020 at 8:40 am

"Bernie Bros" = all Sanders supporters [coded male]. Wow, yes! -- Exactly! That's a penetrating insight, Lambert. Thank you!

[Mar 07, 2020] Democrat Establishment deliberatly hands control over the nomination to the political establisment in states they will never win in the general elections

So sellout by Clinton of the Democratic Party to Wall Street proved to be durable and sustainable...
Bernie again behaves like a sheep dog with no intention to win... "Let's be friends" is not a viable strategy...
Notable quotes:
"... the same character traits that make him an honorable politician also make him fundamentally unsuited for the difficult task of waging a successful outsider campaign for the nomination of a major political party. ..."
"... Why hasn't Sara Nelson, head of the Flight Attendants' Union, endorsed Bernie? (Personally I have always thought she'd be a good VP.) ..."
"... Robinson is dreaming if he thinks Non-Profit Industrial Complex entities like EMILY's List and Planned Parenthood will lift a finger to help Sanders, or busines unionists like Randi Weingarten. To his credit, though, Ady Barkan switched immediately. External support, though is correct: IIRC, there are plenty of union locals to be had; the Culinary Workers should be only the first. ..."
"... "Corporate Lobbyists Control the Rules at the DNC" [ ReadSludge ]. "Among the 447 total voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates, there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants -- including many of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected . ..."
"... The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following 20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers." ..."
"... "Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already". No amount of ground-level organizing can make up for a candidate willing to publicly overlook what should be high-office-disqualifying fundamental character traits in his opponents out of "niceness". ..."
"... It's easy to do a post Super Tuesday defeat analysis of Sanders but remember, everything seems to work before SC where I think the Democrats fixed the election and the same holds for Super Tuesday. ..."
"... post-dial-up-modem ..."
Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Sanders (D)(1): "Bernie Sanders needs to find the killer instinct" [Matthew Walther, The Week ]. I've heard Useful Idiots, Dead Pundits, and the inimitable Jimmy Dore all make the same point, but Walther's prose makes the point most forcefully (as prose often does). The situation:

There is no greater contrast imaginable than the one between the popular (and frequently exaggerated) image of so-called "Bernie bros" and the almost painfully conciliatory instincts of the man they support.

This was fully in evidence on Wednesday afternoon when Sanders responded to arguably the worst defeat of his political career by chatting with journalists about how " disgusted " he is at unspecified online comments directed at Elizabeth Warren and her supporters and what a " decent guy " Joe Biden is.

He did this despite the fact that Warren, with the connivance of debate moderators, recently called him a sexist in front of an audience of millions, effectively announcing that she had no interest in making even a tacit alliance with the only other progressive candidate in the race and, one imagines, despite thinking that the former vice president's record on virtually everything -- finance, health care, race relations, the environment, foreign policy -- should render him ineligible for office.

It should go without saying that offering these pleasantries will do Sanders few if any favors.

Lambert here: This is a Presidential primary, not the Senate floor. There is no comity. Walther then gives a list of possible scorched earth tactics to use against Biden; we could all make such a list. But then:

Sanders's benevolent disposition does him credit. But the same character traits that make him an honorable politician also make him fundamentally unsuited for the difficult task of waging a successful outsider campaign for the nomination of a major political party.

Corbyn had the same problem...

Sanders really must not let Biden and the Democrat Establishment off the hook. He seems to have poor judgment about his friends. Warren was no "friend." And neither is Joe Biden.

If Sanders wants friends, he can buy a dog .

He should forget those false friends, go into the next debate, and slice Joe Biden off at the knees. Trump would. And will, if Sander loses.

His canvassers and more importantly his millions of small donors deserve no less. The race and the debate is now between two people, and only one can emerge the winner. Sanders needs to decide if he wants to be that person, and then do what it takes . (If the outcome of the Sanders campaign is a left that is a permanently institutionalized force, distinct from liberal Democrats, I would regard that as a net positive. If that is Sanders' ultimate goal, then fine. He's not going to achieve that goal by being nice to Joe Biden. Quite the reverse.)

UPDATE Sanders (D)(2): "Time To Fight Harder Than We've Ever Fought Before" [Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs ].

"Biden now has some formidable advantages going forward: Democrats who no longer see him as a failed or risky bet will finally endorse and campaign for him. He will find it easier to raise money. He will have "momentum." Bloomberg's exit will bring him new voters.

Sanders may find upcoming states even harder to win than the Super Tuesday contests. But the one thing that would guarantee a Sanders loss is giving up and going home, which is exactly what Joe Biden hopes we will now do."

Here follows a laundry list of tactics. Then: "The real thing Bernie needs in order to win, though, is external support. Labor unions, activists, lawmakers, anyone with a public platform: We need to be pressuring them to endorse Bernie.

Why hasn't Sara Nelson, head of the Flight Attendants' Union, endorsed Bernie? (Personally I have always thought she'd be a good VP.)

Now that Elizabeth Warren is clearly not going to win, will organizations like the Working Families Party and EMILY's List and people like AFT president Randi Weingarten and Medicare For All advocate Ady Barkan switch and endorse Sanders?

Where is the Sierra Club, SEIU (Bernie, after all, was one of the first national figures to push Fight for $15), the UAW, Planned Parenthood? Many progressive organizations have been sitting out the race because Warren was in it."

Good ideas in general, but Robinson is dreaming if he thinks Non-Profit Industrial Complex entities like EMILY's List and Planned Parenthood will lift a finger to help Sanders, or busines unionists like Randi Weingarten. To his credit, though, Ady Barkan switched immediately. External support, though is correct: IIRC, there are plenty of union locals to be had; the Culinary Workers should be only the first.

Warren (D)(1): "Why Elizabeth Warren lost" [Ryan Cooper, The Week ]. "Starting in November, however, she started a long decline that continued through January, when she started losing primaries . So what happened in November?

It is hard to pin down exactly what is happening in such a chaotic race, but Warren's campaign certainly made a number of strategic errors. One important factor was surely that Warren started backing away from Medicare-for-all, selling instead a bizarre two-step plan.

The idea supposedly was to pass universal Medicare with two different bills, one in her first year as president and one in the third year. Given how difficult it is to pass anything through Congress, and that there could easily be fewer Democrats in 2023 than in 2021, it was a baffling decision. Worse, Warren then released a plan for financing Medicare-for-all that was simply terrible.

Rather than levying a new progressive tax, she would turn existing employer contributions to private health insurance plans into a tax on employers, which would gradually converge to an average for all businesses but the smallest. The clear objective here was to claim that she would pay for it without levying any new taxes on the middle or working classes. But because those employer payments are still part of labor compensation, it is ultimately workers who pay them -- making Warren's plan a horribly regressive head tax (that is, an equal dollar tax on almost all workers regardless of income).

All that infuriated the left, and struck directly at Warren's branding as the candidate of technical competence. It suggested her commitment to universal Medicare was not as strong as she claimed, and that she would push classic centrist-style Rube Goldberg policies rather than clean, fair ones. (Her child care plan, with its complicated means-testing system, had a similar defect).

Claiming her plan was the only one not to raise taxes on the middle class was simply dishonest. In sum, this was a classic failed straddle that alienated the left but gained no support among anti-universal health care voters. More speculatively, this kind of hesitation and backtracking may have turned off many voters." • On #MedicareForAll, called it here on "pay for" ; and here on "transition." Warren's plans should not have been well-received, and they were not. I'm only amazed that these really technical arguments penetrated the media (let along the voters).

Warren (D)(2): "Warren Urged by National Organization for Women Not to Endorse Sanders: He Has 'Done Next to Nothing for Women'" [ Newsweek ]. • Establishment really pulling out all the stops.

* * *

"Why Southern Democrats Saved Biden" [Mara Gay, New York Times ]. (Gay was the lone member of the Times Editorial Board to endorse Sanders .) "Through Southern eyes, this election is not about policy or personality. It's about something much darker. Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow .

They were deeply skeptical that a democratic socialist like Mr. Sanders could unseat Mr. Trump. They liked Ms. Warren, but, burned by Hillary Clinton's loss, were worried that too many of their fellow Americans wouldn't vote for a woman."

Well worth a read. At the same time, it's not clear why the Democrat Establishment hands control over the nomination to the political establishment in states they will never win in the general; the "firewall" in 2016 didn't work out all that well, after all. As for Jim Crow, we might do well to remember that Obama destroyed a generation of Black wealth his miserably inadequate response to the foreclosure crisis, and his pathetic stimulus package kept Black unemployment high for years longer than it should have been. And sowed the dragon's teeth of authoritarian reaction as well.

"Corporate Lobbyists Control the Rules at the DNC" [ ReadSludge ]. "Among the 447 total voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates, there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants -- including many of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected .

The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following 20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers."


ewmayer , March 6, 2020 at 6:03 pm

"Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already". No amount of ground-level organizing can make up for a candidate willing to publicly overlook what should be high-office-disqualifying fundamental character traits in his opponents out of "niceness".

Lambert Strether Post author , March 7, 2020 at 1:57 am

> Bernie is thinking like an organizer

That's fine, but if his organization is then put at the disposal of Joe Biden, I don't see how the organization survives. (That's why the DNC cheating meme* is important; it provides the moral cover to get out of that loyalty oath (which the Sanders campaign certainly should have had its lawyers take a look at)).

NOTE * Iowa, Texas, and California have all had major voting screw-ups, all of which impacted Sanders voters disproportionately. The campaign should sue. They have the money.)

dcblogger , March 6, 2020 at 2:15 pm

I once met an union organizer and he said he could go back to any site he had worked and be on friendly terms with everyone. Bernie is thinking like an organizer. I think that making this about Social Security is his best bet. It demolishes Biden in a way that makes the election about the American people.

pretzelattack , March 6, 2020 at 2:25 pm

he needs to go after biden on the issues in a much more forceful manner than he typically does, with lots and lots of specifics. did i mention lots of specifics? and lots of pointed references to biden's past positions, and a focus on pinning him down on his position now. he needs to ask questions biden will not be prepared for with easy scripted responses.

JohnnyGL , March 6, 2020 at 2:59 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hcEljDeFEI

Well, he's baited Biden into a spat about SS for now, so that's a positive sign.

drumlin woodchuckles , March 6, 2020 at 7:10 pm

Perhaps if Sanders can keep successfully baiting Biden with hooks baited with Biden's own past statements over and over and over again, that Sanders can then go on to practice some very well disguised passive-aggressive pointing/not-pointing to Biden's mental condition by asking Biden at every opportunity: " don't you remember that, Joe? You remember saying that, don't you Joe? Don't you remember when you said that, Joe?"

Titus , March 6, 2020 at 3:31 pm

Except 70% of Women according to Stanford finding these kind of confrontations distressing to very distressing. Tricky. One changes emotions by using emotions so the trick here is "allowing" Biden to act deranged and expressing sorrow over it. For 70% of guys they won't get the emotional content, but will understand the logic of the questions and lack of answers. It can be done, Bill Clinton and Obama were very good at this. Look you want to be president you got to play the game at the highest level. Good practice for dealing with trump.

Oh , March 6, 2020 at 3:51 pm

Timing was right for both Obama and Clinton. After the GFC voters would have gone for any Democrat because Republicans were toxic. Similarly, it was fortuitous for Clinton because Perot was running and he quit the race a couple of months before the election.

Obama got loads and loads of money from Wall Street. Neither of these guys would stand a chance in an election year when the economy was doing well.

It's easy to do a post Super Tuesday defeat analysis of Sanders but remember, everything seems to work before SC where I think the Democrats fixed the election and the same holds for Super Tuesday.

I didn't see anyone pointing out that Bernie had to be confrontational when he seems to be winning.

Mo's Bike Shop , March 6, 2020 at 8:59 pm

Wait. How many days ago was the field of candidates wide open?

If Bernard does not roast Biden on Social Security I will be disappointed. If Smokin' Joe doesn't lash out with his typical aplomb, I'll be disappointed. I'm saving myself up for bigger disappointments.

I'll be happy with the Vermont interpretation of Huey Long. I'm glad that people are finally noticing we have one Socialist Senator.

Idea for an 'own the slur' bumper sticker: "I'm tickled pink by Bernie" -- Although I don't know how the post-dial-up-modem crowd might misinterpret that?

foghorn longhorn , March 6, 2020 at 2:56 pm

This is such bs.
Trump insulted the f*ck out of mccain, mittens, jeb, cruz, pelosi, schumer and the rest of the clown posse and what did they do?

Passed every gd thing he sent to them.

Are we gonna fight or dance, it's past time to get it on.

Zagonostra , March 6, 2020 at 6:01 pm

"I admittedly don't even know what to call Pelosi and Schumer at this point, besides a simple "past their sell date".

How about corrupt, immoral dishonest, greedy, sociopaths for starters (for more accurate adjectives I recommend viewing Jimmy Dore)

Glen , March 6, 2020 at 5:22 pm

Bernie cannot say it, but I can.

I support Bernie because Bernie supports the polices I think we need to save the country: M4A, GND,$15/hr min, free college, etc. To me, being an FDR Dem like Bernie is the moderate position, we've done it before, we know it works. Biden's support of neoliberal polices that have wrecked America is the extreme position.

But the DNC does not support FDR's Democracy. They have ended up to the right of Ronald Reagan. Pelosi could have pushed a M4A bill but did not. Pelosi could have pushed any number of polices to show how Trump is failing the working and middle class, but she did not.

So if Bernie is not picked for the general, I no longer have a reason to support the Dems, and will stay home. Actually, I will probably not stay home, I will work to get Dems out of office, and in general, work to burn the party to the ground. Why? Because it is in the way, and does not support the working class or the middle class.

The Dem party has to decide – do they really support the working and middle class or not. Because only Bernie supports those polices, and the rest of the Dems running for President do not.

[Mar 07, 2020] Sanders "Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already" It is a capitulation.

Sheep dog, version 2.0 ? And he did not supported Tulsi, who made a big bet of him in 2016
Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ewmayer , March 6, 2020 at 6:03 pm

"Joe Biden is a friend of mine" is the 2020-updated version of "enough about the damn e-mails, already". No amount of ground-level organizing can make up for a candidate willing to publicly overlook what should be high-office-disqualifying fundamental character traits in his opponents out of "niceness".

[Mar 07, 2020] The Neoliberal Plague by Rob Urie

Highly recommended!
Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
We can view "Creepy Joe" and Trump as representatives of "neoliberal plague" The slogan should be " No Pasaran " ( Dolores Ibárruri's famous battlecry appeal for the defense of the Second Spanish Republic)
Notable quotes:
"... For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague , disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city. ..."
"... Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick people will 'buy' health care they can't afford. ..."
"... If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. ..."
"... While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust, there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock prices. ..."
"... If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger. ..."
"... But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at twice the price of comparable systems. ..."
"... Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that explains why it is, and always will be, a farce. ..."
Mar 07, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org

For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague , disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city. Today, by way of the emergence of a lethal and highly communicable virus (Coronavirus), we -- the people of the West, have an opportunity to reconsider what we mean to one another. The existential lesson is that through dread and angst we can choose to live, with the responsibilities that the choice entails, or just fade away.

Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick people will 'buy' health care they can't afford.

Market provision of virus test kits, vaccines and basic sanitary aids will, in the absence of government coercion, follow the monopolist's model of under-provision at prices that are unaffordable for most people. The most fiscally responsible route, in the sense of assuring that the rich don't pay taxes, is to let those who can't afford health care die. If this means that tens of millions of people die unnecessarily, markets are a harsh taskmaster. ( 3.4% mortality rate @ 2X – 3X the contagion rate of the Spanish Flu @ 4 X 1918 population).

If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. According to Ryan Grim of The Intercept, Bill Clinton eliminated the ' reasonable pricing ' requirement for drugs made by companies that receive government funding. This has bearing on both commercially developed Coronavirus test kits and vaccines.

Leaving aside technical difficulties that either will or won't be resolved, how would any substantial portion of the 80% of the population that lives hand-to-mouth be effectively quarantined when losing an income creates a cascade effect of evictions, foreclosures, starvation, repossessions, shut-off utilities, etc.? The current system conceived and organized to make desperate and near desperate workers labor with the minimum of pay and benefits is a public health disaster by design.

While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust, there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock prices. The same Federal Reserve that has been engineering a non-stop rise in stock prices since Wall Street was bailed out in 2009 knows perfectly well how narrowly stock ownership is concentrated amongst the rich -- it publishes the data. It quickly lowered the cost of financial speculation as the cost of Coronavirus tests and a vaccine -- and the question of who will bear them, remain indeterminate.

If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.

The brutality of the logic used by the Obama administration in constructing the ACA, Obamacare, is worthy of exploration. The premise behind the 'skin in the game' idea is neoliberalism 101, developed by a founder of neoliberalism, economist Milton Friedman, to ration health care. The basic idea is that without a price attached to it, people will 'demand' more health care than they need. That from a public health perspective, oversupplying health care is better than undersupplying it, is ignored under the premise that public health concerns are communistic. (Read Friedman).

But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at twice the price of comparable systems. Through the 'market' pricing mechanism that existed, the incentive was for people to avoid purchasing healthcare because it was / is wildly overpriced. Not considered was that through geographical and specialist 'natural monopolies,' health care providers had an incentive to undersupply health care by providing high-margin services to the rich.

Furthermore, why would a healthcare system be considered from the perspective of individual users? In contrast to the temporal sleight-of-hand where Obamacare 'customers' are expected to anticipate their illnesses and buy insurance plans that cover them, the entire premise of health insurance is that illnesses are unpredictable. Isn't the Coronavirus evidence of this unpredictable nature? And through the nature of pandemics, it is known that some people will get sick and other people won't. Not known is precisely who will get sick and who won't.

While there are public health emergency provisions in Obamacare that may or may not be invoked, why does it make sense in any case to require that people anticipate future illnesses? Such a program isn't health care and it isn't even health insurance. It is gambling. Guess right and you live. Guess wrong and you die. Why should we be guessing at all? Prior to Obamacare, health insurance companies gamed the system with life and death decisions. In true neoliberal fashion, Obamacare randomized the process as health insurers continue to game the system.

As I understand it, the public health emergency provision in Obamacare might cover virus testing and the cost of a vaccine if one is ever found. Great. What about care? How many readers chose a plan that covers Coronavirus? How many days can you go without a paycheck if you get sick or are quarantined? Who will take care of your children and for how long? How will you pay your rent or mortgage? Who will deliver groceries to your house and how will you pay for them? How will you make the car payment before they repossess it and how will you get to work without it if you recover?

The rank idiocy -- and the political content, of the frame of individual 'consumers' overusing health care quickly devolves to the fact that some large portion of the American people can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Even if they can afford the direct costs, they can't afford the indirect costs. When Obamacare was passed, the U.S. had the worst health care outcomes among rich countries. Ten years later, the U.S. has the worst healthcare outcomes among rich countries . And medical bankruptcies are virtually unchanged since Obamacare was passed.

The reason for focusing on Obamacare is it is the system through which we encounter the Coronavirus. In the narrow political sense of getting a health care bill passed, Obamacare may or may not have been 'pragmatic.' In a public health care sense, it is a disaster decades in the making. The problem wasn't / isn't Mr. Obama per se. It is the radical ideology behind it that was posed as pragmatism. Mr. Obama's success was to get a bill passed -- a political accomplishment. It wasn't to create a functioning healthcare system.

The otherworldly nature of neoliberal theory has led to a most brutal of social philosophies. Mr. Obama later put his energy into lengthening drug company patents to give drug companies an economic advantage provided by the government. Economist Dean Baker has made a career out of hammering this general point home. Michael Bloomberg benefited from government support for both technology and finance. His fortune of $16 billion in 2009 followed stock prices higher to land him at $64.2 billion in 2020.

Donald Trump inherited a large fortune that likewise followed stock and Manhattan real estate prices higher. Both he and Mr. Bloomberg could have put their early fortunes into passive portfolios and received the returns that they claim to be the product of superior intelligence and hard work. Analytically, if the variability of these fortunes tracks systemic, rather than personal, factors, then systemic factors explain them. The same is true of most of the great fortunes of the epoch of finance capitalism that began around 1978.

The point of merging these issues is that they represent flip sides of the neoliberal coin. In a broad sense, neoliberalism is premised on economic Darwinism, the quasi-religious (it isn't Darwin) idea that people land where they deserve to land in the social order. This same idea, that systemic differences in economic outcomes are evidence of systemic causes, applies here. However, differences in intelligence, initiative and talent don't map to systemic outcomes , meaning that concentrated wealth isn't a reward for these.

The ignorant brutality of this system appears to be on its way to getting a reality check through a tiny virus. Unless the Federal government figures this out really fast, most of the bodies will be carried out of poor and working class neighborhoods like mine. Few here have health insurance and most health care providers in the area don't take the insurance they do have. More than a day away from work and many of my neighbors will no longer have jobs. Evictions are a regular state of affairs in good times. There are no resources to facilitate a larger-picture response.

Liberalism, of which neoliberalism is a cranky cousin, lives through a patina of pragmatism until the nukes start flying or a virus hits. Getting healthcare 'consumers' to consider their market choices follows a narrow logic up to the point where none of the choices are relevant to a public health emergency. One I plus another I plus another I doesn't equal us. The fundamental premise of neoliberalism, the Robinsonade I, has always been a cynical dodge to let rich people keep their loot.

The mortality rate and contagion factor recently reported for Coronavirus (links at top) place it above the modern benchmark of the Spanish Flu of 1918 in terms of potential lethality. What should make people angry is how the reconfiguration of political economy intended to make a few people really rich has put the rest of us at increased risk. These are real people's lives and they matter.

Finally, for students of neoliberalism: there is no conflation of neoliberalism with neoclassical economics here. Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that explains why it is, and always will be, a farce.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

[Mar 06, 2020] "Bernie Sanders 2020" ad.

Mar 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

Hail , says: Website Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 12:03 am GMT

@Anatoly Karlin

-Has the flu. Not coronavirus
-Billed $3,270
-Works for medical device company that doesn't offer insurance

This is basically a "Bernie Sanders 2020" ad.

[Mar 05, 2020] Swamp russsiagators at work again: Apparent US Intel Meddling in US Election, With 'Report' Russia is Aiding Sanders Consortiumnews

Looks like Putin have always been eating CIA homework...
Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Consortium News ..."
Feb 21, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
Apparent US Intel Meddling in US Election, With 'Report' Russia is Aiding Sanders

96 Comments

Without any proof, The New York Times and Washington Post run "Russia helping Sanders" stories, and Sanders responds by bashing Russia, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

W ith Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders spooking the Democratic establishment, The Washington Post Friday reported damaging information from intelligence sources against Sanders by saying that Russia is trying to help his campaign.

If the story is true and if intelligence agencies are truly committed to protecting U.S. citizens, the Sanders campaign would have been quietly informed and shown evidence to back up the claims.

Instead the story wound up on the front page of the Post , "according to people familiar with the matter." Zero evidence was produced to back up the intelligence agencies' assertion.

"It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken," the Post reported. That would tell any traditional news editor that there was no story until it is known.

Instead major U.S. media are again playing the role of laundering totally unverified "information" just because it comes from an intelligence source. Reporting such assertions without proof amounts to an abdication of journalistic responsibility. It shows total trust in U.S. intelligence despite decades of deception and skullduggery from these agencies.

Centrist Democratic Party leaders have expressed extreme unease with Sanders leading the Democratic pack. Politico reported Friday that former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's entry into the race is explicitly to stop Sanders from winning on the first ballot at the party convention.

A day after The New York Times reported , also without evidence, that Russia is again trying to help Donald Trump win in November, the Post reports Moscow is trying to help Sanders too, again without substance. Both candidates whom the establishment loathes were smeared on successive days.

In a Tough Spot

The Times followed the Post report Friday by making it appear that Sanders himself had chosen to make public the intelligence assessment about "Russian interference" in his campaign.

But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement after the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on anonymous sources.

Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that Russia is trying to help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even disloyalty to) U.S. intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin.

So politician that he is, and one who is trying to win the White House, Sanders told the Post :

"I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do. In 2016, Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that they are doing it again in 2020."

The Times quoted Sanders as calling Russian President Vladimir Putin an "autocratic thug." The paper reported Sanders saying in a statement: "Let's be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election."

Responding to a cacophony of criticism that Sanders' supporters are especially vicious online, as opposed to the millions of other vicious people online, Sanders attempted to use Russia as a scapegoat, the way the Clinton campaign did in 2016. He said: "Some of the ugly stuff on the Internet attributed to our campaign may well not be coming from real supporters."

But no matter how strong Sander's denunciations of Russia, his opponents will now target him as being a tool of the Kremlin.

Mission accomplished.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for T he Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe , Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .


Juan M Escobedo , February 24, 2020 at 10:55

Let`s face it,even though Bernie is a moderate Social Democrat,at best.He`s the only one capable of beating "the Orange"version of Hitler.But he sounds as if the DNC,big wigs,decide to deny him the nomination;he`d go along with it.Just like before;when he even campaigned for the"Crooked One(Hillary).I guess we`ll see.

Kim Dixon , February 24, 2020 at 04:31

The most-important element missed in this piece is this: Sanders is helping the DNC and the MIC gin up fear of, and hatred for, the only other nuclear superpower on earth.

If you were around during the McCarthy years, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the '73 Arab/Israeli war, and all the other almost-Armageddon crises of Cold War One, you know that nothing could be stupider and more-dangerous than that. The missiles still sit in their silos, waiting for the next early-warning misunderstanding or proxy-war miscalculation to send them flying.

Sanders lived through it all. He's supposed to be the furthest-Left pol in Congress. So how can he possibly advocate for anything but detente and disarmament?

SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:18

I would really like to support Bernie, but statements like this make me shake my head. It's more a reflection of America today I guess. Politicians believe to a man (or woman) that they must put the hate on Putin and Russia or they have no chance. It doesn't matter that the Russia garbage is 100% false. And, I don't mean they 'interfered' only a little there was nothing, nothing at all. Even Trump has to go along with this propaganda. I don't know how anyone can believe this idiotic (and incredibly dangerous, as you point out) rubbish at this point. But you can't call your friends blanking morons.

J Gray , February 25, 2020 at 02:55

I think he successfully dodged a bullet but set himself up to offer comprehensive election reform if he pulls out a victory .

or it is an early sign that he, the DNC & MIC are coming to terms. It doesn't have that ring to it to me, like when Trump called for regime-change war in Venezuela & defunding schools to build a space army. That was a clear on-the-record sell-out & got him off the Impeachment hook the next day. Similar to when the Clinton signed the Telecom Act to get off his.

They are still coming after Sanders too hard w/their McCarthiast attacks to feel like he is siding with them. I think he has to do this because they are bundling his movement, Venezuela and Russia into the new Red Scare.

Tony Kevin , February 23, 2020 at 21:49

"#JoeLauria's piece in #ConsortiumNews is excellent. He calmly sets out #Sanders' political dilemma. The latest line from US intelligence agency stenographer media like #NYTimes is that #Russians are helping both #Trump and Sanders because they simply want to sow discord and cynicism about US democracy , they do not care who wins. #CaitlinJohnstone neatly satirises this by writing a spoof article claiming that US intelligence agencies have discovered #Bloomberg is being helped by Russians because he has two Russian grandfathers.

It has reached the point , as Lauria shows, where any criticism of such US MSM nonsense leaves the speaker open to the allegation that he is soft on/ naive about/complicit in Russian election meddling. Without being a Trump supporter, one can understand Trump's rage and contempt for what is going on .

Justin Glyn. Consortium News. Joe Lauria. Tony Kevin"

Tony Kevin , February 23, 2020 at 21:32

Sanders and Trump will survive this Deep State manipulation and attempted blackmail . They will see off the Clintonistas and Deep State moles, and will go on to fight a tough but fair election. Americans are sick of Russophobia.

jack , February 24, 2020 at 15:25

agreed – the Russiagate psyop is past its shelf life – BUT Deep State will carry on – it's a global entity and they're into literally everything – no idea how any known, normal governing structure can deal with it

Susan J Leslie , February 23, 2020 at 10:40

Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the people

Susan J Leslie , February 23, 2020 at 10:40

Enough with the "Russia" BS already! It is clear to me the wealthy corporate Dems and the MSM are behind all of the smear tactics against Bernie and anyone else who serves the people

Dfnslblty , February 23, 2020 at 09:07

Front page drama plus zero evidence began long ago with 'anonymous sources said "!
Complete lack of accountability on the part of the sources and on the part of the reporters.
Thus we receive a "reality teevee " potus , and we are pleased to be hypnotised and titillated.
A true revolution would demand CN-quality reportage and reject msm pablum.

JohnDoe , February 23, 2020 at 03:43

It's enough to look at the news on mainstream media to understand who's, as usual, meddling in the elections. In the latest period for the first time I saw a lot of enthusiastic comments and articles about Bernie Sanders. It's clear they are pushing him. But why those who isolated him in during the primaries against Clinton are now supporting him? It's obvious, that they want to get rid of Elizabeth Warren, first push ahead the weaker candidates, then they'll switch their support towards another candidate, probably Bloomberg.

delia ruhe , February 23, 2020 at 00:14

Well, thank you Joe Lauria! I am in trouble in several comment threads for suggesting that the intel community is at it again, trying to ruin two campaigns by identifying the candidates with Putin and the Kremlin. Now I can quote you. Excellent piece, as usual.

Deniz , February 22, 2020 at 22:44

Imagine Sanders and Trump, putting their differences aside and declaring war on the deep state during a debate. They have the same enemies.

The same people who planted Steele's dirty dosier are going to try to steal Sanders election from him. It wont be Trump and the Republicans who rigs the election against Sanders.

SteveK9 , February 24, 2020 at 20:21

Trump actually seemed to want to help Bernie a bit (well, he keeps calling him 'Crazy Bernie as well). He put out some tweet calling this latest rubbish, Hoax #7. But Bernie would rather say something stupid, like 'I'm not a friend of Putin he is' talk about 5-year olds.

Deniz , February 25, 2020 at 00:49

Its disappointing. Sanders heart seems to be in the right place, but when it comes time to face the sinister forces that run the country for their own benefit, he will be absolutely crushed.

Linda Jean Doucett , February 22, 2020 at 21:32

This will never end.
No president will ever change anything.
The deep state tentacles will eventually kill us all.
I am going to go and enjoy what's left.

Marko , February 22, 2020 at 20:24

" But Sanders had known for a month about this assessment and only issued a statement after the Post asked him for comment before publishing its uncorroborated story based on anonymous sources Sanders was put in a difficult spot. If he said, "Show me the proof that Russia is trying to help me," he ran the risk of being attacked for disbelieving (even disloyalty to) U.S. intelligence, and, by default, defending the Kremlin. "

I suspect that Sanders was given a classified briefing a month ago , which he couldn't disclose to the public. If so , and given that he didn't make this clear immediately after being accused of withholding this information , he has only himself to blame for the resulting "bad look".

JWalters , February 22, 2020 at 19:06

The corporate media has revealed itself to be a monopoly behind the scenes, working in unison to trash Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Even though Gabbard is only at a few percent in the polls, her message is potentially devastating to the war profiteers who own America's Vichy MSM.

"Congressman Oscar Callaway lost his Congressional election for opposing US entry into WW 1. Before he left office, he demanded investigation into JP Morgan & Co for purchasing control over America's leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of his corporate and banking interests, including profits from US participation in the war."
war * profiteerstory. * blogspot. * com/p/war-profiteers-and-israels-bank.html

Thankfully, there is still a free American press, of which Consortium News is a stellar example.

elmerfudzie , February 22, 2020 at 13:25

The CIA and DIA (it has about a dozen agencies under it and is much larger than any other Intel agency) are supposed to monitor threats to our national security, that originate abroad. Aside from a few closed door sessions with a select group of congresspersons, our Intel agencies have practically no real democratic oversight and remain, for all intents and purposes, a parallel government(s) well hidden from public view. In particular how they are financed and what their actual annual budgets really are. How these agencies every managed to seep into any electioneering process what so ever, is beyond me, since they are all intentionally very surreptitious- by design. We ask questions and these Intel agencies are quick to tout the usual phrase; that subject area is secret and needs to be addressed in closed session, blah, blah, blah. Of course "secrecy" translates into, we do what we want when we want and use information any way we want because our parallel governments represent the best example(s) of a perpetual motion machine that does not require outside monitoring. The origins of these "parallel entities" can be traced to the Rockefeller brothers and their associated international corporations. There's the rub folks. Our citizens at large will never overtake for the purposes of real monitoring, this empire and elephant in the room, directly. However we do have one avenue left and it requires a rank and file demand from the people to their state representatives demanding two long standing issues, they remain unresolved and until a solution is found, will permit dark powers to side step every level of democratic governments-anywhere.

The first is true campaign finance reform and the second is assigning, or rather, removing the status of person-hood to corporate entities. The Rockefeller's used their corporate power and wealth to influence legislative, judicial and executive bodies. They cannot help but do as the puppet master commands! Be it some form of, corporatism, fascism, feudalism, monarchy, oligarchy, even bankster-ism or any other "ism We as citizens at large must make every effort to again, obtain true campaign finance reform and remove the lobbying presence inside the beltway. Today, the corporate entity has risen to a level that completely overtakes and smothers any authentic democratic representation, of and by the people. Originally (circa the early1800's) American corporations were permitted to exist and papers were drawn based on the specific duties they were about to perform, this for the benefit of the local community for example, building a bridge. Once the job was completed, the incorporation was either liquidated or remanded over to the relevant governing body for the purposes of reevaluating the necessity of re-certifying the original incorporation papers. Old man Rockefeller changed the governance and oversight privilege by forcing and promulgating legislation(s) such as limited liability clauses, strategies to oppose competition, tax evasion schemes and (eventually) assigning person-hood to corporate entities, thus creating a parallel government within the government. It all began in Delaware and until we clear our heads and assign names to the actual problems, as I've itemized here, our citizenry will never experience the freedom to fashion our destiny. Please visit TUC radio's two part expose' by Richard Grossman. It will help CONSORTIUMNEWS readers to understand just what a monumental task is ahead for all of us. Work for a fair and equitable future in America, demand campaign finance reform and kick the hustling lobbyists out of our government. Voters being choked to death with senseless debates and useless candidates.

Jeff Harrison , February 22, 2020 at 12:36

The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the craven politicians in Washington, DC. And, no, Ben, we can't keep our republic because we don't have a sufficient mass of critical thinkers to run it. If we did, this kind of BS, having been shot full of holes once, wouldn't get any air.

Alan Ross , February 22, 2020 at 10:37

Sanders may win the nomination and the election but he cannot get a break from some purists on the left. His reaction may have been quite astute. When Sanders says that we should station troops on the borders of Russia or arm the Ukrainians, then you can say he really is anti-Russian. I have not heard all that he has said, but what I have heard sounds so much like hot air put out by a left politician trying to deal with the ages-old establishment and right wing smear that he is a pawn of the commies, a fellow traveler, a pinko, and now an agent of a foreign power, a Russian asset and so on. There is real criticism of Sanders, but his statements about Putin and Russia do not add up to much.

Skip Scott , February 22, 2020 at 09:51

Anyone who is still under the influence of the MSM hypnosis of RussiaGate, led by Rachel Madcow, needs to think long and hard about this latest propaganda campaign. The real message here is unless you support corporate sponsored warmonger from column A or B, you are a tool of the "evil Rooskies". And the funny thing is, Sanders is "weak tea" when it comes to issues of war and peace, and the feeding of the war machine at the government trough with no limits.

The purpose of this BIG LIE of the "Intelligence" agencies is to make it impossible for someone to be against the Forever War without being tarred as a "Foreign Agent", or at least a "useful idiot", of the "EVIL ROOSKIES". To simply want peaceful coexistence on its own merits is impossible.

Imagine if Sanders dared to mention that Putin enjoys substantial majority support inside Russia, and seeks peaceful coexistence in a multi-polar world, instead of calling him an "autocratic thug". Often for politicians, speaking the truth is a "bridge too far". I wonder if Sanders (like Hillary) finds it necessary to hold "private" positions that differ from his "public" positions? Or does he really believe his own BS?

Jacquelynn Booth , February 22, 2020 at 09:19

I had not seen Mr Joe Lauria's article when I commented on Mr Ben Norton's story, but my reply could fit here as well.
The idiot American public dismays me. To them, the "MSM news" and "celebrity gossip reports" are equal and both to be wholeheartedly believed.
There is no point in trying to educate a resistant public in the differences between data and gossip -- public doesn't care.
I weep for what we have lost -- a Constitution, a nation of free thinkers. My heart breaks for the world's people, and what my country tries to do to them, with only a few resistant other countries confronting and challenging America.
It is so difficult to know the truth of a situation and yet to know that almost no one (statistically speaking) believes you.

Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:04

A better distinction might be, concerning the intelligence of the American public, the one Chomsky has used, rooted in Ancient Greek culture, that between KNOWLEDGE and OPINION. Americans, of course, have OPINIONS about everything, but little KNOWLEDGE about much of anything. And it seems their idea of FREEDOM is related to, bound up with, their having OPINIONS about virtually EVERYTHING.

So much for our being a HIGHER life form.

We're in the process of destroying EVERYTHING, not just HIGHER LIFE FORMS [us], but all flora and fauna, water and air on the planet–as I said, EVERYTHING. To paraphrase from memory a citation by Perry Anderson from the work of heterodox Italian Marxist, Sebastiano Timpanaro, "What we are witnessing is not the triumph of man over history, but the victory of nature over man."

Tony , February 22, 2020 at 07:40

The Trump administration has pulled out of the INF missile treaty citing totally unproven claims of Russian violations.
It also looks like allowing the START treaty on strategic nuclear missiles to lapse if we do not stop it.

And so, in what sense would Putin want Trump to get re-elected?

Van Jones of CNN once described the original allegations of Russian meddling in US elections as a 'great big nothing burger'.

Sounds right to me.

Sam F , February 22, 2020 at 07:24

When the secret agencies and mass media stop manipulating public opinion, despite their oligarchy masters' ability to control election results anyway, we will know that they no longer need deception to control the People. Simple force will do the job, with a few marketing claims to assist in hiring goons to suppress any popular movement. Democracy is completely lost, and the pretense of democracy will soon follow.

michael , February 22, 2020 at 07:03

Another foray into domestic politics by the CIA, with anonymous sources and no evidence shown (as no evidence exists). Perhaps the CIA (which probably works for Putin, or Bloomberg, or anyone who pays them best, but they are loyal to the US dollar only; and maybe heroin?) is even now making up another Chris Steele/ Fusion GPS/ CrowdStrike dossier, getting that Russian caterer to the Kremlin to pump out clickbait and sink both Trump and Sanders. Because RUSSIANS!!! are "genetically driven" to interfere in American democracy. Next we'll have the DNC (CIA) pushing Superpredator tropes such as "this enormous cohort of black and Latino males" who "don't know how to behave in the workplace" and "don't have any prospects." With this Clintonian (and Biden and Bloomberg) mindset, America will be increasing incarceration once again. That $500,000 bribe the Clintons took from Putin in 2010 when Hillary was Secretary of State probably plays a role.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have surprisingly noted that China, not Russia, is America's #1 concern: "America's concerns about Beijing's commercial and military expansion should be your concerns as well." Since Bill Clinton's Chinagate fiasco in 1996, Communist China, for a measly $million or so in illegal campaign donations, gained permanent trade status, took millions of American jobs, and suddenly were allowed access to advanced, even military technologies. This was the impetus for China's rise to be the strongest nation in the world. There are no doubt statues of the Clintons all over China, and soon to Hunter Biden, if his Chinese backed hedge funds do well. There are some rumors that Bloomberg has transacted business with China, although doubtful he tried to build a hotel in Beijing or Moscow, or the CIA would be all over it (for a cut)!

Realist , February 24, 2020 at 00:22

Esper is a dangerously deranged man who seems, at least to me, to be telegraphing his intent, and certainly his desire, to get into a kinetic war with both Russia and China (Washington already has most of the hybrid war tactics already fully operational), unless English usage has changed so drastically that insults, overt threats and unrestrained bombast are now part of calm, rational cordial diplomacy. I would not be surprised if neocon mouthpieces like Esper are not secretly honing their rhetorical style to emulate the exaggerated volume and enunciation of der ursprüngliche Führer.

Ma Laoshi , February 22, 2020 at 06:04

"So politician that he is" -- isn't this already on the slippery slope towards double standards, that is, would say Hillary get a similar pass for making McCarthyite statements like this? Isn't a dispassionate reading of the situation that Bernie is an inveterate liar , and moreover specializing in the particular brand of lies that could get us all into nuclear war? Whether it's character or merely age, haven't we seen enough to conclude that Mr. Sanders would be much weaker still vis-a-vis the Deep State than Donald Trump turned out to be?

For those without a dog in this fight, shouldn't it cause great merriment if the various RussiaGaters devour each other? Mr. Sanders has seen for years that the "muh Putin" hoax will be turned against him whenever needed. If he nonetheless persists, doesn't that show his resignation that his role in this election circus is a very temporary one, like in '16? How was that definition of insanity again?

If you want to fix America, then the Empire and Zionism are your enemies; so is the Dem party that is inextricably wedded to these forces. Play along with them and–well what can you expect.

aNanyMouse , February 22, 2020 at 13:29

Yeah, and Bernie sucked up to the Dem brass on the impeachment crap, even tho Tulsi had the stones to at least abstain. How sad.

GMCasey , February 21, 2020 at 22:33

Dear DNC:
KNOCK IT OFF! The only person I am voting for President is the only one who is capable -- and that is Bernie Sanders.
And really, with NATO breaking the agreement where they agreed to NOT go up to Russia's border : it is getting very sad and embarrassing to be an American because the elected ones make agreements and yet break so many. What with Turkey and Israel and Saudi Arabia trying to disrupt the area, I am sure that Russia is too busy to bother disrupting America . Lately America seems to disrupt itself for many ridiculous reasons. I am sorry that the gossip rags, which used to be important newspapers have failed in supporting their First Amendment right of Free speech . I just finished reading "ALL the Presidents Men. " What has happened to you, Washington Post, because as a newspaper, you really used to be somebody. Please review your past and become what you once were, a real genuine news source.

Sam F , February 23, 2020 at 09:18

Wikipedia: "In October 2013, the paper's longtime controlling family, the Graham family, sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company established by Jeff Bezos, for $250 million in cash."

Jim Hartz , February 23, 2020 at 12:37

One of the craziest ongoing media phenomena, prevalent in the Impeachment Hearings, is the repeated claim that RUSSIA IS AT WAR WITH UKRAINE.

What kind of "Higher Life Form" enthusiastically EATS IT'S OWN SHIT?

Sam F , February 21, 2020 at 22:10

Mass media denouncing politicians based upon "information" from secret agencies are propaganda operations, and should be sued for proof of their claims. But of course the judiciary are tools of oligarchy as much as the mass media. No one has constitutional rights in the US under our utterly corrupt judiciary, only paid party privileges.

Eddie S , February 21, 2020 at 21:55

Hmmm.. so those oh-so-clever Russkies (I mean they MUST-BE if they were able to outwit ALL the US politicos -- who are immersed in the US political culture 24/7 as well as having grown-up in this country and having billions of $ to spend -- in 2016 with a mere $100k of Facebook ads) messed-up this time! They're supporting OPPOSING candidates, effectively canceling-out their efforts ? Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a vastly exaggerated distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated by a sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence community??

dale t hood , February 21, 2020 at 22:42

There is NO "intel"; plenty of un-intel, shameless mendacity from these info=dictators zionazi NYT and Wapoop drivel; hopefully the insouciant public is starting to see what a sham these rats are. Hearst outdistanced.

Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 10:45

"Kinda strange, unless that whole 'Russia meddling' thing was a vastly exaggerated distraction by a losing hawkish candidate and her party, further inflated by a sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence community??"

Exactly. Shame on Hillary Clinton and all who view the electorate with such disdain as to have pushed this propaganda on us for the last three years, and continue to do so, obviously. If either Hillary Clinton or the "sensationalistic media and a predictably antagonistic military & intelligence community" had any integrity at all, they would have beaten Trump handily in 2016, just as they condescendingly told us they would. They did not, though, and have been outraged to have been exposed as the frauds they are ever since.

When your political party is nothing more than a marketing scheme designed to fool the population, that population will turn on you. Imagine that. And no amount of Russia-gating will save you. Shame on all who would continue this charade.

John Drake , February 21, 2020 at 21:33

Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad Ruskies are trying to help. One week its Trump, the next it is Sanders. Frankly on the face, it sounds like bad intel to me.
But fortunately I am a regular reader of this site and Ray McGovern; and know it's all, to put it politely , disinformation; or less politely a pile of diarrhea invented by Hillarybots after a really really bad election day three years ago.
The only thing that disturbs me is the way Bernie buys into this Russiagate thing himself. Maybe you all could send him a trove of articles debunking the whole mess, especially Ray and Bill's forensics.

Fred Dean , February 23, 2020 at 03:52

When Durham starts indicting people and the story of the Deep State coup against the President becomes common knowledge, Bernie's statements on Russiagate will be a liability. Trump's people are digging up whatever videos they can of Bernie talking smack about Trump/Russia. It is a crack in Bernie's armor and we can expect Trump to exploit. Bernie has been such a toadie to the DNC. He cowers to the Democratic establishment because he fears they will pull his credentials to run as a Democrat.

OlyaPola , February 23, 2020 at 08:08

"Gosh I wish those so called intel people could make up their mind about whom the big bad Ruskies are trying to help."

Output is a function of framing and consequently the intelligence community/opponents are helping others including the Russians who encourage such help by doing nothing.

KiwiAntz , February 21, 2020 at 21:26

What a shambolic mess of a Nation that America is! Nothing more than a Billionaire's Banana Republic? A International laughingstock ruled by a Oligarchy, masquerading as a Democracy? And if all else fails to get rid of Bernie Saunders by vote rigging or gerrymandering or other nefarious acts of sabotage with Superdelegates stealing the nominations then resurrect the bogus Russiagate Conspiracy, a ridiculous failed & faked experiment to gaslight, spook & confuse the population again? Wouldn't it be delicious if Russiagate was actually TRUE, it would be payback for the USA, a Nation that meddles in the affairs & politics of every other Country on Earth, overthrowing & regime changing everyone who doesn't "bend the knee" to America, the most corrupt & evil Nation on Earth since Nazi Germany! I've never seen a more propagandised or mindf**ked People on Earth than the American people! It must be soul destroying to live in this Country & have to put up with this nonsense, day in, day out?

Ian , February 22, 2020 at 02:47

Yes, it is. Living with the infuriating unreality and militaristic worldview that is so cultivated here takes a personal emotional and intellectual toll. No place is perfect, but when I travel to Europe I feel a weight lifted.

Broompilot , February 22, 2020 at 03:50

Kiwi you may have a point.

ML , February 22, 2020 at 09:19

Yep. But for those of us with our critical thinking skills intact, we won't let it be soul destroying, Kiwi. Still, the daily crapload of bs we are fed in the "legacy" press is aggravating beyond the beyonds. Cheers, fellow Earthling.

Daniel , February 22, 2020 at 11:09

I hear you, KiwiAntz. It IS soul destroying to withstand this onslaught of disinformation each and every day. There is a rhythm to it that is undeniable, too. One can almost predict when the next propaganda hit will come, as here – after their latest would-be savior, Mike Bloomberg, imploded on live TV, and with Bernie looking more and more inevitable.

Our reality in the US today is that we have to fight against our own media to approach anything resembling a reasonable discussion about what is important to vast majorities (mean tweets and fake memes aren't it) or to champion candidates who display even the slightest integrity. But, of course, it is not 'our' media. It is 'theirs.' And they will continue to abuse us with it until we reject it completely.

robert e williamson jr , February 23, 2020 at 20:31

I see things pretty clearly for what they are and the billionaire democrats are heading for a train wreck and I hate to admit I cannot look away.

Trump is just another self serving U.S. president leaving a stain in America's underwear adding to the humongous pile of America's dirty laundry.

When the demographics finally dictate it change will come and likely not before. On that note I wold like to reach out here. Justin King, who goes as Beau on the net runs a site called the Fifth Column News and does a ton of informative and educational videos on many various topics. .

If you go to youtube, search and watch each of the videos I'm about to list here you stand to learn quite a lot about how Americans got screwed by the two party system without really realizing it. Plenty of blame to go around , no doubt though. You will also learn of the changing demographics in American politics. Many of the poor, minorities and youth of the country are coming into politics for they stand to lose everything if they don't change the status quo.

Feb 11 2020 runs 6:21 minutes and seconds- Search terms, Beau Lets talk about the parties switching and the party of trump

Feb 15 2020 runs 4:11 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about dancing left and dancing right

Feb 20 2020 runs 10:44 Search terms, Beau Lets talk about misunderstanding Bernie's supporters

This last video is a long video by Justin's standards. Most of his videos are under 7 minutes.

Much thanks to CN this site and the Fifth Column New site give me strength and bolster my courage by allowing me to know that there are those of us who know what gong on and know things must change.

[Mar 05, 2020] Who needs the Russians to meddle in the US elections when the DNC is much better at undermining the democratic process?

NY Times is citing "people familiar with the situation." How the mighty have fallen. What about Shadow, and the Iowa caucuses, and Buttigieg? That was real. This is absolute horseshit.
Mar 05, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

jmg , February 22, 2020 at 11:32

> Apparent US Intel Meddling in US Election With 'Report' Russia is Aiding Sanders

It looks like the CIA is short of ideas on how to meddle in the elections. Trump had a very similar briefing on January 6, 2017 -- with Brennan, Clapper, Rogers, and Comey -- on Russia allegedly aiding his campaign. As well without any evidence.

Charlene Richards , February 22, 2020 at 14:47

Russia couldn't possibly do the damage to Sanders that the DNC and Democrat Establishment elites are doing out in the open every day with the MSM as their prime propagandists.

As they say in wrestling, it's all "a work".

richard baker , February 22, 2020 at 10:55

Bart Hansen , February 22, 2020 at 18:27

Looking at the comments at the Post and Times, I'd say you are on target. Oh, for the Kool Aid contract at those organs of misinformation and omission.

[Mar 05, 2020] The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the neoliberal politicians in Washington

Notable quotes:
"... the parties are two arguing heads on the same rapacious beast. or in the case of the primaries, a multi-headed beast. ..."
Mar 05, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

Jeff Harrison , February 22, 2020 at 12:36

The real threats to our democracy are our unaccountable surveillance state and the craven politicians in Washington, DC.

And, no, Ben, we can't keep our republic because we don't have a sufficient mass of critical thinkers to run it. If we did, this kind of BS, having been shot full of holes once, wouldn't get any air.

Ground Owl Eats Fox , February 22, 2020 at 21:49

I don't think the Democrats have been very coordinated, and they (the establishment in general) is growing more desperate. They're acting less and less rationally.

My hunch is that Sanders is going to be assassinated. Even if a low chance per industry (5% for MIC; 5% for Wall Street; 5% for Hillary Clinton, etc ) the sheer number of powerful enemies and tens of trillions of dollars (and power) potentially at stake IMO makes it likely that this'll happen, whether coordinated or not. I'm guessing before the convention, if his lead is looking formidable.

He needs to pick a safety VP to make killing him less attractive, and also needs to wear a vest, ride around in a Popemobile-style vehicle, and have trustworthy chemists and doctors to check his food and umbrellas and everything else. And lots of documenters with cameras so if they do kill him in a violent hit maybe they won't get away with it.

tim ashby , February 22, 2020 at 10:38

how on earth could any entity, foreign or domestic, create any outcome in our burlesque electoral process that's worse than any other? the parties are two arguing heads on the same rapacious beast. or in the case of the primaries, a multi-headed beast.

the political circus can be likened to condi rice's concept of "constructive chaos" in the middle east. instead of nonfunctional endless war to render malleable a target for exploitation, we have endless functionless nitpicking blather to render popular leadership impossible.

[Mar 05, 2020] Season of the Switch Dissident Voice

Notable quotes:
"... If you are holding out hope that Bernie can slay the dragon of the existing system at its belladonna roots, then be my guest. I see too many people spending their hope on Elizabeth Warren, which will only serve to suck power away from Bernie, who is the ONLY Democratic candidate movie that has the potential to actually INSPIRE voters, just as Trump does. Bernie deserves credit too for actually CHANGING the nature of the campaign conversation and who just MIGHT even begin to change it at the national level, assuming that time, tide and tyranny allow him four years safe passage to reach his pending retirement. ..."
"... In any case, after a year of endless media barrage, it is rather late now for the gods to intervene. All I would hope is that a few more of us can open our eyes to see past the silly "lesser of two evils" and "#votebluenomatterwho" memes, to the reality of how every one of these candidates serve as puppets to SOME specific mix of master control forces and thus make our choice in THAT more realistic light, rather than thinking that any of them offer "real" independent solutions or that any of their "heroic" feet are NOT already embedded knee, waist or neck-deep in the Big Muddy river of our dissolute illusions of Democracy. ..."
Mar 05, 2020 | dissidentvoice.org

Season of the Switch

Revising History Before It Happens

by Mark Petrakis / March 3rd, 2020

As people march off to the polls today to pick their favorite political actor of the year, I hear precious few voices openly asking what seem to me to be obvious questions, like WHO produced the movie that is their candidacy? Who directed it? Who wrote the script? Who are the investors that will be expecting to see returns on their investment, if their movie and their best actor should somehow win? And how far do the networks of wealth, influence and control extend beyond those public faces inside the campaign? None of these questions strike me as tangential; rather they are all essential.

Let's imagine for a moment that one of these actors can somehow out-thespian Trump once on stage which is HIGHLY unlikely – even for folksy Bernie – UNLESS he can somehow win himself 100% DNC buy-in and 24/7 mainstream "BLUE" media support. But assuming that he (or some "brokered" candidate) wins, it will still be their production teams (along with their extended networks) who will be making their presence felt on Day One of any new presidency. These are the people who will be calling in the favors and calling the shots.

I recall how moved I was by Obama's 2008 election. I was buoyed with hope, because I did not understand then what I understand now – that NO candidate can exist as an independent entity, disconnected from the apparatus and networks that support and produce the narratives that advance them and their agendas. I also recall the day that Obama entered the White House and instantly handed the keys to the economy (and the recovery) back to Geithner, Summers and Rubin – the same trio that had helped destroy it just a year earlier. And he did this at the same moment he was filling his cabinet with the very people "suggested" in that famous leaked letter from the CEO of Citibank. My hope departed in genie smoke at that moment, to be followed by eight years of spineless smooth talk and wobbly action, except where the agendas of Wall Street and pompous Empire were concerned.

Do you see how this works? The game is essentially rigged from the start by virtue of who is allowed to enter the race, what can and what can't be said by them and by who the media is told to shine their light on, and who to avoid. Candidates can, of course, say pretty much anything they want (short of "Building 7, WTF!!" of course) in hopes it will spark a reaction that the media can seize upon.

But just based on words, we know that NONE of these happy belief clowns will forcefully oppose existing "Regime Change" plans for Venezuela, Bolivia and Syria. We know that NONE of them will stand up to Israel – or to a Congress that is, almost to a person, in the pocket of Israel. We know too that NONE of them will bring more than an angry flyswatter to the battle with Wall Street or the corporations. We further know that NONE of them will do more than make modest cuts to military spending or god forbid, call out the secret state's fiscally unaccountable black budget operations, which by now reach into at least the 30 trillions.

Personally, I'm not FOR any candidate simply because I cannot UNSEE what it has taken me 12 years to get into focus; namely, how everyone of them are compromised by a SYSTEM that talks a lot about FIXING what's broken, but which is simply INCAPABLE of delivering anything other than what has been pre-ordained and decreed by the global order of oligarchs, which exists as the "ghost in the machine" that ultimately controls every part of the political "STATE" – at high, middle, low and especially at DEEP levels.

I will say in defense of Bernie that his production team early-on made the very unique decision to crowd-source the campaign's costs. That was a PROFOUND decision, which has paid off for him and which may well buy him a certain level of lubricated control over what is to come, even though the significance of that decision is not well appreciated because the DNC and the MSM simply refuse to discuss it in any depth.

Warren was TRYING to play the populist "people's campaign" game too, until last week when she must have been startled awake by the "Ghost of Reagan's Past" and decided to take the money and run as a Hillary proxy which (big surprise) was what she was all along anyway.

Let me just say this about Joe Biden. From his initial announcement, I never felt he was in his right mind. He seems rather to be teetering on the edge of senility and fast on his way into dementia. Also, the man has openly sold his soul so many times in his career that we shouldn't at this point expect any unbought (or even lucid) thought to ever again escape his remarkably loose lips. Joe might have run with the old skool Dems when he was a big deal on the Delaware streets, but now, like Bloomberg and Romney, he's just another Republican in a pricey blue suit.

I understand how people are feeling stressed, obsessed and desperate to get rid of Donald Trump. It's just that until we take a collective step back and see things at the level from which they actually operate and NOT at the level from which we are TOLD they operate, then we will never be successful in turning our public discourse around or in beginning to identify and eliminate the fascist and anti-human agendas that we associate with Trump, but which actually lie behind the subservient to power policies and preferences of BOTH parties.

If you are holding out hope that Bernie can slay the dragon of the existing system at its belladonna roots, then be my guest. I see too many people spending their hope on Elizabeth Warren, which will only serve to suck power away from Bernie, who is the ONLY Democratic candidate movie that has the potential to actually INSPIRE voters, just as Trump does. Bernie deserves credit too for actually CHANGING the nature of the campaign conversation and who just MIGHT even begin to change it at the national level, assuming that time, tide and tyranny allow him four years safe passage to reach his pending retirement.

In any case, after a year of endless media barrage, it is rather late now for the gods to intervene. All I would hope is that a few more of us can open our eyes to see past the silly "lesser of two evils" and "#votebluenomatterwho" memes, to the reality of how every one of these candidates serve as puppets to SOME specific mix of master control forces and thus make our choice in THAT more realistic light, rather than thinking that any of them offer "real" independent solutions or that any of their "heroic" feet are NOT already embedded knee, waist or neck-deep in the Big Muddy river of our dissolute illusions of Democracy.

– Yet Another Useful Idiot.

Mark Petrakis is a long-time theater, event and media producer based in San Francisco. He first broke molds with his Cobra Lounge vaudeville shows of the 90's, hosted by his alter-ego, Spoonman. Concurrently, he took to tech when the scent was still utopian, building the first official websites for Burning Man, the Residents and multiple other local arts groups of the era. He worked as a consultant to a variety of corps and orgs, including 10 years with the Institute for the Future. He is co-founder of both long-running Anon Salon monthly gatherings and Sea of Dream NYE spectacles. Read other articles by Mark .

This article was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 at 8:34pm and is filed under Barack Obama , Bernie Sanders , Deep State , Democrats , Donald Trump , Elections , Joe Biden , Presidential Debates , United States .

[Mar 04, 2020] From now on Warren is a Biden's Trojan horse. Warren staying in through Super Tuesday certainly hurt Sanders, while disappearance of Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Steyer helped Biden; that smells like the return of the smoke fills room deals

The art of backstabbing, textbook example...
Mar 04, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

... Although it cannot be assumed that all her voters would have gravitated to Sanders, certainly some would have, and with an extra ten points Bernie would have won some states he lost. If she departs after coming in third in her home state, that will help Sanders going forward.

Sanders performed well below the polling. Polls had him competitive in Virginia, where he was crushed by Biden. Polls showed him winning Texas, whereas that turned into a close race.

[Mar 04, 2020] Russiagate should be viewed as classic, textbook case of gaslighting and projecting election interference

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference. ..."
"... Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn. ..."
Mar 04, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

MrWebster on Wed, 03/04/2020 - 1:00pm

What you describe is probably why Russiagate spread so easily to so many people. Nothing happened in previous elections? Everything you describe never happened as you point out. The American electoral system was and is pristine and virginal.

Until the Russians came and destroyed American democracy through social media themes, memes, and retweets.

The American electoral system was never brutally corrupted by rigged votes, voter suppression on the scale of hundreds of thousands, deliberately miscounted votes, voter fraud, etc. Americans never did to each other anything as bad as what the Russians did to Americans.

Of course, for me never worked as I worked in primaries of a democratic machine dominated city. I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference.

Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn.

[Mar 04, 2020] May the Best Man Win

Mar 04, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 03/04/2020 - 8:28am We base our entire politics on the idea that we're living in a meritocracy. In other words, like the knights of old at a joust, we find out who is best through competition, a competition assumed to be both fair and honest. In the old days, the joust was assumed to be fair and honest because God was both omnipotent and just and therefore, obviously, would not allow a bad man to win. Nowadays, even most of us who believe in God don't believe that God controls the outcome of competitions in that way. Yet the assumption of a fair and honest competition persists, despite blatant evidence to the contrary.

In the case of U.S. elections, it is assumed, not that the will of God controls the outcome of competitions, but that the will of the people does. Voter suppression and election fraud are hand-waved away on the dubious grounds that any candidate strong enough could overcome such things. Or maybe the people are to blame. The supporters of the defeated candidate must not have worked hard enough, or maybe the people generally are to blame for not voting in large enough numbers. Those who challenge any of these assumptions are defeated, either by institutional inertia or by gaslighting.

Nothing happens, so nothing happened

Here's what I mean by institutional inertia.

In 2000, there was ample evidence that George W. Bush had committed fraud in the presidential election, with the help of his brother, the governor of Florida. In 2004, there was ample evidence that George W. Bush had committed fraud once again, famously in Ohio, and less famously in Florida for a second time. However, in the first case, Gore stopped fighting after an obviously partisan and corrupt Supreme Court decision, and not a single member of the U.S. Senate was willing to help the Congressional Black Caucus challenge the election. In the second case, Kerry refused to challenge the election in Congress, and the legal case he brought about election fraud, after the fact, did not even make it to the Supreme Court.

In 2016, when New Yorkers brought a case that there had been election fraud and voter suppression in the Democratic primaries, the case was thrown out on the grounds that each county in New York had to file such cases separately, and, by then, the election would be over. Pleas to delay the vote count, or to delay declaring a winner, until the voting rights of the people could be secured, were brushed aside. Much later, when a civil lawsuit was brought against the DNC, the case was once again thrown out for lack of standing, but not before the DNC lawyers had defended their client on the grounds that the DNC didn't have to provide a fair competition, or any competition at all, really, and certainly didn't have to care what the people thought.

The effect of this institutional inertia is not simply that cheaters win the day, or that the people, whose will is being suppressed, lose morale and give up. The complaint itself begins to fade from people's minds. People begin to make excuses for what happened, to justify it, to act as if there never were cheating to begin with. Even many of those who dissent find that, over time, the injustice they remember mellows: no less a person than Jimmy Dore, hardly a weak-minded hack for the establishment, talks now about Gore's "loss" in 2000 as an evil caused by the electoral college. While the electoral college is obviously a tool for elites to control American politics (and never has that been so obvious as over the past two election cycles), such a narrative ignores and erases the police checkpoints that were set up in 2000 near predominantly African American polling places in Leon county, Florida. It ignores the Republican Speaker of the House, Tom DeLay, sending Republican staffers to Dade County to break up Miami's vote count by marching into the Supervisor of Elections office and screaming at the top of their lungs so that no accurate count could take place. It ignores and erases the digital Jim Crow that purged the voter lists of African American Democrats by claiming, falsely, that they were felons. It ignores the fact that emails between the State of Florida and the company that created the Jim Crow software revealed that the company had warned that their software would draw too many false positives, and that the State of Florida had replied "That's just what we want."

Similarly, the DNC's perfidy in 2016 has been reduced to the following: 1) that they had pre-selected their candidate, and didn't provide a real or fair competition, 2) that they gave debate questions ahead of time to Hillary Clinton, 3)that they used the electoral college, most particularly superdelegates, to overwhelm the Sanders movement, and that 4) the party primaries were often closed, not allowing independents the right to vote. Left out, or forgotten, are the multiple polling places closed in states from Arizona to New York (in New York, sometimes even the open polling places had no staff or broken machines), the media calling California for Clinton before the votes were counted, the 136,000 voters purged off Brooklyn's voter rolls (no doubt because Bernie Sanders was born and grew up in Brooklyn and that might have given him an advantage there), and the much larger multi-state purge of the Democratic party through changing people's voter registration without their knowledge and consent.

I'm not bringing this up to attack Jimmy Dore, who is one of the most reliable truth-tellers in the media today, but rather to point out what people's minds do under the stress of watching the establishment normalize corruption again and again. If there is no power to challenge institutional corruption, most people, over time, make of the corruption something less unjust and outrageous. Simply smothering objections to injustice with institutional inertia, will, over time, allow the victors to erase the evidence of their crime.

Sore Loserman

Since we believe, with the faith of fanatics, that competition must be honest and fair, it's easy to gaslight the losers (or the apparent losers). The Republicans in 2000 did not need to disprove the fact that George W. Bush had committed fraud and contravened the will of the people when he climbed up a staircase of disenfranchised Black faces to become President. All the Republicans needed to do was issue tens of thousands of bumper stickers that replaced the words "Gore/Lieberman" with "Sore Loserman." The RNC was using the same argument that was bruited about in the 1980s about poverty and employment. Unemployed poor people had lost the economic competition. Therefore, there must be something wrong with them. Maybe they weren't educated enough, smart enough, clean enough, hard-working enough; maybe they were people of bad character. Bloomberg's racial profiling worked much the same way. Black people are losers in the judicial game because they commit more crimes. That's why we put more police in their neighborhoods, because there are more criminals among young Black men than anywhere else. Corruption can't bring down a meritorious man. If you're good, you'll win. If you complain about cheating or any other form of injustice, you must be a Sore Loserman, attempting to cover up your own inadequacies by whining.

It's pretty obvious that this way of thinking makes it literally impossible to stop even the most outrageous injustice, as long as the perpetrators of that injustice have enough power to spread their "Sore Loser" messaging far and wide. So if I commit identity theft today and access one of your bank accounts, I can be brought to account. But if Wall St cheats homeowners, there was probably something wrong with the homeowners, or with the government for suggesting that those homeowners should get loans. If George W. Bush cheats in an election, there was probably something wrong with the other candidate, or with the voters.

People tend to get upset when I bring this up, because they think that talking about the corruption of the system will demoralize voters, making such discussions their own form of voter suppression. But I bring this up because the worst damage that can come out of Bernie Sanders losing contests in a highly compromised electoral process is that the idea of meritocracy be preserved. There are valid reasons for voting even in a corrupted system (of the "make 'em sweat" variety). There are valid reasons for not voting in a corrupted system. But whatever a citizen chooses to do on Election Day, the idea of meritocracy must die.

Despite all the truly horrendous policies, from both the Democrats and the Republicans, that have laid our society, our people, and the world to waste, the most poisonous effect of the tyranny we live under is its fraudulence: its pretense of being a fair, accurate, and reasonable expression of the will of the people. Even the Democrats' attacks on Trump, who is supposed to be a Manchurian candidate placed in office by Russian intelligence operatives and an existential threat to our democracy, have, in the past two years, increasingly focused on the people who support Trump. It's the voters fault for supporting the bad man. So even when we are supposedly in a situation of foreign powers changing the outcome of a presidential election, it's still the people's fault. Why? Well, there was a competition, and somebody won, so the person who won must be there by the will of the people. It has to be the people's fault.

Corruption among the powerful isn't a thing.

System-wide corruption in all the various infrastructures of our country, especially the political ones, isn't a thing.

Or, if it is, you just didn't do enough lifting at the political gym to be able to fend it off.

[Mar 04, 2020] I just can't be sympathetic with Bernie and his voters tonight. Remember how Bernie came out to support Tulsi Gabbard when she was having such a hard time with the establishment? Neither do I

Mar 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

SharonM , Mar 4 2020 3:34 utc | 104

I just can't be sympathetic with Bernie and his voters tonight. Remember how Bernie came out to support Tulsi Gabbard when she was having such a hard time with the establishment? Neither do I. Remember how Bernie's supporters made sure Bernie would speak the truth about russiagate, or they weren't going to support him? Neither do I. Remember how Bernie made it clear in every debate and every interview that the choice is endless war or medicare for all? He didn't. Watching someone with a few leftist atoms in him being defeated in State after State by a warmongering sociopath who belongs in a hospice with bars on the windows, is like watching what he deserves.

Jackrabbit , Mar 4 2020 6:10 utc | 129

Copeland @122
People who casually tell you that Bernie is for the Empire--and not for the repair of society-- are people trafficking in lies.
I encourage everyone to look at Bernie with a critical eye and decide for yourself. Anyone in political life for any length of time (like Bernie) must know that USA is EMPIRE-FIRST. Empire priorities (military and intelligence focus; 'weaponized' liberalism; neoliberal graft; dollar hegemony; Jihadis as a proxy army; etc.) dictate the limits of domestic politics.

Bernie's quixotic insurgency was doomed to fail unless Bernie attacked the Democratic Party's connection to Empire and use of identity politics to divide and conquer. Oh, and Bernie would have to threaten to leave the Democratic Party -- but then would become the independent Movement that Bernie and the Democratic Party have tried so hard to prevent!

!!

[Mar 04, 2020] Donna Brazile who among other things gave Hillary the question for presidential debate in advance just told the @GOPChairwoman to "go to hell" for suggesting that the Democratic establishment was once again worked to manipulate a nominee into frontrunner status

Mar 04, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Former DNC chairman who gave Hillary Clinton debate questions in advance during the 2016 election, exclaimed on Fox News that Biden's victory was "the most impressive 72 hours I've ever seen in U.S. politics," and told another analyst to " go to hell " for suggesting that the Democratic establishment was once again working to manipulate a nominee into frontrunner status.

The Democrats are in chaos and melting down on live TV.

Donna Brazile just told the @GOPChairwoman to "go to hell" when asked about the chaos.

Best of luck, Donna! Meanwhile, Republicans are more unified than ever! pic.twitter.com/hCwotuF9tx

-- Trump War Room - Text EMPOWER to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) March 3, 2020

[Mar 03, 2020] Brokered convertion is now given. Sanders did not get the necessary support to became the candidate from the party in the first tour.

Mar 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

DB notes that "No one" is likely to win the majority of pledged delegates unless Sanders wins something close to 50% of the delegates , and nobody comes close enough that the Democratic party would rally behind him out of fear of "alienating and disenfranchising just under half the primary voters."

It is hard to project how exactly a brokered convention would unfold this far out and what the party and candidate machinations would be. It will come down to how the rest of the primary process unfolds, but one could see a world where Sanders has 30% of the vote and Biden or one more moderate candidate has just less than that and their voters decide to coalesce and try to say the party in aggregate wanted a more moderate candidate . Alternatively there is a scenario where Sanders ends up in the high 40s% and there is no close second place challenger and the party comes behind him for fear of alienating and disenfranchising just under half of the primary voters. -Deutsche Bank

If Sanders doesn ' t score a decisive win today, moderate Democrats will continue to rally behind this guy:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident.. all men and women are created by... go... you know, the thing!"

This is the candidate that the Democratic Establishment is currently rallying behind.
pic.twitter.com/GlKpblT3En

-- Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 2, 2020

[Mar 03, 2020] Your Super Thursday, err Tuesday Cheat Sheet by Larry C Johnson

Note minuscule amount of voters in each state. This is were election fraud resides.
Mar 03, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I will be very interested to see what happens in the states with closed or semi-closed primaries. That should be a true test of Bernie enthusiasm compared to 2016.

Enjoy.

Alabama: Open primary , with 52 pledged delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

American Samoa: Open caucus, with the territory awarding six delegates on the basis of the results of the caucuses.

Arkansas: Open primary , with 31 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

California: Semi-closed primary -only Democrats and unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot- with the 415 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Colorado: Semi-closed primary –only Democrats and unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot- with 67 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Democrats Abroad: Open primary in which any U.S. citizen living abroad who is a member of Democrats Abroad can participate, with the 13 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Maine: Closed primary –only Democrats can cast a ballot- 24 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Massachusetts: Semi-closed primary –only Democrats and unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot- 91 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Minnesota: Open primary , 75 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

North Carolina: Semi-closed primary –only Democrats and unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot- 110 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Oklahoma: Semi-closed primary –only Democrats and unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot- 37 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Tennessee: Open primary , 64 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Texas: Open primary , 228 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Utah: Open primary , 29 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Vermont: Open primary , 16 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

Virginia: Open primary , 99 delegates being awarded on a proportional basis.

[Mar 03, 2020] Super Tuesday Bernie vs The DNC Round Two

Highly recommended!
Mar 03, 2020 | off-guardian.org

No matter who comes away with the nomination, it has to be asked "was any of this process legitimate?". We know from a plethora of examples that US elections are not fair. They border on meaningless most of the time. The DNC's doubly so, having argued in court they have no duty to be fair.

Any result, then, you could safely assume was contrived, for one reason or another.

If the Buttigieg-Klobuchar-Biden gambit works, we end up with Trump vs. Biden. And, realistically, that means a second Trump term.

Biden is possibly senile and definitely creepy . Watching him shuffle and stutter through a Presidential campaign would be almost cruel.

Politically, he has all of Hillary's weaknesses, being a big-time establishment type with a pro-war record, without even the "I have a vagina" card to play.

He'll get massacred.

Is that the plan?

There's more than enough signs that Trump has abandoned all the policies that made him any kind of threat to the political establishment. Four years on: no wars ended, no walls built, no swamp drained. Just more of the same. He's an idiot who talked big and got co-opted. It happens.

The Senate and other institutions might talk about Trump being a criminal or an idiot or a "Nazi", but the reality is he's barely perceptibly different from any other POTUS this side of JFK.

#TheResistance was a puppet show. A weak game played for toy money. When it really counts, they're all in it together. Biden getting on the ticket would be a public admittance of that. It would mean the DNC is effectively throwing the fight. Trump is a son of a bitch, but he's their son of a bitch. And that's much better than even the idea of President Bernie.

... ... ...

falcemartello ,

Does it really matter?
Empire of kaos will never move one inch to change the status quo.
The quaisi fascist state that most western /antlantacist nations have become it will make no difference
Gianbattista Vico"Their will always be an elite class" Punto e basta.
Name me one politico that made any difference to we the sheeple in the modern era.
If someone were to mention FDR I will scream.
Aldo Moro got murdered by the deep state for only suggesting to make a pact with Berlinguer the head of Il Partito Communista Italiano.

[Mar 03, 2020] The Democratic Party oligarchy are the world champions at every sort of electoral malfeasance

Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin , Mar 3 2020 18:04 utc | 25

The thing to watch today will be the vote stealing by the Democrat oligarchy. They are the world champions at every sort of electoral malfeasance. Remember in 2016 how Bernie almost won New York until Brooklyn, his hometown, was counted and more than 20,000 voters disappeared? Then there was California where millions of votes went uncounted and Hillary was called the winner.


The Democrats are not really a political party in the sense that europeans understand the term, more like an agglomeration of electoral machines, controlled by politicians owned by vested interests, making up the rules as they go along.

With both Biden and Warren desperate for anything that can be portrayed as momentum expect the unexpected: repeats of the sort of nonsense we saw in Iowa and local precincts in which 110% of the electorate give unanimous support to the candidate most likely to take away their social security and wave 'bye-bye' as they die untreated of diseases. Or malnutrition.
A
nd the cherry on top of the electoral sundae in today's primaries will be the near unanimity with which the most glaring irregularities are ignored by the media, and anyone suggesting that 2+2= anything as predictable as 4 will be called a conspiracy theorist, working for Putin and the KGB.

[Mar 03, 2020] Let s Talk About Your Alleged #Resistance by Joe Giambrone

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children . ..."
"... What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working Americans are not the points of contention in this race. ..."
"... Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in poll after poll . The only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't enough. ..."
"... Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000 children had been killed. ..."
"... Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite. ..."
"... How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa– the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children. ..."
"... The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents a hopeful future for the next generation. ..."
"... The DNC's message is very clear– they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. ..."
"... But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marbles–it's obvious–we can only guess it's some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee, Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates. ..."
"... I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump. He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years. ..."
"... Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything" ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then. ..."
"... We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy. ..."
"... 'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root. ..."
"... Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns ..."
"... Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken. ..."
"... Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it." ..."
"... Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago, with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. ..."
Mar 03, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Editor Joe Giambrone

In 2016, Hillary Clinton deserved to lose, and she did. Her deception, her cheating in the primary elections , was well-documented, despicable, dishonest, untrustworthy. Her money-laundering scheme at DNC should have been prosecuted under campaign finance laws.

Her record of warmongering and gleefully gloating over death and destruction was also well established. On national TV she bragged about the mutilation of Moammar Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died!"

Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children .

This person was undeserving of anyone's support.

What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working Americans are not the points of contention in this race.

His opponents have instead opted for every nonsensical conspiracy theory and McCarthyite smear they can concoct, including the most ridiculous of all: the Putin theory , without a single shred of evidence to support it.

Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in poll after poll . The only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't enough.

Bernie wins, and he has the best overall shot of changing the course of history, steering America away from plutocracy and fascism.

That crucial race is happening right now in the primaries . If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders have already signaled that they will steal the nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday.

It's either Trump or Bernie. That's your choice. Your only choice.

Where is your so-called "#Resistance" now?


Ben Barbour ,

Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000 children had been killed.

Bernie also voted for Clinton's 1999 bombing campaign on Kosovo.

All that said, yes, Bernie is the best option.

Rhys Jaggar ,

Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite.

When they spout bullshit that 20% of UK workers could miss work 'due to coronavirus', when we have had precisely 36 deaths in a population of 65 million plus, you know that like climate change, they spout the 1% probability as the mainstream narrative .

It just shows what folks are up against when media is so cravenly serving those who do not pay them.

Charlotte Russe ,

"If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders have already signaled that they will steal the nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday."

While Bernie spent more than three decades advocating for economic social justice Biden spent those same three decades promoting social repression."

"The 1990s saw Biden take aim at civil liberties, authoring anti-terror bills that, among other things, "gutted the federal writ of habeas corpus," as one legal scholar later reflected. It was this earlier legislation that led Biden to brag to anyone listening that he was effectively the author of the Bush-era PATRIOT ACT, which, in his view, didn't go far enough. He inserted a provision into the bill that allowed for the militarization of local law enforcement and again suggested deploying the military within US borders."

How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa– the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children.

The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents a hopeful future for the next generation.

The DNC's message is very clear– they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. In fact, they're saying more than that–if uninvited workers and the marginalized dare to enter they'll be tossed out on their arse

In plain sight the mainstream media news is telling millions that NO one can stop the military/security/surveillance/corporate state from their stranglehold over the corrupt political duopoly.

I say fight and don't give-up! Be prepared–organize a million people march and head to Milwaukee– the future of the next generation is on the line.

But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marbles–it's obvious–we can only guess it's some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee, Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates.

But if Biden, makes it to the Oval Office he'll be "less" than a figurehead. Biden, will be as mentally acute as the early bird diner in a Florida assisted living facility after a recent stroke. The national security state will seize control– handing the "taxidermied Biden" a pen to idiotically sign off on their highly insidious agenda ..

Ken Kenn ,

Pretty straightforward for me ( I don't know about Bernie? ) but if the Super delegates and the DNC hierarchy decide to hand the nomination over to Biden then Bernie should stand as an independent. At least even in defeat a left marker would be placed on the US political table away from the Corporate owners and the shills that hack for them in the media and elsewhere. At least ordinary US people would know that someone is on their side.

Corbyn in the UK was described as a ' Marxist' by the Tories and the unquestioning media. Despite all that ' Marxist ' Labour got 33% of the vote. People will vote for a ' socialist '

Charlotte Ruse ,

Unfortunately, Bernie won't abandon the Democratic Party. However, there's a ton of Bernie supporters who will vote Third Party if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.

paul ,

I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump. He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years.

That's when he hasn't been shilling for regime change wars in Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and elsewhere against "communist dictators."

Bernie will get shafted again shortly and fall into line behind Epstein's and Weinstein's best mate Bloomberg or Creepy Joe, or Pocahontas, or whoever.

If by some miracle they can't quite rig it this time and Bernie gets the nomination, the DNC will just fail to support him, and allow Trump to win. They would rather see Trump than Bernie in the White House.

Just like Starmer, Thornberry, Phillips and all the Blairite Backstabber Friends of Israel were more terrified of seeing Jezza in Number Ten than any Tory.
Dr. Johnson said that getting remarried represented the triumph of hope over experience.

The same applies to people expecting any positive change from people like Bernie, Tulsi, or Jezza.

The system just doesn't allow it.

pete ,

Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything" ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then.

Gezzah Potts ,

We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy.

clickkid ,

"The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday." Sorry Joe, but where have you been for the last 50 years" Elections are irrelevant. Events change the world – not elections. The only important aspect of an election is the turnout. If you vote in an election, then at some level you still believe in the system.

Willem ,

Sometimes Chomsky can be useful

'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root.

Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns.'

If true, the question is, what are we not allowed to say? Or is Chomsky wrong, and are we allowed to say anything we like since TPTB know that words cannot, ever, change political action as for that you need power and brutal force, which we do not have and which, btw Chomsky advocates to its readers not to try to use against the nation state?

So maybe Chomsky is not so useful after all, or only useful for the status quo.

Chomsky's latest book, sold in book stores and at airports, where, apparantly, opinions of dissident writers whose opinions go beyond the bounds of the consensus of elites, are sold in large amounts to marginalize those opinions out of society, is called 'Optimism over despair', a title stolen from Gramsci who said: 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.'

But every time I follow Chomsky's reasoning, I end in dead end roads of which it is quite hard to find your way out. So perhaps I should change that title into 'nihilism over despair'. If you follow Chomsky's reasoning

clickkid ,

Your Chomsky Quote: "'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. .. " Tell that to the Yellow Vests.

ajbsm ,

Despite the deep state stranglehold .on the whole world there seems to be a 'wind' blowing (ref Lenin) of more and more people turning backs on the secret service candidates – not just in America. Power, money and bullying will carry on succeeding eventually the edifice is blown away – this will probably happen, it will be ugly and what emerges might not even be better(!) But the current controllers seem to have a sell by date.

Ken Kenn ,

I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt. A revolution can only come about when the Bourgeoisie can no longer continue to govern in the old way. In other words it becomes more than a want – more of a necessity of change to the ordinary person.

We have to remember that in general ( it's a bit of a guess but just to illustrate a point ) that a small majority of people in any western nation are reasonably content – to an extent. They are not going to rock the boat that Kennedy tried to make the tide rise for or that Thatcher and her mates copied with home owner ship and the right to get into serious debt. This depends on whether you had/have a boat in the first place. If not you've always been drowning in the slowly rising tide.

Sanders as I've said before is not Castro. He has many faults but in a highly parameterised p Neo liberal economic loving political and media world he is the best hope. Not great stuff on offer but a significant move away from the 1% and the 3% who work for them ( including Presidents and Prime Misister ) so even that slight shift is plus for the most powerful country on planet earth.

I have in the past worked alongside various religious groups as an atheist as long as they were on the right( or should that be left?) side on an issue.

Now is not the time for the American left to play the Prolier than though card.

Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken.

wardropper ,

I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt. But didn't the Storming of the Bastille happen for that very reason? I think people are waiting for just one spark to ignite their simmering fury – just one more straw to break the patient camel's back. Understandably, the "elite" (which used to mean exalted above the general level) are in some trepidation about this, but, like all bullies their addiction to the rush of power goes all the way to the bitter end – the bitter end being the point at which their target stands up and gives them a black eye. It's almost comical how the bully then becomes the wailing victim himself, and we have all seen often enough the successfully-resisted dictatorial figure of authority resorting to the claim that he is now being bullied himself. But this is a situation of his own making, and our sympathy for him is limited by our memory of that fact.

Ken Kenn ,

Where's the simmering fury in the West. U.S. turnout is pathetically low. Even in the UK the turnout in the most important election since the First World War was 67%. I see the result of the " simmering fury " giving rise to the right not the left. Just that one phrase or paragraph of provocative words will spark the revolution?

... ... ...

wardropper ,

My point, which I thought I made clearly enough, was that the fury is simmering , and waiting for a catalyst. I also think an important reason for turnout being low is simply that people don't respond well to being treated like idiots by an utterly corrupt establishment. They just don't want to participate in the farce.

Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and, like you, I am quite happy to back Sanders as by far the best of a pretty rotten bunch. Perhaps China is indeed leading in many respects right now, but becoming Chinese doesn't seem like a real option for most of us at the moment . . . Incidentally I have been to China and I found the people there as interesting as people anywhere else, although I particularly enjoyed the many things which are completely different from our western cultural roots.

Rhisiart Gwilym ,

Speaking of the Clintons' death toll, didn't Sanders too back all USAmerica's mass-murdering, armed-robbery aggressions against helpless small countries in recent times? And anyway, why are we wasting time discussing the minutiae of the shadow-boxing in this ridiculous circus of a pretend-democratic 'election'? Watching a coffin warp would be a more useful occupation.

I go with Dmitry Orlov's reckoning of the matter: It doesn't matter who becomes president of the US, since the rule of the deep state continues unbroken, enacting its own policies, which ignore the wishes of the common citizens, and only follow the requirements of the mostly hyper-rich gics (gangsters-in-charge) in the controlling positions of this spavined, failing empire. (My paraphrase of Dmitry.)

USPresidents do what their deep-state handlers want; or they get impeached, or assassinated like the Kennedy brothers. And they all know this. Bill Hick's famous joke about men in a smoke-filled room showing the newly-'elected' POTUS that piece of film of Kennedy driving by the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, is almost literally true. All POTUSes understand that perfectly well before they even take office.

Voting for the policies you prefer, in a genuinely democratic republic, and actually getting them realised, will only happen for USAmericans when they've risen up and taken genuine popular control of their state-machine; at last!

Meanwhile, of what interest is this ridiculous charade to us in Britain (on another continent entirely; we never see this degree of attention given to Russian politics, though it has a much greater bearing on our future)? Our business here is to get Britain out of it's current shameful status, as one of the most grovelling of all the Anglozionist empire's provinces. We have a traitorous-comprador class of our own to turn out of power. Waste no time on the continuous three-ring distraction-circus in the US – where we in Britain don't even have a vote.

wardropper ,

The upvotes here would seem to show what thinking people appreciate most. Seeing through the advertising bezazz, the cheerleaders and the ownership of the media is obviously a top priority, and I suspect a large percentage of people who don't even know about the OffG would agree.

John Ervin ,

Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago, with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. And that much still holds true. Game. Set. Match. Any questions?

Antonym ,

What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous.

US deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016: they would love him to become string puppet POTUS in 2020. Trump is more difficult to control so they hate him.

John Ervin ,

Just one more Conspiracy Realist, eh! When will we ever learn? "The deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016 ." That gives some sense of the ease with which they pull strings, nicely put. One variation on the theme of your metaphor: "They savored him as one might consume a cocktail olive at an exclusive or entitled soirιe."

It is painfully clear by any real connection of dots that he is simply one of their stalking horses for other game. And that Homeland game (still) doesn't know whether a horse has four, or six, legs.

*****

"Puppet Masters, or master puppets?"

Antonym ,

It is painfully clear that US Deep state hates Trump simply by looking at the Russiagate they cooked him up.

Fair dinkum ,

The US voters have surrounded themselves with a sewer, now they have to swim in it.

[Mar 03, 2020] Bernie Saunders will be ousted by the powers that don't want him to be successful in the bordello that is the Washington politik

Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Beibdnn , Mar 3 2020 15:50 utc | 8

Sadly I reckon Bernie Saunders will be ousted by the powers that don't want him to be successful in the bordello that is the Washington politik.
I find it amusing he's labeled as a Socialist. He's a champagne socialist at best.
I fall about laughing when he claims he's going to tell Putin anything at all.
Should the miracle of U.S. democracy pass and he's elected POTUS, meeting Vladimir Vladimirovich will be a rather large culture shock methinks.
Thanks for the laughs, those passed and if elected, those to come, Bernie.

Piotr Berman , Mar 3 2020 15:55 utc | 9

Very smart establishment tactic. A combo of long predicted Biden win in South Carolina with resignation of Klob and Butti and endorsement may give Biden plurality in some states. Strategy of picking a senile champion with "stellar" Obama credentials and a mine of paydirt for Republican to excavate is dubious. But the youngsters, starting from Beto and ending with Klob/Butti pair of mixed twins proved to be so-so campaigners at their best. BTW, Steyer dropped after spending 200 M+ with nary a comment. The same may happen to Little Mike. Direct reign of billionaires in USA seems to be a failing experiment (assuming that Little Mike is correct when he says that Donald "I will not show tax return to anyone" Trump is a fake billionaire), or a work still in progress.
peter , Mar 3 2020 16:09 utc | 11
What is there to comment on? The majority right in the DNC will be pushing Biden, the left of right under Sanders will be cheated out of the nomination and Trump will rule another 4 years.
That there is a "left" in the Democrat Party is an illusion, what counts for the left there would be the equivalent of the CDU in Germany under Merkel.

[Mar 03, 2020] Hillary Clinton regarding the primaries: "Let's follow the rules"

Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Mar 3 2020 15:06 utc | 2

Quote of the Day
or
Quote of the Millennia?

Hillary Clinton regarding the primaries:

"Let's follow the rules"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485646-hillary-clinton-responds-to-sanders-on-delegates-lets-follow-the-rules


Trailer Trash , Mar 3 2020 15:49 utc | 6

Is there any other nation state that has 50 separate official elections, mostly run and paid for by the public, just so a private club masquerading as a political party can select its leader? To the rest of the world, this must look completely insane, but few people anywhere even seem to notice how ridiculous it all looks.
Nathan Mulcahy , Mar 3 2020 22:54 utc | 62
Stop calling it USA. It is USO (United States of Oligarchs).

[Mar 03, 2020] The mainstream corporate Democrats may well get their way, but what happens to the party afterwards is the question.

Mar 03, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Jane , 01 March 2020 at 09:38 PM

It's about the numbers and superdelegates. The "reforms" in the DNC system following 2016 include a new rule that superdelegates, all 93 of them, cannot take part in the first round of voting. If there is no outright plurality, these 93 delegates, all of whom have stated no intention to give their votes to Bernie, will rule the day. The only candidate that might help Bernie is Warren if/if the math shows that whatever number of delegates she gets would give Bernie his plurality in the first round. Those superdelegates tell us a lot about our two-party system.

At least one wealthy delegate is a major donor to Republican candidates.

They largely represent the same corporate interests that ensure that neither party does anything dramatic to harm Wall Street or big industries. A look at the actual voting records of Democratic senators and house members reveals a lot that public posturing does not.

Democratic leaders have said that they would rather lose the election to Trump than to have the party taken over by progressives. The mainstream corporate Democrats may well get their way, but what happens to the party afterwards is the question.

[Mar 03, 2020] Vampire Squid interests in 2020 elections by the Democratic Party elites, should he miraculously become the party's nominee, the game of least worst will radically change. All the terrifying demons that inhabit Trump will be instantly exorcised. But unlike in the biblical story of Jesus driving the demons into a herd of swine, they will be driven into the senator from Vermont. Trump will become the establishment's reluctant least worse option. Sanders will become a leper. The Democratic and Republican party elites, joining forces as they did in the 1972 presidential election, will do to Sanders what they did to George McGovern, who lost in 49 of the 50 states. "If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he'll ruin our economy and doesn't care about our military," former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (net worth $1.1 billion) tweeted. "If I'm Russian, I go with Sanders this time around." "If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he'll ruin our economy and doesn't care about our military," former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (net worth $1.1 billion) tweeted. "If I'm Russian, I go with Sanders this time around."

Related Articles
Mar 03, 2020 | www.truthdig.com
Matt Taibbi: Democrats Are Unwittingly Handing Sanders the Nomination by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
The Clinton Machine Will Do Anything to Stop Bernie Sanders by Robert Scheer
Bernie Sanders Faces a Media Rigged Against Him by Jeff Cohen

Blankfein, who calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and who headed Goldman Sachs when it paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speaking engagements in 2013, laid out the stance of the billionaire class that controls the Democratic Party. The New York Times reported that Mike Novogratz, "a Goldman Sachs alumnus who runs the merchant bank Galaxy Digital, said Mr. Sanders's oppositional nature had prompted 'too many friends' to say they would vote against him in November. 'And they hate Trump,' he said."

"Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it," Hillary Clinton says of Sanders in a forthcoming television documentary .

The courtiers in the press, pathetically attempting to spin Sanders' New Hampshire win into a victory for the corporate-endorsed alternatives, are part of the firing squad. "Running Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity" read the headline in a piece by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. "No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders would be insane," he wrote. David Frum -- now a darling of the Democratic elites, like many other Republicans who morphed from George W. Bush supporters into critics of Trump -- announced in The Atlantic that Bernie can't win. "Sanders is a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot," Frum wrote. "Class relations are foundational; everything else is epiphenomenal."

Jennifer Rubin declared in The Washington Post that a Sanders nomination would be a "disaster for the Democrats." "Sanders's campaign, like all primary campaigns, is a preview of the general-election race and, if elected, the administration he would lead," Rubin wrote . "A nominee who insists on personally attacking all doubters and the media might be a model for the Republican Party, but Democrats are not going to win with their own Donald Trump, especially one who has burned bridges and stirred resentment in his own party."

Thomas Friedman, in a column supporting Bloomberg, the newest savior in the protean Democratic firmament, wrote of Sanders: "On which planet in the Milky Way galaxy is an avowed 'socialist' -- who wants to take away the private health care coverage of some 150 million Americans and replace it with a gigantic, untested Medicare-for-All program, which he'd also extend to illegal immigrants -- going to defeat the Trump machine this year? It will cast Sanders as Che Guevara -- and it won't even be that hard."

MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, descending to the Red baiting employed by Blankfein, said that "if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, okay?"

Despite the hyperventilating by corporate shills such as Matthews and Friedman, Sanders' democratic socialism is essentially that of a New Deal Democrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for "Medicare for All," abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall , raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.

Sanders, unlike many more radical socialists, does not propose nationalizing the banks and the fossil fuel and arms industries. He does not call for the criminal prosecution of the financial elites who trashed the global economy or the politicians and generals who lied to launch preemptive wars, defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, which have devastated much of the Middle East, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees and displaced people, and cost the nation between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. He does not call for worker ownership of factories and businesses. He does not promise to halt the government's wholesale surveillance of the public. He does not intend to punish corporations that have moved manufacturing overseas. Most importantly, he believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate. The vicious attacks against him by the elites are an indication of how anemic and withered our politics have become.

The Democrats have, once again, offered us their preselected corporate candidates. We can vote for a candidate who serves oligarchic power, albeit with more decorum than Trump, or we can see Trump shoved down our throats. That is the choice. It exposes the least worst option as a con, a mechanism used repeatedly to buttress corporate power. The elites know they would be safe in the hands of a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama or a John Kerry, but not a Bernie Sanders -- which is a credit to Sanders.

The surrender to the "least worst" mantra in presidential election after presidential election has neutered the demands of labor, along with those organizations and groups fighting poverty, mass incarceration and police violence. The civil rights, women's rights, environment justice and consumer rights movements, forced to back Democrats whose rhetoric is palatable but whose actions are inimical to their causes, get tossed overboard. Political leverage, in election after election, is surrendered without a fight. We are all made to kneel before the altar of the least worst. We get nothing in return. The least worst option has proved to be a recipe for steady decay.

The Democrats, especially after Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential run, have erected numerous obstacles to block progressives inside and outside the party. They make ballot access difficult or impossible for people of color. They lock third-party candidates and often progressives in the Democratic Party, such as Dennis Kucinich , out of the presidential campaign debates. They turn campaigns into two-year-long spectacles that cost billions of dollars. They use superdelegates to fix the nominating process. They employ scare tactics to co-op those who should be the natural allies of third parties and progressive political movements.

The repeated cowardice of the liberal class, which backs a Democratic Party that in Europe would be considered a far-right party, saw it squander its credibility. Its rhetoric proved empty. Its moral posturing was a farce. It fought for nothing. In assault after assault on the working class it was complicit. If liberals -- supposedly backers of parties and institutions that defend the interests of the working class -- had abandoned the Democratic Party after President Bill Clinton pushed through the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump would not be in the White House. Why didn't liberals walk out of the Democratic Party when Clinton and the Democratic Party leadership, including Biden, passed NAFTA? Why didn't they walk out when the Clinton administration gutted welfare? Why didn't they walk out when Clinton pushed through the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which abolished the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis that trashed the global economy in 2008? Why didn't they walk out when year after year the Democratic Party funded and expanded our endless wars? Why didn't they walk out when the Democrats agreed to undercut due process and habeas corpus? Why didn't they walk out when the Democrats helped approve the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? Why didn't the liberals walk out when the party leadership refused to impose sanctions on Israel for its war crimes, enact serious environmental and health care reform or regulate Wall Street? At what point will liberals say "Enough"? At what point will they fight back?

By surrendering every election cycle to the least worst, liberals proved they have no breaking point. There never has been a line in the sand. They have stood for nothing.

Bernie Sanders arose in 2016 as a political force because he, like Trump, acknowledged the bleak reality imposed on working men and women by the billionaire class. This reality, a reality ignored by the ruling elites, was spoken out loud. The elites were held accountable. The Democratic elites scrambled, successfully, to deny Sanders the 2016 nomination. The Republican elites squabbled among themselves and failed to prevent Trump from becoming the party nominee.

The 2016 chessboard has reappeared, but this time in the Democratic Party primary. The Democratic hierarchy, as horrified by Sanders as the established Republican elites were by Trump, is flailing about trying to find a political savior to defeat the Red menace. Their ineptitude, Sanders' primary asset, was displayed when they mangled the Iowa primary. They, like the Republican elites in 2016, are woefully disconnected from their constituency, attempting to persuade a public they betrayed and no longer understand.

Joe Biden, long a stooge of corporate America, for example, is frantically attempting to paint himself as a champion of poor people of color after his defeats in the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The onetime vice president, however, was one of the driving forces behind the strategy to take back the "law and order" issue from the Republicans. He and Bill Clinton orchestrated the doubling of the prison population, the militarization of the police, and mandatory minimum sentences along with juvenile boot camps, drug courts, policing in schools and the acceleration of the deportation of "criminal aliens." During Biden's leadership in the Senate -- where he served from 1973 until 2009, when he became Obama's vice president -- the Congress approved 92 death-eligible crimes in an almost identical period. These Democratic "law and order" policies landed like hammer blows on poor communities of color, inflicting untold misery and egregious acts of injustice. And now Biden, who pounded the nails into those he crucified, is desperately trying to present himself to his victims as their savior. It is a sad metaphor for the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.

Biden, however, is no longer the Democratic ruling elite's flavor of the month. This mantle has been passed to Bloomberg, once the Republican mayor of New York and a Rudy Giuliani ally whose indiscriminate stop-and-frisk harassment of, mainly, African Americans and Latinos was ruled unconstitutional. Bloomberg, whose net worth is estimated at $61.8 billion, said he is ready to spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, what The New York Times has called "a waterfall of cash." He has bought the loyalty of much of the ruling Democratic establishment. He spent, for example, $110 million in 2018 alone to support 24 candidates now in Congress. He is saturating the airwaves with commercials. He is lavishing high salaries and perks on his huge campaign staff. Sanders, or anyone else defying the billionaire class, cannot compete financially. The last desperate gasp of the Democratic Party establishment is to buy the election. Bloomberg is ready to oblige. After all, Bloomberg's money worked miracles in amassing allies to overturn New York City term limits so he could serve a third term as mayor.

But will it work? Will the Democratic elites and Bloomberg be able to smother the Democratic primaries with so much money that Sanders is shut out?

"As with Republicans in 2016, the defining characteristic of the 2020 Democratic race has been the unwieldy size of the field," Matt Taibbi writes. "The same identity crisis lurking under the Republican clown car afflicted this year's Democratic contest: Because neither donors nor party leaders nor pundits could figure out what they should be pretending to stand for, they couldn't coalesce around any one candidate. These constant mercurial shifts in 'momentum' -- it's Pete! It's Amy! Paging Mike Bloomberg! -- have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to continue doing so."

If Sanders gets the nomination it will be due to the Keystone Cops ineptitude of the Democratic leadership, one that as Taibbi points out replicates the ineptitude of the Republican elites in 2016. But this time there will be a crucial difference. The ruling elites, once divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton, with most of the elites preferring Clinton, will be united against Sanders. They will back Trump as the least worst. The corporate media will turn its venom, now directed at Trump, toward Sanders. The Democratic Party's mask will come off. It will be open warfare between them and us. Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers

[Mar 03, 2020] Bloomberg spoke at Aipac and did nothing but trash Bernie in his speech of wrongly judging Aipac and not being loyal to Israe

Mar 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Circe , Mar 2 2020 16:59 utc | 91

Bloomberg spoke at Aipac and did nothing but trash Bernie in his speech of wrongly judging Aipac and not being loyal to Israel.

If I were Bernie I would wear Bloomberg's attacks as a BADGE OF HONOR.

Bernie Sanders is definitely going to take on Israel for its oppression of Palestinans in a way that no other previous President has done.

Interesting article in The Intercept on this subject.

ON MONDAY, the only Jewish candidate in the Democratic presidential race stood in front of an audience of Jews in Washington, D.C., and suggested cutting U.S. aid to Israel.

And they applauded him.

"I would use the leverage, $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government or for that matter to any government at all," Sen. Bernie Sanders said at the annual convention of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group.

It isn't the first time Sanders has discussed deploying foreign aid as "leverage" over the Jewish state. Back in the fall of 2017, in an interview with me for The Intercept, the Vermont senator described the United States as "complicit" in the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and said he would consider voting to reduce U.S. aid to Israel.

At J Street, however, he went much further. "What is going on in Gaza right now is absolutely inhumane, it is unacceptable, it is unsustainable," the Democratic presidential candidate told his interviewers, Pod Save the World hosts -- and former Obama aides -- Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes. "My solution is to say to Israel: You get $3.8 billion every year. If you want military aid, you're going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza."

Then came the kicker: "In fact, I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza."

"I can't think of any presidential contender from either party who's said anything comparable," said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution and the author of the recently published book "Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump." Diverting money away from the Israeli military and toward hungry Gazans may not sound radical as a policy, Elgindy told me, but "from a political standpoint it's an earthquake."

I asked the independent senator to respond to these attacks on him, and on the people of Gaza, from the right. "Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian and environmental crisis," Sanders told me. "Conflating an effort to address that crisis with 'support for Hamas' is part of an effort to dehumanize Palestinians and continue the conflict."

Bernie Sanders Palestine

Bernie Sanders will also restore the JCPOA, and have a 180-degree different relationship with Iran. He is determined to invest heavily on domestic issues, therefore NOT on war, regime change machinations and will reduce troop level presence overseas and reduce military spending to help fund domestic issues, and instead focus and rely on increasing diplomacy to solve disagreements instead of sanctions and military escalation.

What a refreshing change all this will be. The Palestinians are referring to him as their Moses and Bernie has Palestinian advisors in his campaign adminisration and hired a young Palestinian author and political rising star to intern in his office in Congress.

Bernie Sanders will be the 46th President-TG! The world is desperate for this transformation. Bernie Sanders will eclipse Obama's popularity on the world stage!

[Mar 03, 2020] Whacking Rich is a reminder to Sanders what the party establishmen is capable of

Highly recommended!
Mar 03, 2020 | www.unz.com

An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.

There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made its way from there to WikiLeaks.

Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used, meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system. Someone like Seth Rich.

... ... ...

Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference, which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the Clinton and Podesta emails.

Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable of.

It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone's guess, but many of those who pause to observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.


plantman , says: Show Comment February 29, 2020 at 9:35 pm GMT

Excellent roundup.

I don't ascribe to the idea that the intel agencies kill American citizens without a great deal of thought, but in Rich's case, they probably felt like they had no choice. Think about it: The DNC had already rigged the primary against Bernie, the Podesta emails had already been sent to Wikileaks, and if Rich's cover was blown, then he would publicly identify himself as the culprit (which would undermine the Russiagate narrative) which would split the Democratic party in two leaving Hillary with no chance to win the election.

I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking Rich but eventually realizing that there was no other way to deflect responsibility for the emails while paving the way for an election victory.

If Seth Rich went public, then Hillary would certainly lose.

I imagine this is what they were thinking when they decided there was really only one option.

james charles , says: Show Comment February 29, 2020 at 11:14 pm GMT
"I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption."
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

"The FBI Has Been Lying About Seth Rich"
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

niteranger , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 12:08 am GMT
@plantman It's more than Hillary losing. It would have been easy to connect the dots of the entire plot to get Trump. Furthermore, it would have linked Obama and his cohorts in ways that the country might have exploded. This was the beginning of a Coup De'tat that would have shown the American political process is a complete joke.

... ... ...

Carlton Meyer , says: Website Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 1:04 am GMT
To understand why the DNC mobsters and the Deep State hate him, watch this great 2016 interview where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the "Clinton Crime Family." This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_sbT3_9dJY4?feature=oembed

Ron Unz , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:18 am GMT
Well, here was my own take on the controversy a couple of years ago, and I really haven't seen anything to change my mind:

Well, DC is still a pretty dangerous city, but how many middle-class whites were randomly murdered there that year while innocently walking the streets? I wouldn't be surprised if Seth Rich was just about the only one.

Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street killing not long afterward, isn't that just the most astonishing coincidence in all of American history?

Consider that the leaks effectively nullified the investment of the $2 billion or so that her donors had provided, and foreclosed the flood of good jobs and appointments to her camp-followers, not to mention the oceans of future graft. Seems to me that's a pretty good motive for murder.

Here's my own plausible speculation from a couple of months ago:

Incidentally, I'd guess that DC is a very easy place to arrange a killing, given that until the heavy gentrification of the last dozen years or so, it was one of America's street-murder capitals. It seems perfectly plausible that some junior DNC staffer was at dinner somewhere, endlessly cursing Seth Rich for having betrayed his party and endangered Hillary's election, when one of his friends said he knew somebody who'd be willing to "take care of the problem" for a thousand bucks

https://www.unz.com/announcement/new-software-releaseopen-thread/#comment-1959442

https://www.unz.com/isteve/was-seth-rich-murdered-by-the-russians-the-democratic-elite-or-the-democratic-base/#comment-2069185

Let's say a couple of hundred thousand middle-class whites lived in DC around then, and Seth Rich was about the only one that year who died in a random street-killing, occurring not long after the leak.

Wouldn't that seem like a pretty unlikely coincidence?

Mustapha Mond , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:45 am GMT
"If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for his treachery ."

Heroism is the proper term for what Seth Rich did. He saw the real treachery, against Bernie Sanders and the democratic faithful who expect at least a modicum of integrity from their Party leaders (even if that expectation is utterly fanciful, wishful thinking), and he decided to act. He paid for it with his life. A young, noble life.

In every picture I've seen of him, he looks like a nice guy, a guy who cared. And now he's dead. And the assholes at the DNC simply gave him a small plaque over a bike rack, as I understand it.

Seth Rich: American Hero. A Truth-Teller who paid the ultimate price.

Great reporting, Phil. Another home run.

(And thanks to Ron for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. As a Truth-Teller extraordinaire, please watch your back, Bro. And Phil, too. You both know what these murderous scum are capable of.)

Biff , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:46 am GMT
When the FBI doesn't fully investigate a crime(DNC-emails/9-11/JFK-murder) the only conclusion is " coverup ".
John Chuckman , says: Website Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 7:31 am GMT
I suppose American security services could have been involved.

That would explain the poor police investigation and lack of information and questions answered.

But Hillary and her dirty associates were quite capable of hiring a hit.

That would also explain the lack of information, since DC, unlike any other city, is literally controlled by the Federal government.

This is a very vicious woman despite her clownishly made-up face.

Her words after Gaddafi's murder were chilling.

She is said to have been responsible too for pressuring for the final push to get Waco out of the headlines. 80 folks incinerated.

She also joked about Assange, "can't we just drone him or something?"

And there was the dirty business at Benghazi.

She is indeed a woman capable of anything. A contemporary Borgia.

Daniel Rich , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 9:33 am GMT
Because the {real} killers of JFK, MLK and RFK were never detained and jailed/hanged, why would one expect a lesser known, more ordinary individual's murder [Seth] to be solved?
hobo , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 10:27 am GMT
Seymour Hersh, in a taped phone conversation, claimed to have access to an FBI report on the murder. According to Hersh, the report indicated tha FBI Cyber Unit examined Rich's computer and found he had contacted Wikileaks with the intention of selling the emails.

Seymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report ( 7 min)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZJpQPGeUeQY?feature=oembed

Antiwar7 , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 10:33 am GMT
Another reason Assange may not want to reveal it, if Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks, could be that Seth Rich didn't act alone, and revealing Seth's involvement would compromise the other(s).

Or it could simply be that Wikileaks has promised to never reveal a source, even after that source's death, as a promise to future potential sources, who may never want their identities revealed, to avoid the thought of embarrassment or repercussions to their associates or families.

Incidentally, they only started really going after Assange after the Vault 7 leaks of the CIA's active bag of software tricks. I think, for Assange's sake, they should instead have held on to that, and made it the payload of a dead man's switch.

Chet Roman , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 11:05 am GMT
I'm not sure how credible the source is but Ellen Ratner, the sister of Assange's former lawyer and a journalist, told Ed Butowsky that Assange told her that it was Seth Rich. She asked Butowsky to contact Rich's parents. She confirms the Assange meeting in an interview, link below. Butowsky does not seem to be a credible source but Ratner does. If it was Seth Rich then I have no doubt that his brother knows the details and the family does not want to lose another son.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_YyuWpjTbg0?feature=oembed

The story has gone nowhere.

Chet Roman , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 11:42 am GMT
"According to Assange's lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National Committee emails to someone other than the Russians."

Not to quibble on semantics but Rohrabacher met with Assange to ask if he would be willing to reveal the source of the emails then Rohrabacher would contact Trump and try to make deal for Assange's freedom. Rohrabacher clarified that he never talked to Trump or that he was authorized by Trump to make any offer.

The MSM has been using the "amnesty if you say it was not the Russians" narrative to hint at a coverup by Russian agent Trump. Normal for the biased MSM.

Giraldi's link "Assange did not take the offer" has nothing to do with Rohrabacher's contact. It's just a general piece on Assange acting as a journalist should act.

https://www.rohrabacher.com/news/my-meeting-with-julian-assange

Alfred , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 12:01 pm GMT
@plantman I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking Rich

Have you never had to deal with a psychopath? That is not the way they reason.

She would have done it in the "national interest"

DaveE , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 2:21 pm GMT
I'm of the opinion Ron Unz seems to share, that Rich was not a particularly "big hitter" in the DNC hierarchy and that his murder was more likely the result of a very nasty inter-party squabble. I seem to recall a LOT of very nasty talk between the Jewish neocons in the Bush era and the decent, traditional "small-government" style Republicans who greatly resented the neocons' hijacking of the GOP for their demonic zionist agenda.

Common sense would suggest that the zionist types who have (obviously) hijacked the DNC are at least as nasty and ruthless as the neocons who destroyed any decency or fair-play within the GOP. It's not exactly hard to believe that these Murder, Inc. types (also lefties of their era) wouldn't hesitate to whack someone like Rich for merely uttering a criticism of Israel, for example.

Hell, Meyer Lansky ordered the hit-job on Bugsy Seigel for forgetting to bring bagels to a sit-down ! There was a great web-site by a mobster of that era, long since taken down, who described the story in detail. I forget the names .. but I'll see if I can't find a copy of some of the pieces posted at least a decade ago .

It's not exactly hard to imagine some very nasty words being exchanged between the Rahm Emmanuel types and decent Chicago citizens, for example, who genuinely cared for their city and weren't afraid of The Big Jew and his mobster cronies . to their detriment I'm sure.

We're talking about organized crime, here, folks. The zionists make the so-called (mostly fictitious) Sicilian Mafia look like newborn puppies. They wouldn't hesitate to whack a guy like Rich for taking their favorite space in the bicycle rack.

Rev. Spooner , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:27 pm GMT
@John Chuckman A long time ago I read in the London Guardian ( before it's reputation was in tatters) that the witch kept a list of all who pissed her off and updated it every night.
A quick search and here it is https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/14/hillary-clinton-hitlist-spreadsheet-grudge
Altai , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:33 pm GMT
My only trouble with the Seth Rich thing is, it seems a bit extreme, they seem quite callous in murdering foreigners but US citizens in the US who are their staffers? If they really were prepared to go out and kill in this way, they're be a lot more suspicious deaths.

What makes the case most compelling is the very quick investigation by police that looks like they were told by somebody concerned about how the whole thing looked to close up the case nice and quickly. That and the fact that he was shot in the back, which doesn't make sense for an attempted robbery turned murder.

However, it may also be that as in so many cities in the US, murder clearance rates for street shootings (Little forensic evidence, can only go by witness accounts or through poor alibis from usual suspects and their associates. In this case there is also no connection between Rich and any possible shooter with no witnesses.) are just so very low that DC police don't bother and Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.

But then maybe for the reasons above a place like DC is perfect to just murder somebody on the street and that's why they were so brazen about it.

Ron Unz , says: Show Comment March 1, 2020 at 3:47 pm GMT
@Altai

Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.

Well, upthread someone posted a recording of a Seymour Hersh phone call that confirmed Seth Rich was the fellow who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, thereby possibly swinging the presidential election to Trump and overcoming $2 billion of Democratic campaign advertising.

Shortly afterwards, he probably became about the only middle-class white in DC who died in a "random street killing" that year. If you doubt this, see if you can find any other such cases that year.

I think it is *extraordinarily* unlikely that these two elements are unconnected and merely happened together by chance.

[Mar 02, 2020] In a couple of crucial ways Sanders has indicated his radical break with the current foreign policies of both corporate Democrats and Republicans.

Mar 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin , Mar 1 2020 23:58 utc | 44

In a couple of crucial ways Sanders has indicated his radical break with the current foreign policies of both corporate Democrats and Republicans.
On Israel he has indicated that he will reverse the decision, symbolic of a major change in US policy, to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He has also said very clearly that he supports a two state solution including Palestinian sovereignty.

Both are direct challenges to the Israeli Establishment and led to massive anti-Sanders spending in the Primaries. They undoubtedly played a part in the decision to run Bloomberg and the DNC decision to allow him to buy his way into the debates.

Sanders also indicated that he would not attend the AIPAC convention and reafformed his support for KStreet.

It might be objected that these are all old, moderate zionist and shelfworn policies. And so they are likely to prove in implementation. But that is unimportant: they represent a direct confrontation with the current (fascist) Israeli political consensus and in terms of the Democratic party and US public opinion constitute a radical and courageous challenge to a party leadership that takes all its cues from Netanyahu.

But most important is the implied challenge of Sanders' domestic policy priorities: he has said, though it really hardly needs saying, that in order to carry out his signature policies it will be necessary, firstly to control expenditure on arms and interventions abroad. And secondly to reform the tax system and shift the burden of taxation from poor to rich. This would introduce penalties for the insane jingoism that has characterised the past twenty/seventy years- which has never been a problem for the oligarchs and their intellectual pretorian guard, because wars have always been a source of profit for them, with the sacrifices of blood and treasure being left to the working class to come up with.

There is much missing in Sanders's Foreign Policy statements; there is much that most of his supporters would be pleased to see but they understand that the battles between now and November-all of which must be waged against MIC fans from the current Primary candidates on- must be about the domestic issues that matter most urgently to American families- free tuition as an alternative to debt peonage and a fear of education; Medicare for All; repealing the anti-union laws that have reduced the poor to political impotence, insecurity and poverty; defending Social Security from Biden Bloomberg, Trump et al; taming Big Pharma; addressing the real and urgent issues of climate change; and redressing the signature policies of the DNC which have led to the incarceration of a higher proportion of the population than in any other country and the criminalisation of significant proportions of the population.

You'll get your pony, but first you must break up the domination of politics by the Cold War-anti-socialist consensus.

As to the JFK


ben , Mar 2 2020 0:49 utc | 50

From Greyzone,

"PUSHBACK WITH AARON MATÉMarch 1, 2020
Krystal Ball: panicked DNC elites try to stop Bernie's big Super Tuesday"

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/01/krystal-ball-panicked-dnc-elites-try-to-stop-bernies-big-super-tuesday/

uncle tungsten , Mar 2 2020 1:53 utc | 56
Bernie ridicules the billionaires here in a brief 3 minute from the Rational National who is measured and calm and very straight.

Glad to hear of buttergig being flushed down the toilet. Way to go cheatin Pete. Now we watch Warren on her single minded obstruction of Bernie Sanders and set up a contested convention.

On Biden, I speculate he is throwing the race by constantly pantomiming dumb gaffes so we think he is sincere but alzheimer affected. That way he will be able to defend against his millions carpetbagged from Ukraine. His performance is pathetic and I suspect well rehearsed as he sets up his escape route. See Consortium news four part expose.

Circe , Mar 2 2020 2:03 utc | 57
Youtube not linking to rally yet. Go here: Bernie rally LA
c1ue , Mar 2 2020 2:46 utc | 62
Bernie did a little better than 2016 in South Carolina, but still not a major change: 96,498 in 2016 vs. 105,197 in 2020. He gets actually 1 less delegate in 2020 than 2016: 33 vs 34, but HRC got 39 vs. Biden 35.

In 2016, there were 5 unpledged delegates but apparently there are 9 in 2020 - which are likely to not go to Bernie (7 DNCC and 2 Congress members - house of representatives).

The question then is: who will Steyer and Buttigieg endorse?

uncle tungsten , Mar 2 2020 2:58 utc | 63
c1ue #62
The question then is: who will Steyer and Buttigieg endorse?

no contest: those two scumbags will endorse a billionaire scumbag. NOT Bernie.

Opportunist shits and carpet baggers never endorse the good guys.

donkeytale , Mar 2 2020 3:04 utc | 65
Ben - the US economy is nazi socialist for the rich and free market for the poor.

Bernie is making this point very effectively, imho, to the people who are most negatively affected by nazi socialism.

My own arguments with the moderates I meet who automatically buy into the Bernie as Castro-Chavez socialist use examples of nazi socialism, as opposed to the "mixed vegetables" labelling:

1. Huge farm subsidies, huge energy subsidies....provided for the corporately wealthy.

2. Huge financial subisidies for the corporately wealth: Trump/GOP tax cuts and the ongoing federal reserve monetary supply side tricks propping up the wealth accumulations of the already obscenely corporately wealthy .

This is the nazi socialism that both parties have perfected since Reagan.

[Mar 02, 2020] Last Ditch Effort to Stop Sanders

Mar 02, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

Rick Wilson has a plan for Obama to help snatch the White House away from Trump

.. GOP strategist and avid Never Trumper Rick Wilson said ... Obama needs to throw his full weight behind Biden before Super Tuesday in a way that will shake up the race ... Obama can transform this race in a hot second. ... It's now or never ... Biden beat Sanders like a rented mule. The exit polls told the tale; it was a crushing defeat across almost every demographic group ...

Gotta love these Republicans who have our best interests at heart.

Last week in Nevada it was Sanders who beat Biden like a rented mule, inflicting a crushing defeat across almost every demographic group. But that was then, this is now, and a Republican stratigist says "It's now or never" to defeat Sanders Trump.

Super Tuesday is ... Tuesday. Biden, as I noted yesterday, hasn't visited any Super Tuesday state in a month, has almost no money, is not on the air, has little or no ground game. Early voting is already in progress in several states. What can be done in one day to turn things around?

Realistically, nothing. Yes, a big endorsement by Obama could have an impact, but how many voters would even hear about it before voting? Biden will definitely get a bounce from his win in SC, but how big will it be? How much did Sanders' win in Nevada help him in SC?

Then there's this:

Why Biden still needs Klobuchar and Warren in the race

Team Biden believes having Klobuchar in the race through Super Tuesday is incredibly helpful to them.
Why? It blocks Bernie Sanders in the Minnesota primary on Tuesday.
"If Amy gets out, that gives Minnesota to Bernie,"
...
Four years ago, Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton in Minnesota, winning 62% to 38% ...
The Biden campaign wants Warren to be in the race through Super Tuesday, when Massachusetts voters weigh in.

Not to win. Not to hoard delegates for a convention fight. But just taking every opportunity to slow Bernie down.

Finally, and I only saw one tweet about this and can't find any confirmation, that Bloomberg hasn't made any ad buys beyond Super Tuesday. Anyone know anything about this?

Steyer has spent $200 million, got nothing for it, and has dropped out. I'm hoping that's what we see for Bloomberg as well. Is Bloomberg trying to win? Or just to stop Bernie? Super Tuesday will tell the tale.


laurel on Sun, 03/01/2020 - 2:18pm

It's interesting how each of them

@WoodsDweller -- Biden, Bloomberg, Warren, Klobuchar -- is stepping in to do his or her part for the overall goal of stopping Bernie. They are 100% loyal to the Dem establishment which is 100% loyal to the neocon, neoliberal, oligarchic, globalist Deep State. They know the Dem establishment will reward them -- and you can practically smell the certainty of that knowledge on Liz. She'll do and say whatever they ask of her.

Anja Geitz on Sun, 03/01/2020 - 10:42am
Frankly, I never believed Bernie's candidacy was going to be met

with anything but a full on assault by the DNC, the media, and their respective surrogates. What I didn't expect, especially from dubious "progressives" like Warren, was to hear non-viable candidates openly talking about blunting Bernie's momentum with their only goal being to collect delegates into the convention. Yes, most of us anticipated this was going to turn into a contested convention by design, but I don't know how many of us believed they'd tip their hand so blatantly and so soon into the process. Now that they have, it gives Bernie time to prepare his own strategy for meeting their threat at the convention. Maybe someone could refresh his memory on how effective the bus loads of people that GWB arranged were in shaping the media narrative of "civil disruption vs. accurate counting" in Florida? Taking a page out of that playbook, Bernie's people really need to start thinking about organizing an army of supporters in strength that rivals his numbers at his rallys, and descend onto Wisconsin. And maybe as an added bonus, conjure up the image of the 1968 convention Buttigieg seems to believe Bernie is so nostalgic about resurrecting. If the Establishment is going to twart the will of the people, let the will of the people be heard.

doh1304 on Sun, 03/01/2020 - 2:03pm
There are threee possible scenarios

for how the pre primary polls were so far off:

First, a wild methodological error. Bernie actually received more votes yesterday than in 2016. Perhaps only people who voted in 2016 were polled.

Second, everyone knows that Bernie is the person most likely to defeat Trump and Biden is the worst possible candidate. Perhaps thousands of Trump supporters came out pretending to be Democrats to vote for Biden. This has supposedly happened before.

Third, the quisling Democrats have given up all pretense of being honest and are blatantly stealing the nomination from Bernie. This is the most likely.

FreeSociety on Sun, 03/01/2020 - 3:18pm
2016 Deja Vu

.
In many ways, this race is now the same exact contest that was fought back in 2016. It has come down to Joe Biden -- The Establishment choice -- despite his obvious Ukraine corruption, family payoffs, obstruction of justice and abuse of office, etc. -- and despite Biden being 100% wrong on every issue from the Iraq War to NAFTA to the TPP to Syria (more Regime Change) to Libya to saying China is not an economic threat , etc. -- and despite him being a bumbling buffoon and gaffe machine who doesn't even know what State he is in, and constantly mangles sentences, and arrogantly yells at or insults prospective voters -- and despite him on multiple occasions caught sniffing the hair and fondling young girls in public.

How is this different from Hillary Clinton .. just without the Cackle ?

Bernie Sanders, as in 2016, is the only other option now that has a multi-state Campaign support structure. While Mike Bloomberg can buy million dollar Ads and saturate them everywhere across TV and the Internet .. he has no real voter base, a phony message, and no charisma.

So it is Sanders .vs. Biden , which is essentially a rematch between Sanders and Clinton -- or -- essentially a rematch between Sanders and the DNC Establishment (who also control the rules of the game).

My question is, who in earth would ever want to vote for the doddering and incoherent Joe Biden under any circumstance? Clearly, Biden just represents the anti-Sanders vote here, and The Establishment, with Bloomberg, Buttiburger, and Klobachar all failing, has closed ranks to consolidate around the one dog-faced, pony soldier left standing in the race: Quid Pro Joe.

Come on man! Get down and do some pushups Jack. I don't want your vote.

Polls and Votes and super delegates and Media narratives will all now be fixed around Biden from this point on (if they weren't already). So expect a whole lot of Malarkey upcoming, and this means that Sanders will have to win by big margins, and win a whole lot more States than he did in 2016, in order to survive.

--

[Mar 02, 2020] Denying Sanders Dem ticket using super delegates as a ram is a possibility, but unless the candidate is Warren (which can be viewed as Sanders-light) it might have several possible negative effects

Dems don't actually know how to run a clean election. They've spent all these decades holding sham contests where the outcomes were predetermined, that accurately tallying votes in a timely manner and reporting the results honestly is completely beyond their institutional capabilities.
Mar 02, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Denying Sanders Dem ticket using super delegates as a ram is a possibility, but unless the candidate is Warren (which can be viewed as Sanders-light) it might have several possible negative effects:

1. Re-election of Trump due to obvious and glaring weakness of all centrists candidates (Biden-Butti-Bloomberg-Klobustar ) and the real possibility that Sanders voters abandon Dems. Moreover they are really the second rate politicians.

2. Further de-legitimization of Dems leadership which raises the question of the party chances in 2022.

Hers is one interesting comment from the discussion at Off-Guardian

https://off-guardian.org/2020/02/29/the-trump-impeachment-looking-back-and-looking-forward/

paul ,

Sanders was shafted in 2016 by the corrupt DNC machine, and he is being shafted again.He will probably be sidelined in favour of some third rate hack like Buttplug, or some other synthetic, manufactured nonentity.

If he isn't, and by some miracle does secure the nomination, they will fail to support him and just allow him to be defeated by Trump. It doesn't matter.

There are millions of decent people who have long been persuaded to play the game of Lesser Evils. They will be as disenchanted as was Trump's Base by a transparently corrupt, rigged system, and finally withdraw their support. This has to be seen as a positive development. They can no longer paper over the cracks.

and other from https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/03/democrat-morning-sickness-in-south-carolina-by-larry-c-johnson.html#comments

Sanders' constituency is disproportionately 45 and under, many of whom voted in the 2016 primary. The memory of the last primary theft by the DNC, added onto another convention coup will have transformative consequences for the party.

Will the party insiders allow a Sander's nomination, or will they follow the instructions of the deep-pocketed financial backers who view Sandes as a threat to their incomes. Nancy Pelosi recently remarked that she would be okay with a Sander's nomination. Was she expressing a party platform, or was that the wine talking? If Sanders shows up at the convention as the leading delegate winner, but is denied the nomination, does that spawn a third party?

We are, indeed, living in very interesting times.

Posted by: Jim Henely | 01 March 2020 at 02:14 PM

[Mar 01, 2020] Sanders defeat will be the next step indelitimization of the US corrupt regime

Mar 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org

paul ,

Sanders was shafted in 2016 by the corrupt DNC machine, and he is being shafted again.He will probably be sidelined in favour of some third rate hack like Buttplug, or some other synthetic, manufactured nonentity.

If he isn't, and by some miracle does secure the nomination, they will fail to support him and just allow him to be defeated by Trump. It doesn't matter.

There are millions of decent people who have long been persuaded to play the game of Lesser Evils. They will be as disenchanted as was Trump's Base by a transparently corrupt, rigged system, and finally withdraw their support. This has to be seen as a positive development.

They can no longer paper over the cracks.

[Mar 01, 2020] It was her waffling, insincerity, and attacks on Sanders that caused voters to realize not only that she was not committed to solving the most important issue dacing the nation and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion.

Notable quotes:
"... not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad. ..."
"... "Elizabeth Warren cries and tries to regain ground with voters" [Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe ]. The deck: "Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, her ideological soulmate, rolls along, tears-free." Ouch. ..."
"... IMO it was her later waffling, insincerity, and backtracking on M4A that caused progressives to realize not only that she was not committed to solving the most important issue identified by Dem voters, but that she may not have a fire in her belly to address the nation's other urgent crises and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion. ..."
"... Trump as the not-Democrat has such an edge among the disaffected who are still angry enough to vote ..."
"... I think that I can answer that. Jimmy Dore put out a 5-minute video showing her in action. A protestor heckled her in front of a meeting and she went into deer-in-spotlight mode and shut down. In the end she had to be rescued by Ayanna Pressley and I was thinking – "She really wants to debate Trump? Will she shut down then too?". (Some language) ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Warren (D)(1): "What is happening with Elizabeth Warren?" [Chris Cilizza, CNN ].

"Less than two months ago, it looked as though Elizabeth Warren might just run away with the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination . Then that Warren wave hit a wall. Starting right around mid-October, Warren's numbers not only stopped moving upward but also began trending down

Add it all up and there's plenty of reason to believe that Warren's full-fledged support for Medicare for All -- coupled with her less-than-successful attempts to defend that position in the last two debates -- led to her current reduced status in the race."

If this were true, Sanders should drop as well. I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad.

"Elizabeth Warren cries and tries to regain ground with voters" [Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe ]. The deck: "Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, her ideological soulmate, rolls along, tears-free." Ouch.

More: "According to the Des Moines Register, "after a long pause and with tears in her eyes, the senator from Massachusetts said 'yeah,' before telling the story of the divorce from her first husband," and how painful it was to tell her mother that her marriage was over.

To showcase the significance of the encounter, Warren tweeted out a clip."

Dead Lord. You don't tweet out your own tears to show sincerity. Have somebody else do it! Isn't anybody on her staff protecting her?

XXYY , December 3, 2019 at 3:40 pm

I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad.

The establishment is trying mightily to salvage something useful from Warren's surprisingly rapid decline in the polls, constantly pushing the refrain that M4A was somehow the kiss of death for her.

In fact, she rose to prominence by riding on Sanders policies like Medicare for All, canceling student debt, and free college. "I'm with Bernie" was her frequent reply on several policy issues, and she co-sponsored Sanders' Medicare for All Senate bill to great effect on her own "progressive" cred.

IMO it was her later waffling, insincerity, and backtracking on M4A that caused progressives to realize not only that she was not committed to solving the most important issue identified by Dem voters, but that she may not have a fire in her belly to address the nation's other urgent crises and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion.

Mo's Bike Shop , December 3, 2019 at 8:23 pm

Six years wait for the ACA to piss almost everyone off.

Trump as the not-Democrat has such an edge among the disaffected who are still angry enough to vote. Especially since the whole and only DNC message will be 'you can't possibly vote for Trump!!!'

The Rev Kev , December 3, 2019 at 6:38 pm

"What is happening with Elizabeth Warren?"

I think that I can answer that. Jimmy Dore put out a 5-minute video showing her in action. A protestor heckled her in front of a meeting and she went into deer-in-spotlight mode and shut down. In the end she had to be rescued by Ayanna Pressley and I was thinking – "She really wants to debate Trump? Will she shut down then too?". (Some language)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CeRiG9jdF0

flora , December 3, 2019 at 7:34 pm

Warren seems to have a tin ear when it comes to political give and take. IMO.

[Feb 29, 2020] The RNC tried a similar trick against Trump in 2016 and DNC against Sanders in 2020. Everyone knows how well it worked.

Notable quotes:
"... Buttigieg and Bloomberg have similar voting blocks to Biden. Buttigieg is the clean cut presidential type with PR trained words, a Biden 2020 model with less baggage. Older whites love him which is why he does well in Iowa and NH. ..."
"... If Biden/Buttigieg/Bloomberg join forces behind one of them, they won't add any new voters; they'll simply stop stealing votes from each other. Less self-destructive, of course, but hardly enough to beat Sanders. ..."
Feb 29, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Alex (the one that likes Ike)3 days ago • edited

The Democratic establishment worries that if the "moderates" in the race do not start falling on their swords, dropping out, and joining behind a single candidate -- Biden, Buttigieg or Bloomberg -- to challenge Sanders, they will lose the nomination to Sanders and the election to Trump.

Strange and deeply delusional people. Let us imagine they fell on those proverbial swords and joined the forces behind someone. Why should it work with Democratic voters any better than in did with Republicans in 2016?

Biden's voters are those who believe that he will become Obama's third term; a doubtful assertion, but the number of such believers is rather stable and won't go either up or down. Warren's voters are more likely to defect to Sanders rather than to anyone else. Buttigieg's and Bloomberg's voters... Wait. Who exactly those "Buttigieg's and Bloomberg's voters" as a voting bloc even are?

Anyways, the RNC tried a similar trick against Trump in 2016. Everyone knows how well it worked.

IanDakar Alex (the one that likes Ike)3 days ago
Buttigieg and Bloomberg have similar voting blocks to Biden. Buttigieg is the clean cut presidential type with PR trained words, a Biden 2020 model with less baggage. Older whites love him which is why he does well in Iowa and NH.

Bloomberg is liberal Trump. Big business man that can "get things done". Has an ugly past but who cares. He was getting the same votes as Biden (both white and non white so long as they are middle agreed and older, all moderates). So basically a Biden 3.0 now with Minority Power and a dash of Trump

Note that was before the Nevada debate.

Note that Warren was supposed to be a Sanders 2.0 with less baggage. The race has always been Biden-like vs Sanders-like. But Warren couldn't go full Sanders while Biden ended up with that Romney effect where flashy new people would show up look nice then fade away because they couldn't just stick with the original.

It would be a very different race if it was Biden vs Sanders and that's that. But Sanders side figured it out first.

Alex (the one that likes Ike) IanDakar3 days ago
That's right. If Biden/Buttigieg/Bloomberg join forces behind one of them, they won't add any new voters; they'll simply stop stealing votes from each other. Less self-destructive, of course, but hardly enough to beat Sanders.

Though I'd disagree that Warren is Sanders 2.0 - as you noted, she cannot go full Sanders. She is Sanders 0.5 at best, if not Sanders beta.

IanDakar Alex (the one that likes Ike)3 days ago • edited
On the second matter the idea was for her to be Sanders 2.0. But Sanders always goes full Sanders to the point of flat out telling you that he WILL raise taxes. Warren couldn't go full Sanders and actually tried so sneak into the Biden camp. "Sanders v.5 now with more Biden" didn't sell well.

(Suddenly imagining a video of Sanders telling Warren to "follow me" then start parkour up a building while Warren watches helplessly)

On the first I just listened to Mondays episode of political rewind that noted something in Nevada: Sanders only got about 30% of the initial vote which is the closest to a normal primary. His bump to over 45% came as voters of dead candidates had to move to their second pick.

If this really was a moderate vs radical then Warren votes would go to Bernie and everyone else to Biden or buttigieg. Instead they mostly went to Sanders. Which means voters went "I would rather have this person but if I can't I'll vote Bernie." Jeeesh even TAC is doing it with Tulsi compete with hard social conservative folks seemingly to find a reason to vote for Sanders. Jeesh I did that with Warren.

It's one caucus but it's an interesting idea. What if it's not Anyone but Bernie and more "Bernie is ok but I really like this person." A mass consolidation may end up pushing them all to their second pick. It also explains why the field is so spread. It's not confused voters deciding on a moderate. It's fans of a particular candidate that are willing to substitute for Bernie once they're love drops out.

A consolidated field might not stop Bernie. It might give him the gold.

Alex (the one that likes Ike) IanDakar3 days ago
By the way, Tulsi as a veep candidate would significantly imporove Sanders's chances against Trump during the election itself. Though picking her will be equal to saying "we're through" to the Democratic establishment. So I'll withhold my opinion as to whether Bernie will dare to do it until he's nominated - at this point I expect that he will be nominated, unless the DNC resorts to some highly unconventional (which is, outright fraudulent) measures.
MT1798 Alex (the one that likes Ike)2 days ago
I don't know if Sanders has the courage to nominate someone like Tulsi, but he should, and not just to win the election. If he nominates some moderate, he'll have to watch his back constantly in fear that he might be given an untimely "heart attack."
MT1798 IanDakar2 days ago
Agreed, the idea that Sanders has a significantly lower ceiling than the others fell apart when the second alignment results from NV came in. There were plenty of people who picked Sanders when they could no longer go with their 1st option.
Kent3 days ago
""Medicare for All." Abolition of private health insurance. War on Wall Street. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition. Forgiveness of all student debt. Open borders. Supreme Court justices committed to Roe v. Wade. Welfare for undocumented migrants. A doubling of the minimum wage to $15 an hour."

With the exception of "open borders", which Sanders has repeatedly stated he is against, which of these issues do you think hurts Sanders with the majority?

James Burger Kent3 days ago
Right, he listed them off like they were points against him. Those are the reasons people are voting for him!
MT1798 Kent2 days ago
Abolition of private health insurance will hurt him with some union members, as well as people who have good health benefits currently. My parents are public employees, and their insurance costs little and they get access to the best doctors in the area. A MFA system would increase the demand to see those elite doctors, and they might get squeezed out. And Trump/GOP can simply say "They couldn't even build a functioning website for Obamacare, do you really trust them to completely overhaul our healthcare system?" People with no/bad health insurance might take that chance, but people with solid/good health insurance will probably be risk averse. Do you think people are going to fall for "If you like your doctor, you can keep them" a second time?

The Green New Deal will hurt in TX and PA, since there are a lot of oil industry workers there. And if you look at polling, Climate Change is nowhere near most voters, especially moderates, top concern.

Welfare to illegal immigrants is extremely unpopular to everyone outside of the hard left.

James Burger MT17982 days ago
I definitely hear those concerns but MFA will absolutely help more people than it hurts. Arguing against it for the sake of preserving jobs is to me like arguing for the carriage industry during the advent of the automobile. With regards to doctors, the problem with Obamacare was that it left the insurance industry intact, which is why people couldn't always keep their doctors. It's not a choice if your insurance won't cover the doctor you want. MFA would allow you to see literally any doctor you wanted, no concerns about "networks".

With regards to the GND, again you're arguing for the carriage makers while Model-T's are rolling off the line. Green energy is already edging out coal as it becomes cheaper and easier to produce, the oil workers are living on borrowed time. And any GND will have provisions for re-training displaced workers so they can land on their feet. My brother just became trained as a wind-turbine mechanic, he's working on job sites literally across the country (so far he's been to Texas, Iowa and Minnesota). The jobs for the displaced workers are there, and the GND will make sure they're properly prepared for them.

Also you're incorrect on American's concerns about climate change. Pew Research center says 67% of Americans believe the federal government should be doing more to stop it from getting worse. And while of course you see some demographic divisions in the data the trend is that number is growing, in fact they say 65% of moderate Republicans feel that way.

MT1798 James Burgera day ago
First of all, to all my original point, I'm arguing about how those policies hurt Bernie Sanders politically, not on their merits. Bernie continually votes to fund the F-35 even though it's a trillion dollar piece of junk, because some of its parts are built in VT.

On comparing MFA and the GND to the advent of the automobile, that's a terrible analogy since the government didn't shove the automobile down our throats. The automobile became affordable and convenient, and people voluntarily purchased it.

For MFA, there is no evidence that there will be any cost control measures that would make it economically viable. Congress has been kicking the can down the road on cost controls for Medicare and Obamacare for years, so why would we expect MFA to be different?

For the GND, if renewables are so awesome and cost effective, why do we need a new multi-trillion dollar government initiative to make people adopt them?

And as to climate change, where is that on people's list of concerns when polled? Yes, people may say we should do something about it, but 1.) typically they don't want to have to sacrifice anything for it and 2.) If you look at polls that rank peoples concerns in the world, climate change consistently ranks quite low. Heck, they couldn't even get WA state to adopt a modest carbon tax when it was voted on, so what makes you think that it will catch on nationally?

James Burger MT1798a day ago
I'll write more in depth when I have time but just as a point of order I apologize, I misunderstood the intent of your post.
cka2nd MT1798a day ago
There was quite a lot of corporate chicanery, aided and abetted by government, that helped promote the automobile, from auto and rubber companies butying up trolley systems to auto companies paying off movie producers to make newsreels promoting buses over trolleys. There are documentaries, books and even comic books on the subject.
Chris Chuba2 days ago
Sanders is for increasing the carried interest tax rate for private equity firms. He wants to turn the U.S. into Venezuela. Socialism ... sooooooocialism.
MT1798 Chris Chuba2 days ago
Bernie's Wall Street tax proposals are nonsensical. They are supposedly going to raise a ton of revenue without substantially disrupting the financial sector. One, or potentially both, of those things are likely to be false.
James Burger Chris Chuba2 days ago
For every Venezeula there is a Denmark, a Germany, a Finland, a Japan. It's easy to point to (I know it's not PC to say) a corrupt 3rd world country and crow about how "socialism failed". And yet if you glance over towards Europe you see dozens of nations with one form of socialist safety net or another, and they're spending *less* per capita on healthcare *and* getting *better* results than we are.

I flipped on this issue specifically because of the numbers, not ideological reasons. I happily voted for Johnson in 16, and in a perfect world I'd prefer government to stay small. But you can't deny that the healthcare system we're currently in is MUCH worse than just about everyone else's in the developed world (I mean it's the internet, you can deny all you want but the facts are what they are). I flipped because if we're spending more and getting less, it's literally *more* fiscally conservative and efficient to switch to a MFA system. I'd love a completely free-market system, but there's fewer examples that I'm aware of of that sort of system working well, and honestly I don't think it could be pulled off.

Kent James Burgera day ago
We in essence have a free market health care system. At least outside of Medicare and the VA. For a market to function efficiently, it requires 2 key ingredients: the ability to compare prices and the ability to compare quality. Due to the disparity in medical training between the medical community and your average Joe on the street, having those 2 key ingredients is impossible. So we just have a very inefficient health care market, as any economics book would predict. Less corrupt nations understand how this works and mitigate the problem with different solutions: full government control (England), government single-payer (Canada), non-profit insurance system (Germany) and many others.

[Feb 28, 2020] Increase attraction of Bernie "Democratic Socliasm" (in reality the restoration of the elements of the New Deal) agenda

Feb 28, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

TMoney , February 28, 2020 at 11:18 am

*DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR REVOLUTION*

Servants to the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), Janitors, Secretaries, Food Services Workers – Now is your chance for paid sick leave. Come to work with the Coronavirus, cough on everyone. You can't afford to stay home. Paid Sick Leave Now.

Can't let a good crisis go to waste can we ?

*END DISCLAIMER*

TMoney , February 28, 2020 at 12:18 pm

I don't disagree, however, the bottom rungs of society, the working poor are going to do this anyway, they CAN'T afford to stay home. How many pay checks can you miss at the bottom – none. The PMC have told the rest of us to work or die, poor people understand this and will work, even if they spread an infectious disease. The working poor are going to skip getting tested if it interfers with getting paid, they will work until they collapse on your desk.

This is going to happen, which is why it's not a call for revolution. It's just a fact.

TMoney , February 28, 2020 at 12:36 pm

I did work at a company that switched from sick time to PTO, were sick time and vacation counts the same.
Flu meant no summer on the beach. I went to work with flu. If the boss or coworkers got sick it was of no economic consequence to me. The loss of my holiday on the other hand .

Perhaps this anecdote makes me a bad person, but I didn't change the rules, just played by them.

Corona Virus is the same but worse since it can kill, however the symptoms are such that if I were scraping along I would cross my fingers and not get tested. Ignorance is plausible deniability, especially if I can't afford a test that tells me I can't work.

jrs , February 28, 2020 at 1:11 pm

Well sure it makes you a bad person. Because when others get sick because of you coming in, they MIGHT use their vacation time for sickness that you refused to. So you are just FOBing it off on the next guy and making them lose their vacation instead of you. And some of them may not even have paid time off (are they contract workers, what about the janitor etc.?) But you've got yours.

I would give up summer on the beach in a New York nanosecond to be able to stay home sick. Not even "for the good of society and infecting others", but for far more selfish reasons: the pleasure of the vacation ISN'T WORTH the suffering it entails to work while feeling aweful. When I have worked without any time off it made me long with all my being for time off for things like sickness and doctors visits. My priorities got real real, real fast, and it wasn't about vacation, but it was about seeing the doctor, what if I got sick, etc.. I mean look if I lived in a country that believed in vacation then it would be one thing, but we have to deal with actual reality here.

Reply

TMoney , February 28, 2020 at 1:32 pm

Agreed, I selfishly chose what was best for me. I did not optimize for the greater good. Please note, the company made the same choice first.

I did make sure to tell my managers in advance of the consequences of the change to PTO.

It's an interesting example of "economic man", I only followed my own interests, when I had sick time, I took it and everyone was better off because of it.

I felt it was worth suffering at work to spend time off with family.

Reply

You're soaking in it! , February 28, 2020 at 1:52 pm

"Ihr Herren, redet euch da gar nichts ein:
Der Mensch lebt nur von Missetat allein!"

(Don't kid yourself, boss; people can only survive by doing 'bad' things)

[Feb 28, 2020] "Abort operation! Russian agent Bernie Sanders has been compromised!"

Notable quotes:
"... I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party" ..."
Feb 28, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

clarky90 , , February 27, 2020 at 5:04 pm

"Abort operation! Russian agent Bernie Sanders has been compromised!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=4xQTr14WMMs&feature=emb_logo

RT admits that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both Russian Agents!

USAian Patriot, Michael Bloomberg has uncovered the truth and heroically, "pulled aside the curtain". (sarc)

Mel , , February 27, 2020 at 5:13 pm

A candidate should not be trying to win the nomination.

LET'S give medals to EVERYbody!

Samuel Conner , , February 27, 2020 at 8:16 pm

I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party"

[Feb 27, 2020] One has to admire DNC brazenness and willingness to sink the ship if they can't remain in first class.

Notable quotes:
"... I just went to his rally here in Winston-Salem. Incredible energy and it built as the rally went on; with students loving the local Black Panther party founder's comment "Trump and Bloomberg are two cheeks on the same ass" ..."
"... It only took the Establishment one single decapitation strike to defuse and diffuse and defeat the MLK anti-poverty movement. ..."
"... Superdelegates admit that if it comes to a contested convention, they would vote to award the nomination to somebody other than Sanders even if he got the most delegates ..."
"... The Democrats are basically playing the part of the aristocracy on the eve of the French Revolution at this point, and they might well even suffer the same fate if they are this determined to go down this path. ..."
"... Well, given that superdelegates exist to perform that function -- there could, otherwise, simply be a rule giving the nomination to the person who has the plurality -- it's not that surprising. One has to admire their brazenness in stating so plainly their willingness to sink the ship if they can't remain in first class. ..."
"... FTA:"Mr. Sanders expressed frustration that Mrs. Clinton had won superdelegates even in states where he won the primary. In Washington State, where he won almost 73 percent of the vote, Mrs. Clinton has 10 superdelegates while he has none. In Colorado, Mr. Sanders won 59 percent of the vote, but again Mrs. Clinton has 10 superdelegates from that state and he has none. Sanders aides handed out a list showing similar situations in states like New Hampshire, Kansas and Maine where he won more votes but has fewer superdelegates than his rival." ..."
"... Warren is such a brazen liar in that clip. I would never consider her as my second choice, nor would I consider anyone but Bernie. And should we manage to defeat the establishment at the convention, Warren should have no part in his administration. Snakes should always be kept at an arm's length. Besides, let her prove her alleged legislative prowess by fighting to pass Bernie's agenda there ;) ..."
"... My perception is that Warren's claims to be more effective than Sanders are premised on her belief (or, perhaps, hope) that Sanders would get nothing done because the political realities in DC would not change (Sanders wouldn't be able to mobilize effective public pressure on Congress) while Warren's approach would be gradual enough that the political elites would not feel so threatened that they would completely obstruct her. ..."
"... I understand the anger at Warren, but the right play is to make sure she realizes she is not going to be the annointed one, and make a deal for her delegates by any means necessary. Seriously, this is politics, and Bernie needs to play to win. IMHO he should be calling on her to drop out at this point, as frontrunners generally do, without anyone thinking it's odd. ..."
"... It's hardly a secret. Thomas Frank said in 2016 that the Democratic Party hates economic populism more than it hates Trump. And since then Bloomburg bought even more of them. ..."
"... He managed to annoy the hell out of me on a regular basis here in NYC. And I can think of a few areas where his decisions and actions hurt the city. ..."
"... As a NYC public school teacher and union rep during those dark years for public education under Bloomberg, let me assure you he is one vicious bastard, and that those working under him were either willfully clueless or themselves pretty monstrous. ..."
"... And the "efficient businessman" label is a canard: the incompetence at his Department of Education was a constant, except when it came to closing public schools and promoting charters. ..."
"... A brokered convention that nominated someone else would see a mass walkout of the Sanders people. None of the others would have come close to earning it and would get the nomination only through a thoroughly corrupt and rigged process. The superdelegates already are strategizing how to get anyone but Sanders. This will make Chicago 1968 look like a love fest. ..."
"... I'm from Massachusetts. Warren is as phony as they come. She needs to go back to Harvard where blowhards/filpfloppers belong. When cafeteria workers were striking at Harvard for a living wage and health care, even though warren said she "supported" workers she did not join them on the picket line. ..."
Feb 27, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Sam , February 27, 2020 at 2:42 pm

I just went to his rally here in Winston-Salem. Incredible energy and it built as the rally went on; with students loving the local Black Panther party founder's comment "Trump and Bloomberg are two cheeks on the same ass" as well as minimum wage and marijuana. As a student at a relatively politically inactive college, it is great to be a part of other schools and students fighting to give themselves a future we can confide in and he and Nina Turner are great at providing incentive to vote. I hope he begins to tie Medicare for all to COVID for it is the only sensible way to combat it and would leave everyone in the dust on the issue.

clarky90 , February 27, 2020 at 5:04 pm

"Abort operation! Russian agent Bernie Sanders has been compromised!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=4xQTr14WMMs&feature=emb_logo

RT admits that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both Russian Agents!

USAian Patriot, Michael Bloomberg has uncovered the truth and heroically, "pulled aside the curtain". (sarc)

drumlin woodchuckles , February 27, 2020 at 6:59 pm

One hopes the SanderBackers organize themselves into the sort of deeply informed and envisionated movement-community which can do things even with another Big Leader to fill the Big Shoes.

It only took the Establishment one single decapitation strike to defuse and diffuse and defeat the MLK anti-poverty movement.

Whereas if the current movement can become a self-cohering bunch of smart people . . . . ten million pairs of little feet filling ten million pairs of little shoes, then a decapitation strike will reveal the nature of the Establishment without weakening and disorganizing the Movement.

dcblogger , February 27, 2020 at 7:55 pm

not just King, a whole series of black activists were murdered in 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgkJcdmheCg

JohnnyGL , February 27, 2020 at 2:25 pm

Re-upping this one that I posted from this morning. If there's such a think as 'political hostage taking' this is it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E56IHwBWkgU

CNN really finds the worst takeaways from its own focus group discussions. Did they seriously watch the same focus group?

Panelists: "Police behavior is a real problem, Bloomberg is emblematic of that. We're struggling with poverty, gentrification and crumbling schools."

CNN: "Ah ha! We have found voters who will suck it up and 'vote blue no matter who', because trump"

These look like voters who are ripe for Bernie's pitch. I hope he's managing to reach them. That one poor guy looks like he's got Stockholm Syndrome!

Hepativore , February 27, 2020 at 2:25 pm

So, what we suspected is true has come straight from the horse's mouth. Superdelegates admit that if it comes to a contested convention, they would vote to award the nomination to somebody other than Sanders even if he got the most delegates.

They would apparently do this even if it possibly means the destruction of the Democratic Party. Whatever empty rhetoric that the Democratic Party has put forth about resisting Trump is a red herring as it has been confirmed that they would rather let him win than risk losing their corporate donors and consulting jobs under a Sanders presidency.

Here it is, courtesy of the Rising today with Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=epwzcl20fyM

Since they are willing to put the existence of their own party on the line in order to stop Sanders, I wonder if Tom Perez and pals are also planning to change the rules mid-election to stop Sanders by allowing superdelegates to vote again on the first ballot or even use the "nuclear option" in the event that he gets a majority of delegate votes.

The Democrats are basically playing the part of the aristocracy on the eve of the French Revolution at this point, and they might well even suffer the same fate if they are this determined to go down this path.

dcrane , February 27, 2020 at 2:39 pm

I wonder if Tom Perez and pals are also planning to change the rules mid-election to stop Sanders by allowing superdelegates to vote again on the first ballot

Yes, a trial balloon went up on this several weeks ago. Wouldn't put it past them for a second. Maybe I'm getting too hopeful about Sanders (as I did with Obama) but he looks to be an existential threat to the way of the life of the super-rich and their political servants at the likes of the DNC.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 2:43 pm

How many corporate donors are they going to have if they don't exist any more?

drumlin woodchuckles , February 27, 2020 at 7:01 pm

They will retain enough big donors to keep the party shell and machinery alive as a velcro-decoy hologram-of-a- party to be a roach motel decoy for millions of cult-members.

Anarcissie , February 27, 2020 at 3:30 pm

Is this news? I thought I saw something a couple of months ago to the effect that numerous big-time Democrat donors said they would support Trump before Sanders. I assume the thing that matters most to the superdelegates, based on their behavior, is their jobs and their money.

Intersectionalsadist , February 27, 2020 at 3:41 pm

Everyone knew, and now they admit it openly. But how do they do it with the least blowback? Best theory so far: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/27/bloombergs-game/

Jeff W , February 27, 2020 at 4:50 pm

Superdelegates admit that if it comes to a contested convention, they would vote to award the nomination to somebody other than Sanders even if he got the most delegates.

Well, given that superdelegates exist to perform that function -- there could, otherwise, simply be a rule giving the nomination to the person who has the plurality -- it's not that surprising. One has to admire their brazenness in stating so plainly their willingness to sink the ship if they can't remain in first class.

flora , February 27, 2020 at 11:16 pm

About Dem super(califragistic)delegates, you can't make this stuff up:

https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1233133893911363584

Amfortas the hippie , February 27, 2020 at 4:54 pm

the nyt art they're riffing on: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/democratic-superdelegates.html

FTA:"From California to the Carolinas, and North Dakota to Ohio, the party leaders say they worry that Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist with passionate but limited support so far, will lose to President Trump, and drag down moderate House and Senate candidates in swing states with his left-wing agenda of "Medicare for all" and free four-year public college.

Mr. Sanders and his advisers insist that the opposite is true -- that his ideas will generate huge excitement among young and working-class voters, and lead to record turnout. Such hopes have yet to be borne out in nominating contests so far."

"limited support" "hopes not borne out so far.."

and their source for this earth shattering news? Sydney Ember. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-voters.html

I assume there's a poll or something down that rabbithole of links within links, but i didn't bother. at the very, very least as in "well, at least there's still gravity.." we'll have a demparty naked and shit smeared in it's corruption and perfidy. whether that makes a damned bit of difference, long term, is sadly frighteningly up for grabs.
after all, I've been pretty much waiting for the Dem Base to notice that it's not the Democratic Party any more since around 1993.
if this doesn't do it, what will?

Amfortas the hippie , February 27, 2020 at 4:59 pm

and the article that THAT one uses to source the claim(a la warren in the vid) that "Bernie changed his tune from 2016″

https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/05/01/bernie-sanders-says-superdelegates-should-follow-voters-will-in-landslide-states/

FTA:"Mr. Sanders expressed frustration that Mrs. Clinton had won superdelegates even in states where he won the primary. In Washington State, where he won almost 73 percent of the vote, Mrs. Clinton has 10 superdelegates while he has none. In Colorado, Mr. Sanders won 59 percent of the vote, but again Mrs. Clinton has 10 superdelegates from that state and he has none. Sanders aides handed out a list showing similar situations in states like New Hampshire, Kansas and Maine where he won more votes but has fewer superdelegates than his rival."

gish galloping all over the place, with the thin shroud of "umm yeah that makes sense " it's infuriating. back when, when i first noticed the Right doing this sort of thing misremembering history, even when there was video evidence, I'd sometimes feel compelled to undertake to link bomb whomever was putting it on FB.
but it never worked. it never worked in 2016, either, with the Hill Trolls.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 5:41 pm

"after all, I've been pretty much waiting for the Dem Base to notice that it's not the Democratic Party any more since around 1993. if this doesn't do it, what will?" Maybe they can change the name to the Fox Party (watching the henhouse, eh?)

dcblogger , February 27, 2020 at 8:28 pm

I will be interested in seeing how this conversation changes if House Democrats opposed to Medicare for All start losing to challengers who support Medicare for All. If opponents to Medicare for All start losing their primaries the conversation about a brokered convention will shift. This ain't about Bernie, it is about Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and the rest of the program.

OIFVet , February 27, 2020 at 4:56 pm

Warren is such a brazen liar in that clip. I would never consider her as my second choice, nor would I consider anyone but Bernie. And should we manage to defeat the establishment at the convention, Warren should have no part in his administration. Snakes should always be kept at an arm's length. Besides, let her prove her alleged legislative prowess by fighting to pass Bernie's agenda there ;)

chuckster , February 27, 2020 at 5:46 pm

I'll take the opposite stand. Since she can "do things" that Bernie can't put her in charge of the Treasury Department and tell her to get her Wealth Tax done, make sure to get the stock market transaction fee enacted and clean up Wall Street. That would allow him to focus on M4A

OIFVet , February 27, 2020 at 7:32 pm

You assume she is serious about her own platform. I've become too jaded to believe even that much, and that's the direct result of her own actions since New Year's. I wish I didn't feel this way, but right now I would check my watch if she were to wish me "good morning."

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 8:10 pm

> "focus on M4A".

which, I think, would mean driving the neoliberal majorities out of (or subjugating them in) both houses of Congress through a massive bully pulpit campaign and test votes in Congress to smoke out the opponents. I suspect that we would see Sanders "in his element" in such conflict.

But since the opponents are likely to be in the leadership of both houses of Congress, my guess is that there will be a low-intensity conflict over procedure (the leaders will not want the test votes to take place) that will start on the first day of the legislative session and continue uninterrupted for as long as Sanders continues in office.

Discharge petitions, anyone?

Potted Frog , February 27, 2020 at 8:35 pm

Why do you think Warren can "do things" that Sanders can't? Do you really think the oligarchs will play nice with Warren because Warren? Everything will be a massive fight. There is no middle.

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 9:44 pm

My perception is that Warren's claims to be more effective than Sanders are premised on her belief (or, perhaps, hope) that Sanders would get nothing done because the political realities in DC would not change (Sanders wouldn't be able to mobilize effective public pressure on Congress) while Warren's approach would be gradual enough that the political elites would not feel so threatened that they would completely obstruct her.

The "progressive change" that she claims to regard herself to be the only hope of achieving would in practice be partial and sluggish, and IMO quite possibly, "never".

Better to leave her in the Senate, IMO. With progressive pressure coming from below in response to Sanders' bully pulpit campaign, she would get with the program and quite possibly be highly helpful.

Seth A Miller , February 27, 2020 at 6:18 pm

I understand the anger at Warren, but the right play is to make sure she realizes she is not going to be the annointed one, and make a deal for her delegates by any means necessary. Seriously, this is politics, and Bernie needs to play to win. IMHO he should be calling on her to drop out at this point, as frontrunners generally do, without anyone thinking it's odd.

At the convention, the superdelegates may think they can deny Bernie the nomination, but let's be clear about how strong Bernie's hand will be even if he doesn't make it past 50% on the first ballot. On each subsequent ballot, whoever is annointed must still get 50%.

From "270 to Win" ( https://www.270towin.com/content/superdelegate-rule-changes-for-the-2020-democratic-nomination ): "All delegates become unpledged, with an estimated 771 superdelegate votes coming into play if the convention is contested (i.e., more than one ballot is needed to select a nominee). For those subsequent ballots, a majority of all 4,750 delegates (2,375.5) will be needed to secure the nomination."

So if Bernie gets, say, 40%, he first needs to hold them. He would have 1,900 and would need another 476. The supers could only throw the election to an individual candidate if they stay unanimous and if their chosen candidate has 1,605. That's around 33%. Those are big "ifs." If Bernie's at 40 and Warren has 10% of pledged delegates, Bernie could cut a deal with her to get them and win. She can't cut a deal to win, and the supers don't want her anyway, for the reasons Krystal outlined, so that would be the best deal she could get.

By the way, Bernie could cut deals with anyone else in the same way, including the "centrists": he would be in the driver's seat. He just needs to be a little bit Machiavellian about it. Bottom line is that the plurality candidate has a better chance of navigating even a wired up convention than "party leaders" who only control 771 delegates. IMHO.

Amfortas the hippie , February 27, 2020 at 6:29 pm

"IMHO he should be calling on her to drop out at this point, as frontrunners generally do, without anyone thinking it's odd. "

but they would think it odd scandalous, even.
"see, he's a misogynist!"
" and he hates democracy!!"
" he wants to be a dictator! just like Stalin!"
and millions of people like my mom who don't get their news from anywhere but msnbc and kos will believe it.

OIFVet , February 27, 2020 at 7:26 pm

+ infinity. What would be perfectly normal for an establishment candidate, is borderline criminal if Sanders did it. I just had a lengthy argument on faceborg with a liberal friend who has bought everything emanating from the DNC and their propaganda outlet hook, line and sinker. He is hopeless, all he could do is talk "electability" (me: see the polls from swing states), extremists proposals re M4A ("ah, of course people want to incur debt to be seen by a doctor" and "yes, indeed we don't have money for healthcare. Say, stopping the endless wars would pay for it and would have enough left for other things, won't we?"), and that perennial hit, "Russia Russia Russia." I had the small satisfaction of telling him to surf the rising tide rather than to seek false comfort in the learned helplessness instilled in him by MSDNC. People like him are cowards, that's what has become crystal clear to me.

Seth A Miller , February 27, 2020 at 7:41 pm

yes, but criminal or not, Bernie has to have a convention strategy. For my part, I don't care if he has to offer Biden the Vice Presidency (again), as long as he locks up all the delegates he needs. The MSM kvetching is just a distraction from what he needs to do here. He has to make better offers than what the existing clown car can get from the DNC.

Strategically, the DNC completely blew it, by the way, by signaling to the NY Times that nobody who will have actual delegates will be the annointed one. These guys are all playing for president or VP, and the main prize just came off the table, in favor of who? Sherrod Brown? Michelle Obama? So what deal can the DNC offer any of them, in exchange for delegates, that Bernie cannot beat? Bernie only needs to get to 50%, and that means, in all likelihood, offering a suitable position to only one of his rivals, who will know that the deal is not contingent on anyone else playing ball. No complex "unite all five moderates plus Warren by making five sets of promises, none of which involve the top slot" deal. (VP can only be offered once, obviously). It doesn't take LBJ to figure out how to play Bernie's hand. The DNC, in control of the stage or not, still has a harder hand to play.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 27, 2020 at 8:55 pm

I thought the same thing about Biden, once you get over your initial revulsion it has some logic to it. MSM, Crooked camp, Mellifluous Melanoderm camp would struggle to complain about it. Imagine if those forces plus Bloomberg/Steyer money got behind it.

I know Bernie wants a real movement but appointing Nina Turner et alia has so much risk to it. Just keep Biden on the same meds he was on the other night and he'll do fine in a Pence debate

Jeff W , February 27, 2020 at 10:24 pm

"Bernie has to have a convention strategy."

I would bet my bottom dollar that the Sanders campaign has gamed this scenario out every possible way (and probably has since day one) -- and it's very familiar with the DNC from its dealings with it in 2016. Sanders is not a novice player here. That doesn't mean he will actually get the nomination in the absence of having a majority of the delegates -- it just means Sanders will be going into this situation, if it arises, with the best possible hand he can play.

Tom Doak , February 27, 2020 at 10:21 pm

Does Warren HAVE any delegates after these first primaries?

Jeff W , February 27, 2020 at 10:32 pm

Elizabeth Warren at the moment has eight delegates (all from Iowa).

Tom , February 27, 2020 at 7:46 pm

It's hardly a secret. Thomas Frank said in 2016 that the Democratic Party hates economic populism more than it hates Trump. And since then Bloomburg bought even more of them.

JohnMinMN , February 27, 2020 at 2:31 pm

In case others got the "video unavailable in your Country message, here's a link to the Public Enemy video that worked for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM

Barbara , February 27, 2020 at 5:31 pm

I changed my vpn connection to Canada

Daniel'sHat , February 27, 2020 at 2:49 pm

"After a Solano County resident tested positive for COVID-19, federal officials told the Fairfield-Suisun School Unified School District to prepare school sites for a potential outbreak of the pneumonia-like coronavirus." San Francisco Chronicle

Right next to Travis Air Force Base to which the virus sufferers were brought.
Great job of containing it, no?

Now is the time to point out why Bernie Sander's health plan, had it been implemented after he took office in 2017, would have helped prevent a pandemic. Hindsight is 2020

SufferinSuccotash , February 27, 2020 at 3:12 pm

The heroin epidemic could be characterized in racial terms (very convenient!). Not this baby. Anyone who sat in an airliner in the last couple of months is a candidate.

Oso , February 27, 2020 at 2:40 pm

Media ignored as expected but i thought some folks here might find this interesting, Mrs Sanders came to Alcatraz to see the native 50th occupation exhibit from native PoV. she was very down to earth, very engaged in the dialogue. she and the Sanders people were good with native security, can't imagine any of the other dem candidates doing that.

https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/bernies-wife-jane-sanders-visits-indigenous-grassroots-leaders-on-alcatraz-island/

JohnMinMN , February 27, 2020 at 3:15 pm

More solid analysis at CBS This Morning, from yesterday's post debate confab. This is "Democrat Strategist" Joel Payne's final comments.

" outside of the debate, Bernie Sanders is making buys in Massachusetts, Minnesota he's not in party unification mode . He's still very aggressive trying to attack, trying to take out Elizabeth Warren. Trying to take out Amy Klobuchar. So he has not decided to bring the Party together yet . He still deciding, I want to go after people and I want to be on the attack.

See for yourself at the 5:40 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BteTuTtnePs

Dr. John Carpenter , February 27, 2020 at 4:22 pm

Someone running in a primary which is yet to determine a winner daring to point out the differences between him and the other candidates!?! How toxic!

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 8:16 pm

I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party"

flora , February 27, 2020 at 4:55 pm

From 1995, Biden vs Sanders on policy. https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1233143844843077632 Leopard, spots, etc.

Darthbobber , February 27, 2020 at 9:06 pm

Party unification mode comes after achieving a winning position. I saw a few Warren and Pete supporters (not many) opining that not campaigning in an opponent's home state is an ancient and inviolable Democratic Party norm. Forgetting that literally everybody was campaigning in California while Harris was still a candidate. In 08 this would have required Obama to stay out of New York and Clinton out of Illinois.

Clearly nobody is, or can afford to be, in unification mode right now. Duh.

urblintz , February 27, 2020 at 5:40 pm

what, exactly, can he do that's different?

WobblyTelomeres , February 27, 2020 at 5:48 pm

He posed for pictures with David Koch at Memorial Sloan Kettering? Note I agree with the OP assertion that Bloomerberg is effective and competent at what he does . Too bad his commercials don't highlight that. /s

David R Smith , February 27, 2020 at 6:13 pm

He ran NYC for 12 years, and fought real hard for good public health policies. Much of his philanthropy, particularly with Johns Hopkins, has focused on the same subject. If he's concerned about his legacy, one would think he would want to be remembered for that, as not as a damn billionaire who has set himself to buying the presidency and the Democratic Party

WobblyTelomeres , February 27, 2020 at 6:48 pm

Well said!

NotTimothyGeithner , February 27, 2020 at 10:07 pm

Bloomberg has an ideology. He's lying as much as he can, but he's a guy who wants to live in a proper oligarchy where the rich make all the rules and have little to any control over them but have major control over the little people reaching down to the size of soda. This is the connection to guns. Like the Republicans who think they will fight off the government with guns, Bloomberg is worried the little people will use guns to take from him. Remember he's from Medford, Mass, its reasonable to assume he is aware the rabble in the colony of Massachusetts controlled the royal governors through a combination of controlling the salary and fear of being tarred and feathered.

Like all villains, he's the hero of his own story. I doubt he can make those promises as it would be too much of a stretch.

Phacops , February 27, 2020 at 8:01 pm

I would rather ensure that he pay Eisenhower era taxes and shitcan the self-serving philanthropy.

Darius , February 27, 2020 at 10:15 pm

Bloomberg opposes M4A. Our corrupt and collapsing health system is the biggest impediment to an effective coronavirus response. Bloomberg is more worried about the health of Wall Street than the health of millions of people.

If you look at all the dough he's blowing in his campaign on stupid s&#t, it gives the lie to his supposed competence.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 5:32 pm

There's a reason why most of us in Buffalo/Niagara can't stand anything east of Syracuse. Bubble dwellers indeed! It might as well be a completely different country. Much in the same way that Chicago is the tail that wags the dog known as "Illinois".

Efmo , February 27, 2020 at 7:31 pm

I think Bloomberg wasn't as competent as mayor as everyone thinks. I remember reading in the Daily News in 2015, I think, about how over budget and rife with fraud and waste NYC's 911 system update was during his administration. I think it was about a billion over budget and many years behind schedule. No one ever brings it up. I think everything about him is bull puckey.

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 3:49 pm

This reminds me of the famous two-axis (intelligence, diligence) typology of military officers (I think Lambert posted this some time in the last year or two)

One wants an intelligent but lazy commander in chief, who will delegate his responsibilities to intelligent and diligent staff officers. The stupid and lazy elements of the officer corps (which is the vast majority) can be assigned routine tasks, but the stupid and diligent ones must at all costs be kept away from anything important.

Perhaps one could posit a similar two-axis typology for political leaders, with the two axes being "public spiritedness" and "diligence"

It doesn't map perfectly to the hilarious military typology; Sanders is highly diligent and I think would make a good chief executive; I do suspect that he would make a greater effort in terms of ongoing political mobilization rather than absorption in policy minutia. Perhaps the typology needs to be expanded into a 3rd axis.

To your point, neither DJT nor MB is public-spirited, but MB would be a much more diligent chief executive than DJT has been, and might do much more long-term damage. He must at all costs be kept away from every lever of power that is not already under his control.

--

I earnestly hope that Saturday, Sanders is able finish first or a not-deep second. I have no confidence in the stability of the convention rules and I think that every possible indication that Sanders is the preference of the voters is needed to frighten the Party powers into acceding to the public's wishes.

OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL , February 27, 2020 at 3:52 pm

Mini Mike "effective and competent"? I wonder. His clientele was on the receiving end of $29 *trillion* (GAO figure) of bailout funds. Selling into that tsunami of money, especially while exorting your salespeople to "give bl*wjobs to close the deal" does not necessarily require a high level of competency IMO.

Pat , February 27, 2020 at 4:00 pm

He managed to annoy the hell out of me on a regular basis here in NYC. And I can think of a few areas where his decisions and actions hurt the city.

(Amazing how many of our Corporate leaders aren't quite as effective and amazing without a lot of public support or out right theft of the public.)

Michael Fiorillo , February 27, 2020 at 6:07 pm

As a NYC public school teacher and union rep during those dark years for public education under Bloomberg, let me assure you he is one vicious bastard, and that those working under him were either willfully clueless or themselves pretty monstrous.

And the "efficient businessman" label is a canard: the incompetence at his Department of Education was a constant, except when it came to closing public schools and promoting charters.

nycTerrierist , February 27, 2020 at 8:45 pm

efficient at gutting the commons!

he gentrified NYC and made it safe for suburban values!

Arizona Slim , February 27, 2020 at 3:59 pm

Well, if anyone is down Tucson way, we Bernie supporters are having a YUGE Super Tuesday Party. Get your exciting details right here:

https://events.berniesanders.com/event/246357/

Hope to see my Southern Arizona NC peeps!

Darius , February 27, 2020 at 4:57 pm

A vote for Warren or anyone other than Sanders is a vote for a brokered convention, which will elect Trump. Put that in you pipe an smoke it.

a different chris , February 27, 2020 at 5:55 pm

Why will that elect Trump?

carl , February 27, 2020 at 6:45 pm

Because the other candidates aren't worth a bucket of warm spit.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 27, 2020 at 8:10 pm

A few reasons:

Ultimately, the goal is to get to get 270. Warren pre-December or so maybe could have put together a coalition to win, but none of the others can credibly put together a coalition. Biden and Pete are segregationists, hawks, and largely disasters on most domestic policies. Klobuchar with her "no we can't" routine isn't going to reach the disaffected, and Bloomberg is running in the wrong primary. How are any of these characters going to win Ohio? PA? Michigan? And so forth.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 27, 2020 at 8:13 pm

Which isn't to say Sanders will win (he probably would), but he's the only one offering up a path to victory which is still winning the electoral college.

Titus , February 27, 2020 at 9:03 pm

Thoughtful, but I don't think the the community @NC is typical of the 50% + 1 vote of citizens going to vote in this election. In Michigan we want our issues dealt with, actual action. Trump's never going to do anything except make things worse. Many may not like this, but Sanders, Biden or Bloomberg will all win over trump. It's not even going to be close. In 2016 trump's support didn't show up in the polls because who'd want to admit to it. The same is going on in reverse. And the same thing is going on with Sanders. No one wants to say "stuff' out loud.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 27, 2020 at 9:55 pm

This isn't about NCers. This is about actual voters. Republicans are loyal. They will come home, and Democrats have done nothing to earn loyalty or be rewarded. HRC ran up the score in safe states, but in competitive states, she did worse than Kerry in a bunch, not Obama, Kerry.

Things like wealth inequality are real problems. Unless it hits the GOP turnout, there are no swing voters out there. There is no equilibrium between elections. Bloomberg is a Republican and a monster. At the end of the day, the disaffected aren't coming over, and neither are the moderate, suburban Republicans because they don't need to jump ship to guarantee success. They are already incumbents.

The idea Trump will make things worse is going to fix electoral fortunes is naïve. This was the prediction made about McConnell all these years and the "party of no."

Darius , February 27, 2020 at 10:03 pm

A brokered convention that nominated someone else would see a mass walkout of the Sanders people. None of the others would have come close to earning it and would get the nomination only through a thoroughly corrupt and rigged process. The superdelegates already are strategizing how to get anyone but Sanders. This will make Chicago 1968 look like a love fest.

This will tear the party apart. I think the Democrats could go the way of the Whigs, although legal and institutional inertia could keep the shell going for a while. These Hillary-Obama Dems are so horrified at the prospect of Bernie, they would slit their own throats if they have to.

Any of these other Democrats carry such liabilities, Trump will have a field day. A bunch of people won't turn out for Pete. He doesn't give anyone a reason to vote for him, except for those taken in by his rhetoric, which doesn't soar to Obama's heights, but rather glides at about 5,000 feet. Warren says things that aren't true, but isn't an epic liar like Trump, who has perfected the big lie. Warren tells fibs that are easily attacked. Biden can't remember what office he's running for. Amy has the same problem as Pete. Can anyone name a single proposal of hers? And she's bizarrely mean and abusive, as well as reflexively reactionary, which ties back into the question of why she's running except for personal ambition.

Any of these candidates would emerge from a brokered convention almost fatally wounded and would have few resources on which to draw to recover. Only Bernie leads a movement. And people instinctively trust him.

tegnost , February 27, 2020 at 10:14 pm

"These Hillary-Obama Dems are so horrified at the prospect of Bernie, they would slit their own throats if they have to."

I think they should go make the republican party better rather than being embarrassed republicans living in a closet

Darius , February 27, 2020 at 10:32 pm

And Bloomberg is just money bags who wants to take away your guns and your Coca Cola, and regiment your life.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 5:36 pm

I'll make a wish for your birthday: I hope and pray that Sanders can get out the Latino vote in Texas enough to flip the state Blue. You can sit back the next morning with the beverage of your choice and watch the heads explode.

(I never said I was a nice person)

Titus , February 27, 2020 at 9:06 pm

It's not the Latino vote thst will cause the vote to flip, in Texas, it is like Arizona, transplants from California.

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 3:32 pm

That's an amazing flower, sort like a Mandlebrot set of living matter.

Visited some elderly friends earlier today to help recover an AOL password that stopped working. Very strange; the password had previously worked (after a long period of disuse and a recent change because the prior pwd was no longer working). Has anyone seen this before? The recent login history has been inconsistent; does AOL mail get spooked if a password is changed after a long period of not logging in?

I made some lowish-key suggestions for preparations as if they were expecting a major storm. The gentleman told me that the local home improvement store is completely sold out of respirators. I suppose that the unusually mild weather might have led to more construction activity than the head office was stocking the shelves for, but my intuition is that that is not the explanation.

Bill Carson , February 27, 2020 at 5:06 pm

Here's the link to Silver's prediction model. Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary?

Dan , February 27, 2020 at 6:34 pm

The Sanders campaign needs to come out with a missive that states in no uncertain terms that they've been consistent in their desire that the popular vote winner should be selected. The media is having a field day with this and the Sanders campaign hasn't effectively explained why they took the position they did in 2016 and why they're taking the one they are now.

As was pointed out on Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti this morning, the Sanders campaign would ultimately like to do away with Superdelegates entirely.

The campaign needs to clearly explain this so it doesn't look like they are two-faced. It's about the popular vote and it always has been.

voislav , February 27, 2020 at 6:12 pm

A bunch of new polls came out in some key states, swinging the projection against Bernie. South Carolina is now projected to go to Biden with a wide margin, there was a swing in Texas as well, which is now projected to narrowly go to Biden.

That's the problem with models, they don't differentiate the quality of input. We'll see how realistic the new projection is on Saturday. Anything but a Biden landslide would swing the projection back to Bernie.

Bill Carson , February 27, 2020 at 6:40 pm

And of course having Biden at the top of that poll this close to the vote is a huge advantage because people like to vote for the winner.

But these last minute polls have raised my level of anxiety to new heights. Something is rotten in Denmark.

Assuming there has been a shift and it's not just a polling error, I have to think about two things:
1) the debate was horrible all the way around; and
2) Bernie made a huge blunder when he announced how he would pay for his plans (just like EW did four weeks ago or so), and people are afraid of taxes.

Say what you will about the RNC, at least they weren't corrupt.

Grant , February 27, 2020 at 6:57 pm

There isn't any actual evidence of a huge swing against Bernie. That simply isn't true. He is doing well in many super Tuesday polls. Two outliers came out in South Carolina that are highly problematic in regards to their methodology. They are done to make you anxious and to try to build momentum for Biden. The Monmouth poll massively oversampled older voters, as did the Clemson poll (look it up), the Monmouth poll has a margin of error of 9%, and they have inflated Biden's support by 10% in Iowa and NH. And how did him coming up with a "way to pay for his plans" (I know the MMT implications of that phrase) hurt him? Everyone knew taxes would go up, he said as much. He has said that out of pocket expenditures would more than offset that. Warren went down for a number of reasons, the biggest of which was that her single payer plan wasn't serious and she was clearly backing away from it.

I have to say, it is really frustrating when I go to a site that poster after poster looks at methodology in polling and can critically analyze problems, but then forget to look into the methodology of these polls. Some of these polls are trying to capture the objective reality, some have other motives.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 7:01 pm

Why would creating anxiety change my vote? If anything, it only strengthens my resolve to shove Sanders across the finish line, over the DNC's dead body if need be.

Grant , February 27, 2020 at 8:37 pm

Anxious may not be the best word. Bernie has momentum, he does have the best path forward, and they want someone else to get momentum. And I find the actual evidence of a huge swing to be a bit suspicious. There are two joke outlier polls and a tight race in Texas. I personally think Bernie has a good shot to do really well in Texas and there is a huge enthusiasm gap with Biden. And people in Texas started voting days ago and turnout was really high. Outside of Florida, Bernie is doing well, and these are largely right wing states. If people are actually supporting Bernie, maybe remain logical and don't feed into propaganda. Biden may win SC, but it isn't impossible for Bernie, and if Bernie wins, he is in even better shape.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 9:46 pm

Mentioned above, I hope Bernie can flip Texas blue. Very long shot I know, but -- the latino vote. I would be laughing for a week if that happened.

inode_buddha , February 27, 2020 at 6:58 pm

Um. RNC is every bit as corrupt. Just not so openly. Former GOP here, I should know.

Grant , February 27, 2020 at 6:45 pm

"South Carolina is now projected to go to Biden with a wide margin"

Not based on what I have seen. Two outliers came out, both massively oversampling older voters with huge margin of errors. Monmouth has had Biden doing far better in Iowa and NH than he actually did, I think the margin was 10%. Colorado and Virginia came out with Bernie far ahead. California looks good and Bernie is right there in Texas, with a large Latino population. Bernie is right there in NC and Georgia too. There are some states where Bernie might not do great (Florida), but he looks to pick up delegates in most every state. Not sure that is the case with anyone else. And he is doing well in Midwest states too. Biden has underwhelmed to this point and there is an enthusiasm gap. We'll see I guess.

But, I don't trust the judgement of Democrats one bit.

Grant , February 27, 2020 at 8:25 pm

Which should cause a logical person to question that. Two days ago there was a bunch of articles on Bernie closing the gap in SC, all polls showing a close race. Everyone acknowledges that if he wins in SC it is close to over. Then, two joke polls come out within hours showing a 20 point gap, huge outliers, and the media then ignores the other polls and goes with a poll from Monmouth that massively oversamples older voters, has a 9% margin of error and from a source that gave Biden 10% more in Iowa and NH than he actually got. The Clemson poll was an outright joke. Bernie is well situated in every super Tuesday state, other than Florida, and early voting started in TX and California days ago. We know how propaganda works, right? I think Biden may win in SC, I would be shocked if it wasn't decently close. Find me a poll with good methodology that has Biden running away with it. Let's also not pretend that Silver himself is objective. He is the Neera Tanden of people that analyze data.

Dan , February 27, 2020 at 8:43 pm

Grant, I've been following your analysis and I agree wholeheartedly. I'd be shocked, and obviously very suspicious, if it isn't a very close contest.

The Post and Courier Poll is the one that still has Bernie closest, within the margin of error.

Carey , February 27, 2020 at 7:48 pm

>South Carolina is now projected to go to Biden with a wide margin, there was a swing in Texas as well, which is now projected to narrowly go to Biden.

What has changed to make either of these factoids become true?

Biden doesn't know where he is, or what office he's running™ for, for dog's sake.

#riggedPolls (and likely, #riggedVotes)

Grant , February 27, 2020 at 8:40 pm

Norhing. Most polls show a tight race in SC. Two ridiculous polls came out and the media, and Bill, are focusing on them. In the case of the media, for obvious reasons. Don't know what Bill's motivation is.

Dan , February 27, 2020 at 9:09 pm

The Charleston Post and Courier has Biden at 28, Bernie at 24, with a 5.1 margin of error

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485042-south-carolina-poll-biden-leads-sanders-by-four-points

Titus , February 27, 2020 at 9:24 pm

Not to argue, but good system models do in fact assign a series of class attributes to inputs. 'Quality', in this context is kinda meaningless. Any good sociologist or physicist, or medical evidence based analysis, knows how to analyze and assign 'value' to inputs. I think all these poli-science polling models are next to worthless. Clearly there is at any given time an actual reality of what citizen voters both believe and may act on. All polling should reach the same conclusions if any kind of science was being employed. There are several ways to analyze the earth's shape but them come to the same conclusion- round (pear shaped actually). Zeitgeist is nice but it isn't science.

urblintz , February 27, 2020 at 7:44 pm

The Dem leadeship has finally found a full-proof method to mis-count the votes in favor of the guy with hair-plugs.

Carey , February 27, 2020 at 5:33 pm

Bloomberg's Game, by Jim Kavanagh:

"..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.."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/27/bloombergs-game/

Seems plausible enough.

jo6pac , February 27, 2020 at 5:36 pm

dnc has pulled out all the stops on their brain storming to stop Bernie. Amazing but not surprising. https://www.yahoo.com/news/democratic-leaders-willing-risk-party-200946646.html

Hoppy , February 27, 2020 at 6:06 pm

If ever there was a brain dead post from kos that needs some love..

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/27/1922484/-From-killing-the-filibuster-to-her-detailed-plans-only-Warren-is-serious-about-enacting-real-change#read-more

This is it.

I threw up in my mouth a couple times at the twisted logic.

I'm banned though.

Lupemax , February 27, 2020 at 8:20 pm

I'm from Massachusetts. Warren is as phony as they come. She needs to go back to Harvard where blowhards/filpfloppers belong. When cafeteria workers were striking at Harvard for a living wage and health care, even though warren said she "supported" workers she did not join them on the picket line.

Naive me I was shocked and remember that vividly. Opened my eyes to how bought off the democrat party has become. I also work with a candidate against her on the campaign trail in the primary for Senate. I never did get to shake Warren's hand on the campaign trail. Too many young guards around her prevented me from getting close enough to shake her hand. Bernie is so much more genuine in caring about people (especially the 99%) than Warren. I hope Bernie wins in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 8:50 pm

I don't read Kos anymore, but I can guess that the argument is basically that

"for a candidate's claimed commitment to "real" change to be credible, that candidate's plan has to be achievable within the constraints imposed by present political realities, and assuming no significant change in the ideological composition of the Party delegations to the legislature or the partisan breakdown within the legislature, and assuming no consequential changes in the political engagement of the public"

This seems to basically be Biden's theory, too, of why he is the only "real Progressive" running, because he's the only guy willing to compromise enough with the R Senate to "get things done".

The idea that the ideological composition of the legislature (dominated by neoliberalism at the moment) is not an unchangeable fact of nature eludes many people, and such people probably find Sanders to be beyond their comprehension.

-- -

I confess that when I hear EW earnestly proclaim that "Progressives have just one chance to implement change" (with the implication that her candidacy is that one hope for progressive change), what I intuit she really means is "this is my one chance at becoming President".

I'm not with her.

Here's the deal: let JB and EW argue over who is the real progressive or the only hope for change. Meanwhile, Sanders will go on mobilizing voters and volunteer campaign workers.

I hope it isn't even close.

jackson , February 27, 2020 at 6:58 pm

I found this to be a pretty convincing article that refutes the myth that centrist candidates are the most electable. Once you stop thinking about political alignment in one-dimensional terms and replace it instead with a two-dimensional framework (political compass), it's very intuitive to see why Bernie will defeat Trump. Thoughts?
https://thefutureiskeynesian.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-myth-of-centrist-electability.html

Carey , February 27, 2020 at 7:02 pm

NYT: "Due to technical difficulties, comments are unavailable. We're working to fix the issue as soon as possible."

From article: 'Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders':
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/democratic-superdelegates.html

that consent-manufacturing's just not what it used to be

heh

urblintz , February 27, 2020 at 8:04 pm

The comments were working when I read the article and the "Reader's Picks" almost unanimously were angry and opposed.

oops.

Carey , February 27, 2020 at 7:35 pm

2020 support among voters under 45 years old according to the new NPR/PBS/Marist poll:

Sanders 54%
Warren 16%
Bloomberg 8%
Biden 6%
Buttigieg 5%
Klobuchar 5%
Everyone else 2% or less

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-poll-results-election-2020/

Anthony G Stegman , February 27, 2020 at 7:40 pm

If it is Trump vs Bloomberg I will vote for Trump.
Trump vs Biden I will vote for Trump.
Trump vs Klobuchar I will vote for Trump.
Trump vs Warren I'll hold my nose and vote for Warren.
Trump vs Sanders I will vote for Sanders.
Trump vs. Mayor Pete will never happen. If a crazy thing happens I will vote for Trump.
Trump vs Steyer I will hold my nose and vote for Steyer.

cm , February 27, 2020 at 8:11 pm

I will either vote Sanders or else Trump. Burn it to the ground if they yank Sanders.

Carey , February 27, 2020 at 8:26 pm

I will vote for Sanders (and hope the vote gets accurately counted), or I won't mcVote. Team Dem are fine with a vote for Trump!; and indeed, may prefer it.

And why not? effing loserCrats..

Plenue , February 27, 2020 at 9:04 pm

Sanders or bust.

Either give me actual progressive change, or I'm content with the more inept evil continuing in power. I won't actively vote for Trump, but I'll happily not vote for a Republican-lite against him.

Dems are not entitled to me vote. I do, in fact, 'have somewhere else to go'. Maybe they need to lose to the clown a second time for that point to be pounded into their skulls.

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 9:17 pm

If one is going to vote DJT as a protest, at least vote "D" down-ballot (unless there is a clearly superior "R" on offer) so that the Party gets a sense of how many votes it lost to ticket-splitters.

One can also simply not vote the top of the ticket to send the same message.

I hope to not have to make such decisions, but it is worth thinking about it ahead of time.

And maybe DNC lurkers are reading these threads. I hope they are dismayed by what they see here.

John k , February 27, 2020 at 10:09 pm

Party doesn't care about losing votes, explaining no 50 state strategy or fighting rep vote suppression.
Job 1 is to simply keep the progressive from power. Trump is good for donors, so what's not to like?
Granted, they have to pretend they want to win, and individual candidates very much want to win, but winning is not at all important to the dem elites.
Buffett of course said he'd pick Bloomberg over sanders. But the more interesting answer is whether he would vote for sanders over trump not that I'd trust his answer. Sometimes it's just more prudent to lie.

anonymous , February 27, 2020 at 8:08 pm

The results of the Iowa Democratic Party caucus limited recount were released. There was no change in national delegates (Buttigieg 14, Sanders 12).
https://iowademocrats.org/idp-announces-results-limited-scope-precinct-caucus-recount/

Some limitations of a recount were explained by Bleeding Heartland's Laura Belin prior to the recount: https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2020/02/19/three-ways-mark-smith-can-restore-faith-in-the-iowa-democratic-party/

Samuel Conner , February 27, 2020 at 9:26 pm

I think that caucuses are harder to rig because there is no "ballot secrecy". You can see how many people align with each candidate in each vote. And each campaign is doing it's own counting and verifying that the published totals match what it counted.

I hope that Sanders has good tech consultants looking at the specific models of voting machines in the upcoming secret-ballot primaries, and good mathematicians evaluating the output numbers for traces of non-random features that could suggest tampering.

Oh yes, and good lawyers standing by.

WheresOurTeddy , February 27, 2020 at 9:40 pm

Bernie is supported by:

Dick Van Dyke
Ariana Grande
Public Enemy
the lion's share of Latinos, nurses, people under 35, people under 30k/yr
this poor rural California white person who should demographically be a Trump voter

Who is the unity candidate, Liz?

urblintz , February 27, 2020 at 10:37 pm

Bernie is supported by this 64 yr old white male retired opera singer living not uncomfortably (at least for now knock on wood) who shouldn't care about m4all because, well, I'll get mine soon enough, but who cares a lot anyway, and understands that only Sanders is prepared to redirect $$ to expanded social services for the people from the way $$ is currently directed for anything military and corporate and wasteful (everything else is just noise) and who gets the urgency of climate change without offering profit oriented solutions, as I observe the splendid wreck that was once my future and gleefully imagine Bernie saying, in that untranscribable accent:

"Ya know what Mr. Trump? You're a liar and a criminal. The voters are gonna make sure you get a one way ticket outta the White House. And by the way after you're gone?.. we're gonna come after you with handcuffs."

Of course one shouldn't presume what Bernie might say except that it'll be better and classier than the above and it will be direct!

[Feb 26, 2020] If the virus comes on big, Sanders will be our next president.

Feb 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

melpol , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 2:48 pm GMT

Lack of hospital beds for those infected with the virus will be blamed on Trump. He will be accused of funding a trillion dollar military handout and neglecting the health of the American people. Trump will look so bad that Sanders can easily beat him. If the virus comes on big, Sanders will be our next president.
Pft , says: Show Comment February 27, 2020 at 12:07 am GMT
This is a fake wrestling match. The script has been written, trump for 4 more. The Dems are not seriously contesting the script. If they were they would have found a viable candidate and would have fired DNC leadership and distanced itself from Russia gate and impeachment. None of these candidates are electable.

Like Trump they submit to the elites and Israel wishes. And Bernies as socialist as China, fake socialism, both captured by neoliberalism. On economic and foreign policy and military matters, they are no different than Trump. Different look thats all, like Coke and Pepsi,just 2 different flavors

Which one actually wins the nomination is irrelevant.

The party is dysfunctional, or at least doing its best to appear to be. Perhaps just for entertainment purposes. I mean, nobody could be as detached from reality as they pretend to be.

So don't waste your time with this. Better off watching reruns of classics where you already know the ending. The acting and scripts were far better than this reality cluster bomb, even if the picture quality is not as good.

Anon [140] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment February 27, 2020 at 1:05 am GMT
I wonder what our elites will resort to to stop Bernie this time?

If conventional slanted media coverage/mega donations/and the usual dirty tricks like charging $3,200 dollars to attend the debate, ensuring the audience was filled with wealthy establishment cheerers and booers dont work, what then? It be kinda touchy to outsource the dirty work to the Mossad wouldnt it? Another heart attack perhaps? Bernie have secret service protection yet?

The Bloomberg commercials on endless youtube videos, news broadcasts, and television get to be too much in my opinion. Its like "Hey Im Mike Bloomberg and I was a Republican Mayor but now Im a Democrat, and intend to be in every commercial break you see until you give up and vote for me".

[Feb 26, 2020] Sanders and immigration

Feb 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

TG , says: Show Comment February 25, 2020 at 11:22 pm GMT

Quandry? "If there is no solution, there is no problem!"

The big deal with Bernie, I think, is his donor-driven post-2015 change on mass immigration. Even Ann Coulter says she'd vote for 2015 Bernie, but the present Bernie, who wants to wipe out border enforcement – which means wiping out the border – which means ending the country as a country – would invite at least hundreds of millions of third world refugees into the nation, and giving them all free medical care will bankrupt us very very quickly.

Indeed the elites are screwing the average person, and most of that is today condemned as 'socialism' is about where Richard Nixon was in the political spectrum (how soon we forget). But Bernie 2015 was right: open borders is a Koch Brothers plan and it will wipe out all other good aspects of his proposed programs. Because corporate propaganda aside, no nation without an open frontier has either achieved or maintained a high standard of living in the face of massive population growth.

If it's 2020 Bernie vs. Trump, then I, as an FDR-style progressive, have no choice but to vote for Trump. And that's sad.

[Feb 26, 2020] Latest Bernie statements of foreign policy are encoraging

Feb 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

juliania , Feb 26 2020 19:30 utc | 42

To my thoughs @40 above:

I scrolled through the NC debate comments to about two-thirds down, to find a clear positive on Bernie's remarks:

nippersmom: "Great comment from Bernie on US overthrowing governments around the world."

23 comments later, this:

"Bill Carson
February 25, 2020 at 9:42 pm
Finally -- -Bernie just knocked it out of the park with his answer on Israel.

Reply ↓
nippersmom
February 25, 2020 at 9:43 pm
Thank you, Bernie, for not backing down on your criticism of Israel.

Reply ↓
CarlH
February 25, 2020 at 9:44 pm
Bernie drops truth bomb never heard in a debate before about Israel/Palestine. Finally some truth on this issue!

Reply ↓
Darius
February 25, 2020 at 9:46 pm
Also mentioned overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile. Wow."

Pretty important stuff, which we have discussed on this forum at length - I would say foreign policy issues being the most important to posters here. Yet even on a pro Bernie forum like Naked Capitalism, the negativity thrown at the Sanders campaign is almost insurmountable.

Some actual physical repression occurred at the l968 Democratic Convention. Young people were attacked in the hall and on the street. I'm not one of those who say 'pass the popcorn.' But perhaps instead of outrage against the inevitable, there ought to be counter moves being considered. One came up, one comment among many at the above quoted discussion - somebody asked if Bernie is not the candidate of the Democrats, can there be an alternative legitimate avenue for him to be on the ballot?

I know he has said he will support whomever. That 'noble' intention is the unsurmountable problem. Bernie is no Malcolm X. He has devotees, but that is not a movement. If it can't happen, in the face of this negativity attracting all the energy at such sites as quoted, I cannot imagine his candidacy from within will succeed. Nor that US foreign policy, so important to us here, will change.

All the same, bravo to him as far as he has gone. We have a way to go yet, and perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a real movement now. It didn't happen right away in Russia. But they got there in the end.



karlof1 , Feb 26 2020 19:39 utc | 43

On the last thread , I proved all candidates aside from Sanders are Pro-Establishment and Anti-99%. I've also written that Sanders is imperfect and that we'll never find a perfect candidate given the fact of human imperfection. So as far as I'm concerned, the debate over which candidate to support has ended with Sanders being the clear choice. I've also shown how Sanders can wrap his campaign proposals in the language of the Constitution and the designs of The Founders which would make it dangerous for any of his opponents to argue against them, which is why we're beginning to see personal assaults and smears against his character.

In 2016, the clear enemy was Hillary Clinton and her DNC/DLC rackets. In 2020, those enemies remain but are obfuscated by the current Pro-Establishment candidates. IMO, what must happen next is for the People's Party Movement Sanders initiated to become autonomous--to grow beyond Bernie Sanders and truly embody all the people already in and soon to join. The reason ought to be clear: No one individual can beat back the Establishment and their Death Squads (If you don't think they exist, you're very naïve); they can only be defeated by a very broad coalition of US citizens, most of whom still need to be educated as to who their enemies are.

The shouting matches here and elsewhere only serve the Establishment and must cease. Some may not care to support Sanders, but to work against him is to work against yourself. It's also very key for Sanders to have likeminded people elected to Congress and to statehouses nationally. The most important election during the Depression was 1936, and one of FDR's most important speeches was the 1937 Inaugural, which I've also cited and linked. Most importantly, political change won't occur unless we all get off our butts and work for it regardless of where you're living as ousting Neoliberalism and reestablishing national sovereignty is a global task for all citizens to accomplish. Yes, a repetition of the last financial crisis is on the horizon. The real data I've shown proves the real economy has yet to recover from the Dot.Com crash of the late 1990s while a vast army 100 million strong want full employment at a living wage, all of whom ought to be within the Movement. I'm reminded that we've been pushed and pulled in so many directions over the years that we're now like the befuddled star of Quadrophrenia who in a moment of lucidity sings:

"My karma tells me
You've been screwed again.
If you let them do it to you
You've got yourself to blame.
It's you who feels the pain
It's you that feels ashamed."

And that the only remedy is to fight back--to Rage Against the Machine and convert the Mods.

Circe , Feb 26 2020 20:11 utc | 46
Bernie rally live From Myrtle Beach!

https://youtu.be/6WinWkMqPSU

Circe , Feb 26 2020 21:47 utc | 53
Hey, remember yesterday evening I was here bitchin' that the debate audience must have been paid by Bloomberg or the DNC cause they were so hostile to Bernie. I was right to suspect something!

This is how sharp Papa Bernie is! (Click on interview with MSNBC and vol. Right bottom.)

Bernie zinger

Oh and someone else caught Bloomberg in a Freudian slip like me! (It went right over the ms media's head.)

Bloomberg slip

-Trust you instincts.

Circe , Feb 26 2020 22:10 utc | 54
Here's two versions of the video of Bloomberg gaffe.

Bloomberg slip

This is the funny version.

https://youtu.be/kT5k73noAQo

[Feb 26, 2020] Does Bernie play the role of a sheep dog like he did in 2016 lections?

After 2016 you need to be suspicious... Nothing that candidate say or propose can be taken at face value anymore. Only actual legislative record has some predictive value. Those candidates who does not have it can do Obama (or Trump) "change we can belave in" dirty trick with ease. They can promise to voters anything and do completely opposite things.
Legislative record does give some confidence that not everything in this particular candidate is fake.
Feb 26, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jackrabbit , Feb 26 2020 17:29 utc | 28
Because Bernie's response to the undermining of his campaign/ insurgency is weak because he's tied his hands by making 'Party unity' paramount. And we are further informed by Obama's faux populist hucksterism and Bernie's 2016 sheep-dogging.

If you really wanted to help Bernie you would spend your time at places frequented by women, LGBT, minority voters, and elderly voters. The Democratic Party strategy is to use identity politics to attract voters away from Bernie. But you're at moa instead, a small international affairs site.

!!

vinnieoh , Feb 26 2020 20:08 utc | 44

Jackrabbit @28

"Bernie's 2016 sheep-dogging."

This remains a false accusation as far as I'm concerned. We (wife and I) were Sanders followers/supporters when in 2014 or 2015 he solicited the comments from those on his mailing list why he was considering running. I felt he was serious about his core message then, and still do. Had he done other than he had at the end of the '16 campaign, his political life would have been over, but instead here he is, stronger and more organized and still with the same message. I'm guessing that of the probably many who supported him but ended up casting a ballot for HRC would have done so without the herding of a sheep dog. That's what my wife did, but I did not. My wife, like Bernie, couldn't stomach the thought of Trump in the WH; do you suggest that my wife's vote was not honest or that Sanders desire not to see Trump elected wasn't real? It was a foregone conclusion here in Ohio and the count proved that out, so my vote for Stein was of no consequence.

And I understand the argument that voting matters little. Gillens and Page (sp,s?) assembled statistical proof, in the best traditional style, of the disenfranchisement of the non-wealthy and the non-powerful from any influence on governance. Yet, if this is so, there are many powerful forces at work trying to derail Sanders and the stirrings inspired by his stump. Sanders core message goes to the heart of how we are disenfranchised - money in government, systemic corruption. Perhaps very many always took this politics as a given, but believed it was either petty corruption and/or of no consequence in their lives. But this is 2020 and the ownership society has become greedier; freed from regulatory restraints by the captured political class it has become predatory in all aspects of our lives. This is not a difficult reality to prove. Health care is a raging example of this, a fact that most of us commoners have thoroughly absorbed by now.

Only meant to refute the sheep herding accusation. I digressed.

[Feb 26, 2020] The neoliberal globalists and bankers are engaging in a massive ripoff of the "99%" (although I think the ratio is more like 80-20% rather than 99-1%). But I don't think Bernie has the solution.

Feb 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

Dr. X , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 1:10 pm GMT

This article correctly describes how the neoliberal globalists and bankers are engaging in a massive ripoff of the "99%" (although I think the ratio is more like 80-20% rather than 99-1%). But I don't think Bernie has the solution.

Frankly, the Democratic Party had the solution -- the New Deal, which actually did create economic security for the white working class.

But they threw it out the window, and sided with the neoliberal oligarchy to finance their hedonistic post-1960s lifestyle of porn, drugs, miscegenation, integration, and recreational sex.

They've completely destroyed the culture. I don't think there is any solution at this point.

RadicalCenter , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 1:34 pm GMT
It's interesting: Hudson calls Democrat's "the servants' entrance to the Republican Party" and refers to the republican party's agenda in favor of the one percent.

Meanwhile, also on unz.com this very day, Boyd Cathey has a column "The Russians are Coming" wherein he calls Republicans "a sordid and disreputable second cousin of the advancing leftist juggernaut."

Perhaps they are both correct, and each of their own party's ruling apparatus is no better than the "other" party's ruling apparatus at all.

Jake , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 1:46 pm GMT
The motto of both Democrats and Republican Neocons and Republican Country Clubbers: Don't Think; Don't Ask; Pay Taxes; Vote for Us; Never Doubt 'Our' Filthy Rich; Blame 'Them' for Everything 'We' Call Bad.

American Democracy, WASP created democracy, is a whore's game. It is con artistry.

RadicalCenter , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 1:55 pm GMT
@Anon 123 No, there still is enough money even now to take care of the vast unemployed and underemployed class of people, WITHOUT further taxing those of us still working full-time and increasingly struggling.

1. Place natural resources -- oil, gas, and minerals -- under public ownership. Distribute the proceeds from their extraction and sale as an equal dividend to every US Citizen. (As part of the grand bargain, make it MUCH harder to gain US Citizenship, e.g. no birthright citizenship and no chain migration aka "family reunification.") This is a more thorough, more equitable national version of Alaska's resource-funded permanent fund.

How much do executives and shareholders of energy corporations profit each year off of our God-given natural resources? That becomes revenue available for all US Citizens as a universal basic income. (To minimize price/rent inflation, we can start the UBI very low and phase it in gradually over a period of, say, 8 years.)

2. Stop the us government's constant aggressive wars and occupations far from our borders, and close the majority of our bases abroad. Bring the troops home from Europe, Japan, and South Korea -- they can guard our southern border instead, and the new bases will provide a sustained boost to the hundreds of towns around the new bases here at home.

What if we reduced direct war, occupation, and foreign-base spending by $400 billion per year. Seems like a conservative figure. Here is a website that still has 2018 fed gov spending stats -- and seems to undercount military spending -- but a place to start:

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/trade-offs/?state=00&program=14

Of course, since we are borrowing a large chunk of the fed gov's current spending, we should not simply re-spend all of the military savings. Allocate part to other spending, but simply don't spend the rest (thereby borrowing less each year).

3. The current federal "Alternative Minimum (Income) Tax" kicks in at far too low an income level. Conversely, the AMT rate is far too low for extremely high incomes. What a coincidence. Apply the AMT only to household annual income above $2 million, amply adjusted for inflation, but tax the starch out of the oligarchs and billionaires. Yes, they can be forcibly prevented from moving their assets and themselves out of the country. Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Trump, the Sacklers, et al., can be confined and their property confiscated as needed to pay the AMT on their income and a wealth tax.

Even now, the money is there to directly help the American people with no increase in taxes on 99.5% of us, and with less fed gov borrowing than now.

[Feb 26, 2020] Bernie is threatening to expose the delusions of the deep state in regards to multiculturalism.

Feb 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

Cyrano , says: Show Comment February 26, 2020 at 7:52 pm GMT

Bernie is threatening to expose the delusions of the deep state in regards to multiculturalism.

Prior to Bernie, the deep state's not so deep thinkers believed that the phony socialism that they invented works on 2 levels. It portrays US as a liberal country and on the second level it scares those who have no clue about socialism even more away from wanting to have anything to do with socialism.

The party slogan of the deep state – fake socialism is better than the real one – was never true, and with Bernie threatening to bring some of the real features of socialism to US, it will bring into turmoil the "brilliantly" constructed deception by the deep state.

If US are going to get some real socialist policies, the question will emerge – do they still need the fake socialism that's destroying them and the rest of the western world.

[Feb 26, 2020] A serious US politician has to demonstrate a large capacity for betrayal.

Highly recommended!
Feb 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

Levtraro , says: Show Comment February 25, 2020 at 6:52 pm GMT

I suspect his open-borders advocacy and Russia-bashing too are lies; these are lines of defence against internal forces. It makes sense for him to take those positions while he seeks the nomination. If he gets it, he can betray those positions. A serious politician has to demonstrate a large capacity for betrayal. At the end of the day, he is a hardened politician like the rest.

[Feb 26, 2020] Why Sanders was booed for highlighting Bloomberg's "strong and enthusiastic base of support" among fellow billionaires?

Only Democrats can reach such a level of hypocrisy. They preach one thing to you and then turn around and do the opposite with no shame.
Feb 26, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

It's easy: Nothing says more about the "party of the people" like $1,750 to $3,200 tickets.

Asked about the crowd's behavior in an interview following the debate, Sanders said "to get a ticket to the debate, you had to be fairly wealthy."

The Bloomberg campaign denied that it stacked the audience with paid supporters amid rampant social media speculation that the billionaire " purchased " a portion of the crowd to create the appearance of a strong performance following his poor showing in Las Vegas last week.


Victory_Rossi , 2 minutes ago

Fairly wealthy? I refuse to believe that anyone would pay a couple of grand to go to a ******* debate.

Musum , 4 minutes ago

In America, $1750-$3200 per seat is democracy.

And oligarchs on Wall St. and industry is capitalism.

You don't have to go far to figure out why Sanders is popular. And voting doesn't matter.

XXX , 15 minutes ago

If it was serious, there wouldn't be a "studio audience", ala Jerry Springer, just reasoned arguments, courtesy and professionalism, all kept under tight control by an unbiased moderator. But it's not serious. It's just political carnival time, clowns only.

XXX , 1 minute ago

Yes. True. It's a shitshow for sure.

XXX, 16 minutes ago

Disgusting hypocrisy. Most of the U.S. citizenry Rep&Dem don't even have that kind of $ available for an emergency let alone some worthless, useless, meaningless debate for an election that will never be happen regardless of whether 100% of the information is presented that it did happen.

These psychopaths really are some sick mf'ers.

[Feb 26, 2020] Sanders on "60 Minutes" spells out willingness to use US military power - World Socialist Web Site

By Patrick Martin 25 February 2020 25 February 2020
Feb 26, 2020 | www.wsws.org

One of the most important aspects of Bernie Sanders' appearance Sunday night on the CBS program "60 Minutes" was a section of the interview that the network chose not to broadcast, but which was nonetheless available on its website and widely cited in the media afterwards.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, February 3, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]

This was a discussion between Sanders and interviewer Anderson Cooper over the question of US war-making, in which the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination gave his views on the circumstances in which he would order military action.

"We have the best military in the world," was Sanders' first response when Cooper raised the question of his past posture of opposing overseas American military interventions. Asked to spell out the circumstances in which he, as president, would send US forces into combat, Sanders replied: "Threats against the American people, to be sure. Threats against our allies. I believe in NATO. I believe that the United States, everything being equal, should be working with other countries in alliance, not doing it alone."

When Cooper asked whether he would order military action if China attacked Taiwan -- an island which the United States officially recognizes as Chinese territory -- Sanders replied, "Yeah. I mean, I think we have got to make it clear to countries around the world that we will not sit by and allow invasions to take place, absolutely."

Given that nearly all of the American wars of aggression of the past 30 years were waged under such pretexts, Sanders' response should raise the alarm among working people and young people who have rallied to his campaign thinking that he was a genuine opponent of war.

The administration of George H. W. Bush launched the 1991 Persian Gulf war on the pretext of opposing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The administration of Bill Clinton bombed Serbian targets in Bosnia and later bombed Serbia itself, citing acts of aggression by Serbian forces against Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars as a pretext.

The administration of George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan claiming this was a necessary response to the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States. It employed the same pretext, on an even more threadbare and dishonest basis, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

The Obama administration waged war for all its eight years in office -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, and through the use of drones and proxy forces in Syria, Yemen and many other countries. It should be recalled that during his first run for the presidency, when Sanders was asked whether he would use drones and special forces in the "war on terror," he responded, "All that and more."

As for "threats against our allies," such a criterion could be used to justify US military intervention against Russia in the event of further border clashes with Ukraine or conflict between Moscow and the ferociously anti-Russian right-wing regimes in the Baltic states. Further clashes between Turkish and Syrian government forces could involve Russian forces, bringing them into a military conflict with Turkey, a NATO member.

In the event of naval conflicts between China and Japan or South Korea over disputed islets, or with any number of southeast Asian countries that contest Chinese claims to parts of the South China Sea, the US could go to war with yet another nuclear-armed rival on the basis of Sanders' criteria.

Revealingly, in the "60 Minutes" interview Sanders did not make a single criticism of the Trump administration's bellicose threats against Iran, Venezuela or other countries targeted for imperialist bullying by Washington. He criticized Trump's friendly overtures towards North Korea, although he said he would not rule out meeting with the country's dictator Kim Jong-un.

These comments follow a response by the Sanders campaign to a New York Times survey of the Democratic candidates, in which Sanders said he would consider preemptive use of military force against an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test.

Sanders sought to combine his generally "mainstream" approach to imperialist foreign policy with a bit of left posturing in relation to Cuba. He told Cooper, in response to a question about his past sympathy for the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and opposition to US sanctions against Cuba: "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?"

Anticipating the red-baiting response of the Republicans and Cuban exile groups in south Florida, Sanders staged his own pre-emptive red-baiting against Trump, suggesting that the president had no right to criticize him as soft on Castro given his own "love letters" to Kim Jong-un.

There is another incident that raises questions about Sanders' claims to be a candidate opposed to the "endless wars" of American imperialism. When asked by reporters about the Washington Post 's report Friday that he had been notified by US intelligence agencies about supposed Russian efforts to interfere in the US elections in his support, he said he had received a briefing "about a month ago."

When asked why he had not disclosed the briefing or its subject, Sanders answered, "Because I go to many intelligence briefings which I don't reveal to the public."

[Feb 25, 2020] Bernie is a Russagater and he will suck the life out of a possible leftist movement in this country. Just like Obama, the faux-populist huckster.

Feb 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Feb 23 2020 15:45 utc | 8

SharonM @4 [Bernie] ... will suck the life out of a possible leftist movement in this country.

Just like Obama, the faux-populist huckster.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

IMO Bernie will not be the nominee. The Democratic Party will throw sheepdog Bernie and his supporters a few bones (like VP pick), then Bernie will declare victory and support whomever is the nominee (as he's always said he would).

Bloomberg's already buying super-delegates .

!!

SharonM , Feb 23 2020 15:56 utc | 11

@7 Jackrabbit

But Bernie is not that much of a threat to the establishment. His whole thing is updating domestic policy, while he continues U.S. hegemony around the world. The most powerful force in the U.S. is the MIC, and Bernie is all in. In my view, of course;)

Kabobyak , Feb 23 2020 16:10 utc | 13
Every time I allow some optimism to grip me concerning Bernie's campaign, he throws another sucker punch promoting the dangerous and dumbass Russia narrative. I'll vote Tulsi in March if she's still in the race; making that tiny statement is more important to me than the also tiny vote rewarding someone for being so wrong about a most important issue.

I went back to a Caitlin Johnstone piece from exactly a year ago talking about this. She predicted accurately that the smears would then be used against him also:

"I find myself unable to join in the jubilations over Bernie's candidacy because of what I've learned and seen since the last election. Sanders not only refused to provide any pushback whatsoever against the DNC's blatant subversion of the will of the people, but he actively fanned the flames of the establishment Russia hysteria which the Democratic Party used to completely kill the narrative about primary rigging.

Contrary to the belief of some Bernie supporters I've spoken to, Sanders didn't just pay lip service to some Russian interference once or twice and then change the subject back to healthcare and income inequality: he has gone full Rachel Maddow promoting the Russian collusion narrative many, many times. As we discussed recently, this baseless Russia hysteria that he has sold to American progressives will be used to attack him throughout the primary, and it will be partly his fault for promoting that narrative."

"While Bernie might not start any new hot wars or engage in the kind of obscene regime change interventionism we're seeing from Trump in Venezuela, under a President Sanders we can expect to see a continued escalation of the world-threatening cold war against Russia, continued starvation sanctions against nations which fail to comply with the demands of the US empire, continued military expansionism around the world, and very little pushback against the depraved agendas of military and intelligence agencies.

We can expect to see him play right along with the establishment narrative if the political/media class decides that Assad is gassing civilians and needs a dose of Tomahawk missiles, and we can probably expect him to facilitate the persecution of Julian Assange as well."

gottlieb , Feb 23 2020 16:30 utc | 16
For the left, it's easy to be skeptical of Bernie Sanders. He has and does act as a sheepdog for Democrats to swoop centrist progressives into the Democrats' debauched Money-Power tent. We all know the monopoly two-party systems in the States is one of two-sides of the same coin; controlled opposition.

But if folks believe what they say about a variety of existential problems facing life on this planet, and that time is of the essence, then the idea of waiting for 'revolution' or conducting leftist purity tests for candidates to prove their Peace, Love and Understanding, is to cut off the nose to spite the face.

The Green Party, to which I belong, polls about 1% and has no traction whatsoever in the political landscape of the country in 2020. If one thinks our problems are existential and time-sensitive, then what alternative is there but to place one's hope in a lifelong mensch who has held true to his beliefs while the Democrats, under Clinton/Schumer/Pelosi/Obama leadership has relegated the Party to a vassal of greed, and are nothing short of co-conspirators in great crimes against humanity.

I get all the purity arguments, and sheep-herding skepticism. But in the United States of America, awash in devious propaganda, jingoist extremism, and a population of the dazed and confused, Bernie Sanders is a cry in the wilderness for some sense of decency and he deserves support. All war is class war, and the working class is on its way to annihilation. It's Sanders or Bust.

Noirette , Feb 23 2020 16:34 utc | 18
IMO Bernie will not be the nominee. Jack Rabbit at 7.

Right on. If he finally is hoisted to that position, contrary to all expectations, resisting all the kill-him Dem moves (which are costing the Dems. bigly) it will be because the fix is in, giving Trump a second term.

But Bernie is not that much of a threat to the establishment Sharon M at 11.

No threat at all.

Trisha , Feb 23 2020 16:38 utc | 20
Here's Bernie's reaction to his briefing by U.S. intelligence officials about Russian attempts to interfere in the 2020 elections:

"The ugly thing that they are doing, and I've seen some of their tweets and stuff, is they try to divide us up. That's what they did in 2016."

Sanders described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "thug" in a statement on Friday, emphasizing that he stands "firmly against" Russian interference efforts.

"Unlike Donald Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good friend. He is an autocratic thug who is attempting to destroy democracy and crush dissent in Russia," Sanders said. "Let's be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts, and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election."

If he gets elected, Bernie will get along great with the Deep State, he's already spouting their propaganda.

Trailer Trash , Feb 23 2020 16:58 utc | 22
Two decades ago I knew people in my state's Green Party and Dummycrat Party. The funny thing was, it was the same people in both parties! In my view, the hapless Greens were organized to be sheepdogs, but they have been replaced by Bernie.
Jackrabbit , Feb 23 2020 17:00 utc | 23
gottlieb @15: It's Sanders or Bust.

Comments like this are disingenuous, Democracy Works! bullcrap that supports the establishment while pretending to be against it.

<> <> <> <> <>

Still no answer to my question:

Why can't we have independent Movements AND support Bernie?

The best way around the two-party lock on politics is to support strong independent, long-lasting Movements.

We are allowed to have Movements for women, minorities, the environment, etc. but not for economic justice and democracy. The media and political parties discourage it. We know they work for the power elite, not for the people.

!!

Richard , Feb 23 2020 17:01 utc | 24
Trisha @ 10

Perhaps if Bernie was not the fake servant of the MIC that he is (rather than a socialist) he would have drawn attention to the USA's meddling in Russia's elections. Because...it seems that, besides being a lie, the whole 'Russia did it' narrative may well have been a case of 'the pot calling the kettle black', for a new report out of Russia exhaustively lists the ways in which the American state and oligarch and CIA funded NGO's have attempted to interfere in Russian elections...

https://richardhennerley.com/2019/10/27/american-interference-in-russian-elections/

jef , Feb 23 2020 17:07 utc | 26
@11 SharonM

As many others have pointed out, the outlaw US empire has been sanctioning, regime changing, overthrowing, assassinating, and "bombing back to the stone age" any country that elects a leader who initiates socialist policies that inhibits "American interests" which means the ability to benefit in some way. Socialism is another way of saying a government "for the people" when all America stands for is government "for the rich".

If we have gone to so much trouble, as Bill Blum called it in his book "Killing Hope" over the last 75+ years to 50+ countries, why would we let it happen here?

Likklemore , Feb 23 2020 18:14 utc | 34
The Dems Party are in chaos.

Biden's support in South Carolina that he needs to stay relevant is dropping faster than a blink was leading by 30 points now just by 5.

The poll, which was finished before Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the Nevada caucuses, revealed that Biden's support has fallen by double-digits and that he leads the progressive senator by just 5 points. Biden, who once led the field by nearly 30 points, earned 28 percent support among Democratic voters and independents who plan to vote in the primary.

Bernie: His age, heart attack and the Russia smear will be tweeted wall-to-wall.

Disappointing for me to find that Bernie is in the pocket of USMIC.
He confirmed being against disastrous wars but is ready to do pre-emptive strikes against Iran, North Korea and will 'Absolutely use military force,'
"Yeah, we have the best military in the world." [watch CBS 60 Minutes]

Knock me over with a feather if Bernie is allowed the nomination.

Here comes mini-Mike in the brokered convention.

ben , Feb 23 2020 18:29 utc | 35
gottlieb @ 15 said in part;"We all know the monopoly two-party systems in the States is one of two-sides of the same coin; controlled opposition."

"But if folks believe what they say about a variety of existential problems facing life on this planet, and that time is of the essence, then the idea of waiting for 'revolution' or conducting leftist purity tests for candidates to prove their Peace, Love and Understanding, is to cut off the nose to spite the face."

Absolutely right on point!

Perhaps the folks here daily who consistently trash Bernie, can enlighten us misguided fools as to what "movement" or candidate we should prefer.

And be specific please, no generic solutions.

Igor Bundy , Feb 23 2020 18:32 utc | 36
Americans have ended up without honor, without ethics or even common human decency.. They can not be helped.. And it seems they are already in control.

How can you help people who are already lost and beyond redemption? They need to care for themselves and then others. Dont even know what they care about.. Kind of like the zoo where the monkeys are running amock. And this is what capitalism brings you when there are no restrictions or over sight to keep people safe from predators.

ben , Feb 23 2020 18:33 utc | 37
P.S. Non-participation is capitulation to the elites,period..

[Feb 25, 2020] 23 February 2020 at 02:36 PM

Notable quotes:
"... The Democrats are in a bind. The only candidate that generates any enthusiasm among their candidates is Bernie. Yet a Bernie win would lead to the possibility that the Clinton-Obama machine that has dominated the DNC power structures may be on the out. They'll resist with everything they've got. They can't afford the loss of money and power. ..."
"... Lloyd Blankfein has stated that he would vote for Trump than Bernie. He must echo Wall St sentiment. They too can't afford giving up the gravy train of the past 40 years that financialization of the economy has given them. ..."
"... As Eric Newhill points out the Democrats are damned if they go Bernie and damned if they don't. ..."
"... The democratic establishment had every intention of rigging the primary by means of "super delegates" at a brokered convention, but it looks like Bernie is going to win an outright majority. People want change. Bernie is the only guy who can bring the US troops home from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan - so I hope he wins. ..."
Feb 25, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
div Is weakened by his domestic and foreign policy blinders and the threat of Coronavirus recession Trump manage to hold his 2016 swing voters against Sanders?

blue peacock , 23 February 2020 at 02:36 PM

The Democrats are in a bind. The only candidate that generates any enthusiasm among their candidates is Bernie. Yet a Bernie win would lead to the possibility that the Clinton-Obama machine that has dominated the DNC power structures may be on the out. They'll resist with everything they've got. They can't afford the loss of money and power.

Lloyd Blankfein has stated that he would vote for Trump than Bernie. He must echo Wall St sentiment. They too can't afford giving up the gravy train of the past 40 years that financialization of the economy has given them.

As Eric Newhill points out the Democrats are damned if they go Bernie and damned if they don't.

If the Nevada results are indication of the Latino vote in the Southwest, then it will be interesting how they vote in Texas and Arizona. They voted overwhelmingly (70+%) for Bernie in Nevada. Super Tuesday will probably provide clues if Bernie will lead the delegate count by a significant margin. The question is will the DNC bigwigs force everyone out to coalesce around Bloomberg or will their plan be to use the second ballot at the convention to deny Bernie. The latter will likely fracture the party as the Bernie Bros will not take this second time of super delegates putting their thumbs on the scale well and that could mean the loss of the House. A perfect scenario for Trump.

I'm curious why Trump is trolling on behalf of Bernie over Mike. Does he believe Mike would be a more formidable opponent?

What is interesting is that there has been no reflection by the establishment of both parties and the big corporate media why the voters are more enthusiastic for Trump and Bernie. Clearly the status quo over the past 40 years have only created deep frustration among significant sections of the electorate.

IMO, an underestimated threat is the coronavirus. If it turns out to be a real pandemic and large parts of China and S. Korea remain shut for an extended period it would have significant implications as the extent of dependence on the Chinese supply chain will become apparent. That is one consequence of the policies of both parties over the past several decades. Another is if the coronavirus spreads in the US. I'm skeptical that we are prepared to handle it. We may experience another Katrina moment. That would play to Bernie's message.

At this point in time, Trump must be feeling very good about his re-election prospects.

JamesT , 23 February 2020 at 02:39 PM
The democratic establishment had every intention of rigging the primary by means of "super delegates" at a brokered convention, but it looks like Bernie is going to win an outright majority. People want change. Bernie is the only guy who can bring the US troops home from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan - so I hope he wins.
JohninMK , 23 February 2020 at 03:03 PM
Colonel, you ponder the monetary value of a delegate's vote. I wonder what the monetary value of Bernie having a 'heart attack' and being unable to continue for health reasons is increasing to?

Probably vastly more than last times lakeside house.

Fred , 23 February 2020 at 03:18 PM
JohninMK,

No need for the inuendo. Bernie's on the campaign trail shaking hands daily. Corona-Chan, or just the old fashioned flu and hospitalization is more likely, not to mention a stress induced heart attack when Trump debates him.

jerseycityjoan , 23 February 2020 at 04:21 PM
I was really surprised to see Sanders do so well. It will say a lot about the state of our country if we end up with two candidates who won as the result of protest votes in November.

The Clinton's old friend James Carville is sounding the alarm against going too far left. He makes some good points:

"We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They're talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You've got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn't matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments -- talking about that is not how you win a national election. It's not how you become a majoritarian party.

For f***'s sake, we've got Trump at Davos talking about cutting Medicare and no one in the party has the sense to plaster a picture of him up there sucking up to the global elites, talking about cutting taxes for them while he's talking about cutting Medicare back home. Jesus, this is so obvious and so easy and I don't see any of the candidates taking advantage of it."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/7/21123518/trump-2020-election-democratic-party-james-carville

I myself have gone back and forth about who I'll vote for in the primary. I don't agree with or feel uncertain about much of what Sanders says but then how much of what he advocates has a chance of being voted for by Congress anyway? Part of me wants to be a protestor too, like I was in 2016 when I voted for Sanders and then Trump.

I am very worried about the future of our nation and the world, too. Both parties are very wrong about some things.

Rd , 23 February 2020 at 05:10 PM
oh. 'em pesky reds!! they are at it again.. they just can't keep their hands off America.. they have been at it ever since Columbus beat them to it!! and what is Russia going to do, if their man loses the house? would the red movement take over Mockba again!!! what a convoluted soup.. and where is FDR to save them capitalist from themselves!!! again! This sounds like of one of Carol B's skids, "As the stomach turns".

On the less funnier side, what if Bernie picks Tulsi as VP? That would add an interesting dimension. The real economy is not any where like what is advertised, or even perceived by the top 10-15% income earners. As much money as the FED has been pumping to REPO market since Sep, all is needed a 2008 surprise, before the election.

Trump promised to clear the swamp and stop the never ending wars.. he didn't carry except some brouhaha!! the swamp got him swamped. Can Bernie clear the swamp? His political savvy MAY be better than Trumps street/business fighting. Ultimately, it is the swamp/deep state and their corp media, that needs some serious re-arrangements. Ofcourse, any successful democracy, also needs an informed public.

Some to the point observations by Amb. Freeman.

https://chasfreeman.net/america-in-distress-the-challenges-of-disadvantageous-change/

D , 23 February 2020 at 06:05 PM
Democrat establishment should not be surprised - they are reaping what they have sown over the past few decades. It is their own teacher union-driven K-12 harvest that preached hate America and created everyone is a victim grievance industry. Those are the Bernie Babies.

Many, many, many of them are also anchor babies, coming into full voting maturity after having left the back door open for over 21 years too. ( Since 1999 and voila, you have a Bernie voter)

This your spawn, Democrats. Your hands rocked this cradle and now they want to rule the world. Plus now you demand universal child care and mandatory Pre-K? Stop acting so surprised.

Don't forget, in 1982 SCOTUS mandated free K-12 for all illegals. We have been turning out Berniecrats like sausages ever since.

A cold fusion energy cycle - open borders feed K-12 teachers unions - K-12 teachers unions feed Democrat candidates - Democrat candidates feed more open borders - the full cycle is now in perpetual motion.

Jack , 23 February 2020 at 06:24 PM
blue peacock,

This weekend is the S. Carolina primary. The polls have Biden in the lead but Bernie coming on strong. With a significant black vote in the Democratic primary it will be pivotal moment for the non-Bernie candidates. Super Tuesday 3 days later is gonna be huge with states with nearly 40% of the population voting. Over 1,300 delegates at stake. Huge states like California and Texas as well as Tennessee, Virginia, Colorado, N.Carolina and Massachusetts. Enough of a cross-section of states to dent Bernie. If he runs away with a big delegate lead, the Democrats party establishment will be faced with a big decision.

A first for corporate media. In the aftermath of the Nevada caucus results.

This is a wake-up moment for the American power establishment.

Many in this elite are behaving like aristocrats in a dying regime -- including in media.

It's time for many to step up, rethink, and understand the dawn of what may be a new era in America.

https://twitter.com/anandwrites/status/1231622488204959744?s=21

JamesT , 24 February 2020 at 12:17 AM
Jack,

Remember 2016 when Tyler kept saying that the polls were baloney - and was proven right? The polls back then said Trump had no chance, and they are equally rigged against Bernie this time.

Fred , 24 February 2020 at 12:31 PM
jerseycityjoan,

Carville is living to see the destruction of the Clinton lock on the Democratic Party. Almost as enjoyable as hearing people like him complain that Trump is "sucking up" to the global elite is their complaining about low population states having 2 Senators - but they never mention VT or NH or Delaware.

Artemesia , 24 February 2020 at 05:39 PM
I revel in my mastery of 5th grade maths when I calculate that what Bloomberg has spent, relative to his wealth, is approx. the same as a wage earner making $150k per annum donating
$1000 to the party of his choice.
Bloomberg's assets have not yet felt 'the bern'.

[Feb 25, 2020] The Democrats' Quandary In a Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy, Something Must Give by Michael Hudson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year ..."
"... Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor Class trump the voting class? ..."
"... This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the One Percent. ..."
"... But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC. ..."
"... Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again. ..."
"... So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another day. ..."
"... Trump may or may not win. But if he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton. ..."
"... And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops Richie Rich gets uneasy. ..."
"... I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom Perez. ..."
"... I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings? ..."
Feb 25, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year

To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat Trump. But when Trump's billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, it's obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party. Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which money votes. (If "corporations are people," so is money in today's political world.)

Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor Class trump the voting class?

This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the One Percent.

All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC. The way Rome's constitution was set up, candidates for the position of consul had to pay their way through a series of offices. The process started by going deeply into debt to get elected to the position of aedile, in charge of staging public games and entertainments. Rome's neoliberal fiscal policy did not tax or spend, and there was little public administrative bureaucracy, so all such spending had to be made out of the pockets of the oligarchy. That was a way of keeping decisions about how to spend out of the hands of democratic politics. Julius Caesar and others borrowed from the richest Bloomberg of their day, Crassus, to pay for staging games that would demonstrate their public spirit to voters (and also demonstrate their financial liability to their backers among Rome's One Percent). Keeping election financing private enabled the leading oligarchs to select who would be able to run as viable candidates. That was Rome's version of Citizens United.

But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC.

Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times have been busy spreading their venom against Sanders. On Sunday, February 23, CNN ran a slot, "Bloomberg needs to take down Sanders, immediately."[1]Given Sanders' heavy national lead, CNN warned, the race suddenly is almost beyond the vote-fixers' ability to fiddle with the election returns. That means that challengers to Sanders should focus their attack on him; they will have a chance to deal with Bloomberg later (by which CNN means, when it is too late to stop him).

The party's Clinton-Obama recipients of Donor Class largesse pretend to believe that Sanders is not electable against Donald Trump. This tactic seeks to attack him at his strongest point. Recent polls show that he is the only candidate who actually would defeat Trump – as they showed that he would have done in 2016.

The DNC knew that, but preferred to lose to Trump than to win with Bernie. Will history repeat itself? Or to put it another way, will this year's July convention become a replay of Chicago in 1968?

A quandary, not a problem . Last year I was asked to write a scenario for what might happen with a renewed DNC theft of the election's nomination process. To be technical, I realize, it's not called theft when it's legal. In the aftermath of suits over the 2016 power grab, the courts ruled that the Democrat Party is indeed controlled by the DNC members, not by the voters. When it comes to party machinations and decision-making, voters are subsidiary to the superdelegates in their proverbial smoke-filled room (now replaced by dollar-filled foundation contracts).

I could not come up with a solution that does not involve dismantling and restructuring the existing party system. We have passed beyond the point of having a solvable "problem" with the Democratic National Committee (DNC). That is what a quandary is. A problem has a solution – by definition. A quandary does not have a solution. There is no way out. The conflict of interest between the Donor Class and the Voting Class has become too large to contain within a single party. It must split.

A second-ballot super-delegate scenario would mean that we are once again in for a second Trump term. That option was supported by five of the six presidential contenders on stage in Nevada on Wednesday, February 20. When Chuck Todd asked whether Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar would support the candidate who received the most votes in the primaries (now obviously Bernie Sanders), or throw the nomination to the super-delegates held over from the Obama-Clinton neoliberals (75 of whom already are said to have pledged their support to Bloomberg), each advocated "letting the process play out." That was a euphemism for leaving the choice to the Tony-Blair style leadership that have made the Democrats the servants' entrance to the Republican Party. Like the British Labour Party behind Blair and Gordon Brown, its role is to block any left-wing alternative to the Republican program on behalf of the One Percent.

This problem would not exist if the United States had a European-style parliamentary system that would enable a third party to obtain space on the ballots in all 50 states. If this were Europe, the new party of Bernie Sanders, AOC et al. would exceed 50 percent of the votes, leaving the Wall Street democrats with about the same 8 percent share that similar neoliberal democratic parties have in Europe ( e.g ., Germany's hapless neoliberalized Social Democrats), that is, Klobocop territory as voters moved to the left. The "voting Democrats," the 99 Percent, would win a majority leaving the Old Neoliberal Democrats in the dust.

The DNC's role is to prevent any such challenge. The United States has an effective political duopoly, as both parties have created such burdensome third-party access to the ballot box in state after state that Bernie Sanders decided long ago that he had little alternative but to run as a Democrat.

The problem is that the Democrat Party does not seem to be reformable. That means that voters still may simply abandon it – but that will simply re-elect the Democrats' de facto 2020 candidate, Donald Trump. The only hope would be to shrink the party into a shell, enabling the old guard to go way so that the party could be rebuilt from the ground up.

But the two parties have created a legal duopoly reinforced with so many technical barriers that a repeat of Ross Perot's third party (not to mention the old Socialist Party, or the Whigs in 1854) would take more than one election cycle to put in place. For the time being, we may expect another few months of dirty political tricks to rival those of 2016 as Obama appointee Tom Perez is simply the most recent version of Florida fixer Debbie Schultz-Wasserman (who gave a new meaning to the Wasserman Test).

So we are in for another four years of Donald Trump. But by 2024, how tightly will the U.S. economy find itself tied in knots?

The Democrats' Vocabulary of Deception

How I would explain Bernie's program. Every economy is a mixed economy. But to hear Michael Bloomberg and his fellow rivals to Bernie Sanders explain the coming presidential election, one would think that an economy must be either capitalist or, as Bloomberg put it, Communist. There is no middle ground, no recognition that capitalist economies have a government sector, which typically is called the "socialist" sector – Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, roads, anti-monopoly regulation, and public infrastructure as an alternative to privatized monopolies extracting economic rent.

What Mr. Bloomberg means by insisting that it's either capitalism or communism is an absence of government social spending and regulation. In practice this means oligarchic financial control, because every economy is planned by some sector. The key is, who will do the planning? If government refrains from taking the lead in shaping markets, then Wall Street takes over – or the City in London, Frankfurt in Germany, and the Bourse in France.

Most of all, the aim of the One Percent is to distract attention from the fact that the economy is polarizing – and is doing so at an accelerating rate. National income statistics are rigged to show that "the economy" is expanding. The pretense is that everyone is getting richer and living better, not more strapped. But the reality is that all the growth in GDP has accrued to the wealthiest 5 Percent since the Obama Recession began in 2008. Obama bailed out the banks instead of the 10 million victimized junk-mortgage holders. The 95 Percent's share of GDP has shrunk.

The GDP statistics do not show is that "capital gains" – the market price of stocks, bonds and real estate owned mainly by the One to Five Percent – has soared, thanks to Obama's $4.6 trillion Quantitative Easing pumped into the financial markets instead of into the "real" economy in which wage-earners produce goods and services.

How does one "stay the course" in an economy that is polarizing? Staying the course means continuing the existing trends that are concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the One Percent, that is, the Donor Class – while loading down the 99 Percent with more debt, paid to the One Percent (euphemized as the economy's "savers"). All "saving" is at the top of the pyramid. The 99 Percent can't afford to save much after paying their monthly "nut" to the One Percent.

If this economic polarization is impoverishing most of the population while sucking wealth and income and political power up to the One Percent, then to be a centrist is to be the candidate of oligarchy. It means not challenging the economy's structure.

Language is being crafted to confuse voters into imagining that their interest is the same as that of the Donor Class of rentiers , creditors and financialized corporate businesses and rent-extracting monopolies. The aim is to divert attention from voters' their own economic interest as wage-earners, debtors and consumers. It is to confuse voters not to recognize that without structural reform, today's "business as usual" leaves the One Percent in control.

So to call oneself a "centrist" is simply a euphemism for acting as a lobbyist for siphoning up income and wealth to the One Percent. In an economy that is polarizing, the choice is either to favor them instead of the 99 Percent.

That certainly is not the same thing as stability. Centrism sustains the polarizing dynamic of financialization, private equity, and the Biden-sponsored bankruptcy "reform" written by his backers of the credit-card companies and other financial entities incorporated in his state of Delaware. He was the senator for the that state's Credit Card industry, much as former Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman was the senator from Connecticut's Insurance Industry.

A related centrist demand is that of Buttigieg's and Biden's aim to balance the federal budget. This turns out to be a euphemism for cutting back Social Security, Medicare and relate social spending ("socialism") to pay for America's increasing militarization, subsidies and tax cuts for the One Percent. Sanders rightly calls this "socialism for the rich." The usual word for this is oligarchy . That seems to be a missing word in today's mainstream vocabulary.

The alternative to democracy is oligarchy. As Aristotle noted already in the 4 th

Confusion over the word "socialism" may be cleared up by recognizing that every economy is mixed, and every economy is planned – by someone. If not the government in the public interest, then by Wall Street and other financial centers in their interest. They fought against an expanding government sector in every economy today, calling it socialism – without acknowledging that the alternative, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, is barbarism.

I think that Sanders is using the red-letter word "socialism" and calling himself a "democratic socialist" to throw down the ideological gauntlet and plug himself into the long and powerful tradition of socialist politics. Paul Krugman would like him to call himself a social democrat. But the European parties of this name have discredited this label as being centrist and neoliberal. Sanders wants to emphasize that a quantum leap, a phase change is in order.

If he can be criticized for waving a needlessly red flag, it is his repeated statement that his program is designed for the "working class." What he means are wage-earners and this includes the middle class. Even those who make over $100,000 a year are still wage earners, and typically are being squeezed by a predatory financial sector, a predatory medical insurance sector, drug companies and other monopolies.

The danger in this terminology is that most workers like to think of themselves as middle class, because that is what they would like to rise into. That is especially he case for workers who own their own home (even if mortgage represents most of the value, so that most of the home's rental value is paid to banks, not to themselves as part of the "landlord class"), and have an education (even if most of their added income is paid out as student debt service), and their own car to get to work (involving automobile debt).

The fact is that even $100,000 executives have difficulty living within the limits of their paycheck, after paying their monthly nut of home mortgage or rent, medical care, student loan debt, credit-card debt and automobile debt, not to mention 15% FICA paycheck withholding and state and local tax withholding.

Of course, Sanders' terminology is much more readily accepted by wage-earners as the voters whom Hillary called "Deplorables" and Obama called "the mob with pitchforks," from whom he was protecting his Wall Street donors whom he invited to the White House in 2009. But I think there is a much more appropriate term: the 99 Percent, made popular by Occupy Wall Street. That is Bernie's natural constituency. It serves to throw down the gauntlet between democracy and oligarchy, and between socialism and barbarism, by juxtaposing the 99 Percent to the One Percent.

The Democratic presidential debate on February 25 will set the stage for Super Tuesday's "beauty contest" to gauge what voters want. The degree of Sanders' win will help determine whether the byzantine Democrat party apparatus that actually will be able to decide on the Party's candidate. The expected strong Sanders win is will make the choice stark: either to accept who the voters choose – namely, Bernie Sanders – or to pick a candidate whom voters already have rejected, and is certain to lose to Donald Trump in November.

If that occurs, the Democrat Party will evaporate as its old Clinton-Obama guard is no longer able to protect its donor class on Wall Street and corporate America. Too many Sanders voters would stay home or vote for the Greens. That would enable the Republicans to maintain control of the Senate and perhaps even grab back the House of Representatives.

But it would be dangerous to assume that the DNC will be reasonable. Once again, Roman history provides a "business as usual" scenario. The liberal German politician Theodor Mommsen published his History of Rome in 1854-56, warning against letting an aristocracy block reform by controlling the upper house of government (Rome's Senate, or Britain House of Lords). The leading families who overthrew the last king in 509 BC created a Senate chronically prone to being stifled by its leaders' "narrowness of mind and short-sightedness that are the proper and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism."[2]

These qualities also are the distinguishing features of the DNC. Sanders had better win big!

________________

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/22/opinions/bloomberg-needs-to-take-down-sanders-lockhart/index.html . Joe Lockhart, opinion. For the MSNBC travesty see from February 23, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/23/msnbc-full-blown-freakout-mode-bernie-sanders-cements-status-democratic-frontrunner, by Jake Johnson.

[2]Mommsen, History of Rome , 1911: 268.


divadab , February 25, 2020 at 7:55 am

I wonder how much of the rot at the top of the Dem party is simple dementia. By the age of 70, half of people have some level of dementia. Consider Joe Biden – is anyone in the public sphere going to state the obvious – that he has dementia and as such is unfit for office?

Fred1 , February 25, 2020 at 8:32 am

First, my priors. I voted for Sanders in 2016, will vote for him in 2020, and expect him to be elected president. Further I believe that where we find ourselves today is the result of at least 40 years of intentional bi-partisan policies. Both parties are responsible.

If Sanders, upon being elected, were able to snap his fingers and call into existence his entire program, it would immediately face a bi-partisan opposition that would be funded by billions of dollars, which would be willing to take as long as necessary, even decades, to roll it back.

Just electing Sanders is only the first step. There must be a committed, determined follow through that must be willing to last decades as well for his program to stick. And there will be defeats along the way.

Several observations. If Hillary had beaten Trump, Sanders would have trudged back to Vermont and would never have been heard from again. The MSM would have dismissed his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class. But she didn't, so here we are, which is fantastic.

Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again.

So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another day.

If he loses to Trump, but closely, which can mean a lot of different things, his program would live to fight another day. Moreover, if the D's are seen to actively collude with Trump, this less bad outcome would be even better.

I am an old geezer and don't expect to live long enough to see how all of this plays out. But I am very optimistic about his program's long term prospects. There is only one bad outcome, a Trump 48 state sweep, which I consider very unlikely. But most importantly, the best outcome, his election, and the two least bad outcomes, the D's stealing the nomination from him or his losing a close general election, all still will require a decades long commitment to make his program permanent.

I wish I were younger.

a different chris , February 25, 2020 at 8:55 am

>a Trump 48 state sweep

Where do people get this? Take a deep breath. Trump may or may not win. But if he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton.

And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops Richie Rich gets uneasy.

Hammered by a 5 star general. The Deplorables kids were raised to look up to generals, not New Yawk dandys. How does this affect them? And it's still February.

Sailor Bud , February 25, 2020 at 8:34 am

Just an FYI: The five-volume Mommsen "History of Rome" referenced in the text is available in English on Project Gutenberg, free and legal to download. Probably everyone here knows this, but just in case

Dan , February 25, 2020 at 8:44 am

How about Bernie call himself "Roosevelt Democrat" instead of "Democratic Socialist". It would give all those in the senior demographic a better understanding of what Sander's policies mean to them as opposed to the scary prospect of the "Socialist" label.

Oxley Creek Boy , February 25, 2020 at 10:12 am

The Democrats should have been slowly disarming the word "socialist" for at least the last decade. In principle, it's not difficult – as Michael Hudson says – "Every economy is a mixed economy" – and in a very real sense everyone's a socialist (even if only unconsciously). I'm not saying that bit of rhetorical jujitsu would magically turn conservative voters progressive but you'll never get to the point where you can defend socialist programs on the merits if you always dodge that fight. It's just a shame that Bernie Sanders has to do it all in a single election cycle and I don't think choosing a different label now would help him much.

flora , February 25, 2020 at 11:37 am

He could even compare himself to the earlier Roosevelt: Teddy Roosevelt.

By 1900 the old bourbon Dem party was deeply split between its old, big business and banking wing – the bourbons – and the rising progressive/populist wing. It was GOP pres Roosevelt who first pushed through progressive programs like breaking up railroad and commodity monopolies, investigating and regulating meat packing and fraudulent patent medicines, etc. Imagine that.

lyman alpha blob , February 25, 2020 at 1:30 pm

I just finished Stoller's book Goliath and according to him, Teddy wasn't quite as progressive as we are often led to believe. He wasn't so much opposed to those with enormous wealth – he just wanted them to answer to him. He did do the things you mentioned, but after sending the message to the oligarchs, he then became friendly with them once he felt he'd brought them to heel. He developed quite the soft spot for JP Morgan, according to Stoller.

TR wanted to be the Boss, the center of attention with everyone looking up to him. As one of his relatives said, he wanted to be the baby at every christening and the corpse at every funeral.

I find Bernie to be a lot more humble.

Balakirev , February 25, 2020 at 12:51 pm

I have a sense that changing his party affiliation label at any point in time since Sanders began running for president in 2016 would be a godsend to his enemies in both hands of the Duopoly. They'd tar him loudly as a hypocrite without an ounce of integrity, using personal politics to distract from the issues.

Meanwhile, we can expect to see the Socialist (and Communist, and Russia-Russia-Russia) nonsense reiterated as long as Sanders has strong visibility. He's extremely dangerous to both parties and their owners. I don't' believe the DNC will let him take the convention, but if he does, I'll bet the Dems give him minimal support and hope he fails–better the devil you know, etc.

political economist , February 25, 2020 at 9:56 am

It's time to put your money in reality futures by putting all that you can into supporting Bernie, AOC, etc. and all your local candidates that support at least democratic socialism and ourrevolution the DSA Justice Dems or other groups that have people but need money. I was having a conversation with a friend who was complaining that he was getting too many emails from Bernie asking for money after he had given the campaign a "modest amount". My suggestion was in honor of his children and grandchildren he should instead GIVE 'TIL IT FEELS GOOD. My spouse and I, I told him, gave the max to Bernie and now we don't give upset when he asks for more. There will likely never be a moment like this in history and there may not be much of a history if things go the wrong way now. He agreed.

Debra D. , February 25, 2020 at 10:11 am

Exactly right. I gave Bernie the max in 2019 and will keep giving throughout 2020. This campaign is about not just me, but all of us. It's now. We must fight for this change as has always been the historical precedent.

BillC , February 25, 2020 at 11:55 am

OK, you two gave me the push I needed to max out my contributions to Bernie too. Let's hope Bernie's (oops OUR) bandwagon keeps gathering steam!

Arizona Slim , February 25, 2020 at 12:41 pm

Another 2019 Bernie maxer here.

I feel blessed to have been able to give at this level. And I believe that I did this for a lot of people who aren't able to donate at all.

steven , February 25, 2020 at 11:13 am

I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom Perez.

I am coming to understand that might have been necessary within the context of one last desperate attempt to work with the Democratic party. But now I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings?

Little as it has been the answer has a lot to do with my willingness to pour more money into repetitively self-defeating behavior.

HotFlash , February 25, 2020 at 12:49 pm

Bernie is a long-distance runner and strategizes like one. First work on finishing your races. Then worry about where you place.

Debra R. , February 25, 2020 at 11:28 am

I am a somewhat old geezer, too, who caucused for Bernie in 2016 and 2020. This article is very good and helps me understand why I feel the way I do. I was disappointed in Obama, who didn't follow through on the things I cared about, and I was devastated when Clinton was crowned the Democratic nominee well before the Convention, all the while holding onto a smidgen of hope that somehow Bernie would pull through as the nominee.

I was ecstatic when Bernie announced his candidacy for 2020. He is our only hope, and now we have a second chance. But now I am spending half my time screaming at people on tv and online who can't even hear me, and even if they could, they don't give a s–t what I think. It's Clinton 2.0–same thing all over again, four years later. Just who do these people (DNC, MSM, and others with a voice) think they are, to decide for the Democratic voters which candidate will be the nominee, who won't be the nominee, without regard to what the voters want? They are a bunch of pompous as–s who have some other motive that I am not savvy enough to understand. Is it about money in their pockets or what?

It should be as simple as this–Bernie is leading in the polls, if they are to be believed, and good people of all demographics want him to be our next President. He is a serious contender for the nomination. Show the man some much-earned respect and put people on MSM and publish articles by writers who help us understand what the anti-Bernie panic is about and why we shouldn't panic. Help us to explain his plans if he hasn't explained it thoroughly enough instead of calling him crazy. But to dismiss him as if he has the plague is not furthering the truth, and it is a serious injustice to the voting public. Naked Capitalism can't do it alone.

HotFlash , February 25, 2020 at 12:58 pm

There is a lot of good analysis out there, mainly on Youtube. I particularly like The Hill's Rising. A young progressive Democrat and a young progressive Republican (who even knew there was such a thing!) 'splain a lot of the antipathy. Another good source is Nomiki Konst, who is working on reforming the Dem party from within. Here she talks to RJ Eskow about how the DNC is structured and how she hopes to provide tools for rank-and-file Dems to wrest the levers of power from the establishment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7wm6DCPV4

notabanktoadie , February 25, 2020 at 12:32 pm

Private sector cannot operate without same. Harrold

The problem is that the population, including FDR in his time, have been duped into believing that the private sector REQUIRES government privileges for private depository institutions, aka "the banks."

So currently we have no truly private sector to speak of but businesses and industry using the public's credit but for private gain.

Susan the other , February 25, 2020 at 12:16 pm

Last night's Democracy Now was interesting. Amy seems to be less of a commie hater than she recently was with her participation in the Russia-Russia-Russia smears against Trump. She held court last night with Paul Krugman and Richard Wolff discussing just exactly what "socialism" means. It was a great performance.

Krug seemed a little shellshocked about the whole discussion and he said we shouldn't even use the term "socialism" at all because all the things Bernie wants are just as capitalist – that capitalism encompasses socialism. But he stuttered when he discussed "single-payer" which he claimed he supported – his single payer is like Pete Buttigieg's single-payer-eventually. He tried to change the subject and Amy brought him straight back.

Then Wolff, who was in excellent form, informed the table that "socialism" is a moveable feast because it can be and has been many things for the advancement of societies, etc. But the term always means the advancement of society. Then Krug dropped a real bomb – he actually said (this is almost a quote) that recently he had been informed by Powell that debt isn't really all that important.

Really, Krug said that. And he tried to exetend that thought to the argument that anybody can provide social benefits – it doesn't require a self-proclaimed "socialist".

Richard Wolff confronted that slide with pointing out that it hasn't happened yet – and he left Krug with no excuses. It was quite the showdown. Nice Richard Wolff is so firmly in Bernie's camp.

Krug looked evasive – and I kept wishing they had invited Steve Keen to participate.

[Feb 25, 2020] The Economic Anxiety Hypothesis has Become Absurd(er)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup") was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment. ..."
"... The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population. ..."
"... The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016). ..."
"... That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal faηade. ..."
"... In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses." ..."
Feb 25, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

I am old enough to remember when many very serious people ascribed the rise of Donald Trump to economic anxiety. The hypthesis never fit the facts (his supporters had higher incomes on average than Clinton's) but it has become absurd. The level of self reported economic anxiety is extraordinarily low

Gallup reports "Record High optimism about Personal Finances in U.S." with 74% predicting they will be better off next year.

Yet now the Democratic party has an insurgent candidate candidate in the lead. I hasten to stress that I am not saying Sanders supporters have much in common with Trump supporters (young vs old, strong hispanic support vs they hate Trump etc etc etc). But both appeal to anger and advocate a radical break with business as usual. Both reject party establishments. Also Warren if a little bit less so.

Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry. He remains unpopular in spite of an economy performing very well (and perceived to be performing very well).

Whatever is going on in 2020, it sure isn't economic anxiety.

Yet there is clearly anger and desire for radical change.

I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality. I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News.

One other thing which it isn't is rejection of the guy who came before Trump. Obama has a Real Clear Politics average favorable rating of 59% and unfavorable of 36.1 % vastly vastly better than any currently active politician. (Sanders is doing relatively very well at net -2.7 compared to Obama's + 22.9) He is not rejected. He is not considered a failure. Yet only a small majority is interested in any sort of going back to the way things were.


likbez , February 25, 2020 12:37 am

Robert ,

Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry.

Many Trump "angry supporters" in 2016 used to belong to "anybody but Hillary" class (and they included a noticeable percentage of Bernie supporters, who felt betrayed by DNC) .

They are lost for Trump as he now in many aspects represents the "new Hillary" and the slogan "anybody but Trump" is growing in popularity. Even among Republicans: Trump definitely already lost a large part of anti-war Republicans and independents. As well as. most probably, a part of working class as he did very little for them outside of effects of military Keynesianism.

I suspect he also lost a part of military voters, those who supported Tulsi. They will never vote for Trump.

He also lost a part of "technocratic" voters resentful of the rule of financial oligarchy (anti-swampers), as his incompetence is now an undisputable fact.

He also lost Ron Paul's libertarians, who voted for him in 2016.

How "Coronavirus recession", if any, might affect 2020 elections is difficult to say, but in any case this is an unfavorable for Trump event.

EMichael , February 25, 2020 10:39 am

"I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then I don't watch Fox News."

Coming to you since 1965. It's just that immigrants are now added to blacks. Trump took 50 years of the Southern Strategy, took the dogwhistles completely out of the closet and wore his racism right on his chest. Helped that he had over 50 years of experience as a racist, it came naturally to him.

And he attracted a new rw base, those who were not satisfied with dog whistles and/or did not hear them.

likbez , February 25, 2020 12:19 pm

I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality.

It is actually very easy to understand: the middle class fared very poorly since 1991. See https://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589 . Now "the chickens come home to roost," so to speak.

The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup") was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment.

The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population.

The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016).

Resentment against spending huge amounts of money for wars for sustaining and enlarging the global USA-centered neoliberal empire is another factor. In this sense, impoverishment and shrinking of the middle class in the USA is similar to the same impoverishment during the last days of the British colonial empire.

That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal faηade.

In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses."

In 2016 that resulted in the election of Trump.

Add to this the fact that the neoliberal establishment (represented by both parties) now is clearly anti-social (the fact that a private equity shark Romney was a presidential candidate and then was elected as senator tells a lot about the level of degradation) and is unwilling to solve burning problems with medical insurance, minimal wage and other "the New Deal" elements of social infrastructure.

Democratic Party platform now is to the right of Eisenhower republicans.

That dooms the party candidates like CIA-democrat Major Pete, or "the senator from the credit card companies" Biden, and create an opening for political figures like Sanders (which are passionately hated by DNC)

[Feb 24, 2020] The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity: ..."
"... Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire. ..."
"... Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit. ..."
"... Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked. ..."
"... If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE : ..."
"... "I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday. ..."
"... "Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government." ..."
"... Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining. ..."
"... Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent. ..."
Feb 24, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson

Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity:

Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said : "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration -- all trying to do something -- all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .

But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don't last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs. As Americans, we should be frightened -- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security -- then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?

Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.

Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:

On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.

Donald Trump did not fire Maguire. He followed the law. The specious claim that Trump fired Maguire exposes McRaven and his ilk as either liars or ignoramuses. The statute governing temporary appointments (i.e., the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) is quite clear:

Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210 days from the date of the vacancy, as well as any time when a nomination is pending before the Senate.

Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.

Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney General Barr's legitimate and proper submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling for the mass extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr's "RECOMMENDATION" was just that--a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr's wishes. And guess what? Judge Berman decided that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.

Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked.

The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is the fact that we are once again being bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia meddled in our 2016 election and is poised to do the same in 2020. What next? Resurrect Jussie Smollet and hire a group of pretend rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the night on the wintry streets of Chicago?

The most recent installment in Putin on the prowl comes courtesy of The NY Times, doing its damndest to masquerade as Pravda.

Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.

Just another scurrilous lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and tainting his election. The real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing less "meddling" in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled in their elections and domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of having professional intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more difficult for the traditional intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg's spending in the 2020 Democrat primary dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the effectiveness of such "meddling."

If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE :

"I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

"I have not seen that, and I get pretty good access," he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.

Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to portray Maguire's temporary replacement, Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant, unqualified political hack.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia offers up an excellent example of this kind of malicious stupidity :

"The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation's intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate's constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004.

"The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question, now more than ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best intelligence and analysis, regardless of whether or not it's expedient for the President who has appointed him.

Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with Warner's vote, approved him. Coats had trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper. How about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte was not an intelligence professional. He was career Foreign Service.

Ambassador Grenell has experience comparable to Negroponte's. Grenell has dealt with all elements of the intelligence community during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S. foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and is starting to clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the bureaucracy, is infested with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his Presidency.

Robert O'Brien has cleaned out the NSC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And persons through out the National Security bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied. This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments expect the screaming to intensify.


blue peacock , 23 February 2020 at 02:59 PM

"When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments....."

Larry, it looks like you have a lot of confidence in Durham. What gives you this confidence? The actions of the DOJ to date should make people skeptical that they'll prosecute their own leadership.

Larry Johnson , 23 February 2020 at 03:10 PM
If Barr and Durham were going to play ball with the Deep Staters and the anti-Trumpers they would not be attacked as is happening. The hysterical over wrought accusations leveled at Barr last week are merely a symptom of the fear seizing these seditionists.
D , 23 February 2020 at 03:52 PM
Americans still retain their keen sense of fair play. Nothing wrong with wanting to be surrounded by those loyal to the elected President.

It is the President's duty to the office itself to demand those appointed also be competent and act with integrity. The President pays the price if they do not.

English Outsider , 23 February 2020 at 04:25 PM
Larry Johnson,

When it comes to telling us where he's coming from Barr has certainly set out his stall. I have been very interested in AG Barr recently. I quoted this fine lecture - https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williambarrfederalistsociety.htm

- on an English blog in order to underline some parallels between the parliamentary crisis in England last year and the very similar constitutional crisis in the US. But there's a lot more to the lecture than that -

"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government."

That, together with some penetrating remarks about the difference between Progressive and Conservative - and making it amply clear how destructive Progressivism was - was perhaps more than William Barr merely setting out his stall. It was a declaration of intent and if it's held to then we may expect some dramatic results.

So I'm not surprised the Democrats are attacking him. The wonder is that they're not tearing him limb from limb.

Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 07:53 PM
Chris Murphy - the dolt from CT - on TV whining about Grenell being unqualified and a Trump loyalist. This is the same stooge who just met with the Iranian Foreign Minister (and a head of hair looking for a brain John Kerrey) in Munich.
Flavius , 23 February 2020 at 08:43 PM
Admiral McRaven and his gumba Pentagon bureaucrats should be doing a little belly button gazing to determine how after 2 decades they've managed with considerable sturm und drang to win nothing but have succeeded magnificently in piloting the country into Cold War II with a real adversary.

Well done, Admiral!

Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining.

Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 09:41 PM
Flavius:

You mean all those VERY important people - dressed like doormen -who haven't won a war since WWII? BTW, Gulf Storm doesn't count - you'd probably get more fight back from the NY State Troopers.

These politicians in uniform know all about "diversity", pissing away LOTS of money, transgenders, sucking up and especially landing Beltway bandit contracts. Fighting, not so much.

Note, I'm referring to the General Officer ranks, not actual troops.

JerseyJeffersonian , 23 February 2020 at 10:33 PM
I assess with 100% certainty that this fake scandal was contrived to coincide with the end of this Maguire's "service". Indeed, all of this time he has been acting as an agent of the Borg, only chucking this stinkbomb as his last, spiteful act. Contemptible.
prawnik , 24 February 2020 at 10:46 AM
Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent.
PRC90 , 24 February 2020 at 07:17 PM
Unless someone in the DNC or numerous affiliates can come up with an actual Russian, this kind of hoax will begin to be be seen as dated.

However, with the Weinstein conviction, the MeToo movement will get new life and a wave of similar high profile pursuits will begin.

Undoubtedly this will include one DJT, featuring accusers going back to the 1960's in a orchestrated 24/7 chorus of unproven horror that they hope will succeed where Mueller and Schiff et al have failed.

Who knows, perhaps one accuser (two for corroboration) will even allege some vague Russian presence.

Fred , 24 February 2020 at 08:12 PM
PRC90,

So a democratic megadoner is convicted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and surprise! Others in the moral cesspool that is Hollywood won't be brought to "justice", social or otherwise but we'll see Stormy Daniels 2.0. Except her lawyer's already in jail. The left better come up with something better than that.

Jack , 24 February 2020 at 10:43 PM
Fred,

How about Epstein and his pals? That would be a good start. However nothing will happen on that since too many powerful people would likely be ensnared like Billy Clinton and a British prince.

[Feb 24, 2020] Creating the Corporate Coup

Notable quotes:
"... Although corporations are legally a person (see history below), they are in fact an entity. The sole goal of that entity is profit. There is no corporate conscience. ..."
"... Perhaps it would be useful to look at the nature of our global expansion. The global expanse of US military bases is well-known, but its actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, ' How To Hide An Empire ,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States." This is worth the 40 minute watch...I learned several new things. One more long clip. However this one is fine to just listen to as you do things. This is a wonderful interview with Noam Chomsky. The man exudes wisdom. ..."
"... The oligarchy has been with us since perhaps the tribal origins of our species, but the corporation is a newer phenomenon. A faceless, soulless profit machine. Ironically it is the 14th amendment which is used to justify corporate person-hood. ..."
"... Corporations aren't specifically mentioned in the 14th Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. But going back to the earliest years of the republic, when the Bank of the United States brought the first corporate rights case before the Supreme Court, U.S. corporations have sought many of the same rights guaranteed to individuals, including the rights to own property, enter into contracts, and to sue and be sued just like individuals. ..."
"... But it wasn't until the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the Court appeared to grant a corporation the same rights as an individual under the 14th Amendment ..."
"... The United States is home to five of the world's 10 largest defense contractors, and American companies account for 57 percent of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, based on SIPRI data. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through deals with governments all over the world. The company drew public scrutiny after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 boys and 11 adults. Lockheed's revenue from the U.S. government alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency, combined. ..."
"... http://news.nidokidos.org/military-spending-20-companies-profiting-the-m... For a list of the 20 companies profiting most off war... https://themindunleashed.com/2019/03/20-companies-profiting-war.html ..."
"... Capitalism, militarism and imperialism are disastrously intertwined ..."
"... Corporations are Religions Yes they are. They have ethics, goals, and priests. They have a god who determines everything "The Invisible Hand". They believe themselves to be superior to the state. They have cult garb, or are we not going to pretend that there's corporate dress codes, right down to the things you can wear on special days of the week. They determine what you can eat, drink and read. If you say something wrong, they feel within their rights to punish you because they OWN the medium that you used to spread ideas. OF course they don't own your thoughts... those belong to the OTHER god. ..."
Dec 09, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

Chris Hedges often says "The corporate coup is complete". Sadly I think he is correct. So this week I thought it might be interesting to explore the techniques which are used here at home and abroad. The oligarchs' corporate control is global, but different strategies are employed in various scenarios. Just thinking about the recent regime changes promoted by the US in this hemisphere...

The US doesn't even lie about past coups. They recently released a report about the 1953 CIA led coup against Iran detailing the strategies. Here at home it is a compliant media and a new array of corporate laws designed to protect and further enrich that spell the corporate capture of our culture and society. So let's begin by looking at the nature of corporations...

The following 2.5 hour documentary from 2004 features commentary from Chris, Noam, Naomi, and many others you know. It has some great old footage. It is best watched on a television so you have a bigger screen. (This clip is on the encore+ youtube channel and does have commercials which you can skip after 5 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpQYsk-8dWg

Based on Joel Bakan's bestseller The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power , this 26-award-winning documentary explores a corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.

One hundred and fifty years ago, a corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic, and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, a corporation is today's dominant institution.

Charting the rise of such an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals, the documentary also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

Although corporations are legally a person (see history below), they are in fact an entity. The sole goal of that entity is profit. There is no corporate conscience. Some of the CEO's in the film discuss how all the people in the corporations are against pollution and so on, but by law stockholder profit must be the objective. Now these entities are global operations with no loyalty to their country of origin.

Perhaps it would be useful to look at the nature of our global expansion. The global expanse of US military bases is well-known, but its actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, ' How To Hide An Empire ,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States." This is worth the 40 minute watch...I learned several new things. One more long clip. However this one is fine to just listen to as you do things. This is a wonderful interview with Noam Chomsky. The man exudes wisdom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuVqfKYbGvE (2 hour 5 min)

So much of this conversation touches on today's topic of our corporate capture. Amy interviewed Ed Snowden this week... (video or text)

This is a system, the first system in history, that bore witness to everything. Every border you crossed, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friends you keep, article you write, site you visit and subject line you type was now in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards were not. And I felt, despite what the law said, that this was something that the public ought to know.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/5/edward_snowden_amy_goodman_interv...

The oligarchy has been with us since perhaps the tribal origins of our species, but the corporation is a newer phenomenon. A faceless, soulless profit machine. Ironically it is the 14th amendment which is used to justify corporate person-hood.

Corporations aren't specifically mentioned in the 14th Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution. But going back to the earliest years of the republic, when the Bank of the United States brought the first corporate rights case before the Supreme Court, U.S. corporations have sought many of the same rights guaranteed to individuals, including the rights to own property, enter into contracts, and to sue and be sued just like individuals.

But it wasn't until the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the Court appeared to grant a corporation the same rights as an individual under the 14th Amendment

https://www.history.com/news/14th-amendment-corporate-personhood-made-co...

More recently in 2010 (Citizens United v. FEC): In the run up to the 2008 election, the Federal Elections Commission blocked the conservative nonprofit Citizens United from airing a film about Hillary Clinton based on a law barring companies from using their funds for "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The organization sued, arguing that, because people's campaign donations are a protected form of speech (see Buckley v. Valeo) and corporations and people enjoy the same legal rights, the government can't limit a corporation's independent political donations. The Supreme Court agreed. The Citizens United ruling may be the most sweeping expansion of corporate personhood to date.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/how-supreme-court-turned-co...

Do they really believe this is how we think?

More than just using the courts, corporations are knee deep in creating favorable laws, not just by lobbying, but by actually writing legislation to feed the politicians that they own and control, especially at the state level.

Through ALEC, Global Corporations Are Scheming to Rewrite YOUR Rights and Boost THEIR Revenue. Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.

In ALEC's own words, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU? Numerous resources to help us expose ALEC are provided below. We have also created links to detailed discussions of key issues...

https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

Here's an attempt by a local station to tell the story of a Georgia session of legislators and ALEC lobbyists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3yIbxydlHY (6 min)

There is very little effort to hide the blatant corruption. People seem to accept this behavior as business as usual, after all it is.

Part of the current ALEC legislative agenda involves stifling protests.

I think it started in Texas...

A bill making its way through the Texas legislature would make protesting pipelines a third-degree felony, the same as attempted murder.
H.B. 3557, which is under consideration in the state Senate after passing the state House earlier this month, ups penalties for interfering in energy infrastructure construction by making the protests a felony. Sentences would range from two to 10 years.

https://www.ecowatch.com/texas-bill-pipeline-protests-felony-2637605986....
It is now law. Other states are following suit...

Lawmakers in Wisconsin introduced a bill on September 5 designed to chill protests around oil and gas pipelines and other energy infrastructure in the state by imposing harsh criminal penalties for trespassing on or damaging the property of a broad range of "energy providers."

Senate Bill 386 echoes similar "critical infrastructure protection" model bills pushed out by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Council of State Governments over the last two years to prevent future protests like the one against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/09/16/wisconsin-legislators-seek-crimi...

These activities are taking place in most states...especially red ones like mine.

When TPTB use government to play chess with the countries of the world havoc ensues...

Abby and Mike were on Chris' show yesterday talking about Gaza and the US/Israeli effort at genocide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcsEYRt_jGY (28 min)

And Chris was on the evening RT news this week discussing how the US empire is striking back against leaders who help their own people rather than our global corporations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5G9S8flnY (6.5 min)

Lee Camp and Ben Norton also discussed how the US wants to own South America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLETst107M0 (1st 22 min)

This excellent article tells the story well...

Financially, the cost of these wars is immense: more than $6 trillion dollars. The cost of these wars is just one element of the $1.2 trillion the US government spends annually on wars and war making. Half of each dollar paid in federal income tax goes towards some form or consequence of war . While the results of such spending are not hard to foresee or understand: a cyclical and dependent relationship between the Pentagon, weapons industry and Congress, the creation of a whole new class of worker and wealth distribution is not so understood or noticed, but exists and is especially malignant.

This is a ghastly redistribution of wealth, perhaps unlike any known in modern human history, certainly not in American history. As taxpayers send trillions to Washington. DC, that money flows to the men and women that remotely oversee, manage and staff the wars that kill and destroy millions of lives overseas and at home. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees and civilian contractors servicing the wars take home six figure annual salaries allowing them second homes, luxury cars and plastic surgery, while veterans put guns in their mouths, refugees die in capsized boats and as many as four million nameless souls scream silently in death.

These AUMFs (Authorization for Use of Military Force) and the wars have provided tens of thousands of recruits to international terror groups; mass profits to the weapons industry and those that service it; promotions to generals and admirals, with corporate board seats upon retirement ; and a perpetual and endless supply of bloody shirts for politicians to wave via an unquestioning and obsequious corporate media to stoke compliant anger and malleable fear. What is hard to imagine, impossible even, is anyone else who has benefited from these wars.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/authorizations-for-madness-the-e...

The United States is home to five of the world's 10 largest defense contractors, and American companies account for 57 percent of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, based on SIPRI data. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through deals with governments all over the world. The company drew public scrutiny after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 boys and 11 adults. Lockheed's revenue from the U.S. government alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency, combined.

http://news.nidokidos.org/military-spending-20-companies-profiting-the-m... For a list of the 20 companies profiting most off war... https://themindunleashed.com/2019/03/20-companies-profiting-war.html

The obvious industry which was not included nor considered is the fossil fuel industry. Here's another example of mutual corporate interests.

"Capitalism, militarism and imperialism are disastrously intertwined with the fossil fuel economy .A globalized economy predicated on growth at any social or environmental costs, carbon dependent international trade, the limitless extraction of natural resources, and a view of citizens as nothing more than consumers cannot be the basis for tackling climate change .Little wonder then that the elites have nothing to offer beyond continued militarisation and trust in techno-fixes."

-- Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/05/doubling-down-the-military-big-b...

The US military is one of the largest consumers and emitters of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in history, according to an independent analysis of global fuel-buying practices of a "virtually unresearched" government agency.
If the US military were its own country, it would rank 47th between Peru and Portugal in terms of annual fuel purchases, totaling almost 270,000 barrels of oil bought every day in 2017. In particular, the Air Force is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions and bought $4.9 billion of fuel in 2017 – nearly double that of the Navy ($2.8 billion).

https://www.iflscience.com/environment/us-military-ranks-higher-in-green...

The fossil fuel giants even try to control the climate talks...

Oil and gas groups were accused Saturday of seeking to influence climate talks in Madrid by paying millions in sponsorship and sending dozens of lobbyists to delay what scientists say is a necessary and rapid cut in fossil fuel use.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/fossil-fuel-groups-destroying-climate-t...

The corporations are so entwined that it is difficult to tell where they begin and end. There's the unity of private prisons and the war machine. And it's a global scheme...this example from the UK.

One thing is clear: the prison industrial complex and the global war machine are intimately connected. This summer's prison strike that began in the United States and spread to other countries was the largest in history. It shows more than ever that prisoners are resisting this penal regime, often at great risk to themselves. The battle to end prison slavery continues.

https://corporatewatch.org/poppies-prison-labour-and-the-war-machine/

Then there was the corporate tax give away...

The 2017 tax bill cut taxes for most Americans, including the middle class, but it heavily benefits the wealthy and corporations . It slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and its treatment of "pass-through" entities -- companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations -- will translate to an estimated $17 billion in tax savings for millionaires this year. American corporations are showering their shareholders with stock buybacks, thanks in part to their tax savings.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18146253/tax-cuts-and...

Even Robert Jackson Jr., commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Appointed to the SEC in 2017 by President Donald Trump. Confirmed in January 2018 sees the corporate cuts as absurd.

"We have been to the movie of tax cuts and buybacks before, in the Republican administration during the George W. Bush era. We enacted a quite substantial tax cut during that period. And studies after that showed very clearly that most corporations use the funds from that tax cut for buybacks. And here's the kicker. That particular tax cut actually required that companies deploy the capital for capital expenditures, wage increases and investments in their people. Yet studies showed that, in fact, the companies use them for buybacks. So we've been to this movie before. And what you're describing to me, that corporations turned around and took the Trump tax cut and didn't use it in investing in their people or in infrastructure, but instead for other purposes, shouldn't surprise anybody at all."

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/11/18/corporations-stock-buybacks-sec-...

So the corporations grow larger, wealthier, more powerful, buying evermore legislative influence along the way. They have crept into almost every aspect of our lives. Some doctors are beginning to see the influence of big pharma and other corporate interests are effecting the current practice of medicine.

Gary Fettke is a doctor from Tasmania who has been targeted for promoting a high fat low carb diet...threatened with losing his medical qualifications. He doesn't pull punches in this presentation discussing the corporate control of big ag/food and big pharma on medical practice and education. (27 min)

Comments

detroitmechworks on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 8:28am

Corporations are Religions Yes they are. They have ethics, goals, and priests. They have a god who determines everything "The Invisible Hand". They believe themselves to be superior to the state. They have cult garb, or are we not going to pretend that there's corporate dress codes, right down to the things you can wear on special days of the week. They determine what you can eat, drink and read. If you say something wrong, they feel within their rights to punish you because they OWN the medium that you used to spread ideas. OF course they don't own your thoughts... those belong to the OTHER god.

At least the crazy made up gods that I listen to don't usually fuck over other human beings for a goddamn percentage. ON the other hand, if a corporation can make a profit, it's REQUIRED to fuck you over. To do otherwise would be against it's morals. Which it does have, trust us... OH, and corporations get to make fun of your beliefs, but you CANNOT make fun of theirs. Because that would be heresy against logic and reason.

www.youtube.com/embed/uGDA0Hecw1k?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 8:37am
yes indeed, they are superior to the state...

@detroitmechworks

In the film Secret State they (fossil fuel) admit it. Here's the trailer...(1.5 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCYjbux_dCM

You can watch the series if anyone has an interest. Start here...there are about 6 episodes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeZT6IXCUg (42 min)

Good spy thriller.

Nice to see you around the site again. Thanks for visiting this piece.

QMS on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 8:39am
A recent front page item

In a local newspaper showed a couple coming out of a Wal-Mart with their carts piled high with big boxed foreign junk, then shown cramming their SUV full of said junk. The headline read "Crazy Busy". It pretty much summed up what is wrong with the American consumer culture. The next day's big headline spotlighted our senator's picture affixed to a LARGE headline boasting "$22 Billion Submarine Contract Awarded". A good example of of what is wrong with the american war economy.

Thank you for your compilation Lookout! If we can get beyond the headlines, working at grass root and local solutions, maybe even underground revolution, there may be hope for us. Barter for a better future.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:06am
Let's hope we trade up for something better

@QMS

My buddies always say about their mayor..."There's no way we will trade down after this election...but then we do." Perhaps it is true for more than just their town.

The line running in my head is..."What if they gave a war and nobody came". I want to expand it to..."What if they made cheap junk no one really wanted and nobody bought it". Or substitute junk food for cheap junk, or...

My point in today's conclusion is much as I try to walk away from corporate culture/control, I really can't totally escape...but at least I spend most of my time in the open, breathing clean air, surrounded by forest. We do what we can.

Onward through the fog...

Raggedy Ann on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 8:58am
Good Sunday morning, Lookout ~~

Consumerism in our society is a plague, a disease perpetrated upon us by our corporate lords. It has taken over everything about being an American.

I think the youth are catching on, as they are thrifting more, but they don't understand about food, and that's the rub. Our youth will be more unhealthy until they understand what corporations are doing to us through food addictions.

We're expecting rain today for most of the day and actually it's just started. The person who will drill our well came by yesterday and figured out some details. We are behind two other wells, so it will probably be the holiday week when it happens - we'll see. I can wait til January and hope we do.

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:10am
best of luck with your well!

@Raggedy Ann

That's an exciting project. Keep us posted. I hope y'all have a great holiday break. Enjoy your time....the most valuable thing we have!

davidgmillsatty on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:09am
The main reason I am not enamored with Sander's economic

Ideas is that new deal of FDR's day had corporate opponents far different than those of today. Sanders does not seem to understand that the corporations of yesterday, and what worked against them, will not work against the corporations of today. In the early part of the 20th century, corporations were still primarily domestic and local often with charters from the state where they conducted their primary business, many times all of their business.

Regulation and unions were reasonable anti-dotes to the abuses of these local and domestic corporations. The state still had some semblance of control over them.

But today corporations are global. They have no allegiance to, or concern for the domestic economy or local people. They do not fear of any anti-dotes that worked for years against domestic or local corporations. Global corporations just leave and go elsewhere if they don't like the domestic or local situation if they have not managed to completely take over the government.

There is only one reason to incorporate in the first place. That is for the owner(s) of the business to avoid personal liability or responsibility. The majority of people never understand this idea. Corporate owners are the people who are the genuine personal responsibility avoiders. Not the poor. The only antidote to corporations these days is the total demise of the corporation and its similar business entities that dodge personal responsibility. And the state must refuse to allow any such entities to do business. It is the only way forward. Otherwise nation states will give way to corporate states. Corporate governance is the new feudalism from which the old feudalism morphed.

Sanders isn't going to advocate doing away with corporate entities or other similar business entities. Nor will any of the Democratic contenders. They all require corporations to rail against as the basis for their political policy.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:19am
corporate power is formative

@davidgmillsatty

...and I've always wondered just how Bernie would dismantle them. However like the impotence of the impeachment, is the impotence of the primary process.

When the DNC was sued after 2016, they were exonerated based on the ruling they were a private entity entitled to make rules as the wanted. The primary is so obviously rigged I can almost guarantee Bernie will not be allowed the nomination, so the question to how he would change corporate control is really moot.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

davidgmillsatty on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 10:56am
Sanders Winning the Nomination

@Lookout I probably could get on board with a Sanders campaign if he would run as an Independent. But it is really hard to get on board with him as a Democrat. If he loses the nomination, he will probably not run as an Independent once again. Once he bailed on an Independent run last time, I and many others bailed on him. I would support his Independent candidacy just to screw with the Electoral College. I thought last time an independent candidacy might have thrown the election to the House of Representatives. I could see a Democratically controlled House voting for him over Trump in a three way EC split if the Democratic candidate took low EC numbers.

But he is so afraid of being tarred with the Nader moniker.

What I said many times on websites last election is that an EC vote is very similar to a Parliamentary Election. And that would be an interesting change for sure. It would also be a means of having the popular vote winner restored if there is a big enough margin in the House. And what would be equally cool is that the Senate picks the VP. So you could have President and VP from different parties.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 10:32am
in some alternate universe...

@davidgmillsatty

if Bernie got the nomination, I would vote for him, especially in this imaginary world, if Tulsi was his running mate. Then there the question about your vote being counted? We'll just have to see what we see and make judgements based on outcomes, IMO.

#4.1 I probably could get on board with a Sanders campaign if he would run as an Independent. But it is really hard to get on board with him as a Democrat. If he loses the nomination, he will probably not run as an Independent once again. Once he bailed on an Independent run last time, I and many others bailed on him. I would support his Independent candidacy just to screw with the Electoral College. I thought last time an independent candidacy might have thrown the election to the House of Representatives. I could see a Democratically controlled House voting for him over Trump in a three way EC split if the Democratic candidate took low EC numbers.

But he is so afraid of being tarred with the Nader moniker.

What I said many times on websites last election is that an EC vote is very similar to a Parliamentary Election. And that would be an interesting change for sure. It would also be a means of having the popular vote winner restored if there is a big enough margin in the House. And what would be equally cool is that the Senate picks the VP. So you could have President and VP from different parties.

davidgmillsatty on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 11:01am
The more I think about this

@Lookout The only way the Democrats might beat Trump is to have Sanders run as an Independent and prevent Trump from reaching 270. That is a far better way to beat Trump than impeachment. Would the house vote for the Democrat or an Independent? I guess it would depend on how Sanders did in the popular vote and EC against his Democratic rival.

#4.1.1
if Bernie got the nomination, I would vote for him, especially in this imaginary world, if Tulsi was his running mate. Then there the question about your vote being counted? We'll just have to see what we see and make judgements based on outcomes, IMO.

TheOtherMaven on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 2:06pm
And who that rival was!

@davidgmillsatty @davidgmillsatty

If it was Hillary "Dewey Cheatem & Howe" Clinton, all bets are off.

#4.1.1.1 The only way the Democrats might beat Trump is to have Sanders run as an Independent and prevent Trump from reaching 270. That is a far better way to beat Trump than impeachment. Would the house vote for the Democrat or an Independent? I guess it would depend on how Sanders did in the popular vote and EC against his Democratic rival.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 2:48pm
The $hill was on Howard Stern this week...

@TheOtherMaven

//www.youtube.com/embed/LhxMvmX9WlA?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 3:18pm
Howard effin Stern indeed

@Lookout

Good lord.that she did that is unbelievable. Great point. Boycott Fox News, but go on Stern's show. It's going to be fun to watch how much lower she falls.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 3:30pm
The depth of her corruption is unfathomable

@snoopydawg

AE maybe be correct that they will pull her from behind the curtain and anoint her to run again. But I sure hope not!

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 3:31pm
More lying about Bernie not supporting Hillary

@Lookout

MSNBC invited on two former Hillary Clinton aides to criticize Bernie Sanders for taking a "long time to get out of the race" and that he didn't do "enough" campaigning for her in 2016. pic.twitter.com/6Vsqo0DKZI

-- Ibrahim (@ibrahimpols) December 8, 2019

Come on Bernie call this crap out.

davidgmillsatty on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 6:08pm
The Way that would work in the House of Reps

@TheOtherMaven They have to choose from actual EC vote getters. So if she is not the candidate she could not win.

Having Sanders run as an Independent and Warren or Biden run as a Democrat would be a much better strategy to ensure a Trump loss in the House. Of course it might take some coordination as in asking the voters to vote for the candidate who has the best chance of beating Trump in certain states. But voters could probably figure that out.

Or a candidate could just withdraw from a state in which the other candidate had a better chance of beating Trump.

QMS on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:27am
Dig it

@irishking @irishking
What to do?Dance in the streets! //www.youtube.com/embed/9KhbM2mqhCQ

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:27am
Do you think the bear went over the mountain...

@irishking

refers to RUSSIA!!! (Just joking) Thanks for the song. Here's one from 1929 back atcha! Thanks for the visit. //www.youtube.com/embed/pDOwDi2jlk0

jakkalbessie on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 10:15am
So much to think about

Lookout as usual you have done an excellent job of giving me a lot of articles to read and think about this next week.

Of course I need to be loading my car and shutting this place down as I head to the Texas hill country. Will look for an article about Kinder Morgan and small communities that are fighting the pipeline through their towns. The read was a little hopeful.

Watching the weather and it looks like sunshine and clear skies as I travel. Thanks for all your work in putting this together.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 10:27am
My buddy JU Lee wrote a song...

@jakkalbessie

I like to travel on the old roads.

There's not a youtube, but the chorus goes:

I like to travel on the old roads
I like the way it makes me feel
No destination just the old roads
Somehow it helps the heart to heal.

I hope your road trip is a good one. The less busy tracks are almost meditative....soaking in scenery as the world passes by.

Have fun and be careful.

Lookout as usual you have done an excellent job of giving me a lot of articles to read and think about this next week.

Of course I need to be loading my car and shutting this place down as I head to the Texas hill country. Will look for an article about Kinder Morgan and small communities that are fighting the pipeline through their towns. The read was a little hopeful.

Watching the weather and it looks like sunshine and clear skies as I travel. Thanks for all your work in putting this together.

ggersh on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 11:06am
Nice work Lookout

Here are a couple of links to how free markets help in the corporate takeover. Amazon a corp that has only made a profit by never paying taxes and accounting fraud. It became a trillion dollar corp through the use of monopoly money(stock) it's nothing but the perfect example of todays "unicorn" corp, i.e. worth what it is w/out ever making a penny

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 11:26am
The free market created the private prison industry too

@ggersh

Not so free really is it? Amazon is certainly a monster...now hosting the CIA/MIC cloud as well as owning the WaPo.

Snode on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 11:45am
Corporations are not people

Corporations can live far beyond a persons lifespan. Corporations can commit homicide and escape execution and justice. Unfortunately, unions are just as likely to be on the corporations side to get jobs and wages, and bust heads if anything interferes with that.

If we protest we've seen the police ready to use deadly force at the drop of a hat, and get away with it. We get to vote on candidates that some political club chose for us, and have little incentive to work for the 99%. The gov. has amassed so much information on us we can't even fathom its depth. We have nowhere left, no unexplored lands out of reach of the government. We think we own things, but if you think you own a home, see how long it is before the gov. confiscates it if you don't pay your property taxes.

If I were younger, or a young person asked what to do, I would say.... learn some skill that would make you attractive for emigrating to another country, because the US looks like it's over. It's people are only here to be exploited. And if Bernie were to become president I hope he gets a food taster.

Lily O Lady on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 1:27pm
Corporations are worldwide entities now. No where to

@Snode

run to. No where to hide. As in the U.K., corporations are seeking to to dismantle the NHS and turn it into a for-profit system like ours. Even as the gilllet-jaune protesters risk life and limb, Macron seeks to install true neoliberalism in France. And the beat goes on.

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 5:41pm
Yep you nailed it

@Snode

Corporations can live far beyond a persons lifespan. Corporations can commit homicide and escape execution and justice.

Look at what chevron did to people in Borapol. I'm sure I spelled this wrong but hopefully people will know what I'm talking about. They killed lots of people and poisoned their land for decades and the fight over it is still going on. How many decades more will chevron get to skirt justice? Banks continue to commit fraud and they only get little fines that don't do jack to keep them from doing it again. Even cities are screwing people. Owe a few dollars on your property taxes and they will take your home and sell it for pennies on the dollar. How in hell can it be legal to charge people over 600% interest? What happened to usury rules if that's the correct term.

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 5:51pm
They've done it all over the world...

@snoopydawg

The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled last week that a prior ruling by an Ecuadorean court that fined Chevron $9.5 billion in 2011 should be upheld, according to teleSUR, a Latin American news agency. Texaco, which is currently a part of Chevron, is responsible for what is considered one of the world's largest environmental disasters while it drilled for oil in the Ecuadorian rainforest from 1964 to 1990.
https://www.ecowatch.com/will-chevron-and-exxon-ever-be-held-responsible...

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 7:13pm
It's just unbelievable that they can still dodge responsibilit

@Lookout

for decades of polluting and killing.

The legal battle has been tied up in the courts for years. Ecuador's highest court finally upheld the ruling in January 2014, but Chevron refused to pay.

This is another thing that corporations get away with. Contaminating land and then just walking away from it. How many superfund sites have we had to pay for instead of the ones who created the mess. Just declared bankruptcy and walked away. Corporations are people? Fine then they should be held as accountable as the people in the lower classes. Fat chance though right?

Lily O Lady on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 6:01pm
Union Carbide India was responsible for the Bopal disaster.
snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 7:16pm
Thanks for the save

@Lily O Lady

Weren't people killed by a gas cloud released from the plant? I read something recently that said the case is still going through the courts. How much money have they spent trying not to spend more?

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 12:27pm
7 year old concerned about the Uighers

//www.youtube.com/embed/wGq0xVh6UJw?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 12:36pm
The comments are supportive of Tulsi

@snoopydawg

....and no I had not seen that clip. Tulsi impresses me in many ways and the manner in which she treats this child is an example.

Especially as compared to Joe ByeDone's adolescent behavior...

//www.youtube.com/embed/mKV0oAPENdg?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

snoopydawg on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 1:09pm
Ugh

@Lookout @Lookout

Byedone just needs to pack it in and drop out already. Today he was defending the republican party after someone said something about them needing to go away. Joe said that we need another party so one does not get more power than the other. Yeah right, Joe. It's not like the Pubs are already weilding power they don't have and them dems cowering and supporting them.

Newsweek reporter quit after being censored on the OPCW story.

I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US govt was removed, though it was factually correct.

-- Tareq Haddad (@Tareq_Haddad) December 7, 2019

ANd great news for Max Bluementhal!!

BREAKING: The US government has DROPPED ITS BOGUS CASE against me and @NotConq .

I was hauled out of my house by a team of cops, jailed for two days, and maliciously defamed due to the lies of the US-backed Venezuelan opposition.

I plan to seek justice. https://t.co/Wm7Yl8cL2T

-- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 7, 2019

Thanks for the wound up, LO. Lots of great stuff here to go back and digest.

#9

....and no I had not seen that clip. Tulsi impresses me in many ways and the manner in which she treats this child is an example.

Especially as compared to Joe ByeDone's adolescent behavior...

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 1:22pm
Glad to see Max vindicated

@snoopydawg

...thanks for the news.

Caity had a nice piece on Consortiumnews on the newsweek story...
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/08/journalist-newsweek-suppressed-opc...

Lily O Lady on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 1:44pm
Bipartisanship is big now. It's how politicians hide their dirty dealings.

@snoopydawg

First frustrate us with gridlock. Then pass bills benefiting the corporate overlords. Then leading up to elections pass bills like the one against animal cruelty (who doesn't love kitties and puppies?), or propose a bill to consider regulating cosmetics. This second bipartisan effort is glaringly cynical since no one apparently knows what is in beauty products. Sanders must have politicians worried for them to attempt something which has managed to go unregulated for so long.

All this bipartisanship is not even up to the level of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's more like wiping at them with a dirty rag while the ship of state continues to sink. While animal cruelty and cosmetic safety are important issues, they pale in comparison to the systemic ills America suffers. Our fearless leaders will continue to scratch the surface while corruption and business as usual continue to fester. These bipartisan laws may look good on a politician's resume, but they won't really help the 99%.

CB on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 5:35pm
Looks like the PTB are starting to crank up

@snoopydawg
the propaganda to give NATO a raison d'κtre for a pivot to China. This will be doomed to complete failure just as the Russian pivot has.

But Putin and Xi Jinping are both much too skilled and intelligent to defeat. American WWE trash talkers are completely outclassed by an 8th dan in judo paired with a Sun Tzu scholar.

Tomoe nage - use your opponent's weight and aggression against him.

"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected ."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Thank you Barack and Hillary...

CB on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 9:39pm
Neither Russia nor China want the US or US$ to collapse too quickly. It would be devastating for the entire world if it happened suddenly.

@Lookout
What they want is a controlled collapse. If they can get the US to continue to overspend on war mongering rather than programs of social uplift the country will rot from the inside.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Meanwhile, back in the Motherland: //www.youtube.com/embed/acPgB_rhdfA

Lookout on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 3:25pm
corporate corruption is low fanging fruit

@Pluto's Republic

So much more to say really. Had to stop somewhere but as you know the corruption runs deep and is intermixed with the CIA/FBI/MIC corporate government under which we live.

On we go as best we can!

There is great dignity in the objective truth. Perhaps because it never flows through the contaminated minds of the unworthy.

smiley7 on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 7:43pm
Excellent Watch, Lookout,

Corporate charters were initially meant to be for the public good if i'm not mistaken in recall, it was a trade-off for their privilege to exist. Maybe a movement political leader could highlight this and move the pendulum back to accountability.

Had a conversation with good friend today, a 3M rep, and he was griping about his competitor's shady marketing product practices apparently lying to manufacturers about the grades and contents of their competing products.

smiley7 on Sun, 12/08/2019 - 7:53pm
A timely piece to go with your conversation of today:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/07/kochland-review-koch-bro...

Battle of Blair... on Mon, 12/09/2019 - 8:37am
I want that flag.

Where can I buy that flag? I will raise it and sing the corporate anthem

"God bless Generica.
Land that is owned.
By the wealthy, unhealthy
As that might be for those being pwnd.

From the Walmart to McDonalds to the corner Dominooooos.
God Bless Generica
My high rent home.

[Feb 24, 2020] The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Feb 24, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson

Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity:

Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said : "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration -- all trying to do something -- all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .

But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don't last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs. As Americans, we should be frightened -- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security -- then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?

Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.

Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:

On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.

Donald Trump did not fire Maguire. He followed the law. The specious claim that Trump fired Maguire exposes McRaven and his ilk as either liars or ignoramuses. The statute governing temporary appointments (i.e., the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) is quite clear:

Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210 days from the date of the vacancy, as well as any time when a nomination is pending before the Senate.

Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.

Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney General Barr's legitimate and proper submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling for the mass extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr's "RECOMMENDATION" was just that--a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr's wishes. And guess what? Judge Berman decided that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.

Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked.

The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is the fact that we are once again being bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia meddled in our 2016 election and is poised to do the same in 2020. What next? Resurrect Jussie Smollet and hire a group of pretend rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the night on the wintry streets of Chicago?

The most recent installment in Putin on the prowl comes courtesy of The NY Times, doing its damndest to masquerade as Pravda.

Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.

Just another scurrilous lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and tainting his election. The real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing less "meddling" in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled in their elections and domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of having professional intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more difficult for the traditional intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg's spending in the 2020 Democrat primary dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the effectiveness of such "meddling."

If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE :

"I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

"I have not seen that, and I get pretty good access," he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.

Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to portray Maguire's temporary replacement, Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant, unqualified political hack.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia offers up an excellent example of this kind of malicious stupidity :

"The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation's intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate's constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004.

"The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question, now more than ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best intelligence and analysis, regardless of whether or not it's expedient for the President who has appointed him.

Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with Warner's vote, approved him. Coats had trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper. How about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte was not an intelligence professional. He was career Foreign Service.

Ambassador Grenell has experience comparable to Negroponte's. Grenell has dealt with all elements of the intelligence community during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S. foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and is starting to clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the bureaucracy, is infested with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his Presidency.

Robert O'Brien has cleaned out the NSC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And persons through out the National Security bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied. This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments expect the screaming to intensify.


blue peacock , 23 February 2020 at 02:59 PM

"When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments....."

Larry, it looks like you have a lot of confidence in Durham. What gives you this confidence? The actions of the DOJ to date should make people skeptical that they'll prosecute their own leadership.

Larry Johnson , 23 February 2020 at 03:10 PM
If Barr and Durham were going to play ball with the Deep Staters and the anti-Trumpers they would not be attacked as is happening. The hysterical over wrought accusations leveled at Barr last week are merely a symptom of the fear seizing these seditionists.
D , 23 February 2020 at 03:52 PM
Americans still retain their keen sense of fair play. Nothing wrong with wanting to be surrounded by those loyal to the elected President.

It is the President's duty to the office itself to demand those appointed also be competent and act with integrity. The President pays the price if they do not.

English Outsider , 23 February 2020 at 04:25 PM

Larry Johnson,

When it comes to telling us where he's coming from Barr has certainly set out his stall.

I have been very interested in AG Barr recently. I quoted this fine lecture -

https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williambarrfederalistsociety.htm

- on an English blog in order to underline some parallels between the parliamentary crisis in England last year and the very similar constitutional crisis in the US. But there's a lot more to the lecture than that -

"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government."

That, together with some penetrating remarks about the difference between Progressive and Conservative - and making it amply clear how destructive Progressivism was - was perhaps more than William Barr merely setting out his stall. It was a declaration of intent and if it's held to then we may expect some dramatic results.

So I'm not surprised the Democrats are attacking him. The wonder is that they're not tearing him limb from limb.

Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 07:53 PM
Chris Murphy - the dolt from CT - on TV whining about Grenell being unqualified and a Trump loyalist. This is the same stooge who just met with the Iranian Foreign Minister (and a head of hair looking for a brain John Kerrey) in Munich.
Flavius , 23 February 2020 at 08:43 PM
Admiral McRaven and his gumba Pentagon bureaucrats should be doing a little belly button gazing to determine how after 2 decades they've managed with considerable sturm und drang to win nothing but have succeeded magnificently in piloting the country into Cold War II with a real adversary.

Well done, Admiral!

Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining.

Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 09:41 PM
Flavius:

You mean all those VERY important people - dressed like doormen -who haven't won a war since WWII?

BTW, Gulf Storm doesn't count - you'd probably get more fight back from the NY State Troopers.

These politicians in uniform know all about "diversity", pissing away LOTS of money, transgenders, sucking up and especially landing Beltway bandit contracts. Fighting, not so much.

Note, I'm referring to the General Officer ranks, not actual troops.

JerseyJeffersonian , 23 February 2020 at 10:33 PM
I assess with 100% certainty that this fake scandal was contrived to coincide with the end of this Maguire's "service". Indeed, all of this time he has been acting as an agent of the Borg, only chucking this stinkbomb as his last, spiteful act. Contemptible.
prawnik , 24 February 2020 at 10:46 AM
Caity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent.
PRC90 , 24 February 2020 at 07:17 PM
Unless someone in the DNC or numerous affiliates can come up with an actual Russian, this kind of hoax will begin to be be seen as dated.

However, with the Weinstein conviction, the MeToo movement will get new life and a wave of similar high profile pursuits will begin.

Undoubtedly this will include one DJT, featuring accusers going back to the 1960's in a orchestrated 24/7 chorus of unproven horror that they hope will succeed where Mueller and Schiff et al have failed.

Who knows, perhaps one accuser (two for corroboration) will even allege some vague Russian presence.

Fred , 24 February 2020 at 08:12 PM
PRC90,

So a democratic megadoner is convicted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and surprise! Others in the moral cesspool that is Hollywood won't be brought to "justice", social or otherwise but we'll see Stormy Daniels 2.0. Except her lawyer's already in jail. The left better come up with something better than that.

Jack , 24 February 2020 at 10:43 PM
Fred,

How about Epstein and his pals? That would be a good start. However nothing will happen on that since too many powerful people would likely be ensnared like Billy Clinton and a British prince.

[Feb 23, 2020] Looks like the USA intelligence (or, more correctly semi-intelligence) agencies work directly from KGB playbook or Bloomberg as Putin's Trojan Horse in 2020 elections

Highly recommended!
Surprising lack on intelligence in intelligence community. But after Brennan and "ruptured" Pompeo as CIA chiefs who would be surprised?" Or more correctly utter despise of ordinary Americans: 'nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people' ~ H L Mencken.
But seriously, if Putin does now have the power to decide US elections, he simply makes his preferred choice one day before the election. There is no reason to open cards right now. You could not make this up. What we have now is Government by Gossip and Innuendo with intelligence crooks on the frontline of spreading the disinformation.
Notable quotes:
"... The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful civilized society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful empire for the benefit of all humanity. ..."
"... The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present state of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of this empire by sowing internal conflict. ..."
"... The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord ..."
"... The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord ..."
Feb 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A careful reading of the news provides that Mike Bloomberg, who had two Russian grandfathers, is Putin's asset.

Consider:

Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump - New York Times , February 20 2020

Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working to get Americans to repeat disinformation , the officials said. That strategy gets around social media companies' rules that prohibit "inauthentic speech."

It is Bloomberg, working as a Russian operative, who pays the trolls that repeat disinformation.

Twitter suspends 70 pro-Bloomberg 'spam' accounts - The Hill , February 21, 2020

The temporary employees recruited by Bloomberg's camp are given the title "deputy field organizer" and make $2,500 a month to promote his White House bid among their followers . The employees can choose to use campaign-approved language in their posts.

Twitter said the practice violated its "Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy," which was established in 2019 to respond to Russia's expansive troll network that was tapped in 2016 to meddle in the U.S. elections.

Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign - Washington Post , February 21 2020

In that closed hearing for the House Intelligence Committee, lawmakers were also told that Sanders had been informed about Russia's interference. The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.

Here are Bloomberg's behind the scene machinations which are sowing division and uncertainty about the validity of American elections. This is exactly what Russia wants.

Bloomberg quietly plotting brokered convention strategy - Politico , February 20, 2020

Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and donors allied with his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to him -- and block Bernie Sanders -- in the event of a brokered national convention.
...
It's a presumptuous play for a candidate who hasn't yet won a delegate or even appeared on a ballot. And it could also bring havoc to the convention , raising the prospect of party insiders delivering the nomination to a billionaire over a progressive populist.

Lock him up!


Peter | Feb 22 2020 10:27 utc | 4

Mike Bloomberg Is Putin's Agent

This should have been obvious for some time.

The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful civilized society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful empire for the benefit of all humanity.

The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present state of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of this empire by sowing internal conflict.

This is why from Sanders to Warren to Gabbard to Bloomberg to Trump everyone is on the PUTIN payroll or subconsciously exposed to some mind controlling rays he sends via satellite to the USA.

The PUTIN is the invention by the Russian Federation after their successful evil attempt to evade the good intentions of the EMPIRE to embrace Russia in its sphere of peaceful tranquility.

Bad PUTIN.

Christoph , Feb 22 2020 12:54 utc | 14

"The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections" WaPo, 2/21/20.

This level if clinical delusion is reminiscent of the Führer's last days in the bunker.

How about free passage to (swampy) Latin America?

Brendan , Feb 22 2020 13:10 utc | 15
I know, I know, it's a waste of time trying to ridicule the media when they're already doing that to themselves. Satire is definitely dead when the Washington Post reports about "two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow". WaPo's attempts to explain that the purpose of this bizarre behavior is "sowing division" makes it look even more incredible.
/div> The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord .

Posted by: bjd , Feb 22 2020 13:13 utc | 16

The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord .

Posted by: bjd | Feb 22 2020 13:13 utc | 16

Trailer Trash , Feb 22 2020 13:49 utc | 23
>How about free passage to (swampy) Latin America?
> Posted by: Christoph | Feb 22 2020 12:54 utc | 14

I'm thinking the Bermuda Triangle would fit right in with their magical thinking and mad delusions.

Jackrabbit , Feb 22 2020 13:58 utc | 24
Bloomberg + Trump = Checkmate?

Trump will say b writes "fake news" .

Damn you Putin!

!!

jared , Feb 22 2020 14:02 utc | 25
Perhaps the intelligence community would just tell us who we should vote for so as not to fall into Putins trap.

[Feb 22, 2020] Sadly ironic: Sanders believes that Russia meddled. So he believes in Russiagate. And Russiagate is McCarthyism.

Feb 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Feb 22 2020 17:51 utc | 55

vk @51

Sadly ironic: Sanders believes that Russia meddled.

Russiagate is McCarthyism.

<> <> <> <> <>

Every US Presidential candidate is pro-Empire.

Martin Luther King, who led an independent Movement had the balls to denounce the Vietnam War and the Empire-builders. Zionist Sanders doesn't.

The Empire costs all of us a bundle, makes us less safe, and leads to civil and human rights violations up to and including crimes against humanity.

!!

[Feb 22, 2020] Mike Bloomberg Is Putin's Agent

Feb 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter , Feb 22 2020 10:27 utc | 4

This should have been obvious for some time.

The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful civilized society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful empire for the benefit of all humanity.
The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present state of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of this empire by sowing internal conflict.
This is why from Sanders to Warren to Gabbard to Bloomberg to Trump everyone is on the PUTIN payroll or subconsciously exposed to some mind controlling rays he sends via satellite to the USA.
The PUTIN is the invention by the Russian Federation after their successful evil attempt to evade the good intentions of the EMPIRE to embrace Russia in its sphere of peaceful tranquility.

Bad PUTIN.


Jen , Feb 22 2020 10:36 utc | 5

I suppose when Jeff Bozo's Blog discovers that Putin is playing three-dimensional chess with himself using Bernie Sanders as the White Side and Mike Bloomberg as the Black Side, it will finally declare that to save the US from Russian meddling, the very notion and institution of regular elections, and the massive organisation, funding systems and networks, and marketing campaigns and promotions associated with the 4-year election cycle must finally be declared harmful to American interests and done away with. WaPo will finally advocate for a one-man police state. Democracy truly dies in the darkness of delirium and derangement. Thank you, WaPo.
Harry law , Feb 22 2020 10:57 utc | 7
This is hilarious, 'nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people' H L Mencken. But seriously, Putin does now have the power to decide US elections, he simply makes his preferred choice [now the obvious loser]one day before the election. You could not make this up.
Timothy Hagios , Feb 22 2020 12:25 utc | 10
Russia is 1984's Emmanuel Goldstein in the form of a country.
Christoph , Feb 22 2020 12:54 utc | 14
"The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections" WaPo, 2/21/20.

This level if clinical delusion is reminiscent of the Führer's last days in the bunker.


How about free passage to (swampy) Latin America?

Brendan , Feb 22 2020 13:10 utc | 15
I know, I know, it's a waste of time trying to ridicule the media when they're already doing that to themselves. Satire is definitely dead when the Washington Post reports about "two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow". WaPo's attempts to explain that the purpose of this bizarre behavior is "sowing division" makes it look even more incredible.
bjd , Feb 22 2020 13:13 utc | 16
The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord.
b , Feb 22 2020 13:16 utc | 17
Here is a candidate who gets it:

Tulsi Gabbard: How Democrats' impeachment campaign helped Trump

For years I have stressed the need for our leaders to make decisions based on thoughtfulness and foresight -- not just emotion, or what may "feel good" in a given moment. This is especially important in the area of foreign policy, as politicians' desire to "do something" too often overrides careful consideration of the unintended consequences of the actions they take. Time and time again, their poor judgment has led to worse outcomes in the countries where we recklessly intervene, and for our own country's national security.

An egregious lack of foresight also led to this counterproductive impeachment of Trump.

Those who wish to lead our country should have had the foresight to know that this result was inevitable. They need to understand that their decisions should not be dictated by what makes them temporarily feel good or look good, but rather by what will be good for the American people. Emotional gratification or political advantage should never determine one's votes or actions.

jared , Feb 22 2020 14:02 utc | 25
Perhaps the intelligence community would just tell us who we should vote for so as not to fall into Putins trap.
gottlieb , Feb 22 2020 15:22 utc | 37
Of course the 'sky is falling' Russia revelation/leak/false flag is part of the CIA's ongoing (failed) coup against Trump. But most importantly these revelations are meant to destroy the Bernie Sanders campaign as he gains an insurmountable lead and momentum. The desperate, debauched CIA stooge Democratic Party launches another salvo in its ongoing coup against Sanders. This is nothing to do with Russian interference of US elections, but the interference by Intelligence, working for the Money Power, to preserve the status quo of greed, and murder hope for change in its cradle.
naiverealist , Feb 22 2020 15:23 utc | 38
IMO the "Russia meddling" trope is just cover for the real meddlers (ReMs) in our elections. The ReMs don't bother with click bait ads, they use the most effective tool out there to influence voters, candidates, and deep state operatives: the US$. The ReMs give cash to candidates who prefer their policies, and if the candidate does toe the line on their policies, they give the money to their opponent. This is the real meddling, but we don't hear about it because any mention of it results in major shaming as "anti-*******" from the ReMs. The ReMs (even though they are supporting a foreign country) do not have to register as foreign agents in the US (very special treatment) due to specific legislation passed in previous years. The ReMs have bragged about their "support of" (really, buying of) state and federal level legislatures to the point of denying basic Constitutional rights and have been vehemently protected by those bought off people.
This is the most effective fifth column, the principal criminal, not the Russkies.
Copeland , Feb 22 2020 16:46 utc | 48
Give them yellow cake and circuses. 24/7
vk , Feb 22 2020 17:11 utc | 51

Sanders on why the story of the briefing from the intelligence came out today

Sanders on why the story of the briefing from the intelligence community he received a month ago came out today:

"I'll let you guess. One day before the Nevada caucuses. Why do you think it came out? It was the Washington Post? Good friends."

blues , Feb 22 2020 17:18 utc | 52
Let's be honest with ourselves. We all know that American minds are extremely weak and fragile and Americans cannot be exposed to any informations which they are far too helpless to process correctly.

We absolutely need to be protected from any ideas that might derail our defenceless little minds.

Thank heaven that the kindly US Government is defending us from wrongful ideas that we cannot possibly handle ourselves.

james , Feb 22 2020 18:22 utc | 59
keep taking everything serious and sooner or later you are going to be seriously dead!
corvo , Feb 22 2020 18:34 utc | 60
Bit early for April Fool's, isn't it?

But seriously, even if the notion that Bloomie were a Putin operative were true, I still wouldn't like Bloomie.

Miss Lacy , Feb 22 2020 18:48 utc | 62
I hate to break circe's bubble, but here's Saunders responding to a WaPoo trash article:

"I don't care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do. In 2016, Russia used Internet propaganda to sow division in our country, and my understanding is that they are doing it again in 2020."

Sorry dear. Russia did not use internet propaganda to sow division in 2016.... the Dims did it all by themselves. So Saunders is a.) delusional or b.) just another lying politician or c.) hoping the J. Bozo drops a check in the mail?

Question: the WaPoo seems to have become the new National Inquirer, yes? Does J. Bozo really need the money?

Norwegian , Feb 22 2020 19:12 utc | 66
Posted by: Bemildred | Feb 22 2020 13:41 utc | 20
The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or "commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.

I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
Nathan Mulcahy , Feb 22 2020 19:20 utc | 68
The American "D"emocracy is a theater of the absurd - not sure if it is a tragedy or a comedy or a tragicomedy. But one thing I am absolutely sure about is the high level of intelligence of the Sheeple.
karlof1 , Feb 22 2020 20:05 utc | 78
Yesterday, Pepe Escobar made a similar entry on his Facebook page to which I replied as follows:

"Why would Russia do that when Trump's doing such a good job of further ruining the USA and Bloomberg would do an even better job of it, whereas Sanders would actually improve the nation and make it a stronger competitor. 100% illogical and spastic!"

One of his entries today deals with the Iranian election which saw the "Conservatives" gain ground, which in the circumstances was a likely result. And if you haven't yet, check out Pepe's article at Strategic Culture .

michaelj72 , Feb 22 2020 20:18 utc | 81
"... Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections..."

hell, I think there's been sizeable skepticism about the validity of US elections since the Supreme Court pulled off a coup d'etat against Gore in 2000, and then went ahead again to load the dice in Citizens United to give it all away to the oligarchs and Ruling Class with their truck loads of money and dirty laundrying

no 'russian assets' need to add anything to that pathetic track record of American 'democracy'.... and that's just from the past short 20 years

I always thought the thing about 'sowing division in the US' was one of the Elites most hilarious and laughable memes - what we need is a satirist as great as Moliere

Erelis , Feb 22 2020 20:54 utc | 86
To quote: "Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections."

A democracy without division, really dissent, is not a democracy. "Hey hey we must not have division over Wall Street or police abuse.....let's have harmony. No no no say no more or you create division."

Want to get a prespective on American democracy? Ask African Americans and other minority groups (such as Hispanics and the wrong sort of European immigrants) what has been done to their right to vote and dissent both now (see Georgia) or in the past (see Jim Crow).

Kadath , Feb 22 2020 20:58 utc | 87
I said this back in 2016 when Russiagate started that it was a poisoned well that the Democrats and the Deep State/National Security establishment would never stop returning to. And here we are, within the space 72 hours the Democrats have accused Russia of "meddling" in the 2020 election by supporting Trump AND Sanders, so I take it that from now on whenever any candidate appears that might upset the establishment even a little bit, they will be accused of being Russian puppets.

This gives the Democrat Party leadership yet another potential weapon to use against Bernie Sanders in the event of a brokered convention, they'll just bleat out "we can't nominate Bernie, the Russians tainted the process to support him". Trump at least can call the Democrats out on their B.S. and call them liars right to their faces, but poor Bernie wont have the courage to do that (at least from what I've seen so far). His own words about Russian "meddling" in 2016 will haunt him, he'll say that the Russians shouldn't have meddled but it won't have impacted his support, but they'll counter that the nomination process was tainted and the DNC has no choice but to discuss how to proceed with the nomination process. That's how they'll try to kill Bernie's candidacy, the "discussion" will just be a bunch of declarations, ultimatums and public commitments they will extract from Bernie to try and break Bernie from his base and either halt his movement's momentum or kill it outright.

I don't know if it will work but the DNC has a history of doubling down against the people's favorite. If the DNC pursue this stratagem I imagine we'll see some talking heads show up in March pushing for a discussion among the candidates on how to respond to Russian meddling, maybe even some debate questions. Either way, Sander needs to come out swinging against whatever the DNC suggests (ideally he should put forth his own suggestion and steer the conversation down a path he choses). Rest assured whatever the DNC puts forth, the goal won't be to protect the electoral process it will be to bog down the nomination process with a dead horse debate in order to blunt Sander's momentum so that a brokered convention to pick someone else won't be such an obvious democratic betrayal.

If the DNC succeeds in screwing Bernie (and more importantly Bernie's supporters) out of a presidential nomination for an election they could have won, It will be a paradigm shift in US internal politics, a second 9/11 that will radically alter how all elections within the US are perceived by the public forever. in the same way 9/11 normalized the concept of the Forever War within the US (also called "Generational War" for those who wish to obscure truth), a "Milwaukee Screw job 2020" will normalize the concept of a moribund political establishment within the DNC that will strangle even mild political reform movement conducted within the system itself. While this will preserve the political establishment for a time, the economic and political crises that created these movements will remain unresolved and having de-facto declared maintaining these crises official party policy by blocking reform efforts within the existing political system, these movements will become radicalized and we'll see return of radical movements similar to those of the 1970s (or 1900s). Eventually either the political system will be reformed or it will collapse, but this will take time (a generation perhaps more). At the very least, this period time and all of the people who lived during it will be robbed of their full political agency, a massive lose to US society and political sophistication. In the worst case, it will result in a political collapse of the US, which will entail a massive cost to the US's human, economic, political and international capital comparable to Russian in 1917

S , Feb 22 2020 23:42 utc | 117
The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.

(In Rachel Maddow's voice.) Sounds crazy, but what if that's the whole point? What if Russia is making all these nonsensical moves on purpose, knowing full well they'll be detected by the U.S. intelligence and reported in the press, thus hurting the credibility of the U.S. intelligence, as no sane individual will believe these allegations?

[Feb 21, 2020] The fact that Bernie Sanders is one this stage with the other pro-war imperialists and Tulsi is not is no accident

Feb 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

JC , Feb 20 2020 23:37 utc | 70

Posted by: SharonM | Feb 20 2020 20:29 utc | 41

"Bernie Sanders belonged on that stage with the other pro-war imperialists. With him, we get affordable healthcare, while millions of people around the world will suffer through coups, invasions, bombings, mass murder, and mass displacement. There is absolutely NOTHING (nothing) for an anti-war advocate to get excited about with a Sanders Presidency."

Exactly! I'm surprise even Tulsi Gabbard not invited to the debate many here still wanna her for VP. I an't voting for anyone but Tulsi Gabbard, I hates the Democratic more than Trump and will vote for Trump if necessary.

JC , Feb 20 2020 23:41 utc | 71

http://brothernathanaelchannel.com/

Inside Bernie

Forgot to include Brother Nathanael

[Feb 21, 2020] There is no way Gabbard will be permitted as Sanders' running-mate unless she has totally sold out already.

Feb 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A User , Feb 21 2020 3:04 utc | 101

Frankly some people here seem to be living in la-la-land where impossible dreams come true.

How about some realpolitik as practiced by both halves of the amerikan empire party when the VP decision time comes around. Does anyone imagine Kennedy wanted Johnson as VP or Bush I, Dan Quayle or Oblamblam the crookedest man in the senate, Joe Biden?

Of course not they were told to take these hacks as a way for 'the party' to keep the hairy eyeball on 'their' Prez.

Let's just pretend for a moment that Sanders came to conference with sufficient delegates that the hope of the DNC to override Sanders with superdelegates was simply too much for the dem party to achieve without alienating a sizable chunk of potential dem voters for life (the odds of that occurring are slimmer than a 2 year old Yemeni, but let's pretend).

Even if Sanders had sufficient delegates to obviate a brokered conference, it wouldn't matter, the DNC would still insist on a 'sit down' with the Sanders crew and insist he took a particular person as his VP. Sanders could refuse, in which case he could expect zero $$$'s for his campaign from the dems and worse the DNC would tell him that the party money, in many cases donated to the DNC by naifs who 'wanted to give Bernie a hand', was going to be spent 'down ticket' assisting all the dem pols up for re-election who were committed to opposing Bernie's favourite policies such as single payer healthcare.

Bernie would be screwed as even if he beat orange moron as he wouldn't stand a shitshow in hell of getting any of these "radical pinko policies" through, which would be justified by the rightist dem senators & congress-creeps saying "Democrat voters, voted for a democratic president not a Marxist president" over and over until the idiots among the public had been sufficiently indoctrinated to believe that tosh. There is no way Gabbard will be permitted as Sanders' running-mate unless she has totally sold out already.

Maybe Sanders should open the bidding with Gabbard, after which the DNC might offer up 'Pete the cheat' to ensure Bernie is defeated, or some other less power-hungry, more malleable dem lick-spittle.
If Sanders is smart enough to play this game, he will already have worded up one or two slightly conservative DC hacks on the qt, then make out he's making a huge compromise by selecting her/him.

He could conceivably get away with that as long as the DNC mobsters are blindsided - remember most of those DC lowlifes will leap at the chance of the veep's gig since it puts you in the inside running to be the prez after yer running 'mate'. And offering it quietly early on would give Sanders the right to insist on blind loyalty - which he prolly wouldn't get totally, but he would have something close to that

Trouble is I don't reckon Sanders has the smarts to pull a rort like that off - we shall see. Whatever he does do the odds are high of him being stymied every time if he does make it


Likklemore , Feb 21 2020 3:25 utc | 102

Posted by: Krollchem | Feb 21 2020 1:55 utc | 92

In reply to my comment on the process, you wrote

"Actually this is not technically correct
and then you quoted Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution.

You ignored the process

I wrote on the process in which jim and jane mainstreet vote [the 2nd part of the process] to select the State electors to the Electoral College: from Link (Archives.gov) provided @ 24 and fully detailed below:

November 3, 2020 -- Election Day

During the general election your vote helps determine your State's electors. When you vote for a Presidential candidate, you aren't actually voting for President. You are telling your State which candidate you want your State to vote for at the meeting of the electors. The States use these general election results (also known as the popular vote) to appoint their electors. The winning candidate's State political party selects the individuals who will be the electors.[.]

Who selects the electors?

Choosing each State's electors is a two-part process. First, the political parties in each State choose slates of potential electors sometime before the general election. Second, during the general election, the voters in each State select their State's electors by casting their ballots.

The first part of the process is controlled by the political parties in each State and varies from State to State. Generally, the parties either nominate slates of potential electors at their State party conventions or they chose them by a vote of the party's central committee. This happens in each State for each party by whatever rules the State party and (sometimes) the national party have for the process. This first part of the process results in each Presidential candidate having their own unique slate of potential electors.

Political parties often choose individuals for the slate to recognize their service and dedication to that political party. They may be State elected officials, State party leaders, or people in the State who have a personal or political affiliation with their party's Presidential candidate. (For specific information about how slates of potential electors are chosen, contact the political parties in each State.)

The second part of the process happens during the general election. When the voters in each State cast votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice they are voting to select their State's electors. The potential electors' names may or may not appear on the ballot below the name of the Presidential candidates, depending on election procedures and ballot formats in each State.

The winning Presidential candidate's slate of potential electors are appointed as the State's electors -- except in Nebraska and Maine, which have proportional distribution of the electors. In Nebraska and Maine, the State winner receives two electors and the winner of each congressional district (who may be the same as the overall winner or a different candidate) receives one elector. This system permits Nebraska and Maine to award electors to more than one candidate.[.]

(empasis added)


psychedelicatessen , Feb 21 2020 4:04 utc | 103
Rob @ 99 - I don't think evidence of this form has been archived anywhere on the Internet. I would be particularly interested in seeing how much of a favorite Clinton was in 2016. I doubt she would have been more than 2/3, and the result not as shocking an upset were Trump actually 1/1. In any event, if the favorite an hour before the books closed always won, who then would ever consider the price on an underdog as an overlay? I'm not addressing any prediction of a winner; I'm observing the changes in public opinion as expressed through those who are willing to take a money position along the way. There would be no other prominent reason for Sanders to reclaim over Bloomberg in less than a week, the Democratic candidate top spot in betting odds, than his strong showing Wednesday night.

All of the legal gambling outlets will tend to keep fairly close in sync with changes in odds offered. Any one of them getting significantly out of sync is taking a position, attracting layoff action from one of the others. When someone makes an investment in this type of futures, it's with an eye toward spotting an overlay. That means a current line which is offering too strong a return on the investment. The books have several ways of adjusting. They can change the odds offered, lay off action with each other to balance their money position, or offer early resolution to certain ticket holders. For example, Trump opened at 5/2 and toward the end of 2018 had been bet down to 3/2. He is currently 8/13 which represents an extreme overlay if someone is holding a ticket with 3/2 odds. When this kind of situation occurs, all of the books are likely to sustain a loss. So, they will offer early resolution. A $2000 ticket on Trump at 3/2 will return $5000, however anyone holding this ticket may be offered $2750 today for early resolution. That's an immediate $750 profit for giving back their position.

Now to illustrate just how drastic changes in the futures betting can be, a few hours ago Sanders was 7/2, he's now 10/3. Bloomberg continues to slide, from 4/1 last week to 11/2 a few hours ago to now 7/1. Perhaps Bloomberg will be attractive enough to become an overlay at 10/1? I would consider that price might be worth taking a position on, if one thinks convention shenanigans will place him as the candidate. At that point (if correct) he'll drop to say 8/5 and will return a good profit from early resolution.

The changes in the betting lines appear more discernible to me, than a shift of a few percentage point amongst pollsters. Notice Pence is back on the board, so obviously some people think there's greater than a 300/1 chance Trump is deceased during this term.

Circe , Feb 21 2020 4:33 utc | 104
Aren't you being somewhat disingenuous by selectively nitpicking a few sentences out of Bernie's speech that merely express an opinion, not a declaration of political meddling, intervention or war, while leaving out the positive 90%, like his criticism of Bolsanaro, Netanyahu and Israel's racist unjust policies and his concern for the dire situation in Gaza?

He rails against Saudi Arabia and MBS and the war on Yemen. He's critical of Sheldon Adelson's influence, the Koch brothers and Mercer and the corruption of goverment and the greed they represent. He's critical of the massive amounts of funding spent on the military. That's great, no?

He's sympathetic to the unjust imprisonment of Lula da Silva and talks about the necessity of addressing climate change and poverty and much more. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT??? There's a Ziofascist in the White House right now who just brought on board Richard Grenell for DNI, (ironically mentioned in Bernie's speech last October... prophetic? Yes.), yet another Iranophobe! So you can guess what direction we're headed in?

Out of all the good that Bernie spoke you gripe about that small paragraph and use it to distort as still too aggressive his entire foreign policy vision and pov on issues few in Congress have the spine to address?

You think I'm just going to let slide this perversion of his message?

Just see how so many comments reek with that same type of distortion parotting YOUR CUE. Do you not feel any responsibilty to the truth and to the power your word may have to influence others to misjudge Bernie Sanders unfairly through your distorted lens?

I am sickened reading the comments that emanated from your small paragraph and bet you NO ONE BOTHERED TO READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH IN THE LINK AND RELIED INSTEAD ON THAT DROP FROM POISON PEN TO FORM A TOTALLY IGNORANT, BIASED OPINION.

I'm glad you at least gave him credit for defending well his positions in the midst of multiple attacks in the debate.

If Bernie can withstand the onslaught of unfair, disproportionate establishment and media attacks (your's included) and win the Nomination, it won't be thanks to the majority of you, but you will all in some way benefit from an improvement in foreign policy under a Sanders administration. OR DO YOU ACTUALLY PREFER TO DISCUSS WAR AND ATROCITY AND CONSPIRACY MACHINATIONS HERE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY IN PERPETUITY? Maybe that's the problem, maybe with Bernie as President you'll be less involved as armchair generals and have to settle for criticizing boring diplomacy for a change!

I don't know about you, but I really welcome most of what Bernie talked about and his vision for the future on this planet much more than discussing war with Iran, famine and climate disaster.

Bernie will make it in spite of haters, never Sanders, maligners, and distorters of the truth.

Oh, and he'll DESTROY Trump in November.

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪
Jared suggests Bloomberg/Gabbard.

Gobbledygook!

I guess you don't really know what Bloomberg's about. And you especially don't get Gabbard! She wouldn't be caught dead working for that Neocon warmonger!

SharonM and Jackrabbit

Get a room you professional koo-koo spinbots...preferrably in another Solar System where you can't damage impressionable minds. Ugh.

Cadence calls , Feb 21 2020 5:04 utc | 105
I feel bad for the Bernie Bros.
He's gonna sell them out again.
Dude has zero pull with his "party", and is facing a steamroller in Trump.
I would be happy to have a small dinner with Circe and friends after the convention.
We can commiserate over a few wodkas and goulash.
SharonM , Feb 21 2020 5:14 utc | 106
@104 Circe

"SharonM and Jackrabbit
Get a room you professional koo-koo spinbots...preferrably in another Solar System where you can't damage impressionable minds. Ugh."

I'm against war. You're obviously just another loser imperialist.

Penelope , Feb 21 2020 5:30 utc | 107
Since medical care figures so prominently in the election, might be a good idea to know why it costs so much now:

The Oligarch Takeover of US Pharma and Healthcare by Jon Hellevig
"The Awara study shows https://www.awaragroup.com/blog/us-healthcare-system-in-crisis/ that in addition to the original sin of corporate greed, the exorbitant costs of the US healthcare system stem from layers upon layers of distortions with which the system is infested. Each part of the healthcare industry contributes to what is a giant monopoly scam: the pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, drug wholesalers, drug stores, group purchasing organizations, health insurance companies, doctors, clinics and hospitals, and even what should be impartial university research. And on top of that, there's the government as a giant enabler of monopolized corporations running roughshod over the American consumer and patient.

"But it is worse than that. All the monopolists (in official parlance, oligopolies) are in turn owned by the same set of investors in what is called horizontal shareholding. The same some 15-20. investors have the controlling stake in all the leading companies of the entire pharma and healthcare industry.

"That's not all. Two of the investors, BlackRock and Vanguard, are the biggest owners in almost every single one of the leading companies.

"Furthermore, BlackRock is owned by Vanguard, BlackRock's biggest owner being a mystical PNC Services, whose biggest owner in turn is Vanguard. Vanguard itself is recorded directly as BlackRock's second biggest owner. Moreover, BlackRock and Vanguard are the two biggest owners of almost all the other 15-20 biggest investors, which most are cross-owned and together own the entire US pharma and healthcare sector. Ultimately, then we might have the situation that the whole healthcare sector and Big Pharma are controlled by one giant oligarch clan (and the very real people who stand behind them), one single interest group of oligarch investors." -- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52658.htm


PS: US is now 33d in life expectancy.

Circe , Feb 21 2020 5:45 utc | 108
Yesterday some dirty dog, Bloomberg or weasel Buttigieg, brought up the fact that Bernie has 2 million, and 3 homes, one in Washington, a house in Vermont his wife inherited from her parents and a cabin by a lake! OMG! QUICK! Call the Socialist police! He's 78, has a career in politics, wrote some bestsellers and he has to live like a monk otherwise, he's a hypocrite???

The hypocrites are the ones criticizing him and not Warren who appeared in Forbes cause she has two expensive homes, and 12 MILLION. But, at the debate she was coy and uncommonly silent when they attacked Bernie for what is perfectly normal given his career, success as an author and his age!

But Lizabeth, she cares so much about poor mothers and babies, and shares Bernie's platform, and yet is too chicken to call herself a democratic socialist. Yeah, with 12 Mil in the bank and different investments she's got a big stake in Capitalism! And someone mentionned that during the commercial break she was getting quite friendly yacking it up with Bloomberg, AFTER she put on the Non-disclosure artifice (watch out for hidden mics, Mike!). And she's not big on democracy either, since she would rather go to a brokered convention, than give Bernie the nomination when he gets the majority of pledged delegates. Screw her!

Oh Lizzie, you showed all your true colors!
DONE, put a fork in it!

▪▪▪▪▪

SharonM

Against war and for Trump? 🤣🤣🤣

Trust me, Bernie's not starting any war at his age, and he's from a bucolic state. If you think Bernie's for war and I'm an imperialist, then must be a real bad judge of character.

You fool no one. You hate Bernie for some other stupid reason.

Blue Dotterel , Feb 21 2020 6:19 utc | 109
Really, the Oligarch party composed of the Republican and Democrat branches will not make any significant changes to the status quo, even if Sanders is voted in to the presidency. Sanders' foreign policy is the Oligarch policy; Sanders domestic policy would never get past the Oligarch house without significant watering down to be totally irrelevant. Sanders only "threat" to the Oligarchs is that the presidency would give him a 4-year platform to continue to put forth his semi-socialist domestic views, seeding the brains of the ignorant masses with dangerous thoughts.

Voting for either branch of the Oligarch party is to vote for the status quo. All that is guaranteed are a few cosmetic changes of zero significance. Vote, but vote anyone but the Oligarch Party!

Piotr Berman , Feb 21 2020 7:26 utc | 110
A positive assessment of the chances of Sanders to win the nomination:

"Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign called on former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to drop out of the Democratic presidential primary race in a memo released on Thursday, warning that Bloomberg's presence in the race would propel Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the Democratic nomination. "

Pete could be more incisive by pointing that unlike his much more financially successful colleague from the race of nomination, he has no track record on making unwanted passes on women, or jokes that cannot be revealed to the publics. More seriously, American establishment is so vast that it is internally divided into various groups or cliques that detest each other. Pete is a darling of CIA circles, Bloomberg is so rich that he nearly makes an influence group by himself., but he may be popular among Wall Street denizens who donate to Metropolitan Opera and snicker at Trump who could not tell Verdi from Barbie doll. On political positions, I wonder if there is an ounce of difference.

YnO , Feb 21 2020 7:41 utc | 111
There is a lot of criticism in these comments about Sanders not going all out against the Democratic Party and playing too nice, but a counterpoint to consider is that we have a perfect example to contrast his behavior with: Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi was vice chair of the DNC and considered one of their "rising stars" in part because of the elites' insipid love of identity politics, and she is demonstrating the country what happens when you go nuclear against the establishment. She burned her political capital to back Bernie in 2016 and went on the attack during the debates she was able to get into. Would Sanders really get better results doing what Tulsi is doing, and if so, why would he going that course be different?
Krollchem , Feb 21 2020 8:27 utc | 112
Likklemore@102

What you describe is what is generally done. If the State legislature chooses to ignore the vote then your argument is not valid.

Please see the US Constitution that I linked...

james , Feb 21 2020 8:29 utc | 113
@95 sharon.. thanks.. that sounds reasonable.. however at present either one of the war parties is going to win.. i suppose some will think bernie i war party lite or something, but regardless if he gets the nod - which i highly doubt - the war party is still in control.. something bigger has to happen for this to change.. collapse is a popular fantasy for some.. i am not sure if or when that could happen too.. it is hard being reasonable in this atmosphere.. i am inclined to more radical thinking as the answer at this point..
BM , Feb 21 2020 8:58 utc | 114
"It's time to give the elites a bigger say in electing the President"

Under Trump Bezos lost highly profitable interests, and under a second Trump term he would likely lose still more. If any of the elites' choices get the Dem nomination, Trump is certain to win. Perhaps Bezos' reasoning was to try to provoke Dem supporters to reject the elites because that is the only chance of getting back the business interests he lost.

Bezos is a nasty piece of work indeed, but to his credit, maybe he at least sees the need of a more acceptable candidate.

Seer , Feb 21 2020 10:26 utc | 115
"They" have thrown down everything against Sanders yet he continues to rise. His support base is HUGE. Competition can't touch him. His victories will put him up so much that the DNC is rendered powerless.

Of all the candidates, Tulsi Gabbard is far away the closest in ideology to Sanders. She entered the race with Bernie's approval, before Bernie announced. Bernie knows that Tulsi is the only one (other than Nina Turner) that would totally have his back. I actually believe that Gabbard is the best candidate that the US has had in a LONG time. If she were selected as VP she would get a lot more exposure; the more exposure the more support she gets. I don't believe that Bernie needs to pick a VP in order to garner more votes; that is, it's not as strategically necessary as other candidates have required: I repeat: Bernie's base is HUGE. Tulsi is a BIG insurance policy. VP isn't a do-nothing position: it can cast a tie-breaking vote in the senate; it can act as collaborator with POTUS. In a more correct positioning of talents it would be Gabbard as POTUS and Sanders as VP. I'd be happy to see Nina Turner as VP but am worried that the pairing with Sanders would create too stark of a picture, one open to really ugly attacks: it's hard to attack Tulsi given her military experience (I hate that this needs to be played, but it's the reality we face). AND there's the VP debates: Tulsi vs Pence would be one for the history books.

Paco , Feb 21 2020 10:29 utc | 116
Turkey closed its airspace to russian airplanes flying to Syria and slowed down the so called Syrian Express. The straights would be closed in case of declared war but the flow can be slowed down by other means. Hard to think that war will be officially declared with all the joint projects in energy, but logistics would be a real problem for Russia if things get uglier.
http://www.ng.ru/politics/2020-02-20/1_7800_bosphorus.html
The second question of the 20 series to Putin is about Ukraine, as usual he comes across as well informed and with ease of verve.
https://putin.tass.ru/ru/ob-ukraine/
jared , Feb 21 2020 11:21 utc | 117
Circe

I guess you don't really know what Bloomberg's about. And you especially don't get Gabbard! She wouldn't be caught dead working for that Neocon warmonger!

Please advise - What is Bloomberg about.
In my experience he is a conservative moderate.
Do we just describe everyone we dont like as zionist?

Willy2 , Feb 21 2020 11:34 utc | 118
- The american writer Thomas Frank has put this way: The Democrats had every opportuniy to win the presidential election of 2016 by focussing on the people in "fly-over land", on the people who felt "left bhind" but instead they focussed on the "creative class" (laywers, the "professional class", hollywood and people from the tech sector (GOOGLE, Facebook, etc.).

- It was the presidential campaign of Trump who saw the chance to win over the people from "fly-over country".

Willy2 , Feb 21 2020 11:38 utc | 119
@Jared (#117):

- Yes, Bloomberg is a moderate republican but he is also an establishment figure/person. So, he won't be the one that will bring about MAJOR changes that are going to hurt that same establishment. Including the "zionists" (with or without quotation marks).

Willy2 , Feb 21 2020 11:47 utc | 120
- The people who are commenting on this topic should take into account one thing. Over the years the Republican party has purged the party of "moderate Republicans". As a result of that Republican party shifted more and more to the right side of the political spectrum.
William Gruff , Feb 21 2020 12:18 utc | 121
About Butt-gig...

If you were running a giant organized crime group with cash flow in the hundreds of $billions, with tentacles deeply penetrating all of the mass media, with connections at the top of all major western multinational corporations, and you wanted to "manage" the political system of the country that finances the military that you occasionally need, how would you do that?

Run you own candidates, of course!

So it is 2015. You've already gotten one of your candidates elected twice, and you are confident that mass media cultivated "identity politics" played a big part in getting him into the White House. Because of this you are now running another "identity politics" compliant candidate, but you have some tricks up your sleeve to guarantee she wins. Most importantly you have an utter heel running against her who cannot possibly win.

So you [big mafia don] are confident that you have the 2016 and 2020 elections sewn up, but even though it is only 2015, now is the time to be thinking about 2024. You've already used up the woman and Black man identity issues, so what next? The gay man "identity politics" angle, of course! So now you need to introduce to the public a gay candidate that is under your control so the public can start to get used to him and he can become widely known by the time campaigning starts in 2023.

Remind me now when it was that Butt-gig "came out" as gay? Oh, yeah, that's right! It was 2015. He then "married" in 2018.

"But Butt-gig is so young!"

Sure. Realize that he wasn't supposed to be running until 2024, when he would be in his forties. 2016 and 2020 were supposed to be Clinton's turn in the White House, but things went all sideways for some reason. Now you have to move up the timetable.

Butt-gig is CIA.

Willy2 , Feb 21 2020 12:43 utc | 122
- Bernie Sanders has promised FREE education/college and FREE Healthcare. Although I have SERIOUS doubts how he is going to pay for all that FREE stuff, the large support he enjoys shows very well how Joe Sixpack is thinking about his own economic situation.
- There were A LOT OF voters who voted first for Sanders in the primaries. When it became clear that Sanders wasn't going to be the Democratic candidate these voters votes for Trump in november 2016.
Piotr Berman , Feb 21 2020 12:50 utc | 123
Blue Dotterel is not satisfied: >>Sanders only "threat" to the Oligarchs is that the presidency would give him a 4-year platform to continue to put forth his semi-socialist domestic views, seeding the brains of the ignorant masses with dangerous thoughts.

Voting for either branch of the Oligarch party is to vote for the status quo. All that is guaranteed are a few cosmetic changes of zero significance. Vote, but vote anyone but the Oligarch Party! Sanders only "threat" to the Oligarchs is that the presidency would give him a 4-year platform to continue to put forth his semi-socialist domestic views, seeding the brains of the ignorant masses with dangerous thoughts.<<

But the oligarchy and sectors close to oligarchy are already worried exactly about that. For example, certain David Brook is almost morose. A nightmare that is at least 170 years old reappeared:

>>Bernie Sanders is also telling a successful myth: The corporate and Wall Street elites are rapacious monsters who hoard the nation's wealth and oppress working families. This is not an original myth, either. It's been around since the class-conflict agitators of 1848. It is also a very compelling us vs. them worldview that resonates with a lot of people.

When you're inside the Sanders myth, you see the world through the Bernie lens.
-----
This brings memories... agitators of 1848, revolution spread around Europe, Hapsburgs quelling a revolution in Vienna only to watch Hungary, nearly half of the empire, raising in rebelion that lasted until Czar send help a year later, stimulating dense Romantic poetry that till today children in Central Europe are forced to learn. Final stanza translated into English (it has a very compelilng rhytm in the original)

[the funeral of an agitator of 1848 turns into a march of specters that disturb comfortable city dwellers]
And we shall drag on the funeral procession, saddening sleeping cities
Banging upon gates with urns, whistling into the notches of hatchets
Until the walls of Jericho fall like logs
Fainting hearts shall be revived; nations shall clear their musty eyes

Onward-Onward

Clueless Joe , Feb 21 2020 13:04 utc | 124
William Gruff:
So, do you basically imply that the next run, after Black, Woman and Gay, would be Latino? In which case they actually planned well ahead and AOC could be their card for 2032? Or would that be too far-fetched? (she seems to go a bit too far into leftism for that after all)
SharonM , Feb 21 2020 13:14 utc | 125
@108 Circe

"SharonM
Against war and for Trump? 🤣🤣🤣
Trust me, Bernie's not starting any war at his age, and he's from a bucolic state. If you think Bernie's for war and I'm an imperialist, then must be a real bad judge of character. You fool no one. You hate Bernie for some other stupid reason."

Here are some relevant questions with Bernie's answers:

*Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?
Sanders: Yes.

*Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?

Sanders: Yes.

*Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?

Sanders: Yes.

*Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back into the G-7?

Sanders: Yes.
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/02/14/sanders-tells-new-york-times-he-would-consider-a-preemptive-strike-against-iran-or-north-korea/

Don't care about your dumb opinion, Circe. But I don't want anyone else here to think I'm some supporter of the U.S. regimes two war parties. Bernie is just like Trump, Obama, the Bush and Clinton families--warmongering assholes all of them.

SharonM , Feb 21 2020 13:20 utc | 126
@113 James
I agree. An actual revolution here would probably require masses of people on the verge of starvation. But perhaps there's a trigger event that we can't foresee?
Victor , Feb 21 2020 13:49 utc | 127
As long as Sanders treats Latin America with respect, I will vote for him. He just said that he backs Evo Morales in Bolivia. That is a good sign.
john , Feb 21 2020 13:59 utc | 128
Willy2 @ 122 says:

Bernie Sanders has promised FREE education/college and FREE Healthcare. Although I have SERIOUS doubts how he is going to pay for all that FREE stuff,...

he's not.

and there's the rub, or the common denominator between domestic policy and foreign policy...i.e. lucre (and hellfire missiles are so much sexier , right?).

if a candidate is not clamoring loudly that the defense budget must be cut by at least 50%, he or she is being disingenuous, if not downright deceptive, about enacting any kind of national healthcare, education, or whatnot.

Jackrabbit , Feb 21 2020 14:10 utc | 129
james @113:
[If Bernie wins] the war party is still in control.. i am inclined to more radical thinking ... at this point.

When reasonable, level-headed people like james are "inclined to more radical thinking" then the establishment is really in trouble.

Will they take heed? Nah, they'll just send out more Circe dembots.

!!

Circe , Feb 21 2020 14:25 utc | 130
@125 SharonM

If you were an anti-war candidate running for President of a militarized security state that is so easily brainwashed by half a billion dollars in ads run by a war-mongering Ziofascist and one of the highest-circulated Zionist-run propaganda rags asked trap questions to test their definition of patriotism on you, you too would go through the motions and give them what they wanna hear so they would leave you the fock alone for the rest of the campaign.

Now, if you're looking to blow in 15 minutes your years in the making efforts to win the Presidency and use your power to change that security state mentality, then you would stupidly answer what you're suggesting.

You're a Trumpbot. AND I COULD GIVE A SHET WHAT YOU THINK.

Bernie wants to restore the Iran deal, and do diplomacy with Iran, and substantially reduce military spending. Bernie is as anti-war a politicisn as I've seen in my lifetime. I'll bank on his wisdom over your intellectual dishonesty ANY DAY, ANY TIME, ANY WHERE. Unlike you, a lousy judge of character, or just plain demonizing Trumpbot on a fool's mission, I am an excellent judge of character who had Ziofascist Trump pegged from day one and took two years of flak for it! Today, I've been vindicated in every way. Ziofascist Trump is the agent provocateur in the Middle East unilaterally, repeatedly resorting to multiple acts of war against the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq and Iran. If he didn't trigger war yet, it's not for lack of trying! Everyone is wisely on hold prevailing on their cool-headedness hoping Americans elect a SANE, and more humane President, and that President will be Bernie Sanders.

When Bernie shuts the door on that lunatic's orange-cake face the entire planet will breathe A COLLECTIVE SIGH.

Now go bark your fake purist bullshet at someone stupid enough to fall for it. I'm a firewall for the truth and you're barking up the wrong tree and messing with someone berning for justice.

PRESIDENT BERNIE SANDERS

Get used to it; it's happening.

clickkid , Feb 21 2020 14:40 utc | 131
@ Circe | Feb 21 2020 14:25 utc | 130

If Sanders actually got into the Presidency and threatened established interests, then he would be given a non-refusable invitation to vist Dallas and drive past the Texas Shoolbook Depositary.

clickkid , Feb 21 2020 14:43 utc | 132
Or even the:

Texas schoolbook depository

SharonM , Feb 21 2020 14:43 utc | 133
@130 Circe

Oh sure, Bernie is just playing 4d chess, right? We've been hearing that for years about Trump as he bombs countries, assassinates people, and overthrows governments. We'll have to relive it all hearing about Bernie's grand scheme to undermine the MIC by doing exactly what the MIC wants. You're just another fake following a warmonger.

Blue Dotterel , Feb 21 2020 14:49 utc | 134
Piotr Berman,

"But the oligarchy and sectors close to oligarchy are already worried exactly about that. For example, certain David Brook is almost morose. A nightmare that is at least 170 years old reappeared"

Well if Sanders does manages to get the Dem. nomination, then go ahead and vote for him. Just, do not expect anything to change during his administration.

Otherwise, if someone else gets it, Sanders will be put out to pasture, and no one will hear from him again. He was pretty quiet the past three years. For Sanders, and his domestic ideas to blossom, he needs to be able to win the presidency, not just run for it. This is why the Oligarchy will probably tank him. Right now, very few people in the US are politically active. It is only the primaries after all. They are mostly ignored by the vast majority of the electorate despite CNN's propaganda polls (which read only 52% interest anyway). In fact, US elections for pres are regularly ignored by almost half the population, anyway.

If anyone else gets the dem nomination, there is no point voting for the Oligarch Party.

Circe , Feb 21 2020 14:52 utc | 135
@117 jared

Do you realize the damage you're doing to your credibility and reputation tooting Bloomberg's horn here?

Bloomberg is a rabid Zionist who defied a flight ban making a cruel, pompous spectacle of himself flying into Tel Aviv during Israel's massive criminal assault on Gaza while vociferously supporting Israel's shelling of children, schools and hospitals.

Bloomberg is a Ziofascist Israel shill Neocon BUSH jr REPUBLICAN. Complete Presidential disqualification in one sentence.

Now run along with your leaky can of Bloomberg whitewash.

Sheesh, how pathetic!

Likklemore , Feb 21 2020 14:57 utc | 136

Posted by: Krollchem | Feb 21 2020 8:27 utc | 112

If the State legislature chooses to ignore the vote then your argument is not valid.

Please see the US Constitution that I linked...

And you continue to ignore Process. Well, in Constitutional Law courses that very scenario is addressed. In Law, Process matters.

if the State legislature choses to ignore the vote.."[..]
if not members of the Parties elected to the Legislature, pray tell how is the Legislature comprised?

You do know when (ahead of the general election) the Republicans and Democratic Parties appoint their respective representative slate of electors they take into account Party Loyalists who are pledged to vote the presidential ticket?

On pledges of the electors: 29 states have laws forbidding the electors to violate their pledges.

In recent history: December 2016, Trump had the required electoral votes and the Hillary Mob attempted a full-throated campaign to have some of the Republican electors switch their votes at the Electoral College!!

How did that work out?

There were 7 "Faithless electors" who ignored their pledges. Oeps of the 7: five defected Democratic-loser Clinton and two the Republican president- elect. [Cases are on appeal before the Supreme Court; to be heard in 2019-2020 term]

When the Electors' switchero campaign did not succeed, Russiagate was the lever to frustrate Trump's presidency. Russiagate will continue as long as the orangeman occupies the White House.

Walter , Feb 21 2020 15:03 utc | 137
WP > "...After a senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected..."

UNZ> "...Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Vice President Biden are being told that if they do not get out of the race and clear the lane for the mayor, they will get a socialist as their nominee, and the party will deserve the fate November will bring -- a second term for Trump..."

Now then, when will the intel dudes claim Buttboi and Buyiden and Klob are commie agents? Why already Wally suspects Putin's on the secret Badenov Shoe-phone with his vast army of verraters... I mean, there must be Some Truth, right?

And if (mirabele dictu) Burner get's 'lected and avoids Dallas... if that, then how will they change the story and tell us Burner is a Putin controlled Putin versteher?

("We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." (CIA Director Casey)

Karlofi mooted Beard's "Republic"... A proud attempt by Beard, but, alas (!) it reads like a sad comic... Painful.

Perhaps one interesting point there though > Lincoln's first inaugural.

I'll leave that for K-Man to discuss, if he likes.

Jackrabbit , Feb 21 2020 15:08 utc | 138
I'm all for disrupting the Democratic Party by voting for Sanders in the Primary.

But anyone that thinks that Sanders will be allowed to actually win the Primary is smoking something. And anyone that thinks that Sanders isn't working with the Democratic establishment to accomplish their goals is snorting something.

Sanders is there as window-dressing and to lure young voters into the Democratic Party fold as a "Democracy Works!" ploy (a form of 'stay in school' PSA) .

The Democratic Party won't actually nominate him because Americans would vote for Bernie's anti-oligarch program in droves. Anyone with any sense knows that the oligarchs have too much money and too much power and that government services monied interests instead of the people.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

We are now in a new Cold War. And we are on the brink of ANOTHER major war in the Middle East. It's long-past time to see through the bullshit propaganda, fakery, and scheming.

!!

Circe , Feb 21 2020 15:23 utc | 139
Copy/paste Jackrabbit who hasn't hatched an original thought in quite some time tries to project his professional troll gig on me. Dembot? Is that all you could come up with?

As with Bernie, I might be more like, hmmm... how would I describe myself?

The Dems worst nightmare⁉️ 😜

...soon to become the Trump-era TERMINATOR.

or, better yet, Circe unleashed.

Walter , Feb 21 2020 15:23 utc | 140
Jackrabbit | Feb 21 2020 15:08 utc | 138

"Smokin' ??"

"...This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it..."

Wally is a bit shocked...here's Lincoln saying the Revolution is a Right... And he wuz smokin...what?

But yes, context matters...read the entire document>

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln

MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1861
Fellow-Citizens of the United States: (avalon / yale / edu an' all of that)

Copeland , Feb 21 2020 15:55 utc | 141
All the slander being heaped upon Bernie is not going to drain one jot of energy from the momentum of his campaign. The trolls desire above all for a tide of chaos to wash over the country. The energy in this movement is going play out on the convention floor and beyond; and the spirit of the people is not about to be diminished or crushed.

It is best not to give up on the struggle, especially when the stakes have been made so clear as Bloomberg plants the flag of oligharchy in this election. Only Sanders and Warren had the decency to react with moral vigor to this outrage.

This is far from over. This is just getting interesting.

William Gruff , Feb 21 2020 16:29 utc | 142
Clueless Joe @124

Correct, as I see it that would be too far-fetched. I cannot see AOC being managed opposition, even if her behavior doesn't seem very leftish sometimes. The establishment's biggest concern with their management of the political process is to make sure that some of the things that AOC discusses remain outside the scope of acceptable political discourse. See Willy2 above with his "Free stuff!" narrative for how the establishment wants people to react... the establishment wants to prevent the public from even considering reallocating resources away from the military and corporate subsidies to so-called "Free stuff!" While AOC's ideology and support for Pelosi and such might leave some leftists unimpressed, the fact that she even discusses free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare and education as well as living wages strongly suggests that she is not part of the establishment's operation.

I honestly do not think the establishment has any plans for pandering very much to Latin American identity... there is far too much revolution in that identity. My guess is that the plans post-Butt-gig are to mix things up... say a Black lesbian or Black transsexual, for instance. Keep in mind this would be planned for 2028 (previously 2030) so whoever they have in mind would only be starting to get publicly groomed for the job now. The potential individuals may not have even had their debutante unveiling to the public yet.

fnord , Feb 21 2020 16:40 utc | 143
@Copeland, 141
The trolls desire above all for a tide of chaos to wash over the country.

Well, true, but we don't need much help. The Sanders campaign has been a gift to socialists who can piggy-back off of his demolition of decades of John Birch Society indoctrination against socialism. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the only good thing he's done. Him losing will be better for socialists - who can benefit from his supporters flocking to our organizations - rather than him winning and forcing us to take him in as "our guy" or us being tarred with any failures of his presidency.

William Gruff , Feb 21 2020 17:01 utc | 144
"[Sanders] losing will be better for socialists..." --fnord @143

Not good strategy. People are not ready to go for real revolution yet. They need to try half measures first and see those half measures fail or be attacked and defeated by the oligarchs. Sanders losing will cause many people to either drop out of the movement or switch to the far right. Sanders victory is needed just to show the masses that victory is possible. People pursue socialist revolution out of a sense of optimism and open possibilities, not desperation. Desperation leads to fascism.

Circe , Feb 21 2020 17:03 utc | 145
Uh-Oh, Jackrabbit just got scorched by Walter's bern brilliance.

I'm a lover of pithy truth, and here's one to describe Bernie's movement:

The real revolution is the evolution of consciousness.

Here's one to prepare for Trump's Bernie strategy:

When a narcissist can no longer control you, they will instead try to control how others see you.

(In other words, always keep in mind; they're coming at you from a position of weakness.)

In my words:

The key to triumph over evil is to take the fight into the light and INSPIRE ALLEGIANCE.

That's Bernie's strength, and that's why Bernie Sanders will become the 46th President of the United States.


Circe , Feb 21 2020 17:28 utc | 146
While Trump boasts he's the master of 4D chess; he will be outplayed by Bernie Sanders, the 4D Master of CHESED .

Bernie Sanders will defeat Donald J. Trump to become President of the United States.

[Feb 21, 2020] Democrat dog and pony is designed to bury Tulsi and Sanders

Feb 21, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Master Slacker , 20 February 2020 at 02:41 PM

The longer this Democrat dog and pony show continues the more I have a sense that it is a false flag operation whereby the most unelectable (Feel the Bern) is being raised while the most competitive (Tulsi Gabbard) has been shunted aside leaving no trace.
Tom Milton , 20 February 2020 at 04:51 PM
Master Slacker et al

Was privileged to attend a Tulsi Town Hall last evening in Colorado Springs.

Very impressive from start to finish. Estimate 300 attended, many young military, and many there identified as Republicans including a former CO State Senator.

Try to catch this wonderful candidate in person. Her positions are available in considerable detail on Wikipedia.

She may be shunted aside by the MSM, but she's leaving way more than a trace for sure -- a redemptive force for a troubled and divided nation.

Eureka Springs , 20 February 2020 at 05:06 PM
With exception of Sanders I can't imagine any candidate on the stage last night offering Gabbards a position in their administration.

If Bernie Sanders were President of say any South American country every other Democrat on stage last night would be delighted as president themselves to covertly and overtly destroy him and his nation. Think Honduras, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia for the most recent examples.

This country is getting a very clear lesson in the fact not only is not a democracy, it's anti-democratic to its core. I hope at long last it finally sinks in among the half of eligible voters who still legitimize it with their vote.

divadab , 20 February 2020 at 05:54 PM
The US of A should do as EVERY other advanced economy did - and implement single payer healthcare and eject the profiteers from the medical system, which is a public good. Germany has had universal medical care since Otto von Bismarck implemented in the 1870's to unify the country - most other countries implemented it in the 20th century (UK just after WW2; Canada in 1963' and so on). This will liberate US Americans from the advanced world's most expensive and inefficient health insurance system, with administrative costs of over 20% compared to Canada's 2-3% depending on province. And Bernie Sanders is the only Dem candidate who unequivocally stands for Medicare for all - the rest are to some degree or other captured by health industry cartel payoffs, much as the Dem party is.

Bernie or bust! He's not a commie; he's a democratic socialist, in the model of FDR's New Deal. Yes he's bad on foreign policy - do you-all really approve of what Trump has been doing on behalf of "client states" who really run the foreign policy show in their domains? I'm not sure if this will ever change - no president wants to end up like JFK. But what is important is to improve the lot of all of us poor citizens who get to pay for all these shitshow foreign SNAFU's - will they ever end? Not while the likes of Pompeus Maximus is in charge....

[Feb 21, 2020] Here is Bernie Sanders Foreign Policy platform.

Feb 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

linda amick , Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 25

Here is Bernie Sanders Foreign Policy platform. In my opinion the details will prove better than interviews and not aggressively campaigning yet on foreign policy issues. This is because he has been in this game a very long time and can not swallow a fire hose worth of condemnation at one time.

Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 19:21 utc | 31

linda amick @25

The fact is, Bernie doesn't need a great foreign policy platform to win. Americans would vote for Bernie's domestic platform in overwhelming numbers.

That's why the establishment will do everything possible to defeat Bernie.

But is Bernie doing everything possible to win? And/or cause his Democratic Party insurgency to prevail?

He won't criticize the Party and he has stated many times that he'll support whomever the Party nominates (even if he is cheated).

<> <> <> <> <> <>

With that said, Bernie's record on foreign policy is not as good as his aspirational policy positions and his preference for Israel is clear (despite his concerns about how the Palestinians are treated). This has been discussed in detail at moa in recent weeks.

!!

[Feb 21, 2020] Not on Our Side: On Bernie Sanders and Imperialism

Feb 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

SharonM , Feb 20 2020 20:29 utc | 41

@35 Piotr Berman

There's no way to sugarcoat Sanders' pro-war imperialism. This is a good article about it:

"Not on Our Side: On Bernie Sanders and Imperialism"
https://www.leftvoice.org/not-on-our-side-on-bernie-sanders-and-imperialism

You said this:

"He also detests the leadership of Israel..."

And that claim is shot down in the linked article. Here:

"Sanders' support for protecting Israel was not just in terms of words, but by votes to provide billions in military hardware and aid to the Apartheid state in 1997, 1999, 2004. When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Sanders voted in favor of imposing sanctions in order to remove them from power. He has also voted for resolutions in favor of Israeli military actions against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2014. At a town hall meeting on Gaza, Sanders was heckled for defending the Israeli actions, telling the audience to "shut up.""

Bernie Sanders belonged on that stage with the other pro-war imperialists. With him, we get affordable healthcare, while millions of people around the world will suffer through coups, invasions, bombings, mass murder, and mass displacement. There is absolutely nothing for an anti-war advocate to get excited about with a Sanders Presidency.

[Feb 21, 2020] I don't think we should be delving on Sanders' foreign policy too much. Each President reliably betray his election platform

In France they used to say "Socialists who became ministers are not socialist ministers" ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Sanders' 2016 campaigning was also very curious for his amazing deference to Hillary ..."
Feb 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , Feb 20 2020 18:22 utc | 19
I don't think we should be delving on Sanders' foreign policy too much.

Obama was elected on a "hope and change" platform - mentioning removing troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo etc. and then, boom, Libya, drones, private contractors and Syria happened.

Also, we have the Deep State, which is the true dictator of American foreign policy. This is the team of "experts" and "advisers" who will "educate" whoever is newly elected to the WH. So it doesn't really matter what the candidates state about foreign policy at this point.

It really doesn't matter what Sanders says on the FP front.


Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 20:43 utc | 44

And Sanders' 2016 campaigning was also very curious for his amazing deference to Hillary .

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 36

I will not defend Sanders from basing his foreign policy on the progressive outliers of reactionary CAP. There is a distinct danger that he would be malleable on foreign policy, but also a hope... The hope is that he collected a lot of supporters who are less deferential to DC consensus than himself.

The deference to Hillary was a good tactical choice in my humble opinion. He leads the insurgents who do not favor the current DNC and party apparatus. To win a national elections he does need cooperation across party spectrum. PUMA is a real danger against that (search PUMA 2008 election). So he can (a) challenge and shame possible repeaters of PUMA (b) give good example (c) rely on his feared supporters who are guaranteed to be suspicious and grumpy.

Bloomberg as the champion of moderate democrats reminds me the candidate for Polish presidency that Nationalists put forth in 1922. He was the top aristocrat, with vast holdings. Nationalists had hopes of attracting the larger and very moderate peasant party, but moderate as they were, they just could not vote for Aristocrat Number One. A lot of Democrats prefer Sanders over Bloomberg, even the moderate ones. If Sanders becomes top in delegate count and Bloomberg second, brokering the convention against Sanders will be hard.

Bubbles , Feb 20 2020 21:30 utc | 51
I started out to say that Sanders can't compete in the American Political sham reality if he goes ball to the wall against Israel's aggression's and totally illegal behaviour which is supported by Democrats and Republican's alike because of the monetary power the Zionist fifth column in America wields with their "Benjamins"

Hat tip to that tiny girl born in Somalia for calling a spade a spade. Courage should be rewarded, not attacked by those who disrespect truth and decency.

Patroklos , Feb 20 2020 22:30 utc | 59
On Sanders' foreign policy: we shouldn't forget that democracies are belligerent, that the link between war and high citizen participation in decision-making was the hallmark of classical antiquity. More recently, the icing on FDR's New Deal was ww2. It doesn't surprise me that a shift to social democracy does not imply a decrease in external belligerence. In fact moderate right-wing libertarians tend on the whole to be the least fond of war, unless it's about protecting their interests. But when the interests at stake are understood by the deliberative citizen body (e.g. SPQR or ὁ δῆμος) to be those of the collective citizen body, then war is endemic. I am reminded too that one of the most left-wing institutions (in spirit at least) in the US is the Marine Corps: the polis is a warrior-guild (Max Weber)
waste , Feb 21 2020 0:06 utc | 75
Thanks b for watching the debate for us :)

Even if sanders gets the nomination (a very very big if), don 't expect him to go all anti-systemic at all, more the opposite I would say. So Tulsi for VC is like a red herring, he would probably choose a "moderate" for VC.

The following article is a very interesting one, showing the type of socialist sanders is. His ideas about socialism are closer to the european socialdemocratic system after the 90s , and we all know what a trainwreck that is.

https://libcom.org/library/bernie-sanders-paradox-when-socialism-grows-old

Jackrabbit , Feb 21 2020 0:27 utc | 78
karlof1 @62, b4real @73

Whether he realizes it or not, karlof1 is exposing a version of the establishment-friendly "best of all worlds" (BOAW) political theory

BOAW was popular when Obama the deceiver was President. It fits well with his neoliberal hucksterism aka "social choice theory".

BOAW says that if something is wrong or can be improved, it will get attention and be addressed because people will get behind the change necessary to make it happen.

But the Empire and great wealth disparity has distorted democratic processes into something garish - like fun house mirrors. BOAW is now recognized as simply hopium propaganda and is hardly ever even mentioned anymore.

!!

[Feb 20, 2020] Sanders Wins Democrats Primary Debate

President in the USA is just a puppet of more powerful forces. Attempt to change foreign policy will result in the color revolution against him as happened with Trump (who actually folded three month into his presidency).
Bernie in this sense is a sheepdog, nothing more nothing else. But this show is very entertaining as in "Bread and circuses' for the plebs.
Notable quotes:
"... Sanders economic and domestic policies seem generally okay to me. But his foreign policies are still too aggressive: ..."
"... In Hungary, far-right authoritarian-nationalist leader Victor Orban models himself after Putin in Russia, saying in a January interview that, "Putin has made his country great again." Like Putin, Orban has risen to power by exploiting paranoia and intolerance of minorities, including outrageous anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, but at the same time has managed to enrich his political allies and himself. ..."
"... Where please is Putin "authoritarian"? When has Putin "exploited paranoia and intolerance of minorities"? When he opened the Grand Mosque in Moscow? And to put the dully elected Duterte of the Philippines and North Korea's Kim Jong Un into one "authoritarian leaders" pot, as Sanders does in other parts of that speech, makes little sense to me. ..."
"... Still - Sanders foreign policy is probably the least aggressive in the field with the exception of probably Gabbard's. Sanders should select her for the vice president position. As a women of color she would also tick off two now necessary categories. ..."
"... Trump will spend most of the campaign working for Senate candidates. He must hold the majority to prevent his second impeachment and removal. All the strategy for re-election is based on the Senate now. ..."
"... Unless something remarkable occurs with the Dems, they lost the election last night. A Minor League lineup. ..."
"... Remember, Obama, the worst warmaker of the last imperial dynasties, started as a self-declared upholder of international law, a Nobel prize-winning one at that. ..."
"... Now to my point: if foreign policy is imperial, all other improvement is irrelevant. ..."
"... Health care, better pensions, affordable mortgage, a free hamburger every week, etc. for the population of the Empire that murders, plunders and generally threatens the health of the whole world seems like something one should avoid, not cheer for. ..."
"... A good assessment and I would add that Gabbard won by not being there. The dog and pony show conducted by corporate news has adult political aspirants panting like sixth graders for teachers attention. Demeaning to all involved. ..."
"... If the DNC and its bosses screw Bernie, which they obviously want to do, they'll certainly re-elect Trump. They prefer Trump to Bernie anyway. But they'll also rip apart the Dem Party ..."
Feb 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

The various reflections of last night's debate between Democratic party primary candidates give a consistent picture.

This impression seems to be correct:

Carl Beijer @CarlBeijer - 3:01 UTC · 20 Feb 2020

Bernie Sanders is debating like a frontrunner, confidently advancing his agenda and fending off attacks.

Everyone else is frantically trying to make some kind of game-changer happen, throwing up one-liners and cutthroat attacks like Hail Marys with the clock winding down.

The Democrats will likely have a brokered convention. If there is no candidate who gets a majority in the first round, hand selected 'superdelegates' will also vote. They will select the candidate the party's paymasters want. They may even try to rerun Hillary Clinton through this backdoor.

Op-eds that argue for such sham democratic processes already get published . Even under the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness":


bigger

(The Washington Post changed the above headline after it had caused an outrage on social media.)

All candidates but Bernie Sanders seen to be fine with such anti-democratic schemes. When the moderators asked if the candidate with the most delegates should automatically become the party nominee the answers were :

- Bloomberg: No
- Warren: No
- Biden: No
- Buttigieg: No
- Klobuchar: No
- Sanders: Yes, the inclusion of superdelegates is not indicative of a democratic process.

Sanders economic and domestic policies seem generally okay to me. But his foreign policies are still too aggressive:

In Hungary, far-right authoritarian-nationalist leader Victor Orban models himself after Putin in Russia, saying in a January interview that, "Putin has made his country great again." Like Putin, Orban has risen to power by exploiting paranoia and intolerance of minorities, including outrageous anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, but at the same time has managed to enrich his political allies and himself.

Where please is Putin "authoritarian"? When has Putin "exploited paranoia and intolerance of minorities"? When he opened the Grand Mosque in Moscow? And to put the dully elected Duterte of the Philippines and North Korea's Kim Jong Un into one "authoritarian leaders" pot, as Sanders does in other parts of that speech, makes little sense to me.

Sanders current foreign policy advisor is an aggressive known-nothing:

Matt Duss @mattduss - 1:37 UTC · Feb 20, 2020

"It should come as no surprise, therefore, that those who understand Putin's kleptocratic system – such the leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny – are now rooting for Sanders."

Guardian: Hawks say Sanders will be weak on Russia. But Putin should fear a President Bernie

Navalny is a xenophobe and racist nutter. He compared Muslims to cockroaches who should be killed. He does not lead anything and certainly not the Russian opposition. Polls in Russia have him at 1%.

Still - Sanders foreign policy is probably the least aggressive in the field with the exception of probably Gabbard's. Sanders should select her for the vice president position. As a women of color she would also tick off two now necessary categories.

But first he will have to win the big fight to become the nominee. The powers that be will do their best to prevent that.

Posted by b on February 20, 2020 at 16:50 UTC | Permalink


Pnyx , Feb 20 2020 17:00 utc | 1

I agree to the Gabbard as vice idea.
Red Ryder , Feb 20 2020 17:03 utc | 2
'b'

Good analysis of the debate. Pithy remarks was all it was worth. Trump won 'yuge' last night. Bloomberg showed that Trump would crush him in the debates. The key to the 2020 election is now the Senate race. Can the Republicans hold their majority?

Trump will spend most of the campaign working for Senate candidates. He must hold the majority to prevent his second impeachment and removal. All the strategy for re-election is based on the Senate now.

Unless something remarkable occurs with the Dems, they lost the election last night. A Minor League lineup.

vk , Feb 20 2020 17:06 utc | 3
Bloomberg bought everybody - but he forgot to fix himself.
bjd , Feb 20 2020 17:14 utc | 4
Bloomberg knows the price of everyone, but the value of nothing.
frances , Feb 20 2020 17:19 utc | 5
In reading of conservative websites, a number of commenters are saying they will vote for Bernie in the Primaries, hoping he will get the nomination. Their reasoning is that if it is a race between Trump and Bernie, they will be resigned if Trump loses, but ONLY if he loses to Bernie. Most are against Gabbard as she is seen as anti-2ed amendment.
snake , Feb 20 2020 17:22 utc | 6
Its all about show.. the electoral college selects the president.
Piero Colombo , Feb 20 2020 17:22 utc | 7
"But his [Sanders] foreign policies are still too aggressive"

Aye, too aggressive by far to make him any kind of improvement over any other Admin. Remember, Obama, the worst warmaker of the last imperial dynasties, started as a self-declared upholder of international law, a Nobel prize-winning one at that.

Now to my point: if foreign policy is imperial, all other improvement is irrelevant.

Health care, better pensions, affordable mortgage, a free hamburger every week, etc. for the population of the Empire that murders, plunders and generally threatens the health of the whole world seems like something one should avoid, not cheer for.

dbrize , Feb 20 2020 17:26 utc | 8
A good assessment and I would add that Gabbard won by not being there. The dog and pony show conducted by corporate news has adult political aspirants panting like sixth graders for teachers attention. Demeaning to all involved.

Sanders needs stronger vetting on foreign policy. It should be remembered that he twice voted for Clinton's wars and the AUMF which gave presidents the power to conduct never ending wars of choice.

Gabbard is clear on her position and Sanders is not.

NoOneYouKnow , Feb 20 2020 17:26 utc | 9
If the DNC and its bosses screw Bernie, which they obviously want to do, they'll certainly re-elect Trump. They prefer Trump to Bernie anyway. But they'll also rip apart the Dem Party. I anticipate violence if they do.

If Bernie is elected, we'll find out how much of his foreign policy he believes in and how much he has said to get along with the neocon Dem establishment. His base certainly is to his left on foreign policy.

Nathan Mulcahy , Feb 20 2020 17:44 utc | 10
They call them super delegates and I call them Dem-Ayatollahs or politburo members who decide who people can vote for.

I am completely with b on Sanders's stand on foreign policy. The good thing I can say about this is that he has been slowly but continuously moving in the right direction. He is still not where I want him to be. But I could persuade myself to vote for him IF the Dem-Ayatollahs and the politburo members allow him to run AND if he chooses Tulsi as his VP.

div> Many of Sanders supporters on Twitter will tell you that his foreign policy utterances are what "he has to do" so that the media doesn't increase their attacks on him. They say it is a con. A lot of others like the people at WSWS disagree completely. I don't know for sure, but it does make sense to play along with the establishment while you don't have power. And Tulsi is part of the Sanders Institute. As for Tulsi being VP, there would be unanimous outrage like you have never seen from so many liberals because Hinduphobia is rampant among so many of them. This explains how they have have been conned by a smear psy-op against Tulsi Gabbard: Anatomy of A Smear: How Liberals Have Become Willing Dupes of Foreign Political Psy-Ops

Posted by: Kali , Feb 20 2020 17:54 utc | 11

Many of Sanders supporters on Twitter will tell you that his foreign policy utterances are what "he has to do" so that the media doesn't increase their attacks on him. They say it is a con. A lot of others like the people at WSWS disagree completely. I don't know for sure, but it does make sense to play along with the establishment while you don't have power. And Tulsi is part of the Sanders Institute. As for Tulsi being VP, there would be unanimous outrage like you have never seen from so many liberals because Hinduphobia is rampant among so many of them. This explains how they have have been conned by a smear psy-op against Tulsi Gabbard: Anatomy of A Smear: How Liberals Have Become Willing Dupes of Foreign Political Psy-Ops

Posted by: Kali | Feb 20 2020 17:54 utc | 11

jared , Feb 20 2020 18:01 utc | 12
That headline is interesting:
It's time to give elites a bigger say in selecting president.

Could someone actually be so absorbed in own perspective as to not realize how provocative that is - pretty much poking finger in someones chest? I don't think so. It was meant to provoke. Perhaps Bezos is threatened by other rich people.

ChasMark , Feb 20 2020 18:01 utc | 13
The Hail Mary used to be the comfort-food of prayer.
Adrian E. , Feb 20 2020 18:08 utc | 14
I find some of Sanders' answers about foreign policy extremely hawkish:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/politics/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy.html

The most extreme thing is that Sanders would consider military force to prevent even just a missile test.

He also says he would "consider" "humanitarian interventions" without saying anything about those "humanitarian interventions" based on lies that led to deterioration of the humanitarian situation.

Under normal situations, I would think that Sanders' foreign policy positions should disqualify him. But we are talking here about the United States of America, a country with extreme disregard for international law, and it is probably correct that all other candidates who have a chance of being elected would be even worse (compared to the extremists Biden, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg, Sanders' hawkishness and aggressive rhetoric against Russia seems relatively harmless). Compared to Trump, Sanders is probably the lesser evil.

But I doubt he will be inclined to go against the neocons who dominate the foreign policy establishment and the secret services.

I used to think that if Sanders is president, Gabbard could be Secretary of State or vice president. But now, I think this is unlikely. First because of many jingoistic statements by Sanders, but second also because polls show that Tulsi Gabbard seems to be quite unpopular among the US population. It seems that, while in Sanders' case the smears in the media don't work well because people already know Sanders well enough, in Gabbard's case, the smears seem to have worked. Sanders probably will not want to burden his administration with someone who is so hated by a large part of the Democratic electorate.

I think Tulsi Gabbard will be needed for something else if Sanders is elected, for pressuring Sanders from outside the government.

karlof1 , Feb 20 2020 18:14 utc | 15
During the debate, Sanders clubbed Bloomberg over the head for his "immoral" amount of wealth:

"'Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans,' said Sanders. 'That's wrong. That's immoral. That should not be the case when we got half a million people sleeping out on the street. When we have kids who cannot afford to go to college. When we have 45 million people dealing with student debt.'"

But the amount of disparity Sanders announced was likely overstated--reality is actually worse:

"In the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data, Bruenig noted, ' the bottom 38 percent of American households have a collective net worth of $11.4 billion, meaning that Michael Bloomberg owns nearly 6 times as much wealth as they do .'

"'The definition of wealth used in the official SCF publications includes cars as wealth,' wrote Bruenig. 'But academics that study wealth inequality, like Edward Wolff, often do not count cars as wealth because they are rapidly-depreciating consumer durables that most people can't really sell for the practical reason that they need a car to get around and live. When you exclude cars from the definition of wealth, what you find is that the bottom 48 percent of households have less combined wealth than Michael Bloomberg does. This is 60.4 million households or 158.9 million people .'

"'Regardless of which measure you use,' Bruenig concluded, 'the upshot is clear: the United States is simultaneously home to some of the wealthiest people on Earth and to a large propertyless underclass that have scarcely a penny to their names.'" [My Emphasis]

The description of Bloomberg as an Oligarch is correct. That he's also a kleptocrat is also likely true. What's certain is he didn't "work hard" to attain his loot; he's a Rentier just like Trump.

In a related development, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has proposed to change the tax codes to "Treat Wealth Like Wages" , something strongly advocated by economists like Hudson, Keen, and Wolff and would start to slowly change the disparity. George Will wrote a column about it yesterday . And although he's mistaken about that wealth being turned into productive (entrepreneurial) Capitalism as proven by Hudson, Keen, Wolff, and others, he does agree that something must be done about the problem.

Danny C , Feb 20 2020 18:18 utc | 16
I wish he would pick Tulsi, but the media has already done a good job
of getting clueless Dem voters to turn on her
Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 18:19 utc | 17
The most important, and most illusive issue is E M P I R E . But we won't hear much about that in US Presidential elections.
Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 18:21 utc | 18
Bill Clinton, 1992:
It's the economy, stupid.

Jackrabbit, 2020:

It's the Empire, stoopid. (tm)

!!

vk , Feb 20 2020 18:22 utc | 19
I don't think we should be delving on Sanders' foreign policy too much.

Obama was elected on a "hope and change" platform - mentioning removing troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo etc. and then, boom, Libya, drones, private contractors and Syria happened.

Also, we have the Deep State, which is the true dictator of American foreign policy. This is the team of "experts" and "advisers" who will "educate" whoever is newly elected to the WH. So it doesn't really matter what the candidates state about foreign policy at this point.

It really doesn't matter what Sanders says on the FP front.

JR , Feb 20 2020 18:30 utc | 20
Quite revealing:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/02/19/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-pete-buttigieg-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/

michaelj72 , Feb 20 2020 18:42 utc | 21
the first headline by the WA Post opinion piece is better and truer in that it is more indicative and exact of what the Elites think, want, and believe in - more Elite control


hell they already have substantial backroom control via the hack Media - see exclusion of Gabbard critique of aggressive US foreign policy aka imperialism for further proof; not to mention of course the overwhelming role of money in this election, in all elections (Citizens United consolidated this), and in the very fabric, functioning and meaning of the 'society' at large.

the Elites are afraid of the insurgent wing of their party for a variety of reasons, and are once again trying to rig the system against any chance of Sanders getting the nomination

oldhippie , Feb 20 2020 18:44 utc | 22

If Hilary jumps in and steals the nomination Trump will relish the opportunity to beat her up again.

If Bernie gets the nod (miraculously) the Democratic right will ensure he loses the general. Hilary would rather McGovern him and lose the House, lose ten Senate seats, than tolerate an usurper.

Anybody else gets the nomination Trump needn't bother to pretend he has an opponent.

Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 18:48 utc | 23
A Brokered Convention?

Sadly, Bernie isn't doing everything he can ...

Likklemore , Feb 20 2020 18:56 utc | 24
Its all about show.. the electoral college selects the president.

Posted by: snake | Feb 20 2020 17:22 utc | 6
the process -
first - it's the main street voters who, on November 3rd, Election day will select the State electors to the electoral college. The State electors will vote for the president on December 14, 2020. On January 6, 2021 the Senate counts the electoral votes and declares who has been elected President and Vice President. That's how it works.

So, these guys and gals running for the office of president need to garner the votes of the main street voters...jim and jane.

linda amick , Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 25
Here is Bernie Sanders Foreign Policy platform. In my opinion the details will prove better than interviews and not aggressively campaigning yet on foreign policy issues. This is because he has been in this game a very long time and can not swallow a fire hose worth of condemnation at one time.

The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality. When we are in the White House, we will:

Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.

Allow Congress to reassert its Constitutional role in warmaking, so that no president can wage unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas.

Follow the American people, who do not want endless war. American troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years, the longest war in American history. Our troops have been in Iraq since 2003, and in Syria since 2015, and many other places. It is long past time for Congress to reassert its Constitutional authority over the use of force to responsibly end these interventions and bring our troops home.

End U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which has created the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

Rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement and talk to Iran on a range of other issues.

Work with pro-democracy forces around the world to build societies that work for and protect all people. In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, democracy is under threat by forces of intolerance, corruption, and authoritarianism.

AntiSpin , Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 26
@ Red Ryder | Feb 20 2020 17:03 utc | 2

"Unless something remarkable occurs with the Dems, they lost the election last night. A Minor League lineup."

I watched a few moments at a time of that childish squabble, during the first hour. After that I couldn't stand any more.

//

@ dbrize | Feb 20 2020 17:26 utc | 8
"The dog and pony show conducted by corporate news has adult political aspirants panting like sixth graders for teachers attention. Demeaning to all involved. Sanders needs stronger vetting on foreign policy. It should be remembered that he twice voted for Clinton's wars and the AUMF which gave presidents the power to conduct never ending wars of choice."

He also apparently has, like Hillary before him, his public positions and his private positions, depending upon whom he's talking to. He told the NY Times (he seemingly is unaware that the Times is read by the general public) that he would willingly launch a military assault on North Korea, would willingly launch a military assault on Iran, and would be willing to continue the absurd policy of treating Russia and China as enemies of the US. And let's not forget that he once referred to Hugo Chavez as "a dead communist dictator," and also recommended that Saudi Arabia be put in charge of the war against Syria.

I do believe, though, that his absurd foreign policy positions are based on ignorance, and not on imperial impetus.

He's still the best of that entire lot.

Rusty Shackleford , Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 27
Sanders's economic and domestic policies are economically illiterate and anti free market - so are Trump's generally. The only possible, slight positive about Bernie Sanders is that he's...sometimes less hawkish than others. The same is true for Tulsi.
SharonM , Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 28
Sanders would never want Tulsi in his cabinet. And vice President is a total do-nothing position. Secretary of State, or Secretary of Defense, even Ambassador to the United Nations is much more significant than Vice President. Sanders is a pro-war imperialist, clearly.
Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 19:10 utc | 29
"I'd like to talk about who we're running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg," Warren said to gasps from the audience.

"In my foundation, the person that runs it is a woman, 70% of the people are women," he said. "In my company, lots and lots of women have big responsibilities."

Warren allowed to add one liner: "I hope you heard what his defense was: 'I've been nice to some women,' "

Bloomberg clobbered some more "we have very few nondisclosure agreements. None of them accused me of doing anything – except, maybe they didn't like a joke I told," [boo!]

Bloomberg countering Sanders: "You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people I'm going to take away the insurance plan they love," Bloomberg argued." That was his high points. All members of the audience who love their insurance stood in applause. Or perhaps one person stood up, looked around and sat back.

naiverealist , Feb 20 2020 19:20 utc | 30

Sharon M @28
"Sanders would never want Tulsi in his cabinet. And vice President is a total do-nothing position."

All that changed when Dick Cheney became VP. The list of his "accomplishments" (including Wars, promoting torture, promoting support of Al Qaida (and ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, plus so many more that we don't know of).
Hardly a "do-nothing" position.

Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 19:21 utc | 31
linda amick @25

The fact is, Bernie doesn't need a great foreign policy platform to win. Americans would vote for Bernie's domestic platform in overwhelming numbers.

That's why the establishment will do everything possible to defeat Bernie.

But is Bernie doing everything possible to win? And/or cause his Democratic Party insurgency to prevail?

He won't criticize the Party and he has stated many times that he'll support whomever the Party nominates (even if he is cheated).

<> <> <> <> <> <>

With that said, Bernie's record on foreign policy is not as good as his aspirational policy positions and his preference for Israel is clear (despite his concerns about how the Palestinians are treated). This has been discussed in detail at moa in recent weeks.

!!

NemesisCalling , Feb 20 2020 19:35 utc | 32
The question is not if Sanders should choose Gabbard as V.P., the question is why he wouldn't, and that my friends will tell you all you need to know about Sanders and his genuine interest in leading this country.

If Gabbard is left off his ticket he will lose. If he chooses her, it will excite the left like nobody's business and he will cruise to victory utilizing the antiwar vote that got Trump into office.

But...you do have the establishment left who may not want anything to do with the antiwar and populist conjoinment of Sanders/Gabbard. It may be too world-shaking for them and they may throw their lot in with Trump.

Either way, I think we are in good shape, barring a full Neocon push to colonize Trump's presidency.

bevin , Feb 20 2020 19:40 utc | 33
It is very curious that there seems to me something approaching unanimity-among the commenters- that Sanders is the candidate who is least trustworthy.
I note that Jackrabbit even wheels out his old "Bernie the sheepdog" routine despite the fact that the rest of the Democrats continue to do all that they can to sabotage his campaign, ensuring that his supporters, when cheated in Convention, are going to walk out. Which, for those unacquainted with the logistics of pastoral agriculture, is not what sheepdogs-employed to gather the flocks together and deliver them to be clipped or butchered-do.
Of course the issue is imperialism. But imperialism is not an ideological but a material matter: among the material bases of the Empire is the superstition that the United States is under constant military threat and that, unless Americans voluntarily impoverish themselves, by giving vast sums to the MIC, they will lose everything. And the world will disintegrate. To undermine imperialism in the United States it is necessary to empower the only forces that can defeat the MIC-the masses, taxpayers working hours a week for the trillion dollar defense budget and workers afraid to stop making the rich ever richer and themselves poorer, less secure and more vulnerable.

Sanders challenges this view. And he does so from a very old-fashioned position. He is arguing that social and economic security should be the first priorities of government and that, in order to defend the constantly threatened benefits that exist and to extend them to such popular areas as healthcare and free tuition, it is necessary to restore the freedom to organise that existed before Taft Hartley.
The DNC and the anti Sanders forces are the current iteration of the coalition of Republican reactionaries and the Tammany/Jim Crow bosses that brought about Taft Hartley and the Cold War, the twin foundations of imperialist politics in the United States for more than seventy years.
As to Israel Sanders' position is one that is utter anathema to the Zionists- a clue being the enormous resources they are mobilising against him. A call for 'peace' and an end to the 'conflict' being the one policy that not only appeals to public opinion but cannot be countenanced by any of the Israeli parties all of which have committed their all to eradicating all traces of Palestine and dominating the middle east.

Robert Shule , Feb 20 2020 19:44 utc | 34
In the Nevada debate I noticed how the candidates other than Bernie at many times were talking into the cameras and over the heads of the people in the audience while garbling out their resumes about how they are the best candidate to beat Trump as if that was the debate question put to them. In doing so, I think they are really out boot-licking for super delegates.
Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 19:46 utc | 35
Sanders is a pro-war imperialist, clearly.

Posted by: SharonM | Feb 20 2020 18:57 utc | 28

Sanders does not seem a pro-war imperialist, and he has SOME positive statements on foreign policy now, and according to my observations in 2016, we is not interested in foreign policy and he wants to fight on one front. He also detests the leadership of Israel, but given his roots etc. he did not want to say anything on that, just some isolated statement when confronted in meetings with voters.

Now that he expected to be a front runner he hired the most progressive chaps from the mainline Democratic think tanks, and clearly, you can take them from CAP etc. but you cannot totally remove CAP etc. out of them. Coming from environment where "muscular liberals" keep taunting "so do you love dictators", after few years you prepare "appropriate defenses".

"Yes" on "Would you consider military action if Iran or North Korea did X" was a typical weaseling. "Not considering war under ANY circumstances" is still a third rail in American policies. So one "Yes" was placed in the questionaire. But he also had a long paragraph about diplomacy first, last resort, requesting advise and approval from Congress, so it was formal "considering", not "willingness". Your can interpreted differently, and that was the whole purpose.

I would ask something about economic warfare, sanctions etc., like how he would weight "applying pressure on regimes" versus "welfare of the population", how much of deprivation is too much. And selection criteria for the list of "regimes". Do absolute monarchies get exemption, perhaps on the account of reigning by the grace of G..d? When do we "worry" about events during vote counting (no worry on Honduras, grave concern on Bolivia). And so on.

Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 36
bevin @33: It is very curious ...

Well, it's very curious that Sanders accepts the party line on Russiagate/Russian meddling.

And it's very curious that Sanders attacks Maduro as a Dictator that must be removed.

And it's very curious that Sanders' bill to prevent US support for the war on Yemen had big loopholes.

And Sanders' 2016 campaigning was also very curious for his amazing deference to Hillary.

Also curious: how Sanders' candidacy is used as Democracy Works! propaganda to shore-up a corrupt. EMPIRE-FIRST political system.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

If WE can all see that the Democratic Party is scheming to have a brokered convention, WHY CAN'T BERNIE SEE IT? Well, of course he sees it. But he doesn't do anything about it. He plays into it by stressing his support for 'party unity'.

!!

lysias , Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 37
Gabbard as VP would be Sanders's best insurance against being assassinated.
Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 38
Jackrabbit, are you quoting someone or yourself, you use quotation paragraphs without attributing to anyone.

Concerning tactical advise, I do not think that you tested it on "focus groups" or in any other way. Identity politics is a third rail in the territory to the left and center of the political centrum. Some aspects are OK, like changing attitude to work place sexual harassment or even demeaning. Shaming homosexual is medieaval (going back to a ancient Greek attitudes could be a step to far).

But there is a need to avoid alienating working class people who do not ascribe to political correctness. But what would you like to give up as an issue? The right to terminate pregnancy? Sanders made a choice that I fully approve: prying guns from the hands of the working people is a futile, alienating, and he did not win so many elections in a rural state full of hunters by trying that. He is correctly accused of never advocating gun control. But you cannot run in Democratic party AGAINST gun control, not because of DNC and other sinister powers (although they love the issue) but there is a wide constituency for it. As a hiker, I appreciate extensive state forests and game reserves created because of the wide support from the hunters, and the fact that the hunting in my state is forbidden on Sunday. "And on the seventh day thou shall hike".

Once I thought about a compromise good for running in the South, namely, why not agree to hand some commandments in public building, say, 5 out of 10? One could make a referendum choosing the "top 5".

Jackrabbit , Feb 20 2020 20:10 utc | 39
Piotr @38: are you quoting someone or yourself

When quoting someone I will always use italics (rarely, I might forget to).

So when there are no italics, then I'm indenting for readability.

!!

karlof1 , Feb 20 2020 20:24 utc | 40
Finnian Cunningham weighs in with an excellent article about Bloomberg as symbolic of the demise of the Outlaw US Empire's nationwide electoral political system, "With Bloomberg Entering Race, U.S. Oligarchy Takes Stage" . A portion of the juicy meat:

"In a nutshell, the political party is bought. It has become a vehicle that is patently the political property of an oligarch. And not just this one oligarch, but the entire oligarchic system of super-wealth in the United States. Hillary Clinton, the Democrat candidate in 2016, was despised by voters because of her solicitous connections to Wall Street and Big Business. That corruption has now only become starkly manifest in the form an oligarch-in-person taking the political stage instead of a politician-surrogate. The same can be said for the other side of the oligarch coin, the Republicans.

"It is rather fitting too that Bloomberg stood as a Republican when he was elected Mayor of Gotham (er, New York City) between 2001-2013. Since leaving that office be flipped to the Democrats, no doubt sensing a more expedient route for buying his way to the White House. That again demonstrates how hollow the party names are of any substantive meaning regarding policy.

"In the 2018 mid-term elections, Bloomberg donated $100 million to the DNC to promote 16 new female lawmakers to Congress. Enamored by that superficial progressive benevolence, the party bosses are in his pocket."

Cunningham concludes with an observation that many of us arrived at long ago:

"The only 'superhero' that can save Gotham (er, the U.S.) from the oligarchs is the American people themselves finding the strength and independence to rise up against the endemic two-party corruption, and voting for real change.

" That, however, requires mass organization, mobilization and a class consciousness about the predatory capitalist, oligarch-ridden system that the U.S. has descended into ." [My Emphasis]

The bolded sentence above provides us with our task and goal, that is if we--non-Americans included--wish to save the nation and the world from Oligarchical Ruin. Our only chance is to provide Sanders with 1991+ delegates so he can gain the nomination outright on the first ballot before the corrupt delegates can enter the fray. Yes, he has issues with his foreign policy record; but it's his domestic record most voters will want to know about since so many are struggling. And it's on that part of his record that I intend to focus upon, while I'm certain the naysayers like the rabbit will focus exclusively elsewhere.

SharonM , Feb 20 2020 20:29 utc | 41
@35 Piotr Berman

There's no way to sugarcoat Sanders' pro-war imperialism. This is a good article about it:

"Not on Our Side: On Bernie Sanders and Imperialism"
https://www.leftvoice.org/not-on-our-side-on-bernie-sanders-and-imperialism

You said this:

"He also detests the leadership of Israel..."

And that claim is shot down in the linked article. Here:

"Sanders' support for protecting Israel was not just in terms of words, but by votes to provide billions in military hardware and aid to the Apartheid state in 1997, 1999, 2004. When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Sanders voted in favor of imposing sanctions in order to remove them from power. He has also voted for resolutions in favor of Israeli military actions against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2014. At a town hall meeting on Gaza, Sanders was heckled for defending the Israeli actions, telling the audience to "shut up.""

Bernie Sanders belonged on that stage with the other pro-war imperialists. With him, we get affordable healthcare, while millions of people around the world will suffer through coups, invasions, bombings, mass murder, and mass displacement. There is absolutely nothing for an anti-war advocate to get excited about with a Sanders Presidency.

SharonM , Feb 20 2020 20:34 utc | 42
@ 30 Naiverealist

That's a good mention about Dick Cheney. But it was an anomaly.

karlof1 , Feb 20 2020 20:43 utc | 43
bevin @33--

Thanks for that bit of analysis!

I'll forever argue that the United States of America's government was designed to be a social democratic republic. Proof of this deliberate design is found within the rationale for the federal government as stated in the Constitution's Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

I'll argue that establishing Justice and insuring domestic Tranquility means not to promote policies that result in economic divisiveness and massive disparities of wealth--what that hell's tranquil or justified about Bloomberg owning as much wealth as @160 million people: almost 1/2 of the populous?!?! How is it possible to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity in the face of such unjust, immoral disparities?! And I could go on and rant a lot more, but I think my point's made. Clearly, the best political weapon and campaign asset Sanders could deploy is the Preamble and argue that the Oligarchs and their Establishment are UnAmerican at best and Traitors at worst. As I wrote the other day echoing Solomon and Sanders, it's a Class War, and we need everyone to come to the barricades and the polling stations!! And the naysayers better get the hell out-of-the-way or be trampled underneath the masses clamoring for a huge change in direction, which we might call back to fundamentals.

Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 20:43 utc | 44
And Sanders' 2016 campaigning was also very curious for his amazing deference to Hillary.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 20 2020 20:05 utc | 36

I will not defend Sanders from basing his foreign policy on the progressive outliers of reactionary CAP. There is a distinct danger that he would be malleable on foreign policy, but also a hope... The hope is that he collected a lot of supporters who are less deferential to DC consensus than himself.

The deference to Hillary was a good tactical choice in my humble opinion. He leads the insurgents who do not favor the current DNC and party apparatus. To win a national elections he does need cooperation across party spectrum. PUMA is a real danger against that (search PUMA 2008 election). So he can (a) challenge and shame possible repeaters of PUMA (b) give good example (c) rely on his feared supporters who are guaranteed to be suspicious and grumpy.

Bloomberg as the champion of moderate democrats reminds me the candidate for Polish presidency that Nationalists put forth in 1922. He was the top aristocrat, with vast holdings. Nationalists had hopes of attracting the larger and very moderate peasant party, but moderate as they were, they just could not vote for Aristocrat Number One. A lot of Democrats prefer Sanders over Bloomberg, even the moderate ones. If Sanders becomes top in delegate count and Bloomberg second, brokering the convention against Sanders will be hard.

Steve , Feb 20 2020 20:44 utc | 45
It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the USA'system that the best hope on both left and right are Bernie and Trump. The system suffocates true statesmen.
Sabine , Feb 20 2020 20:49 utc | 46
It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the USA'system that the best hope on both left and right are Bernie and Trump. The system suffocates true statesmen.

Posted by: Steve | Feb 20 2020 20:44 utc | 45


yep, death by entertainment.

and please someone at RT or OAN or FOX please hire Tulsi, the poor thing needs a job.

b4real , Feb 20 2020 21:11 utc | 47
@karlof1 | Feb 20 2020 20:43 utc | 43

"As I wrote the other day echoing Solomon and Sanders, it's a Class War, and we need everyone to come to the barricades and the polling stations"


Karlof1, I admire your knowledge. That being said, can you tell me of any instance in the history of mankind, wherein a national government has changed its behavior due to the results of an election? As far as I can see, governments have only changed their ways after catastrophic war, economic or foundational collapse or a peasant revolt.

TIA

b4real

james , Feb 20 2020 21:16 utc | 48
@ 42 sharon... who are you able to vote for presently that isn't on side with usa foreign policy? i am curious.. do they have a chance in hell of winning?
Turk 152 , Feb 20 2020 21:18 utc | 49
Undoubtedly Sanders will be a compromised politician when it comes to Israel. But Lesser of Two Evils 2020, isnt even a close contest.
Bubbles , Feb 20 2020 21:21 utc | 50
Sanders plus Tulsi Gabbard, the ultimate ticket indeed b, but as for anti Putin statements one has to bear in mind the new cold war thrust America's elite have foisted on the masses and it's significant degree of success as illustrated in polls taken over the past the past few years following the Russia Russia Russia campaign asking what country is a threat to America. As the new McCarthyism got into full swing, Americans were once again reminded of the cold war rhetoric that had been so deeply ingrained in them by the American led Propaganda Divisions, and like the sheep folks so often are, followed along with a pip pip hooray!

But all that doesn't mean Putin isn't an authoritarian. America elects authoritarians because they are presented with a choice of 2 people it's Oligarchs offer. Both are fronts for the Authoritarian Oligarchy system. A system rife with corruption that not only allows authoritarianism, it offers no alternative.

Which brings me back to Putin's Russia. Not disputing his value to his country which to me seems obvious, but opposing voices and movements aren't exactly welcome. Sadly, said movements often have roots in the ZioAmerAnglo hierarchy / multiple NGO's, that aren't really non governmental but have very deep tax payer funded pockets and partners like Soro's Open Society. But I digress.

I think free discussion of Putin's Russia should be given equal accommodation to that of scrutiny of America's ongoing Imperial Regimes, for the sake of balance.

ie Putin's Russia can build a pipeline wherever they want, whenever they want. I hope brighter minds can catch my drift.

The best argument against Democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill


Democracy is the worst of forms of Government, except for all the rest.

Also said by the Winnie. But the Winnie was always a man for Aristocracy first, even though his Pa another leading member of the Gov't and Servant of Empire had contracted syphilis while 'serving' the Empire in India and became an embarrassment to his family and the Party he served with his rambling speeches in Parliament as the disease he contracted overseas ate out his brain.


Personally I believe Donald Trump has contracted syphilis of the brain as a result of delusions of grandeur while in service of the Kosher Nostra and needs to be put out to pasture forthwith.

Bernie and Tulsi may, and I reiterate may, be able to restorith a Soul to America. A gargantuan task that may be, the alternative is spreading your legs and liking it.

Some folks here call me Bubblehead, sort of like a dreamer I suppose. I would say unto them, nothing of value comes easy, and the Oligarchs intent is to make you compete with the power of the 1.4 billion Chinese and other slave wage/ no social cost jurisdictions they so whole heartedly embraced to build their own fortunes and power over joe the plumber, the dirt farmer which I was one of in past life, and even the resistors in far away lands like Syria, where the majority of Assad's military are Sunni's.


Bubbles , Feb 20 2020 21:30 utc | 51
I started out to say that Sanders can't compete in the American Political sham reality if he goes ball to the wall against Israel's aggression's and totally illegal behaviour which is supported by Democrats and Republican's alike because of the monetary power the Zionist fifth column in America wields with their "Benjamins"

Hat tip to that tiny girl born in Somalia for calling a spade a spade. Courage should be rewarded, not attacked by those who disrespect truth and decency.

Piotr Berman , Feb 20 2020 21:41 utc | 52
But all that doesn't mean Putin isn't an authoritarian. Bubbles | Feb 20 2020 21:21 utc

But it does not mean that he is an authoritarian. His main strength is to choose popular policies and execute them competently. When he sees a need for unpopular reforms like increasing retirement age and introducing highway tolls, he defers to public opinion and proceeds very gradually (Macron could learn something). One can accuse him of cultivating friendly media, but I do not see outright repression of opposing media, one can read at websites of anti-Putin news outlets etc. In that he differs from Chinese and Turkish policies of muzzling and censoring. Cultivation of friendly media and legal system that is harsh on dissidents can be observed in countries like UK or USA.

michael lacey , Feb 20 2020 21:42 utc | 53
Tulsi would be a great Vice President!
ben , Feb 20 2020 21:43 utc | 54
Sanders/Gabbard is my "make a wish" ticket, but alas, it'll never happen. The forces(big organised $) arrayed against that happening are just too strong. I'd be happier if Sanders
would utter the phrase "mixed economy" to explain his Democratic Socialist roots. After all, the American voting public, for the most part, equates Democratic Socialism with Communism. And, virtually all the countries we're taught are Socialist, are, in reality Mixed Economies. Even Venezuela, who's demonized daily as an evil Socialist country, is a Mixed Economy.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/important-facts-related-to-the-economy-of-venezuela.html


Every time Bernie is demonized as a Socialist, he should mention Mixed Economies. It's the economy of the U$A, an most of the industrial world..

linda amick , Feb 20 2020 21:58 utc | 55
This week I drove to South Carolina and did the knock on doors for Bernie. The neighborhood was in a downtown area that was fairly run down. The community was mixed race and multi cultural. Here are my take aways. 1) the Sanders campaign is extremely organized. After I signed up for a slot I received a phone call in about 10 minutes with details. 2) the volunteers were given a run through and some very nice collateral that was given out or left on porches. 3) there were GPS phone maps identifying the houses to be canvassed as these folks were registered to vote.
In a 3 hour period 2 people canvassed 96 houses. Of course since it was during the day probably 1/2 were not home. The people that were home were overwhelming either leaning towards Bernie or were a definite for Bernie. There were 2 voters for Biden who became more open to Sanders after hearing and seeing his platform. There were 2 Trumpers. Both of them were obviously religious as they thought Trump had Christian interests (!!) There were no Pete, Warren nor Buttigieg interests.
I plan to do another town next week before their Primary.
dltravers , Feb 20 2020 22:01 utc | 56
I suspect that none of them will pull out before the convention in order to divide the vote and keep the Sanders delegate count as low as possible. That way they can pool their votes and keep Sanders out.

Sanders is targeted by AIPAC and there are two AIPAC darlings up against him as well as a young Anglo American Empire trained Rhodes scholar. I bet that the three of them combine to keep Sanders out.

That leaves one former VP and a gentile fake native American. Hillary will fit in perfectly at the convention to this disaster.


[Feb 20, 2020] Fratricide in Las Vegas - Six dwarfs mud fight should be fun all the way to November

Looks like it will Oligarch vs Oligarch Wrestling World Championship match again ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the convention ..."
Feb 20, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Some particulars:

  1. Bloomberg is revealed as having said in public that all the disposable income of the poor should be taxed away so that they will not have funds with which to do mischief like buying fast food or sugary drinks.
  2. Bloomberg described Sanders as a Communist who cannot be elected. In this he was correct.
  3. Bloomberg was described by Warren as a cold-hearted and insulting man who openly scorns women, gays and minorities.
  4. Mayor Pete mocked Klobuchar for her inability to remember the name of the president of Mexico. She asked if he was calling her "stupid."

These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the convention. In the mayhem there, the "winner" will probably have to choose one of the "losers" to be his VP running mate.

This should be fun all the way to November. pl

[Feb 19, 2020] Good luck getting rid of the private insurance companies, lobbies, lawyers, accountants, and other third party beneficiaries of the private insurance market

Notable quotes:
"... United Healthcare has revenues of nearly a quarter trillion dollars just by itself. It's better to focus on what is possible instead of what is noble ..."
Feb 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

eakens , 16 February 2020 at 01:45 PM

Good luck getting rid of the private insurance companies, lobbies, lawyers, accountants, and other third party beneficiaries of the private insurance market. United Healthcare has revenues of nearly a quarter trillion dollars just by itself. It's better to focus on what is possible instead of what is noble .

It is the same reason we won't be able to end all the wars, and simplify the tax code in a meaningful way. Intuit (the maker of TurboTax) is one of the largest supporters of complicating the forms and processes by which to file taxes.

The bottom line is that these are massive, structural changes that they would take constitutional amendments to fix since every 4-8 years some carpetbagger shows up seeking to undo what the other carpetbaggers did, and the only thing they do is create another cottage industry regulated by an equally large bureaucracy.

If you want to champion anything, start with campaign finance reform since everything else is just noise.

james , 16 February 2020 at 02:53 PM
basically you're saying 'the usa is screwed." that is what it sounds like to me..
Dwight , 16 February 2020 at 03:17 PM
Our current system already beggars most of us. Expensive yet insecure coverage that potentially bankrupts us all from surprise billing. Incredible time-suck to protect yourself from such predatory practices. (Though it appears Medicare recipients are protected from such price gouging.).

Employer-based coverage constrains job changes, and leaves people without coverage when they get laid off because of illness. I see Medicare for All as enhancing liberty. Tying health care to your employer is kind of feudal. Take away the tax breaks at least so the market is fair. I wouldn't mind paying premiums and copays, with monthly maximum, but wouldn't mind paying through taxes either.

[Feb 16, 2020] Bernie Sanders isn't actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn't want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning," and suggests that Sanders would be better described as a European-style social democrat."

Feb 16, 2020 | off-guardian.org

The best to describe Sanders is a sheep dog.


Charlotte Russe ,

"Krugman's column, under the headline, "Bernie Sanders Isn't a Socialist," makes the correct observation that "Bernie Sanders isn't actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn't want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning," and suggests that Sanders would be better described as a European-style social democrat."

That's a very telling comment, especially since $68 billion dollar Bloomberg entered the race. Krugman is actually saying the US is an oligarchy run by plutocrats and Sanders has the audacity to want to transform it into a socially democratic society.

To the ruling class democratically run elections are considered revolutionary.

For decades the super-wealthy have controlled the electoral process by: enacting legislation like Citizens United; gerrymandering every state; tactically suppressing minorities and the marginalized from voting; deploying lobbyists and representatives from think tanks to inundate mainstream media news casting opinions without identifying whose actually paying them, etc . Multinational corporations and the uber-wealthy are having a grand time and it shows–three people in the US now own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the entire population. In other words, three people possess more wealth than a 160 million.

For more than three years, centrist Democrats expressed outraged over "Putin the oligarch" interfering in the 2016 election. Let's define oligarch–an oligarch is a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (Bloomberg). And now let's define oligarchy– a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. Well if that's the case, there's very little difference between the US and other plutocratic nation-states. Isn't the Electoral College a striking example of this–a politician can win the popular vote by millions and still lose the election.

Simply put, the will of the people does NOT matter. Seventy-five percent of the population wants Medicare-for-All, but it's the billion dollar health insurance companies deciding this issue. Ninety percent of the population wants to end the endless wars and spend tax dollars on rebuilding the US infrastructure, ending homelessness, improving public schools, and transforming the US into a 21st Century nation -- but that doesn't mean a thing if the arms industry and all the ancillary war profiteers are making trillions.

An electoral democracy is the revolution the ruling class fears.

They know Sanders is not going to confiscate their property or nationalize every industry. What they oppose is paying their fair share of taxes, regulations safeguarding the lives of workers, a living wage for employees, ensuring excellent healthcare for everyone, ending subsidies to industries destroying the planet, and taking money out of politics.

The goal is to create a civilized society where everyone can live a life of dignity. How revolutionary is that!

So the big question is –can you convert a plutocracy into a democracy via the ballot box. Many say no–the system is just too corrupt. However, Sanders supporters, more diverse than the media wants you to think, are saying they want to give it one last shot before our Titanic sinks .

Richard Le Sarc ,

You cannot have a 'democracy' in any meaningful sense, in a capitalist pathocracy. The USA is the prime example. That generation after generation buy into this ludicrous exercise in self-delusion is proof of the power of life-long brainwashing, and the smothering of any meaningful dissent. The Obama debacle should have been the last straw, but it wasn't. Black voters trooped out to support Clinton, their enemy for decades. Working class UK voters chose five more years of brutal Tory class hatred and austerity.

Charlotte Russe ,

It may take a failed attempt by Sanders to obtain the nomination, or if it's miraculously attained relentless thwarted attempts to achieve progress before hopefuls eventually see the ballot box offers few solutions when the military/security/surveillance corporate state reigns supreme. What other options besides taking to the streets does the younger generation possess for metamorphosing the world out of its current mess?

Rhisiart Gwilym ,

If Trump truly believes that the US military is the very best, and invincible, then he's really not in this world at all. The actual reality suggests unmistakably that it's a giant, muscle-bound paper tiger, on its last legs; not even able to dare to strike back against Iran when the Iranians missiled the main US military base in Iraq, with Pentagoon-terrifying accuracy, and with still-undisclosed US military casualties of some kind.

The Iranians announced this as the first stroke in a campaign to drive the Anglozionist empire out of the ME altogether, in revenge for the Soleimani murder; and the Az imperial gics daren't escalate and hit back again, because they already know the devastation that Iran can unleash on their ring of bases in the Gulf, against which attacks the US has no effective defence. Equally ill-defended, by 'Iron Sieve', is the zio-cancer in Palestine. And the goons won't even think about exposing their white-elephant carriers to the new missiles, which have now brought the whole disastrously-costly and ultimately futile carrier battle group strategy to complete obsolescence.

Nightmare on to the final collapse, Donald! Couldn't happen to a more deserving set of schmucks than the gics who run the Az empire!

RobG ,

The US military is also, by many degrees, the biggest cause of pollution in the world.

Dear Greta, though, will never mention this.

You have stolen my future. I hate you for this

What was that old movie..? Village of the Damned .

michaelk ,

The United States has been involved in the Middle East for a very long time indeed. Close to a century and its' involvement has only grown deeper and deeper over that period, especially since WW2; when oil became so incredibly important strategically modern armies run on oil.

Almost seventy years ago the oil wealth of the Middle East was recognised as the single biggest source of wealth on the planet by the Americans. Why then; as the US had/has vast oil and gas reserves of its own and only got a tiny fraction of its energy surplies from the Middle East, even today it gets far more from Venezuela than the entire Middle East, was it so involved in the Middle East; today they even have huge armies sitting on the top the reserves is the US so obssessed with the oil in the Middle East?

Because controling the oil and most importantly access to it, gives them enormous power over the nations who are heavily reliant on Middle East oil, like India, China, Japan and Western Europe. Control of the oil, to a lesser or greater degree, basically gives the US a strong hand on the rest of the industrialised world and is great way to dicipline the world.

Antonym ,

Trump and the US MIC are on parallel tracks for one big issue : US stock prices have to go up no matter what, intertwined with the US dollar as the world's exclusive financial vehicle. Both have become virtual commodities , the former by self buy backs and the latter by QE xx.
Trump believes high stock prizes will get him reelected and the MIC want to make even more money – the endless greed problem. The Wuhan virus could be enough to tip over the global virtual finance card board set.

Oil and gas fields are their main physical assets , not just the American ones or the(b) locked Canadian, but Venezuela's and Arab ones too.
The Russian and Iranian ones are out of reach, the Iraki ones are becoming hot potatoes.
Do US military fight abroad without paychecks? Robots do, but GIs won't.

[Feb 15, 2020] Sanders surge in poll sparks backlash in Democratic establishment by Patrick Martin

Feb 15, 2020 | www.wsws.org

The surge of popular support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, now the clear front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has touched off frantic retaliation by the Democratic Party establishment and the corporate media.

While Sanders himself is a known quantity in capitalist politics, with a 30-year career as a loyal supporter of the Democratic Party and American imperialism, there is consternation in the ruling class over the shift to the left among workers and young people that underlies the strength of his campaign.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders arrives to speak to supporters at a primary night election rally in Manchester, N.H., Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]

Sanders won the most votes in both the February 3 Iowa caucuses and the February 11 New Hampshire primary. He has taken a wide lead in polls of prospective Democratic primary voters both nationally and in many of the states scheduled to vote over the next month, which will select two-thirds of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

A Morning Consult poll published Thursday found Sanders with a double-digit lead among likely Democratic voters nationwide. Sanders was at 29 percent, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 19 percent and the billionaire former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, at 18 percent. Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who finished second in both Iowa and New Hampshire, was in fourth place nationally at 11 percent. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was at 10 percent, while Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was at 5 percent.

The support for Sanders reflects shifts to the left in the working class and among young people. Exit polls in New Hampshire showed Sanders leading by a wide margin among working-class voters, both those with incomes below $50,000 a year, and those without a college education. He had 51 percent support among young people under 30, compared to 4 percent each for Klobuchar and Biden.

Nationally, half of US college students support Sanders, according to a poll from Chegg/College Pulse, which surveyed 1,500 full and part-time students attending both four-year and two-year colleges. The students named climate change and income inequality as their top issues. Warren came far back in second at 18 percent.

The widening support for Sanders, along with the apparent demise of Biden's campaign, after a fourth-place finish in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire, has provoked angry denunciations of the Vermont senator from the Democratic Party establishment and the corporate media.

The Biden campaign led the way, with its campaign co-chairman, Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, telling a conference call with reporters that there would be "down-ballot carnage" for the Democrats if Sanders won the nomination. "If Bernie Sanders were atop of the ticket, we would be in jeopardy of losing the House, we would not win the Senate back," he said.

Two right-wing Democrats in the Senate openly denounced Sanders for his claim to be a democratic socialist. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama said, "I don't agree with the socialism label." Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said, "If Bernie ends up being one of these frontrunners, he'll have to moderate. I'm not going socialist. Never been a socialist."

Campaign consultant James Carville, a fixture in Democratic politics for three decades, was more vituperative, making repeated television appearances this week to denounce Sanders as an easy target for the Republican right, and at one point directly echoing Trump in calling Sanders a "communist."

The corporate media was filled with anti-Sanders commentary, ranging from laments (Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times ), to cynical sneers (Paul Krugman in the Times ) to outright denunciations (Chuck Todd on MSNBC).

Krugman's column, under the headline, "Bernie Sanders Isn't a Socialist," makes the correct observation that "Bernie Sanders isn't actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn't want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning," and suggests that Sanders would be better described as a European-style social democrat.

The column goes on to echo the warnings of the Democratic establishment that if Sanders is nominated, Trump would win an easy victory, concluding "I do wish that Sanders weren't so determined to make himself an easy target for right-wing smears." Krugman says nothing about the fact that the "right-wing smears" have already begun from the Democrats.

As for Todd, during MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, he quoted from a diatribe against Sanders by Jonathan Last of Bulwark , who wrote: "No other candidate has anything like this digital brownshirt brigade. I mean, except for Donald Trump. The question no one is asking is this, what if you can't win the presidency without an online mob?"

This comparison of supporters of Sanders -- who is Jewish -- with the fascist thugs of Hitler and Mussolini is typical of the smear tactics by the corporate media against anyone who criticizes the super-rich. Todd's commentary was reposted by the Sanders campaign, where it was viewed nearly a million times, no doubt adding to Sanders' support.

The consternation over Sanders' rise in the polls has already led to calls for the consolidation of the "moderate" (i.e., openly right-wing) forces in the Democratic Party against him. A focal point of these appeals is billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who entered the race for the nomination in November and will be on the ballot for the first time in the March 3 Super Tuesday states.

Bloomberg has poured $100 million into advertising just in those 14 states, a major part of the $300 million he has already invested in winning the Democratic nomination. His campaign has rolled out endorsements from congressmen and local government officials, particularly mayors of cities where Bloomberg has long used his gargantuan fortune to buy influence.

Rather than risk a four-way split among Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, to Sanders' advantage, there have been multiple suggestions in the media of various combinations -- a Bloomberg-Klobuchar tie-up, for example.

More likely than an open alliance is a splintering of the delegates among five or six candidates, that would preclude any one candidate gaining an absolute majority, leading to a brokered convention in which the various right-wing candidates would combine to block a Sanders' nomination.

Sanders directly addressed this possibility in an appearance on MSNBC. "The convention would have to explain to the American people, 'Hey, candidate X got the most votes and won the most delegates at the primary process, but we're not going to give him or her the nomination,'" he told host Chris Hayes. "I think that would be a divisive moment for the Democratic Party."

While his opponents are implacably determined to prevent his nomination, Sanders himself has repeatedly reiterated his determination to support whoever the convention chooses and oppose at all costs any break by his supporters from the Democratic Party.

At his campaign rallies, Sanders makes a rhetorical appeal to opposition to social inequality and war. However, he is also making a case to the political establishment that he can be trusted to defend the interests of the ruling class.

In a recent interview with the New York Times , Sanders said that he would consider using military force in a preemptive war against Iran or North Korea. He also fully endorsed the anti-Russia campaign of the Democratic Party, agreeing that it should be considered "an adversary, or even an enemy" if it continues on its current course in Ukraine.

[Feb 15, 2020] Matt Taibbi: Democrats Are Unwittingly Handing Sanders the Nomination

Feb 15, 2020 | www.truthdig.com

With both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary behind us, one thing is abundantly clear: the establishment still cannot stomach a Bernie Sanders nomination. Writing in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi points out how corporate media fell all over itself on Wednesday to undercut the Vermont senator's win in New Hampshire, just as it fabricated Pete Buttigieg's victory in Iowa just a week ago.

What's Driving Democrats' 'Bernie-or-Bust' Freakout by Jacob Bacharach

Establishment Democrats are throwing everything -- and everyone–they've got into the primary race to stop or at least slow the Vermont senator's ascendance. Ironically, it is precisely this eagerness to nominate anybody but Sanders that is leading Democrats into the same trap Republicans fell into in 2016. From Taibbi's latest column:

Four years ago, after New Hampshire, it was crystal clear that Donald Trump was not only going to win his party's nomination, but that his path was being actively cleared by the Republican Party establishment and the national news media, whose half-baked efforts to stop him were working in reverse. I wrote this in February 2016 :

The [Republicans] sent forth to take on Trump have been so incompetent, they can't even lose properly. One GOP strategist put it this way: "Maybe 34 [percent] is Trump's ceiling. But 34 in a five-person race wins " The numbers simply don't work, unless the field unexpectedly narrows before March.

Early mixed results guaranteed that Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio would not drop out soon enough to give any of the others a chance. As a result, the following was obvious at this time four years ago: "Trump will probably enjoy at least a five-horse race through Super Tuesday."

In hindsight, those Republican challengers were so villainously terrible that none would have beaten Trump in a two-person race. Still, Bush's backers knew their man was roadkill by New Hampshire, yet didn't pull the plug. Kasich, who in a rare moment of self-awareness was ready to bail after Iowa ("If we get smoked up there, I'm going back to Ohio," he fumed in New Hampshire), let himself be fooled by one surprise second-place finish.

All pledged to be committed to stopping Trump but accelerated his victory by staying in too long. Popular disgust was also enhanced by delusional news-media hype surrounding a succession of would-be "real" candidates.

All of this is happening all over again, only this time it's Democrats who are committing ritualistic self-abuse, seemingly in a conspiracy with one another and the news media to push as many votes as possible to a hated outsider.

The journalist goes on to list the many ways Republicans paved the path for Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee four years ago, comparing how the media gushed over Pete Buttigieg to the rapturous reporting of Marco Rubio's short-lived "Marcomentum" after Iowa. These outlets are even regurgitating the same awful puns. ("Petementum"? " Klomentum"? Who comes up with these?)

"These constant mercurial shifts in 'momentum' -- it's Pete! It's Amy! Paging Mike Bloomberg!," writes Taibbi, "have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to continue doing so."

Taibbi admits that "no one could have predicted that even the idiosyncratic particulars of the 2016 and 2020 races would be so alike." But unlike the electoral nightmare of 2016, this particular horse race won't end with the "horrifying" nomination of a neo-nazi sympathizer. And if Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee and bests Trump -- as most polls predict he will -- the U.S. will have elected a democratic socialist who can deliver "a future to believe in," as Sanders' campaign slogan goes.

As for the Berniecrats, Taibbi advises them to simply keep asking themselves, "Are you bought off, or not?" and hang tight while their man crosses the finish line, much to the dismay of an increasingly inept establishment.

[Feb 15, 2020] How does one say Adam Schiff without laughing? by title="View user profile." href="https://caucus99percent.com/users/alligator-ed">Alligator Ed

Highly recommended!
Feb 15, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

At the end of this essay, you may find a song which reasonably applies to Donald Trump directed to Democrats.

How does one say Adam Schiff without laughing? It's hard to continue typing while contemplating the Burbank Buffoon. Yet AS is making obscene flatus-like noises about impeachment 2.0. He and Nervous Nancy will conspire with chief strategist Gerald Nadler about extending the charges of 1.0 to 2.0.

Second verse
Same as the first

Obstructing leaking by firing leakers. That's one of the pending charges. Leutnant Oberst Vindman will be help up as the innocent victim of political retaliation. As I understand the military code of conduct, it says that the underling, Herr Oberst Vindman, went outside the chain of command and released classified information. In the military this is called insubordination, perhaps gross insubordination in view of the classified nature of the information.

Another charge to be filed on behalf of former Ambassador Yovanovich, is that her God-given Female rights were brutally violated as retaliation of advising Ukrainian officials to disregard Commander Cheeto.

There is no telling what additional non-crimes may be thrown at the feet at El Trumpo. All too horrible to contemplate--like someone throwing feces-contaminated dope needles onto Nervous Nancy's front lawn in Pacific Heights.

If this Shampeachment 2.0 (S2) occurs before November's election, Democrats will become as rare as dodo birds. If such proponents of S2 persist after the general election, they better have secure transportation to an extradition-free country.

If it gets bad enough, considering the Clinton Mafia's body count, would it be unreasonable to expect some untimely heart attacks and suicides with red scarves? On Clintonites? Soros et al.?

When the first shot and you don't kill the king, flee. But the DNC is going to attempt shot number 2. Trump WILL NEVER ALLOW A SECOND IMPEACHMENT TO OCCUR, no matter how patently worthless? Will the most powerful narcissist in the world allow the DNC / coup perpetrators to escaping Trumpian retribution?

Those doubting the Wrath of Q be prepared to be disabused of the impression that Q is pure fantasy. Fantasy--like GPS targeting a single small sniper drone to shoot someone from 3000 feet.

Sorry folks. I live in a swamp. I've stepped in shit with my eyes open. Many of you have too. Some of the excrement was of my own making.

Think about the singularly most effective and complex plot the world has ever seen, called 9/11. Think of the thousands of lives purposefully snuffed in then name of power and money. Call yourselves serfs--that's a euphemism. You--including me-- are nothing but ants. Goddam little ants that only Janes respect. There are no ascetic Janes in the penthouses of the elites.

But I digressed to the mysterious existence of morality in politics as a whole. Today's topic is more confined to the Democratic nomination.

Statement of Bias: Go Tulsi. Bravo Andy. The rest of you to the elsewhere--yeah, BS too.

The Dems are determined to grasp Defeat from the jaws of Defeat. Quite a trick. Like trying to borrow money from the Judge during a Bankruptcy trial.

I talked today with a freshman college student majoring in political science about her thought about the Shampeachment. She hadn't been paying attention. Not that I blame her. Her college freshman friend watched C-Span; wasn't impressed. We political aficionados know all about this political debauchery. If AS and NN attempt S2, expect many defections from the supporting vote.

Democrat respect has dwindled in the Independent sector. This is not to say the Repugnants are thereby more popular. They aren't. Trump is. Trump need that NH clown to challenge him in the Repugnant primary to prove exactly how powerful he is. Anybody notice who were in the audience, sitting nearby during Trump's post acquittal speech. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham. The lamb and the lion laying together. They are both on the Trump Train. Even Richard Burr voted Trump in the impeachment. Mittens feared both his cojones would be excised if he voted against Trump on both counts. What a chickenheart.

But where are the Dems? Why, they are Here. Yes. Yes. And they are There. Yes. Yes. And they are Near. Yes. Yes. But....they are Far. Whither thou goest?

I refrain from pointed comments about AOC in further comments. The Squad is the iceberg floating away from the glacier which spawned it. Unsuitable to warm weather produced by political combat, the Squad faction will woke themselves up to dubious futures.

Establishment versus Bernie:

Not a contest. Spineless Bernie pretzelizes during first heated combat (which the Dem Debate Debacles were not). Won't take a second punch--the first during night 3 of the '16 DNC convention. Fist-shy now. Open Borders? WTF? Are you so nuts? If one offered a person the choice personal safety in their own homes and streets and free medical care for all--including the criminal aliens that A New Path Forward proposes--what do you think 85% of the public would choose?

Pandering.

The Left is also pushing strenuous avoidance of discussing issues in a platitude-depleted fashion. Yeah, Bernie's giving the same speech, with suitable modification, over 40 years. Consistency is a good thing, yeh? How about persistently beating your head with a hammer (while you still can)? Sounds like something Sun Tzu might not recommend.

Now, speaking of Las Vegas and the Nevada Primary. The culinary workers union will not endorse Bernie due to well-deserved or ill-deserved claims that M4A will abolish hard won union health benefits. And don't worry, the Shadow will be there, although Buttjiggle has now disavowed any further connection, along with David Plouffe.

Keeping the Bern off the campaign trail is going to infuriate the Woke Generation / Antifa. When--not if--the DNC cheats Bernie out of the nomination, if such proves necessary* will literally result in blood on the streets along with broken windows and flaming tires. Associate with that lot, eh? Given the choice of going into a biker bar, where brawls are always on the menu, or a discreet wine bar, which would one rather choose? Sorry, those are your only choices.

Nancy Pelosi, impressed by Arnold Schwarzenegger's former physical prowess, tears up her copy of the state of the union address. How decorous. How courteous. How polite. Seen around the world. Nigel Farage must be laughing his butt off, thinking about the shallow anti-Brexit campaigns against his were compared to our Coup. Nigel won. Trump . is. winning. Getting tired of winning yet?

I could go on for pages more of Dem stupidity, but why bother? Stupidity surrounds us.

Betting odds: DNC 1,999,999 to Bernie 1.

Place your bets.

For all the good it will do and I am sincere about this, I will vote Tulsi in the Dem primary.

Here is the song Dems need to heed. This is Donald Trump telling' y'all I'M NOT YOUR MAN

[Feb 15, 2020] Talking to the NYT, Sanders doesn't even pretend to be anything but a hard-core imperialist war-monger indistinguishable from Biden or Hillary herself

Notable quotes:
"... Your Sanders is as much of a warmonger as Bush, Clinton, the Clinton harpy, ... He is a Zionist, continues to be a Zionist, only not the same party as Netanyahoo. He is not running to win anything but the badge of true and faithful servant of the Imperial owners ... ..."
Feb 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

D. , Feb 15 2020 19:37 utc | 27

I'd just like to remind the Bernie bros here that Sanders is also a Zionist whore.
Sanders tells New York Times he would consider a preemptive strike against Iran or North Korea

Link

Russ , Feb 15 2020 20:09 utc | 40

The link at 27 is really something. Talking to the NYT, Sanders doesn't even pretend to be anything but a hard-core imperialist war-monger indistinguishable from Biden or Hillary herself. How does he think he benefits from that? Stupid as Corbyn.

Trailer Trash , Feb 15 2020 22:37 utc | 72
was hoping that circe might have something to say about the WSWS article referenced above. Personally, I'm not much interested in the internal workings of the Dummycrat Wurlitzer Dazzlemachine. Like the incessant use of Shakycam in TV and movies, it just gives me a headache and a queasy feeling.

Sanders tells New York Times he would consider a preemptive strike against Iran or North Korea


Someone asked, "What is to be done?"
Posters keep saying, "Build an independent movement."
But that is hard uncertain work with no predetermined outline to follow, so that idea is not very attractive.

Piotr Berman , Feb 15 2020 22:51 utc | 78
Trailer Trash should consider the context, in particular the only longer answer in the questionary of NYT:

Bernie's first priority is to protect the American people. Military force is sometimes necessary, but always -- always -- as the last resort. And blustery threats of force can often signal weakness as much as strength, diminishing U.S. deterrence, credibility and security in the process. When Bernie is president, we will ensure that the United States pursues diplomacy over militarism to bring about peaceful, negotiated resolutions to conflicts around the world. If military force is necessary, Bernie will make sure he acts with appropriate congressional authorization, and only when he has determined that the benefits of military action outweigh the risks and costs.Trailer

"Yes" for "considering military response to planned missile/nuclear test" does not mean much with a very deliberate process described in the first answer. Practically, such responses/preemeptions were considered before and rejected.

Piero Colombo | Feb 15 2020 23:59 utc | 89
Circe @59

Your Sanders is as much of a warmonger as Bush, Clinton, the Clinton harpy, ... He is a Zionist, continues to be a Zionist, only not the same party as Netanyahoo. He is not running to win anything but the badge of true and faithful servant of the Imperial owners ...

All this is a matter of uncontroversial record of facts and you are part of the propaganda operation. If willingly or not is irrelevant.

[Feb 15, 2020] Duplicity: Sanders rejects preemptive actions and then tells New York Times he would consider a preemptive strike against Iran or North Korea by Jacob Crosse and Barry Grey

Feb 14, 2020 | www.wsws.org

Bernie Sanders has won the popular vote in both the New Hampshire and Iowa presidential primary contests in considerable part by presenting himself as an opponent of war. Following the criminal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani last month, Sanders was the most vocal of the Democratic presidential aspirants in criticizing Trump's action. His poll numbers have risen in tandem with his stepped-up anti-war rhetoric.

He has repeatedly stressed his vote against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reminding voters in the Iowa presidential debate last month, "I not only voted against that war, I helped lead the effort against that war."

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, February 3, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais]

However, when speaking to the foremost newspaper of the American ruling class, the New York Times , the Sanders campaign adopts a very different tone than that employed by the candidate when addressing the public in campaign stump speeches or TV interviews.

The answers provided by Sanders' campaign to a foreign policy survey of the Democratic presidential candidates published this month by the Times provides a very different picture of the attitude of the self-styled "democratic socialist" to American imperialism and war. In the course of the survey, the Sanders campaign is at pains to reassure the military/intelligence establishment and the financial elite of the senator's loyalty to US imperialism and his readiness to deploy its military machine.

Perhaps most significant and chilling is the response to the third question in the Times ' survey.

Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?

Answer: Yes.

A Sanders White House, according to his campaign, would be open to launching a military strike against Iran or nuclear-armed North Korea to prevent (not respond to) not even a threatened missile or nuclear strike against the United States, but a mere weapons test. This is a breathtakingly reckless position no less incendiary than those advanced by the Trump administration.

Sanders would risk a war that could easily involve the major powers and lead to a nuclear Armageddon in order to block a weapons test by countries that have been subjected to devastating US sanctions and diplomatic, economic and military provocations for decades.

Moreover, as Sanders' response to the Times makes clear, the so-called progressive, anti-war candidate fully subscribes to the doctrine of "preemptive war" declared to be official US policy in 2002 by the administration of George W. Bush. An illegal assertion of aggressive war as an instrument of foreign policy, this doctrine violates the principles laid down at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi officials after World War II, the United Nations charter and other international laws and conventions on war. Sanders' embrace of the doctrine, following in the footsteps of the Obama administration, shows that his opposition to the Iraq war was purely a question of tactics, not a principled opposition to imperialist war.

The above question is preceded by another that evokes a response fully in line with the war policies of the Obama administration, the first two-term administration in US history to preside over uninterrupted war.

Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?

Answer: Yes.

Among the criminal wars carried out by the United States in the name of defending "human rights" are the war in Bosnia and the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s, the 2011 air war against Libya that ended with the lynching of deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and the civil war in Syria that was fomented by Washington and conducted by its Al Qaeda-linked proxy militias.

The fraudulent humanitarian pretexts for US aggression were no more legitimate than the lie of "weapons of mass destruction" used in the neo-colonial invasion of Iraq. The result of these war crimes has been the destruction of entire societies, the death of millions and dislocation of tens of millions more, along with the transformation of the Middle East into a cauldron of great power intervention and intrigue that threatens to erupt into a new world war.

Sanders fully subscribes to this doctrine of "humanitarian war" that has been particularly associated with Democratic administrations.

In response to a question from the Times on the assassination of Suleimani, the Sanders campaign calls Trump's action illegal, but refuses to take a principled stand against targeted assassinations in general and associates itself with the attacks on Suleimani as a terrorist.

The reply states:

Clearly there is evidence that Suleimani was involved in acts of terror. He also supported attacks on US troops in Iraq. But the right question isn't 'was this a bad guy,' but rather 'does assassinating him make Americans safer?' The answer is clearly no.

In other words, the extra-judicial killing of people by the US government is justified if it makes Americans "safer." This is a tacit endorsement of the policy of drone assassinations that was vastly expanded under the Obama administration -- a policy that included the murder of US citizens.

At another point, the Times asks:

Would you agree to begin withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula?

The reply is:

No, not immediately. We would work closely with our South Korean partners to move toward peace on the Korean peninsula, which is the only way we will ultimately deal with the North Korean nuclear issue.

Sanders thus supports the continued presence of tens of thousands of US troops on the Korean peninsula, just as he supports the deployment of US forces more generally to assert the global interests of the American ruling class.

On Israel, Sanders calls for a continuation of the current level of US military and civilian aid and opposes the immediate return of the US embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

On Russia, he entirely supports the Democratic Party's McCarthyite anti-Russia campaign and lines up behind the right-wing basis of the Democrats' failed impeachment drive against Trump:

Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back into the G-7?

Answer: Yes.

Finally, the Times asks the Sanders campaign its position on the National Security Strategy announced by the Trump administration at the beginning of 2018. The new doctrine declares that the focus of American foreign and military strategy has shifted from the "war on terror" to the preparation for war against its major rivals, naming in particular Russia and China.

In the following exchange, Sanders tacitly accepts the great power conflict framework of the National Security Strategy, attacking Trump from the right for failing to aggressively prosecute the conflict with Russia and China:

Question: President Trump's national security strategy calls for shifting the focus of American foreign policy away from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and back to what it refers to as the 'revisionist' superpowers, Russia and China. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Answer: Despite its stated strategy, the Trump administration has never followed a coherent national security strategy. In fact, Trump has escalated tensions in the Middle East and put us on the brink of war with Iran, refused to hold Russia accountable for its interference in our elections and human rights abuses, has done nothing to address our unfair trade agreement with China that only benefits wealthy corporations, and has ignored China's mass internment of Uighurs and its brutal repression of protesters in Hong Kong. Clearly, Trump is not a president we should be taking notes from. [Emphasis added].

In a recent interview Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and national co-chair of the Sanders campaign, assured Atlantic writer Uri Friedman that Sanders would continue provocative "freedom of the seas" navigation operations in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, while committing a Sanders administration to "maintain some [troop] presence" on the multitude of bases dotting "allied" countries from Japan to Germany.

Millions of workers, students and young people are presently attracted to Sanders because they have come to despise and oppose the vast social inequality, brutality and militarism of American society and correctly associate these evils with capitalism. However, they will soon learn through bitter experience that Sanders's opposition to the "billionaire class" is no more real than his supposed opposition to war. His foreign policy is imperialist through and through, in line with the aggressive and militaristic policy of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration.

The Democrats' differences with Trump on foreign policy, though bitter, are tactical. Both parties share the strategic orientation of asserting US global hegemony above all through force of arms.

No matter how much Sanders blusters about inequality, it is impossible to oppose the depredations of the ruling class at home while supporting its plunder and oppression abroad.

Sanders is no more an apostle of peace than he is a representative of the working class. Both in foreign and domestic policy, he is an instrument of the ruling class for channeling the growing movement of the working class and opposition to capitalism back behind the Democratic Party and the two-party system of capitalist rule in America.

[Feb 15, 2020] Can Sanders run as an independent?

Feb 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

D. , Feb 15 2020 19:42 utc | 32

@farm ecologist #29

Surely he could. But the good sheepdog he is he wont!

[Feb 14, 2020] Key Takeaways From The New Hampshire Primary

Tulsi did not managed to gat fifth place.
Feb 14, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Biden is toast

After a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses and a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire, things aren't looking great for the former Vice President, whose popularity has taken a nosedive in recent weeks while Sanders, Bloomberg and Buttigieg's have all risen.

With the wind currently knocked out of his sails, Biden is looking to make up ground with minority voters in Nevada and South Carolina, where he will stage what could be his last stand in the race.

At this point, all Biden may get out of the 2020 election is a reputation as an out-of-touch, mentally unfit, quick to anger politician whose documented history of molesting women and children - and his family's suspect international dealings, will be his legacy.

...At the end of the day, the Democrats my be headed for a contested convention in which nobody arrives in Milwaukee with the required 1,990 delegates needed to secure the nomination, according to The Hill .

1 hour ago (Edited) Silly American Sheeple. The key takeaways are election s are rigged & corrupt. Stupefying ignorance. Smdh 1 hour ago who cares. whoever comes in first will come in 2nd to....

DONALD J. TRUMP

#democrats5yearsdead

1 hour ago The dems have a candidate who could actually win and they don't even know it. Tulsi Gabbard could probably beat Trump IF the democratic party would quit stabbing her in the back.

[Feb 14, 2020] Why Does Mainstream Media Keep Attacking Bernie Sanders as He Wins? Because he said "The business of wall street is fraud"

Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Circe , Feb 13 2020 5:42 utc | 122

Don't be deceived by Sanders' demeanour. He's a little rumpled, a little reserved, a little too old, a little curmudgeonly making him evermore authentic and quite endearing. However, believe it or not, behind this long-suffering activist for social justice, painfully consistent servant of public interest, patiently, unassumingly waiting in the wings to inspire a significant movement at a transformational moment in time, lies an astute, battle-ready, hardened yet tender warrior who could not have picked a better time or waited a moment longer to make a final stand when America's democracy is crumbling and nothing has worked to avert certain disaster.

Could it be that all it will take to shut out the cacophony of white noise deception, hype and blanket corruption is what began as a quiet crescendo of humanity and will end in a blowout that stuns the world?

I feel like there is a shunned amorophous beast headed in the direction of Trumpian fascism and the complicit Ministry of Media Deception.

I invite you to read the excerpt of an article in GQ a long but important excerpt of which I copied below, followed by the link.

Why Does Mainstream Media Keep Attacking Bernie Sanders as He Wins?

Bernie Sanders keeps surprising cynical pundits in his second presidential run.

Poor Chuck Todd.

After a week of Todd using his MSNBC evening show Meet the Press Daily to assail the senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders has won -- clearly -- in New Hampshire. It's not if Todd hadn't tried.

On Monday, Todd quoted conservative outlet the Bulwark, characterizing Sanders's online following as "digital brown shirts," essentially likening a Jewish politician's supporters to Nazis. The Friday prior, Todd led a panel in hand-wringing over class warfare against billionaires. He has long had his crosshairs on Sanders. In May, he told the senator "the right will hammer and sickle you to death." In 2015 after a shooting, he called Sanders, who has a D minus rating from the NRA, "pro-NRA." And in December, he balked at the idea of refraining from the unjournalistic phrase "Bernie Bros," asking, "What do we call them, Bernie siblings? Bernie people?" His guest suggested the obvious: "Bernie supporters."

Of course, Todd is one among many in an anti-Bernie chorus. After the New Hampshire debate last week, his colleague Hardball host Chris Matthews went on a socialism rant, warning of "executions in Central Park" and exclaiming that "I might have been one of the ones getting executed" -- perhaps revealing elite pundit anxiety that a growing consciousness about wealth inequality and its enforcers might turn on them. Matthews continued: "I don't know who Bernie supports over these years, I don't know what he means by socialism. One week it's Denmark...Well, what does he think of Castro? That's a great question." On Morning Joe, James Carville, the old Clinton strategist, warned: "That's it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it's going to be the end of days." Nevermind that Corbyn is deeply unpopular in the UK, with a net favorability rating of -40 percent according to YouGov polling, while Sanders is America's most popular politician.

And all of that was just MSNBC.

After the New Hampshire results came in, political reporters and pundits put facts into linguistic pretzels, instead of just stating what the numbers did: That Sanders had won, taking the popular vote for two straight contests in a crowded field. Not all of it was pure ideological offense. New York Times politics reporter Jeremy Peters, tweeted: "Pete, after winning Iowa, is almost beating Bernie in a state Bernie won four years ago by 22 points. Under any normal standard of assessing the Democratic race, Pete would be called a frontrunner." Likewise, Trip Gabriel also of the New York Times, also asserted an upside-down analysis tweeting, that the number one story of the night was Amy Klobuchar (who came in third) and the number two story of the night was Pete Buttigieg (who came in second) coming closer to Sanders than expected.

Sanders has been a punching bag for the media establishment for some time. In explaining its decision to pass over Sanders to endorse, strangely, both Warren and Klobuchar, the New York Times editorial board wrote "we see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure in Washington for another." Their competitors have been little different. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Jennifer Rubin have made Trump-Sanders comparisons a writerly tick. Last April, Milbank said both Sanders has emerged as "the Donald Trump of the left," citing their "flair for demagoguery" and speeches with "Trumpian flourishes." Rubin for her part has been banging that drum as daily practice, accusing Sanders in January of "playing Trumpian politics." As if a politician advocating for healthcare and against student debt somehow equaled Trump's authoritarian and racist radicalism.

In 2016, the media watch group FAIR found that the Washington Post ran a stunning 16 negative stories on Sanders in just 16 hours. The Sanders campaign collated a string of "misinterpreted" polls, in which Sanders as leader was not the headline story, like the New York Times reporting that Sanders had been "eclipsed by Warren and Buttigieg" in a story about an Iowa poll that had him in first, and five CNN articles about a poll also showing Sanders in the lead which went unmentioned in the headline. Back in November, the Onion parodied the liberal network's bias: "MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up." But it might as well have been said about any major outlet.

Pundits like to point out that Sanders carried New Hampshire by 60 percent in 2016 when his only opponents were Hillary Clinton (38 percent) and Martin O'Malley (under 1 percent). But Obama, who only won Iowa with 37.4 percent of the vote, lost New Hampshire by 2.6 percentage points in 2008. Heading into more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina, with something of a tie and a win at his back in a crowded field, Sanders seems only to be growing stronger. After criticism about his white-dominated base, he now leads all candidates in support from voters of color, gaining 10 points from black voters.

What is still impressive is, during our Citizens United era, Sanders's massive grassroots fundraising donor base, surpassed 5 million donors with an average donation of $18.53, hauling in $34.5 million in the last quarter of 2019, [plus 25 million in January alone!] and more than any other campaign. His biggest challenge may not be whether he's a democratic socialist pushing universal healthcare, but whether a daily barrage of negative media attacks, even when the news is objectively good, can chip away his potential support on the margins in a few vital states.

And if Sanders does manage to win without corporate PAC money or the $2 billion in earned media showered on Trump, well, that would certainly be a story.

mainstream-media-vs-bernie-sanders

[my comment in these brackets]

FIGHT, DAMNIT! FIGHT THIS! YOU WONDER MAYBE WHY I'VE BEEN OFTEN SCREAMING LATELY?

IT'S TIME TO SCREAM ALREADY FGS! IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN???

BERNIE SANDERS CAN DEFEAT TRUMP AND THIS IS A FIGHT FOR THE AGES ONE COULD ONLY DREAM OF UNTIL NOW.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥


psychohistorian , Feb 13 2020 5:57 utc | 123

Below is a recent Reuters quote
"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin both said that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would destroy the U.S. economy if he wins.
"
Blankfein is the guy who reported himself and his private finance buddies as ".....doing God's work"

and Mnuchin is working for his boss's boss.

uncle tungsten , Feb 13 2020 6:39 utc | 125
On wall street crash and so on...

"The business of wall street is fraud" Bernie Sanders 2020

Sure it looks that the trap is set but what are you proposing? Sit on your hands? pull your punch? If the crash is engineered on Trump's re-election do you think Trump will look out for the dispossessed?

I am tired of this mega path web of reasons to fail Sanders and the movement. If/when wall street starts its rick/roll of the USA, I would want a leader who knows and says who the culprit is, can identify the real enemy and then at least there is a chance of setting things straight. Trump or the yapping dogs of the oligarchs such as Cheatin Pete Buttigieg would throw all else overboard.

[Feb 14, 2020] The Numbers Spell Trouble for the Democrats by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Feb 14, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

12 February 2020 The Numbers Spell Trouble for the Democrats by Larry C Johnson

Let us be quantitative and empirical. I do not care who you like or dislike for the Presidency. I simply want to focus on some data points and what they mean for the November 2020 election if we continue to see a similar pattern.

I will start with the debacle in Iowa. An old, dear friend who lives in Clarion, Iowa (about an hour north of Des Moines) attended the local caucus two weeks ago and voted for Trump. More than 150 Trump supporters showed up for a non-contested caucus. Meanwhile, in the same building the Democrats also assembled. The media wanted you to believe that Democrat enthusiasm was at a boiling point. A blue Tidal forming that would swamp Donald Trump. Well, only 34 Democrat supporters showed up in Clarion. Republicans in a non-contested race outnumbered the Dems by a 4 to 1 ratio.

The total voters for the Democrat 2020 caucus in Iowa for the final tally was 172,669 . This is almost the same number of voters who turned out in 2016 when Hillary and Bernie were battling it out--171,109. That is about 70,000 less than the enthused crowds that turned out in 2008 for the Hillary versus Obama showdown. Not much enthusiasm in Iowa.

So we turn to New Hamshire. At least here we had a vote. But the dynamics for 2020 are quite different from 2016 and 2008. The Democrats had a contested primary and turned out about the same number of voters that showed up for the Obama/Clinton contest in 2008. However, the number is not as good as it appears. The Republican contest, once again, was uncontested. Under New Hampshire rules Republicans keen on meddling in the Democrat primary can crossover and vote for a Democrat. Many did. More than 296,000 Democrat votes were cast in New Hampshire. This exceeded the 287,542 that voted for Obama and Hillary in 2008. However, there are more eligible voters today than in 2008. 29% of the electorate voted in the Democrat primary in 2008 while only 26% voted this go round. In addition, there is no precise figure for the number of Republicans and Independents who crossed over to "play" in the Democratic primary. While the total numbers were up, the enthusiasm on the Democrat side was still less that 2008.

It also is worth noting that Trump set a new record for the number of votes received by an uncontested incumbent. He doubled the results of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The bottomline is this--the weak Democrat field is not generating much enthusiasm. Will this continue to be the case?

We will keep tracking results event by event.


plantman , 12 February 2020 at 10:37 PM

I've just been looking over the numbers in Iowa and the turnout was clearly a disaster for Democrats.

The WA Post says: "About 170,000 people participated in the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses, far short of the unprecedented 240,000 voters who turned out in 2008 and launched Barack Obama"....and much less than the 300,000 predicted.

It seems the Democrats and the media have been sipping their own Koolaid. There is zero enthusiasm for this wastrel group of professional politicos. Sure, I'll probably vote for Bernie because Trump wants to cut Social Security and keeps antagonizing Iran, but, what a sad sack bunch of losers. There's not one among them that I admire at all.

It's very depressing. I want to say we're better than this, but maybe we're not.

Jack , 12 February 2020 at 11:16 PM
Larry

The Democrats are deeply divided. There's the Bernie/AOC wing and the Establishment/Deep State/Wall St wing. The latter would prefer Trump over Bernie. They're banding around Pete, Amy and Mike, with the likely strategy of garnering enough delegates collectively to be able to throw their delegates to Mike who is buying the convention. Of course Bernie Bros will be disappointed once again but the Establishment is betting that Bernie will not make much of a fuss. The net of it is that many Bernie supporters will again sit out the election.

What I'm most interested in is how Super Tuesday plays out. Are we gonna get a replay of NH or a different dynamic?

Assuming Trump gets re-elected what will his second term look like? More Swampsters running the roost like his first term or a cleaning of the stables? We've had a decade long bull market since the GFC with central banks underpinning financial assets. Can that continue for another 5 years through Trump's second term? How would public sentiment change if asset markets take it on the chin despite central bank largesse?

D , 12 February 2020 at 11:25 PM
One can't complain about Trump "increasing the national debt" and also demand Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid) do not get "cut", since all three entitlements are the chief cause of our rising debt; no matter who is President.

Start thinking all three entitlements drastically need to be reformed if they are to survive at all; and not simply "cut". Increased efficiencies; decreased redunancies, program audits and proven effectiveness are reforms, even though they might look on the surface like "cuts".

Worry more the howls about "cuts" come from those feasting off these programs at our expense; not the actual intended beneficiaries.

Eric Newhill , 13 February 2020 at 03:38 AM
This is what happens when you live in an elite bubble and think social media, and the loud cry babies on it, represent the real world outside your bubble - and you pay stupid consultants that think the same.
Mathias Alexander , 13 February 2020 at 04:16 AM
The Democratic field doesn't generate much enthusiasm because only the DNC crowd have a say in it.
Timothy Hagios , 13 February 2020 at 08:17 AM
IMO the major split in the Democratic Party is between those who genuinely agree with left-wing economic policies and those for whom liberalism is a status symbol that elevates them above the deplorable untermenschen. The policies of the former would be much more electorally successful, but the traditional leftists don't have the same financial pull as the wealthy corporate leaders and lobbyist groups. Thus we are stuck with a "liberal" party that gives liberal platitudes but is ultimately hostile to the working class. Among other things, the lopsided trade deals, unfettered illegal immigration, and Obamacare (which literally forced the poor and dispossessed to hand over what little money they had to the insurance companies in exchange for fake health plans that they couldn't actually use) have only been harmful to traditional Democratic voting groups, who have responded by leaving the party. We see the party trying to appeal to new demographics through identity politics, but I don't think they will be very successful.
Elmo Zoneball , 13 February 2020 at 10:15 AM
LJ wrote:
Under New Hampshire rules Republicans keen on meddling in the Democrat primary can crossover and vote for a Democrat. Many did.

That's not accurate. (I live in NH, and have been politically active here for the past 25 years.)

The rules for Primary voting in NH are that a partisan primary is open to any voters registered to that party and unaffiliated voters ("independents".) GOP registered voters cannot vote in the Dem Primary, and Dems can't vote in the GOP primary. Unaffiliated voters can choose any party primary.

The only exception is for a New Major Political Party, participating in its first NH primary since qualifying for Major Party Status. In that rare case, any registered voter can take that New party's primary ballot, but only during that first Primary after achieving Major Party Status.

The ONLY way for GOP voters to vote in the Dem Primary would have been for them to de-register as GOP voters and re-register as unaffiliated, and that has to be done by a deadline that is several months before the Primary takes place.

I don't think this materially alters your conclusions. There is likely a large contingent of Anti-Trump unaffiliated voters who choose a Dem ballot this time around, where they could have more influence, rather than staying home or making protest vote for Weld or some other obscure opponent to Trump in the essentially uncontested GOP Primary.

blue peacock , 13 February 2020 at 11:03 AM
Jack

Our politics have become more and more dysfunctional over the past 40 years and DC is the epitome of pervasive corruption. The rot has now infected every aspect of our government including the legislature and the judiciary.

Recall how there was so much rhetoric about the deficits during Reagan's term when the federal debt tripled. Then there was all the noise about balanced budgets during Clinton's term. Now Trump is adding a trillion dollars to the national debt annually in the "greatest economy evah" while the Fed is furiously monetizing the debt and no one even cares including the so-called fiscally conservative Republicans.

According to the Brown University study we've spent so far over $8 trillion in our Middle East and Afghan military and regime change adventures while our national infrastructure crumbles. What have these expenditures which have added to our national debt accomplished for our national interest? These expenditures and the trail of destruction it has caused have been supported by the majority of both parties.

After Wall St speculated and lost and created the GFC, the middle class were on the hook for trillions so that Paulson, Rubin, Summers, and others wouldn't lose any of their wealth.

The establishment of both parties have been using the jackboot of government to enrich the top 0.01% for decades. We have more market concentration across many many market sectors than ever. Wealth and income inequality is even worse now than in the gilded age of the 1920s. More of our Deplorables continue to die of suicide and opioid addiction.

Yet, Bernie is the one deemed a communist!

You are spot on that the Democratic leadership backed by the billionaire class would much prefer Trump than Bernie and will insure that he's not the nominee. Consequently, unless we have a stock market meltdown it looks like Trump will be re-elected. Nothing will change. The Deep State and Wall St will continue to run their rackets and our national debt will continue to explode as will the frustrations of the working classes.

As Jefferson noted we need a revolution but the vast majority of the American people anesthetized with drugs & circuses on social media have no capacity to revolt. They would much rather cling to "hope & change" of the next "knight in shining armor".

Keith Harbaugh , 13 February 2020 at 11:10 AM
A while back Col. Lang and others were observing
how biased the jury pool is for trials conducted at
the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
(located at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse ).
The Roger Stone jury very much evidences that:
"Roger Stone jury foreperson's anti-Trump social media posts surface
after she defends DOJ prosecutors"
(2020-02-12 Fox News article)
Former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart revealed Wednesday that she was the foreperson of the jury that convicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone on obstruction charges last year -- and soon afterward, her history of Democratic activism and a string of her anti-Trump, left-wing social media posts came to light.
...
james , 13 February 2020 at 12:34 PM
@ blue peacock... that is such an excellent comment by you!

it would be great if PAT HIGHLIGHTED your post for further comment from others... your post is really worth discussing and highlighting.. i fully agree with your commentary..

[Feb 14, 2020] While I have little hope that Berniebots are educable, perhaps the 2020 debacle will convince more abstentionists to not just abstain from the fake-electoral system but to start organizing against it.

Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Russ , Feb 13 2020 8:59 utc | 142

uncle tungsten 137

"Is that a revolution building up in your pocket or are you just excited to watch a futile election?"

As a writer I've done all I can for going on eleven years now. Dedicated my life to it. As for your fake election, I suppose I'm as excited by that as by other symptoms of accelerating futility, chaos and collapse among your system's institutions. While I have little hope that Berniebots are educable, perhaps the 2020 debacle will convince more abstentionists to not just abstain from the fake-electoral system but to start organizing against it.

"So do you have a party one can vote for?"

Sorry, I'm not part of your electoral fundamentalist religion. If and when people like me ever could build a mass cultural movement against the system to the point we could extrude an uncorrupted political party, it will be a party against your fake-electoral system, against your Democrat Party etc.

That is, if enough of us ever were to exist, which looks unlikely. Which is why I no longer think in terms of mass movements but instead in terms of early communities built to weather the hurricane and make it through the flames once everything explodes.

Nevertheless I still sometimes point out that if people really wanted to reform the system there are historically proven ways to do it, and the fact that people refuse to do the necessary movement-building work, refuse to commit their lives to this work, is proof that they're just play-acting. Like everything else in America, electoral "politics" is a pure fake for the purely complacent and lazy sandheaders.


Russ , Feb 13 2020 9:17 utc | 143

It's clear that the goal of the economic civilization is ecocide for the sake of ecocide, destruction for the sake of destruction. Modern economic governments are designed first and foremost to organize and maximize this destruction. Here's just one typical example of how the destruction imperative transcends even capitalist goals, let alone how such productionism is allegedly for human benefit.

(My emphasis, on how the whole system is driven not by capitalist "demand", let alone human need or even want, but maximal production/destruction for the sake of production/destruction.)

"RY is blaming environmentalists for what they claim is an insufficient supply of timber from National Forests. But two recent articles reveal that the basic economic principles of over-supply and over-production in the timber industry are the real problems.

As Julia Altemus, logging lobbyist and director of the Montana Wood Products Association, told the Missoulian's Rob Chaney: "There's been a lot of over-production across the board. We have too much wood in the system and people weren't building. That will make it tougher for us. What would help is if we could find new markets."

When Stoltze Land and Lumber Co. cut back its mill production cycle from 80 to 50 hours weekly, manager Paul McKenzie told the Hungry Horse News: "It's purely market driven demand for lumber across the country is down supply has actually been good. "

In fact, the "supply" from national forests is more than just good. Last year the Forest Service received no bids on 17.5% of the timber if offered, up from 15.6% that received no bids in 2018. That's 615 million board feet that weren't cut in 2019 because the timber industry did not bid on it. The truth is that Region One of the Forest Service, which includes Montana, has increased the amount of timber offered by 141% in the last 10 years and the cost to taxpayers continues to climb to staggering heights.

A report by the Center for a Sustainable Economy found "taxpayer losses of nearly $2 billion a year associated with the federal logging program carried out on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. Despite these losses, the [US government] plans to significantly increase logging on these lands in the years ahead, a move that would plunge taxpayers into even greater debt."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/13/timber-industry-wants-to-rape-and-run-on-our-national-forests/

Russ , Feb 13 2020 9:40 utc | 144
Steven Salaita says Sanders is no better for Palestine than the rest.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/13/how-bernie-sanders-became-a-fighter-for-palestine/

The whole thing's good. I'll quote just the part about US fake-politics.

Sanders has made his platform clear. By this point it's not changing. He's a two-stater who dislikes conservative Israeli politicians and frets about the government's excesses. He won't affirm the right of return. He won't consider a one-state solution. He opposes BDS, but also opposes its criminalization. For all his talk of conditioning aid to Israel on its behavior (something George H.W. Bush also proposed), it will require more political capital then he's willing to use. (An overlooked feature of this pledge is that Sanders also threatens to withhold aid from Palestinians.) Palestine will fall by the wayside. Sanders' most vocal supporters will accept that result as the cost of doing business.

They'll talk about holding him accountable, of course, but nobody should take it seriously...Electoralism doesn't allow for the kind of responsiveness its advocates imagine. Anybody who tries to hold Sanders to account will be shouted down. (Electoral common sense always leads to liberal orthodoxy.) Accountability to the people is the most anti-human myth of this entire spectacle.

Attempts to prioritize the Global South simply can't compete with fetishes of enfranchisement in the imperial core. (The Global South, uncoincidentally, manifests the world's greatest revolutionary potential.)...What the system lacks in substance it replaces with myth. Electoralism is a heatsink of revolutionary politics. We select representatives actually seated by the elite. Everything that sounds nice about electoralism in fact reinforces the false promises of settler colonization.

Aren't Sanders' boosters setting themselves up for disappointment? Not really, because the logic of electoralism provides for delirious hope in the incredible. It also renders Palestine's freedom (at best) a secondary concern...

Sanders says "respect and dignity." His fans hear "liberation." They're not listening closely enough. (We're incentivized to mishear by so many promises of minor celebrity.) Nothing in Sanders' record as a politician suggests that he'll fight for anything but the tired "international consensus." And nothing in decades of US brokerage indicates that the "peace process" will result in anything but continued suffering for Palestinians.

[Feb 14, 2020] Bernie is not there to be president. his "community" job is to dog herd the progressive crowds to vote, as a lesser evil, for the Judeo-Zionist corporate candidate, the donors' choice, as he did servilely in 2016

Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

nietzsche1510 , Feb 12 2020 18:23 utc | 40

Bernie is not there to be president. his "community" job is to dog herd the progressive crowds to vote, as a lesser evil, for the Judeo-Zionist corporate candidate, the donors' choice, as he did servilely in 2016. ask him any question about foreign policy and you will note, on the spot, where he stands: he approved, as a Senator, the last 3 out of 4 major wars of the US empire. 95% of his domestic promises are undeliverable. we did love Obama, didn´t we? we will adore Bernie! for sure.

bevin , Feb 12 2020 19:48 utc | 51

"Bernie is not there to be president. his "community" job is to dog herd the progressive crowds to vote, as a lesser evil, for the Judeo-Zionist corporate candidate, the donors' choice, as he did servilely in 2016..." nietzsche1510@40

The problem with this argument is that it lacks any grounding in reason and political logic. As 2016 figures showed and as current polling of Bernie supporters indicates far from herding together voters who would not have voted Democrat without his guidance (which is what a sheepdog candidate would do) he is actually working very hard to alienate voters who, in the past, have always ended up supporting the Democrats' (corporate shill of) choice, from their automatic, 'lesser evil' resignation to the Clinton, Kerry, Gore or Obama on offer.
What is quite obvious is that Sanders is breaking up the corporate vice on the traditional Democratic vote and urging voters to choose options in line with their actual social and economic interests. And it is working.

It is all very well for nietszche1510 to assert that Sanders is working hand in glove with the corporate democrats but all the evidence is that the DNC spends its energies not assisting its 'sheepdog' but attempting to cripple him before he is even started on his work.

Now for your information a real sheepdog candidate-and we have seen plenty of them- after making lots of noise about radical policies and enthusing lots of dumb and naive people goes into a Convention, armed with hundreds of delegates and buys himself his reward. Knowing that he is coming the corporate leadership is ready to make a show of reconciliation, says that it has taken the views and aspirations of his supporters into account, puts a couple of token, watered down compromises into the platform and finds him and his friends prestigious but empty jobs.

That is what those who called Bernie a 'sheepdog' in 2016 were expecting would happen. But it didn't-Sanders kept his promise to ask his supporters to support the Convention choice but then, essentially, he disappeared from the election. As to his supporters, most went home angry at Hillary, many refused to vote for her in November (it shows on the election numbers) and quite a few supported Trump as the lesser evil.

As to Foreign Policy matters- US foreign policy is hardwired into the current system of government. This has been the case since 1948, at latest. The only way that Foreign Policy can be changed is by people consciously disassociating themselves from the scam that the US is constantly in danger of invasion-that unless trillions of dollars are poured into arms production, proxy armies around the globe and the prostitution of both media and the academy- people will lose their jobs, the standard of living will fall and the USA will be invaded by envious, rapacious outsiders.

What Sanders is doing is outlining to the electorate what they could get if they directed their taxes and their incomes towards obtaining it. This includes such simple and easy to understand reforms as free tuition, a moratorium of student debt and medicare for all. If the voters signify that they support such policies then the question of how to divide up the national 'cake'will, logically, arise. And some will argue that assisting Israel's massacres of Palestinians is a higher priority than lowering the infant mortality rate to slightly better than Third World standards. Others will beg to differ.

Some will argue-as Bernie's Primary opponents are doing- that having wasted trillions in Afghanistan over 20 years the US should go for the record and try for a new 30 year War or maybe even a 100 years, as did the English in France. Others will think that ending the war and diverting the resources there wasted into almost any other uses would be preferable.

All Bernie says is the people must take the decisions and that they should do so in the light of the reality that the only threat to the American people comes from the billionaires who feed off them like vampire bats.

And he has been saying these things since about 1960. That may not earn anyone's respect but it ought to make those who consider him corrupt to ask themselves why he has waited so long to sell out. And what he has ever got for doing so. Had he really been corrupt in the traditional American politician's manner he would be a lot richer. And he would be a lot less feared by the people who are all our enemies-the billionaires and their agents working every day to cheat him and defeat him.

CHRIS ZELL , Feb 12 2020 20:19 utc | 57
Bernie is the best hope to end Endless Wars if he can bring about national healthcare, similar to other nations. Such nations can barely afford wars - as with Canada and the EU. Britain may end up with an army smaller than the NYC Police force.

While this sounds indirect, it may be the only way to stop crazy warmongering by the US. Anyone who openly opposes such insanity ends up condemned by the mainstream media ( like Tulsi). On this issue, Buttigieg is breathtakingly dishonest. If you like war, vote for the Deep State candidate.

fnord , Feb 12 2020 21:08 utc | 64
@60-61
The problem for Bernie is that he's not going to have a friendly congress. Even the proudly neoliberal Barack Obama couldn't corral his Democratic supermajority into giving the American people a healthcare system that doesn't require throwing people into debtors prisons or kill tens of thousands a year out of sheer social negligence. If Obama couldn't get the likes of Mary Landrieu to vote for even a public option (out of her fear that it would kill her political career in Louisiana - ironic since her eventual vote for the ACA was indeed used against her anyway and did indeed contribute to her unseating by a Republican Senator), if the likes of Joe Liebermann could throw a monkeywrench into a system that could conceivably be transformed over time into a single-payer national health insurance system, it's a wonder how he'd get the likes of Manchin or even "moderate" (moderate like the rebels in Syria) Republican congressmen and senators on his side.

Sandernistas argue that he'll rally the masses into getting it done. I'm not so optimistic. American workers are in a precarious position and this unfortunately does not push them toward revolutionary consciousness. It pushes them rather to a more conservative position, trying to defend what little they have rather than fight for more. That's not to say it's impossible, there are good reasons to want single-payer, including the ability of the government to leverage its monopsony to finally nip the pharmaceutical industry's rent-seeking in the bud, but that will depend on congress having the balls to stand up to major donors and gore their ox.

The questions that those of us to the left of Sanders need to be asking are how to credibly assert our independence from Sanders while still, potentially, fighting alongside the Sandernistas for basic reforms; how to raise class consciousness (inoculating people against the conspiracy theory virus); and how to begin winning power for ourselves.

HarryOrd , Feb 12 2020 21:15 utc | 65
fnord:

Excellent point. Add to this Political fanboyism("Bernie's trying! Don't rock the boat!") And nothing would get done. Bernie would also restore a veneer of respectability to the U.S empire, so it almost baffles me why the democrats fight him so hard(None so blind as those who do not see, as the Moody Blues would say.)

[Feb 14, 2020] OK, Sanders is a despicable warmonger, but who is not

Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

krollchem , Feb 13 2020 8:19 utc | 137

Sharon M@10

As you have said Sanders is a warmonger which is very bad as the President's main power is starting wars. Furthermore, none of the candidates of either party understand foreign affairs. Even Gabbard stupidly claims that Iran was responsible for killing some 600 US troops in Iraq.

Unfortunately, Trump is planning to cut the safety net by reducing the SNAP program, Medicare and even Social Security. Social programs are the one area where Sanders will defend against the billionaires looting. If he were president these programs would be safe, otherwise Trump and most democrats would make social cuts.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/12/18260271/trump-medicaid-social-security-medicare-budget-cuts

Given that Medicare and the SNAP program are in deep trouble, a Sanders presidency would have to cut the foreign aid to Israel, the security state and the "war" department to save these programs or stab the American people in the back.

Too bad the billionaires are running America as a neo-feudal state that will result in the collapse of the economy.

[Feb 10, 2020] The Clinton Machine Will Do Anything To Stop Bernie Sanders

Notable quotes:
"... "[Bill and Hillary Clinton] set up a machine that was really a juggernaut with all this corporate money they brought in through the Democratic Leadership Committee," says Blumenthal. ..."
"... he's done just great journalism. I really loved his book, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel," which came out in 2013, because it was based on just good, solid journalism of interviewing people and trying to figure out what's going on. ..."
"... And the interesting thing is that Israel's interference in the election, and Netanyahu, has been rewarded over and over -- the embassy got shifted, the settlers got more validation, now there's a big peace plan that gives the hawks in Israel everything they want. So why don't we begin with that, and your own writing about U.S.-Israel relations. It's kind of odd that there's -- or maybe not odd, maybe it's just because it is the third rail -- that there's been so little discussion about Donald Trump's relation to Israel and his payoff to Netanyahu. ..."
"... With Israel, you have a situation where you have, not maybe a plurality, but maybe a majority of secular Jewish Americans, progressive Jews, who have completely turned their back on the whole Zionist project. And it has a lot to do with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is someone who came out of the American -- out of American life. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia, he went to MIT, he was at Boston Consulting with Mitt Romney. His father ended his life in upstate New York as Jabotinsky's press secretary, the press secretary for the revisionist wing of the Zionist movement that inspired the Likud party. So Netanyahu is really kind of an American figure, number one; number two, he's a Republican figure. He's like a card-carrying neoconservative Republican. ..."
Feb 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The Clinton Machine Will Do Anything To Stop Bernie Sanders by Tyler Durden Sun, 02/09/2020 - 23:45 0 SHARES Authored by Robert Scheer via TruthDig.com,

The botched Iowa caucuses have raised many legitimate questions about the Democratic establishment, but to understand the point we're at now, it's necessary to think back several years. According to Grayzone journalist and editor Max Blumenthal , Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer's guest on the latest installment of "Scheer Intelligence," part of the backlash Bernie Sanders is currently experiencing as he attempts to transform the Democratic Party dates back to Bill Clinton's presidency.

"[Bill and Hillary Clinton] set up a machine that was really a juggernaut with all this corporate money they brought in through the Democratic Leadership Committee," says Blumenthal.

"It was a very different structure than we'd seen with previous Democratic candidates who relied heavily on unions and the civil rights coalition.

"And that machine never went away," the journalist goes on.

"It kept growing, kind of like this amoeba that began to engulf the party and politics itself. So that when Bill Clinton was out of power, the machine was passed to Hillary Clinton, and the machine followed her into the Senate. And the machine grew into the Clinton Global Initiative."

... ... ...

... Blumenthal's most recent book, " The Management of Savagery : How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, Isis, and Donald Trump."

"It seems to me [there is] a real contradiction [in] the Democratic Party, which you know quite a bit about," when it comes to Israel, says Scheer.

"There's this great loathsome feeling about Donald Trump. And many of these people don't really like [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. You know, the polling data shows that Jews are, you know, just about as open to the concern for the Palestinians as any other group. And Bernie Sanders, the one Jewish candidate, is the one who dared to bring up the Palestinians -- that they have rights also, that they're human beings. He's being attacked for it as, like you, a self-hating Jew ."

Blumenthal, whose 2013 book, " Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel ," touches upon many questions absent in the American conversation about Israel, points out how the Vermont senator's own position on Palestine has shifted over time.

"Bernie Sanders [is] better than most of the other [Democratic] candidates on this issue," says the Grayzone reporter. "After we put a lot of pressure on him in the left-wing grassroots -- I mean, I personally protested him at a 2016 event for his position on Palestinians, and we shamed him until he took at least a slightly better position, where you acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians."

The two journalists discuss what some of the main reasons are that Sanders is facing so much resistance within the Democratic Party, in addition to his views on Palestine. Blumenthal believes there will be a repeat of what happened in 1972 when George McGovern ran for president.

"I think that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, there will be an effort to 'McGovern' him," he posits. The Democratic Party will "hope that Bernie Sanders gets destroyed by Donald Trump, and then wag their fingers at the left for the next 20 years until they get another Bill Clinton.

"I think that they don't know how to stop him at this point, but they're willing to let him be the nominee and go down to Donald Trump, because Bernie Sanders threatens their interests, and the movement behind him particularly, more than Donald Trump does."

Listen to the full discussion between Blumenthal and Scheer, which took place aptly on the eve of the Iowa caucuses that, at the time, Blumenthal assumed would be a landslide win for Sanders. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player and find past episodes of "Scheer Intelligence" here .

- Introduction by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

https://www.kcrw.com/embed-player?api_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kcrw.com%2Fculture%2Fshows%2Fscheer-intelligence%2Fthe-clinton-machine-will-do-anything-to-stop-bernie%2Fplayer.json&autoplay=false

ROBERT SCHEER: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of "Scheer Intelligence," where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case Max Blumenthal, who I must say is one of the gutsiest journalists we have in the United States, and have had for the last five years or so. He's, in addition to having considerable courage and [going] out on these third-rail issues -- like Israel, being one of the more prominent ones -- and challenging some of the major conceits of even liberal politics in the United States about our virtue, our constant virtue, he's done just great journalism. I really loved his book, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel," which came out in 2013, because it was based on just good, solid journalism of interviewing people and trying to figure out what's going on.

I'd done something a half century earlier, or not quite that long ago, during the Six-Day War in Israel, where I went over when I was the editor of Ramparts. And I know how difficult it is to deal with that issue, because I put Ramparts into bankruptcy over the controversy about it. [Laughter] So maybe that's a good place to begin. You know, you dared touch this issue of Israel, and it didn't help that you are Jewish. I guess you are Jewish, right? Do you have a background, did you practice any aspect of Judaism? Literature, culture, religion?

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I'm a Jew who had a bar mitzvah, and I even had a bris.

RS: Oh. [Laughs]

MB: And you know, I've continued to pop in in synagogues here and there on High Holy Days. I guess you could say, you know, when the rabbi asked, you know, asked me to join the army of God, I tell him I'm in the Secret Service. But I'm definitely Jewish, you know, and it's a big part of who I am and why I do what I do.

RS: Well, and I thought your writing on that, and your journalism, was informed by that. Because after all, a very important part of the whole experience of Jewish people as victims, as people forced into refugee status, living in the diaspora, was to develop a sense of universal values, and of decency and obligation to the other. And I think your reporting reflected that. However, my goodness, you got a lot of heat over it. And it's the heat I want to talk about. I want to talk about the difficulty, in this post-Cold War world, of actually writing about the U.S. imperial presence, or writing critically about what our government does, and some of its allies.

And I think Israel is a really good case in point, because we have one narrative that said in the last election we had foreign interference, mostly coming from Russia. And we talk about Russia as if it's the old communist Soviet Union, with a top-down, big, organized party -- forgetting that [Vladimir] Putin actually defeated the Communist Party, and even though he had been in the KGB, and most Russians had been in some kind of official connection with society or another. Nonetheless, Russia really has gotten very little out of whatever interference it did. Israel, that is very rarely talked about, interfered in the election in a very open, blatant way in the presence of Netanyahu, who denounced Barack Obama's major foreign policy achievement, the deal with Iran, and has focused U.S. policy mostly against the enemy being Iran, and ignoring Saudi Arabia and everything else.

And the interesting thing is that Israel's interference in the election, and Netanyahu, has been rewarded over and over -- the embassy got shifted, the settlers got more validation, now there's a big peace plan that gives the hawks in Israel everything they want. So why don't we begin with that, and your own writing about U.S.-Israel relations. It's kind of odd that there's -- or maybe not odd, maybe it's just because it is the third rail -- that there's been so little discussion about Donald Trump's relation to Israel and his payoff to Netanyahu.

MB: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to chew on there. I would first start with just an observation, because you mentioned that we're in a post-Cold War world -- well, we're not in a post-Cold War world anymore, we're in a new Cold War. And for all the attacks I got over Israel, which were absolutely vicious, personalized, you know, framed through emotional blackmail, attacking my identity as a Jew, calling me a Jewish anti-Semite -- the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is this right-wing racket over there in L.A., made me the No. 4 anti-Semite of 2015. You know, I was right behind Ayatollah Khomeini. But you know, the worst attacks, the most vicious attacks I've received have actually been from centrists and liberal elements over my criticism of the Russiagate narrative that they foisted on the American public starting in 2016, and also on the dirty war that the U.S. has been waging on Syria, and how we at the site that I edit, the Grayzone, started unpacking a lot of the deceptions and lies that were used to try to stimulate support among middle-class liberals in the west for this proxy war on Syria, for regime change in Syria. This was absolutely forbidden, and that attack actually turned out to be more vicious and is ongoing.

With Israel, you have a situation where you have, not maybe a plurality, but maybe a majority of secular Jewish Americans, progressive Jews, who have completely turned their back on the whole Zionist project. And it has a lot to do with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is someone who came out of the American -- out of American life. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia, he went to MIT, he was at Boston Consulting with Mitt Romney. His father ended his life in upstate New York as Jabotinsky's press secretary, the press secretary for the revisionist wing of the Zionist movement that inspired the Likud party. So Netanyahu is really kind of an American figure, number one; number two, he's a Republican figure. He's like a card-carrying neoconservative Republican.

So a lot of Jews who've historically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, who see being a Democrat as almost synonymous with being Jewish in American life, just absolutely revile Netanyahu. And here he is, basically the longest-serving prime minister in Israel; he's completely redefined the face of Israel and what it is. And he's provoked -- I wouldn't say provoked, but he's accelerated the civil war in American Jewish life over Zionism. And what I did was come in at a time when it wasn't entirely popular, to not just challenge Israel as a kind of occupying entity, but to actually challenge it at its core, to challenge the entire philosophy of Zionism, and to analyze the Israeli occupation as the byproduct of a system of apartheid which has been in place from the beginning, since 1948, which was a product of a settler colonial movement.

That really upset a lot of people who kind of reflect the same elements that I'm getting, who are attacking me on Syria or Russia. People like Eric Alterman at The Nation. He wrote 11 very personal attack pieces on me when my book "Goliath" came out in 2013. Truthdig, you, Chris Hedges, it was a great source of support. And you, you know, you opened up the debate at Truthdig, you allowed people to come in and criticize the book, but kind of in a principled, constructive way. Whereas Eric Alterman was demanding that The Nation censor me, blacklist me, ban me for life, and was comparing me to a neo-Nazi by the end, and claiming I was secretly in league with David Duke. And that was because he had simply no response to my reporting and my analysis of the kind of, the inner contradictions of Zionism.

And so to me, it was really a sign of the success of the book, that someone like Alterman was sort of dispatched, or took it upon himself to wage this really self-destructive attack. And in the end, he really had nothing to show for himself; he wasn't arguing on the merits. And that's just what I find time and again with my reporting is, you know, you get these personal attacks and people try to dissuade you from going and touching these third-rail issues, but ultimately there's no substance to the attacks. I mean, if they really wanted to nail me and take me down, they would address the facts, and they really haven't been able to do that.

RS: Right. But Max, if I can, let's focus on the power of your analysis in that book, which is that it is a settler colonialism. And Netanyahu actually is -- we can talk about the old labor Zionists, you know, and what was meant by progressive Zionism and so forth. Even at the time of the Six-Day War when I interviewed people like Moshe Dayan and Ya'alon and these people, they all were against a full occupation of the West Bank. They didn't act on that, unfortunately. But they were aware of the dangers of a colonial model. But right now you have a figure in Israel in Netanyahu, who is, very clearly embodies a racialized view, a jingoistic view of the other, which is really, you know, very troubling. And he's embraced by this troubling American figure.

And so what your book really predicted is that the settler colonialism was a rot at the center of the Israeli enterprise -- and historically, one could justify that enterprise. I don't know if you would agree. But even the old Soviet Union, I think, was the second, if not the first country to recognize Israel. There was vast worldwide support for some sort of refuge for the Jewish people after such horrible, you know, genocidal policies visited upon them. But what we're really talking about now is something very different. And that is whether political leadership, and interference and so forth comes mainly for Democrats, very often; obviously, for republicans and Bible-belters and all that, who seem to like this image of the end of time coming in Israel. But really what's happening -- and it's not discussed in this election, except to attack Bernie Sanders, who dared make some criticisms of Israel in some of these debates -- you have a very weird notion of the Jewish experience, as identified with a very hardline, as you say, sort of South African settler colonialist mentality.

And so I want to ask you the question as someone–and we'll get to it later -- you grew up sort of within the Democratic liberal establishment in Washington. Your parents both worked for the Clinton administration, were close to it. How do you explain this blind eye toward Trump's relationship to Netanyahu? And ironically, for all the Russia-bashing, Netanyahu and Putin seem to get along splendidly, you know. And that doesn't bother people as far as criticizing Netanyahu. So why don't we visit that a little bit, and forget about Eric Alterman for a while.

MB: [Laughs] Well, he's already forgotten, so we don't have much work to do there. But there's a lot, again, a lot to chew on, a lot of questions packed into that. You know, just starting with your mention of Moshe Dayan -- who is a seminal figure in the Nakba, the initial ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 to establish Israel -- he was the southern commander of the Israeli military. And he later kind of became a kind of schizophrenic figure in Israeli politics; he would sometimes offer some kind of left-wing opinions, and then be extremely militaristic. But you know, when it came down to it, Moshe Dayan -- like every other member of the Israeli Labor Party -- was absolutely opposed to a viable Palestinian state. He even said that we cannot have a Palestinian state because it will connect psychologically, in the minds of the Palestinian public who are citizens of Israel -- that 20% of Israel who are indigenous Palestinians -- it will connect them to Nablus in the West Bank, and it will provide them with a basis for rebelling against the Israeli state to expand the Palestinian state.

The other labor leaders spoke in terms of the kind of, with the racist language of the demographic time bomb that, you know, we need to give Palestinians a state, otherwise we will be overwhelmed demographically. And so the state that they were proposed was what Yitzhak Rabin, in his final address before the Israeli Knesset, the Israeli parliament, called "less than a state." He promised Israel that at Oslo, he would deliver the Palestinians less than a state. And if you look at the actual plan that the Palestinians were handed at Oslo -- which Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority chairman, didn't even review before signing -- the map was not that different from the map that Donald Trump has offered with the "ultimate deal." And they'd say, oh, you get 97% of what was, you know, offered in U.N. Resolution 242 in 1967. But it really just isn't the case when you get down to the details. What the strategy has been with the Labor Party, and with successive Israeli administrations -- and with Netanyahu until he got Trump in -- was to kind of kick the can down the road with the so-called peace process, so that Israel could keep putting more facts on the ground.

So it was actually Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, Yitzhak Rabin's successor, who moved more settlers into the West Bank, by a landslide, than Netanyahu did. Ehud Barak actually campaigned on his connection to the settlers. And then Netanyahu capitalizes on the strength of the settlement movement to build this kind of Titanic rock of a right-wing coalition that's kept him in power for so long. And if you look at who the leading figures are in Israeli life -- Naftali Bennett, who was from the Jewish Home Party, he comes out of the Likud party and he's someone who was an assistant to Netanyahu. Avigdor Lieberman, who was for a long time the leader of the Russian Party. Yisrael Beiteinu, this is someone who came out of the Likud Party, who helped Netanyahu rustle up Russian votes. It's a Likud one-party state -- but then you have, culturally, a dynamic where starting with 1967, the public just becomes more infused with religious Messianism.

The West Bank is the site of the real, emotionally potent Jewish historical sites, particularly in a city like Hebron. And the public becomes attached to it and attains its dynamism through this expansionist project, and the public changes. A lot of people from the kind of liberal labor wing became religious Messianists, started wearing kippot, wearing yarmulkes, the kind of cloth yarmulkes that the modern orthodox settlers where.

RS: OK, but --

MB: Today you not only have that, you have a new movement called the temple movement, which aims to actually replace Jewish prayer at the Western Wall with animal sacrifice, as Jews supposedly practiced thousands of years ago, and to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque, and practice Jewish prayer there. This is not just a messianic movement, but an apocalyptic movement that is actually gaining strength in the Likud party. So when you mentioned Donald Trump's "ultimate deal," there's one detail that everyone seems to have missed there, which is prayer for all at the Dome of the Rock, at Al-Aqsa. That means there will be Jewish prayer there, officially, that Palestinians must be forced to accept that and destroy the status quo, which has prevailed since 1967.

RS: I know, but Max, before I lose this whole interview here -- because I think that's all really interesting; people should read your book, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel." That's not the focus of this discussion I want to have with you.

MB: OK.

RS: And I want to discuss, in this aspect, the whole idea of Israel as a third-rail issue for American politics.

MB: Yeah.

RS: American politics. And the reason I want to do that is there's obviously a contradiction in the Jewish experience, because Jews -- as much or more so than any other group of people in the world -- understand what settler colonialism does. They understand what oppression does, they've been under the thumb of oppressors. And so I would argue the major part of the Jewish experience was one of revolt against oppression, and recognition of the danger of unbridled power. And that represents a very important force in liberal politics in the United States: a fear of coercive power, a desire for tolerance, and so forth. And we know that Jews have, in the United States and elsewhere in the world, been a source of concern for the other, and tolerance, and criticism of power.

And the reason I'm bringing that up is it seems to me it's a real contradiction for the Democratic Party, which you know quite a bit about. And in this Democratic Party, there's this great loathsome feeling about Donald Trump. And many of these people don't really like Netanyahu. You know, the polling data shows that Jews are, you know, just about as open to the concern for the Palestinians as any other group. And Bernie Sanders, the one Jewish candidate, is the one who dared to bring up the Palestinians -- that they have rights also, that they're human beings. He's being attacked for it as, like you, a self-hating Jew. And so I want to get at that contradiction. And, you know, full confession, as a Jewish person I believe it's an honorable tradition of dissent, and concern for the others, and respect for individual freedom. And I think it's sullied by the identification of the Jewish experience with a colonialist experience. It is a reality that we have to deal with, but that's not the whole tradition. And I daresay your own family, whatever your contradiction -- and I should mention here your father and mother both were quite active in the Clinton administration, right.

And your father, a well-known journalist, Sidney Blumenthal, and your mother, Jacqueline Blumenthal, was I think a White House fellow or something in the Clinton administration? I forget what her job was, but has been active. And they certainly come out of a more liberal Jewish experience, as do most well-known Jewish writers and journalists in the United States. That's the contradiction that I don't see being dealt with here. Because after all, it's easy to blast Putin and his interference, but as I say, Netanyahu interfered very openly, but in a really unseemly way, in the American election by attacking a sitting American president in an appearance before the Congress, and attacking his major foreign-policy initiative. And there's hardly a word ever said about it. It doesn't come up in the democratic debates. You know, and the -- as I say, there was this incredible moment where Netanyahu, after coming over here and praising Trump for his peace deal, as did his opponent, then he goes off and meets with Putin. And so suddenly it's OK, and yet the Democrats who want to blast Putin don't mention Netanyahu, and they don't mention his relation to Trump.

MB: Well, yeah, I was trying to illustrate kind of the reality of Israel, which just, it's gotten so extreme that it repels people who even come out of the kind of Democratic Party mainstream. And the Democratic Party was the original bastion in the U.S. for supporting Israel. So my father actually held a book party for my book, "Goliath," back in 2013. It's the kind of thing that, you know, a parent who had been a journalist would do for a son or daughter who's a journalist. And he was harshly attacked when word got out that he had held that party in a neoconservative publication called the Free Beacon, which is kind of part of Netanyahu's PR operation in D.C. You know, it was like my father had supported, provided material support for terrorism by having a book party for his son.

But the interesting part about that party was who showed up. I didn't actually know what it was going to be like, and it was absolutely packed. I mean, they live in a pretty small townhouse in D.C, and there just was nowhere to walk, there was nowhere to move. And I found myself in the corner of their dining room shouting through the house to kind of explain what my book was about and answer questions. And a lot of the people there were people who were in or around Hillary's State Department, people who worked for kind of Democratic Party-linked organizations -- just a lot of mainstream Democrat people. And they were giving me a wink and a nod, shaking my hand, giving me a pat on the back, and saying thank you, thank God you did this. Because they cannot stand the Israel lobby, they despise Netanyahu, and they're disgusted with what Israel's become.

And we had reached a point by 2013 where it was pretty obvious there was not going to be a two-state solution, and that whole project, the liberal Zionist project, wasn't going to work out. You know, and the fact that they just could give me a wink and a nod shows also how cowardly a lot of people are in Washington. They weren't even stepping up to the level my father had, where when his emails with Hillary Clinton were exposed, it became clear that he was sending her my work. And he was actually trying to move people within the State Department toward a more, maybe you could say a more humanistic view, but also a more realistic view of Israel, Palestine and the Netanyahu operation in Washington. Working through [Sheldon] Adelson, using this fraud hack of a rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, has kind of their front man. They ran like a full-page ad in the New York Times painting me and my father as Hillary Clinton's secret Middle East advisers.

And then one day in the middle of the campaign, Elie Wiesel died. You know, someone who is supposed to be this patron saint of Judaism and the kind of secular theology of Auschwitz, who had spent the last years of his life as part of Sheldon Adelson's political network. Basically, he had lost all his money to Bernie Madoff, and so he was getting paid off by Adelson. He got half a million dollars from this Christian Zionist, apocalyptic, rapture-ready fanatic, Pastor John Hagee. He was going around with Ted Cruz giving talks. And so when he died, I went on Twitter and tweeted a few photos of Elie Wiesel with these extremist characters.

And I said, you know, here are photos of Elie Wiesel palling around with fascists. And the kind of Netanyahu-Adelson network activated to attack me. And ultimately it led -- I actually, within a matter of a few days, it led to Hillary Clinton's campaign officially denouncing me and demanding that I cease and desist. And so, you know, I looked at the debate on Twitter, and a lot of people were actually supporting me. And it was clear Elie Wiesel, this person who was supposed to be a saint, was actually no longer seen as stainless, that the whole debate had been opened up by 2016.

And now when we look at the Democratic Party and we look at the Democratic field, you know, Bernie Sanders -- he's better than most of the other candidates, or the other candidates, on this issue. After we put a lot of pressure on him in the left wing-grassroots -- I mean, I personally protested him at a 2016 event for his position on Palestinians, and we shamed him until he took at least a slightly better position, where you acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians. But what we're hearing, even from Bernie Sanders, doesn't even reflect where the grassroots of the Democratic Party -- particularly all those young people who are coming out and delivering him a landslide victory tonight in Iowa -- are. The Democratic Party is not democratic on Israel, but it's no longer a third-rail issue. You can talk about it, and the only way that you can be stopped is through legislation, like the legislation we see in statehouses to actually outlaw people who support the Palestinian boycott of Israel. So we're just in an amazing time where all of the contradictions are completely out in the open.

RS: OK, let me just take a quick break so public radio stations like KCRW that make this available can stick in some advertisements for themselves, which is a good cause. And we'll be right back with Max Blumenthal. Back with Max Blumenthal, who has written -- I mean, I only mentioned one of his books. He wrote a very important book on the right wing in America that was a bestseller; he has been honored in many ways, and yet is a source of great controversy. And I must say, I respect your ability to create this controversy, because it's controversy about issues people don't want to deal with. You know, they want to deal with them in sort of feel-good slogans, and it doesn't work, because people get hurt. And including Jewish people, in the case of Israel. If you develop a settler, colonialist society, and that stands for the Jewish position, and you're oppressing large numbers of people, be they Palestinian or others, that's hardly an advertisement for what has been really great about the Jewish experience, which I will argue until my death.

It was represented by people like my mother, who were in the Jewish socialist bund, and two of her sisters were killed by the Czar's police in Russia. And they believed in Universalist values, an idea of being Jewish as standing for the values of the oppressed, and concern for the oppressed. And most of their experience in the shtetls, and out there in the diaspora, had been being oppressed.

And so I don't want to lose that there. But I wanted to get now to the last part of this, to what I think is the hypocrisy of the liberal wing of American politics, or so-called. And now they call themselves more progressive. And it really kind of centers around Hillary Clinton. And whatever you want to say about Bernie Sanders -- you know, Hillary Clinton's recent attack on Bernie Sanders, that no one likes him and he stands for nothing and he gets nothing done. And I think this is a, you know, a person that I thought, you know, at one point -- despite her starting out as a Goldwater girl and being quite conservative -- I thought was, you know, somewhat decent.

And I'm going to make this personal now. I was brought to a more favorable view of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in considerable measure, by your father, as a journalist at the Washington Post, and then working in the administration. And I respect your father and mother, you know, and Sidney Blumenthal and Jacqueline Blumenthal, I think are intelligent people. And I once, you know, went through a White House dinner; I think I only got in because your father put me on the list, and Hillary Clinton said I was her favorite columnist in America -- no, the whole world -- and it was very flattering. But I look back on it now -- Hillary Clinton has really represented a kind of loathsome, interventionist, aggressive, America-first politics that in some ways is even more offensive than Trump. When Trump said he's going to make America great again, Hillary Clinton said, America's always been great. What?

MB: Yeah.

RS: What? Slavery, segregation, killing the Native Americans -- always been great? You grew up with these people, right? You were in that world. What -- so yes, they can come up to you at a book party and say, yes, it's about time somebody said that. But what are they really about? That they -- you know, you mentioned Syria. You know, their great achievement, they created a mess of that society. And she's the one who went to, said about Libya, oh, we came, we saw, and he's dead. You know, sodomized to death. So take me into the heart of the so-called liberal experience.

MB: Well, first of all, since you invoke Sidney Blumenthal so frequently, he has a -- I think his fourth book in a five-part series on Abraham Lincoln out. And you know, these books address Lincoln almost as if he were a contemporary politician. It's a completely new contribution to the history of Lincoln, and if you invite him on, be sure --

RS: I'm familiar with it, and I'll endorse it --

MB: If you invite him on, you can ask him, I would love to hear that debate --

RS: I certainly would, and I have -- as I said, I have a lot of respect for your father and mother. I'm asking a different question. Why do good people look the other way? Or how does it work? Just, you know, to the degree you can, take me inside that Washington culture. And where there's a certain arrogance in it, that they are always, even when they do the wrong things, they're just always accidents. They're always mistakes. You know, it never comes out of their ideology, their aggression. So I want to know more about that.

MB: I mean, I saw all these -- so many different sides of Washington. And so -- and I was always supported by my parents, no matter what view I took. So I don't feel like I have to live in my father's shadow or something like that. They remain really supportive of me. I have a new book out -- it's not really new, it came out last April. It's called "The Management of Savagery," and it deals substantially with my view of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, but particularly the Hillary State Department, the Obama foreign policy team, and the destruction they wrought in Libya and Syria. So, you know, I put everything I knew about Washington and foreign policy into that book. And so I really would recommend that as well.

But, you know, how does it work with the Clintons? They were -- they set up a machine that was really a juggernaut with all this corporate money they brought in through the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Committee. It was a very different structure than we'd seen with previous Democratic candidates who built -- who relied heavily on unions and, you know, the civil rights coalition. And that machine never went away. It kept growing like this -- kind of like this amoeba that began to engulf the party and politics itself. So that when Bill Clinton was out of power, the machine was passed to Hillary Clinton, and the machine followed her into the Senate. And the machine grew into the Clinton Global Initiative, which was this giant influence-peddling scam that just cashed in on disasters in Haiti, brought in tons of money, tens of millions of dollars from Gulf monarchies, and big oil and the arms industry -- everything that funds all the repulsive think tanks on K Street through the Clinton Foundation.

And everyone who was trying to get close to the Clinton Foundation, whether they were in Clinton's inner circle or not, was just trying to gather influence. That's why you saw at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, behind her, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was basically Jeffrey Epstein's personal child sex trafficker, just trying to cultivate influence with people who have this gigantic political machine.

So that's why so many people, I think, have stayed loyal to this odious project, and have looked the other way as entire countries were destroyed under the direct watch of Hillary Clinton. Libya today -- where Hillary Clinton took personal credit for destroying this country, which was at the time before its destruction, I think the wealthiest African nation with the highest quality of life -- is now in, still in civil war. We've seen footage of open-air slave auctions taking place, and large parts of the country for years were occupied by affiliates of Al Qaeda or ISIS, including Muammar Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte. It was immediately transformed into a haven for the Islamic State.

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton. There would have been no Benghazi scandal if she hadn't gone into Libya to come, see, and kill, as she bragged that she did. And in Syria, she attempted the same thing; fortunately failed, thanks to assistance from Iran and Russia. But this was, it consisted of a billion dollars, multibillion-dollar operation to arm and equip some of the most dangerous, psychotic fanatics on the face of the planet in Al Qaeda and 31 flavors of Salafi jihadi. Hillary Clinton said we can't be negotiating with the Syrian government; the hard men with guns will solve this problem. She said that in an interview, and that's her legacy.

Beyond that, you know, I in Washington grew up in a very complex situation. I don't know what view people have of me, but I grew up in what was – D.C. when D.C. was known as C.C., or Chocolate City. It was a mostly black city, run by a local black power structure with a strong black middle class, and I grew up in a black neighborhood. And I kind of saw apartheid firsthand, where I saw how a small white minority actually controlled the city from behind the scenes. And then, you know, and I saw that reality, and then I went to school across town in the one white ward to a private school, and I got to know some of the children of the kind of mostly Democratic Party elite. And so I saw both sides of the city. And it was through that other side, and also my parents' connection to the Clintons, that I -- I mean, I barely interacted with the Clintons. I've had very minimal interaction with them ever.

But I did get to meet Chelsea Clinton once. And you know, for all my reservations about the Clintons or what they were, I thought you know, she was kind of an admirable figure at that time. She was a -- she was a kid, she was an adolescent who was being mocked on "Saturday Night Live" because she was going through an awkward phase. She went to school down the street at Sidwell Friends, and I met her at a White House Christmas party; she was really friendly and personable. And you know, since then, I've watched her grow into adulthood and become a complete kind of replication of the monstrous political apparatus that her family has set up, without really charting her own path. She just basically inherited the reign of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. She does paid talks for Israel. Her husband Marc Mezvinsky, he gambled on Greece's debt along with Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. You know, the squid fish. I mean, there's just -- I mean, as a young person, seeing someone of my generation grow up and follow that path, do nothing to carve out her own space -- it just absolutely disgusts me.

And now Hillary Clinton is still there! She won't go away! She's not only helped fuel this Russiagate hysteria that's plunged us into a new Cold War, but she's trying to destroy the hopes and dreams of millions of young people who are saddled with endless debt by destroying Bernie Sanders. And it's because she sees her own legacy being smashed to pieces, not by any right-wing, vast conspiracy, but by the electorate, the new electorate of the Democratic Party. And I absolutely welcome that. I think, you know, tonight in Iowa, a landslide Bernie victory, one of the takeaways is this will be the end of Clintonism. It's time to move on and hand things over to a new generation. They had their chance, and they not only failed, they caused disasters across the world.

RS: So this is -- we're going to wind this up, but I think we've hit a really important subject. And I want to take a little bit more time on it. And I thought you expressed it quite powerfully. But the error, if you'll permit me, is to center it on the personality, or the family. And I don't think Clintonism is going to go away. Because what it represents -- and I know you --

MB: It could be become Bloombergism, you know?

RS: Well, that's where I'm going. I think what Clintonism represents is this triangulation, this new Democrat. And I interviewed him when he was governor, just when he was campaigning. And I did a lot of writing on the Financial Services Modernization Act and on welfare reform, and all of these ingredients of this policy. And what it really represents -- no wonder they're rewarded by the super wealthy. But the Democratic Party lost its organizational base with the destruction of the labor movement and weakening of other sources of progressive class-based politics, concern about working people and ordinary people.

And what Clinton did is he came along, and he had a sort of variation of Nixon's Southern Strategy, how he got the Republicans to be so important in the South. And it was this new politics, this redefinition. And it's not going away, because it's the cover for Wall Street. It's the cover for exploitation. And the main thing that happened from when you were young -- or born, actually; you're 42 years -- it's 42 years of, since Clinton really, and you can blame Reagan, you can blame the first President Bush, you can blame other people, and certainly blame the whole bloody Republican Party. I'm not going to give them a pass.

But the fact is, what the Clinton revolution did was it made class warfare for the rich fashionable, in a way that no one else was able to do it, no other movement. And it said these thieves on Wall Street, these people who are going to rip you off 20 different ways to Sunday -- they're good people, and they support good causes. And you mentioned Lloyd Blankfein, you know; "government" Goldman Sachs, you know. Robert Rubin came from Goldman Sachs; he was Clinton's treasury secretary. And the whole thing of unleashing Wall Street and getting, destroying the New Deal -- that was a serious program to basically betray the average American and betray their interest. And that's why we've had this growing income inequality since that time. That's the Clinton legacy in this world, really, is the billionaire coup, the billionaire culture.

MB: Yep, the oligarchy was put on fast-forward by the new politics of the Clintons. What they promised wasn't, you know, a break from Reaganism, although there was certainly a cultural difference. They promised continuity, and that's what we saw through the Obama administration. Obama presided over the biggest decline in black home ownership in the United States since, I think, prior to World War II. You mentioned Glass-Steagall; this set the stage for the financial crisis; NAFTA, destroyed the unions, shipped American jobs first to Mexico and then to China, and destabilized northern Mexico along with the drug war that Clinton put on overdrive, creating the immigration crisis that helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump.

Welfare reform -- all of these policies were just, were odious to me and so many people at the time, but there was just this desire to just beat the Republicans and out-triangulate them. Now that we've seen the effects on them and so many people have felt the effects, you have an entire generation that sees no future, that realizes they're living in an oligarchy, realizes that the alternative to Bernie Sanders is a literal oligarch, this miniature Scrooge McDuck in Mike Bloomberg, and they're just not having it.

I don't know if Hillary Clinton understands this history; I don't think she sees it in context. She just blames Russian boogeyman and fake news for everything. But the rest of us who've lived through it really do, and it's the continuity that is so dangerous, especially on foreign policy. I mean, the Libya proxy war and the Syria proxy war, the stage was set in Yugoslavia with NATO's war that destroyed a socialist country and unleashed hell on a large part of its population. And we still don't debate that war. The stage for the Iraq invasion was set in 1998 with Bill Clinton passing the Iraqi Liberation Act, which sent $90 million into the pocket of the con-man Ahmed Chalabi and made regime change the official policy of the United States.

It's tragic that Bernie Sanders voted for that. But we have to see the cause and the effect to understand why so many people are in open revolt against that legacy. And you're right, it goes well beyond the Clintons. It's a program that markets right-wing economics and a right-wing foreign policy in a sort of progressive bottle. Now what they're trying to do with the label on that progressive bottle, the way they're trying to preserve it -- we see it a lot through the [Elizabeth] Warren campaign -- is through a kind of neoliberal identity politics that divorces class from race and gender, and attempts to basically distract people with needless arguments about Bernie Sanders saying a woman couldn't have gotten elected in a private conversation that only Elizabeth Warren was party to.

So I'm really encouraged, I guess, by the results that we're seeing. We're talking tonight on the eve of the Iowa caucus. I'm encouraged by those results, just because I see them as a repudiation of the politics that have just dominated my life as a 42-year-old, and just been so absolutely cynical and destructive at their core. But I would just remind anyone who is supporting Bernie Sanders and listening to this -- he's not just running for president. He's running for the next target of a deep state coup, and the deep state exists, and will respond with more force and viciousness than it did to Donald Trump, who actually has much more in common with them than Bernie Sanders.

RS: I didn't quite get the grammar of that last paragraph, not any fault of yours. You said he's not just running -- can you --

MB: He's running for the next target of a deep state coup, the forces of Wall Street. You know, the --

RS: Oh, you mean he will be the target.

MB: He will be the target.

RS: Yeah, you know, it's -- you just said something really -- OK, I know we have to wrap this up, but it's actually just getting interesting for me. [Laughs]

MB: Sorry about that.

RS: No, no, no, come on, come on. [Laughter] What I mean is, I do these things because I learn, and I think, and you know, my selfish interests. And really the question right now, I did a wonderful interview with Chomsky on this podcast, and he took me to school for not appreciating the importance of the lesser evil. And I've lost sleep over it since. You know, well -- and we always fall for that, you know. On the other hand, some of the things you've been talking about, you know -- and this is going to get me in big trouble -- but you know, Trump is so blatant. He's so out there in favor of greed and corruption.

He's so obnoxious. And actually, in terms of his policy impact -- not his rhetoric, but his policy impact -- is he really that much worse? Well, for instance, you mentioned NAFTA. The rewrite of NAFTA, even before, you know, some progressives got involved in it, it was a substantially better trade agreement than the first NAFTA. You know, he hasn't gotten us into Syria-type, Iraq-type wars.

He actually -- so I'm not -- you know, yes, I consider him a neofascist; rhetoric can be very dangerous. He's obviously spread very evil, poisonous ideas about immigrants and what have you, you know, I can go down the list. But the people that you've been talking about, that–you know, and I voted for all of them, and I've supported them -- are they really the lesser evil? You know, or are they a more effective form of evil?

MB: I mean, to understand Trump, we just have to see him as the apotheosis of an oligarchy. In its most unsheathed, unvarnished form, he's just lifted the mask off the corruption, the legal corruption that's prevailed, and been completely unabashed about it. Donald Trump was targeted with this kind of Russiagate campaign, which was partly run by Clintonite dead-enders who wanted to blame Russia for her loss, and to attack Donald Trump with this kind of McCarthyite rhetoric. But it was also being influenced by the intelligence services -- figures like John Brennan and James Comey, and neoconservative hardliners who could easily jump back into the Democratic Party. And they were just seeking a new Cold War, to justify the budgets of the intelligence services, and the defense budget and so on.

But at his core, Donald Trump, what he's actually done, especially domestically, I think outside of the immigration stuff, is he's been kind of a traditional Republican. And he won a lot of consent from Republicans in Congress when he passed a trillion-dollar tax cut. He's given corporate America everything he wanted after kind of campaigning with this populist, Bannonite tone. So in a lot of ways, Donald Trump does share more in common with the Democratic Party elite -- with a lot of the figures who've been nominated to serve on the DNC platform committee, who are just from the Beltway blob and the Beltway bandits -- than they do with Bernie Sanders.

And I think that if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination, there will be an effort to McGovern him. To just kind of turn him -- turn this whole process into McGovern '72, hope that Bernie Sanders gets destroyed by Donald Trump, and then wag their fingers at the left for the next 20 years until they get another Bill Clinton. I think that they don't know how to stop him at this point, but they're willing to let him be the nominee and go down to Donald Trump, because Bernie Sanders threatens their interests, and the movement behind him particularly, more than Donald Trump does.

RS: You know, they will stop Bernie Sanders, and they will do it by the argument of lesser evilism. And you see the line developing --

MB: But who is the lesser evil, Bob? I mean, Joe Biden is like this doddering wreck. There is no other candidate who seems even remotely viable against Trump.

RS: No, no, no -- I understand that. I'm telling you what -- well, it seems to me there's -- you know, you want to talk about fake news, the, misreporting of Bernie Sanders -- in fact, the misreporting of what democratic socialism is. I mean, he's now branded in the mainstream media as some hopeless fanatic because he dared to defend democratic socialism. Democratic socialism has been the norm for the most successful economies in the world, even to a degree when we've been successful. That was the legacy of Roosevelt, after all, is to try to save capitalism from itself. That's why you had some enlightened government programs, you know, right down the list, and that's what saved Germany after the war, and that's what France and England and so forth, that's why they have health care systems.

But the mainstream media has actually taken a very moderate figure, Bernie Sanders, and demonized him as some kind of hopeless ideologue, right? And as you point out, Bernie Sanders is hardly a radical thinker on issues -- particularly, as you mentioned, about the Mideast and so forth. What he is, is somebody who actually is honoring the best side of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: you can't let these greed merchants control everything, you have to worry about some compensation for ordinary people. That's what Bernie Sanders is all about. And it should be an argument that has great appeal to people of power, otherwise they're going to come after you with the pitchforks. Instead the mainstream media, in its hysteria, you know, has taken this word "democratic socialist" and used it to vilify him.

But the point that I want -- and we will end on this, but I'd like to get your reaction -- that came up in my discussion with Chomsky, who I have great admiration for. But it is this lesser evilism. And I think while, yes, people in their vote can think about that, they can vote that way -- I've done it much of my life; I've voted for all sorts of evil people because they were lesser. But as a journalist -- and I want to end about your journalism -- as a journalist, I think we have to get that idea out of our head. And it means being able to be objective about a Donald Trump when he comes up with his NAFTA rewrite, and say hey, there are some good things in it, including the fact that you have to pay $16 an hour to people in Mexico who are working on cars that are going to be sold in the United States, OK. And what the liberal community has been able to do in the mainstream media, MSNBC, is Trumpwash everything.

Which brings us back to your critique. They've been able to say -- they've made warmongering liberal and fashionable. They've taken the -- they've made the CIA now a wonderful institution, the FBI a wonderful institution, [John] Bolton a wonderful hero. And I want to take my hat off to your journalism, because you have -- and I do recommend that people go to your website, the Grayzone. Because you have had the courage to say, wait a minute, what's called a lesser evil can't be given a pass. Because in fact, maybe in some ways, or in many ways, it's a more effective evil. We know what Trump is; he stands exposed every hour of every day.

But you know, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton -- and I'm not trying to pick on them, but you know, they represented this embrace of the Wall Street center -- they were much more effective in redistributing income to the rich. You know, you can talk about Trump's tax break, but the real redistribution came with letting Wall Street do its collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that caused the destruction of 70% of black wealth in America, 60% of brown wealth in America, according to the Federal Reserve. So really, in this election, people have to think -- you know, yes, I'll hold my nose and I'll vote for the lesser evil. But what's that going to get us? Does it get us a more effective evil, a better-packaged evil? Last word from you?

MB: Well, I mean, one of the things that we do at the Grayzone.com, our mission is to oppose this policy of regime change that the U.S. imposes across the world against any state that seeks some independence from the U.S. sphere of influence that wants to craft its own economic policies in a socialist way, like Venezuela, Nicaragua. We, you know, we exposed a lot of the deceptions that were trying to stimulate public support for regime change in Syria, that would have been absolutely disastrous. And in all of these situations, we don't stand alone, but we stand among a really, really small group of alternative outlets who don't play the lesser-evil game on regime change.

Where we say, well, this leader or that leader are horrible, and they are evil dictators, but we should also be kind of suspicious of the, you know, of the war that the U.S. might wage. Or we should be critical of these brutal economic sanctions that have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans through excess deaths. We say -- we actually look at the alternative to the current government and show that there actually isn't the lesser evil, that the alternative is far worse. In Syria it was Al Qaeda and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood; in Venezuela it's Juan Guaidó's right-wing, white collar mafia, which is a front for Exxon Mobil. Same thing in Nicaragua.

And you know, as much as I respect and I've learned from Noam Chomsky, he plays that lesser-evil game on regime change. He's trashed all of the, all of these governments. He celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we saw what happened to Russia after that. So it's important to look at lesser evilism through a historical context, and then we can apply it to the United States as well. Look at who's been sold to us as the lesser evil that we had to support. Well, we've been talking about them, Bob, for the last half hour, and they've subjected Americans to the same evil the Republican Party has, for the most part. Maybe they've limited it to some degree. But now there's actually an option for something that I'd say is moderate in the United States.

You're right -- Bernie Sanders does nothing, and proposes nothing, outside the framework of the New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. I don't even think he's a democratic socialist. I don't know what that term really means. He's a social democrat. And he is someone who at least offers a change from the consensus where the government actually starts to intervene to prevent people from dying excess deaths across the country, from the opioid crisis, from poverty, from homelessness. Eighty percent of new homes that have been built in the U.S. in the past two years are luxury housing. And you know who else is supporting Bernie Sanders besides all these debt-saddled youth? Active duty U.S. military veterans who are sick of permanent war. $160,000 in campaign contributions have been given to Bernie by active duty vets. That's something like eight times more than have gone to Joe Biden, who is involved at the forefront of almost every American war since Gulf War I.

And we're really capitalizing on that at the Grayzone. We understand the American public and the western public are sick of being lied into war, and they're sick of being pushed into lesser evilism, whether it's abroad in countries that are targeted by the U.S., or at home. And so we're just there providing balance and exposing whatever the lie is of the day.

RS: Let me, as an older person, end with a little editorial about what -- and I agree with the thrust of what you've been saying -- but why I think this word "democratic socialism" is important, not just social democrat. Because it acknowledges the vast harm that has been done by the left in human history. It's not just the right, it's not just the corporate elite, and it's not just the oligarchs. That people got hold of a message of concern for the ordinary person. It happened in religion too, after all, you know; structures were developed, people who claimed they were following the message of Christ, and they ended up building edifices to the exploitation of ordinary people.

I think what Bernie Sanders represents -- and I'll ask your response, but what I think he represents, the reason he's so authentic -- he actually believes in the grassroots. He actually believes that an ordinary person in Vermont can make intelligent decisions about the human condition, and about justice and freedom. And I think the reason Bernie Sanders can survive the rhetorical assaults on his leftism or his socialism, is that what people of power in the capitalist world have managed to do is identify this cause of social justice, a notion of democratic socialism with totalitarianism, with elitism. And Bernie Sanders -- and this is a good night to celebrate Bernie Sanders, if it's true; I hadn't caught up with the news, but if he's really doing that well in Iowa. Because I thought he would get 1% of the vote four years ago when he started; I never thought this would happen.

I think what makes Bernie Sanders authentic is his respect for the ordinary person. He is the opposite of that leftist elitist–and you have them as well as rightist elitists -- who thinks they have to distort history to protect the average person from reality. And Bernie Sanders is -- he speaks truth about what's going on. And at a time when people on the right and the left have nothing but contempt for most of the politicians, and journalistic leaders and everything else, for having betrayed them. So I think Bernie Sanders is a ray of hope. I wish he would be around a lot longer, but then again, I wish I'd be around a lot longer. But it's nice to run into Max Blumenthal, who's half my age and has all of that spirit that I'd like to see in journalism. So thanks, Max, for doing this.

MB: Thank you, Bob. It's a real honor.

RS: And by the way, I ignored that last book of yours. Could you give the title again and how people get it?

MB: It's called "The Management of Savagery." And let me pull it off the shelf so I can actually read the subheader. You can edit this. It's called "The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump." And it's really kind of my look at the, sort of how the politics of my lifetime and my generation has been shaped by foreign policy disasters that an unelected foreign-policy establishment has subjected us to.

RS: Full disclosure, I actually have not read it, and I will get it as soon as I can.

MB: I'll send you a copy --

RS: No, no, no, you got -- it's hard enough to make a living as a writer. I don't think you should give these things away for nothing. I'll get myself a copy. And I want to thank you again. I've been talking to Max Blumenthal, check out his work, check out the Grayzone. These podcasts are done basically for KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, where Christopher Ho is the engineer who gets it up on the air.

At Truthdig, Natasha Hakimi Zapata writes the brilliant intros and overview of these things and posts them up there. Here at USC, Sebastian Grubaugh, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, really gets the whole thing going and hooks up everyone, thanks to him. And finally, there'd be no "Scheer Intelligence" without the main Scheer, Joshua Scheer, who's the show's producer. And we'll see you next week with another edition of "Scheer Intelligence."

wick7 , 23 minutes ago link

They celebrated Bernie's landslide victory in Iowa too soon. He was stopped and now the pro-elitist lesser evil Pete has been selected.

ThomasEdmonds , 1 hour ago link

https://russia-insider.com/en/jewish-tranny-billionaire-spending-big-push-trans-ideology-america-29-billion-pritzker-oligarch-clan

Pritzger family money and debauchery.

[Feb 09, 2020] Iowans Rage They're Dirty, Man, Matt Taibbi Warns Des Moines Debacle Was Waterloo For Democrats

Feb 09, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg seemed perfect, a man who defended the principle of wine-based fundraisers with military effrontery. New York magazine made his case in a cover story the magazine's Twitter account summarized as:

"Perhaps all the Democrats need to win the presidency is a Rust Belt millennial who's gay and speaks Norwegian."

(The "Here's something random the Democrats need to beat Trump" story became an important literary genre in 2019-2020, the high point being Politico's "Can the "F-bomb save Beto?").

Buttigieg had momentum. The flameout of Biden was expected to help the ex-McKinsey consultant with "moderates." Reporters dug Pete; he's been willing to be photographed holding a beer and wearing a bomber jacket, and in Iowa demonstrated what pundits call a "killer instinct," i.e. a willingness to do anything to win.

Days before the caucus, a Buttigieg supporter claimed Pete's name had not been read out in a Des Moines Register poll, leading to the pulling of what NBC called the "gold standard" survey. The irony of such a relatively minor potential error holding up a headline would soon be laid bare.

However, Pete's numbers with black voters (he polls at zero in many states) led to multiple news stories in the last weekend before the caucus about "concern" that Buttigieg would not be able to win.

Who, then? Elizabeth Warren was cratering in polls and seemed to be shifting strategy on a daily basis. In Iowa, she attacked "billionaires" in one stop, emphasized "unity" in the next, and stressed identity at other times (she came onstage variously that weekend to Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" or to chants of "It's time for a woman in the White House"). Was she an outsider or an insider? A screwer, or a screwee? Whose side was she on?

A late controversy involving a story that Sanders had told Warren a woman couldn't win didn't help. Jaimee Warbasse planned to caucus with Warren, but the Warren/Sanders "hot mic" story of the two candidates arguing after a January debate was a bridge too far. She spoke of being frustrated, along with friends, at the inability to find anyone she could to trust to take on Trump.

"It's like we all have PTSD from 2016," she said. "There has to be somebody."

... ... ...

What happened over the five days after the caucus was a mind-boggling display of fecklessness and ineptitude. Delay after inexplicable delay halted the process, to the point where it began to feel like the caucus had not really taken place. Results were released in chunks, turning what should have been a single news story into many, often with Buttigieg "in the lead."

The delays and errors cut in many directions, not just against Sanders. Buttigieg, objectively, performed above poll expectations, and might have gotten more momentum even with a close, clear loss, but because of the fiasco he ended up hashtagged as #MayorCheat and lumped in headlines tied to what the Daily Beast called a "Clusterfuck."

Though Sanders won the popular vote by a fair margin, both in terms of initial preference (6,000 votes) and final preference (2,000), Mayor Pete's lead for most of the week with "state delegate equivalents" -- the number used to calculate how many national delegates are sent to the Democratic convention -- made him the technical winner in the eyes of most. By the end of the week, however, Sanders had regained so much ground, to within 1.5 state delegate equivalents, that news organizations like the AP were despairing at calling a winner.

This wasn't necessarily incorrect. The awarding of delegates in a state like Iowa is inherently somewhat random. If there's a tie in votes in a district awarding five delegates, a preposterous system of coin flips is used to break the odd number. The geographical calculation for state delegate equivalents is also uneven, weighted toward the rural. A wide popular-vote winner can surely lose.

But the storylines of caucus week sure looked terrible for the people who ran the vote. The results released early favored Buttigieg, while Sanders-heavy districts came out later. There were massive, obvious errors. Over 2,000 votes that should have gone to Sanders and Warren went to Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer in one case the Iowa Democrats termed a "minor error." In multiple other districts (Des Moines 14 for example), the "delegate equivalents" appeared to be calculated incorrectly, in ways that punished all the candidates, not just Sanders. By the end of the week, even the New York Times was saying the caucus was plagued with "inconsistencies and errors."

Emily Connor, a Sanders precinct captain in Boone County, spent much of the week checking results, waiting for her Bernie-heavy district to be recorded. It took a while. By the end of the week, she was fatalistic.

"If you're a millennial, you basically grew up in an era where popular votes are stolen," she said.

"The system is riddled with loopholes."

Others felt the party was in denial about how bad the caucus night looked.

"They're kind of brainwashed," said Joe Grabinski, who caucused in West Des Moines.

"They think they're on the side of the right they'll do anything to save their careers.

An example of how screwed up the process was from the start involved a new twist on the process, the so-called "Presidential Preference Cards."

In 2020, caucus-goers were handed index cards that seemed simple enough. On side one, marked with a big "1," caucus-goers were asked to write in their initial preference. Side 2, with a "2," was meant to be where you wrote in who you ended up supporting, if your first choice was not viable.

The "PPCs" were supposedly there to "ensure a recount is possible," as the Polk County Democrats put it. But caucus-goers didn't understand the cards.

Morgan Baethke, who volunteered at Indianola 4, watched as older caucus-goers struggled. Some began filling out both sides as soon as they were given them.

Therefore, Baethke says, if they do a recount, "the first preference should be accurate." However, "the second preference will be impossible to recreate with any certainty."

This is a problem, because by the end of the week, DNC chair Tom Perez -- a triple-talking neurotic who is fast becoming the poster child for everything progressives hate about modern Dems -- called for an "immediate recanvass." He changed his mind after ten hours and said he only wanted "surgical" reanalysis of problematic districts.

No matter what result emerges, it's likely many individual voters will not trust it. Between comical videos of apparently gamed coin-flips and the pooh-poohing reaction of party officials and pundits (a common theme was that "toxic conspiracy theories" about Iowa were the work of the Trumpian right and/or Russian bots), the overall impression was a clown show performance by a political establishment too bored to worry about the appearance of impartiality.

"Is it incompetence or corruption? That's the big question," asked Storey.

"I'm not sure it matters. It could be both."

[Feb 09, 2020] What Separates Sanders From Warren (and Everybody Else)

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, some may argue that one's class is based largely on her own experience and perspective, but this confuses psychological feelings with concrete social and economic realities. As C. Wright Mills pointed out in his classic study, "White Collar: The American Middle Classes," just because people "are not 'class conscious' at all times and in all places does not mean 'there are no classes' or that 'in America everybody is middle class.' " Although subjective feelings are no doubt important, to accept that everyone who identifies as middle class must be middle class is to disregard objective economic realities. ..."
"... The new middle class flourished until the capitalist class decided to revolt against the legacy of the New Deal toward the end of the 20th century. In the contemporary era, many who would have been middle-class in the postwar years have effectively been proletarianized once again, and economic inequality has returned pre-Great Depression heights. Proletarianization, Mills explained, "refers to shifts of middle-class occupations toward wage-workers in terms of: income, property, skill, prestige or power, irrespective of whether or not the people involved are aware of these changes. Or, the meaning may be in terms of changes in consciousness, outlook, or organized activity." ..."
Jan 16, 2020 | www.truthdig.com
In America, the term "middle class" has long been used to describe the majority of wage and salary earners, from those receiving a median annual income of around $50,000 to those who earn three or four times that amount. Whether Democrat or Republican, politicians from across the political aisle claim to represent the middle class -- that vast-yet-amorphous segment of the population where the managers and the managed all seem to fit together.

The term has always been somewhat problematic when it comes to politics. As Joan C. Williams observes in her 2017 book, "White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America," a "central way we make class disappear is to describe virtually everyone as 'middle class.' " The majority of Americans see themselves as middle class, including those in the top 10% earning several times the average income. According to Williams, a close friend of hers who "undoubtedly belonged to the top 1%" once referred to herself as middle class, a perspective that the author describes as "class cluelessness."

This cluelessness was also evident in a New York Times article last summer titled "What Middle Class Families Want Politicians to Know," which included interviews with a number of purportedly middle class families with household incomes of up to $400,000 (only one of the interviewees earned less than $100,000, with the average around $200,000).

The fact that people who earn a quarter-million dollars annually place themselves in the same category as those earning $70,000 tells us just how politically useless the term "middle class" has become in contemporary America. Even when we take into account geographic factors and fluctuations in the cost of living, there is little rational justification for categorizing a $60,000-a-year blue-collar worker with a lawyer or doctor earning in excess of $200,000.

Of course, some may argue that one's class is based largely on her own experience and perspective, but this confuses psychological feelings with concrete social and economic realities. As C. Wright Mills pointed out in his classic study, "White Collar: The American Middle Classes," just because people "are not 'class conscious' at all times and in all places does not mean 'there are no classes' or that 'in America everybody is middle class.' " Although subjective feelings are no doubt important, to accept that everyone who identifies as middle class must be middle class is to disregard objective economic realities.

One's class consciousness (or lack thereof) has important implications for one's political attitudes, and in America class consciousness has always been somewhat lacking compared to other countries. The United States has never had a true aristocratic class or feudal property relations like those in Europe, and in the 19th century, the "middle class" essentially stood for small capitalists and propertied farmers. Between the mid-19th century and mid-20th century, the country was transformed, in Mills' analysis, from a "nation of small capitalists into a nation of hired employees" -- a trend that sociologists call "proletarianization."

In the post-World War II era, thanks to the struggle of labor and the policies of the New Deal, which aimed to reduce inequality and mediate class tensions, many in the working class became comfortably middle class. In other words, the proletariat turned into a kind of "petty bourgeois," adopting the same values and attitudes as their employers, while accepting the status quo after a few adjustments. Ironically, this ended up undercutting more radical labor movements while preserving the economic system, which eventually came back to bite working people and their children.

The new middle class flourished until the capitalist class decided to revolt against the legacy of the New Deal toward the end of the 20th century. In the contemporary era, many who would have been middle-class in the postwar years have effectively been proletarianized once again, and economic inequality has returned pre-Great Depression heights. Proletarianization, Mills explained, "refers to shifts of middle-class occupations toward wage-workers in terms of: income, property, skill, prestige or power, irrespective of whether or not the people involved are aware of these changes. Or, the meaning may be in terms of changes in consciousness, outlook, or organized activity."

The proletarianization of the middle class over the past 50 years has had an enormously detrimental effect on communities across the country, but it has taken quite a while for many working people in America to recognize their new situation in terms of consciousness and outlook. The enduring popularity of the term "middle class" reflects this state of affairs.

In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has deliberately chosen to use "working class" over "middle class." Not surprisingly, that candidate is Sen. Bernie Sanders. "I am a candidate of the working class," Sanders recently declared on Facebook. "I come from the working class. That is my background, that's who I am. I fought for the working class as a mayor, a Congressman and a Senator. And that is the kind of president that I will be." Sanders, whose campaign is 100% grassroots-funded, wrote in a column last week for the Des Moines Register, " our campaign is focused on making sure the government stops representing billionaires and start representing us -- the working class of this country."

Though it may seem like a somewhat trivial distinction, when we look at the rest of the Democratic field, it's clear that Sanders has indeed distinguished himself from the other top candidates. For example, Sanders' opponent Joe Biden frequently speaks of the middle class but rarely the working class. "This country wasn't built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs and hedge fund managers. It was built by the American middle class," Biden declares on his campaign website, where he says that the middle class "isn't a number," but a "set of values." (In a way this is correct, but not in the sense that Biden seems to think.)

On the more progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren's website, where she lists her numerous plans, one searches in vain for any references to the working class, though there are plenty to the middle class.

How much this actually matters is, of course, debatable, but the term "working class" undoubtedly has far more implications and political significance than "middle class," which, like many overused words in the political lexicon, has lost all meaning. By using "working class" instead, Sanders appears to be trying to increase class consciousness in America, where those in the ruling class have often demonstrated the highest level of class consciousness (never failing to use their abundant resources to protect and advance their own interests).

The more young and working-class people come to recognize their own situation and place in the 21st century American economy, the more they seem to embrace "socialist" policies that are rejected by "middle class" sensibilities.

In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has made raising levels of class consciousness part of his campaign strategy, and in an election that could very well be determined by working-class voters, this may be the strategy to defeat Trump.

[Feb 09, 2020] DNC Is Setting The Stage For An Irrevocable Split Of The Party

Feb 09, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

If there is one thing that is clear as we end this truly insane week it is that it was a good one for President Donald Trump.

Between his acquittal in the Senate over an impeachment that is the apotheosis of three years of patent nonsense and the fiasco that were the Iowa caucuses, Trump comes out of this first week of February in better shape than he's been since he won the election back in 2016.

The Democrats have made a complete mockery of their candidate selection process. At least back in 2016 when Trump knocked people off one by one the GOP didn't openly try to rig primaries against him.

Of course, Trump isn't as much of an outsider as he portrays himself, so his real threat to the entrenched political establishment in The Swamp was never as great as someone like, say, Ron Paul's was in 2012.

But the depths the DNC are willing to dig deep to in order to stop Bernie Sanders from being their nominee are truly breathtaking. In 2016, the Clinton machine had declared her the candidate. Bernie was getting in the way of her coronation as the first woman president.

In 2020, however, no one actually running for the Democratic nomination, except maybe Bernie Sanders in a perfect world, can actually beat Donald Trump. So, the whole process is really academic at this point.

Honestly, after this week the only person who can beat Trump nationally is Trump himself. So, that leaves me with 65/35 odds he'll be re-elected.

But with impeachment behind him, an agenda of retribution against his accusers ahead of him and a Democratic party deep in the preparations for committing ritualistic suicide Trump should have no problem carrying at least as many states as he did in 2016.

Caitlyn Johnstone believes that the DNC's ineptitude is a ruse, a clever ploy to look stupid and corrupt but doing so to ensure their preferred outcome, which is a brokered convention and the return of Hillary Clinton from the grave, as I said recently , "like some zombie whose head we forgot to cut off."

While I love Ms. Johnstone's thesis, I think she's missing the much more salient point. As the Democrats flop from one fiasco to the next, they are doing two very important things.

This is why no matter who is eventually declared the winner in Iowa, the winner there is Donald Trump.

And, guess what? There's only 49 more states like this to go!

I'm really regretting swearing off popcorn.

The good news is that, for now, the markets recognize that the biggest threat to U.S. political stability has been averted. Stocks bolted to new all-time highs after Trump's acquittal, but couldn't follow through to end the week.

It only gets better from here if the DNC is set on sowing distrust, chaos beneath a veneer of practiced stupidity.

So, while there are a number of sincere challenges to global growth both right in front of us (the coronavirus) and far ahead of us (the growing insolvency of the European financial system now that Brexit is finished) equity markets are more than capable of rallying for the next few sessions.

But expect volatility to increase from here. The dollar is strengthening. While the euro narrowly avoided a catastrophic January close last Friday, the dominant bear trend reasserted itself with a vengeance this week, breaking below the all-important $1.10 level.

And that should finally see eurobond prices begin to collapse. The rally we've seen over the past two weeks has been nothing short of ridiculous. A classic 'false move.'

Oil is now in a bear market after 2018's reaction high above $86 per barrel Brent and the terrible results and guidance from industry leaders this week like Exxon-Mobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) only reinforce that view. If not for some noises from OPEC+ and the hopes that Russia will go along with extending current production cuts kept Brent from collapsing further this week as shorts piled on early.

But everything comes down to King Dollar and whether real fear which lurks just behind the headlines grips the plumbing of global markets, which had an outstanding week.

This surge in the dollar confirms the December low as significant which sets up a difficult few months. Given everything else we're experiencing from the shutdown of major Chinese cities, travel, etc. there's every reason to be cautious here even if the equity markets keep grinding higher, though I'd expect a whole lotta grinding sideways from both equities and gold while this goes on.

Expect a lot of this schizophrenic behavior as capital sloshes from stem to stern trying to figure out where it should best be deployed in this age of central bank heroin .

The central banks are still desperate to keep a lid on volatility to extend the lie that they have things under control, but if that's the case then why is the Fed still having to deal with repo market interventions being oversubscribed and the rate creeping back up toward its target Fed Funds rate and IOER (Interest on Excess Reserves)?

They've lost control over the short end of the yield curve.

And that's where things get interesting for this election cycle.

For Trump, the primary season should work out well as the Democrats continue imploding. And I have no doubt he will now go on the warpath to take down those who he rightly feels wronged him and the country. And he'll be merciless on Twitter using it to goad the Democrats into even more lunacy, more mistakes.

This is what he truly excels at and it will all but guarantee him surviving any crises that appear on the horizon between now and November.

For now, New Hampshire is next. Bernie should win the most votes it in a walk. But the real winner, regardless of anything else will be Trump.

* * *

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Alice-the-dog , 7 minutes ago link

DNC is trying to drive Bernie and Tulsi out of the party. What they don't realize is that doing so will irrevocably drive more than their supporters out as well, as the party faithful realize their faith is unfounded.

HRClinton , 11 hours ago link

Let's not gloat too much here.

The GOP Old Guard screwed over the Libertarian wing also for years. Exhibit A: Ron Paul.

It boils down to this:

It does not matter if you are Democrat leaning or Republican leaning. As soon as you attempt to do any real and fundamental change, banksters bring out their big guns and fund whatever candidate or party to maintain the status quo. US elections are about tinkering around the edges, never about fundamental improvements that would be to the detriment of the banksters.

If you have an IQ >100, more than one testicle and the mental clarity, then you know that the true enemy is and always has been: International Banksters. Without them there could be no MIC, no Wars, no welfare for the rich and no excess of socialism for the poor. Without them, perpetual deficit financing would be impossible. They alone are the financial drug dealers who keep everyone addicted.

Nothing will change until you bring out the proverbial pitchforks, rope and guillotines.

LightBeamCowboy , 12 hours ago link

"But with impeachment behind him, an agenda of retribution against his accusers ahead of him ..."

An "agenda of retribution" is exactly what Dems want us to think this is. But when these cases reach court, we'll find out that they are just normal criminal prosecutions, for real crimes, with real evidence, that would have been brought to the arrest phase a long time ago except that Trump has taken all the time necessary to gather evidence on the one hand, and to let the Dems exhaust their quiver of anti-Trump arrows on the other. Think back to July 5th, 2016 when James Comey went in front of the cameras and rattled off a long list of serious crimes by Hillary and then said she wasn't going to be prosecuted. Trump could have brought charges on January 20th, 2017 but he didn't. These last three years have been the largest, most thorough criminal investigation, of the largest number of people, in human history. Brace yourself for the next phase. And BTW, the sealed indictments are up to 144,844 nationwide.

Mzhen , 11 hours ago link

November 9, 2019 -- "I caught the Swamp. I caught them all. Let's see what happens."

stevesmith- , 15 hours ago link

If were not for Bernie Sanders single-handily, we would not have 'democratic socialism' whatever that means...no one in the democratic party pushes socialism like he does...somehow Warren got 'tied up in the moment' and went with Medicare for All, then backed off. Let him win the nomination, he will be crushed, like Jeremy Corbyn, and the the USA 'socialist movement' will end...there are NO young Bernie Sanders out there...so another 4 years of Trump, but the democrats can remake themselves more center focused. If the Republicans win President, Senate and House, good chance for rebound as usually the ruling party takes the hit and dems get their chance again 2024...their is always hope. New leadership (Schumer, Pelosi and Perez) will also be needed required for a new era.

rtb61 , 16 hours ago link

The Democrats are not imploding, the scam that turned the Democrat Party, the workers party, into another Republican party another bosses party, is failing. The democrats were more corrupt than the Republicans because the Clinton's sold the Democrats to the Corporations, pretended to be the workers party, whilst kicking all the workers out.

The scam is ending. Now the scam where the Republican party was stolen from conservative libertarians to the Corporations, also needs to be tackled.

The USA is a very long way from being a democracy.

uhland62 , 16 hours ago link

Sanders and Gabbard can never be elected to high office. America gets it up on destroying other countries with wars.

As long as America rules the waves there can be no peace - peace candidates will be sidelined in all manner of ways.

algol_dog , 17 hours ago link

I disagree that Sanders can't beat Trump. It's 4 more years later, with another 4 years extra of youth able to vote for this guy. It's been stated before, the new generations have been brought up suckling on the socialist tit of the American school system and media for over 20+ years and they are as indoctrinated as any 20th Century socialist enthusiast. Only a matter of time before the chickens come home to roost. With Trump the battle may have been won, but the war will likely be lost unless something drastically changes. - My $.02

HRClinton , 17 hours ago link

In another ZH article, Steve Banning pointed out that both Sanders and Trump have identified fundamental/similar problems in the country, but that they differ on how to solve them. Not sure about that being true of reality.

I'd argue that both parties are destroying the US with Crony Capitalism and Bifurcated Socialism.

Crony capitalism is letting the rich (1%) get richer.

Bifurcated Socialism is where the TBTF and the MIC get obscene amounts of fiat money on one extreme, and the very poor get just enough welfare to keep them from starting a French Revolution.

Everyone else in the middle (the 20-99%) has to deal with Darwinian Capitalism - survival of the fittest.

The only true winners are the banks and (((those))) closest to the source of money creation, because both militarism and socialism keep increasing the debt burden . Alas, 99.9% off the population and 95% of ZH bloggers fail to see this, and will opt to attack one side or the other - in this Banksters game of Divide and Conquer.

USAllDay , 16 hours ago link

Central Banking is antithesis to Free Markets. The cost of interest is price fixed by a monopoly bank. Not only can the FED create money, but with that money they create artificial demand. The wealth gap will never close so long as the Federal Reserve exist.

[Feb 08, 2020] The Game is Rigged by Paul Street

Feb 07, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
Let's not beat around the bush. The game is rigged. The fix is in.

I'm not just talking about the neofascistic Donald Trump, the Republican Party, the Republican-controlled United States Senate and the fake-impeachment trial that body just concluded. I'm talking about their neoliberal enablers, the Democrats too.

Certain Depressing Things Explained

The deeply conservative corporate and imperialist Democratic Party politics and media complex is determined to deny the progressive neo-New Deal Democrat Bernie Sanders the presidential nomination.

So what if Sanders is the Democratic presidential candidate most likely to organize the working- and lower-class the corporate Democrats – the nation's Inauthentic Opposition Party of Fake Resistance (IOPFR)– have been betraying demobilizing for decades?

So what if this makes Sanders the most electable candidate against an incumbent president and a party that pose existential fascistic and ecocidal threats to what's left of democracy, the republic, and life itself?

So what if Sanders' key policy proposals, including Single Payer health insurance (health care as a human right) and a Green New Deal (to put millions to work trying to roll back the soulless capitalist destruction of livable ecology) are urgently required for the common good and human survival?

So what if Sanders' proposals are conservative in relation to the savage scale of the inequality and environmental destruction neoliberal class rule has been inflicting for several decades on Americans and livable ecology?

So what if nearly half (47%) of Sanders supporters will not commit to voting for the Democratic presidential candidate in November if it isn't Bernie, making it likely that any other candidate is likely to usher in the tragedy of a second Trump term?

The Democratic establishment is determined to stop Sanders at all costs. As I've been saying for years, the corporate Democrats prefer to lose to the ever more viciously right-wing Republicans and the demented fascist oligarch Trump than to the moderately left wing of their own party.

This is why the establishment Democrats and their many media allies (at the New York Times , the Washington Post , Politico , The Hill , CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and elsewhere) have issued repeated dire warnings over the supposed "radical Leftism" and "extremism" of the mildly social-democratic Sanders.

It's why Democratic Party-affiliated funders and media opened the campaign season by touting the clownish center-right dementia victim Joe Biden as their "front-runner."

It's why those funders and media shifted to the slimy Wall Street plaything Pete Butiggieg after Biden re-exposed himself and pseudo-liberal Kamala Harris proved unable to stand strong in the "pragmatic" center-right Clinton-Obama-Tony Blair-Emanuel Macron lane.

It's why the establishment "liberal" media harps constantly on Sanders' supposed un-electability even as polls show him solidly beating Trump.

It's why former Barack Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, former global derivatives trader and right-wing MSDNC (I mean MSNBC) host Stephanie (class-) Ruhle, and the noxious neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol recently joined forces on MSNBC to viciously denounce Sanders as "the worst candidate" to run against Trump.

It's why the Democratic National Committee is working to reinstate the authoritarian veto power of unelected establishment "superdelegates" on the first ballot of the Democratic National Convention – a move clearly driven by establishment fears that Sanders could accumulate enough delegates to sweep to a first ballot victory under current rules.

It's the reason for the Elizabeth Warren-CNN hit job in the last Iowa Democratic presidential debate – the one where Warren and the cable network conspired to falsely smear Sanders as a sexist.

It's why MSDNC and CNN went into overdrive trying to portray Sanders' campaign as "divisive" after Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib responded to Hillary Clinton's malicious personal attacks on Sanders with an ill-timed reaction MSDNC blew up into "the boo heard around the world."

It's why MSDNC and CNN have played along with Hillary Clinton's despicable and false claim thar Sanders didn't work hard to help Mrs. Clinton's (horrific and depressing) campaign during the 2016 general election.

It's why the Democratic Party has changed its presidential debate qualification rules so that mega-billionaire and center-right Republocrat Mike Bloomberg can ascend to the top candidate stage on a magic carpet of money after skipping the campaign process in the early caucus and primary states.

It's why the insufferable MSDNC bully Chris Matthews (the Ted Baxter of cable news) lost what little composure he has when Sanders' campaign co-chair Nina Turner accurately called Bloomberg "an oligarch" (more on this amusing and revealing episode below).

It's why the New York Times has been running deceptive commentaries warning falsely about the supposed "radical extremism," "fiscal irresponsibility," "rudeness" and "nonviability" of Sanders and his backers.

It's why the California Democratic Party's centrist managers are doing their best to make it difficult for independents to vote for Sanders, the state's leading presidential candidate.

It's probably why the Des Moines Register Star (which endorsed Elizabeth "Capitalist in my Bones" Warren) strangely decided not to release its usual "gold standard" Iowa poll of the state's first-in-the-national caucus-goers prior to the big (and shockingly wrecked) event last Monday.

It's why the Times, CNN, and MSNBC (the last outfit is broadcast media's ground-zero for fake-progressive Wall Street centrism ) tout Butiggieg as the winner of Iowa's spoiled caucus even though Sanders won the same number of state delegates and triumphed decisively in the popular vote (please see and disseminate Fairness and Accuracy in Media's reflection on "How Corporate Media Makes Pete Look Like He's Winning").

It's why CNN anchors smirkingly opine that Sanders "under-performed" and "failed to meet expectations" even after he won the Caucus.

Iowa Black-Apped

And it's likely why the Iowa Caucus got app-f*#^ed, with the contest's results rendered unavailable to the public for days. The deadly Shadow app's "failure" and the mind-boggling dysfunction and confusion of the error-ridden count that followed (so extreme that we'll probably never know the real numbers) robbed Sanders of a momentum-building election night victory speech – and gave Trump another reason to gloat about the pathetic nature of the Democratic Party.

It turns out that the Shadow app that crashed the Iowa Caucus and threw Sanders' Iowa victory down the media memory hole was less than politically neutral. Hardly known for leftist conspiracy theorizing, USA Today offered some chilling reflections the morning after:

'What's this about Shadow and where did the app come from? The app was created by a company called Shadow Inc., and issued by Jimmy Hickey of Shadow Inc., metadata of the program that the Des Moines Register analyzed Tuesday shows . A LinkedIn profile for James Hickey lists him as COO of Shadow and an engineering manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Two other former Clinton campaign workers, former Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, co-founded Shadow The New York Times has reported that ACRONYM – a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 "to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters," according to its website – supported Shadow . Its founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign , The Los Angeles Times reported . Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price, who also worked as Clinton's 2016 Iowa political director, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday about the relationship between the party and Shadow, which it paid $63,184 for website development and travel expenses '

It gets worse. According to the Los Angeles Times , in an article titled "Tech Firm Started by Clinton Campaign Veterans Linked to Iowa Caucus Debacle": " Among Shadow's clients is Pete Buttegieg's presidential campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for 'software rights and subscriptions,' according to disclosures to the FEC."

So, Shadow, Inc. got money from Wall Street Pete (from the financial sector via Butiggieg, that is), a former consultant with the infamously dark and globalist McKinsey Company and a onetime U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer.

Further feeding the sense of the Iowa Caucus Debacle as a CIA/military intelligence Black Op, Butiggieg proclaimed himself the Iowa victor with zero precincts reporting last Monday night! How Juan Guaido was that?

It worked. The fact that Sanders won Iowa was turned into a public non-fact. The confusion bought Mayor Pete a couple of days to take some undeserved victory laps across the "liberal" media, boosting him in New Hampshire.

The Democrats Did "More to Undermine Faith in Our Elections than Russia Ever Could"

No talking head has captured the evil of it all more effectively and bitingly than The Hill 's Krystal Ball yesterday morning. Her comments merit transcription and lengthy quotation:

"Let [this sink in]: Twitter is doing a better, more accurate job of tabulating the results than the Democratic Party. What else might be wrong through incompetence, malice, or a combination of both, God only knows. But as if that's not enough, after Pete claimed a fake victory thanks to the complicity of the Iowa Democratic Party and the media, it turns out that, surprise, surprise, they saved the best precincts for Bernie Sanders to be counted and included last, because of course they did. I'm sure it was all just a coincidence , though, guys. And meanwhile, a new tracking poll shows that Pete's fake win in Iowa has given him a big boost in New Hampshire, lifting him 9 points in 3 days."

"What is truly criminal to me, though, is this: the people who gave Bernie Sanders this hard-fought and well-deserved win are people like this: immigrant workers at a pork-processing plant, who had to fight to even be able to cast their ballots in a caucus that conflicted with their work schedule. They were the very first to vote and among the last to be counted. For four days, their voice and their vote were completely erased, as were the Latinos who participated in satellite caucuses and went overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders. It is absolutely outrageous ."

" Do you remember the endless, three-year rant at RussiaGate and over how a foreign power spending a million or two over a month on lousy, ungrammatical Facebook ads inside a billion dollar election was the biggest threat to our constitutional republic and was material to Hillary's loss in 2016? Let's be completely clear here . The Democratic Party in Iowa has done more to undermine faith in our elections than Russia ever could . Period. But don't expect a Democratic House to hold months-long hearings into the Iowa Caucus debacle. Don't expect any degree of self-reflection on the part of the party bosses and consultant grifters who deserve to be fired en masse . Instead, the same folks who think they should be able to take the nomination from Bernie with their Superdelegates, the same folks who tweak the process so it suits them, the same folks who are now leaking out partial wrong results in a mockery of manipulation masquerading as transparency these people will continue to run the Democratic Party in Iowa and elsewhere until and unless an anti-establishment candidate like Bernie throws them all out. ."

" Single moms arranged babysitters to participate in this caucus. Nurses gave up shifts, lost 12 hours of pay to participate in this caucus. People rolled in with their wheelchairs. They weren't with their kids or doing their college homework Volunteers donated hundreds of thousands of hours of time. Banging on doors, hosting house parties, managing selfie lines, and all for what? So that all that time, all that energy could be turned into a giant joke that makes everyone who participated in the process feel like a fool ."

"People that we invite into this process are made a sacred promise that this activity s meaningful and necessary. And then to watch such manifest incompetence, cronyism, obfuscation, and selective disclosure in what is supposed to be the most critical election of our lifetime makes a joke out of democracy and spread cynicism like the Coranavirus of the civic soul This whole democracy looks like a Potemkin Village farce where the GOP and Democratic Party insiders seem to almost laugh at the rubes who take this whole thing as serious and sacred ."

I've never had the same degree of faith n U.S. electoral politics that Ms. Ball (who would likely and wrongly consider me a victim and purveyor of cynicism) seems to have had in the past, but that is an extremely powerful denunciation of what happened to Sanders and his backers – and the democratic ideal – in Iowa this week.

(At least we know for certain that voters are ready to pull the rusty chain on Joe Pool Chain Biden. Too bad for the companies who were gearing up to mass produce record players for the poor in response to Joe "Record Players for the Poor" Biden's promise of Vinyl New Deal.)

This is Who the Democrats Are

Butiggieg knows he's never going to be president. "Alfred E. Neuman's" role is to muddle public perceptions, screwing Warren and Sanders in the early states to help set up "Mini-Mike" Bloomberg (I am borrowing Trump's frankly clever nicknames for these right-wing candidate), who is Wall Street's next Great Stop Sanders Hope in the wake of "Sleepy Joe's" predictable (and widely predicted) collapse.

MSDNC is cable news central for the IOPFR's Campaign to Stop Sanders and Re-Elect the Neofascist Trump with Yet Another Centrist Neoliberal Creep. Two days ago, the network's "Morning Joe" hosts used the very Iowa fiasco that their on-the-ground ideological comrades created to promote Bloomberg and Super Tuesday as the alternatives to "radical" Bernie and the early caucus and primaries. The "progressive" Kissingerian network (I've heard MSNBC hosts praise the blood-drenched war criminal Henry Kissinger on numerous occasions) didn't try hide its corporatist agenda to any serious degree.

"Democrats," a popular Internet meme featuring pictures of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi runs, "are afraid that American voters are going to interfere in the 2020 election."

Thank you. Exactly right.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. The Democratic Party isn't about social justice, democracy, and/or environmental sanity. It isn't even primarily about winning elections. "History's second most enthusiastic capitalist party" (as former Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips once accurately described the Democrats) is about serving "elite" corporate and financial sponsors above all, and those sponsors prefer a second fascistic Trump term to a mildly progressive first Sanders one.

Oligarchs "Take Advantage of a Broken and Dysfunctional System"

In an amusing and telling episode on MSNBC prior to the Caucus, Nina Turner told Chris Matthews that voters worry about "the oligarchs" who buy American elections. "Do you think Mike Bloomberg is an oligarch?!" an outraged Matthews asked. "He is," Turner retorted. "He skipped Iowa. Iowans should be insulted. Buying his way into this race, period. The DNC changed the rules. They didn't change it for Senator Harris. They didn't change it for Senator Booker. They didn't change it for Secretary Castro."

Thank you. Exactly right.

Matthews then incredulously asked Turner is she really believed Bloomberg purchased his way into the presidential debates – as if there is the slightest hint of a scintilla of an iota of a sliver of a wisp of a rumor of a scent of doubt about.

After Matthews finished idiotically interrogating Turner, MSDNC anchor Brian Williams turned to MSDNC pundit Jason Johnson. Johnson also disapproved of Ms. Turner's description of the oligarch Bloomberg as an oligarch.

"Oligarchy, in our particular terminology," Johnson intoned, "makes you think of a rich person who got their money off of oil in Russia, who is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional system."

You can't make shit like that up! No, Jason Johnson: imperialist, Russophobic, and American Exceptionalist doctrine and bad reporting make you think that way. Merriam-Webster defines "oligarchy" as: "government by the few; a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes." There's an abundance of solid academic research showing that the United States today fits the definition very well. Here are four for Johnson to start with: Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What we Can Do About It (University of Chicago, 2018), Ron Formisano, American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (University of Illinois, 2017); Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (Cambridge University Press, 2011, with the United States as a leading case study); Paul Street, They Rule: They 1% v. Democracy (Routledge, 2014).

Concerned about rich people "taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional system"? Look no further than the world's self-proclaimed "greatest democracy"! No other "democracy" in the so-called developed world remotely matches the United States of Dark Money when it comes to giving big donors unregulated power in their national electoral processes. Along with other and related characteristics of its election and party system -- winner-take-all contests with no proportional representation, rampant partisan gerrymandering of election districts, voter registration problems, corporate media bias and the "federalist" decentralization and partisan control of U.S. election process -- this plutocratic campaign finance free-for-all is why the Electoral Integrity Project (a research undertaking funded by the Australian Research Council with a team of researchers based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University) ranks the democratic election integrity of U.S. elections below that of all 19 North and Western European democracies and also below that of 10 other nations in the Americas (Costa Rica, Uruguay, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Jamaica, Grenada, Argentina, Barbados and Peru), 10 nations in Central and Eastern Europe, 9 Asian-Pacific countries, 2 countries in the Middle East (Israel and Tunisia) and 6 African nations. The U.S. ranks dead last among "Western democracies."

Don't take it from a radical eco-Marxist like me. As the distinguished liberal political scientists Page (Northwestern) and Gilens (Princeton) showed in their expertly researched 2017 book mentioned above:

"the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans actually have had little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups – especially business corporations – have had much more political clout. When they are taken into account, it becomes apparent that the general public has been virtually powerless Majorities of Americans favor programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut 'corporate welfare.' Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies [and programs] (emphasis added)."

The Table is Tilted: Beyond the Cynical Brilliance of George Carlin

It was nice of the professors to quantify and document what working-class Americans have always known: money talks, bullshit walks. My old Finish socialist Aunt Mary (a high school graduate who worked for decades as a department store clerk in downtown Elgin, Illinois) understood Page and Gilens' point very well. In the famous words of George Carlin:

"There's a reason education sucks and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you've got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the REAL owners, now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions -- forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they've got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear."

"They gotcha by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want -- they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting f***ed by the system that threw them overboard 30 f***ing years ago. They don't want that."

"You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe -- what to think -- and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care."

" They don't give a fuck about you, they don't They don't care about you – at all. At all, At all. At all. At all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care that's what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue d**k that's being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth -- it's called the American Dream 'cuz you have to be asleep to believe it."

The problem with Carlin's brilliant rant is of course it's extreme, well, cynicism. Millions upon millions of Americans do notice and do care . They aren't asleep . They are capable of critical thinking. They very much want to un-rig the game, level the table, and change the system – make a people's democratic revolution and save humanity. I run into and talk to and try to energize and learn and get energy from these people regularly. They haven't surrendered to the American authoritarian-sexist-racist-nativist-nationalist-fascist nightmare yet.

I share with many of these people a basic underlying spiritual sense that giving up and letting the owners – our financial and political owners, yes – win is irrational and indeed morally corrupt. Let's say the chances of collapsing the nation's un-elected and interrelated dictatorships of money, empire, white-supremacism, and patriarchy are just 3 or 2 or even 1 in 10 (I think the real odds may be much higher). Why bring them down to zero by giving in to fatalism – to "it's never going to change?" It makes no sense to give up: you lose nothing by believing in the possibility of democratic transformation and revolutionary change; you lose everything by not believing. Try some radical existentialism!

Tactical Support

Should people caucus and vote for Bernie in the rigged Democratic Party nomination process? Sure, for three reasons. First, there's a(n admittedly slim) chance Sanders could prevail and lead the enactment of changes that would make a very positive difference in peoples' lives and capacity to fight back against American Oligarchy, which is now taking significant steps towards openly authoritarian rule.

Second, doing some work with the Sanders campaign puts you in contact with masses of people who are changing all the time (like all phenomena), people-in-process who are capable of engaging on the critical topics of how and why we must move beyond the rigged games and systems that capture and depress our energies and how and why we must begin to organize for a real revolution.

Third, even if he doesn't win, it's good to make the screwing over of Sanders as transparent and instructive as possible. This could help motivate millions of Americans to break in revolutionary fashion from a "broken and dysfunctional [American] system" of class rule. It could help spark millions to join a people's movement that works beneath and beyond the rigged elections cycle and system to heroically reclaim the commons and save humanity.

There's a lot of good and potentially radical energy out there. It needs to go somewhere positive once the "coffin of class consciousness" (in the words of the radical historian Alan Dawley ) that is the American ballot box fails to deliver yes yet once again. The capitalists hardly restrict their political pressure to the electoral process – just wait to see what happens if Sanders (somewhat miraculously) makes it into the White House. We must and can develop an anti-capitalist (and now anti-fascist) politics that fights back in ways that transcend those savagely time-staggered moments when our owners permit us to make marks next to the names of politicians who can generally be trusted to put their own interests above ours and those of the common good.

"Except for the rare few," Howard Zinn once wrote, "our representatives are politicians, and will surrender their integrity, claiming to be 'realistic.' We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth." Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Paul Street Paul Street's latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)

[Feb 08, 2020] The 2020 Democratic Candidates and Foreign Policy

Notable quotes:
"... Sanders and Warren have set themselves apart from the field in having the most credible foreign policy visions and the strongest commitments to bringing our many unnecessary wars to an end. Biden remains wedded to too many outdated and unworkable policies, and just on foreign policy alone Bloomberg is running in the wrong party's primary. Buttigieg is the least formally qualified top presidential candidate on the Democratic side, and his inability or unwillingness to answer most of these questions shows that. If the moderators bother to ask them about foreign policy, the candidates will have another opportunity to address these issues in the debate tonight, and Buttigieg won't be able to get away with saying nothing. ..."
Feb 08, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Most of the candidates' responses were predictable. Biden's North Korea policy would be every bit as unrealistic as Trump's, but he shows even less willingness to negotiate. Bloomberg's positions were unsurprisingly the most hawkish of the bunch. If there was an option for using force, he was for it. All of the candidates were unfortunately in agreement with defining Russia as an enemy.

One of the weirder questions asked the candidates whether they would consider using force to "preempt" a nuclear or missile test by either Iran or North Korea. Only Yang and Warren said no. It isn't clear how many of them were serious and how many were just making fun of the absurdity of the question, but it is disturbing that most of the candidates asked about this would entertain taking military action against another country because of a test. Maybe it doesn't need to be said because it is so obvious, but using force to stop a nuclear or missile test is not "preemption" in any sense of the term. A test is not an attack to be preempted, and taking military action to prevent a test would be nothing less than an unprovoked, illegal act of aggression. To her credit, Warren recognizes how dangerous such an attack would be:

No. Using force against a nuclear power or high-risk adversary carries immense risk for broader conflict. Using force when not necessary can be dangerously counterproductive. Again, I will only use force if there is a vital national security interest at risk, a strategy with clear and achievable objectives, and an understanding and acceptance of the long-term costs.

In general, Warren's answers were the most substantive and careful. She not only answered the questions that were put to her, but she gave some explanation of why she took that position and why it was the appropriate thing to do. She correctly rejected Trump's regime change policy in Venezuela, and acknowledged that "Trump's reckless actions have only further worsened the suffering of the Venezuelan people." On North Korea, she remained open to continuing direct talks with Kim Jong-un, but qualified that by saying, "I would be willing to meet with Kim if it advances substantive negotiations, but not as a vanity project." Her negotiating position was similarly reasonable: "A pragmatic approach to diplomacy requires give and take on both sides, not demands that one side unilaterally disarm first." Both Warren and Sanders correctly criticized Trump for the illegal assassination of Soleimani, and they recognized that the president's escalation had put Americans at greater risk. When asked about taking military action against Iran, Warren rejected the idea of a war with Iran and said the following:

I want to end America's wars in the Middle East, not start a new one with Iran. The litmus test I will use for any military action against Iran is the same that I will use as I consider any military action anywhere in the world. I will not send our troops into harm's way unless there is a vital national security interest at risk, a strategy with clear and achievable objectives, and an understanding and acceptance of the long-term costs. We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary role in deciding to engage militarily.

The most revealing set of responses came from Pete Buttigieg in that he gave very few responses and had remarkably little to say about his plans. He failed to answer most of the questions he was asked. Of the 36 individual questions included in the 11 sections, he answered only 17 by my count, and many of those were recycled clips from previous speeches, interviews, and debate statements. Despite leaning heavily on his military service in Afghanistan in his campaigning, he failed to answer all of the questions asked about Afghanistan and the U.S. war there. Buttigieg's failure to respond to most of these questions underscores the former mayor's lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge, and it shows that after almost a year his campaign still doesn't have their foreign policy worked out.

Sanders and Warren have set themselves apart from the field in having the most credible foreign policy visions and the strongest commitments to bringing our many unnecessary wars to an end. Biden remains wedded to too many outdated and unworkable policies, and just on foreign policy alone Bloomberg is running in the wrong party's primary. Buttigieg is the least formally qualified top presidential candidate on the Democratic side, and his inability or unwillingness to answer most of these questions shows that. If the moderators bother to ask them about foreign policy, the candidates will have another opportunity to address these issues in the debate tonight, and Buttigieg won't be able to get away with saying nothing.


MPC a day ago

I don't trust Warren on this, her flimsiness and pandering and propensity to outright lie remind me too much of Romney (who speak of the devil got a backbone for once this week!).

Bernie is definitely the best bet for a softer foreign policy.

=marco01= MPC a day ago
Warren is one of the most honest politicians. Check her Politifact file, she does far better than even Bernie. Of course neither compares to Trump, his Politifact file is a Pants on Fire dumpster fire.

The one thing, and it's only one thing, that causes you to say this is the controversy over her ancestry. But I don't believe she lied, she was raised with the family lore that she had native ancestry and she believed that family lore.

Tom Riddle =marco01= 21 hours ago
If I had a dollar for every white midwesterner who told me that they had Native ancenstry, I wouldn't be typing comments on disqus, that's for sure. My personal internet comment typer would be doing the typing for me as I dictated from my throne of mammon.
=marco01= Tom Riddle 16 hours ago
Sure, but that was her family lore. Apparently it was spoken a lot of when she was growing up.

Her DNA test puts her Native ancestor from around the time of the Revolution, it's easy to see how that could start a family legend.

Tom Riddle =marco01= 14 hours ago
Im not even really disagreeing. Even if she was wrong, I find it wild that these attacks on her are playing well in Trumpville, since white midwesterners (my people) falsely claiming Native heritage is a most common genre.
=marco01= Tom Riddle 3 hours ago
As we've seen with their support of Trump, conservatives don't seem to have much of a problem with hypocrisy.

They'll gleefully attack someone for something they are even more guilty of.

cka2nd 20 hours ago • edited
I wonder why Gabbard failed to respond to the survey (as per a note on the bottom of the Times' page). A missed chance on her part.
Wally 8 hours ago
This is why I'm voting for Warren in my states primary next month. I just hope she's still in the race!
cka2nd Wally 5 hours ago
My guess is that after South Carolina it will be Sanders vs. Bloomberg vs. one of the other more mainstream Dems, either Mayor Pete, Warren (she's been tacking to the mainstream, right on economics and "left" on wokeness) or Biden, in that order. A fall-off in funding will knock everyone else out of the race (or a failure to move the voting needle if Steyer is self-funding).

[Feb 08, 2020] Are the Bells Tolling for Amy, Liz Joe by Pat Buchanan

A Rockefeller and a Rothschild?
Feb 08, 2020 | www.unz.com

... Biden's fundraising has fallen off, and it is unlikely major donors are going to send cash to a candidate who just ran fourth in Iowa and could run fourth or fifth in New Hampshire.

...Klobuchar is now in the second tier in New Hampshire, behind Sanders and Buttigieg, but right alongside Biden and Warren. A third-, fourth- or fifth-place finish would be near-fatal for them all.

...As for Warren, in her battle with Sanders to emerge as the champion of the progressive wing of the party, her third-place finish in Iowa, and her expected third-place finish in New Hampshire, at best, would seem to settle that issue for this election.


Buck Ransom , says: Show Comment February 7, 2020 at 1:38 am GMT

Uncle Joe's presidential road show may be a bore and a bust, but the upcoming expose of Biden & Son International, Inc. should provide a dumpster-load of drama and comedy all summer long. I wonder how many special guest appearances there will be by the Kerrys, the Clintons, the Obamas and other nice folks Joe knows from DC.
Prester John , says: Show Comment February 7, 2020 at 5:29 pm GMT
@Buck Ransom That reminds me. Obama was Biden's putative "boss" during the Ukrainian transaction. What did he know and when did he know it?
follyofwar , says: Show Comment February 7, 2020 at 5:46 pm GMT
@anon IMHO, Bloomberg is ... just one year younger than Bernie, so this is his final rodeo too.

...After the Iowa deep state operation, (it was NOT incompetence), it is clear that the PTB will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to ensure that Socialist Sanders is not the nominee. Remember, he already has a heart condition. Just sayin'.

The very part-time mayor of South Bend will soon be yesterday's news after South Carolina. Unlike suburban whites, blacks have too much common sense to vote for a homosexual.

Servant of Gla'aki , says: Show Comment February 7, 2020 at 8:39 pm GMT
@BingoBoingo

Mayor Pete's their attempt to groom a new one young, but he seems just as unelectable.

Blacks, men in particular, simply won't vote for Pete Buttigieg. They'll stay home in droves, and more than a few will vote for Trump.

If Buttigieg is the nominee, Election night will look like a Republican landslide straight out of the 1980s.

anon [833] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment February 7, 2020 at 9:22 pm GMT
@follyofwar If it ends up Bloomberg vs Trump what we've got in this country will have transmogrified further from an oligarchy to a full blown aristocracy–certainly a plutocracy–where only billionaires can afford to play king. That race won't be Dems vs GOPers, as both gentlemen have posed as one before switching to the other for simple expedience. Who will be the veep candidates? A Rockefeller and a Rothschild?
KenH , says: Show Comment February 8, 2020 at 12:31 pm GMT
Bootyjudge is just a short, gay and white version of Obama. But he typifies a government bureaucrat in that he's politically left wing, sexually deviant and hates normal, everyday Americans especially if their skin is white.

The DNC knows that if Biden were to win the nomination he'll commit so many gaffes, like burbling about corn pop, his hairy legs and enjoying kids sitting on his lap, among other things, that Trump would have a field day on Twitter and easily win a second term.

So it's shaping up to be a contest between orange Jebulus vs. anal Pete. By the time the presidential debates arrive both candidates will be vowing to crush white nationalism and improve the lives of black and brown people. White people need not apply.

Nevertheless, Trump's cult like almost all white base will cheer madly for a man who claims to represent them in words only, but almost never in deeds.

Zach , says: Show Comment Next New Comment February 8, 2020 at 7:57 pm GMT
@Adrian E. Everyone seems to forget that Sanders will be 79 in 2021...

[Feb 07, 2020] Moving independents is the primary task for Sanders

Highly recommended!
Many independents will abandon Trump in 2020. Trump lost all anti-war independents faction, for sure. His openly pro-isreal position will cost him some nationalists.
I think Sanders can knockout Trump by appointing Tulsi as the VP.
Feb 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ObjectiveFunction , February 7, 2020 at 11:04 am

Sanders understands (as does Trump), that the 2020 battle is *not* for the 35-40% whose minds are basically made up at each end. Trying to win those over in any numbers (especially by shrieking invective at them) is a pathetic waste of time and effort.

The winning message must move the 20-30% of voters who either:

(a) voted Obama (hope, for something more than soothing patter) and then Trump (a giant stubby middle finger to the establishment).
(b) voted Obama in 2008 but have stayed at home since (what's the point? they're all lying scum)

Sanders simply doesn't bring socialism to America, because he doesn't have a New Deal (i.e. SocDem) party. That kind of movement will take time (and the upcoming global climatolo-economic crisis) to build up, under savage attack from the propertied unterests and continuously subverted by credentialed PMC weasels and Idpol misleadership grifters.

What Sanders the man *does* bring, today, is:

(1) unimpeachable integrity, steadfastness and sorely missed absence of smug BS and double talk;
(2) hardheaded enforcement of the existing laws of the land;
(3) delivery of universal Concrete Material Benefits© to the broad citizenry (not more 'GDP' gravy for the oligarchs) in finite time, freeing them to rejuvenate themselves, and over time, the Republic.

This last is vitally important, but must also be approached prudently lest the entire movement lose focus, overextend and fall prey to the next Trump .

IMHO, it must focus ruthlessly on delivering:

(a) single payer health care, to starve (if not incinerate) the bloated ticks gorging on the US health/elder 'care' . cesspool, I can't bring myself to call it a 'system'. This above all: without it, Americans simply can't compete in any world, walls and tariffs or not.

(b) *real* infrastructure, for the 80%. That's water and sewerage, cross-class public housing, and busways and light rail to coax Americans out of their cars and suburbs. It's not 5G, vanity EVs and high speed Acelas. And sorry Keynesians, shovel ready is a side benefit, not the primary purpose. There's a lot to do.

(c) an overhaul of American higher education (still rooted in 17th century divinity schools). Teaching (and medicine) must again become honored occupations in the country; administrators must give way to front line practitioners.

. Only then can Bernie move on to the more deeply embedded and multinational targets:

(a) big finance,
(b) extractive industries
(c) the MIC

These behemoths can really only be attacked during a time of crisis. Or they will simply crush their opponents like insects, or buy them off.

In the case of the MIC, Berniecrats will likely need to be content with strong reassertion of Federal oversight (more stick, less carrot), and disengagement from doing our 'allies' dirty work (Trump is already on that road, with one huge Ixception .)

Total dismantlement sounds very nice, but consider: whatever's left of US industrial power is concentrated in the MIC. America doesn't need to 'buy prosperity down at the armoury', but like FDR, Bernie and (Tulsi) will also need to have the keels laid down against whatever whirlwind we have reaped. Baring our breast and saying 'we deserve destruction for our sins' is a fatuous open invitation to fascism. FDR knew better.

[/rant]

[Feb 07, 2020] Sanders Foreign Policy platform

Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality... ..."
"... So how is the fight against "militarism" and "authoritarianism" not simply code words for regime change, proxy war and sanctions (economic warfare)? ..."
Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Feb 6 2020 19:24 utc | 57

As for Sanders Responsible Foreign Policy , It's clearly not what the D-Party Establishment wants (see Giraldi item linked @53):

"The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality. When we are in the White House, we will:

•Implement a foreign policy which focuses on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness.

•Allow Congress to reassert its Constitutional role in warmaking, so that no president can wage unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas.

•Follow the American people, who do not want endless war. American troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years, the longest war in American history. Our troops have been in Iraq since 2003, and in Syria since 2015, and many other places. It is long past time for Congress to reassert its Constitutional authority over the use of force to responsibly end these interventions and bring our troops home.

•End U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which has created the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

•Rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement and talk to Iran on a range of other issues.

•Work with pro-democracy forces around the world to build societies that work for and protect all people. In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, democracy is under threat by forces of intolerance, corruption, and authoritarianism."

What follows is Bernie's Mantra, and the Billionaire Class includes the DNC:

" This is your movement . [Emphasis Original]

"No one candidate, not even the greatest candidate you could imagine, is capable of taking on Donald Trump and the billionaire class alone. There is only one way we win -- and that is together . [My Emphasis]

The first step to halting a runaway train is to get an engineer to pull back the throttle and apply the brakes before the train can be reorganized and moved to a different set of tracks. Nothing can get accomplished until that basic effort is won. No, it won't be easy as we must reach the train and its engines before the attempt to halt it can be made. If you insist on being cynical, please be my guest, but get the hell out of the way of those trying to stop the damned thing!!!!!!! Yes, there's some verbiage I don't care for--the democracy promotion being #1. But Gabbard's plank on Ending the Forever Wars is there. And do note in his last point that Sanders recognizes and articulates the truth that the USA also faces the threat of Authoritarianism.


nemo , Feb 6 2020 19:29 utc | 59

" The U.S. must lead the world in improving international cooperation in the fight against climate change, militarism, authoritarianism, and global inequality... "

So how is the fight against "militarism" and "authoritarianism" not simply code words for regime change, proxy war and sanctions (economic warfare)?

c1ue , Feb 6 2020 19:48 utc | 63
@karlof1 #55
Bernie's foreign policy platform, as you posted, is admirable.
I have significant doubts over whether he and/or his movement can enact even a title of it.
I have zero doubt that the platform guarantees the enmity of the entire political establishment, on both sides of the aisle.
Imagine a liberal equivalent of Trump, but without the big biz or MIC assistance.
Could well wind up as one of the least effective administrations evah!
Erelis , Feb 6 2020 20:16 utc | 68
@63 c1ue

Sanders in his pronouncements about evil Russia, the Ukraine, and VZ has basically messaged to the neocon deep state they can have their policies if they leave him alone on domestic issues. The neocons could care less about Medicare for All, college tuition, etc so long as they control the Pentagon, State department, and their budgets.

If any democrat becomes president, including Sanders, it will ratchet up the odds for a nuclear war with Russia. Any democrat who dares to even talk to Putin will be called a traitor. Any democratic president will have to prove they are tough on Russia, and I am afraid sanctions won't do it. Expect some military action.

lysias , Feb 6 2020 22:01 utc | 78
Only way Sanders's domestic programs can be funded is by cutting the military budget. As Gabbard keeps saying.
Vato , Feb 6 2020 22:35 utc | 83
Here is Jimmy Dore ranting about Sanders' Foreign Policy Advisor. Segment starts at 12:35 . Enjoy!
Bubbles , Feb 6 2020 22:44 utc | 85
But Sanders waffles & hedges and talks about too many things without offering straightforward understandable solutions -

Posted by: A User | Feb 6 2020 22:33 utc | 82


And the Grande Orange, America's Evangelicals Newest Messiah said he was going to drain the swamp, make mexico pay for the wall, bring jobs back from china to Make America Great Again, make those factories and Coal Mines hum again!!


Your point was?

ben , Feb 7 2020 1:22 utc | 109 krollchem , Feb 7 2020 1:23 utc | 110
Vato@83

Thanks for the post of the Jimmy Dore show. It pointed that Sanders is another Fascist when it comes to US foreign policy which is the one thing that the President can control as discussed by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, historian and Middle East expert, Stephen Kinzer in New Hampshire (time stamp 12:30).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wrf4meoydI

As we all know, Tulsi Gabbard is misinformed when she states Assad is a dictator and was foolish to volunteer in the Gulf War. At least she calls for an end of regime change wars unlike any current Republican or Democrat in Congress and is willing to talk to any leader.

It is a shame when Gabbard is the only choice for those opposed to fascism. Fascism appears to be the main characteristic of the American way along with the desire for comfort and conformity.

p.s. Unlike Gabbard I didn't volunteer, but was drafted as Conscious Objector medic, medical lab specialist and clinical specialist and was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

[Feb 07, 2020] From the financial standpoint it did not make much sense for Dem elite to stop Sanders at Iowa

Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

steven t johnson , Feb 6 2020 17:02 utc | 17

Trump became the president in 2016 because of 1)the Electoral College nonsense 2)billions of free publicity 3)a sharp drop in black turnout. None of these factors is going away, plus monetary support from other rich is skyrocketing even from the levels seen at the end of the 2016 campaign. Yes, Trump has a good chance of losing the popular vote but becoming president yet again. The usual dirtbags who hate humanity can whine about how it's the letter of the law, just as rich men's lawyers always do.

As to the alleged power surge for Trump, see https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/02/05/trumps-rising-approval-numbers-resulting-from-differential-nonresponse/ Hyping Trump power is maybe the crudest, most self-debasing form of Trumpery I think, really sniffing the Sharpie. Admittedly claiming Trump is fighting the Deep State is a shocking shameful self-exposure.

The alleged plan is so moronic the first impulse is to try to claim it's actually disguised self-sabotage. The conspiracy mongers who believe in the all powerful conspiracy that just happens to be exposed because of a miraculous fluke of one-off incompetence and/or eleven dimensional modified limited hangout duplicity are not only stupid, but in this case, addicted to Trumpery.

But even an honest conspiracy monger should have the common sense to ask who benefits from using any excuse to pull the results. The answer of course, is Biden. The notion that a loss in Iowa would harm Sanders forgets why Iowa is important in the first place: As a real test of the sales value of the candidates. And losing in Iowa is first of about losing big donor money. Sanders is the least dependent on big donor money, which is why it wasn't useful to stop him here. Sanders is supposed to get stopped Super Tuesday when campaigning supposedly has to be done by TV and Sanders can be outspent. (Unless anti-Semitic black votes stop him in South Carolina, which is not impossible, as Obama led blacks to the right as hard as he could.) No, the hold was to help Biden. And the conspiracy mongering is to help Biden by targeting the gay guy. Naturally, the mad dog reactionaries have fallen for it.

If you suppose by some miracle these crazed, hate-mongering theories are correct, then 1)the Democratic Party is so incompetent it's doomed, or 2)it is all really about supporting Trump. Even if you pretend not to worship Trump's farts, #1 alternative should still be good news.

Buttigieg was Navy, and military rivalry with the CIA means he's not likely to be CIA. Also, McKinsey is a political influence peddling outfit, which is not CIA. Working at NGOs, maybe. Buttigieg is affiliated with the Truman Project...but the Truman Project centers on the open admission that the Iraq war was an insanely stupid strategic and tactical mistake, and imperialism needs to be done smarter. It is not, not, not yet a principle of the CIA that the Iraq war was a signal failure on their part. Further, the CIA finds gays pretty much as distasteful as the average barfly, even if they feel they should be discrete. The closest thing to a reason to believe Buttigieg is CIA is that his further was an avowed leftist who taught the works of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramscie, associated with the journal Rethinking Marxism. That is an ideal bio for a fake leftist fighting Leninist Communism. The thing there, of course, is that the CIA is not a hereditary institution!

Buttigieg believes in capitalism, just like Warren. Thus he is no good, period. The rest is largely homophobes losing their minds. I think Buttigieg is the honest version of Warren, saying what she would actually do, whatever she's pretending right now. I think it is always an offense to common sense and common decency to abuse politicians when they tell the truth. It should be the opposite. Loving them for their lies is Trumpery.

[Feb 07, 2020] The democratic party must be thee only political party in all world history that actively suppresses people who want to vote for them.

Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Erelis , Feb 6 2020 19:43 utc | 61

The democratic party must be thee only political party in all world history that actively suppresses people who want to vote for them.

Looks like the democrats are set to lose the same way they did in 2016. Basically as Matt Bruenig wrote in his article "The Boring Story of the 2016 Election

Donald Trump did not win because of a surge of white support. Indeed he got less white support than Romney got in 2012. Nor did Trump win because he got a surge from other race+gender groups. The exit polls show him doing slightly better with black men, black women, and latino women than Romney did, but basically he just hovered around Romney's numbers with every race+gender group, doing slightly worse than Romney overall.

However, support for Hillary was way below Obama's 2012 levels, with defectors turning to a third party. Clinton did worse with every single race+gender combo except white women, where she improved Obama's outcome by a single point. Clinton did not lose all this support to Donald. She lost it into the abyss. Voters didn't like her but they weren't wooed by Trump .

The Third Wave neocons pointed out an interesting fact. Clinton won bigly CA, NY, and MA which gave her something like 7 million votes. However, Trump won the remaining 47 states by four million.

Willy2 , Feb 6 2020 23:19 utc | 92

- Caitlin Johnstone: It wasn't "incompetence", it was intentionally.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/06/the-myth-of-incompetence-dnc-scandals-are-a-feature-not-a-bug

[Feb 07, 2020] Divide et Impera

Feb 07, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

VodkaInKrakow , 1 hour ago link

Bezos held a party in DC recently at his place attended by top officials from the Trump Administration. Jared Kushner was there before. They hang out together.

How odd that Bezos is somehow portrayed as some anti-Trump owner of WaPo. Bezos serves his role in Beltway...

Divide et Impera.

Divide and Rule (the rabble).

[Feb 07, 2020] Centrist Dems - The Right Wing Democrats dominating the Democratic Party... prefer Trump to Sanders

Feb 07, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

VodkaInKrakow , 1 hour ago link

As has always been said, Centrist Dems - The Right Wing Democrats dominating the Democratic Party... prefer Trump to Sanders.

It will always be that way. They figure they can stick out four more years of Trump just like they did with Bush and have their victory in 2024.

They are living in the past.

2020, with continued corruption by Centrist Dems? Will result in massive gains for Republicans and massive losses for Centrist Dems. The top party leadership of Centrist Dems are fine with that as long as their own seats are protected from Republican challenge. Deals will be made.

If you look at Trump term? Not much has really changed other than the rabble (Right, Center, and Left) being at each other's throats more than usual. That's they way the elites like it. Rabble like that, so easily divided?

DESERVE TO BE RULED.

monkman , 1 hour ago link

The system isn't broken. It's working exactly the way it's intended to work. It ain't a bug, it's a feature. And that feature will remain in operation until the entire sick system is torn down and replaced with something healthy.

* * *

Correct, the entire system and most likely that's a long time from now. Unfortunately.

[Feb 07, 2020] Sanders Called JPMorgan's CEO America's 'Biggest Corporate Socialist' Here's Why He Has a Point

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It is purely extractive ..."
"... By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at The Conversation ..."
Feb 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Yves here. I wish Sanders would use even more pointed messaging, like "socialism for the rich". But for those who complain about Sanders not going after important targets, this slap back at Dimon, who criticized Sanders and socialism at Davos, shows that the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.

And banks are much bigger welfare queens than the public realizes. They get all sorts of subsidies, from underpriced deposit insurance to Federal guaranteed for most home mortgages to the Fed operating and backstopping the essential Fedwire system. These subsidies are so great that banks should not be considered to be private sector entities, yet we let them privatize their profits and socialize their train wrecks. As we wrote in 2010 :

More support comes from Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England, who in a March 2010 paper compared the banking industry to the auto industry, in that they both produced pollutants: for cars, exhaust fumes; for bank, systemic risk. While economists were claiming that the losses to the US government on various rescues would be $100 billion (ahem, must have left out Freddie and Fannie in that tally), it ignores the broader costs (unemployment, business failures, reduced government services, particularly at the state and municipal level). His calculation of the world wide costs:

.these losses are multiples of the static costs, lying anywhere between one and five times annual GDP. Put in money terms, that is an output loss equivalent to between $60 trillion and $200 trillion for the world economy and between £1.8 trillion and £7.4 trillion for the UK. As Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed, to call these numbers "astronomical" would be to do astronomy a disservice: there are only hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. "Economical" might be a better description.

It is clear that banks would not have deep enough pockets to foot this bill. Assuming that a crisis occurs every 20 years, the systemic levy needed to recoup these crisis costs would be in excess of $1.5 trillion per year. The total market capitalisation of the largest global banks is currently only around $1.2 trillion. Fully internalising the output costs of financial crises would risk putting banks on the same trajectory as the dinosaurs, with the levy playing the role of the meteorite.

Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a societal standpoint. It is purely extractive . Even though we have described its activities as looting (as in paying themselves so much that they bankrupt the business), the wider consequences are vastly worse than in textbook looting.

Back to the current post. As to JP Morgan's socialism versus the old USSR's planned economy, one recent study which I cannot readily find due to the sorry state of Google offered an important correction to conventional wisdom.

Recall that Soviet Russia initially did perform extremely well, freaking out the capitalist world by industrializing in a generation. There was ample hand-wringing as to whether a less disciplined free enterprise system could compete with a command and control economy. Economists got a seat at the policy table out of the concern that capitalist economies needed expert guidance to assure that they could produce both guns and butter.

The study concluded that central planning had worked well in Soviet Russia initially, until the lower-level apparatchiks started gaming the system by feeding bad information so as to make their performance look better (for instance, setting way too forgiving production targets, or demanding more resources than they needed). The paper contended that the increasingly poor information about what was actually happening on the ground considerably undermined the central planning process. That is not to say there weren't also likely problems with motivation and overly rigid bureaucracies. But the evolution of modern corporations, of devaluing and ignoring worker input and treating them like machines that are scored against narrow metrics, looks as demotivating as the stereotypical Soviet factory.

Finally, this post conflates socialism, which includes New Deal-ish European style social democracy, with capitalist systems alongside strong social safety nets, which the public ownership and provision of goods and services. It should be noted that public ownership has regularly provided services like utilities very effectively.

By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at The Conversation

Sen. Bernie Sanders called JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the " biggest corporate socialist in America today " in a recent ad.

He may have a point – beyond what he intended.

With his Dimon ad, Sanders is referring specifically to the bailouts JPMorgan and other banks took from the government during the 2008 financial crisis. But accepting government bailouts and corporate welfare is not the only way I believe American companies behave like closet socialists despite their professed love of free markets.

In reality, most big U.S. companies operate internally in ways Karl Marx would applaud as remarkably close to socialist-style central planning. Not only that, corporate America has arguably become a laboratory of innovation in socialist governance, as I show in my own research .

Closet Socialists

In public, CEOs like Dimon attack socialist planning while defending free markets.

But inside JPMorgan and most other big corporations, market competition is subordinated to planning. These big companies often contain dozens of business units and sometimes thousands. Instead of letting these units compete among themselves, CEOs typically direct a strategic planning process to ensure they cooperate to achieve the best outcomes for the corporation as a whole .

This is just how a socialist economy is intended to operate. The government would conduct economy-wide planning and set goals for each industry and enterprise, aiming to achieve the best outcome for society as a whole.

And just as companies rely internally on planned cooperation to meet goals and overcome challenges, the U.S. economy could use this harmony to overcome the existential crisis of our age – climate change. It's a challenge so massive and urgent that it will require every part of the economy to work together with government in order to address it.

Overcoming Socialism's Past Problems

But, of course, socialism doesn't have a good track record.

One of the reasons socialist planning failed in the old Soviet Union, for example, was that it was so top-down that it lacked the kind of popular legitimacy that democracy grants a government. As a result, bureaucrats overseeing the planning process could not get reliable information about the real opportunities and challenges experienced by enterprises or citizens.

Moreover, enterprises had little incentive to strive to meet their assigned objectives, especially when they had so little involvement in formulating them.

A second reason the USSR didn't survive was that its authoritarian system failed to motivate either workers or entrepreneurs. As a result, even though the government funded basic science generously, Soviet industry was a laggard in innovation .

Ironically, corporations – those singular products of capitalism – are showing how these and other problems of socialist planning can be surmounted.

Take the problem of democratic legitimacy. Some companies, such as General Electric , Kaiser Permanente and General Motors , have developed innovative ways to avoid the dysfunctions of autocratic planning by using techniques that enable lower-level personnel to participate actively in the strategy process.

Although profit pressures often force top managers to short-circuit the promised participation, when successfully integrated it not only provides top management with more reliable bottom-up input for strategic planning but also makes all employees more reliable partners in carrying it out.

So here we have centralization – not in the more familiar, autocratic model, but rather in a form I call "participative centralization." In a socialist system, this approach could be adopted, adapted and scaled up to support economy-wide planning, ensuring that it was both democratic and effective.

As for motivating innovation, America's big businesses face a challenge similar to that of socialism. They need employees to be collectivist, so they willingly comply with policies and procedures. But they need them to be simultaneously individualistic, to fuel divergent thinking and creativity.

One common solution in much of corporate America, as in the old Soviet Union, is to specialize those roles , with most people relegated to routine tasks while the privileged few work on innovation tasks. That approach, however, overlooks the creative capacities of the vast majority and leads to widespread employee disengagement and sub-par business performance.

Smarter businesses have found ways to overcome this dilemma by creating cultures and reward systems that support a synthesis of individualism and collectivism that I call "interdependent individualism." In my research, I have found this kind of motivation in settings as diverse as Kaiser Permanent physicians , assembly-line workers at Toyota's NUMMI plant and software developers at Computer Sciences Corp . These companies do this, in part, by rewarding both individual contributions to the organization's goals as well as collaboration in achieving them.

While socialists have often recoiled against the idea individual performance-based rewards, these more sophisticated policies could be scaled up to the entire economy to help meet socialism's innovation and motivation challenge.

Big Problems Require Big Government

The idea of such a socialist transformation in the U.S. may seem remote today.

But this can change, particularly as more Americans, especially young ones, embrace socialism . One reason they are doing so is because the current capitalist system has so manifestly failed to deal with climate change.

Looking inside these companies suggests a better way forward – and hope for society's ability to avert catastrophe.


Colonel Smithers , February 7, 2020 at 5:21 am

Thank you, Yves.

Just to add, as a former bank and buy side lobbyist, the industry is not always opposed to regulation. It's a barrier to entry.

This post is on the money. Banksters and their clients love corporate welfare and socialism for the rich, especially when so much of, for example, UK QE "leaked" into asset bubbles in emerging markets, commodities and real estate.

You are right to say that Sanders should use more pointed language. Like Nina Turner, he should call out oligarchs. That term is used for Russians and Ukrainians, but never for the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Dimon, Blankfein, Schmidt, Branson, Dyson, Arnault et al. The term regime should also be used. If it's good enough to delegitimise certain governments, it's good enough to describe the Trump and Johnson administrations. After all, William Hague in talks with the US government called the British government the Brown regime.

Feynman and Haldane are mentioned above. It emerged this week that Dominic Cummings, Johnson's main adviser, is an admirer of both, regarding them as free thinkers and technicians of substance, and championed Haldane's candidacy to be Bank of England governor. Johnson sided with Chancellor Sajid Javid.

Ignacio , February 7, 2020 at 6:21 am

Sanders should use more pointed language or may be not for the moment. May be after the Super Tuesday. He is being careful and that is good IMO. He doesn't want to give excuses for easy attacks. I would say, instead of "socialism for the rich", "socialism for the 1%" or the 0,1% even better. Sounds more neutral. A comment yesterday linked an article comparing Sanders with Gandhi and others and I think it was well pointed. The quiet and careful revolution!

skippy , February 7, 2020 at 6:30 am

Attack the economics and not the strawmen.

pretzelattack , February 7, 2020 at 7:02 am

what do you think of american democracy? i think it would be a good idea.

ObjectiveFunction , February 7, 2020 at 11:04 am

Sanders understands (as does Trump), that the 2020 battle is *not* for the 35-40% whose minds are basically made up at each end. Trying to win those over in any numbers (especially by shrieking invective at them) is a pathetic waste of time and effort.

The winning message must move the 20-30% of voters who either:

(a) voted Obama (hope, for something more than soothing patter) and then Trump (a giant stubby middle finger to the establishment).
(b) voted Obama in 2008 but have stayed at home since (what's the point? they're all lying scum)

Sanders simply doesn't bring socialism to America, because he doesn't have a New Deal (i.e. SocDem) party. That kind of movement will take time (and the upcoming global climatolo-economic crisis) to build up, under savage attack from the propertied unterests and continuously subverted by credentialed PMC weasels and Idpol misleadership grifters.

What Sanders the man *does* bring, today, is:

(1) unimpeachable integrity, steadfastness and sorely missed absence of smug BS and double talk;
(2) hardheaded enforcement of the existing laws of the land;
(3) delivery of universal Concrete Material Benefits© to the broad citizenry (not more 'GDP' gravy for the oligarchs) in finite time, freeing them to rejuvenate themselves, and over time, the Republic.

This last is vitally important, but must also be approached prudently lest the entire movement lose focus, overextend and fall prey to the next Trump .

IMHO, it must focus ruthlessly on delivering:

(a) single payer health care, to starve (if not incinerate) the bloated ticks gorging on the US health/elder 'care' . cesspool, I can't bring myself to call it a 'system'. This above all: without it, Americans simply can't compete in any world, walls and tariffs or not.

(b) *real* infrastructure, for the 80%. That's water and sewerage, cross-class public housing, and busways and light rail to coax Americans out of their cars and suburbs. It's not 5G, vanity EVs and high speed Acelas. And sorry Keynesians, shovel ready is a side benefit, not the primary purpose. There's a lot to do.

(c) an overhaul of American higher education (still rooted in 17th century divinity schools). Teaching (and medicine) must again become honored occupations in the country; administrators must give way to front line practitioners.

. Only then can Bernie move on to the more deeply embedded and multinational targets:

(a) big finance,
(b) extractive industries
(c) the MIC

These behemoths can really only be attacked during a time of crisis. Or they will simply crush their opponents like insects, or buy them off.

In the case of the MIC, Berniecrats will likely need to be content with strong reassertion of Federal oversight (more stick, less carrot), and disengagement from doing our 'allies' dirty work (Trump is already on that road, with one huge Ixception .)

Total dismantlement sounds very nice, but consider: whatever's left of US industrial power is concentrated in the MIC. America doesn't need to 'buy prosperity down at the armoury', but like FDR, Bernie and (Tulsi) will also need to have the keels laid down against whatever whirlwind we have reaped. Baring our breast and saying 'we deserve destruction for our sins' is a fatuous open invitation to fascism. FDR knew better.

[/rant]

Harry Shearer , February 7, 2020 at 11:28 am

Anybody citing Kaiser Permanente as a good example of anything has never known a person subjected to their distinctive form of "care".

David J. , February 7, 2020 at 7:32 am

Sanders was pretty direct last night at the CNN Town Hall. Flat out calls Trump a socialist. (youtube link to the question.)

Also, stick around for his answer to Cooper's followup question. Gloves are off.

LowellHighlander , February 7, 2020 at 7:43 am

Paul Adler's post here reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's New Industrial State, except Professor Adler was referring to the financial (i.e. parasitical) sector of the economy. Am I off the mark in thinking this?

Mel , February 7, 2020 at 11:13 am

You're right on. Galbraith showed that planning comes naturally from very large projects. Soviets went to planning because they couldn't bet the entire national economy on some gut feeling -- they needed to know what would happen. Ditto the gigantic industries in what JKG called the Planning Sector in the west. Projects spending millions or billions of dollars over many years couldn't be left to chance. Eliminating chance meant imposing control, which the gigantic industries could try to do, helped by their access to gigantic capital, and which the Soviets had done with State power.

IMHO the modern FIRE sector arose from the old Planning Sector. They eliminated the uncertainties that complicated their planning; they cut their ties with physical processes that brought those uncertainties; they dumped physical industries onto throwaway economies overseas (that could be abandoned if they failed); they finally became pure businesses that dealt only with nice, clean contracts. No muss, no fuss, no bother.

Dirk77 , February 7, 2020 at 12:41 pm

So planning is a tool of any organization, yet is required more the larger it becomes? While planning may make sense for a company with a single product such as automobiles, does it make sense for a conglomerate? I mean I think the purpose of a conglomerate is to contain many diverse product sectors to reduce risk of the conglomerate as a whole to any one sector. In that way each sector does its own planning, but the conglomerate as a whole does not, apart from choosing which companies to buy and sell, which can be considered a different type of planning? In that way are the goals of society planning are different from the goals of conglomerate planning or that of smaller single product sector companies? Yet in spite of these differences the techniques of planning are the same? Is that the main point of Alder's article? Can someone explain please.

DSB , February 7, 2020 at 8:44 am

Dimon – billionaire bank manager.

chuck roast , February 7, 2020 at 8:46 am

If you surf around a bit you can find links to Bernie's views and support of worker co-ops. There is nothing on his website. In light the burgeoning Socialist smear tsunami, it is probably not something he wants to emphasize right now. Imagine someone getting up at a CNN Town Hall and asking him about his attitude towards worker cooperatives. (corporate heads explode on golf-courses all over America)

Stadist , February 7, 2020 at 10:03 am

Modern theses about leadership, expertise and management underline agile learning and self leadership to everyone himself and within team and then within larger entities. While I'm somewhat pessimistic about these corporate trends they still look like they would work much better with worker co-ops than in traditional top down owned corporations. Basically they are asking higher dedication from workers, but this only works really well if the profits are shared with workers in somewhat equitable manner in my opinion.

Also it seems common nowadays that many coding/programming companies, especially the highly productive ones seem to act more akin to co-ops than monolithically led traditional companies. The programmers are often engaged more to the company by giving or selling them shares, and if this happens in large scale the company ownership structure can skew more towards worker owned 'co-op'-like entity than more hierarchical traditional company, where owners and workers are usually clearly separated.

The Rev Kev , February 7, 2020 at 9:57 am

Be nice if one could have posted the Forbes 400 but, listed next to each entry, is the amount of money that they receive from the Federal government both directly and indirectly.

inode_buddha , February 7, 2020 at 12:38 pm

You might want to have a look at Open Secrets

https://www.opensecrets.org/

They conveniently list which money went where, and how the respective legislator voted.

notabanktoadie , February 7, 2020 at 10:23 am

Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a societal standpoint. It is purely extractive. [bold in the original]

Which leads to this obvious question: Why should banks be privileged, explicitly or implicitly, in any way then?

E.g. why should we have only a SINGLE payment system (besides grubby physical fiat, paper bills and coins) that recklessly combines what should be inherently risk-free deposits with the inherently at-risk deposits the banks themselves create? I.e. why should a government privileged usury cartel hold the entire economy hostage?

a different chris , February 7, 2020 at 12:14 pm

If you mean "why" in the moral sense, which I believe you do, there is no answer.

If you mean why in the technical sense, examine this sentence:

>why should a government privileged usury cartel

It's not "government privileged", it owns the government. Anything the government is allowed to do outside of making Jamie Dimon et al richer are considered the actual privileges by this group, and can, will and have been retracted at will.

notabanktoadie , February 7, 2020 at 1:46 pm

If the banks cognitively "own" the government, it's because almost everyone believes TINA to government privileges for them.

This is disgracefully true of the big names of MMT, who should be working on HOW to abolish those privileges, not ignore or, in the case of Warren Mosler at least, INCREASE* them.

*e.g. unlimited, unsecured loans from the Central Bank to banks at ZERO percent.

Dirk77 , February 7, 2020 at 11:03 am

That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works, and that what is best for human society is some middle ground between the two is a very important message. So I'm very glad for this post. I realize that a black and white way of perceiving the world is an easy one. Yet as Alder points out, humans are both individuals and social beings. If people in this world could get back to thinking more like Ancient Greece in its appreciation for the golden mean, we would have a much better chance of surviving. Dispensing with all these useless socialism vs capitalism discussions would be a great time saver. I realize most people believe in some middle ground, yet making it explicit would simplify things quite a bit. As for the rest of the article, I need to think about it more. The corporate socialism idea does tie in with the link yesterday about limited liability.

a different chris , February 7, 2020 at 12:19 pm

>That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works,

Exactly! Because: There. Is. No. Economic. Equilibrium. Never was, never will be, anywhere and everywhere. Heck for billions of years, before humans existed let alone learned to talk, the world changed. Things developed, other things went extinct (although not in the heart-wrenching way of the Anthropocene, I personally am happy never to have met a T. Rex in truth), the way the world works even without us is continual change.

So adjust as necessary. Our healthcare system sucks, bring full bore socialism on it. Our corporate overlords suck, bring full bore free markets (kill patents to start) on them.

monday1929 , February 7, 2020 at 2:51 pm

You might want to re-think the "kill patents" idea. Our Founders liked them. I just had a patent "killed" by an examiner who "killed" 42 of 43 patents he examined. It was for a device which could be saving Corona/Flu victims Right Now. I am going to try to Donate the idea to Society, but preventing people from profiting from valid Novel ideas is not the solution. I realize Corporations abuse the Patent System, like every other thing they touch. But I am a low level individual who is trying to "innovate" and reduce illness. My main motivation was not monetary but it is always a factor.
I believe you have the wrong target on this issue.
My first rejection on a related patent was just received 2.5 years after initial filing. It took this long because the Govt. takes money from USPTO (which runs a surplus) and sends it to the General Fund. USA innovation friendly? Not the way I see it.

NoBrick , February 7, 2020 at 11:20 am

"But for those who complain about Sanders not going after important targets "

Consider the wisdom of Susan Webber:
"Wisdom of the CEO is comprimised work. These CEOs "know" that too much candor,
either individually or institutionally, is not a pro-survival strategy."

Diogenes , February 7, 2020 at 11:53 am

I think the comparison of banks to welfare queens is quite unfair.

To welfare queens, that is.

Assuming they exist outside of the sweaty PR fantasies of those of a certain political stripe, presumably even a welfare queen is not living 100% off of the munificence of the state, whereas the implied value of the "Too Big To Fail" guaranty subsidy was determined to be very nearly in the same amount as the annual profits of the recipient banks. In other words, they're complete wards of the state. Doesn't get much more socialistic than that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-

In other words: "Socialism for me, markets for thee."

Susan the other , February 7, 2020 at 12:17 pm

Thank you, Yves for this post. Alder has very logical and accessible ideas. "Interdependent Individualism" is a good way to begin. When he says "socialists recoil against individual performance-based rewards" I can't help but think the rewards should be gifted from the workers to the bosses. Because that would be very change-promoting. Top down has a tendency to stagnate motivation – even offensively – like tossing them a few crumbs to keep them quiet. imo. This also really does sound Japanese. I'm not sure I can relate to the way they cooperate; from them there is not so much as a polite argument; certainly no sarcastic barbs. Americans are the exact opposite – we cooperate competitively in a sense. But Climate Change will dictate our direction regardless of decorum. My own sense of our dilemma is that "free market" corporations make their profits by extracting from labor and the exploitation of the environment, and by externalizing costs to society. Big disconnect. Huge, in fact. This is why "capitalism" has failed to address climate change. Anybody else notice that China has forbidden short selling as we speak? Just like the Fed did in 2009 with QE, etc. That's probably because if the economy crashes (regardless of how illogical it has become) it will take way too long to put back together. And there's work to be done. I remember Randy Wray dryly responding to Jacobin's criticism (of MMT) that the ideological socialists would rather see a bloody Marxist uprising than a peaceful evolution. I do think Wray is right on ideological blinders on both sides. One quibble I have with this very wise post is that it assumes (I think) that we cannot change our ways fast enough to mobilize adequately to address climate change. I think we've been doing it pretty aggressively since 2009. Literally a world war to control oil and maintain financial supremacy; serious consideration of our options by the political class (turning to MMT, etc.); slamming the breaks on trade and manufacturing; subsidizing essential industries. I'm sure there are other things going on under the radar. So I wouldn't discount our ability to mobilize – just our inability to admit it. Clearly we want to do things selectively.

a different chris , February 7, 2020 at 12:25 pm

>the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.

Yes, as Objective Function laid out nicely (funny word for this mess, but whatever) above – this isn't gonna be easy. If you hope to beat Mike Tyson in his prime, you don't start by trading heavy blows. Defeat him with small but continuous cuts from multiple directions.

twonine , February 7, 2020 at 12:30 pm

Speaking of Davos and Dimon, shouldn't that be "Biggest Corporate Criminals" ?

" senior leaders of three of the largest and most elite U.S. banks were serial criminals whose frauds are (we pray) without equal." -- William K. Black

monday1929 , February 7, 2020 at 2:34 pm

Wallstreet on parade website does great job laying out JPM's crime spree. They (JPM) just came off parole(?) in January on some Felony charges. Someone (Eliz. Warren?) might start a movement to prohibit public pensions / State and local Govts. from conducting business with any banks convicted of felonies or entering plea agreements more than, let's say, ten per year.
A convicted felon can not get a job at a bank run by a 22 times loser- Jamie Dimon, a fellow felon who should have some empathy.
Wallstreet on parade is one of few sites who discuss Citi's crimes, and the fact that the Federal Reserve tried to cover up (and succeeded until about 2012) the secret 2.5 TRILLIION in revolving loans provided to a bankrupt Citibank around 2009. This in addition to the hundreds of billions we did know about.
I do tend to harp on this because the felon Robert Rubin cost me about 500K in expired Put options on shittybank because of his blatant, felonious (per FCIC) lies right before the implosion. His referral for prosecution by the Financial Crises Inquiry Commission mysteriously withered away

[Feb 07, 2020] It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what they're doing.

Feb 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ian2 , Feb 6 2020 20:02 utc | 65

It should be clear on what the fight is really about in the US. It's about stopping the rise of socialism. Regardless of party affiliation, the elites know what the populace wants and are desperately trying to stop it. I refuse to accept that the Democrats have no idea what they're doing.

I honestly can't see Sanders getting the nomination with all the corruption openly being displayed. I would be pleasantly surprised if Sanders did manage to get it, but he still have to deal with the ELECTORAL COLLEGE (EC). The Electors have the final say. Yes, one can point out that some States have laws forcing Electors to vote what the populace wants, but that is being challenged in court. The debate on whether such laws are unconstitutional or not, remains to be seen. It's too late now to deal with the EC for this election, but people need to be more active in politics at the State level as that's where Electors are (s)elected.

IF Sanders is genuine then he should prepare to run as an independent just to get the EC attention.

ben , Feb 6 2020 22:01 utc | 79

RR @ 14;
Everything in the U$A today, is driven by the unofficial Party of $, and it's reach transcends both Dems & repubs. It's cadre is the majority of the D.C. "rule makers", so we get what they want, not what "we the people" want or need.

They own the banks, MSM media, and even our voting systems.

IMO, to assume one party is to blame for conditions in the U$A is a bit naive.

Question is, can anything the masses do, change the system? Or is rank and file America just along for the ride?

I'm assuming us peons will get what the party of $ wants this November also.

P.S. If any blame is given, it needs to go to the American public, because " you get the kind of Gov. you deserve" through your inactions...

It's a lot like living, death is certain, but until that occurs, I'll move forward trying to mitigate current paradigms.

[Feb 05, 2020] I recall Debbie W-S claim that yes it was a smoke filled room in which they decided on the candidate the DNC was going to choose by this fame fought hard to revise the rules, winning some battles, but not others. So, for instance, the superdelegates will remain but may not participate in the first round. Perez is a hard-liner and is going to do everything in his power to stop Bernie, as is, of course, Hillary.

Feb 05, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Posted by: Jane | 02 February 2020 at 03:10 PM Trump's mistake was taking ownership of the economy when it was starting to soar, then pumping cheap money into it and inflating bubbles. As a result, when it crashes as it surely will, the Democrats will tie it around his neck.

Posted by: Ken | 02 February 2020 at 03:54 PM i thought printing endless amounts of money backed by the biggest military was a good definition of socialism... isn't boeing in need of another handout? the banks will need to get bailed again like they did in 2008.. that's the cliff we're all approaching.. usa political theatre pales in comparison..

Posted by: james | 02 February 2020 at 05:36 PM Sir;
I guess I'll have to be the one to stand up and "take one" for Sanders.

We are in agreement that the present iteration of the Democrat Party is a freak show. However, the Democrat Party once ruled America with a semi-socialist program. This was after FDR saved unfettered capitalism from itself. Remember the Bonus March and all the outright violent strikes? On each wing were such luminaries as Father Coughlin and Huey Long. The New Deal and then WW-2 saved America from ruin.

That said, I'll state that Sanders is no Trotskyite. He does not call for the destruction of the government. Indeed, he seems to want to return the American governing system to that which ran America under such "Commies" as Eisenhower and Truman.

Bill Clinton and later Barak Obama sold the American working classes a bill of goods. Most policies that these two enacted mainly benefited the upper classes, not the formerly traditional Democrat base, the working classes. Despite the paper improvements to the American economy, most "average" people are seeing their standards of living fall. The anger at that, and the dawning realization of having been sold out by the Democrat Party can be credited with helping Trump win in 2016, that and the abysmal campaign run by the Clinton organization.

I'll end by mentioning a saying from antiquity: "Moderation in all things."

We live in interesting times.

Posted by: ambrit | 02 February 2020 at 05:39 PM

[Feb 05, 2020] The older conservatives who comment here don't get the appeal of Bernie Sanders

Feb 05, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Yes. The older conservatives who comment here don't get the appeal of Bernie Sanders. I mean, that he went to the Soviet Union back in the bronze age is the best criticism they can come up with? The Soviet Union was dissolved almost thirty years ago, for pete's sake. (Something the current corporatist Dems seem to have forgotten in their faked up Russia-Russia-Russia hysteria, but I digress). In a nation that is eating its young in so many ways, not least subjecting them to perpetual debt servitude (thx Joe Biden), Sanders' message of tangible benefits for ALL CITIZENS, especially wresting control of the medical system, a public good, out of the hands of the filthiest profiteers in the world to benefit everybody has a universal appeal.

Just wait - if the Democraps don't succeed in cheating Bernie out of the nomination like they did last time, he will be hard for Trump to beat. If they do cheat him in favor of Bloomberg or Klobuchar, Trump will get the largest majority ever.

I'd say even odds of either occurring.

Posted by: divadab | 03 February 2020 at 02:26 PM ambrit,

I also want the Democratic Party to return to the days when it was the party of the working man.

I support some of what they want to do but the identity politics is a big turnoff for many people who would otherwise support them, as is their movement towards a virtual open borders policy.

What Sanders and Warren want will cost too much and never get through Congress yet its idealism is appealing. The more moderate candidates have their appeal but aren't doing so well; maybe they will do better as the race goes on. Trump has many faults and I criticize him every day yet I just might end up voting for him over immigration.

Both parties are far apart on some big issues. Obama and Trump were both stymied by their inability to get legislation passed and used executive orders too much. I expect a repeat of that in the next four years whoever gets elected.

Posted by: jerseycityjoan | 03 February 2020 at 07:15 PM

[Feb 05, 2020] No less than five separate commentaries, including op-eds and articles purporting to be news reports, appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post alone over the weekend, all of them proclaiming that the nomination of a self-described "democratic socialist" would be a disaster for the Democrats and guarantee the reelection of President Donald Trump.

Feb 05, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

wendy davis on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 12:24pm

crikey, it's bald.

allow me to add a few snippets from patrick martin's ' On eve of Iowa caucuses Corporate media and Democratic establishment target Sanders ' 3 February 2020 , wsws.org

'With polls showing Sanders holding a narrow lead over former Vice President Joe Biden and a half dozen other rivals in Iowa, and tied with Biden nationally, the media barrage has become, in all but name, a stop-Sanders campaign.

No less than five separate commentaries, including op-eds and articles purporting to be news reports, appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post alone over the weekend, all of them proclaiming that the nomination of a self-described "democratic socialist" would be a disaster for the Democrats and guarantee the reelection of President Donald Trump.

At the same time, defeated 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton stepped up her attack on Sanders, while other leading Democratic Party insiders joined the effort. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced Friday a rule change in determining eligibility for the debates that would open the door to billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and some DNC members were openly discussing proposed rules changes at the Democratic nominating convention to block Sanders.

The actual outcome of the Iowa caucuses remains highly uncertain, but Sanders continues to draw by far the largest crowds -- more than 3,000 for a rally Saturday night in Cedar Rapids -- and registers the widest support among youth and working people. One poll showed that among voters under the age of 50, Sanders led with 44 percent. Senator Elizabeth Warren followed with 10 percent, and no other candidate, including Biden, reached double digits.

Perhaps the most open display of media hostility to Sanders came in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post -- owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and a frequent target of Sanders' criticism. The front page of the newspaper carried the unsubtle headline, "Sanders and the specter of socialism" The central thrust of the article was that Trump would make mincemeat of Sanders in the general election by means of red-baiting vilification of "radical socialist Democrats."

A lengthy commentary inside the newspaper, written by Dartmouth Professor Brendan Nyhan, bemoaned the fact that the Democratic rivals of Sanders weren't "going negative" on him in the way that Trump inevitably would. Summing up the red-baiting that he claimed the Vermont senator deserved, Nyhan asked:

How many Americans know that Sanders is not just an avowed democratic socialist but a former supporter of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, which wanted to abolish the federal defense budget and supported "solidarity" with revolutionary regimes like Iran's and Cuba's? Do people know that he spoke positively about Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution ("a very profound and very deep revolution") and even praised the Soviet Union and criticized the United States during a honeymoon trip to the USSR?

Op-ed columnists in the New York Times were equally McCarthyite. Timothy Egan argued, under the headline "Bernie Sanders Can't Win," that what he called "class loathing" of the billionaires was not a viable electoral appeal. Echoing Nyhan, Egan wrote:

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they're done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry's dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature.

[Get a load of this hilarity (ya couldn't make this shit up if ya tried!!!!]

There was even a report by NBC News that former Secretary of State John Kerry , the defeated Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 against George W. Bush, was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel discussing entering the presidential race himself because of "the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party -- down whole."

Kerry reportedly expressed regret that he would have to resign from the board of Bank of America and give up lucrative paid speeches, but could expect wealthy donors to provide backing because they "now have the reality of Bernie."
..................................................
At a Sanders rally Friday night, Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan responded to Clinton's attack by booing the mention of her name. By the next day, Tlaib had been compelled to issue a statement of regret and she was left off the speakers list at the next Sanders rally.

The candidate himself, as one report described it, "went out of his way to be deferential to his opponents," and reiterated that he would support whoever won the Democratic nomination contest.
......................................................
There was a report in Politico that members of the DNC have begun privately discussing a change in the convention rules to allow so-called super-delegates -- elected officials and members of the DNC -- to vote on the first ballot of the presidential nomination . Under current rules, they have no vote on the first ballot, which is reserved to delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, and can vote only if no candidate has an initial majority and the contest goes to a second ballot. Such a change would be transparently aimed at blocking a first-ballot win by Sanders.'

[Feb 04, 2020] According to Rolling Stone, Sanders leads in donations from the US Military:

Feb 04, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"No other 2020 candidate for president, including Donald Trump, can come close to matching Bernie Sanders' level of support among members of the U.S. military, to go by the most recent campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission.

Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have donated a total of $185,625 to Sen. Sanders' 2020 campaign. By comparison, they have given $113,012 to Trump, $80,250 to Pete Buttigieg, $64,604 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and a relatively paltry $33,045 to former Vice President Joe Biden, according to Doug Weber, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics."

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-leads-trump-all-2020-candidates-in-donations-from-active-duty-troops-946188/

This could change if, as I suspect, Trump pulls peace deals out of his hat before the election with Iran and N Korea.

Posted by: johnf | 03 February 2020 at 02:19 AM

[Feb 03, 2020] Is the establishment manipulating the polls to justify another razor thin win against Bernie?

You bet ;-)
To be fair, Sanders is really old.
Feb 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Circe , Feb 2 2020 19:52 utc | 28
In 2016, the Iowa results were Clinton 49.8 and Sanders 49.6⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

Bernie was leading Biden in Iowa by 4 to 5 points last week and today's poll has each of them leading the rest with a 25% to 25% TIE, when Bernie had the clear MOMENTUM. Is the establishment manipulating the polls to justify another razor thin win against Bernie???

One poll didn't even get published because the press pollster claims they forgot to include Buttigieg. BULL.

[Feb 02, 2020] The DNC is using a multi-pronged strategy to sabotage and derail the Sanders campaign

Looks like Bloomberg is the DNC new bet...
Feb 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Circe , Feb 2 2020 16:56 utc | 6
The DNC is using a multi-pronged strategy to sabotage and derail the Sanders campaign because not only does he have the majority of the Left behind him and is surging in the polls as a result, but he also has the best chance of defeating Trump, because he has an energized movement behind him, he is generating all the excitement and like Trump, yes, you bet, he has a badass army of mthrfckers ready to defend him!

...

[Feb 01, 2020] The Myth Of The Electable Democrat Neoliberal Bankruptcy, 2020 Edition

Feb 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Fri, 01/31/2020 - 17:45 0 SHARES Authored by Anthony DiMaggio via Counterpunch.org,

As the Democratic primaries near, the usual chorus of Democratic-establishment pundits have emerged to remind Americans that their party needs to remain "moderate" and appeal to "the center" if it wants to win the presidency. The calls for moderation are pervasive in commentary from the New York Times , the Hill , and the Wall Street Journal , among others.

Most recent is a January New York Times op-ed from Ezra Klein, entitled "Why Democrats Still Have to Appeal to the Center, but Republicans Don't."

Klein is the sort of pundit who likes to drape his political prescriptions in empirical social science data, thereby adding the appearance of legitimacy to what are neoliberal Democratic talking points. He warns primary voters that "Democrats can't win running the kinds of campaigns and deploying the kinds of tactics that succeed for Republicans. They can move to the left but they can't abandon the center or, given the geography of American politics, the center-right, and still hold power."

Klein draws on statistics describing the demographic foundations of Democratic and Republican Party support, claiming that Democrats must appeal to Americans of many different backgrounds. Democrats are "more diverse," drawing support from "a coalition of liberal whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and mixed-race voters," in addition to "liberal and nonwhite Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, agnostics, Buddhists, and so on winning the Democratic primary means winning liberal whites in New Hampshire and traditionalist blacks in South Carolina. It means talking to Irish Catholics in Boston and atheists in San Francisco." In contrast, Klein points out that the Republican Party is primarily comprised of white voters, with "three-quarters of Republicans identify[ing] as conservative, while only half of Democrats call themselves liberals."

Klein believes that "to win power, Democrats don't just need to appeal to the voter in the middle. They need to appeal to voters to the right of the middle." Republicans, to the contrary, rely on undemocratic entities like the Electoral College and the suppression of minority voters to win elections, while relying disproportionately on white conservative supporters who vote in high numbers, despite the party's steadily "shrinking constituency."

But Klein's narrative is largely a regurgitation of an old establishment Democratic trope that's been crammed down Americans' throats for the last three decades. The notion that moderate pro-business Democrats are the party's only chance to win office traces back to the rise of Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" "third way" coalition, which is defined by center-left social politics and conservative, pro-business economic policies in favor of deregulation, free trade, corporate tax cuts, and attacks on the welfare state. I'm intimately the narrative of the "electable" neoliberal Democrat in my own line of work as a professor. Most social scientists, after all, are milquetoast liberals, so claims that only establishment Democrats can win abound in the halls of higher education.

Things Change

The claim that only neoliberal Democrats are viable candidates has been exposed in the era of Donald Trump. Trump's election demonstrates that candidates don't need to appeal to the "center" to win. Reactionary media and political leaders have been pulling Republican voters to the right for decades. Given this shift, the vast majority of Republican voters are willing to vote for most any right-wing candidate running in the general election, so long as they aren't a Democrat. Claims were commonly made in 2016 that Trump would spell doom for the Republican Party, since his brazenly xenophobic, racist, sexist, and authoritarian rhetoric would never appeal to moderate Republican voters. Clearly, this wasn't the case; an overwhelming 88 percent of Republican voters turned out in favor of Trump.

Klein recognizes that Republicans no longer need to rely on moderation to win because of the rightward movement of the party. But he and other Democrats have no insight into what is politically possible, were the Democratic Party to commit to building a durable popular base in pursuit of progressive change. And establishment Democrats have no vision for how to make their party relevant at a time when nearly half of Americans don't bother to vote, and when the vast majority of Americans express little to no trust in government. As a neoliberal entity, the party is fundamentally incapable of operating as a democratic medium for raising support among disadvantaged groups.

Sanders' Appeal

Bernie Sanders' rise in the 2016 Democratic primary provides more evidence to challenge traditional neoliberal notions of "electability." As I've documented , the mainstreaming of Sanders' progressive agenda was revealed in polling at the time, which found that one quarter of Democrats in 2016 believed Sanders' identification as a "democratic socialist" made him more electable, while less than one in ten felt it made him less so, and with two-thirds who thought it made "no difference." In other words, 90 percent of Democrats felt the "socialism" stigma was irrelevant to their political calculations. Such sentiment undermines the notion that only neoliberal Democrats can appeal to voters.

Looking at the 2016 election, we see the poverty behind the claim that Americans thirst for a neoliberal Democrat. Hillary Clinton, the quintessential corporate-friendly politician, failed to defeat one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in modern history. And her party stumbled badly when it came to cultivating support from economically vulnerable Americans.

As documented at the time, Donald Trump did not gain disaffected voters who were harmed by manufacturing outsourcing, so much as pro-free trade Democrats lost them. The Democratic Party lost 3.5 times as many votes from those living in rustbelt areas hardest hit by corporate free trade than Republicans gained, when comparing Republican and Democratic presidential vote tallies from 2012 and 2016.

The story of the modern Democratic Party is one of demobilizing working-class Americans. This is hardly a radical claim, or one lacking historical foundation. The party shamelessly embraced center-right pro-business policies for the last 25 years, and as a result has failed to build a stable coalition that can consistently win and hold political power.

Neoliberalism in Freefall

Looking at the 2020 Democratic primaries, we again see the limits of Democratic centrism. Polling data in the run-up to the primaries demonstrates that those depicted as the most "electable" Democratic candidates benefit from little to no support from disadvantaged socio-economic groups. Pete Buttigieg, a neoliberal Democrat if there ever was one, receives virtually no support from people of color and from the less educated. Joe Biden's campaign has done little to nothing to inspire support from younger and poorer Americans. An overwhelming 73 percent of his supporters are 50 and older, while just 7 percent are 18-29, and only 19 percent are 30-49, for a total of just 26 percent who are under 50. Elizabeth Warren polls well among whites, liberals, and those with a college education, but not so well with everyone else. She benefits from little enthusiasm from people of color, who make up just 4 percent of her supporters.

By comparison, Bernie Sanders does better among disadvantaged groups. Looking at generational cohorts, Sanders' largest group of supporters are 18-29-year olds, followed by 30 to 49-year olds. He receives six times more support from the 18-29 age group than he does from those 65 and over. He is more likely to be supported by liberals, and he receives a range of support from different educational groups, including high school graduates, and those with two and four-year college degrees. Sanders also polls well among black, white, and LatinX voters, in contrast to Buttigieg and Warren.

Finally, Sanders' support is significantly higher among middle and lower income Americans. He is more than two times as likely to receive support from Americans with moderate to low incomes (households earning less than $75,000 a year), compared to those with higher incomes (over $75,000). By comparison, Warren receives twice as much support from higher income Americans than from those with lower incomes. Buttigieg polls equally among higher and lower income groups, while Biden performs better with higher income over lower income Americans by a ratio of 1.3:1.

Sanders' Problem

Sanders' main challenge moving forward is that he isn't really a Democrat, but a progressive independent running in the Democratic primaries. And this clearly hurt him in the 2016 election. As I've documented , Sanders was more likely to receive support from Americans who self-identified as political independents, not as Democrats. Most Democratic primary voters in 2016 preferred an establishment candidate of the Clinton variety. This challenge remains moving into the 2020 primaries. Biden is clearly the central establishment figure in the party, and he retains significant support from the party's sizable centrist, corporate-friendly base, which will be well represented in primary races across the country.

Nine months out, it's impossible to know how the 2020 general election will turn out. But based on available evidence, it's clear that the "more of the same" approach to propping up Democratic neoliberal politics will continue to fail in cultivating sustained mass support. As an electoral strategy, it's failed to produce consistent Democratic victories, despite the promises of its adherents over the last few decades. The 2016 election was the most extreme case of the party's failure, as witnessed by the mass demobilization of formerly Democratic voters who felt betrayed by the party's pro-business politics. Biden, should he win the Democratic nomination, will do little to inspire traditionally disadvantaged demographic groups to vote. Based on pre-election polling data, it's clear that Warren, Buttigieg, and Biden are incapable of building a progressive electoral coalition that will unite white liberals, the poor, younger Americans, and people of color.

As a professional politician, Sanders hasn't been central to progressive movement building. But he has declared support for these movements, via his alliances with Fight for $15, the Madison protests, and Occupy Wall Street. Contrary to the other Democratic primary candidates, he recognizes the importance and centrality of such movements to driving progressive political change. Furthermore, the public is increasingly attuned to the bankruptcy of Democratic-establishment politics, regardless of what the party's pundits say. Their efforts to prop-up Bill Clinton's "new Democrat" coalition represent a last desperate gasp of air for a party that has struggled for years to remain relevant in an era of mass discontent with government. Sanders' rising popularity in recent primary polling suggests that much of the party's base hungers for a serious left alternative to the Democrats' pro-business politics.

[Feb 01, 2020] Bernie Sanders Real resistance and the steep learning curve

Feb 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org

In what is happening right now around the Bernie Sanders camp and the Elizabeth Warren camp, there is an opportunity for these supposed ResistanceTM-people to step up their game significantly.

After all, in this moment, the anti-Berners are certainly stepping up their own game. The problem is that there is a large asymmetry here: it is a lot easier to take someone like Bernie down than it is to build him up, in part because the former can rely on every aspect of the system, from call-out culture and Title IX-type methods to the most nefarious elements of the Deep State, while the latter has to actually confront these elements for a change.

... ... ... 1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in 2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.

The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just say, "Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?

I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her family so much." (Of course, with only a very few exceptions, I find the Democratic Party–and the Republican Party–completely unacceptable anyway. They are both steering media for capitalist power and money. However, unlike my leftist friends who presently justify supporting the Democrats, in impeachment and in re-taking the White House, "because they are the lesser evil," I argue that the Democrats are the greater evil, the "best representatives" of the current form of capitalism, that the Republicans are in at least some cases the lesser evil, and that Trump is something different from either one.)

2. Accordingly, I think a Trump/Sanders election would be a very good thing. You may know that I have been writing a long series of articles I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a Trump/Sanders election: i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this. However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to seriously address these power structures,

ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about it.

That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back militarism.

What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump -- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.


Rhys Jaggar ,

The thing you are failing to see here is that Trump did nothing particularly special last time: the Deplorables had simply had enough shit over enough years that their bullshitometers were fully sensitised.

So they listened to all the Deep State crap and said: 'Screw You! We're all gonna vote Trump and piss on your friggin' parade!'

They did not think all that deeply, they just were absolutely adamant about what they DID NOT WANT.

And Trump just said: 'I understand!'

The words 'I understand' are dynamite in politics. They are even more dynamite if it is said in a roundabout way, but the meaning is crystal clear to the target audience.

If Sanders wants to win, he has to prove to Main Street America that 'HE UNDERSTANDS!'

He will not win speaking down to them, telling them he knows what is best for them.

They have had two generations of that and are absolutely sick and tired of it.

The way to victory for any US Presidential candidate in 2020 is showing that they understand, they care enough to DO SOMETHING TO HELP and they have the savvy NOT TO GET PUT ON A SPIKE BY THE DEEP STATE!

Seamus Padraig ,

Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it can happen

I agree. For one thing, Bernie is no Trump; he's just not a fighter. Bernie is weak. They already defrauded him once back in 2016, and he didn't care. He went ahead and endorsed the woman who cheated him, and he even spent months criss-crossing the country stumping for her! Have we seen the merest scrap of evidence this year that Bernie finally plans to take the gloves off? No, we haven't. He's a lot like Jeremy Corbyn in that regard, and just like Jeremy Corbyn, I predict he will be defeated–not so much by the voters as by 'his own' party.

but does anyone think there is a shortage of obnoxious jerks around Warren and Biden?

Just one little word should suffice: Hunter!

I think you'll find that this work is not going to be nearly so easy as what has passed for "resistance" among the anti-Trump crowd thus far.

What has passed for "resistance" since 2016 is this:

1.) Working for the government for a while to sabotage Trump.

2.) Then, when you get found out and fired by him, getting a multi-million dollar contract to write some 'tell-all' book about how evil/stupid (take your pick) your ex-boss was.

3.) Then getting invited onto The View to promote it and prattle on about how you answer to some "higher calling" so that your serial violations of the law don't matter–as opposed to, say, Trump's serial violations of decorum, which obviously merit impeachment.

That's exactly what "resistance" means to these wankers, and that's one reason I am proud to say that I am not a part of it.

lundiel ,

America's most dangerous president was, imo, Obama. Trump has nothing on him, apart from his delusions over Israel, Trump has tried, and failed, to exercise control over the security state. Obama worked with the state while he mesmerised us with stunning speeches about equality and democracy as he signied off on regime change and assassinations.
Should she ever run, Michelle would be at least as dangerous. The Obamas can make people believe that they are 'on their side'.

Antonym ,

Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county, Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved this.

The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all Establishments against her.

wardropper ,

I'd go further and say that the Americans can't win, whoever is leading them.
The pool from which they make their selections was poisoned long ago.
And it makes me very sad to say that.
Our godless society is overflowing with people who long for moral leadership, but who can't find it in today's Washminster.
Personal pursuit of a decent inner life is always an option, but Washington and Westminster are addicted to the other kind – the moneyed surface of life.
The way things are right now, it's extremely hard to say how a bridge from one kind to the other could possibly be built, but I keep looking

paul ,

Sanders is just another irrelevant mediocrity.

Fair dinkum ,

Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.

Gall ,

I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too long.

Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.

Charlotte Ruse ,

The day FDR dumped Henry Wallace in favor of Harry Truman the US was f–ked.

Seamus Padraig ,

That phase is over. Now that the Titanic's going down, it's no longer about rearranging any deck chairs, but about fighting over the life boats!

Charlotte Russe ,

It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit quite nicely in the Republican Party.

milosevic ,

threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third Party

actually doing so, would accomplish vastly more than just "threatening", unless anybody is really hoping for a remake of Hope and Change, which would change nothing except the specific flavour of Identity Politics secret sauce disguising the foul taste of neoliberal fascism.

[Feb 01, 2020] Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the greater of the two evils.

Feb 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Gall Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.

Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.

There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called "Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a "Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".

Explained here in his inimitable style:

https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/lee-camp-the-dncs-secret-nuclear-option-to-stop-bernie-sanders-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the greater of the two evils.

Yeah right.

Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can both go to hell. I've already made my choice:

https://www.markcharles2020.com

He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left". 1 0 Reply Jan 30, 2020 8:56 PM


Paul Spencer ,

See Joe Rogan endorsement. Also, check out the articles from the Ron Paul Insitute for Peace and Prosperity. The perspective of their main editor, Daniel McAdams, is at least true to the old Libertarian code of 'leave folks alone'. In today's terms that means quit bombing and otherwise causing trouble.

Gall ,

Exactly. This should be the type of Foreign Policy America should have, that the public in general keep demanding but really hasn't existed if one looks at actual history:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946

Greg Bacon ,

After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.

If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another racket in 2021.

Gall ,

Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.

But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie your ass off until you get elected at least.

Willem ,

Much magical thinking here.

If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?

I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.

And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?

Don't think so.

Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations everywhere.

The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped (and will be stopped).

I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for, except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians say

It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.

See also https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

[Jan 31, 2020] The swamp only sorta fears Tulsi Gabbard. Bernie is an annoying blowhard to them. Plus Bernie doesn't want to win, just fill the coffers of his PAC

in 2016 Sanders behaved really despicably betraying all his voters who stretched their finances to support him.
Jan 31, 2020 | www.unz.com

Old and grumpy , says: Show Comment January 31, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT

@TG The swamp only sorta fears Tulsi Gabbard. Bernie is an annoying blowhard to them. Plus Bernie doesn't want to win, just fill the coffers of his PAC. Maybe get another house. Understandable since his wife's source of easy money went belly up.

[Jan 31, 2020] Sanders immigration policy

Jan 31, 2020 | www.unz.com

Bragadocious , says: Show Comment January 28, 2020 at 2:04 am GMT

@Dutch Boy Agreed, and I took the trouble to read his immigration position paper. It's truly frightening. This man, who used to stand for protecting working people's wages, now believes the organizing principle of U.S. immigration policy is to eliminate global inequality . The mind races with all of the possible stratagems Bernie's conjured up for how to do that, but job one is to provide free Medicare for anyone who shows up at the border. Oh and he's going to tear down whatever parts of the wall Trump built, just because walls are evil. The guy's gone absolutely whacko. The 2007 Bernie could win, this guy, never.
Tom Welsh , says: Show Comment January 31, 2020 at 8:23 am GMT
@Bragadocious If the US government ever really wanted to "eliminate global inequality", a fine place to start would be the inequality between countries which attack other countries and kill millions of their citizens, and countries which do not.
Janus5 , says: Show Comment January 31, 2020 at 8:24 am GMT
@TG All true, except he hasn't started a war with Iran (yet). Judging from the hysteria, Iran is the last domino before the Israelis can begin their long awaited territorial expansion, which will be framed as a defensive operation to regional destabilization that they themselves created.
If Trump started the war as intended, the impeachment would have been shelved permanently and the media would have taken a break from attacking him. But if he continues to resist, he better beef up his personal security, because his "good friends" aren't going to let a little thing like American democracy stand in the way of their ambitious plans.
Old and grumpy , says: Show Comment January 31, 2020 at 1:18 pm GMT
@TG The swamp only sorta fears Tulsi Gabbard. Bernie is an annoying blowhard to them. Plus Bernie doesn't want to win, just fill the coffers of his PAC. Maybe get another house. Understandable since his wife's source of easy money went belly up.

[Jan 31, 2020] Tucker: DNC worried about Sanders becoming nominee - YouTube

They actually don't: Sanders proved to be more of a sheepdog then a real candidate in 2016: he betrayed his voters They are afraid of Tulsi, though
Money quote "Democratic Party is a collection of various interest group that actually hate each other"
Jan 31, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Charles Hull , 2 weeks ago

🤔 If she doesn't want to be called a liar, on national TV, she should stop lying, on national TV.

Karinda Tiweyang , 6 days ago

"Sexist, not SEXY, sexist" hahahhaha why was this necessary. Still funny af.

Flagrus , 1 week ago

That moment when a fox News treats Bernie fairer and more honest than his own party.

[Jan 31, 2020] Is Bernie sheep-dogging again?

Jan 31, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Likklemore , Jan 31 2020 15:07 utc | 183

Mike Bloomberg who said he is spending his money to get rid of Trump:

It's now Biden, Bernie, Bloomberg

Bloomberg surges past Warren into third place in new national poll

the polls are fluid - 6 months away.

Biden will flame out. It's all those Videos and his dementia. Throw in Obama's critiques.

Bernie, whether he is sheep-dogging or not and regardless of downplaying his recent heart attack, age, I see the Thomas Eggleton health factor is in play....

IMHO, The Dems convention will be brokered.

Billionaire vs Billionaire

Whatever the outcome, we are doomed. Pull up your Calendar to 2022.

[Jan 31, 2020] Tucker: Biden's career bankrolled by credit card companies and Sanders has no courage to state an obvious think -- yest he is corrupt as hell

Sanders despicably folded... Another argument that Sanders plays the role of sheep dog in this election cycle.
Jan 21, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Impeachment distracting from the real scandal we should be focusing on: the Bidens.


Commander Biden , 1 week ago

Joe Biden loves corruption almost as much as he loves kids jumping on his lap.

Marie Si , 1 week ago

The Democrats are never prosecuted or held accountable for their crimes and corruption.

Freda Rounthwaite , 1 week ago

You've hit the nail on the head with every single word you've said Tucker. Thank you for staying true to real journalism.

ubon11 , 1 week ago

It's too bad that only half the country will ever hear this.

Puffin Vapor , 1 week ago (edited)

This is just a part of the "Swamp" President Trump has talked about. Funneling money to family members of elected officials is so prevalent that they don't even see a problem, it's just business as usual.

L P , 1 week ago

What's in your wallet? Oh, it's Biden's hand..

Kelly T , 1 week ago

"It's a hostage tape." Laughed out loud. Love Tucker

Lynn Jacobs , 2 days ago

Joe Biden is creepy, corrupt, and dishonest -- the exact opposite of Bernie Sanders.

ultraflem , 3 days ago

"My instincts tell me the Democrats don't want to get rid of Plugs (Biden) on the corruption angle because then they're all exposed to it." - Rush Limbaugh

Carl Worsoe , 1 week ago

I wonder if Chuck shummers daughter and her wife got money from Ukraine like piglosi Kerry and the bidens 🇺🇸

No worries Mate , 1 week ago

Biden crime family!

QUÉBEC FLAT , 1 week ago

Colonel Sanders : " Joe Biden is a very decent man" !!! Comming from the mouth of the Communist who wants to put YOU in Goulags...It makes perfect sense !

Elazar de Lusignan M. , 1 day ago

So Uncle Joe is a front man for the credit card industry? Good job Joe! Millions of Americans are being harassed by collection agencies.

James Williams , 3 days ago

Joe Biden is a friend of mine and he's a really nice guy ... I love my husband or wife he/she's a really nice person as the ER staff bandages their wounds ... hmm got it

Emanuel Terzian , 1 week ago

Tucker has been the widest eye opener ever in this 3 year saga of going after the greatest U S President of my lifetime and counting

Sallyanne Deegan , 1 week ago

DEMS react with disbelief when called on the table for the ©BUSINESS AS USUAL CORRUPT PRACTICES... Years of getting the system to fill their pockets ILLEGAL

David Price , 5 days ago

The Bidens are crooks, they need convicting and jailing..

smoothtwh , 2 days ago

The impeachment is to protect ALL the Corruption. The Ukraine was a hotbed for big $$$!!

WoodBeast , 2 days ago

Pelosi too Google 60 minutes steve kroft pelosi credit card insider trading

Adam M , 2 days ago

at best joe's son was being used to get a conncetion to the vp and at worst hunter was running a drug ring

[Jan 31, 2020] What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back by Bill Martin What follows originates in some notes I made in response to one such woman who supports Bernie. There are two main points.

Highly recommended!
Jan 31, 2020 | off-guardian.org

1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in 2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.

The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just say,

"Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?

I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her family so much." Indeed, Hillary's intervention in the following days was very likely intended to take attention away from Warren's attack on Sanders, as well as, of course, to once again put HRC out there as the potential savior at the convention.

It seems to me that the lesson here is that, if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, no other candidate (from among the frontrunners) is acceptable, especially because of the role they will have played in taking down Bernie and his movement.

I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a Trump/Sanders election:

i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this. However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to seriously address these power structures, and even beat them in some significant ways, then something tremendous will have been accomplished -- "the harder they come, the harder they fall," or at least I hope so. ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about it.

That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back militarism.

What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump -- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.

A lot of blowback against my articles has been against my argument that getting these terms and the discourse around them on the table is very important, a real breakthrough, and a breakthrough that both clarifies the larger terms of things and disrupts the "smooth functioning" (I take this from Marcuse) of the neoliberal-neoconservative compact around economics and military intervention.

Okay, maybe I'm right about this importance, maybe I'm not -- that's an argument I've dealt with extensively in my articles and that I'll try to deal with definitively in further writing -- but certainly a very important part of not letting Sanders be taken down by the other frontrunners (and HRC, and other nefarious forces, with Warren playing a special "feminist" and Identity Politics role here -- a role that does nothing to help, and indeed does much to hurt, ordinary working people of all colors, genders, etc.) will be to further sharpen the general understanding of the importance of these themes.

Significantly, there is a third theme which has emerged since the unexpected election of Donald Trump -- unexpected at least by the establishment and the nefarious powers (though they were thinking of an "insurance policy"); on this theme, I don't know that Sanders can do much -- working with the Democratic Party, he is too implicated in this issue, and he does not have whatever "protection" Trump has here.

What I am referring to are those nefarious powers behind the establishment and the ruling class, and that have taken on a life of their own -- I don't mind calling this the Deep State, but one can just think about the "intelligence community" and especially the CIA.

Whatever -- the point is that Trump has had to call them out and expose them in ways that they obviously do not like, and also his agenda of a world where the U.S. gets along well-enough with China and Russia at least not to risk WWIII, or, perhaps more realistically, not to tip the balance of things such that Russia goes completely over to a full alliance with China, a "Eurasian Union," which both Putin and Xi have spoken about, is not to their liking.

Whether Sanders would call out these nefarious factors if he were in a position to do so, I don't know -- I don't have great confidence that he would -- but it is also the case that he is not in a position to do so, these powers can easily dispose of Sanders in ways that they haven't been able to, so far, with Trump.

If one does think these themes are important, especially the first two (with further discussion reserved regarding the powers-behind-the-powers), then I wish that Trump-haters would open their minds for a moment and think about what it apparently takes in our social system to even begin to get these themes on the table.

In any case, regarding Sanders, the movement he is building will have to go even further with the first two themes if Sanders is nominated, and at least go some distance in taking on the third theme. This applies even more if Sanders were to be elected. (This is where you might take a look at the 1988 mini-series, A Very British Coup -- except that how things go down in the U.S. will not be so "British.") Here again, though, if Sanders is to build a movement that can openly address these questions, this will be tremendous, a great thing.

So this is it in a nutshell: If Sanders were to be nominated, then there is the possibility, which everyone ought to work to make a reality, that we could have an election based around the questions, What can be done to improve the lives of ordinary working people?, and, What can be done to curb militarism and end the endless interventions and wars?


Antonym ,

Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county, Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved this.

The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all Establishments against her.

Fair dinkum ,

Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.

Gall ,

I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too long.

Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.

Charlotte Russe ,

It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit quite nicely in the Republican Party.

Bernie a FDR Democrat, is considered too radical by the wealthy who enjoy their Trumpian tax cuts and phony baloney stock market profits. If Trump, was just a bit less crude and not so overtly racist he'd be perfectly acceptable. Bernie, who thinks the working-poor are entitled to a living wage, healthcare, a college education, and clean drinking water is anathema to the affluent liberals who like everything just the way it is. They long for the Obama days when two wars were quietly expanded to seven, when the Wall Street crooks got a pass, and when health insurance lobbyists had their way with the federal government–the CIA was absolutely ecstatic with Obama. Trump was a bit of a speed bump for the security state, but nothing really threatening as he stuffed the pockets of the arms industry and the surveillance state with billions of working-class tax dollars. The Orangeman is having a few internecine battles with the intelligence agencies, but in the end they thoroughly had their way with the buffoon.

Bernie on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He can't be as easily attacked. Of course, the mainstream media news has all the usual Corbyn tricks in their bag, and Bernie could fall to the wayside like Corbyn if he's incapable of unapologetically fighting back. Bernie's working-class supporters want to see him give his attackers the one-two-punch and knock them out before the DNC Convention.

If Bernie manages to win numerous primaries the threat won't come from Warren or Hillary that's so 2016. The new insidious "Bernie enemy" is billionaire Bloomberg. Who is waiting in the wings If Biden takes a deep dive, Daddy Warbucks will make a play to cause a brokered convention. And that's when Perez and his Republican/Dems will takedown Bernie. Bernie's followers MUST come out swinging and not capitulate like they did last time. They have to force the issue, create a stir and threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third Party. Young progressives have this one big shot at making a difference, and they can't allow themselves to be sheepdogged into voting for another neoliberal who's
intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, if you don't move forward you're actually moving backward into planetary ecocide.

Gall ,

Hey check this out. Seems the DNC is shaking in their boots about the possibility of a third party hijacking their "base":

https://www.mintpressnews.com/liberal-establishment-warning-third-parties-not-to-ruin-2020-election/264460/

Here's one from Whitney implying that they needn't worry because plans are in the works to install King Cyrus II as the permanent ruler with the help of his Zionist friends in the Department of Hebrew Security:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/liberal-establishment-warning-third-parties-not-to-ruin-2020-election/264460/

Even so it looks like Trump has decided to get rid of us noninterventionist and antiwar naysayers by fully bringing in the Dispensationalist Armageddon rapture embracing nut jobs who stand with the Talmudic genocidal racists in Israel who believe that Jesus Christ is boiling for an eternity in excrement and that his mother Mary was a whore:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52918.htm

I wish that this insanity was fantasy.

mark cutts ,

Hi Bill

we have witnessed in the UK the defamation of Corbyn the ' Left Disrupter ' as he wanted to throw back the normal state of political play.

He and the well meaning Labour Party was headed off at the pass.

We have to remember that the Ruling Class have to have fall back positions and that Biden is better than Bernie as is Warren and so on.

It appears to me that the DNC also has its fallback positions too and Bernie will be chopped by the Super Delegates once again on the altar of ' electabilty ' ( read any form of Socialism – American or British is not acceptatble to the PTB ) and that is how it may end.

The battle at the moment in the UK Labour Party is which leader will back up and support extra Parliamentary action in resistance to this very right wing Tory government?

In the US the thing is the same if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.

Personally I would think that he would be a plus ( despite his foreign policy views ) but remember that Trump was a maverick Republican yet I'm not sure that Sanders would veer over to that position.

If he did then the " action " part of the steep learning curve would have to kick in to defend him and more to the point his genuinely progressive policies.

In the UK now Corbyn as the personification of ' Socialist ' threat is no longer doorstepped by the British media.

Instead the installation of a Leftish Centrist by the media ( i.e. a person that is -no threat to the existing order ) is a requirement.

This is all under the guise of a " Strong Opposition " to the right wing government.

Warren – not Biden seems to be that kind of favourite for the Ruling Class should Trump fall.

We had Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair – you in the US will get Warren.

I wish Bernie and his backers weel but I don't see it happening.

Maybe Tulsi Gabbard in another 4 years?

She and AOC are very good But this is not their time.

Not yet.

Richard Le Sarc ,

When I think of how Corbyn refused to fight back against ENTIRELY mendacious and filthy vilification as an 'antisemite', I think it might be possible that the MOSSAD told him that if he resisted he might end up, dead in his bath, like John Smith.

bevin ,

Where the world weary gather to tell us how they have been let down.
Bill nails it here:
" i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder ."

Anyone who believes that elections, as such, lead to great changes needs a keeper. And one who can read the US Constitution aloud for preference.
But this is not to say that at a time like this-and there have been very few of them in US history- when there is the possibility of a major candidate challenging some of the bases of the ruling ideology-albeit by doing little more than running on a platform of refurbished Progressivism- there is really no excuse for not insisting that the challenge be made and the election played out.
Sanders is not just challenging the verities of neo-liberalism but, implicitly undermining the political consensus that has supported the Warfare State since 1948.
The thing about Bernie is that he is authenticated by the enemies that he has enrolled against him and the dramatic measures that they are taking against him. Among those enemies are the Black Misleadership Class, and the various other faux progressives who are revealing themselves to be last ditch defenders of the MIC, Israel- AIPAC is now 'all in' in Iowa and New Hampshire- and the Insurance industry. It is an indication of the simplicity of Bernie's political task that no section of Congress gives more support to the Healthcare scammers than the representatives of the community most deprived by the current system. If he manages to get through to the people and persuade them that he will fight for Free Healthcare for all and other basic and long overdue social and economic reforms he can break the hold that the political parties have over a system everyone understands is designed to make the rich-who own both parties- richer and the great majority poorer. That has been the way that things have been going in the USA for at least 45 years.

Gall ,

Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.

Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.

There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called "Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a "Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".

Explained here in his inimitable style:

https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/lee-camp-the-dncs-secret-nuclear-option-to-stop-bernie-sanders-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the greater of the two evils.

Yeah right.

Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can both go to hell. I've already made my choice:

https://www.markcharles2020.com

He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left".

Greg Bacon ,

After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.

If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another racket in 2021.

Gall ,

Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.

But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie your ass off until you get elected at least.

Willem ,

Much magical thinking here.

If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?

I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.

And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?

Don't think so.

Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations everywhere.

The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped (and will be stopped).

I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for, except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians say

It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.

See also https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

Richard Le Sarc ,

If voting changed anything, it would be outlawed.

[Jan 30, 2020] Sanders's fighting words have no fighting in them

Jan 30, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

One assumes that Sanders does not envision this kind of revolution; Sanders supporters will point out that he always refers to a " political revolution." A political revolution is defined as 'an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact,' in contrast to social revolutions, in which property relations are also changed. In short, adding the political prefix hardly helps to clarify what Sanders has in mind. Furthermore, the transformation he is looking for surely includes changing property rights, which suggests that he is actually talking about a social revolution. This is not an academic quibble about definitions; it is a question about what the meaning of the key theme of Sanders's campaign, about the way we are going to get all the wonders he promises to deliver.

Sanders has stated that the political revolution he seeks "is not utopian. This is what we can accomplish and which already exists in a number of other countries." It would help if he named these countries, but they cannot be found in his stump speech, the transcript of his 90-minute-long interview with the New York Times editorial board, or his webpage. A Trump supporter will say that the answer can be found in Sanders's praise for the leftist, authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Bolivia, China, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Indeed, Sander's often points out that China has done more to address extreme poverty "than any country in the history of civilization." He has praised Cuba for "making enormous progress in improving the lives of poor and working people." Sanders stated that "Vermont could set an example to the rest of the nation similar to the type of example Nicaragua is setting for the rest of Latin America" and "It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing! In other countries people don't line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death."

However, no serious observer will claim that Sanders is calling for such a regime for the U.S. While Sanders has heaped praise of these countries, he often adds a hedge. For example, in his December interview with the Times editorial board, he said:

It wasn't so many decades ago that there was mass starvation in China. All right? There is not mass starvation today and people have got -- the government has got to take credit for the fact that there is now a middle class in China. No one denies that more people in China have a higher standard of living than use to be the case. All right? That's the reality.

On the other hand, China is a dictatorship. It does not tolerate democracy, i.e., what they're doing in Hong Kong. They do not tolerate independent trade unions and the Communist Party rules with a pretty iron fist. So, and by the way, in recent years, Xi has made the situation even worse. So, I mean, I'll give, you give people credit where it is due. But you have to maintain values of democracy and human rights and certainly that does not exist in China.

In the same interview, he commented that ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales had "a pretty good record," noting his success in fighting extreme poverty and giving voice to indigenous people. He qualified his compliments by saying, "Should he have run for another term although they made it legal? Probably not".

One may suggest that Sanders has in mind the social democracies of Scandinavia. However, these regimes were forged not through revolutions, but through the kinds of reforms centrist Democrats favor. In short, it is quite easy to figure out what Sanders could not possibly mean when he keeps calling for a revolution; it is much more difficult to figure out what he does mean.

Sanders keeps calling on people to "stand up and fight." "There will never be any real change in this country unless there is a political revolution. That means that millions of people have got to stand up and fight." "We need millions of people[,] working class people whose lives have been decimated for the last 45 years[,] to stand up to Wall Street, to stand up to insurance companies and the drug companies." Again, one is at a loss as to what he means.

Revolutions are forged in the streets, on the barricades, over forceful control of the centers of power and media. There is no hint that Sanders calls on his followers to fight in that way; he mainly ask them to send checks often and for vote him--- which is what all the other candidates also call for. It seems that Sanders's fighting words have no fighting in them .

Finally, one notes that even if Sanders gains power, the old fashioned way, by gaining a majority of the votes in the electoral college, and somehow also gets the Democrats to gain majority in the Senate and maintain their majority in the House, he still will be unable to pass he radical agenda any more than Obama was able to pass much more moderate policies-- when he had such majorities. The Democratic Senators from red stats will not support radical changes.

The good news is that Sanders -- despite his revolutionary rhetoric-- actually does not mean to overthrow the government, but, rather, to work within the democratic system. The sad news is that he is confusing millions with his revolutionary rhetoric and leading them up a garden patch with an agenda that is at best utopian.

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor and professor of international affairs at The George Washington University. Click here to watch a recent, four-minute video called "Political and Social Life after Trump." His latest book, Reclaiming Patriotism, was published by University of Virginia Press in 2019 and is available for download without charge.

[Jan 30, 2020] Pro-Israel Super PAC is spending big money to defeat Bernie Sanders in Iowa

Jan 30, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Oui , Jan 30 2020 14:09 utc | 16

New Aipac group created to curb the Democratic Progressive Grassroots Movement

Pro-Israel Super PAC is spending big money to defeat Bernie Sanders in Iowa | Mondoweiss |

The faces of the old guard who were behind the doomed campaign of HRC in her defeat to long-shot Trump. Also UANI and the successful campaign to defeat the Iran deal, by second try, in 2018.

Walter , Jan 30 2020 14:23 utc | 20

Oui | Jan 30 2020 14:09 utc | 16 (zionish buckies)

They say that Truman beat Dewey in '48 because the nazis, er "zionist agent" ponyed up 2 million 1948 dollars. Lotta money in those days...

............
steven t johnson | Jan 30 2020 14:13 utc | 17

We are surrounded in our small riverain community by nuttychristers who believe precisely as you describe. They also, many, expect to beam up in some magical way..."rapture". The Old Army Game on their soft pliable grey matters...a gang of dangerous rubes.

zionism, nazi-ism, and Judaism are not compatible, but if any preacher or Rabbi were to say this from a local pulpit there'd be a change in his status before sunset. (actually there are zero Rabbis here, but a few within 100 km.

I am pretty sure the guy who tried 30 years ago to teach me Hebrew, a Rabbi (long retired now) sees this for what it is, and for what it's leading to, if he's still alive.

[Jan 29, 2020] Campaign Promises and Ending Wars

Highly recommended!
Jan 29, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

lizabeth Warren wrote an article outlining in general terms how she would bring America's current foreign wars to an end. Perhaps the most significant part of the article is her commitment to respect Congress' constitutional role in matters of war:

We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary role in deciding to engage militarily. The United States should not fight and cannot win wars without deep public support. Successive administrations and Congresses have taken the easy way out by choosing military action without proper authorizations or transparency with the American people. The failure to debate these military missions in public is one of the reasons they have been allowed to continue without real prospect of success [bold mine-DL].

On my watch, that will end. I am committed to seeking congressional authorization if the use of force is required. Seeking constrained authorizations with limited time frames will force the executive branch to be open with the American people and Congress about our objectives, how the operation is progressing, how much it is costing, and whether it should continue.

Warren's commitment on this point is welcome, and it is what Americans should expect and demand from their presidential candidates. It should be the bare minimum requirement for anyone seeking to be president, and any candidate who won't commit to respecting the Constitution should never be allowed to have the powers of that office. The president is not permitted to launch attacks and start wars alone, but Congress and the public have allowed several presidents to do just that without any consequences. It is time to put a stop to illegal presidential wars, and it is also time to put a stop to open-ended authorizations of military force. Warren's point about asking for "constrained authorizations with limited time frames" is important, and it is something that we should insist on in any future debate over the use of force. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs are still on the books and have been abused and stretched beyond recognition to apply to groups that didn't exist when they were passed so that the U.S. can fight wars in countries that don't threaten our security. Those need to be repealed as soon as possible to eliminate the opening that they have provided the executive to make war at will.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is unimpressed with Warren's rhetoric:

But what has Warren offered to do differently, or better? She's made no notable break with the class of experts who run our failing foreign policy. Unlike Bernie Sanders, and like Trump or Obama, she hasn't hired a foreign-policy staff committed to a different vision. And so her promise to turn war powers back to Congress should be considered as empty as Obama's promise to do the same. Her promise to bring troops home would turn out to be as meaningless as a Trump tweet saying the same.

We shouldn't discount Warren's statements so easily. When a candidate makes specific commitments about ending U.S. wars during a campaign, that is different from making vague statements about having a "humble" foreign policy. Bush ran on a conventional hawkish foreign policy platform, and there were also no ongoing wars for him to campaign against, so we can't say that he ever ran as a "dove." Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and ran on ending the U.S. military presence there, and before his first term was finished almost all U.S. troops were out of Iraq. It is important to remember that he did not campaign against the war in Afghanistan, and instead argued in support of it. His subsequent decision to commit many more troops there was a mistake, but it was entirely consistent with what he campaigned on. In other words, he withdrew from the country he promised to withdraw from, and escalated in the country where he said the U.S. should be fighting. Trump didn't actually campaign on ending any wars, but he did talk about "bombing the hell" out of ISIS, and after he was elected he escalated the war on ISIS. His anti-Iranian obsession was out in the open from the start if anyone cared to pay attention to it. In short, what candidates commit to doing during a campaign does matter and it usually gives you a good idea of what a candidate will do once elected.

If Warren and some of the other Democratic candidates are committing to ending U.S. wars, we shouldn't assume that they won't follow through on those commitments because previous presidents proved to be the hawks that they admitted to being all along. Presidential candidates often tell us exactly what they mean to do, but we have to be paying attention to everything they say and not just one catchphrase that they said a few times. If voters want a more peaceful foreign policy, they should vote for candidates that actually campaign against ongoing wars instead of rewarding the ones that promise and then deliver escalation. But just voting for the candidates that promise an end to wars is not enough if Americans want Congress to start doing its job by reining in the executive. If we don't want presidents to run amok on war powers, there have to be political consequences for the ones that have done that and there needs to be steady pressure on Congress to take back their role in matters of war. Voters should select genuinely antiwar candidates, but then they also have to hold those candidates accountable once they're in office.

[Jan 28, 2020] Sanders is like a geriatric Colonel Kurz, operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct by CJ Hopkins

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November. How could they, given the total stranglehold the Russians now have on American democracy? ..."
www.zerohedge.com

... ... ...

Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 1 is winning the 2020 election, which isn't looking very promising. The Democratic Party is in shambles. According to the polls, their current front-runner is a senile, hair-sniffing, finger-sucking freak who never met a credit card company or a healthcare lobbyist he didn't like , and who rivals even Donald Trump when it comes to incoherent babbling.

Yes, that's right, folks, it's "Smilin' Joe" Biden, vanquisher of the razor-wielding, swimming-pool-gangster "Corn Pop " to the rescue!

As far as I've been able to gather, the plan is for Joe to out-"crazy" Trump (and thus win back the "bull goose loony" demographic) by going completely off his medication and having a series of scary-looking petit mal seizures on national television.

That is, unless the impossible happens, and Biden is vanquished by Bernie Sanders (a/k/a "The Magic Socialist" ), who Democratic Party bigwigs would sooner publicly immolate themselves than nominate, and who the corporate media are already accusing of being a lying, sexist. communist, crypto-Trump-loving, Jew-hating Jew .

Sanders, it seems, has gone totally "native." He's out there, in the heart of the American darkness, like a geriatric Colonel Kurz, operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.

According to the latest reconnaissance, he is building another "revolutionary" army of fanatical, doped-up, hacky-sacking "socialists" that he will lead into the convention in July and deliver to Biden, or Elizabeth Warren, or whichever soulless corporate puppet the party honchos eventually nominate, and then obsequiously stump for them for the next five months. (Or, who knows, maybe Michael Bloomberg will put the Democrats out of their misery and just buy the party and nominate himself.)

The "Crush Bernie" movement is just getting started, but you can tell the Resistance isn't screwing around. Hillary Clinton just officially launched her national " Nobody Likes Bernie " campaign at the star-studded 2020 Sundance Film Festival .

Influential Jewish journalists like Bari Weiss and Jeffrey Goldberg , and Ronald Lauder's newly-founded Anti-Semitism Accountability Project , have been Hitlerizing him, or, rather, Corbynizing him.

Obama has promised to "stop him," if necessary.

MSNBC anchor Joy Reid brought on a professional " body language expert " to phrenologize Sanders "live" on the air and, as I said, they're just getting started.

In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November. How could they, given the total stranglehold the Russians now have on American democracy?

As Adam Schiff just reminded everyone , unless Donald Trump is removed from office, " we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won ," because at any moment Putin could order Trump to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating Biden's son's corruption by refusing to fund the Ukrainian military's resistance to Putin's secret plot to occupy the entire Ukraine and use it as a covert base from which to launch an all-out thermonuclear war against the United States (which Putin already controls through his puppet, Trump, and his network of nefarious Facebook bots, which, according to this expert on NPR , are already brainwashing gullible Black people into voting for Bernie Sanders this time, or at least refusing to vote for Biden, like they refused to vote for Hillary last time which, OK, I know, that sounds kind of racist, but we're talking NPR here, folks. These people aren't racists. They're liberals!)

OK, I got a little lost there the point is, if the election goes ahead, and Trump doesn't have an embolism or something, odds are, we're looking at four more years of Putin-Nazi occupation. Which brings us to

Non-Lethal Option No. 2

Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 2 is, of course, the current impeachment circus. I don't even know where to start with this one.

After three and a half years of corporate-media-manufactured mass hysteria and Intelligence Community propaganda designed to convince the American public that Donald Trump is a "Russian asset" (and possibly Putin's homosexual lover ) and also literally the Resurrection of Hitler, the Democrats are trying to impeach the man for something that most Americans either (a) believe is common practice among members of the political class, (b) don't entirely understand, or (c) do, but don't give a shit about.

Seriously, it's like they held a contest to see if anyone could think of something that would out-anticlimax the Mueller report, and this is what the winner came up with an over-acted, sanctimonious snooze-fest, the stakes of which could not possibly be lower.

Sure, the corporate media are doing their best to cover every twist and turn of the "drama" as if the fate of democracy were hanging in the balance, but everybody knows it's a joke or, all right, almost everybody .

... ... ...


[Jan 28, 2020] Bernie Bros Furious (Again) At Hostile DNC Appointments After Sanders Soars Into Dem Lead

Jan 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

It's like deja vu all over again...

It would appear the Democratic Party elites are in full panic mode as despite all their (and their liberal media mates) efforts to bad-mouth Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Senator is soaring in the polls, overtaking 'sleepy' Joe both in surveys and at the bookies.

Today, The Hill reports that a new poll finds Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leading the field of Democratic contenders in California , where about 40 percent of all the convention delegates will be allocated on Super Tuesday.

Sanders also leads in Iowa ...

And Sanders lead in New Hampshire...

And on the national level, is rapidly catching Biden...

And finally, where it really matters - putting your money where your mouth is - Bernie is exploding higher, surging past Biden to lead the Democratic Party nomination odds...

Source: Bloomberg

And it is not likely to slow down anytime soon, as the Sanders campaign announced Tuesday it would launch its first ads in Super Tuesday states, spending $2.5 million between California and Texas.

All of which is probably why - after failing with accusations of sexism and verbal attacks from Hilary and Obama - The DNC has stepped up to the plate (again) to disavow Democratic voters in America that they believe in any sort of democracy.

'Bernie Bros' are venting frustration at DNC Chairman Tom Perez over his initial appointments to the committees that will oversee the rules and party platform at the nominating convention in Milwaukee later this year.

Specifically, as The Hill reports, Sanders' allies are incensed by two names in particular :

The Sanders campaign unsuccessfully sought to have Frank removed from the rules committee in 2016 , describing him as an "aggressive attack surrogate for the Clinton campaign."

And, as The Hill details, Podesta, a longtime Washington political consultant and Clinton confidant, is viewed with contempt by some on the left. One of Podesta's hacked emails from 2016 showed him asking a Democratic strategist where to "stick the knife in" Sanders, who lost the nomination to Clinton that year after a divisive primary contest.

"The appointments also include individuals that are outright hostile to Bernie Sanders and his supporters," Yasmine Taeb, a DNC member from Virginia, exclaimed.

"It's not the message the DNC should be sending to the grassroots right now when we're all working aggressively to defeat the racist in the White House."

"If the DNC believes it's going to get away in 2020 with what it did in 2016, it has another thing coming," Sanders' campaign co-chair Nina Turner blasted.

Even the neocons are panicking...

"For the socialist left...Bernie is too big to fail. The question is whether the Democratic Party, the only political force standing between Donald Trump and his authoritarian ambitions, will risk failing with him." https://t.co/RncDSEzrIL

-- Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 28, 2020

How will the military-industrial-complex survive under a socialist president?

As The Hill concludes, Perez and his team had nothing to do with the party's disastrous 2016 convention, which took place under the cloud of WikiLeaks releasing hacked DNC emails that showed political bias in favor of Clinton over Sanders.

But Clinton's recent return to the spotlight to bash Sanders and relitigate both her 2016 primary victory and general election loss has reignited tensions between establishment Democrats and grassroots liberals.

With Sanders rising in the polls, there are new fears among his supporters that the national party will stack the deck against him, particularly if there is a contested convention.

[Jan 27, 2020] Michael Moore gave an excellent speech at Sanders rally last night, even better than AOC's. Basically he said this election is about FREEDOM and you can't be free if you don't have the power to make this world better for everyone!

Jan 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Circe , Jan 26 2020 21:25 utc | 41

...Show your support! Spread his message online, take action in whichever way you can, because if he doesn't make it in this election we will be at the mercy of lunatic Trump and Ziofascism will take hold for a GENERATION to come, and the oligarchy that rules Washington are already causing irreversible damage on MULTIPLE LEVELS, especially to our freedom and power.

Michael Moore gave an excellent speech at Sanders rally last night, even better than AOC's. Basically he said this election is about FREEDOM and you can't be free if you don't have the power to make this world better for everyone!

We are losing all our power to the will of the billionaire/oligarch rulers who want to lord over the world at our expense. We are losing the fight to stop their military escalation; millions of people suffer daily because of U.S. policy and we can only witness with our hands tied! We are losing to climate change wreaking havoc in more places every year. We will ALL suffer if we don't stop all this soon.

Sanders is about restoring power to average people. Everyone who feels powerless, dragged towards escalating hostility with Iran, and suffering increasing hardship and so much uncertainty and anxiety in regards to the ever-advancing effects of global warming; everyone, stands to benefit in some way from a Sanders presidency. The world will breathe a collective sigh of relief when Bernie kicks Trump out of the White House! It has to happen! It must happen! Bernie has all the energy on his side and now has momentum that must continue. An opportunity like this to stop the madness may NEVER come again in our lifetime.

Please share Sanders' message wherever you can. He must win this election for all of us!

dltravers , Jan 27 2020 2:08 utc | 69

Circe @ 41

I see no way Bernie is going to beat Trump nor is he going to break the back of the collective power centers arrayed against the average person trying to exist. Bernie talks a great game but like Trump he will not deliver other than maybe appointing some judges.

... ... ...

[Jan 27, 2020] Had She Picked Bernie Sanders It Would Have Been Tougher Trump In 2018 Audio

Jan 27, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jon Queally via CommonDreams.org,

A nearly 90-minute audio recording of a private dinner that took place with numerous individuals and President Donald Trump in 2018 was made public Saturday evening by the legal team of Lev Parnas, a close associate of the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, in which the president can be heard saying "take her out" in reference to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch -- a key witness in the impeachment trial now in the U.S. Senate.

Trump also says in the recording that he was relieved that he didn't have to face off against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 election. "Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would have been tougher. He was the only one I didn't want her to pick," Trump is heard saying.

Trump on secret recording:

"If Bernie would have been VP it would have been tougher...I got 20% of Bernie vote because of trade. He's a big trade guy...

Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would have been tougher. He is the only one I didn't want her to pick." #BernieBeatsTrump https://t.co/n27miR67kT pic.twitter.com/pJUpwGcHxm

-- 🔥A NobodyforBernie2020🔥VoteForBernie🔥 (@BernForBernie20) January 25, 2020

The recording, according to CNN ,

was made by another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, and shared with Parnas shortly after the dinner, according to Bondy. Fruman's attorney declined to comment.

Only the first three minutes of the tape include visuals, and Trump can be seen briefly when he approaches the rectangular dining table set with red bouquets of flowers. The remaining portion of the recording is only audio.

The conversation involving Ukraine begins about 40 minutes into the 1-hour-and-24-minute recording. During that discussion, Trump asks a person who appears to be Parnas how long Ukraine would "last in fight against Russia." Parnas says "without us, not very long," and another person chimes in, "about 30 minutes." Months later, Trump would try to cut off military aid to Ukraine.

In its reporting, VICE notes the "five wildest things" Trump had to say during the conversation -- a discussion at one point he can clearly be heard saying is "off the record."

Among the items deemed the wildest was a comment Trump made about current 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In the recording, Trump said he was glad former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't pick Sanders as her 2020 running mate -- citing his tough stance on U.S. trade policy.

"Because [Sanders'] a big trade guy," said Trump. "You know he basically says we're getting screwed on trade. And he's right."

"Had she picked Bernie Sanders it would've been tougher. He's the only one I didn't want her to pick," Trump told the people in the room.

* * *

The full audio recording as released by VICE (Trump begins speaking at approximately 2:28):

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/749447704&color=ff5500

https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4879&num_ads=18&cf=1258.5.zerohedge%20190919 Show 83 Comments


SmilinJoeFizzion , just now link

Tim Kaine was an awful choice. She probably should have picked Romney

Negative Interest , 11 minutes ago link

Water under the bridge and he is getting impeached. Not laughing now about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/us/politics/trump-ukraine-donors.html

Negative Interest , 10 minutes ago link

Thread for the downvoter

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson

Teamtc321 , 4 minutes ago link

^^^^^ Just another typical, Retarded Libtard dragging out a NYT's article to past stupid to their forehead........

What a Dip ****......You idiots are not only thin, you are embarrassing..... smh....

B-Bond , 22 minutes ago link

"Because [Sanders'] a big trade guy," said Trump. "You know he basically says we're getting screwed on trade. And he's right." 😵

Tariff rate, applied, simple mean, all products (%)

China 8.5 🛑⛔

U.S. 3.4

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.SM.AR.ZS

gay troll , 24 minutes ago link

If you like your psychological warfare you can keep your psychological warfare.

travwill , 25 minutes ago link

Probably. I couldn't remember even and had to Google her running mate...

John Hansen , 27 minutes ago link

The election would have also been different if Trump would have been honest about his neocon foreign policy and support for continued mass migration.

Dzerzhhinsky , 25 minutes ago link

The last honest American politician was Jimmy Carter, American voters can't stomach the truth.

Stainless Steel Rat , 21 minutes ago link

Yup. Candidate Trump knew all those Democrat judges would block his fake attempts at scrutinizing travel from terrorist-sponsoring nations and stopping illegal migration. /s

Any way you slice it, Donald J. Trump is a Real Genius.

John Hansen , 16 minutes ago link

Low energy, just like the Bush mess.

Stainless Steel Rat , 4 minutes ago link

Poor Jeb never, none of them ever could keep up with the Dynamo Don.

Stainless Steel Rat , 33 minutes ago link

More evidence President Trump doesn't lie. Ya gotta love it!

(though his haters must hate it..)

...

Still Winning! 🏆❤

#MAGA #KAG2020 🇺🇸

artichoke , 35 minutes ago link

Maybe more Bernie voters will start to appreciate that Trump really does help them, unlike Bernie who is full of and never met a payroll.

Tampan , 40 minutes ago link

It'd be nice to get an age limit on the presidency and other high positions.

At the very least, I'd like to see weekly blood and urine tests of the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House. All the drugs these old people must be on probably contributes to their insanity.

newmacroman , 4 minutes ago link

Term limits and one passport would be better...

overbet , 42 minutes ago link

Politician's running on a platforms to tax me more to give free **** away needs to end. I dont want to pay a ******* penny for anyone else. If I feel charitble Ill doate otherwise get the **** out of my wallet.

Item N9ne , 29 minutes ago link

They love to say capitalism breeds corruption. To a degree, yes.

They hate the fact that capitalism breeds volunteerism. Ruins the talking point.

Summers Eve , 44 minutes ago link

Lol sanders is a lunatic.. I mean the guy looks like a slob.. he doesn't brush his hair, he slouches, he's too old and prone to heart failures. I mean the dude is a ******* nutter..

DEMIZEN , 42 minutes ago link

sure looks a like good monkeywrench.

Item N9ne , 25 minutes ago link

He has all this momentum but you are right, so sloppily planned out with his speeches, aside from his half untucked shirt, like he couldn't organize a better delivery of his message. It's so vague anyways.

Dzerzhhinsky , 16 minutes ago link

So image is more important than substance ?

Abraham Lincoln would not stand a chance in modern superficial America.

DEMIZEN , 44 minutes ago link

Hitlery Clinton and a ******* numale chihuahua.

who comes up with these picks?

id vote for devil before those two...

Item N9ne , 22 minutes ago link

Wait I thought you just said you wouldn't vote for Hillary, but you would vote for the devil? Explain.

uhland62 , 45 minutes ago link

Dear editor - please spare us the pictures and videos of Hillary Clinton. She is a has-been who cannot contribute anything to today and tomorrow. The past is the past and we need to move forward, not backwards.

Can't Hillary knit little jumpers for her grandchildren?

Stainless Steel Rat , 31 minutes ago link

Seconded!

AVmaster , 46 minutes ago link

Bernie isn't a threat to anyone but the country, hes a crazy commie bastard and the undecided/unaffilliated voters(who decide elections) will see right thru his ********...

Southern_Boy , 41 minutes ago link

He is a threat until he's retired to his villas on the waters.

shaboobly757 , 46 minutes ago link

let me guess, another BOMBSHELL lolz

Item N9ne , 54 minutes ago link

That was then and this is now, 2020 has advantages for Trump.

Trump has been able to show that he can get **** done.

Bernie has allowed more audio of him that is detrimental to the moderate dems.

Bernie is an open border guy, plain and simple. He has AOC in his ear.

Bernie will fill the swamp with straight up communists, half if not all who will be working for HRC behind the scenes.

Bernie is old, the debates will show how weak he is. That is, the debate against Trump.

It is a stark difference still. The only difference is that Bernie has the grass roots energy on the left, where as Hillary everyone hates and still hates, and her energy only existed on TV.

Biden will be given the nomination, and will pick Bernie strictly because of the voters he could pick up.

Dems are fucked, fractured party.

Trump 2020!!

steverino999 , 52 minutes ago link

Trump Otisville Prison 2021

HopefulJoe , 49 minutes ago link

Mentally unstable Steve is back, getting fake pleasure because his life is so empty and he is such a failure he has to come here to get fake pleasure. Get help for your TDS before it is to late Steve. I really hate seeing the mentally ill hurting themselves..

shaboobly757 , 46 minutes ago link

that's what happens when no one loves him

Stainless Steel Rat , 29 minutes ago link

Come on. We love him, like one of those three-legged dogs you can't bring yourself to put down.

enforcer92677 , 7 minutes ago link

The TDS guys are like a cat with a laser pointer. It's entertaining to watch them.

steverino999 , 8 minutes ago link

Oh HopelessJoe, get a lobotomy and then you might contribute something worthwhile here at ZH.....

mikka , 49 minutes ago link

Bernie will fill the swamp with straight up communists

I don't think there are vacancies in the Swamp.

artichoke , 41 minutes ago link

Seriously Biden / Bernie? Two 80 year olds? It would be an even better ticket in 2024 when they're both 84, they should run then.

Item N9ne , 36 minutes ago link

If Trump is speaker of the house

HopefulJoe , 55 minutes ago link

Most don't get it, not even Trump, it is written GOD makes kings and takes them out. Trump could have sat on his *** at home doing nothing and he still would have won...

Proudly Unaffiliated , 56 minutes ago link

Hoping the Dems go full, open Communist. Then all will be right and honest with the world. And then we can crush them totally.

Item N9ne , 52 minutes ago link

Exactly, Bernie workers are already glorifying the gulag play. Perfect timing.

tmosley , 49 minutes ago link

That they have done. Hope people notice.

AOC and Bernie literally called for open borders yesterday, as you just ******* walk in with whatever guns or nukes or poison or drugs or child sex slaves you want. ANYTHING.

Xena fobe , 56 minutes ago link

Who did she pick? I forgot.

Proudly Unaffiliated , 54 minutes ago link

A dipshit with a pot belly named Tim Kaine, total loser. But anyone better would have upstaged her so had to go with such a louse.

artichoke , 40 minutes ago link

It didn't hurt that Pence destroyed Kaine in the VP debate. I mean really destroyed him. Pence is sharp!

JCW Industries , 58 minutes ago link

Bernie will not be the nominee. Guys like me have been calling the demorats commies for 20 years. You can't have us be right.

asiafinancenews , 59 minutes ago link

"Months later, Trump would try to cut off military aid to Ukraine."

No, he didn't. Stop lying.

rpm77 , 59 minutes ago link

So many leaking rats!!!!

FireBrander , 1 hour ago link

Biden will be the nominee; the party bosses will see to it one way or another.

I would not doubt if Bernie ends up in a coffin before/during the convention.

Obama was at least a Democrat...but a full blown Socialist?

Bernie shall not pass!

Cman5000 , 56 minutes ago link

Biden with a side of Dementia. Klobuchar will be the VP.

John Hansen , 25 minutes ago link

Nasty.

Item N9ne , 50 minutes ago link

I wonder how long they will be able to keep a digital copy of Biden "alive".. if he ever starts making sense, we will know it is an edited video.

steverino999 , 1 hour ago link

And one day he'll say if Biden didn't pick Tulsi Gabbard he would have won in 2020... ...

beecee , 59 minutes ago link

Above,

another liberal troll upvotes himself

Cman5000 , 58 minutes ago link

Hilarity!

LetThemEatRand , 57 minutes ago link

Sanders/Gabbard would wipe the floor with Trump. The DNC knows this. Ask yourself why the DNC hates both of them and would rather let Trump win.

EDIT: And no, I'm not saying I want Sanders/Gabbard to win. I'm pointing out that they would win the Presidential election against Trump.

beecee , 56 minutes ago link

🙄

Cman5000 , 54 minutes ago link

Gabbard is the only one that can give Trump a competitive race. Sanders will not be the nominee in 2020. Think Super Delegates.

LetThemEatRand , 37 minutes ago link

Absolutely right. Bernie could win every primary and the DNC would find a way to run someone else. You don't have to like Bernie to see how fucked up that is.

WorldView , 1 hour ago link

How can you run a country when everyone you talk to runs out and either writes a book, or gives a recording to the press ?

These people should be in jail for violating basic correctness when dealing with Presidents.

Cman5000 , 59 minutes ago link

Trump is Jack *** some days. This is just plain fuckery. Nothing is functioning.

FukfakeFiat , 1 hour ago link

Hillary doesnt have many friends in case anyone cared to notice.. She has people she CONTROLS... and Bernies problem was that he couldnt convince Hillary he knew how to spend her money better than she did..

_triplesix_ , 55 minutes ago link

Hillary has NO friends. She has only sycophants that want a piece of the corrupt action.

The U.S. has never known a more unlikable person.

Roger Casement , 28 minutes ago link

Soros

FukfakeFiat , 22 minutes ago link

Your avatar goes really good with that answer :)

John Hansen , 24 minutes ago link

Seems to have better friends than Trump, just saying...

Cman5000 , 1 hour ago link

It's going to be a contested convention for Dems.

Item N9ne , 39 minutes ago link

Softball questions are almost over. It's time for the real deal. Watching Trump destroy Biden would actually be one of the great TV moments. Biden might actually collapse physically from being exposed on live tv. I guarantee there are secrets to be revealed at the right time, which will be when everyone is watching, 30 or so days before the ballots are cast.

Trump is pretending that he is powerless for the moment, so they all arrogantly overplay their hands and fall right into his trap. Everything they say and do is being documented for the upcoming military tribunals.

Serious attempts to destroy democracy and overthrow the government must be taken seriously.

For those of you who think this is too Biden's approach, no he actually is weak. Pretending to be powerless and pretending to be retarded are two different things.

Clashfan , 1 hour ago link

Yes, everyone knows or should know that Bern (boo) is the most serious political threat to Rump.

Warts and all, I'd prefer Rump, but that ain't sayin' much.

Rump made the right call on Ukraine imo.

Barnacles , 1 hour ago link

Amazing how many Judas's in waiting.

Parasiticfilth , 1 hour ago link

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders paired up together would be like tying a cat's tail to a dog's tail.

Hillary Clinton being the dog of course

[Jan 25, 2020] This Kabuki theater with Schiff in a major role is outright silly by likbez

Jan 22, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , January 25, 2020 3:10 pm

While I agree that the removal of Trump might be slightly beneficial (Pence-Pompeo duo initially will run scared), this Kabuki theater with Schiff in a major role is outright silly.

Adam Schiff physically resembles a typical prosperity theology preacher -- a classic modern American snake oil salesman. And with his baseless accusations and the fear to touch real issues , he is even worse than that -- he looks outright silly even for the most brainwashed part of the USA electorate ;-)

As he supported the Iraq war, he has no right to occupy any elected office. He probably should be prosecuted as a war criminal.

Realistically Schiff should be viewed as yet another intelligence agency stooge, a neocon who is funded by military contractors such as Northrop Grumman, which sells missiles to Ukraine.

The claim that Trump is influenced by Russia is a lie. His actions indicate that he is an agent of influence for Israel, not so much for Russia. Several of his actions were more reckless and more hostile to Russia than the actions of the Obama administration. Anyway, his policies toward Russia are not that different from Hillary's policies. Actually, Pompeo, in many ways, continues Hillary's policies.

The claim that the withdrawal of military aid from Ukraine somehow influences the balance of power in the region was a State department concocted scam from the very beginning. How sniper rifles and anti-tank missiles change the balance of power on the border with the major nuclear power, who has probably second or third military in the world.? They do not.

They (especially sniper rifles) will definitely increase casualties of Ukrainian separatists (and will provoke Russian reaction to compensate for this change of balance and thus increase casualties of the Ukrainian army provoking the escalation spiral ), but that's about it. So more people will die in the conflict while Northrop Grumman rakes the profits.

They also increase the danger of the larger-scale conflict in the region, which is what the USA neocons badly wants to impose really crushing sanctions on Russia. The danger of WWIII and the cost of support of the crumbling neoliberal empire with its outsize military expenditures (which now is more difficult to compensate with loot) somehow escapes the US neocon calculations. But they are completely detached from reality in any case.

I think Russia can cut Ukraine into Western and Eastern parts anytime with relative ease and not much resistance. Putin has an opportunity to do this in 2014 (risking larger sanctions) as he could establish government in exile out of Yanukovich officials and based on this restore the legitimate government in Eastern and southern region with the capital in Kharkiv, leaving Ukrainian Taliban to rot in their own brand of far-right nationalism where the Ukraine identity is defined negatively via rabid Russophobia.

His calculation probably was that sanctions would slow down the Russia recovery from Western plunder during Yeltsin years and, as such, it is not worth showing Western Ukrainian nationalists what level of support in Southern and Eastern regions that they actually enjoy.

My impression is that they are passionately hated by over 50% of the population of this region. And viewed as an occupying force, which is trying to colonize the space (which is a completely true assessment). They are viewed as American stooges, who they are (the country is controlled from the USA embassy in any case).

And Putin's assessment might be wrong, as sanctions were imposed anyways, and now Ukraine does represent a threat to Russia and, as such, is a huge source of instability in the region, which was the key idea of "Nulandgate" as the main task was weakening Russia. In this sense, Euromaidan coup d'état was the major success of the Obama administration, which was a neocon controlled administration from top to bottom.

Also unclear what Dems are trying to achieve. If Pelosi gambit, cynically speaking, was about repeating Mueller witch hunt success in the 2018 election, that is typical wishful thinking. Mobilization of the base works both ways.

So what is the game plan for DemoRats (aka "neoliberal democrats" or "corporate democrats" -- the dominant Clinton faction of the Democratic Party) is completely unclear.

I doubt that they will gain anything from impeachment Kabuki theater, where both sides are afraid to discuss real issues like Douma false flag and other real Trump crimes.

Most Democratic candidates such as Warren, Biden, and Klobuchar will lose from this impeachment theater. Candidates who can gain, such as Major Pete and Bloomberg does not matter that much.

[Jan 25, 2020] Bernie Sanders Surges To 7-Point Lead In Iowa Times Poll

Jan 25, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

A week to go until the Iowa caucuses, and a new Times-Siena poll published Saturaday shows Bernie Sanders opening up a sizeable lead, with Biden dropping to third under Buttigieg . Sanders is now 7-points ahead of the closest Democrat contender in Iowa, which marks an impressive 6-point jump since the last Times-Siena College survey of likely caucusgoers done in October.

Breaking News: Bernie Sanders has opened up a lead in Iowa in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers found https://t.co/lxA4W5KCUb

-- The New York Times (@nytimes) January 25, 2020

Separate popularity measures, such as the online betting exchange PredictIt has Bernie Sanders above Joe Biden in first place...

[Jan 24, 2020] Sanders' campaign tweeted a clip from Rogan's show saying that he would vote for Bernie in the presidential election if Sanders secures the nomination

Notable quotes:
"... Not sure why Twitter gets so much excitement. The percentage of the US population who actually use their account at least once in a month is about 9%. ..."
Jan 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Sanders' campaign tweeted a clip from Rogan's show saying that he would vote for Bernie in the presidential election if Sanders secures the nomination.

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie... He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from." -Joe Rogan pic.twitter.com/fuQP0KwGGI

-- Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 23, 2020

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from," said Rogan.


groundhogday , 46 minutes ago link

What a backwards *** country..... Liberal, minimum wage advocating, Joe Rogan being bashed by Democraps for wanting to vote for Socialist Bernie.

Rogan is completely ignorant when it comes to economics.

(He had Peter Schiff on the podcast twice) Rogan is dangerous because he has such a large audience that is probably as ignorant as he is when it comes to free markets. Looks like we may be getting that Bernie socialism if the markets and economy start tanking into this next election. Prepare accordingly!

Idleness_Breeds_Heresy , 1 hour ago link

Not sure why Twitter gets so much excitement. The percentage of the US population who actually use their account at least once in a month is about 9%.

I'm guessing about 50% of that number is liberal, 50% is conservative. And an even lesser percent trends, influences, etc. So why does anyone with a brain give a rat **** what any dipshit on Twitter says?

loub215 , 1 hour ago link

Amazing. People fighting with words don't do well when the gloves come off..

[Jan 23, 2020] An incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Highly recommended!
The deep state clearly is running the show (with some people unexpected imput -- see Trump ;-)
Elections now serve mainly for the legitimizing of the deep state rule; election of a particular individual can change little, although there is some space of change due to the power of executive branch. If the individual stray too much form the elite "forign policy consensus" he ether will be JFKed or Russiagated (with the Special Prosecutor as the fist act and impeachment as the second act of the same Russiagate drama)
But a talented (or reckless) individual can speed up some process that are already under way. For example, Trump managed to speed up the process of destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by launching the trade war with China. He also managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Trailer Trash , Jan 23 2020 18:30 utc | 44
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36

Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.

One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially change the direction of US policy.

But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming into view...


Per/Norway , Jan 23 2020 19:31 utc | 62

The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better and independent instead.

Per
Norway

Piotr Berman , Jan 23 2020 20:19 utc | 82
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <- Norway

Of course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some actions.

But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.

Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window, together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".

From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.

[Jan 23, 2020] Incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Elections now serve mainly the legitimizing of the deep state rule function; election of a partuclar induvudual can change little, althouth there is some space of change due to the power of executive branch.
Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Trailer Trash , Jan 23 2020 18:30 utc | 44

For example, Trump managed to speed up the process od destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal empire considerably. Especially by lauching the trade war with China. He also managed to discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.

>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36

Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.

One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially change the direction of US policy.

But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming into view...

[Jan 23, 2020] Sanders desribed the strike as an "assassination" and a "dangerous escalation" that "brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars."

Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Piotr Berman , Jan 24 2020 0:03 utc | 125

A commentary about Sanders in The Week, showing the Overton Window in action:

Democratic presidential candidates have been weighing in on Trump's decision, with Sanders describing the strike as an "assassination" and a "dangerous escalation" that "brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars."

Though all of the 2020 Democrats were critical of Trump's decision, BuzzFeed notes that "Sanders took a different tone, one drawn from a wing of the party that has opposed American wars since Vietnam," while most other leading contenders "took more cautious" stands, being sure to begin their statements by condemning Soleimani.
....

Sanders was initially the only one of the Democratic candidates to describe the killing as an assassination, though Warren later on Friday did so as well.
-----
Implicit in the commentary is that Gabbard was "outside Overton Window", but she is right at the window frame, and Sanders seem to pay more attention to atrocities abroad than few years ago.

Right wing commentary (Washington Examiner)

OPINION
If it's Sanders versus Trump, Vladimir Putin will be a Bernie KGB bro

If Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Russian President Vladimir Putin will go all in for him and against President Trump. Trump can expect cyberattacks, information warfare, and covert/semi-covert Russian efforts to support Sanders' organization.
-----------------------
Privately, I expect a lot of cyber attacts, information warfare and galore of stunts in this scenario, directed at Sanders. In addition to a cool billion or two dollars spend on attack adds. BTW, Sanders did not refrain from using "Putin" as a boogieman, the opinion is in many ways a baseless smear, but it shows that mere scenario of Sanders as a candidate of a major party disrupts the cosy consensus.

[Jan 23, 2020] Electioneering is NOT Movement building

Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Jan 24 2020 2:40 utc | 153

Sanders had a chance to build a Movement but refused to do so. No one that seeks to build a Movement would have stayed silent about Hillary's many issues or the collusion against him. Sanders didn't even make an issue of these things AFTER the 2016 Presidential election. As a Party 'sheepdog' with all the right connections , he's a 'good boy'.

He ran an election. And now he's running another. But electioneering is NOT Movement building.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

In any case, I very much doubt that Sanders will be chosen as the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential candidate.

That would be counter to the establishment's interests.

1) The Jewish establishment doesn't want a Jewish President whose every pro-Israel move would be attract loads of criticism;

2) The USA establishment doesn't want Americans to have a socialist option - too many might vote for it!


That means that Bernie's is simply:
- Window-dressing;

- Sheep-dogging;

- Dividing the progressive vote;

- Democracy Works! propaganda;


!!

[Jan 23, 2020] Does Sanders paly the role of sheepdog like in 2016

Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Russ , Jan 23 2020 22:43 utc | 107

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jan 23 2020 16:14 utc | 11

"i don't think he's a sheepdog, but then i'm left with the alternative that he is still naive and gullible about some aspects of the u.s. neither is really palatable."

Is it possible for a career politician to be that naive and gullible?

But let's look at it this way. Suppose a popular candidate did want to be a sheepdog. How could he improve upon Sanders' performance in 2016? The same performance he's already promised he'll repeat in 2020.

"well if bernie does win, he can appoint her. he needs a good vp, too--not somebody like lieberman, or some other shill. "

I wasn't surprised that none of the Bernie fans answered my question from yesterday:

If he's for real, he must have a full cadre ready to go, a government-in-waiting, fully loyal to Sanders, in full agreement with his agenda, ready to become executive appointees and hit the ground running from day one aggressively pushing this Sanders program, at least in the executive branch.

After all, it's impossible to assemble such a cadre as an afterthought. If you're a real insurgent who would have to overawe and where necessary break the existing executive bureaucratic cadres and structures, you need to be ready to go on the offensive from day one. Most of all you can't expect to find allies or good intentions or conscientious advice waiting for you there.

We've seen what happened with Trump, if he ever did have even the slightest desire to drain any swamps: He brought almost no one with him, and the few he did bring he quickly purged, at the insistence of the establishment. Of course the most likely explanation is that he never had any swamp-draining intentions in the first place.

So: Who are the people comprising the Sanders insurgent-government-in-waiting?


Russ , Jan 23 2020 22:43 utc | 108

Posted by: Chas | Jan 23 2020 19:05 utc | 54

"Bernie doesn't want to take on the CIA, deep state, etc. until after he wins the election. He will be in a much stronger position then to go after them."

Just like Trump, right? He'll drain that swamp!

Piotr Berman , Jan 24 2020 0:32 utc | 134
I'm sure Sanders is a fraud, as are all his fanbots. Except perhaps for the terminally stupid ones. <-- Russ

Words cannot express my gratitude to Russ as he allows that I may be a real human, if rather feebleminded. On the other hand, i have some doubt what is his native planet (but blessing to this unknown world for giving birth to such a generous and talented individual). Take this sage advise that may well be practical where he comes from:

"If he's for real, he must have a full cadre ready to go, a government-in-waiting, fully loyal to Sanders, in full agreement with his agenda, ready to become executive appointees and hit the ground running from day one aggressively pushing this Sanders program, at least in the executive branch.

After all, it's impossible to assemble such a cadre as an afterthought"

Is this cadre bred for the occasion? Cloned? Trained in carefully organized camps -- with a bit of brainwashing to assure full loyalty? Not feasible on Earth, I am sorry to say.
The standard method in USA is to defer to few organizations for the bulk of the cadre, say, ask Goldman-Sachs to fill economic positions, Brookings to do it with the rest of domestic policy, and brainstorm with few confidantes what to do with foreign, military, and intelligence. If you are more of an insurgent, you should have at least one person working with you with an expert background for every key policy area, and let him/her sort through applications, of which there will be many.

I made a spot check on foreign policy. I observed that four years ago Sanders did not have much to say on those issues, staying "on message" that was fully domestic. But now he shows more opinions, and mostly good at that. Hear, hear! Sanders actually has a foreign policy adviser, Matt Duss, with Ph. D. in relevant area: on al-Sadr movement in Iraq, learned Arabic in the process, and his influence seems to be quite extensive according to observers. Matt was active as a journalist etc. and definitely has some network. Frankly, I am more of Gabbard man so it is only now that I did some checking. (I am not sure about her experts, but she has heart in the right place. And in best shape among the candidates.)

c1ue , Jan 24 2020 0:33 utc | 135
@krollchem #121
It seems to me that if what you say is true, nothing needs to be done in order to have the fracking revolution reverse itself. So what's the worry?
As for malinvestment vs. overinvestment: let's compare the actual return of energy vs. $ invested for fracked natural gas or oil vs. say, solar or wind. The comparisons are very unflattering.

I do find it interesting that the absolute success of fracking in producing low cost energy is considered bad...normally being able to drop prices and reduce energy costs across the entire nation, as well as net electricity production pollution levels, would be considered good. I guess some people would complain if you hanged them with a golden rope...

Sure, I actually agree on the ecological aspects to some degree - mostly because fracked oil and/or natural gas provides sooooo much more energy that the environmental impact has to be greater.

But as to reserves vs. investment: I don't remember the source offhand, but I did see a chart which showed the amount of money invested in fracking has produced 3x proven reserves in dollar values, even at existing low prices.

Ultimately, the desire to not pollute is admirable, but meaningless unless there is a clear willingness to also suffer reduced standards of living. Every time I see people say "there's a better way" - this bit is never mentioned. And most importantly, 51% of the population has to agree and vote for it.
They don't and they haven't. Until this vote passes, its all just hot air and sour grapes.

james , Jan 24 2020 0:36 utc | 136
uncle t.... if saunders was really up for it, i think it would have been wise to pull the plug on the dem machine back when he was steamrolled in the previous election... but he wanted to stay united to the sick reality... that to me reflects poorly on saunders and of course even more poorly on the dem party... either way, the usa has one choice only - the war party... no other choices are available as i see it.. now, this doesn't mean i wouldn't vote for bernie if i was in the usa, but the whole system is deeply in need of change.. going along with the status quo - what bernie did last time - just doesn't add up to a strong leadership trait or the type of person that is needed at this time as i see it.. but, i am a canuck so take it fwiw..

[Jan 23, 2020] Politician is valuable and can serve an agent of social change only to the extent he/she represents a movement toward certain programmer, a political party. Sanders does not have a movement behind him and he is foreign to the DemoRats, who will try to derail him or like in the past use him as the sheepdog...

The USA two party system is cleverly designed to destroy emerging political movements/parties by co-opting them within the framework of two faction of the neoliberal UniParty. DemoRats do it for movement to the left and Repugs for movement to the right.
There can be a party which the social base of trade unions now, as DemoRats clearly betrayed trade unions.
Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
bevin , Jan 23 2020 21:47 utc | 96
The important thing about Sanders is the movement/organization that is being built around his candidacy.

So far as I can see the power of the US President to do anything that offends the bulk of the Congress and their Masters, the Capitalist class, is extremely limited.

Without Congress Medicare for All is impossible. And Bernie knows this- the point of his campaign is to put Congress in the position of rejecting popular, electorally endorsed policies or not. And to do so in the face of a live, continuing public campaign from the grassroots.

It is difficult to have any illusions about Sanders but the reality is that the platform he is constructing is not only the only one anyone with reform pretensions can get elected on but a surefire winner in the election.

Bernie may not be a real socialist but he wants to win the race and his policies are the sort that he must campaign on, the only ones that would allow him to tap the real prize in the race: the 50% of the population who never vote. Never mind the independents and the soft Republicans, the vote a strong popular campaign, at grassroots level-door to door canvassing for example- will turn out will overwhelm Trump.

And that, I suspect is going to be the lesson of the Primaries: absent the kind of criminality that Tammany Hill and the DNC got up to in 2016 (for example losing 20,000 votes in Brooklyn) he will crush Biden and the rest of the centrists.

There is much wrong with him, his foreign policy positions, carefully crafted to keep moderate Zionists and those who can't shake the idea that America is Good out of their heads calm, are very mild but that doesn't matter.

What matters is to beat the Oligarchy, from the Deep State to the Wall Street Journal to the DNC to the media to the Academy/Brothel in the Primaries and the General Election and then watch to see whether his supporters will rally to him, after the election, when he will need all the help he can get.

As to LBJ, Lysias old friend, a Devil's Advocate might argue that he is just the sort of VP a Bernie in the White House would need, a hard nosed Congressional assassin to twist arms and implement laws. I, of course disagree.


bevin , Jan 23 2020 21:57 utc | 97

Carson @47--

The place to begin is before the beginning of the 20th Century during the great reaction to Southern and Eastern European immigrants as they were accused of importing anarchism and other un-American ideas like unions and such, the assassination of President Garfield being a good bookend to mark the beginning, although he wasn't any sort of reactionary. The next main event was the First Red Scare and associated Palmer Raids. A short Wiki citation tells much:

"At the end of the 19th century and prior to the rise of the Galleanist anarchist movement, the Haymarket affair of 1886 had already heightened the American public's fear of foreign anarchist and radical socialist elements within the budding American workers' movement."

No, it wasn't the Haymarket event; rather, it was the reporting and propaganda related to it and other actions that promoted the "public's fear." Gotta look at the Big Picture to get a grasp. It was also at this time that the attempts to stop the drive by classical political-economists to destroy the Rentier Class were greatly escalated as Hudson's detailed. The War against worker organization was also in the process of escalating. Much can be learned from Labor History of that period, particularly 1877: Year of Violence , which details the great railroad strike that took place then and is probably a better bookend.

But as is becoming clearer, the moneyed elite have always lived in fear of the masses rising and upending their ill-gained positions, a constant throughout Western History. The Anti-Communist Crusade is a description I got from Parenti's Anti-Communist Impulse , which is an excellent work but lacks an e-version.

Sorry for a rather scattered reply. My main point is that the public was deliberately scared into being anti-socialist, which was going to be difficult due to its being very Christian and keen on fellowship and sharing burdens. Yet another angle to pursue is that of the rising of the Populists from a sectional to a national prominence--it's most instructive to learn how their movement was derailed. The best work on that is Goodwyn's Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America ; Introduction to abridged version provides excellent info. Then as I linked to yesterday in my reply to Bubbles, there's Operation Unthinkable and Operation Sunrise people need to know about. One person we must know as much as possible about is Allen Dulles, younger brother of John Foster Dulles--both Hitlerian criminals IMO-- The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government being a recently published must read "If you look at the definition of the term, you'll find out "democratic socialist" was how the right-wing of the British Labour Party called themselves." vk

That is certainly true: it was. I think they got it from Harrington. In Gaitskell's day when preserving NATO was their main aim. But it hasn't been true for a long time: Labour's leaders since Michael Foot (on his last legs) have tended not to call themselves socialists of any kind. After 40 years of neo-liberal orthodoxy and the best part of a century of Cold War (not to mention the many now forgotten but vicious attacks on socialism preceding WWI) what was once the sign of a mealy mouthed rightwinger has come to signify something else. Quite what else it is difficult to say now that so many 'Leninists' have tiptoed into the Democratic Socialist parties and carried most of their vanguardist tactics with them.

c1ue , Jan 23 2020 21:59 utc | 98
This is a very interesting interview of Steve Bannon by PBS Frontline.

IMO, well worth the 2.5 hours of time Steve Bannon Interview on Youtube

uncle tungsten , Jan 24 2020 0:15 utc | 129
Russ #120
Meanwhile I've periodically visited the Sanders website ever since latter November 2016, specifically to see if there's any evidence of movement-building, as opposed to the equivalent of, "we'll start improvising the status quo campaign in 2019".

Needless to say, I've never seen a shred of commitment to anything real.

I see solid and substantial evidence of Sanders building a movement for change and his election campaign. For these two runs he has created a wide and sustainable changemaking network and raised people's hope and commitment to make a better government for the USA.

This is the success model for all changemakers throughout history: build the base, establish a cohesive and committed network with resilience to continue even in the loss of a leader. I am sure as many others here That Bernie is really sticking his neck out in the assassination land of the USA. Just read the People's History of the United States by Zinn or the cover notes for many songs like Joe Hill etc.

Russ you are a negativist in the face of a great movement for change and that is not a contribution to change, rather a blockade. Sure Bernie may not be the magi to implement all aspirants needs, but he is mighty good navigation beacon to set sail for. I can only trust the millions of USians are on that journey for the next few decades.

uncle tungsten , Jan 24 2020 0:28 utc | 131
krollchem #127
Ron Paul pointed out that one has to reform the two parties from the ground up starting at the local level which Sanders has not done. Those who have never attended a party caucus have no idea how corrupt the process is.

Reform from the ground up is usually renered impossible by thuggish machines.You can work your arse off at a branch level and maybe build a sufficient majority to get your team in control. Then come ballot time an extra fifteen people turn up fully credentialled and financial courtesy of 'head office' and you lose again. Or you get control of one or two branches in a state and then voila! like magic more branches spring up and they are all establishment cronies.

Ron Paul is BS. He is simply a diversion - a neutraliser - a red herring nonsense.

The Bernie machine has not fallen for that BS and is building BOTH internally and throughout the other partyless party the independent voters and the non voters and good luck to them. Read Rules for Radicals.

[Jan 23, 2020] Bernie has just DOUBLED his lead on Biden in New Hampshire 29 to 14 and is now only 3 points behind Biden nationally in choice for President and leads Trump by 2 points in the general. That figure will rise.

To the extent you can trust polls, that's an interesting development. biden is losing grip on electorate due to impeachment noise., which hurts him directly.
Jan 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Circe , Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 37
Despite the establishment and media shenanigans designed to hurt Sanders, despite Hillary and Warren's attempts to turn women against Sanders:

Bernie has just DOUBLED his lead on Biden in New Hampshire 29 to 14 and is now only 3 points behind Biden nationally in choice for President and leads Trump by 2 points in the general. That figure will rise.

Bernie has the wind at his back. This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime to stop Trump's escalation on Iran, to stop Trump from turning the judiciary irreversibly to the far right and making it his fascist tool, to make climate change the burning priority that it is and to take power away from the oligarchs and empower people.

Bernie must make it. He is the only candidate who is genuine and can be trusted and is VIABLE. Yes, many here want Gabbard but she is not viable in the race since she has not gained any traction. The only hope I see for Gabbard's political career is if Sanders offers her a cabinet position later, but not V-P because Gabbard's unpopularity right now will certainly drag him down. Many want her primaried and then she may not win back her seat in Congress. If he offers her an important cabinet position, she will regain in stature and prove that she is presidential material. I see her as UN Ambassador and maybe at DoD. But right now the V-P choice must be wisely assigned.

Sanders now has momentum and everyone must do their part to help him sustain it. This opportunity must not be squandered! His defeat of the CORRUPT establishment is FUNDAMENTAL. The entire planet needs a Sanders presidency to stop military escalation and address the urgency of climate change. He must be supported all the way and Trump must fall to someone of Sanders' authentic calibre.

This is the last opportunity we all have to stop the madness and corrupt oligarch control, and make a global correction towards peace. I believe in this guy; I fear the irreversible changes happening. I HAVE BEEN RIGHT ON MANY THINGS AND I'M CONVINCED OF THIS: EITHER WE ALL, EVERYWHERE ON THIS PLANET, SUPPORT THIS MAN OR WE WILL BE POWERLESS
AND ARE DOOMED TO WHAT'S ALREADY UNFOLDING.

[Jan 23, 2020] Elizabeth Warren Rages Against Anti-Impeachment Senate Republicans not understanding that she already lost her race

Another unforced error. What a politically naive (or evil) twat, this Elithabeth Warren is
"I can't think of more devastating news if you're running one of these campaigns for president than the news that your candidate is going to be bound to a desk in Washington, day after day, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses." ~Obama's former campaign manager David Axelrod
Sanders and Warren have the most to lose from a Senate impeachment trial. Iowa is Feb 3 and New Hampshire is Feb 11. As McConnell told reporters "A number of Democratic senators are running for president. I'm sure they're gonna be excited to be here in their chairs not being able to say anything during the pndency of this trial. So hopefully we'll work our way through it and finish it in not too lengthy a process,"
Clinton trial ran from Jan. 7 until Feb. 12, approximately five weeks. So if McConnell is shrewd, he will ensure that Sanders and Warren were absent from both Iowa is Feb 3 and Feb 11.
Jan 23, 2020 | americantruthtoday.com

This, however, is an outright lie. If Democrats truly valued America over their own partisan interests, they wouldn't have forced a hoax impeachment through government, despite the overwhelming opposition against it. Moreover, if "country over party" mattered to Democrats, then they wouldn't have commenced talks about impeachment since before the inception of Trump's presidency.

A new year and new decade may be upon us, but this doesn't mean that Democrats are any less terrified of seeing their impeachment sham die in the Senate.

As a matter of fact, 2020 Democrat and Sen. Elizabeth Warren spent New Year's Eve raging against her Republican colleagues and making baseless accusations against Trump, per reports from Washington Examiner.

Reviewing Warren's Tirade Against Senate Republicans The 2020 socialist's remarks about Republican members of the Senate came during her New Year's Eve address in Boston, Massachusetts. Warren lamented over the reality that Democrats will not be able to bully or intimidate Republicans into voting for a partisan-driven, unfounded sham. This blows Warren's far-left, unwell mind, so she opted to blast GOP senators as " fawning, spineless defenders" of President Trump's supposed "crimes."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks in Boston: "[President Trump] has tried to squeeze foreign governments to advance his own political fortunes. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress have turned into fawning spineless defenders of his crimes." pic.twitter.com/sGyLqsA8C7

-- The Hill (@thehill) January 1, 2020

Shortly thereafter, Warren followed up with the lie that ramming the weakest and thinnest impeachment through government "brought no joy" to House Democrats. This, of course, just isn't accurate; House Rep. Rashida Tlaib posted a gleeful livestream prior to the "impeachment" where she bragged about being "on [her] way to the United States House floor" in order to "impeach President Trump."

Finally, Warren declared that conservative senators need to "choose truth over politics" or else President Trump will attempt to "cheat his way" via the 2020 election.

Misplaced Outrage As per usual with Democrats, the outrage is misplaced and misguided. If Warren is so eager for a trial, then she should be directed this animosity towards House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who continues to hoard the impeachment articles.

f left-wing Congress members truly believed they had a solid case against the president, they'd be more than eager for the Senate to receive the articles and begin conducting a trial; instead, however, raging at President Trump and Senate Republicans is easier than acknowledge the true reality here.

Democrats forced the weakest, thinnest, and fastest impeachment through the House. The president did absolutely nothing wrong and will be acquitted either when the Senate holds a trial or by default if Pelosi keeps hoarding the articles.

[Jan 22, 2020] #MeToo provocation against Bernie Sanders organized by CNN and Elizabeth Warren

By David Walsh 20 January 2020 20 January 2020
Notable quotes:
"... New York Times ..."
"... own account ..."
"... Why did you say that? ..."
Jan 22, 2020 | www.wsws.org

CNN and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, with powerful establishment support, combined to stage a provocation this week aimed at slowing down or derailing the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Through CNN, the Massachusetts senator's camp first alleged that Sanders told her in December 2018 a woman could not win a presidential election, an allegation Sanders strenuously refuted. At the Democratic debate on Tuesday night, CNN's moderator acted as though the claim was an indisputable reality, leading to a post-debate encounter between Warren and Sanders, which the network just happened to record and circulate widely.

This is a political stink bomb, borrowed from the #MeToo playbook, typical of American politics in its putrefaction. Unsubstantiated allegations are turned into "facts," these "facts" become the basis for blackening reputations and damaging careers and shifting politics continuously to the right. Anyone who denies the allegations is a "sexist" who refuses "to believe women."

The Democratic establishment is fearful of Sanders, not so much for his nationalist-reformist program and populist demagogy, but for what his confused but growing support portends: the movement to the left by wide layers of the American population. The US ruling elite seems convinced, like some wretched, self-deluded potentate of old, that if it can simply stamp out the unpleasant "noise," the rising tide of disaffection will dissipate.

CNN's operation began Monday when it posted a "bombshell" article by M.J. Lee with the headline, "Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren in private 2018 meeting that a woman can't win, sources say."

The article animatedly begins, "The stakes were high when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met at Warren's apartment in Washington, DC, one evening in December 2018." Among other things, the CNN piece reported, the pair "discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win."

Lee continues, "The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting." In reality, the story is based on the account of one individual with a considerable interest in cutting into Sanders' support, i.e., Elizabeth Warren. As the New York Times primly noted, "Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders were the only people in the room."

The absurd CNN article goes on, "After publication of this story, Warren herself backed up this account of the meeting, saying in part in a statement Monday, 'I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.'" In other words, Warren "backed up" what could only have been her own account insofar as she was the only person there besides Sanders!

After a pro forma insertion of Sanders' categorical denial that he ever made such a statement, in which he reasonably observed, "Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016," Lee plowed right ahead as though his comments were not worth responding to. She carries on, "The conversation also illustrates the skepticism among not only American voters but also senior Democratic officials that the country is ready to elect a woman as president" and, further, "The revelation that Sanders expressed skepticism that Warren could win the presidency because she is a woman is particularly noteworthy now, given that Warren is the lone female candidate at the top of the Democratic field."

This is one of the ways in which the sexual misconduct witch-hunt has poisoned American politics, although by no means the only one. Warren's claims about a private encounter simply "must be believed."

During the Democratic candidates' debate itself Tuesday night, moderator Abby Phillips addressed Sanders in the following manner: "Let's now turn to an issue that's come up in the last 48 hours [because Warren and CNN generated it]. Sen. Sanders, CNN reported yesterday that -- and Sen. Sanders, Sen. Warren confirmed in a statement, that in 2018 you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that? " (emphasis added). Sanders denied once again that he had said any such thing. Phillips persisted, "Sen. Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you're saying that you never told Sen. Warren that a woman could not win the election?" Sanders confirmed that. Insultingly, Phillips immediately turned to Warren and continued, "Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?" This was all clearly prepared ahead of time, a deliberate effort to embarrass Sanders and portray him as a liar and a male chauvinist.

Following the debate, Warren had the audacity to confront the Vermont senator, refuse to shake his hand and assert, "I think you called me a liar on national TV." When Sanders seemed startled by her remark, she repeated it. CNN managed to capture the sound and preserve it for widespread distribution.

The WSWS gives no support to Sanders, a phony "socialist" whose efforts are aimed at channeling working-class anger at social inequality, poverty and war back into the big business Democratic Party. He is only the latest in a long line of figures in American political history devoted to maintaining the Democrats' stranglehold over popular opposition and blocking the development of a broad-based socialist movement.

Nonetheless, the CNN-Warren "dirty tricks" operation is an obvious hatchet job and an attack from the right. Accordingly, the New York Times and other major outlets have been gloating and attempting to make something out of it since Tuesday night. The obvious purpose is to "raise serious questions" about Sanders and dampen support for him, among women especially. It should be recalled that in 2016 Sanders led Hillary Clinton among young women by 30 percentage points.

Michelle Cottle, a member of the Times editorial board (in "Why Questions on Women Candidates Strike a Nerve," January 15), asserted that the issue raised by the Warren-Sanders clash was "not about Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren. Not really. And Ms. Warren was right to try to shift the focus to the bigger picture -- even if some critics will sneer that she's playing 'the gender card.'"

Cottle's "bigger picture," it turned out, primarily involved smearing Sanders. The present controversy, she went on, "has resurfaced some of Mr. Sanders's past women troubles. His 2016 campaign faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment, pay inequities and other gender-based mistreatment. Asked early last year if he knew about the complaints, Mr. Sanders's reaction was both defensive and dismissive: 'I was a little bit busy running around the country'."

After Cottle attempted to convince her readers, on the basis of dubious numbers, that Americans were perhaps too backward to elect a female president, she continued, again, taking as good coin Warren's allegations, "This less-than-inspiring data -- along with from-the-trail anecdotes about the gender-based voter anxiety that Ms. Warren and Ms. [Amy] Klobuchar have been facing -- help explain why Mr. Sanders's alleged remarks struck such a nerve. Women candidates and their supporters aren't simply outraged that he could be so wrong. They're worried that he might be right." The remarks he denies making have nonetheless "outraged" Cottle and others.

The Times more and more openly expresses fears about a possible Sanders' nomination. Op-ed columnist David Leonhardt headlined his January 14 piece, "President Bernie Sanders," and commented, "Sanders has a real shot of winning the Democratic nomination. Only a couple of months after he suffered a mild heart attack, that counts as a surprise." Leonhardt downplays Sanders' socialist credentials, observing that "while he [Sanders] would probably fail to accomplish his grandest goals (again, like Medicare for all), he would also move the country in a positive direction. He might even move it to closer to a center-left ideal than a more moderate candidate like Biden would."

On Thursday, right-wing Times columnist David Brooks argued pathetically against the existence of "class war" in "The Bernie Sanders Fallacy." He ridiculed what he described as "Bernie Sanders's class-war Theyism: The billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else." According to Brooks, Sanders is a Bolshevik who believes that "Capitalism is a system of exploitation in which capitalist power completely dominates worker power." Accusing Sanders of embracing such an ABC socialist proposition is all nonsense, but it reveals something about what keeps pundits like Brooks up at night.

The Times is determined, as the WSWS has noted more than once, to exclude anything from the 2020 election campaign that might arouse or encourage the outrage of workers and young people. The past year of global mass protest has only deepened and strengthened that determination.

The Times , CNN and other elements of the media and political establishment, and behind them powerful financial-corporate interests, don't want Sanders and they don't necessarily want Warren either, who engaged in certain loose talk about taxing the billionaires, before retreating in fright. They want a campaign dominated by race, gender and sexual orientation -- not class and not social inequality. The #MeToo-style attack on Sanders reflects both the "style" and the right-wing concerns of these social layers.

[Jan 21, 2020] Warren is a political novice, and while she has sharp elbows she's extremely naive and makes blunder after blunder

Notable quotes:
"... I have no confidence in Elizabeth Warren "doing the right thing"; she might be susceptible to the pressure and to the ignominy attached to doing the disastrously wrong thing. ..."
"... *Donald Trump, for his part, is reportedly " privately obsessed " with Sanders, not, it seems, with Biden. ..."
"... From a recent episode of the Jimmy Dore Show, it's the cringe-worthy Warren "Selfie" Gimmick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5JWIiVMj6g If this doesn't scream "political novice," I don't know what will. ..."
Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Jeff W , January 21, 2020 at 1:41 am

" if she does anything less than help elect the last and only progressive with a chance, she damages them both to Biden's benefit "

If Elizabeth Warren's candidacy becomes unviable, the pressure on her to combine her delegates with those of Sanders -- from those supporting Bernie Sanders and those legitimately concerned with Joe Biden's chances against Trump* -- will be enormous . And, if , instead, Warren helps nominate Biden and Biden then goes on to lose to Donald Trump -- as I'm all but certain he will -- it will be all too clear just who played a pivotal role in helping to make that match-up even possible.

I have no confidence in Elizabeth Warren "doing the right thing"; she might be susceptible to the pressure and to the ignominy attached to doing the disastrously wrong thing.

*Donald Trump, for his part, is reportedly " privately obsessed " with Sanders, not, it seems, with Biden.

rusti , January 21, 2020 at 2:07 am

In Sanders' case, his surge in the polls coincided with his emergence as the chief apologist for the Iranian regime. We needed to point out that he would be dangerous as president since he made clear he would appease terrorists and terror-sponsoring nations.

If this is really representative of a line of attack that the Trump campaign plans to use on him, that would be great. I can't imagine anything that would resonate less with voters. But I was a bit surprised to see this in a Bernie fundraising mail:

The wise course would have been to stick with that nuclear agreement, enforce its provisions, and use that diplomatic channel with Iran to address our other concerns with Iran, including their support of terrorism.

What groups are they referring to when they say this? Hezbollah, which is part of Parliament in Lebanon? Iraqi PMF that are loosely integrated with the Iraqi army?

Bill Carson , January 21, 2020 at 2:15 am

Yep, Warren is a political novice, and she's extremely naive. That Massachusetts senate seat was practically handed to her on a silver platter. She has no idea that she was played in '16 and she's being played now.

Arizona Slim , January 21, 2020 at 8:22 am

From a recent episode of the Jimmy Dore Show, it's the cringe-worthy Warren "Selfie" Gimmick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5JWIiVMj6g If this doesn't scream "political novice," I don't know what will.

[Jan 21, 2020] Warren "Willingness to compromise" = willingness to give obeisance to most of exploitative corporate capitalism

She endorced Hillary in 2016. That tells a lot about her... Now she backstabbed Bernie. What's next?
Notable quotes:
"... Warren has a track record of lying: lied about her dad being a janitor, hers kids going to public school, getting fired for being pregnant, and obviously the Native American heritage. ..."
"... My gut is she is going to endorse Joe Biden and prob got a tease of VP or some other role and all she had to do was kamikaze into Bernie with this. It's backfiring but at this rate and given she's too deep into it now when she drops out she'll prob back Biden as she hasn't shown the integrity to back a guy like Berni. ..."
"... She's toxic now. No one will want her has VP. Sanders supporters despise her, she comes from a small, Democratic state and she's loaded with baggage. She brings nothing to a ticket. She torpedoed any hopes or plans she might have had in that regard. ..."
"... Bernie is labeled as a socialist. Actually he is a real Roosevelt democrat. ..."
"... The most impressive thing I have witnessed about Bernie is that he can extemporaneously recall and explain exactly why he voted as he did on every piece of legislation that he has cast a vote on. in. his. life. It is a remarkable talent. ..."
"... The outcome of the upcoming Iowa Caucus is too hard to predict. All the candidates are very close. Sanders needs to turnout young and working class voters to win. ..."
"... My impression is her supporters are mostly older, mostly female, and mostly centrist. Many want to elect a female pres before they die. Prior to the she said event her supporters second choice were split fairly evenly between Bernie and Biden but the latest fracas is driving her most progressive supporters to Bernie. ..."
Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Massinissa , January 21, 2020 at 12:49 pm

"Willingness to compromise" = willingness to give obeisance to most of exploitative corporate capitalism.

Amit Chokshi , January 21, 2020 at 5:52 am

Warren has a track record of lying: lied about her dad being a janitor, hers kids going to public school, getting fired for being pregnant, and obviously the Native American heritage.

As pointed here on NC she's great at grandstanding when bank CEOs are in front of her and doing nothing following that.

My gut is she is going to endorse Joe Biden and prob got a tease of VP or some other role and all she had to do was kamikaze into Bernie with this. It's backfiring but at this rate and given she's too deep into it now when she drops out she'll prob back Biden as she hasn't shown the integrity to back a guy like Berni.

Yves Smith Post author , January 21, 2020 at 5:57 am

I don't see how she is anyone's VP. She is too old. You want someone under 60, better 50, particularly for an old presidential candidate. Treasury Secretary is a more powerful position. The big appeal of being VP is maybe it positions you later to be President but that last worked out for Bush the Senior.

Arizona Slim , January 21, 2020 at 8:24 am

And Bush the Senior lost his re-election bid.

pebird , January 21, 2020 at 9:41 am

Because he asked us to read his lips. And he didn't think we were lip readers.

Oh , January 21, 2020 at 10:57 am

She may be looking to be the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. /s

Sue E Greenwald , January 21, 2020 at 8:19 am

She's toxic now. No one will want her has VP. Sanders supporters despise her, she comes from a small, Democratic state and she's loaded with baggage. She brings nothing to a ticket. She torpedoed any hopes or plans she might have had in that regard.

jackiebass , January 21, 2020 at 6:40 am

I've watched Bernie for years. Even long before he decided to run for president. He is the same today as he was then. Bernie isn't afraid to advocate for something , even though he will get a lot of backlash. I also believe he is sincere in his convictions. If he says something he believes in it.Something you can't say for the other candidates. Bernie is by far my first choice.

After that it would be Warren. Bernie is labeled as a socialist. Actually he is a real Roosevelt democrat. As a life long democrat, I can't support or vote for a Wall Street candidate. Unlike one of the other commenters, I will never vote for Trump but instead wold vote for a third party candidate. Unfortunate the DNC will do anything to prevent Bernie from being candidate. Progressive democrats need to get out and support a progressive or the nomination will again be stolen by a what I call a light republican.

Robert Hahl , January 21, 2020 at 7:26 am

What is great about Bernie is that he is so sure-footed. It was visible in the hot-mic trap Warren set for him where she got nothing, it actually hurt her.

Anonymous Coward , January 21, 2020 at 3:05 pm

The most impressive thing I have witnessed about Bernie is that he can extemporaneously recall and explain exactly why he voted as he did on every piece of legislation that he has cast a vote on. in. his. life. It is a remarkable talent.

Howard , January 21, 2020 at 6:48 am

The outcome of the upcoming Iowa Caucus is too hard to predict. All the candidates are very close. Sanders needs to turnout young and working class voters to win. By many reports, Warren has an excellent ground game in IA and The NY Times endorsement has given a path for her to pick up Klobuchar voters after round one of the caucus.

Biden is a mystery to me. How the heck is he even running. Obama pleaded with him not to. That being said, it wouldn't surprise me if he finishes in the top two. Buttigieg is the wild card. I think the "electability" argument will hurt him as he can't win after NH.

ALM , January 21, 2020 at 7:51 am

According to a recent poll, Elizabeth Warren is one of the most unpopular senators with voters in her own state as measured against approval rates of all other senators in their states. I find this very surprising for someone with a national profile. What do voters in Massachusetts not like about her?

As for me, I find it more and more difficult to trust Warren because she takes the bait and yields to pressure during a primary when the pressure to back down, moderate, and abandon once championed policy positions and principles is a great deal less than it is during the general election. Warren has gone from Medicare4All to a public option to, in the recent debate, tweaks to the ACA. Despite her roll-out of an ambitious $10 trillion Green New Deal plan, Warren is now to the right of Chuck "Wall Street" Schumer as evidenced by her support of NAFTA 2.0 which utterly fails to address climate change. WTF! Where will she be during a general election?

And her political instincts are awful as recently demonstrated by her woke, badly executed girl power attack against a candidate who has been a committed feminist for his entire political career.

Another Scott , January 21, 2020 at 9:18 am

She also has horrible constituent service. I had an issue with a federal student loan a few years ago (I believe it was the servicer depositing money but not crediting my account and charging me interest and late fees). After getting nowhere with the company, I tried calling her office, figuring that as this was one of her core issues, I would get some response, either help or at least someone who would want to record what happened to her actual constituent. I didn't hear back for about a month, by which time I had resolved the issue – no fees or additional interest through multiple phone calls and emails.

In other words, Elizabeth Warren's constituent service is worse than Sallie Mae's.

T , January 21, 2020 at 9:31 am

The stupid Ponds cold cream lie is the worst. Unless she teed up the "how do you look so young!" question , the corrected answer is to point out the nonsense of talking about a candidates looks and addressing actual sexism.

Instead she has a goofball answer about only using Ponds cold cream which lead to Derm pointing out her alleged method was not good advice and also pointing out that she appears to have used botex and fillers, which I don't think people were talking about before then, in public.

The most generous explanation is she was caught flat-footed and, once again, showed she has terrible instincts.

Just a dumb dumb move.

Stefan , January 21, 2020 at 8:43 am

If Bernie Sanders can get it through the thick noggin of the nation that he stands for and will implement the principles, policies, and values of the New Deal–the attitude that got us through the Great Depression and Wotld War II–he has every chance of being elected the next President of the United States.

Stefan , January 21, 2020 at 8:47 am

Btw, is Inauguration Day just a year away?

The Rev Kev , January 21, 2020 at 9:02 am

Google says Wednesday Jan 20, 2021: Swearing-In Ceremony. And here is a countdown page-

https://days.to/when-is/us-presidential-inauguration/2021

Trust me. By the time it comes around you won't care who gets sworn in as you will just be glad that all the vicious, wretched skullduggery of this year's elections will finally be over.

Pat , January 21, 2020 at 11:11 am

And hoping you get one day of rest before the vicious, wretched skullduggery of undermining the desires of the American people gets started. Obviously Sanders will make the Trump years look a cake walk. Anyone else (Democrat or Trump) we will see lots of 'working for' and 'resistance' type memes while largely doing nothing of the sort, but a whole lot of 'bipartisan' passage of terrible things.

Samuel Conner , January 21, 2020 at 10:25 am

It sounds like Sanders, in the famous 2018 conversation, may have been trying to politely encourage EW to not run in 2020. Her moment was 2016 and she declined to run then when a Progressive candidate was needed. Her run in 2020 to some extent divides the Progressive vote. EW interpreted, perhaps intentionally, Sanders' words to imply that he thinks "no woman can win in 2020", and then weaponized them against him.

The very fact that she is running at all suggests to me that she is not at heart a Progressive and in fact does not want a Progressive candidate to win. If she had run in 2016, Sanders would not have run in order to not divide the Progressive vote. EW knew that Sanders would run in 2020 and planned to run anyway. It is hard for me to not interpret this to be an intentional bid for some of the Progressive vote, in order to hold Sanders down.

Anon , January 21, 2020 at 11:59 am

I agree. She decides to do things based on her own self-interest, and uses progressives as pawns to work her way up in DC. My guess is that Warren chickened out in 2016 and didn't run because maybe she didn't think she had a chance against the Clintons. When Warren saw how well Sanders did against Clinton, how close he was at winning, I think only then she decided that 2020 was a good chance for a progressive, or someone running as a progressive candidate, to win the nomination.

She saw how Sanders had fired up loyal progressive support in the Democratic Party. She chickened out back then when she could have endorsed Bernie in '16, but chose not to, probably hoping not to burn bridges with Clinton in order to get a plum role in her administration. Her non-endorsement in '16 worries me because it shows once again that Warren makes decisions largely based on what is good for her career, not what she thinks is better for the country (if she really is the progressive she claims to be).

Knowing that there was now a strong progressive base ready to vote for a candidate left of Democratic candidates like Biden and Clinton, Warren saw her entry into having a good chance at winning the presidency. Rather than thinking about the implications for Bernie and the possibility of dividing left-wing voters, her desire to become president was more important. Remember, this is exactly what Bernie did not do in 2016 when he urged Warren to run, and was willing to step aside, if she had agreed to do so.

If I had been in Sanders position, I probably would have sat down and talked to Warren about the serious implications of the both of them running in 2020. How he had hoped to build on the momentum from his last campaign and the sexism that was used against Clinton in 2016. Hey, if I had been Sanders, I probably would have told Warren not to run. Not because she's a woman, but because it would have been obvious to Bernie that with Warren running alongside him, they would both end up splitting the progressive vote.

What is happening now between the two of them should have been no surprise to either Bernie or Warren. They are both popular among Democrats who identify as progressive or left-of-center. Democrats will always find a way to shoot themselves in the foot. And I agree that when it becomes evident that one of them cannot win, either Bernie or Warren must step aside for the good of the country and fully back the other. There is no other option if either of them truly wants the other to win the nomination rather than Biden. I'm hoping that Warren will do so since it is becoming more clear that Sanders is the stronger progressive and the stronger candidate who has a better chance at beating both Biden and Trump.

Lambert Strether , January 21, 2020 at 3:37 pm

> "no woman can win in 2020"

The claim was "no woman can win." It was not qualified in any way.

landline , January 21, 2020 at 10:34 am

If sheepdog St. Bernard Sanders begins to look like the presumptive nominee, look for a new candidate to throw her hat into the ring. Her name: Michelle Obama.

Lambert Strether , January 21, 2020 at 3:42 pm

> sheepdog St. Bernard Sanders

I'm so sick of that sheepdog meme (originated by, much as a respect BAR, by a GP activist bitter, I would say, over many years of GP ineffectuality). The elites seem to be pretty nervous about a sheepdog.

pretzelattack , January 21, 2020 at 3:52 pm

if he were a sheepdog, why would the shepherds have to intervene? they wouldn't.

Lee , January 21, 2020 at 10:51 am

And now we have Sanders apologizing for an op-ed in the Guardian by Zephyr Teachout accusing Biden of corruption.

The op-ed simply says what Sanders has said all along, the system is corrupted by big donors. Then she explicitly states the obvious, which Sanders won't at this point say but that Trump certainly will: Biden is a prime example of serving his donors' interests to the detriment of most of the rest of us. Sanders subsequently apologizes for Teachout's baldly true assertion, stating that he doesn't believe that Biden is corrupt.

I guess we're meant to draw a clear distinction between legalized and illegal corruption. I don't know. They both look like ducks to me.

Oh , January 21, 2020 at 11:05 am

Sometimes it's better for Bernie to keep his mouth shut.

Samuel Conner , January 21, 2020 at 11:07 am

I have read that Sanders is the #2 choice of many Iowans who favor JB; it makes a lot of sense for him to not "go negative" on JB in the run-up to the caucuses.

There will be time for plainer speaking. Sanders has been clear about his views on the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics. JB is exhibit #1 within the D primary field and there will be plenty of opportunity to note that.

I suspect that there is a great deal of "method" in what may look to us like "madness" in the Senator's civility.

Samuel Conner , January 21, 2020 at 11:18 am

To put it another way, I doubt very much that Sanders believes that JB's legislative agendas were not significantly influenced by the sources of his campaign funds. And I'm sure that attention will be drawn to this at the right time.

One can charitably affirm that one believes that JB is not a consciously corrupt , pay-for-play, kind of person, while also affirming that of course he has been influenced by the powerful interests that have funded his career, and that this has not served the interests of the American people. All in due course.

jrs , January 21, 2020 at 12:37 pm

The thing is Warren would make the right argument here: that it's the system that is corrupted, and make it well. Too bad she has shown so completely that can't be trusted as a person, because she often looks good on paper

inode_buddha , January 21, 2020 at 1:37 pm

I think Warren misses the key point that the reason why the system is corrupted is because the players in it are corrupted. They can be bought and sold. That is why they have no shame.

Lambert Strether , January 21, 2020 at 3:43 pm

> The thing is Warren would make the right argument here: that it's the system that is corrupted

That's not the right answer at all. The climate crisis, for example, is not caused by a lack of transparency in the oil industry. It is caused by capital allocation decisions by the billionaire class and their servicers in subaltern classes.

urblintz , January 21, 2020 at 11:12 am

"The real game changer around here, though, might be Iowa State University's decision, after years of pressure, to issue new student IDs, enabling 35,000 students to vote, even under Iowa's restrictive new voter-ID law. That's a progressive victory, and in a different media universe, it would be a story even juicier than a handshake." Iowa is not the Twittersphere – Laura Flanders

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/21/iowa-is-not-the-twitterverse/

ptb , January 21, 2020 at 11:23 am

Thanks for giving this the attention it needs, analysis of the primary has been too light on estimation of delegate numbers and strategy.

Prior to Warren's apparent turn to some new direction, the setup for a 3way DNC with a progressive "coalition" was not only conceivable, but actually expected from the polls.

We are on pace for Sanders+Warren's combined delegate total to exceed Biden by a healthy amount (say 4:3) with all others falling below 15% state by state and getting few or no delegates. Obviously subject to snowballing in either direction, but that's the polls now and for most of the past year.

Warren's attack on Sanders, and NYT endorsement, say the national party doesn't expect any such coalition. Therefore Warren has made her choice. That's that.

The path to winning the Dem primary is a little narrower for Sanders, and also for Biden, since he seems to lack the confidence of his the top strata. The DNC screws a lot up but they know how to read polls. I'm pretty sure that running Warren in the General is not their plan A.

Voters in Iowa and the early states (incl. TX and CA) look like they will be deciding it all this year. The tremendous enthusiasm of Sanders followers gives him, IMO, the best ground game of the three. Will be an interesting 6 weeks.

jrs , January 21, 2020 at 12:40 pm

Running Warren in the general might be their plan A. They may not want to win. Of course they might rather have Klobuchar but

Hepativore , January 21, 2020 at 12:52 pm

I do not even trust Warren to hand any delegates she gets to Sanders at this point. Because her campaign staff is so full of Clintonites and neoliberals, she might give them to Biden instead.

She seems to have gone full establishment at this point.

Lambert Strether , January 21, 2020 at 3:39 pm

> I do not even trust Warren to hand any delegates she gets to Sanders at this point. Because her campaign staff is so full of Clintonites and neoliberals, she might give them to Biden instead.

Correct.

ambrit , January 21, 2020 at 1:10 pm

The youngish rehab therapist, a woman, said this morning that of the women running, she likes Klobuchar. "If only her voice wasn't so screechy. And I'm saying this as a woman." She was seriously disturbed by Clinton's attack on Sanders.
Several neighbors are leaning towards Yang.

John k , January 21, 2020 at 1:14 pm

The value of her endorsement

My impression is her supporters are mostly older, mostly female, and mostly centrist. Many want to elect a female pres before they die. Prior to the she said event her supporters second choice were split fairly evenly between Bernie and Biden but the latest fracas is driving her most progressive supporters to Bernie.

This means most of those remaining will probably migrate to Biden if when she drops out even if she recommends Bernie. (If 1/3 of her supporters that had Bernie as their second choice switch to Bernie, then 60% of her remaining supporters have Biden as their second choice.)

2016 was different, Clinton already had the older females. But there was a period where just a little support might have tipped the scale in what was a very tight race.

Anyway, I see going forward she will be mostly holding supporters whose second choice is Biden even as she maybe doesn't reach the 15% barrier
and same with Amy. So I hope they both stay in at least until super tue.

And While I previously thought she was a reasonable choice for veep, I now realize she'd be an awful choice. Maybe treasury if she does endorse which she will do if Bernie looks a winner.

worldblee , January 21, 2020 at 1:35 pm

How can anyone be surprised at the lack of trustworthiness from a politician who chose to endorse Clinton in 2016 rather than Bernie? Warren has been playing the DNC game for a long time now, which ideologically is in line with her lifelong Republican stance before changing to the more demographically favorable party when she was 47. She's not progressive now, and never has been or will be.

[Jan 21, 2020] The Warren attack backfired, hurt her. All sorts of people, even ones who don't support him, said it wasn't credible that he said what she claimed he said.

Notable quotes:
"... he just got betrayed by someone he probably considered a friend, he's getting smeared 24/7 by the dnc, which is in the process of trying to sabotage his candidacy again, he is recovering from a heart attack at 79–this on top of the normal crazy pressures of running a highly competitive presidential campaign. it could be a lot of things getting him down. ..."
"... He's stuck in D.C. at McConnell's and Pelosi's mercy (both of whom are threatened by him) right before the Iowa caucuses -- along with Warren and Klobuchar. Reason enough for him to look miserable. ..."
"... Warren has defined herself as a compromise candidate between the corporate and progressive wings, constantly making rhetorical overtures to each. She is not a neoliberal, but neither is she a committed progressive; ..."
"... She has been vetted as okay by Harry Reid, Barack Obama and the NYT (which attests to her "willingness to compromise", unlike Sanders). If, as seems likely, nobody comes to the convention with an overwhelming position, she will trade her voice and votes for a position with the stronger faction -- probably, unfortunately, the corporate wing. (I'm not at all sure that would be headed by Biden. Bloomberg? Clinton?!!) ..."
Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves Smith Post author , January 21, 2020 at 5:53 am

I don't understand your conclusion.

Sanders has been rising in the polls.

The Warren attack backfired. Gave him a bump, hurt her. All sorts of people, even ones who don't support him, said it wasn't credible that he said what she claimed he said.

He's doing way better than anyone would have forecast despite the media (until just recently) totally ignoring him. And his base is sufficiently committed that it is very effective in whacking back falsehoods on Twitter ..which journos follow. They aren't used to being dissed this way.

Fern , January 21, 2020 at 8:12 am

I'm worried about the internal polling. Sanders has been looking very tense and unhappy the last day or two, from the photos and clips I've seen.

pretzelattack , January 21, 2020 at 8:43 am

well, he just got betrayed by someone he probably considered a friend, he's getting smeared 24/7 by the dnc, which is in the process of trying to sabotage his candidacy again, he is recovering from a heart attack at 79–this on top of the normal crazy pressures of running a highly competitive presidential campaign. it could be a lot of things getting him down.

Carla , January 21, 2020 at 9:53 am

He's stuck in D.C. at McConnell's and Pelosi's mercy (both of whom are threatened by him) right before the Iowa caucuses -- along with Warren and Klobuchar. Reason enough for him to look miserable.

lordkoos , January 21, 2020 at 2:26 pm

Pelosi's timing on the impeachment was interesting. Conveniently, Biden is still able to campaign.

Daniel , January 21, 2020 at 2:57 am

Since at least 2016 (with her neutrality in the Sanders-Clinton race) Warren has defined herself as a compromise candidate between the corporate and progressive wings, constantly making rhetorical overtures to each. She is not a neoliberal, but neither is she a committed progressive; to the extent that she has firm convictions (and I am not convinced of that), she is more of a technocratic anti-corruption reformer.

She has been vetted as okay by Harry Reid, Barack Obama and the NYT (which attests to her "willingness to compromise", unlike Sanders). If, as seems likely, nobody comes to the convention with an overwhelming position, she will trade her voice and votes for a position with the stronger faction -- probably, unfortunately, the corporate wing. (I'm not at all sure that would be headed by Biden. Bloomberg? Clinton?!!)

[Jan 21, 2020] Now Bernie is apologizing to Biden for someone else pointing out Biden's corruption problem. What the heck is going on over there?

Notable quotes:
"... Hey Bernie -- now is the time to punch Biden in the mouth ..."
"... Biden on cutting SS, Medicare, and veterans' benefits. From 1995. When they tell you who they are twitter.com ..."
"... "It looks like "Middle Class" Joe has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn't being "moderate". It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe. ..."
Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Bill Carson , January 21, 2020 at 2:12 am

Now Bernie is apologizing to Biden for someone else pointing out Biden's corruption problem.

What the heck is going on over there?? Hey Bernie -- now is the time to punch Biden in the mouth, HARD! It's what Trump is going to do to you if you get the nomination. If we don't test these Democratic candidates in the primary, then we're going to be in for some ugly surprises, just like Hillary was after she won the nomination after a soft primary. We've got to air the dirty laundry now! TODAY!

Lambert Strether , January 21, 2020 at 3:36 am

> now is the time to punch Biden in the mouth,

Iowa voters like nice. As does the large, conflict-averse portion of the Democrat Party that mainlines West Wing reruns. "Why can't we all get along?" is very powerful for such voters; and their model of politics is "good people having smart thoughts." Good, smart people like they are.

JohnnyGL , January 21, 2020 at 12:11 pm

I'm honestly terrified of Iowa dems and their very questionable decision-making. Yes, they did a good job in '08 in picking a winner in Obama (yes, Obama chose to govern terribly, but his campaign seemed very promising). This bunch picked John Kerry in 2004. They seriously plucked Kerry's failing campaign out of the doldrums and vaulted him to victory.

I'm really worried they might just opt for Klobuchar, or even Biden, at the last minute.

flora , January 21, 2020 at 11:53 am

Biden on cutting SS, Medicare, and veterans' benefits. From 1995. When they tell you who they are twitter.com

John k , January 21, 2020 at 12:04 pm

Yes. But it doesn't have to be Bernie that does it. There are plenty of supporters that can do that while Bernie is the nice guy above the fray,
I trust Bernie's political instincts.

flora , January 21, 2020 at 12:09 pm

Yes. Now, about Joe's corruption problem .

"It looks like "Middle Class" Joe has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn't being "moderate". It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe.

"There are three clear examples."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/joe-biden-corruption-donald-trump

Bill Carson , January 21, 2020 at 2:22 am

I haven't read Lambert's analysis of the NYT endorsement, but here's what the Establishment is trying to do: prop up Warren so she gets at least 15% in Iowa, thereby splitting the progressive votes and making sure Sanders doesn't get many delegates.

This is the DNC's entire strategy: bolster the number of candidates, change the rules in states like Colorado so Bernie can't get a majority of delegates in any state -- NO SURPRISES LIKE HIM WINNING COLORADO AND MICHIGAN LAST YEAR -- -and we'll go into the convention with Biden or another candidate having 51% of delegates OR, as Plan B, a brokered convention -- -Super Delegates chose an Establishment candidate.

Bernie's prospects are looking very grim.

[Jan 21, 2020] Warren as Lizzie-Faire Capitalist.

Jan 21, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

none , January 21, 2020 at 12:46 am

Warren will never endorse Bernie. She is not a progressive and the Republican in her is back in operation. But, there is a new Jeep named after her:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOuTYRlXsAg151I.jpg

Henry Moon Pie , January 21, 2020 at 1:41 am

But we already had the Tin Lizzie.

ambrit , January 21, 2020 at 6:30 am

I can't resist. What we have here is an old fashioned "Lizzie-Faire Capitalist."

John Zelnicker , January 21, 2020 at 10:28 am

@ambrit
January 21, 2020 at 6:30 am
-- -- -

"Strike three! A sizzling fast ball over the middle of the plate, while the batter just looked dumbfounded"

[Jan 21, 2020] A response to a different Wapo opinion hit job.

Jan 21, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

Let's talk about winning. Bernie was was elected to Congress as a socialist, in a red state, during the Cold War.

That was 1990. He won re-election in 92, 94, 96, 98, 00, 02, and 04.

In 06, he ran for Senate, and won by a 33% margin. In 12, he won by 46%.
In 18, he won by 40%. pic.twitter.com/K9I4NkuIzZ

-- Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) January 20, 2020

Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 01/20/2020 - 7:41pm

He also won 23 elections in 2016 ...

@humphrey @humphrey

even though the primaries were rigged against him.

[Jan 21, 2020] Bernie Sanders Walks Straight Into the Russiagate Trap

Jan 21, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org

Daniel Lazare January 20, 2020 © Photo: Wikimedia The New York Times caused a mini-commotion last week with a front-page story suggesting that Russian intelligence had hacked a Ukrainian energy firm known as Burisma Holdings in order to get dirt on Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win re-election.

But the article was flimsy even by Russiagate standards, and so certain questions inevitably arise. What was it really about? Who's behind it? Who's the real target?

Here's a quick answer. It was about boosting Joe Biden, and its real target was his chief rival, Bernie Sanders. And poor, inept Bernie walked straight into the trap.

The article was flimsy because rather than saying straight out that Russian intelligence hacked Burisma, the company notorious for hiring Biden's son, Hunter, for $50,000 a month job, reporters Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg had to rely on unnamed "security experts" to say it for them. While suggesting that the hackers were looking for dirt, they didn't quite say that as well. Instead, they admitted that "it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for."

So we have no idea what they were up to, if anything at all. But the Times then quoted "experts" to the effect that "the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment." Since Trump and the Russians are seeking the same information, they must be in cahoots, which is what Democrats have been saying from the moment Trump took office. Given the lack of evidence, this was meaningless as well.

But then came the kicker: two full paragraphs in which a Biden campaign spokesman was permitted to expound on the notion that the Russians hacked Burisma because Biden is the candidate that they and Trump fear the most.

"Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can't beat the vice president," the spokesman, Andrew Bates, said. "Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe Biden as a threat. Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our elections."

If Biden is the number-one threat, then Sanders is not, presumably because the Times sees him as soft on Moscow. If so, it means that he could be in for the same neo-McCarthyism that antiwar candidate Tulsi Gabbard encountered last October when Hillary Clinton blasted her as "the favorite of the Russians." Gabbard had the good sense to blast her right back.

"Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know – it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine ."

If only Sanders did the same. But instead he put out a statement filled with the usual anti-Russian clichés:

"The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia's plans to once again meddle in our elections and in our democracy. After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddle in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn [sic] by Donald Trump ."

And so on for another 250 words. Not only did the statement put him in bed with the intelligence agencies, but it makes him party to the big lie that the Kremlin was responsible for putting Trump over the top in 2016.

Let's get one thing straight. Yes, Russian intelligence may have hacked the Democratic National Committee. But cybersecurity was so lax that others may have been rummaging about as well. (CrowdStrike, the company called in to investigate the hack, says it found not one but two cyber-intruders.) Notwithstanding the Mueller report, all the available evidence indicates that Russia did not then pass along thousands of DNC emails that Wikileaks published in July 2016. (Julian Assange's statement six months later that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" remains uncontroverted.) Similarly, there's no evidence that the Kremlin had anything to do with the $45,000 worth of Facebook ads purchased by a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency – Robert Mueller's 2018 indictment of the IRA was completely silent on the subject of a Kremlin connection – and no evidence that the ads, which were politically all over the map, had a remotely significant impact on the 2016 election.

All the rest is a classic CIA disinformation campaign aimed at drumming up anti-Russian hysteria and delegitimizing anyone who fails to go along. And now Bernie Sanders is trying to cover his derrière by hopping on board.

It won't work. Sanders will find himself having to take one loyalty oath after another as the anti-Russia campaign flares anew. But it will never be enough, and he'll only wind up looking tired and weak. Voters will opt for the supposedly more formidable Biden, who will end up as a bug splat on the windshield of Donald Trump's speeding election campaign. With impeachment no longer an issue, he'll be free to behave as dictatorially as he wishes as he settles into his second term.

After inveighing against billionaire's wars, he'll find himself ensnared by the same billionaire war machine. The trouble with Sanders is that he thinks he can win by playing by the rules. But he can't because the rules are stacked against him. He'd know that if his outlook was more radical. His problem is not that he's too much of a socialist. Rather, it's that he's not enough.

[Jan 19, 2020] Media Skewers 'Sexist' Sanders for Refusing to Bend the Knee

Notable quotes:
"... Furthermore, if you don't agree with Sen. Warren's version of events, or if you mention her history of "embellishing," you are a sexist and a misogynist just like Sanders. So fall in line with the establishment narrative, quick. ..."
"... In a statement to CNN, Sanders said before the debate that's not what happened at all. ..."
"... "It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," said Sanders, chalking up the story to "staff who weren't in the room lying about what happened." ..."
"... Warren's staff knows she is prone to "embellish" things ..."
"... No wonder Sanders was complaining about liberals' obsession with identity politics . As an elderly, Jewish socialist, he might be an endangered species, but he's one minority group that intersectional politics has no use for. ..."
Jan 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The media cannot forgive Bernie Sanders for refusing to "bend the knee" to Elizabeth Warren regarding her recounting of a now infamous December 2018 meeting between the two, in which the Vermont senator allegedly said a woman could not be elected president.

Furthermore, if you don't agree with Sen. Warren's version of events, or if you mention her history of "embellishing," you are a sexist and a misogynist just like Sanders. So fall in line with the establishment narrative, quick.

That is the clear takeaway after the media took off its fig leaf of journalistic impartiality at the seventh Democrat presidential debate in Iowa Tuesday.

Never mind that women make up about 70 percent of Sanders' campaign leadership team, or that young women actually make up a bigger share of Sanders's base than young men do .

During the debate, CNN moderator Abby Phillips had this exchange:

Phillips: You're saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman couldn't win the election?

Bernie: Correct.

Phillips: Senator Warren, what did you think when Sanders said a woman couldn't win the election?

Warren: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie.

This is "when did you stop beating your wife" level debate questioning from CNN. The question is premised around an anonymously-sourced story CNN reported Monday describing a meeting between Sanders and Warren in December 2018, where the two agreed to a non-aggression pact of sorts. For the sake of the progressive movement, they reportedly agreed they would not attack each other during the campaign:

They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.

In a statement to CNN, Sanders said before the debate that's not what happened at all.

"It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," said Sanders, chalking up the story to "staff who weren't in the room lying about what happened."

"I thought a woman could win; he disagreed," said Warren in a statement.

Cue CNN's gladiatorial presidential debates.

Eager to strike all the right girl-power notes for the night, Phillips followed up by asking Sen. Amy Klobuchar the substantive policy question, "what do you say to people who say that a woman can't win this election?" and Warren earned cheers for a line about women successfully winning elections.

"Look at the men on this stage," Warren said. "Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women: Amy (Klobuchar) and me."

After the debate, media commentators roundly declared Warren the winner, and pundits attacked the very idea of questioning the veracity of Warren's account.

Here's CNN, just after the debate:

Chris Cillizza, CNN politics reporter: Sanders, look, a lot of it is personal preference. I didn't think his answer vis-a-vis Elizabeth Warren and what was said in that conversation was particularly good. He was largely dismissive. "Well, I didn't say it. Everyone knows I didn't say it, we don't need to talk about it."

Jess McIntosh, CNN political commentator: And I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn't a he-said-she-said story. This is a reported-out story that CNN was part of breaking. So to have him just flat out say "no," I think, wasn't nearly enough to address that for the women watching.

Joe Lockhart, CNN political commentator: And I can't imagine any woman watching last night and saying, I believe Bernie. I think people believe Elizabeth.

Van Jones, CNN political commentator: This was Elizabeth Warren's night. She needed to do something and there was a banana peel sitting out there for Bernie to step on when it came to his comments about women. I think Bernie stepped on it and slid around. She knocked that moment out of the park.

But isn't this story the literal definition of a he-said, she-said story?

The accusation may have appeared in a "reported-out story," but these are its sources:

"The description of that meeting [between Sanders and Warren in December 2018] is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting."

Is it sexist to question why this story would come out on the eve of the debate -- after months of the two candidates getting along as they had promised to do, when Sanders pulls ahead of Warren in polling ?

If CNN were impartial, they would have mentioned the sourcing and timing of the story, and Warren's fraught history with the truth. Warren has shown she is willing to tell lies in order to get a job she wants, like when she claimed to have Native American blood. She has also claimed she go fired from her teaching job for being pregnant, even when records contradict that. She's said her children went to public schools, not private ones, even though that's not true either.

In addition to Warren's tenuous relationship with the truth, there also happens to be video from the 1980s where Sanders says a woman could be president:

1988, @BernieSanders , backing Jackson:"The real issue is not whether you're black or white, whether you're a woman or a man *in my view, a woman could be elected POTUS* The real issue is are you on the side of workers & poor ppl, or are you on the side of big money &corporations?" pic.twitter.com/VHmfzvyJdy

-- Every nimble plane is a policy failure. (@KindAndUnblind) January 13, 2020

Yet, you wouldn't know any of that, listening to the coverage of the debate, where commentators waxed poetic about Warren's "win" and how any attacks on her predilection for lying were misogyny itself.

Over on Sirius XM POTUS channel Tuesday, an executive producer on Chris Cuomo's show (Chris Cillizza filling in) said that the suggestion from Sanders surrogates that Warren's staff knows she is prone to "embellish" things is "a misogynistic thing to put out there like, 'oh well, look at the quaint housewife, she is prone to embellishment.'"

The New York Times also embraced the questionable sexism premise, writing that in"a conflict heavily focused on which candidate is telling the truth, Ms. Warren faces a real risk: Several studies have shown that voters punish women more harshly than men for real or perceived dishonesty If voters conclude that Ms. Warren is lying, it is most likely to hurt her more than it will hurt Mr. Sanders if voters conclude that he is lying."

Over at Vox:

The over-the-top language -- likening criticism of an opponent to a knife in the back -- was familiar. When powerful men have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent years, they and others have often complained that they've been "killed" or that their "lives are over" The situation between Warren and Sanders is very different from those that have arisen as part of the Me Too movement. But the exaggerated language around a woman's decision to speak out is strikingly similar.

This sort of language is an insult to all women who have had to deal with sexism and misogyny, both in the workplace and in society, and this need to glom on to any aggrieved group, no matter how ill-fitting, is getting really stale.

Meanwhile, former Hillary Clinton and Obama Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri tweeted, "I just rewatched the footage from last night and found it odd that Sanders never says 'a woman could beat Trump.' His formulation is he believes a 'woman could be president.' It's only when he speaks about his own abilities that he talks about what it takes to 'beat Trump.'"

This is the old sexist standby: "I'd vote for a woman, just not that woman."

What is it that these people want, for Sanders to endorse his opponent, simply because she is female? Isn't that the very definition of sexism? By virtue of the fact that Sanders is still in this race, he obviously thinks he can do a better job as president than Warren. There isn't going to be another presidential race against Trump, but Palmieri still essentially wants Sanders to say, in a five-way race three weeks before the Iowa caucus, "Warren can beat Trump in November."

The question here should be whether this is a person that we can trust, not whether the candidate is male or female. Does this person have a history of being honest, or do they have a history of lying?

No wonder Sanders was complaining about liberals' obsession with identity politics . As an elderly, Jewish socialist, he might be an endangered species, but he's one minority group that intersectional politics has no use for.


Osse a vote for liz a day ago

What are you talking about? If you want to know what Sanders says on this issue, rad his interview with the NYT which was conducted before this cynical hit job occurred. He says many voters are misogynistic, but not that a woman can't win.

I think both were telling the truth in that Warren probably took it to mean a woman can't win, but her campaign cynically released thi story over a year later because she was slipping in tge pollls behind Bernie.

AGPhillbin Osse a day ago
That's ridiculously generous of you, at least towards Warren. She knows perfectly well his position on the possibility of a woman president, and women running for office generally. she knows he campaigned vigorously for HRC after the nomination, and she knows that Sanders knows that HRC took the popular vote by over 3 million votes, so he obviously knows that it is highly possible for a woman to win the presidency. This is simply a bald-faced lie on Warren's part, but she has gained nothing electorally for this desperate smear. Sanders not only had a record fundraising day after this surfaced, but at least one poll has him up 2 points in Iowa, where he was already in the lead, with Warren stuck at 12%.
trailhiker 2 days ago
Six corporations own something like 90% of the media now.
And CNN is part of the corporate-media-complex.
So not too much of a surprise that they are going after Sanders.
The billionaires are worried he might win, so in a way, this is a good
sign.
Great CoB 2 days ago
The 24 hour news channels depend on Trump to bring in the outrage required to keep up their viewing figures. So it makes sense that they should help give him a democrat opponent he can't lose against, like Elizabeth Warren.
𝙆𝙧𝙖𝙯𝙮 𝙐𝙣𝙘𝙡𝙚 2 days ago
While it should be fairly obvious to most that Bernie Sanders political rivals are trying everything they can to get ahead of him, it's also true that the DNC and the Main Stream Media, are also trying to trash Bernie in an attempt to take him out as a candidate. The DNC and the MSM did the same thing the last time he attempted to win the nomination, and it appears they are doing so now.

The corporate MSM machine should be careful. Another candidate they trashed during the last election cycle, and ever since, became the President. It seems some voters have tied the corporate MSM together with the D.C. establishment, and voters that want an outsider to lead them may just see the MSM's attempts to denigrate a candidate as a ringing endorsement for the outsider.

As a side note, I find it humorous that the MSM attempts to diminish Bernie's supporters as zealots and too extreme to be taken seriously... I thought that political candidates actually worked to gain the support of enthusiastic and motivated supporters? Or, is that just for the candidates that are acceptable to the Main Stream Media and the political Parties?

BigShot 2 days ago
Voted for Trump in great part because Hillary Clinton was such a liar. Now he turned out to be an even bigger liar than she was. It sure would be nice to have a candidate who didn't lie so much, but now I don't know whether that would be Sanders or Warren.
Connecticut Farmer FND a day ago
Strictly speaking, socialism was an abject failure which ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain, There is an unfortunate tendency to conflate "socialism" with what is called the "welfare state." The United States is a welfare state but can hardly be mistaken for a socialist state.
Gutbomb Connecticut Farmer a day ago
I think I see it mostly the same way you do, but with semantic differences. I would argue that communism - the totalitarian version of socialism - was the abject failure. Any first world modern state is a blend of market-based economies and socialism. The question is always which exchanges are best left to market forces and which are best managed from above. And then, how much management to provide. I caution against seeing socialism vs capitalism as some binary switch to flip.
former-vet Gutbomb a day ago
Smartest statement I've seen in years.
cka2nd Gutbomb a day ago
And the fact is that many of these welfare states were implemented by self-declared socialists, including many parties that were members of the Socialist, or Second, International.

Unfortunately, many of these socialist and labor parties hopped on the neo-liberal train in the 1980's, and are today deathly afraid of their own Bernie Sanders (see Corbyn, Jeremy), and even more afraid of scaring off international finance and the German Central Bank.

Connecticut Farmer Gutbomb 7 hours ago
Point taken. Perhaps "radical socialism" would have been more accurate. Your description of the modern state as a "blend" is spot-on. An economics professor I once had called ours a "mixed economy", which was a phrase that has always stuck in my mind.
Osse FND a day ago
Substantively Bernie's policies are social democratic and consistent with those of the Scandinavian countries.
cka2nd EdMan 7 hours ago
Social democratic and labor parties around the world turned neo-liberal in the 1980's, including the Scandinavian ones. They've been helping to rip up the "social contract" between Capital and Labor, and the social welfare state, ever since, as well as reversing previous nationalizations and launching privatization. This phenomenon has included Scandinavia, which is why the parties there are so sensitive to all this talk in the U.S. about them being models of "socialism."
AGPhillbin FND a day ago
Fact is, all non-Marxist "socialist" countries are market based, and are in fact capitalist at the economic base. When did any Scandinavian "socialist" country ever expropriate any major corporations?
cka2nd AGPhillbin a day ago
You might actually want to do a bit of research on that point. Going back 60, 70 or 80 years, there might be some nationalizations of railroads, utilities, energy companies and other major industries not involved in the actual manufacturing of goods in Scandinavia. Great Britain certainly saw such nationalizations, although revolutionary leftists sometimes dismissed them as "lemon socialism" because the capitalist class was fobbing off money-losing or capital-intensive sectors of the economy on the government, in order to concentrate on more profitable enterprises.

[Jan 19, 2020] Hijacking the Struggles of Others, Elizabeth Warren Style by Kathleen Wallace

Notable quotes:
"... Warren is that person you can never rely on–the one that has no defining characteristic other than self-elevation. Over the years, if it benefited her, she backed a few seemingly decent causes, but it was never about doing the right thing. It was all political expediency and shape shifting. She was a Republican during so many tumultuous years -- even during the Reagan era that propelled us towards what we are going through now hell, she was a Republican until her late 40s. But now she has reinvented herself as a populist, but won't even talk out against Biden, the man from Creditcardlandia. She's a promiscuous virgin, a carnivorous vegan. ..."
"... The treachery of Warren towards Sanders is most likely from some back room deal with Biden. ..."
Jan 17, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
To say Elizabeth Warren is a political opportunist is not giving her enough credit. She has taken the struggles, as well as the identities of others (women, school teachers, Native Americans, public school supporters, people who are able to tweet with humor, actual humans) and has weaponized these categories until the meaning of it all is lost.

Her tweet about leaving your ghosting boyfriend and getting a dog despite your roommate's objections should have placed her in the pandering hall of fame, and with that should have included a one way trip to some kind of holding cell for the criminally trite.

Her obvious lies (she's not even good at them, shaking and being sketchy with a tweaker-looking-body-vibe-thing when she tries to pull them off) -- well that bit regarding Bernie Sanders has electrified her twitter feed with images of snakes and has even managed to get #RefundWarren trending. At this rate, maybe she can pull in a negative donation for this quarter. What an achievement. The first female candidate to pull that off! Grrrrl Power! Her political instincts are as feeble as her lies -- to have her tell it, she was a selfless public servant most of her career (more like a teacher long enough to mention it, and a corporate lawyer as the subsequent defining profession). Her kids only went to public schools (umm no), she is of native heritage (shouldn't she have helped a bit at Standing Rock with that 1/16600600606006 ancestry that she is so proud of?) . Oh yes, her father was a janitor (again, what? No). She is but a champion for the veracity challenged. That's true at least.

Warren is that person you can never rely on–the one that has no defining characteristic other than self-elevation. Over the years, if it benefited her, she backed a few seemingly decent causes, but it was never about doing the right thing. It was all political expediency and shape shifting. She was a Republican during so many tumultuous years -- even during the Reagan era that propelled us towards what we are going through now hell, she was a Republican until her late 40s. But now she has reinvented herself as a populist, but won't even talk out against Biden, the man from Creditcardlandia. She's a promiscuous virgin, a carnivorous vegan.

This current trend to take on the struggles of others as your own has been powerful of late. Cops pretend to have coffee cups served to them with pig slurs and Warren puts forth that the very individual who actually urged her to run for president in 2016, changed course and told her women can't win (despite ample evidence that Sanders has a track record that is decidedly feminist). I think she said Bernie offered her a cup of coffee in their meeting that had written on it something like "Women can't win, you're a bitch, how's menopause treating you, and also your hair is dry and brittle." (It was a Starbucks Trenta cup so he could go full on misogynist because there was a lotta space to write on–thanks Starbucks, first a war on Christmas, now a war on Women).

So I'd say this is weaponizing a status and taking the struggles of others to pretend they are your own. Stolen valor, really.

For many of us Sanders is a compromise. The changes needed are massive, but he's the closest thing we've got at this point. The hulking size of our nation and the lack of immediacy to those in power over us lends a situation of creating an infantalized population. This is where we are at now. There should be direct accountability and of course we have nothing of the sort. I suspect far in the future, if humans are to survive in any manner, it will go back to some sort of mutual aid, and direct accountability from those making life and death decisions over others, in short, more of a tribal situation. But right now, in our lifetimes, we are tasked with attempting to keep the planet below 150 degrees, to not bake our children before next week.

We have utter nonsense pouring in from the Warren corporate shills and it is wasting our precious time. The recent CNN debate should render that channel irrelevant at best, a direct threat at the worst. Fox comes in with obvious bias, but the CNNs and MSNBCs slip in behaving as if they are reasonable and neutral, assaulting those of us unlucky enough to have to watch them as captives at dental offices. They most certainly help the Warrens and other corporate shills by providing red herring distractions and pleas for incrementalism. This is akin to only turning up your boiling water that you bath in a degree or two every 5 minutes rather than trying to stop the boil. They care about immediate profits and in truth are terribly stupid. Many of us have been raised to be polite and not utter this about others, especially those in power. We look for reasons and conditions for their behavior and choices, but the stark fact is that a lot of these people are ignorant as fuck and want to remain that way -- little or no intellectual curiosity and full of base greed. And this will kill us all.

The treachery of Warren towards Sanders is most likely from some back room deal with Biden. He probably told her that he needs help against Corn Pop and while sniffing her hair and unwashed face, (I'm not being snarky without reason, she shared her beauty routine with the media since that's so pressing in these days of turmoil) well Biden decided that she would be the one to stroke his leg hairs in the oval office as VP.

They are the golden hairs of a golden white man, he says. This is the way of Washington–lots of white men thinking their leg hair is the best, but her instincts were shit to have taken a deal like this. No way in hell is Biden going to win, even if the DNC does manage to prop him up as their candidate.

Trump will have a field day with him (Biden of the reasonable Republican fable) and if they do debate, the entire country might have a collective intracranial bleed from the batshittery that will be spoken.

Trump will be there, all eyes dilated, snorting and speaking gibberish; Biden will be there, all blood eyed and smarmy, talking about how poor kids can be smart too (the more you know). I cry in a corner even considering such a spectacle. I'd rather see Topsy electrocuted than watch that.

Anyway, it's not unlikely that Warren will get a challenger for her senate seat due to this Judas move. The Bernie supporters will be generous with political donations if that individual materializes, I'm sure. But I'm guessing she will try something again in terms of reinvention and she will refer to herself as the politician formally known as Elizabeth Warren and try to get a judge show on antennae tv. I won't watch it even if she hits the gavel and says to leave the ghosting boyfriend and get a dog in the event of a sassy landlord tenant dispute brought before her court.

I plan on ghosting Elizabeth Warren and her lying ass.

Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest.

[Jan 19, 2020] We are fast heading towards Biden v. Sanders as the Primary narrative

Jan 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
− +

Collin Reid a day ago

Well, we have waiting for this Primary to get nasty at some point and of course the media gets one their plate a month before voting.

1) We are few days from this dustup and frankly it has assisted Sanders more than Warren.

2) Three of the top candidates have been the least cultural warriors (Pete, Sanders and Biden) so it does not seem to work.

3) We are fast heading towards Biden v. Sanders as the Primary narrative.

cka2nd Collin Reid a day ago
I agree with #'s 1 and 2 - they've also each taken conflicting stances on Medicare for All and haven't wavered from them, unlike Warren - but I'm still not sure about #3. Joe is just such a lousy candidate that an implosion could happen sooner than later, and leave Pete or Liz to carry the establishment banner.
Kevin_OKeeffe a day ago • edited
While a devotee of Esoteric Trumpetry, I do plan to vote in the Democratic primary. Definitely for Sanders, since he's obviously the one the Establishment hates most.

Apparently, Warren's word is now law. If she says you told her you're a Nazi cannibal, you just have to accept it, or be deemed a misogynist.

EdMan a day ago
I don't like Bernie Sanders. His brain is full of nothing but bad ideas. But I'm deeply disturbed by this joint-Warren-CNN hit-job being executed against him. I hope it fails miserably and I hope the Democrats finally realize the error of their ways.

Sanders' campaign is full of holes that can be easily exposed. There's no need to malign his character like this, none. It's straight-up evil and I wonder if the conscience of individual leftists in media and politics bothers them. I hope Bernie can overcome this because nobody deserves to be treated this way.

Viking a day ago
There's also the issue of her refusing to tell the truth middle-class tax hikes to finance her various programs. Her fellow female Senator, Amy Klobuchar, assailed her on that point: "at least Bernie admits he" would raise taxes.

We may also comment on a certain megalomania in her makeup. Does she really believe that she can simply cancel all student debt as POTUS without even consulting Congress?

[Jan 19, 2020] CNN is Trash

Jan 19, 2020 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

Then CNN turned to a story that it had reported on just prior to the debate, alleging that Sanders had told Senator Elizabeth Warren that he did not believe a woman could be elected U.S. president. The CNN moderator ignored Sanders' assertions that he had a public record going back decades of stating that a woman could be elected president, that he had stayed out of the race in 2015 until Warren decided not to run, and that in fact he had told Warren no such thing. Then came this exchange:
CNN: So Senator Sanders -- Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you're saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?

SANDERS: That is correct.

CNN: Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
You don't have to know that you'd be better off with free college and Medicare for All than with yet another war to recognize the bias here.

Many viewers recognized the slant. Many even began to notice the strange double standard in never mentioning the cost of any of the wars, but pounding away on the misleading assertions that healthcare and other human needs cost too much. Here's a question asked by CNN on Tuesday:
" Vice President Biden, does Senator Sanders owe voters a price tag on his health care plan? "

There was even time for this old stand-by bit of name-calling: " Senator Sanders, you call yourself a Democratic Socialist. But more than two-thirds of voters say they are not enthusiastic about voting for a socialist. Doesn't that put your chances of beating Donald Trump at risk? "

So say the people who did so much to elect Donald Trump.
Source, links:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/17/cnn-is-trash/

[Jan 19, 2020] The fact is, it's impossible to elect a real "populist outsider" as US President. The system is set up to ensure that NEVER happens.

Jan 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Jan 18 2020 1:32 utc | 83

I agree with everyone that doesn't believe the political farce/headfake/psyop.

The fact is, it's impossible to elect a real "populist outsider" as US President. The system is set up to ensure that NEVER happens.

I used to get very frustrated by b's failure to understand US politics but it's now clear to me that anti-USA/anti-Empire folks LOVE to talk up Trump because they think they can exploit a rift in USA power elite - a rift that doesn't really exist .

The standard push-back response to someone like me saying that Trump was selected as President is: bu..but Trump is not a puppet! LOL. That's right! He's a faux populist team player . Just like Obama.

I explain more at my blog. Start with this: https://jackrabbit.blog/2018/08/more-evidence-that-trump-was-the-deep-state-choice/ .

<> <> <> <> <> <>

Triangle of power ... corporate, executive government, and military factions

This is naive. It's an outdated theory. Anyone that knows American society knows that power has become concentrated since this theory was first proposed. And that concentration has put EMPIRE FIRST warmongers/neocons at the top of heap.

Furthermore, Russia's willingness to confront USA in 2013 and 2014 had a profound effect on the pampered Empire-builders that thought that they and their progeny would rule the world. The Trump psy-op is their answer to the challenge from Russia and China.

=
Afghanistan and Trump's "lecture" to the Generals

Well, Trump is STILL THERE (in Afghanistan), isn't he?

And I'd be very skeptical of anything WaPo had to say about Trump.

IMO Trump isn't looking to withdraw from Afghanistan, or NATO, or North Korea, or Syria, or anywhere else. He's looking for Generals that have a will to fight. And that's a very scary prospect.

=
the military faction did not concur with his 'America first' isolationist tendencies.

Sorry, virtually everybody that matters in USA ("the 1%") is EMPIRE FIRST. Trump's 'America First' is just a bullshit slogan to fool the masses. Just as much as Obama's "Change You Can Believe In" was.

Trump is NOT an isolationist. Why does this false narrative still persist? Trump's many acts of war attest to his belligerent interventionist nature:

> seizing Venezuelan government assets;

> seizing Syrian oil fields;

> the assassination of an Iranian General;

> reneging on peace terms with North Korean (IMO reneging on a peace deal with a country that you're still technically at war with is an act of war);

> Pulling out of Cold War I arms treaties with Russia and militarizing space;

> taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - going against UN resolutions to do so;

> recognizing Golan Heights as Israeli - going against UN resolutions to do so;

> support for the Saudi war against Yemen - which includes arms sales, training, and even targeting.


These countries haven't declared war only because it's impractical to do so.

Why can't people see what charlatans Obama and Trump are? What has Trump done to demonstrate that he will be true to his campaign rhetoric? Nothing! Trump:

- didn't prosecute Hillary;

- didn't "end Obamacare on day one";

- didn't exit from NATO;

- didn't exit from the Middle-east;

- hasn't ended the threat from North Korea;

- hasn't brought jobs back (we just have more low-end jobs);

- hasn't "drained the swamp".

=
Most of the 'dopes and babies' who were in that room have since been fired or retired.

Really? What about this: Obama's Military Coup Purges 197 Officers In Five Years .

b's oversight highlights how the focus on TRUMP!! obscures what the Deep State has really been up to. And how even smart people like b are drawn into false narratives.

=
... Trump seems to have a good chance to win the next election.

Many moa commenters have been saying much the same. But the reasoning that three power centers are lined up for Trump is a red-herring.

Plus, whether Trump wins the next election or not, USA is on a path to war.

!!

[Jan 19, 2020] Democrats Ignore the Immigration Elephant in the Room

Notable quotes:
"... Des Moines Register ..."
"... Washington Examiner ..."
"... The Great Revolt ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
Jan 19, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Democrats Ignore the Immigration Elephant in the Room

The most important issue of Trump's ascent has drawn silence from the Democratic Party, now the party of the elites. (Jim Larkin/Shutterstock )

January 17, 2020

|

12:01 am

Robert W. Merry At Tuesday's Democratic debate sponsored by CNN and the Des Moines Register , nobody seemed to notice the elephant in the room -- or perhaps the candidates and moderators just didn't want to acknowledge its presence. Whether it was out of blindness or stubbornness, it tells us a great deal about the state of the Democratic Party in our time -- and also about the state of American politics.

That elephant is immigration, and the issue it represents is the defining one of our time. It is the most intractable, the most emotional, and the most irrepressible of all matters facing Western societies. And yet it was almost totally ignored in the most crucial debate so far in the Democratic quest for a presidential nominee. Two passing references was all the issue got over two hours of polemical fireworks.

President Trump certainly came in for his share of opprobrium from the top six Democratic candidates, yet nobody seemed to have the slightest awareness that the single most important issue driving Trump's political rise four years ago was immigration. A Pew Research Center survey revealed after the 2016 election that 66 percent of Trump supporters considered immigration to be a "very big" problem, the highest percentage for any issue. For Hillary Clinton supporters, the corresponding percentage was just 17. Also, fully 79 percent of Trump voters favored building the border wall he advocated, compared to just 10 percent for Clinton supporters.

During the 2016 campaign, the Washington Examiner called immigration "the mother of all issues" -- touching on jobs, national security and terrorism, the public fisc, and the cultural definition of America. That latter factor, said the paper, was a "nearly existential question" involving the ultimate definition of a nation without borders.

Elsewhere in the West, we see the same political percolation. By most analyses, immigration was the driving force behind Britain's 2016 vote for Brexit. The Atlantic ran a piece in June of that year headlined: "The Immigration Battle at the Heart of Brexit." After the vote, Slate rushed out to interview former British prime minister Tony Blair -- who, as the website noted, "presided over the opening of Britain's borders." That had unleashed "a wave of immigration unprecedented in [Britain's] history." Within a few years, noted Slate, "roughly twice as many immigrants arrived in the United Kingdom as had arrived in the previous half-century." The Brexit vote was in large measure a rebuke to that Blair project, pushed avidly and relentlessly by the British ruling class.

Elsewhere in Europe -- Hungary, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, even Sweden, among other nations -- mass immigration has emerged as the dominant issue, roiling the waters of national politics and pushing to the fore various types of conservative populism. New parties have emerged to join the issue, and old parties have gained new sway.

Many commentators and political analysts in recent years have posited the idea that a new political fault line has emerged throughout the West, between the globalist elites and ordinary citizens who are more nationalist in their political sensibilities and more culturally protective. This is true. And while there are many issues that have come into play here, such as trade, military adventurism, identity politics, and political correctness, immigration is the key driver.

Generally, the open-border elites have been on the defensive since Donald Trump seized the issue in 2015 and tied it to the emotional matters of terrorism and crime. Trump was probably correct in the first Republican debate of the 2016 election cycle when he said that, were it not for him, immigration probably wouldn't have been a major topic of discussion. It certainly seemed as if the other candidates preferred to keep it out of the campaign debate so it could be handled after the election in the more controlled environments of Congress and the courts. By bringing it up, even in his crude and disturbing manner, Trump galvanized a large body of voters who had concluded that the elites of both parties didn't really care about controlling the borders.

Indeed, in their 2018 book, The Great Revolt , Salena Zito and Brad Todd posit that Trump got an extra boost from working class Americans put off by the attacks on him from prominent politicians of both parties who called his immigration concerns "unhinged," "reprehensible," "xenophobic," "racist," and "fascist." Zito and Todd write that many Trump voters "saw one candidate, who shared their anxiety about immigration's potential connections to domestic terrorism, being attacked by an entire political and media establishment that blew off that concern as bigotry."

In this great political divide, the Democratic candidates at the debate represent the elite preference for policies that embrace or nearly embrace open borders. An NPR study of candidate positions indicated that, on the question of whether illegal crossings should be decriminalized, four of those on the debate stage say yes, while the positions of the other two remain "unclear." On whether immigration numbers should be increased, four say yes, while two are unclear. On whether federal funding for border enforcement should be increased or decreased, five have no clear position, while one says it should be decreased. A separate Washington Post study on the candidates' views as to whether illegal immigrants should be covered under a government-run health plan found that five say yes while one has no clear position.

The Democratic Party has become the party of the country's elites -- globalist, internationalist, anti-nationalist, free-trade, and open borders. Those views are so thoroughly at variance with those of Trump voters that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have here a powerful issue of our time, perhaps the most powerful issue. Yet the journalistic moderators at Tuesday's event didn't see fit to ask about it. And the candidates weren't inclined to bring it up in any serious way.

Perhaps they thought that if they just ignored that elephant, eventually it would go away. It won't.

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is the author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century (Simon & Schuster).


MarkVA 2 days ago

A million Eastern Europeans (Poles) move to the UK, and this precipitates Brexit. A million Ukrainians move to Poland, and it is hardly noticed there. There is a difference here which the author did not notice, or care to notice, and I feel no obligation to explain;

Also, in 2016 some truly nasty things were said about the Mexican people, and they were not said by the people on the left. Again, this post fails to mention any of that;

These two things suggest a myopia of American conservatism.

izzy MarkVA a day ago
Mark, you really are a voice of reason. I enjoy engaging with you.

Agree with you entirely here. I think you'll notice that ethnocentrism I was talking about in the previous conversation we had in Rod's post about BenOp for the humanities. The ethnocentrism is in full display on that thread.

It's weird to call the democrats the party of the elites when about half, it not more of the working class vote democratic. The Washington post just put out a poll on black Americans and their hatred of Trump is almost universal. Most blacks are working clsss. The vast majority of Hispanics are also working class and they sure aren't Trump voters either.

trailhiker 2 days ago
Trump and the GOP: had a mandate for populist reform, passed a tax-cut-for-billionaires, almost start a neocon war with Iran

Obama and the Dems: had a mandate and passed ACA, which BigMediPharma is totally fine with, gave Wall Street a big bailout and no punishment for the derivatives crash

Both of the parties are owned by the elites with a few exceptions here and there, such as Sanders and Gabbard. And of course those two are attacked quite a bit by the elites.

Kent trailhiker a day ago
Both parties want to increase immigration, because they drive down wages and increase profits. Both parties are funded by the same crew of the shareholding class.

Trump is an outlier in that he is willing to talk about the unmentionable, which got him elected. Unfortunately, by calling Mexican immigrants rapists, drug dealers and murderers, he associated the immigration issue with racism instead of wage issues. While that played to an ugly subset of his supporters, it took the discussion of immigration off the board for Democrats because they don't want the association.

Bernie Sanders has fought against open borders in the past because of the effect on wages. But he can't discuss it now.

[Jan 19, 2020] With "help" like this from CNN, one struggles to imagine what sabotage might look like.

Is Warren Warren the Jussie Smollet of politics. I wonder if she claims Bernie attacked her while wearing a red hat and screaming, "A woman can't win! This is MAGA country!"
Jan 18, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Connecticut Farmer a day ago

SCENARIO I

Joe is conservative, libertarian or possibly both.
Joe opposes Bernie Sanders on ideological grounds.
Ergo, Joe and Bernie have a different worldview.

SCENARIO II

Joe is conservative, libertarian or possibly both.
Joe opposes Liz Warren on ideological grounds.
Ergo, Joe is an unprincipled sexist.

esquimaux 11 hours ago
Being one of Liz' constituents and familiar with her career and her base (consisting of people like me,) I think she faces so little consequence for her "embellishments" at least in part because "we" (her base) inhabit an environment in which, with ease, we adjust facts and perceptions to conform to whatever our self-serving narrative of the moment may be.

We know that Liz will say anything she imagines will be to her advantage and it's okay with "us" that she does. In a way, she's our ideal candidate and media darling because she reflects and affirms our plastic values.

[Jan 18, 2020] 'Rigging election again' Trump says impeachment all a ploy to... shaft Bernie Sanders -- RT USA News

Notable quotes:
"... "They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial," ..."
"... "Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that's the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it's a lot of fun to watch." ..."
"... Trump's theory isn't plucked entirely out of thin air. With the impeachment trial set to begin on Tuesday, Sanders will have to disrupt his campaign activity in Iowa and return to Washington DC to sit in the Senate, two weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Crucially for Sanders, the trial begins as he edges Biden out of the lead in the polls. ..."
"... Friday's tweet isn't the first time Trump has accused the Democrats of stacking the cards against Sanders. Last April, he suggested that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was "again working its magic in its quest to destroy Crazy Bernie Sanders for the more traditional, but not very bright, Sleepy Joe Biden." ..."
"... whether the impeachment trial is an intentional move to muscle Sanders out of contention or not, The Democratic Party looks in danger of repeating the mistakes that cost it the White House in 2016. ..."
Jan 17, 2020 | www.rt.com
The impeachment trial against Donald Trump is not just a "witch hunt," but a ploy to "rig" the Democratic nomination against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Joe Biden, the US president has claimed. "They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously," Trump tweeted on Friday.

They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously. They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial. Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy...

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2020

"They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial," he continued. "Crazy Nancy thereby gives the strong edge to Sleepy Joe Biden, and Bernie is shut out again. Very unfair, but that's the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it's a lot of fun to watch."

Trump's theory isn't plucked entirely out of thin air. With the impeachment trial set to begin on Tuesday, Sanders will have to disrupt his campaign activity in Iowa and return to Washington DC to sit in the Senate, two weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Crucially for Sanders, the trial begins as he edges Biden out of the lead in the polls.

Also on rt.com Impeachment circus begins in earnest, and will change nothing

The caucuses are the first major contest in the presidential primary season, and eight out of the last 12 caucus winners went on to win the Democratic party's nomination.

Sanders' fellow 2020 frontrunner Elizabeth Warren will also return to DC to hear the case against Trump, while Biden, the former Vice President, will be free to stump for support with impunity.

Trump has savaged the case against him from multiple angles, alternately calling it "presidential harassment," a "partisan hoax," and a "witch hunt" led by the "Do Nothing Democrats." Lately, however, the president has taken to stoking division among his opponents, talking up "Crazy Bernie Sanders" surge in the polls and amplifying a brewing feud between Sanders and Warren – two candidates representing the leftist, progressive wing of the Democratic party.

Bernie Sander's volunteers are trashing Elizabeth "Pocahontus" Warren. Everybody knows her campaign is dead and want her potential voters. Mini Mike B is also trying, but getting tiny crowds which are all leaving fast. Elizabeth is very angry at Bernie. Do I see a feud brewing?

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2020

Friday's tweet isn't the first time Trump has accused the Democrats of stacking the cards against Sanders. Last April, he suggested that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was "again working its magic in its quest to destroy Crazy Bernie Sanders for the more traditional, but not very bright, Sleepy Joe Biden."

The Democratic establishment is widely believed to have "rigged" the 2016 primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton, with an email leak from within the DNC revealing the extent of the bias . Clinton was notified of debate questions in advance, her foundation was allowed to staff and fund the DNC, and Sanders' campaign strategy was secretly passed to the Clinton camp.

The rest is history, and whether the impeachment trial is an intentional move to muscle Sanders out of contention or not, The Democratic Party looks in danger of repeating the mistakes that cost it the White House in 2016.

[Jan 18, 2020] If Bernie is nominated, he better buy a flak jacket..

Jan 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

ben , Jan 18 2020 3:11 utc | 96

An earlier poster said Bernie could defeat DJT. Not to worry, I'll be the most shocked person in the U$A if Sanders gets to nod to run for POTUS.

If that happens, he better buy a flak jacket..

[Jan 16, 2020] Corrupt Clinton Democrats like Biden as just republican in disguise -- wolfs in sheep clothing

In this sense only Sanders, Warren and Tulsi are authentic democrats... Major Pete is definitely a wolf in sheep clothing.
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that fate. ..."
"... A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all. ..."
Jan 16, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

drumlin woodchuckles , , January 14, 2020 at 7:13 pm

Today's Democrats want to destroy those social programs you cite. They have wanted to destroy those social programs ever since President Clinton wanted to conspire with "Prime Minister" Gingrich to privatize Social Security. Luckily Monica Lewinsky saved us from that fate.

A nominee Sanders would run on keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in existence. And he would mean it. A nominee Biden might pretend to say it. But he would conspire with the Republicans to destroy them all.

The ClintoBama Pelosicrats have no standing on which to pretend to support some very popular social programs and hope to be believed any longer. Maybe that is why they feel there is no point in even pretending any more.

drumlin woodchuckles , , January 14, 2020 at 7:22 pm

Bearing in mind the fact that the DemParty would prefer a Trump re-election over a Sanders election, I don't think anyone will be giving Trump any heave ho. The only potential nominee to even have a chance to defeat Trump would be Sanders. And if Sanders doesn't win on ballot number one, Sanders will not be permitted the nomination by an evil Trumpogenic DemParty elite.

Even if Sanders wins the nomination, the evil Trumpogenic Demparty leadership and the millions of Jonestown Clintobamas in the field will conspire against Sanders every way they feel they can get away with. The Clintobamas would prefer Trump Term Two over Sanders Term One. They know it, and the rest of us need to admit it.

If Sanders is nominated, he will begin the election campaign with a permanent deficit of 10-30 million Clintobama voters who will Never! Ever! vote for Sanders. Sanders will have to attract enough New Voters to drown out and wash away the 10-30 million Never Bernie clintobamas.

[Jan 16, 2020] Warren attack on Sanders is backfiring

Jan 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kali , Jan 16 2020 18:40 utc | 12

Now that Warren has been exposed as the charlatan ( The Damned Debates ) many of us knew she was all along, the media is all freaked out that her plan to attack Bernie Sanders is backfiring and that she is losing support rather than gaining it.

It looks to many like she made a deal with the Wall St. crowd funding the DNC who support Biden to attack Bernie for them in exchange for a VP spot.

They are obviously very worried about Biden though because the Trump-GOP attack on Biden over Burisma is coming, and they know they have nothing to stop it. That is what the impeachment is all about ( Impeachment For Dummies: or How progressives were conned into supporting Joe Biden for President ), and what the recent claim of Russia hacking to harm Biden is all about. It is all about trying to protect Biden from the upcoming Trump-GOP Burisma related attack on Biden. So with Biden in trouble and Warren stumbling, expect Hillary to save the day? LOL.

They are worried, but unless Bernie is far ahead when it matters then the superdelegates will save them. But if they do that then they fear many people will go 3rd party next election cycle, meaning the DNC has no chance to beat the GOP in the future if that happens.

What will they do? Right now they are full on trying to threaten their way to keep their new world order as it crumbles around them ( Pax Americana: Between Iraq and A Hard Place ). Times they are a changin.

[Jan 10, 2020] It is highly doubtful that people reassert their power against National Security state and elect Sanders (as flowed as he is) in 2020?

When people thought in 2016 that they are winning against the National Security state, they were deceived by the candidate who sounded rational during election campaign, but then became Hillary II in three months after inauguration and brought Bush II neocons into his Administration.
So voters were deceived with Clinton, deceived with Bush II, deceived with Obama, deceived with Trump. You now see the tendency...
Jan 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
HarryOrd , Jan 9 2020 19:06 utc | 37
Hi first time commenter on here.

With all that is happening in the U.S right now I can't help but think that it's past time for the people to reassert their power over the National security state, as unrealistic as that might sound.

The Anti war movement is ideologically divided between progressives and libertarian/paleoconservatives, so a political party would not likely be the answer.

Instead perhaps we should consider a grassroots movement to amend the constitution to guarantee U.S neutrality in world affairs (banning both the arming or financing of foreign belligerents) and to ban the Federal government from having a standing military force except in times of actual war. I don't know what chance either would have of actually being passed, but it might at least force a debate on these issues in a way that might resonate better with the average American. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Peace and Solidarity

[Jan 03, 2020] For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks

Dec 29, 2019 | www.truthdig.com

A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.

Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other indicators on the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.

From the Times : " Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat ." From Politico : " Democratic Insiders: Bernie Could Win the Nomination ."

Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.

For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks.

Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.

When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.

With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.

While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that a Sanders presidency is a real possibility . The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets that distort options and encourage passivity.

Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."

From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.


Jan Goslinga • 38 minutes ago ,

Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.

Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump

Maxwell Jan Goslinga • 15 minutes ago ,

Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments with only about a third of them having a much relevance.

You might consider re-posting in reply to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.

I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.

Mensch59 Maxwell • 8 minutes ago • edited ,

Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta & historical ].

I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard following by trolling lib-prog sites.

Mensch59 Jan Goslinga • 21 minutes ago ,

Elections aren't real.

Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own reality.

This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born (1949, 1965) Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance , who points out that all knowledge, including natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
newestbeginning • 2 hours ago ,

Meanwhile the wealth of the world's top 500 grew 25% in 2019...

https://www.livemint.com/ne...

V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small." (Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEpXJvWSa4FQ&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

PGGreen V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is being realistic.

But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more important than the presidency in the long run.

Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!

V4V PGGreen • an hour ago ,

Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.

PGGreen V4V • 21 minutes ago • edited ,

Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context of voting.

Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why such support would be effective?

I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach it. And it only takes a small amount of time.

"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.

Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised." Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.

So what are those ways, for you?

V4V PGGreen • 6 minutes ago ,

But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect

-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks

"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats

I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.

Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.

Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.

Mensch59 PGGreen • 16 minutes ago ,

My guess/bet is that V4V believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.

Patrick_Walker V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?

V4V Patrick_Walker • an hour ago • edited ,

simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?

-straw man

That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am usually on the receiving end.

I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible? Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a vehicle and that's where we differ.

And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."

acme V4V • an hour ago ,

The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he somehow gets more electoral votes that both the major parties combined. If not, it goes to the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.

V4V acme • an hour ago • edited ,

You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.

What I propose is a movement outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can down the road to the time you Democrats finally realize it isn't going to work. You obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.

Zsuzsi Kruska • 4 hours ago • edited ,

People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII. But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after the bombs drop.

[Jan 01, 2020] Bernie Could Win the Nomination

Notable quotes:
"... For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks. ..."
"... When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet. ..."
Dec 29, 2019 | www.truthdig.com

A central premise of conventional media wisdom has collapsed. On Thursday, both the New York Times and Politico published major articles reporting that Bernie Sanders really could win the Democratic presidential nomination. Such acknowledgments will add to the momentum of the Bernie 2020 campaign as the new year begins -- but they foreshadow a massive escalation of anti-Sanders misinformation and invective.

Throughout 2019, corporate media routinely asserted that the Sanders campaign had little chance of winning the nomination. As is so often the case, journalists were echoing each other more than paying attention to grassroots realities. But now, polling numbers and other indicators on the ground are finally sparking very different headlines from the media establishment.

From the Times : " Why Bernie Sanders Is Tough to Beat ." From Politico : " Democratic Insiders: Bernie Could Win the Nomination ."

Those stories, and others likely to follow in copycat news outlets, will heighten the energies of Sanders supporters and draw in many wavering voters. But the shift in media narratives about the Bernie campaign's chances will surely boost the decibels of alarm bells in elite circles where dousing the fires of progressive populism is a top priority.

For corporate Democrats and their profuse media allies, the approach of disparaging and minimizing Bernie Sanders in 2019 didn't work. In 2020, the next step will be to trash him with a vast array of full-bore attacks.

Along the way, the corporate media will occasionally give voice to some Sanders defenders and supporters. A few establishment Democrats will decide to make nice with him early in the year. But the overwhelming bulk of Sanders media coverage -- synced up with the likes of such prominent corporate flunkies as Rahm Emanuel and Neera Tanden as well as Wall Street Democrats accustomed to ruling the roost in the party -- will range from condescending to savage.

When the Bernie campaign wasn't being ignored by corporate media during 2019, innuendos and mud often flew in his direction. But we ain't seen nothing yet.

With so much at stake -- including the presidency and the top leadership of the Democratic Party -- no holds will be barred. For the forces of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex, it'll be all-out propaganda war on the Bernie campaign.

While reasons for pessimism are abundant, so are ample reasons to understand that a Sanders presidency is a real possibility . The last places we should look for political realism are corporate media outlets that distort options and encourage passivity.

Bernie is fond of quoting a statement from Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done."

From the grassroots, as 2020 gets underway, the solution should be clear: All left hands on deck.


Jan Goslinga • 38 minutes ago ,

Elections aren't real. Democrats will nominate Joe Biden to lose the election. Trump will remain as fascist strongman and the dems will continue to blame his neoconservative policies on his white trash constituency.

Bernie serves a few important functions.
1. he keeps the radicals from leaving the plantation and going 3rd party.
2. his promotion of progressive policies will make Biden less popular and help him lose to Trump
3. Bernie and his "socialism" can then be blamed for losing the election to Trump

Maxwell Jan Goslinga • 15 minutes ago ,

Unfortunately this comment will be buried in this monstrosity of a thread- now at over 300 comments with only about a third of them having a much relevance.

You might consider re-posting in reply to one of the foremost comments. Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.

I've often wondered how it is people could believe the elections could have any positive and lasting impact on their lives if they have been through a couple of cycles. Do they not also wonder how it is that these election (marketing) campaigns now stretch out for well over a year nowadays demanding everyone's political attention, energy and resources. To say it is a colossal waste does not quite capture the enormity of the mind job being to people.

Mensch59 Maxwell • 8 minutes ago • edited ,

Your simple realism will certainly not be well received during the campaign hallucinations.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. You "realists" who are true believers that you have the Truth and have a calling to preach the Truth absolutely must stand against the unwashed masses who claim that your "reality" isn't even intersubjectively verifiable, much less dialectical & material [eta & historical ].

I quite enjoyed what SteelPirate/LaborSolidarity had to say about you attempting to gain a vanguard following by trolling lib-prog sites.

Mensch59 Jan Goslinga • 21 minutes ago ,

Elections aren't real.

Never pay attention to anyone who claims what's "real" and what isn't. Politics certainly doesn't exist in the realm of an objective, concrete, physical, naturalistic, materialistic reality which is shared by a consensus of rational observers. At best, politics deals with intersubjectively verifiable social phenomena. Thus, politics is mostly idealistic in the belief that each mind generates its own reality.

This realization is the topic of intersubjective verifiability, as recounted, for example, by Max Born (1949, 1965) Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance , who points out that all knowledge, including natural or social science, is also subjective. p. 162: "Thus it dawned upon me that fundamentally everything is subjective, everything without exception. That was a shock."
newestbeginning • 2 hours ago ,

Meanwhile the wealth of the world's top 500 grew 25% in 2019...

https://www.livemint.com/ne...

V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders's Chances of Success- "...the chances he can be elected are pretty small." (Waiting with bated breath for copious downvotes by those who hate the truth and hate reality).

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEpXJvWSa4FQ&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FEpXJvWSa4FQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

PGGreen V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

Most of who support Sanders know that his presidency will involve an uphill battle. Chomsky is being realistic.

But there really is no better option for meaningful change working within the political system than supporting Sanders. it is also important to note that "Our Revolution" has energized many young activists, encouraging them to continue the fight. This goes beyond politics to social and economic issues. If Sanders leaves us with a movement, this may turn out to be more important than the presidency in the long run.

Keep working for effective moral and economic justice and democracy!

V4V PGGreen • an hour ago ,

Well, I have said this several times, it's not the microscopic left that you need to convince, it's the majority of self-identifying Democrats not supporting Sanders that you need to convince. I am repelled by the Democratic Party, but there are millions who identify as Democrats and many are proud of it. You need to convince them, not us.

PGGreen V4V • 21 minutes ago • edited ,

Yes, although I don't think that those who support a Leftist agenda--whether you actually call them Leftists or not--are quite so microscopic a group as you imply. But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect, or that it will be difficult for him to be elected president. We already know; we simply consider him the best option within this context of voting.

Have you ever thought of turning your approach to systemic commentary (which is valid and interesting, BTW, I'm not discounting it) around and saying what candidates you support-- in this context being discussed of voting-- instead of which ones you don't? And then explaining why such support would be effective?

I would say that what is wrong with the world is more a fault of the economic and political system than of Sanders alone--who not only plays small part in causing what is wrong, but a significant part in trying to correct it. Yes, he works within the system. That is a given. It may be, as Chris Hedges thinks, that there is no hope working within the system. But Noam Chomsky's approach also bears serious consideration that even Hedges doesn't discount. Voting will only be a small part of what brings about change, but it may make some slight difference--if you can stomach it. And it only takes a small amount of time.

"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

I don't see much of an argument that Sanders will be no better as president than Trump (and if you think so, I'd like to hear you argue it). I suspect you find the compromise unpalatable. I can understand that. I, too, draw the line at a certain point. I couldn't vote for HRC.

Yes, Sanders isn't perfect. Chomsky also said another important thing: "We're all compromised." Everyone who is a citizen of the US is compromised, and bears some measure of responsibility for the military interventions undertaken by our government. Perhaps we should renounce our citizenship, refuse to pay taxes, etc. But most of us don't -- not even those of us committed to activist work in other ways -- significant ways -- to make things better.

So what are those ways, for you?

V4V PGGreen • 6 minutes ago ,

But you don't need to convince me or most others here (probably) that Sanders isn't perfect

-for me it isn' that he's not perfect, it's that I think he sucks

"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."

-funny, that's a favorite line of Democrats

I get that, but it doesn't negate that Sanders's chances are next to nil.

Your suggestion of me signaling whom I support would fall on deaf ears around here. I have said this many times- I will probably for the Green Party candidate or the Socialist Equality Party candidate. If only a Democrat and Republican appear on the ballot then I would refuse to vote even if I had to pay a fine. I am not in the habit of telling anyone whom to vote for unless asked.

Before a 3rd can succeed, the fantasy that the fix can come through the Democrats needs to be destroyed. Not to worry, in due time it will be obvious.

Mensch59 PGGreen • 16 minutes ago ,

My guess/bet is that V4V believes that the truth "We're all compromised" doesn't apply to him.
He sees himself as a truth-knower and a truth-teller.
He won't commit to logical argumentation.
He'll preach the truth to you.

Patrick_Walker V4V • 2 hours ago • edited ,

I saw this video long ago--and agreed with it. But though Sanders' chances are small, they're still vastly larger than the NONEXISTENT chances of success of the purist, "Born to Lose" left. Why not just admit that you've totally given up and simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?

V4V Patrick_Walker • an hour ago • edited ,

simply like to spent your time bitching and criticizing those of us with some (albeit small) hope?

-straw man

That isn't what I do because I couldn't care less whom Democrats support and vote for. Typically, I post some unpleasant truth about Sanders, like his lackluster polling numbers or his support for neoliberal warmongers and sit back and watch the ad hominems and downvotes roll in. I am not normally on the attack, I am usually on the receiving end.

I admit that I see this forum as a form of entertainment. I admit I have zero expectation that someone to my liking will be elected president and that the system is going to change anytime soon. Do I believe it possible? Yes, I believe it is possible, I just don't believe it possible using the corrupt, Democratic Party as a vehicle and that's where we differ.

And that the crux of our issue- you believe the Democratic Party can be used a vehicle to convert the CIA/Wall Street/War Inc. Democrats into the peoples' party, and I do not. If the needed changes are ever to arrive, it will be in spite of the Democrats not because of them. I hope you stick around because in due time I'll be telling you, "Told ya so."

acme V4V • an hour ago ,

The problem with your position is that, unlike Sanders, you don't seem to understand that a third candidate party candidate hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of being president unless if s/he somehow gets more electoral votes that both the major parties combined. If not, it goes to the house, and in the current partisan atmosphere, would be decided for the candidate of the House majority.
The major parties have a death-grip on the presidency while the electoral college exists.

V4V acme • an hour ago • edited ,

You don't seem to understand that Sanders has a snowball's chance in hell of being the Democratic Party candidate for many reasons including the DNC arguing in court it is a private corporation and can legally rig primary and the trusty superdelegates for Biden.

What I propose is a movement outside the Democratic Party in inside it. I believe any attempt to reform the Democratic Party is doomed to fail. All this whistling in the dark over Sanders is a distraction and a kicking the can down the road to the time you Democrats finally realize it isn't going to work. You obviously didn't learn it in 2016, and I would be surprised if you learn it once Sanders tanks and begins campaigning for Biden just like he did Clinton. I will promise this, I'll say, "I told ya so" in a matter of months. That's okay, play it again, Sam.

Zsuzsi Kruska • 4 hours ago • edited ,

People believe they need others to tell them what to do and give them the illusion somebody cares about them and has their best interests at heart. That's an archetype in the brain that goes back to our baby/childhood when we were dependent on our caregivers for sustenance, comfort and life itself.That's where the original concept of needing "leaders" comes from. But, what happens is psyco/sociopaths see this weakness in humanity and force their way to the top, to herd and exploit the gullible sheeple for their own agendas and selfish interests. No matter who rises to the top, she/he got their through the same system that's been going on since tribes had their chief; chief's lieutenant and witch doctor/shaman. Those three keep the tribe in line with their own desires. Chief through brute force, his lieutenant through information and witch doctor through religion and "spiritual" services; and all three require tribute and fees from the rest of the tribe. So, you will see, regardless of who the next POTUS will be, that same structure, although more complex today, will repeat itself. New boss/old boss, same ol' same ol'. All power has to be returned to the people at the local level before Wash. starts WWIII. But, if that happens, at least we won't have to worry about global warming with a nuclear winter after the bombs drop.


trilobytegames • 3 days ago ,

As usual, I find your analysis and commentary honest and accurate. However, I do take exception to your pulling out these canards:
"Trump's contempt of Congress and attempt to get Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for almost $400 million in U.S. military aid and allowing Zelensky to visit the White House are impeachable offenses"

Trump has certain executive privileges and him being guilty of contempt of Congress should be up to the Supreme Court to decide. Jonathan Turley in his testimony made that quite clear. Military aid was never mentioned in the phone call. Zelensky was unaware aid would be withheld. So if Trump were using the money as a means to induce Zelensky to do those favors, it was a totally botched one. To quote Dr. Strangelove, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost...if you keep it a secret!"

Nir Haramati • 3 days ago • edited ,

New avenues for accountability and oversight became possible in Washington, D.C., in 2019, following the election of a new Democratic Party majority in the House (and the most diverse Congress ever) in the 2018 midterms. As a result, Democrats took hold of the subpoena power that rests in the House of Representatives, along with the power to set the agenda across congressional committees. As a result, 2019 has been full of important moments for congressional oversight of both the Trump administration and private business. Here are five of the most important moments in congressional oversight in 2019.

1. Betsy DeVos, Are You "Too Corrupt" or "Too Incompetent"? ...
2. Big Bank CEOs Are Stumped by Simple Budgets ...
3. Wells Fargo Announces Plan to Divest From Private Prisons in Congressional Testimony ...
4. Rep. Ilhan Omar vs. Elliott Abrams ...
5. Voting to Impeach the President ...

Congressional Oversight Claimed Important Victories in 2019. Here Are the Top 5

The only people who lie and obfuscate facts as much as Trump and his GOP cult are neo progressive demagogues and propaganda buffs like Chris 'regime-change-in-America' Hedges.

Kaptain Amerika • 3 days ago • edited ,

Absolutely bush should have been impeached, convicted, removed and executed for war crimes and mass murder.

But because he wasn't doesn't mean that our orange Fuhrer shouldn't be.
He is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler.

Dr Hacksaw Kaptain Amerika • 3 days ago • edited ,

"[Trump] is the most dangerous authoritarian propagandist and threat to this country since Hitler."

Correction, Kaptain: Since Obama.

rosemariejackowski Dr Hacksaw • 3 days ago ,

THE MOST DANGEROUS IN HISTORY....
https://countercurrents.org...

Kaptain Amerika Dr Hacksaw • 3 days ago ,

NObama was a horrible POTUS for the 99% and is THE reason why we have trump, but he didn't poison every aspect of the government and everything else like your orange Fuhrer is doing, which is the exact same tactic that Hitler used to create Nazi Germany.

Ron Ruggieri Dr Hacksaw • 3 days ago ,

The generic Left is ignoring this aspect of the Trump impeachment circus . The whole farce IS political. Now Senator Lisa Murkowski wants her Republican Party to rise above politics ( and do the wrong thing ? ). In the past three years when did the Democrat Party ever rise above politics ? Politics USA is always CLASS politics, always IMPERIALIST , MILITARIST politics . All the " liberal " Democrats have been slobbering over the UN-ELECTED shadow government of the United States , the National Security Police State , slobbering over FBI, CIA bureaucrats , uniformed officials of the Pentagon War Crimes Machine . Join them ?

This Senator Lisa Murkowski -no surprise - is in good standing with the Israel Lobby collectively determined to nullify the 2016 presidential election . NEWS clip :

[ "There are about 6 million Jewish people living in America, so as a percentage it's quite small, but in terms of influence its quite big," Farage said. Farage seemed to question why Israel was not facing election-meddling accusations, saying Israeli groups "have a voice within American politics" but "I don't think anybody is suggesting that the Israeli government tried to affect the result of the American elections."]

Did not the Kafkaesque Trump impeachment hearings look and sound like Old Yiddish Theater soap opera ? How many working class Christian Americans have heartfelt moral and cultural ties to the Ukraine of all places, now celebrating its first Jewish friend of Zionist Apartheid Israel president ? Who in the USA authorized this character to wage a proxy war against post-communist Russia ? WE THE PEOPLE ?
Guess WHO is promoting the HATE RUSSIA, New McCarthyism ?

VallejoD • 3 days ago ,

$748 billion in 2020 for the military death machine equals $23 MILLION A SECOND.

How many schools or hospitals could have been built, how many roads or bridges repaired, how many students educated with the money the MIC has squandered in the few seconds it has taken me to write this?

We are destroying our people from the inside out. This is treason.

[Jan 01, 2020] Among Dems contenders only Sanders has wide appeal and together with Warren as VP can beat the Trump.

"The unreasonable campaign against Trump will hurt the Democrats in the 2020 elections. Unless something unforeseeable happens Trump will be reelected."
Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jay , Dec 31 2019 16:28 utc | 5

"The unreasonable campaign against Trump will hurt the Democrats in the 2020 elections. Unless something unforeseeable happens Trump will be reelected."

The Democrats are not helping themselves by pushing Russia-gate, or now Ukraine-gate.

However, the US economy is NOT good for 90 percent of workers, and this is what elected Trump 2016. Outside of his extremist fascistic+racist base, Trump is NOT widely popular. Now one way the Democrats could ease his re-election would be nominating Biden, Warren, or Buttigieg.

Here I remind you b how wrong you were about the Republicans retaining control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections.

Really?? , Dec 31 2019 16:34 utc | 6

Jay #5

You may be right, but I just can't see either one of your three choices beating Trump. Biden has huge vulnerabilities, quite apart from being sleazier (plus there are more videos of him doing it) than Trump in Groping 101.

Warren does not appeal.

Buttigieg does not appeal.

The only Dem with a chance is Sanders. If they nominate a Sanders-Warren ticket that could well beat Trump.

Russ , Dec 31 2019 16:50 utc | 8
Based on a hunch, I'll go out on a limb and say Warren will be the Dem nominee. Her fake-"progressiveness" is enough to satisfy most Sanders fans while being demonstrably fake enough to reassure enough Dem Party funders. And the Party could have a do-over on the whole "time for a woman president, any woman no matter what her record" thing.

From there I agree with b, Trump will win "unless something unforeseeable happens." I expect Trump handily to beat any opponent but Sanders, but the Dems will certainly do all they can to prevent his candidacy.

A Trump-Sanders contest would be interesting, though, if only to see how the media, the political class, the well-heeled cultural elites of both parties, the Democrat Party as a whole handle their extreme conflict: Who do they hate more, Trump or Sanders?

Continued

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