Another Set of Primaries Today

Oh well. There’s always next time. Oh, wait, no there isn’t. There won’t be a next time. The window of opportunity is almost closed and will be closed after the results are announced this evening. I will vote for Bernie in my state’s primary but I know he won’t get the nomination let alone win the primary in my state, so I will not be voting in the general and I am in the process of convincing my wife, daughter and son to withhold their vote in the general in protest against the Dem party. The Dem party needs to be destroyed. It’s the reason there is, and can be, no progress.

Ian’s right, America deserves what it’s going to get, but, then again, most of the world also deserves what it’s going to get because as it goes in America it goes in the rest of the world for the most part. We’ve run our course as a species and taken most of nature with us. I fail to see how that’s progress. Orwell would be pleased. Progress = destruction.

Now, please, everyone join me in prayer. Oh great lord, mightier than the mightiest, please crater the stock market to zero and destroy the sadistic rich of this planet entirely. We ask this in your name, amen.

Immigration is a losing issue, last year for Corbin, and now for and Bernie.

What’s the point of trying to appeal to people who can’t even legally vote (and aren’t supposed to be in the country in the first place) while at the same time alienating a lot of people who can?? Hello, MATH?

The Dem establishment is bad enough but then there are the conservative retards also like the retard in Detroit arguing with Biden about Biden wanting to take his guns away. God I wish I could bloody that son-of-a-bitch in the hard hat without going to jail. Guys like him need to bloodied to the point they can never walk and talk again. The retarded conservatives are showing the video of this confrontation as though it makes Biden look bad when in fact it makes Biden look great. It makes him look tough. He’s surrounded by a bunch of fascist white goons in hard hats and he’s undaunted and goes toe to toe with the pussy in the hard hat confronting him. Hey pussy, at least take off your hard hat so if something physical does go down, your skull can be cracked open and what little brains you do have, if you have any at all, can spill out on the factory floor. Such tough guys. Biden ended up looking like a stud and the thugs in hard hats made it all possible. What a bunch of white dumbasses.

I’m never going to stand side to side with dumbasses like that dumbass in the hard hat who confronted Biden about Biden taking his guns away. I’d sooner kill him or at least beat him until he’s disabled (the guy in the hard hat). This union could never happen. Biden is inadequate for SO MANY REASONS and taking away dumbasses’ guns IS NOT ONE OF THEM. Get out of my face with that nonsense, white militia moron.

Fyi, Mexicans are painting my house. The owner of the company is Mexican and he employs Mexicans. It was between him and a white owner of a painting company. The white owner employed an all Mexican crew too but he wanted $1,500 more for the job which I figured to be his bonus for being white and I wasn’t about to pay it. No down Whitey McWhite is a big Trump supporter just as many Trump supporters we know of are terrified of COVFEFE-19 despite their Dear Leader telling them it’s nothing. The hypocrisy. The hypocrisy. The rest of the whites in this trade are too screwed up on opioids and/or meth to even bother to give an estimate. My guy’s a devout family man who lives simply within his means unlike the white guy who wanted to charge me $1,500 more for the job.

People are going to start looking for all kinds of scapegoats now that the narrative is against Bernie. Too much identity politics, too much pro-immigrant, etc, etc. Some polling data will be scraped out here and there to show whatever it is you want it to show.

It ain’t true. Bernie is losing because he chose an underlying emotional narrative that is doomed to fail. People spent too much time dunking on Russiagate (among other things!!!) as a sign of liberal fecklessness to see the forest for the trees and the underlying fear it represents. The “election question” of the primary was *who will undo Trump*. Denying Russiagate without addressing the fear that underlies Russiagate was a losing strategy. The “can’t get insulin to live” narrative is easily flooded by the fear of what Putin represents.

Nearly every major Democratic candidate that ran in this year’s primary is backing Biden. Only those considered ”outsiders” like Marianne Williamson, Tom Steyer, and Elizabeth Warren did not endorse Biden. Warren’s cowardly silence is like a default endorsement for Biden. Obama has been twisting arms and Hillary continues her ”I hate Bernie”/documentary tour. This was always going to be an uphill battle for Bernie even if he had won more delegates. If he were to go to the convention with a slight lead, the DNC would just hatch another way to deny him the nomination.

There are many Americans who get what they deserve because of who they vote for, but Bernie’s popularity and his initial surge show that there are millions of Americans who support his ideas. The DNC had to pull out all the punches this time to portray Bernie in the worst possible light to voters who may want Bernie, but will vote for the “safe” “Democratic” candidate with party backing and larger name recognition over an Independent outsider.

The will of the people is being subverted by the wealthiest Americans who don’t want change. The upper middle class well-educated peons who support Warren, Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar, and think they are somehow better than Bernie’s working class supporters, are only one job loss or health emergency away from losing everything. They are not a part of the ruling class no matter how much they want to believe they are part of their club.

Never count out the coronavirus, but I think this is a done deal.

I was disappointed that the race came down to Bernie and Biden– I voted enthusiastically for Bernie in 2016, but 4 years and a heart attack later, I was planning on voting for someone else this go around. But by the time of the Texas primary, with Bernie, Biden, and Bloomberg the only three remotely viable candidates left, it was Bernie or bust. Now that the moderate Borg has united by Biden, I’m just sort of numb that this is the route the election has taken. I think Biden is objectively terrible as a candidate, and he is terrible in ways that blunt criticism of Trump– family corruption, refusal to reform healthcare, mental decline, etc. Watching the mindless defense of such a ridiculous old man by those who have to know better, but who are committed to dragging his corpse across the finish line, is somehow predictable and shocking at the same time.

In the end, the best case scenario with a Biden election is a repeat of Obama: a moderate-right Democrat comes in to bail out Wall Street and the healthcare industry, and do his damnedest to cut the social safety net to pay for it all. History repeats itself in a hurry these days, it seems.

“To me it looks like Warren’s repeated attacks on Sanders had the effect of estranging various of her followers from Sanders.”

I guess Warren decided if she could not be the progressive nominee, she would help doom Bernie’s chances as well. Bitter and petty. If she did not want to endorse Bernie, she could have at the very least kept her opinions regarding Bernie and his supporters to a minimum until after the primary was over. She only made things worse between her supporters and Bernie’s on Twitter. I would say that other than the DNC, Warren entering the race was the worst thing to have happened to Bernie’s campaign.

I feel bad that so many of Bernie’s so-called “friends” betrayed him. If I were him, I would give the middle finger to the Democratic Party, not campaign for Biden (or do as Hillary did for Obama and only do a handful), leave DC, and spend my retirement years creating an organization that will help progressive candidates nationwide beat the same politicians who stabbed him in the back. The Democratic Party and many of its supporters have stated loud and clear that they do not want progressives around except for their votes every four years.

Correction: Missouri has 68 delegates.

I question whether it’s not some kind of parody of an actual post.

Where have you been? Asleep for the past four or more years, it appears. Reality is now a parody, for your information. Maybe it always has been but it certainly, most assuredly, is now. Look at the Buffoon In Chief. He’s a fu*cking parody for christ’s sake. What else would you call it? It’s all a very bad joke. A tragic comedy and yet you somehow think it’s not. What’s wrong with you? Do you have autism that you fail to see that you are part of a big f*cking joke? How could you have no clue that you exist in a reality that’s a parody?

That being said, yes, Biden showed his Trump today with that hard-hatted goon/thug and actually he showed he’s tougher than Trump because he went toe to toe with the white militia goon versus hiding behind multiple layers of security like fat orange Donnie does because he’s such a bed-wetting coward.

The people want someone who can beat Trump at his own game and Biden is the perfect choice. The people want someone who can stand up to Trump. Someone who will take Trump behind the woodshed and kick his ass or hell, kick his ass on the debate stage, quite literally. Biden can gaffe as much as Trump and he can chastise & harangue the opposition and push back against it/them just as much as Trump and as effectively as Trump. The polls are showing that he apparently is inspiring his base.

Have you heard the good news, edmondo? He has risen — Joe Biden that is. He’s a Blue Trump. He’s Trump for Dems and you reich wing turds are jealous because he’s not obese like Donnie the orange dildo and he’s sensitive towards women. He’s so sensitive, he prefers to smell their essence versus violently grab their pussies as is the orange feces stain’s wont.

Biden was right to push back against the white militia man turd blossom. White militia man doesn’t need 100 rounds of ammo. He doesn’t need machine guns or automatic weapons. He doesn’t need an arsenal. For that doofus gun-loving freak to put forth that specific protest to Biden, of all possible protests and there are many, to Joe Biden who is a Republican for all intents & purposes, is beyond idiotic. It’s emblematic of someone who suffers from microcephaly.

Well, I came out and primary-voted for Sanders. There was almost nobody there, at 1:00p.m.
A poll-worker told me that there had been about 300 people there not long before. A different poll worker told me that it looked like the young and near-young were about 30% of the voters.

I hope the Sanders effort continues all the way through DemCon 2020 in Milwaukee. I hope the Bernists can force the convention to go through hundreds of rounds of balloting before doing a brokered convention right out in the open.

But also, and at the same time, I hope enough Sanders supporters in each state begin organizing to get Sanders’s name independently on all 50 state ballots.

And I hope that Gabbard’s supporters begin immediately working to get Gabbard’s name on all 50 state ballots. The Gabbardistas don’t have to wait till DemCon 2020 to begin getting her separate name on all the state ballots because she has zero nomination chances to jeopardize by that effort.

Sanders’s fatal weakness is that he is good to bad people. Perhaps that is a weakness of the liberal-left in general. Perhaps it goes back to the dirty filthy influence of ideological pacifism coming from the Quakers and other Peace Creeps who were so important in the recent “left”.

Are flat-out racist posts like Willy’s welcome here with no moderation?

The DNC can engineer the nomination to whomever it wants, even someone with dementia and a terrible and very long political record. But the question is as always: can Democrats win the general without progressives and Millennials? Are they even going to bother with independents? Inquiring minds would like to know.

First off, let me state that I detest Biden. But I think he can beat Trump. Why? Because there is an enormous amount of energy by a huge amount of local Democrats intent on getting Trump out of the White House. They would put Jimmy Carter — who is 95 – over the top, were he the nominee. Hell, they would put a ham sandwich over the top if that;s what emerged out of Milwaukee.

Seriously, the number of people in my local area who are deeply involved in an astonishing array of “resistance” groups is amazing. If it’s like this around the country — and I have no reason to think it isn’t — then Biden can win the general election.

So, what really worries me is what happens when a Biden administration proves its inability to confront the problems — like climate change, and the inexorable squeeze on family finances — that are an ever worsening threat to an increasing number of people.

I think Edward Burmila in The Nation late last year is probably correct:
“It is only luck that the right has not yet found a skilled autocrat. Palin was clueless, and Trump is his own worst enemy. He is a historically weak president who lacks even a passing understanding of how to use the power of the office effectively…. Democrats may get one more chance to govern before a competent authoritarian emerges from the right…”
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2019/05/if-democrats-dont-offer-real-change-in.html

Just like the path followed by Obama led to Trump, the real danger is that the path followed by Biden will lead to something much worse than Trump: a competent authoritarian.

Which means that no matter what happens to Sanders’ campaign, it is essential that his movement continue to be built. So that there are policy alternatives than can be readily grasped when the Biden Boyz screw everything up.

Anthony,

You’re assuming that a large part of Bernie’s following is going to vote for Biden, I’d imagine.

If so, I think that’s a big assumption to make.

Z

Follow up: Bernie lost Michigan so it’s over unless Biden keels over from corona virus (which is possible).

While the “establishment” was definitely against Bernie and that hurt him, the bottom line is that Bernie failed to win blacks and he failed to win the white working class, and you can’t blame that on the “establishment.” Bernie has to own that, and any progressive movement that wants to get traction in the heartland needs to learn some lessons from Bernie’s failures.

Huey Long could have won those black votes and white working class votes and still been just as progressive on economic issues as Bernie if not more so.

Four fifty botting along like an oldster mixing his meds. 10 Bears got the survival mode going, loaded and locked down for that security touch. Ok. Fine. There are others rearranging furniture while the house burns down.
Is there a voice of reason in the room? Are we all doomed by a cheap Mexican beer virus? Much wringing of hands and scrunching of brow here. Er, cleaning of hands.
Just tossing shit out here because I\’m of an age and sensibility that allows the indulgence. Thanks.
Now back to Bernie and the normal (ha ha) commentators.

They’ve already started calling for Bernie to concede the nomination.

Z

Looks like the party voters have chosen: crazy grandpa with dementia is the nominee.

I’ll take a distinct pleasure in Trump’s victory.

Most “Bernie Bros” are not Democrats. Most are left-leaning independents. They support Bernie Sanders, NOT the Democratic Party. They do NOT owe the Democratic Party their allegiance or loyalty.

Anonone wrote: “Are flat-out racist posts like Willy’s welcome here with no moderation?”

@ Anonone –

As least as welcome as your question’s deeply dishonest concern trolling. Because whether you’re conscious enough to know it or not, your question _is_ deeply dishonest.

There’s nothing implicitly racist in what Willy wrote. He may have racist views for all I know, but he didn’t express them here.

What he wrote about “people who actually work in the trenches know what immigration does to their own job security” is nothing but the most basic, simple truth about the effect of cheap, easily pliable immigrant labor on the labor market as a whole.

It depresses the cost of labor for the capitalists and terrorizes individual laborers into acquiescing to the demands of capital for fear of otherwise ending in the surplus labor pool. It immiserates — let’s bring back that word — labor as a whole.

It’s designed to immiserate labor — that’s the reason for it. This is fundamental supply and demand, and doesn’t even rise to the level of Econ 101. “Open borders are a Koch Brothers policy,” as Bernie Sanders used to say.

It’s not racist to point out the process of this immiseration. It’s truth-telling.

What’s disturbing is that a clown like you is either (a) so brainwashed by neoliberalism that you honestly imagine that telling the truth about the effect of immigrant labor is intrinsically racist or (b) you imagine the rest of us are that brainwashed and you can just go around pointing the finger and chanting ‘racist, racist, racist’ and everybody will buy it.

I feel the same way, Benjamin. I’m in my 30s and I don’t feel like a Democrat after participating in a handful of demoralizing elections. If would describe myself as a progressive and a liberal Independent. I usually vote for down-ticket Democrats and will continue to vote for progressive Democrats. I have not been impressed with any of the Democratic nominees since Al Gore. At least he was serious about climate change.

Mark Pontin – Thank you for that excellent response to Anonone.

Benjamin – I’m a geezer – a Boomer whether I am proud of that or not. What my generation is doing to yours breaks my heart. I don’t see how people who actually have kids can do this to their own children. My nephew is your age and he is an ER nurse, so he will be on the front lines fighting the coronavirus. I pray to all the saints that he survives it, and I hate the people who put him in such a position with a bottomless rage.

@Benjamin,

There is something else to consider . . . Voter Suppression targeted against potentially-suspect possible-Sanders-voters. The manufacture of long to super-long lines in places full of time-pressured people is one way to stop people from voting. Here is a story hinting at that.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/09/long-waits-ann-arbor-east-lansing-absentee-voting-registration/5002272002/

And how many normal-and-accustomed polling places were carefully closed in Texas and maybe other states in possible pro-Sanders areas?

And how many of the vote totals are falsified or simply fake?
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/03/08/dallas-county-election-officials-asking-for-super-tuesday-recount/

You offer some theories other than hatred for older black voters voting for Biden. These seem like good theories. I would suggest that the non-black Boomers who voted for Biden might also be motivated by their own versions of these same Black-voter motivations. In other words, also not hatred for you. After all, they too, in their tiny minds, think that not-Sanders is somehow a key to defeating Trump. And they think that Biden is the only stop-Sanders hope at this point in time. ( Though it is fair to wonder how many votes Biden got from bitter Clinters
who were voting for Biden strictly and only to get revenge on Sanders. If only there was a way to destroy their Social Security without affecting my Social Security at the same time, I would be well pleased with that.)

There’s just no Black support for Sanders. He can’t win the nomination without a sizable portion of Black voters. Black Democrats are more conservative than White Democrats, and don’t see what Bernie offers them from 98% white Vermont. Biden has a stronger coalition than Hillary already, and a female VP nominee would make him stronger.

And for all you planning to sit out a Biden-Trump election, thanks for losing the Supreme Court for the much of thebrest of the century, and blowing off climate reforms for good. Biden is not a 21st Century Republican and doesn’t act, look, walk, quack, or vote like one. He may not be a socialist or even much of a liberal but he sure as hell isn’t a Republican.

Wow. According to Lee Fang, a writer for the Intercept,

“Thermo Fisher Scientific, the main CDC partner supplying coronavirus test kits via its Qiagen partnership, apparently lacks the resources to make test kits here in the US. Combined both firms have spent $3 billion+ in stock buybacks over the last two years to enrich shareholders.”

@TomR,

Biden conspired to put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is just as lost under Biden as it is under Trump. So playing the “Supreme Court” card doesn’t work in this case. Nice try, though.

why the Democrats lose (from 2011) –

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/wisconsin-recap-thanks-to-obama-american-left-lies-in-smoldering-wreckage.html

“Obama’s policy framework is now the policy framework of the Democratic Party, liberals, and unionism. Up and down the ticket, Democrats are operating under the shadow of the President, associated with unpopular policies that make the lives of voters worse and show government to be an incompetent, corrupt handmaiden to big business. So they keep losing.

It should be obvious that if you foreclose on your voters, cut their pay, and legalize theft of their wealth by Wall Street oligarchs, they won’t be your voters anymore. ”

Lucky us, Obama still runs the party. He is going to get Trump elected twice.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

As I said here for a third time: if Obama and Trump run against each other in an election, I would definitely vote for Trump over Obama. If you look deeper and beyond the mainstream media narrative, Obama was actually a worse president than Trump is.

The first time I posted that comment, I got some very strong… reactions.

The second time, some of you finally agreed with me.

So here I repeat and reaffirm my stance again for the third time, and I expect more people to see the light.

Don’t forget Obama has also normalized forever and permanent wars; he effectively ended all and any anti-war movements on the left.

@Mark Pontin

Making broad negative generalizations about whole groups of people based solely on race or ethnicity is racism and prejudice by definition.

And that is exactly what Willy did in his post, including making prejudicial generalizations about all Mexican people (the classic “they”) and referring to human beings as “illegals.” It is a dehumanizing label, but that is what bigotry is all about.

No human being is illegal.

Racism and bigotry should be called out here, even if Ian isn’t going to moderate it.

Who made anonone the gatekeeper of the English language?

From the BLS,

“In 2018, there were 28.2 million foreign-born persons in the U.S. labor force, comprising 17.4 percent of the total.

Hispanics accounted for nearly half of the foreign-born labor force in 2018, and Asians accounted for one-quarter.”

The BLS doesn’t track the legal status of these workers. It is disingenuous to pretend that these numbers don’t have a major depressive effects on wages and working conditions of native-born workers or that many of these workers are here illegally.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.nr0.htm/labor-force-characteristics-of-foreign-born-workers-summary

As I have said before, I wish the Democrats well in their efforts to get rid of Trump, but after the DNC’s coup against Sanders and that Biden is an anti-progressive neoliberal with significant dementia, they don’t represent me and are against most of what I believe. They don’t own me or my vote. They clearly don’t want it, and I have no intention of giving it to them.

@someofparts

“A more detailed breakdown of the cheating:

http://tdmsresearch.com/

Given the probable accurate votes tallies indicated here, Bernie won and he won big.”

Thanks for this. I have to wonder, though, why more people aren’t angered, or at least interested, in this. It’s one thing if the margin of cheating is 4 or 7 percent. It’s another if the margin of cheating can be flexibly expanded to knock out any uppity reformer who will ever come along. Both are bad, but by “whistling past the graveyard” on this issue, reform will remain on the margins, ‘forever’. The plutocracy will continue ruling.

IMNSHO, at this point, the best thing Bernie could do for future generations is not concede anything until the voting fraud problem is fully exposed. And that means bringing it up hard and often in the next debate. Also, if he were to put the exit poll discrepancies front and center on his website, I’ll bet at least Tucker Carlson would pick up on it. That might be enough to split the seam.

I don’t think Sanders has it in him, but maybe some of his followers can force him on this issue. Bernie will probably settle for some Bernie-ish things in the Democratic platform, which will be promptly abandoned if Biden wins.

Also, I wonder if Gabbard has made any noises about this.

metamars, it shows us why Stoller and Greenwald get the twitter blue check seal of approval. They are opposition containment. Both refuse to accept the primaries are rigged. For this so-called “movement” to ever be effective, it must shed itself of ALL insiders, and that includes the likes of Stoller, Greenwald, Caitlin Johnson and Naked Capitalism and its myriad Russian trolls. Anyone with a twitter blue check seal of approval is automatically barred and banned. The twitter blue check seal of approval means they’re CIA compliant & approved.

Bernie is moments away from jumping on Biden’s senile bandwagon. As I’ve said, he’s not fit to hold Castro’s jock. He’s not a leader. He’s a politician interested in perpetuating his political career and he has his legacy to consider.

Until Joe & Mika are forced to flee the country or are forced to pick watermelons in the hot & sultry fields of rural Alabama, nothing will change. We will know we have arrived when the tables are turned on the likes of Joe & Mika. They were placating Bernie’s supporters today saying Bernie has made an impact and maybe, perhaps, in ten years or more America will finally be ready for universal healthcare but not in a socialist kind of way. Too funny. Ten years. Unreal. But not surprising. Joe & Mika have incredible reach and influence and they have been great in making it appear Biden’s sudden resurgence isn’t a fix and instead is just a natural phenomenon that just suddenly and miraculously manifested out of thin air.

Wow, the results look exactly as I said. Actually, worse, since Bernie is barely winning Washington. You could know this purely by figuring out the demographics of Sanders coalition, who was turning out to vote at higher numbers, and projecting that from state to state. It was also predictable from the beginning because of Bernie’s terrible numbers among old people, and old people are predisposed to voting at much higher rates than young people. If you want to lament that 96% of black voters over age of 65 who live in Mississippi are “The Establishment” or are too stupid, well you’ve just explained why you’ll be stuck in a loop of endless grievances, rather than figuring out a way to win. The path must be through those voters, or you will lose. This is all changing, as the demographic split among age is right along the 45-50 barrier. Unfortunately the electorate is going to keep getting older.

You know what would allow the left to win? If we actually do what Republicans accuse us of doing: increase immigration and legalize more citizens who are predisposed to voting for the left party, the one that doesn’t rely on white identity politics. But comments are already talking about how bad immigration is. That’s a better plan for winning to me, but what do I know?

Welp, the Biden Surge continues much as predicted. The Michigan loss must have stung at Sanders’ HQ, but it shouldn’t have been unanticipated. Nor should various methods of voter suppression and vote rigging. This is the USA (!) and this is how politics and elections have been done in this country since dirt was new. The idea that it shouldn’t be that way is fine, but it is that way nonetheless. Best to deal with the reality and win in spite of it

On the other hand, people still put way to much faith in elections to get what they want — politically, socially, legally, economically. Bernie in the White House would make a difference, sure. But it’s not enough. Not even close to enough. Especially when nearly the whole system of rule is aligned against him and his program.

It’s not so for Old Joe. For good or ill, the money and power people, and much of the governing class are comfortable enough with his inadequacies to let things play out the way they will. If he’s the Dem nominee and the Trump regime continues to bollox the COVID-19 response, there’d be little reason not to replace one old man with little or no plan in the White House with another.

But I’m still not convinced Old Joe will be the nominee. I’m certain Bernie won’t be. A galvanizing figure from out of nowhere more likely will be.

It’s a long time till July, even longer till November. Things have been changing so fast so much lately that it wouldn’t even surprise me if whoever winds up in the presidency isn’t elected.

Stranger things have happened.

There is no overlap between Bernie and Trump whatsoever. They are 180 degrees of separation. Trump is a degenerate con man who will say and do anything to increase his brand awareness. He and Bernie are diametrically opposed.

Mallam

You know what would allow the left to win? If we actually do what Republicans accuse us of doing: increase immigration and legalize more citizens who are predisposed to voting for the left party, the one that doesn’t rely on white identity politics. But comments are already talking about how bad immigration is.

Actually, no, Mallam, not all of us Bernie supporters are anti-immigration. In fact, the reason I am pro-immigration is because ‘socialism’ largely solves (to a reasonable extent) the immigration issue by removing the need for employment and income from the hands from “Daddy Warbucks” deciding how many workers should be employed not on any objective measure of need, but based on maximizing his own short-term profits. We actually have, objectively speaking from a ‘needs’ appraisal, both in the private and public sectors, both a shortage of workers while we have under- and unemployment.

I’ve recounted how Wall Street drives private companies into the ditch by short-term management (so did Ian, “burning down the house to heat it” is the way he puts it) but it’s also in the public sector. For instance, for all the crying about the deficit by people (including Biden) one of the ways to ‘fix’ the deficit–maybe even to eliminate it altogether even with our too-low tax rates–is for the IRS to hire more auditors to audit the tax returns of the rich. But instead, the IRS says it’s largely given up doing just that because it requires more manpower that they don’t have, and they don’t have that manpower due to employment/budget cuts pushed through Republican Congresses, pushed through precisely to keep the IRS off the donor class’s backs.

The problem is that successful narcissists are better than the honest integrous at getting people to follow them.

I think it’s because the former are better at seeing and accepting reality, because they just don’t give a shit about anything but themselves.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/another-set-of-primaries-today/#comment-111295

But I’m still not convinced Old Joe will be the nominee. I’m certain Bernie won’t be. A galvanizing figure from out of nowhere more likely will be.

Same here. Resurrecting Biden will, I think, just be simply the way They stopped Sanders. My money would be on one of the quasi-Republican women. Harris, Klobuchar, or both. Even Warren.

The Powers That Be really do have us by the plums – the only alternative to their hand-picked party hacks is Trump.

Hugh

The BLS doesn’t track the legal status of these workers. It is disingenuous to pretend that these numbers don’t have a major depressive effects on wages and working conditions of native-born workers or that many of these workers are here illegally.

Would you then argue that women entering the workforce depressed wages and working conditions?

In 1950, the US workforce was 62 million. c. 18 million were women.

In 1980, the US workforce was 107 million, c, 45 million were women.

That’s a 72.5 % jump in the labor force, which outstrips the 45 % growth rate in the overall US population. The increase in this was largely driven by women–a 25 % increase from 18 % to 43%. We not only have more workers, we have more people working compared to our overall population. So according to your line of reasoning, we should have seen wages and working conditions plummet from 1950 to 1980. But while there were some hiccups in the 1970s (and the oil shocks, and the beginnings of our current neoliberal policy date back to then) but overall hourly wages actually peaked in the 1970s.

So the US economy can absorb a 25 % + hit in additional workers in 1950-1980, additional to the male participants, but can’t absorb a mere 17.4 % increase today? The US population increase from 1980 to today is almost exactly the same — 45 %– but the workforce has grown only 54 %. Some of that can be explained by the baby bust, but a question that should be asked if “why do we ‘need’ fewer workers’? Who decides that? Wall Street?

Right– it’s not Mexican immigrants’ fault that everything from coding to legal research is now done in India by PhDs making pennies an hour. It’s not Mexican immigrants’ fault that we have offshored our entire manufacturing base.

The hard Bircher And Libertarian right spends years taking over the Republican Party and they control all levels of power because they win primaries, providing clear evidence of how to take over a party.

And yet, still, right now, you’re talking up third parties because you’d rather be a loser and cry into your shirt and make plain your irrelevance. Get a new idea. All you’re doing is making yourself irrelevant. Third party voting isn’t going to happen in 2020, it will be low compared to 2016, a historically high rate of 6%. The most loyal Dem voting base — black voters — pushed Biden to the nomination. You can’t have power if you have no leverage. But sure, maybe cutting off some limbs will make them pay attention to you 🙄

Hey, you do what you want. I look at results and see what’s working and what’s not. Your plan is to dig a niche online community that yells and has no power, I want to advance left politics. I warned what the results would be and I don’t live in fantasy world. I’m sure another third party challenge will move the country to the left. Any day now. Any day now…

@metamars,

Ever since the FSM ( Fake Stream Media) dropped the Big Acoustic MuffleCone of Silence over candidate Gabbard, it is hard to hear anything she says about anything. So it would be hard to know if or when Gabbard begins to address this.

@TomR

“And for all you planning to sit out a Biden-Trump election, thanks for losing the Supreme Court for the much of thebrest of the century, and blowing off climate reforms for good.”

Spare us the DNC talking points. At most what we’d get from Biden is a ‘moderate’ Republican nominee for the court, just like Obama tried.

As for climate change, we’re well past the point of reforms having any effect. Nothing short of a Green New Deal will be adequate, and probably not even that. Biden has shown exactly zero evidence that he’ll do anything more than Obama’s token tweaking. He might roll back some of Trump’s more ludicrous changes, but that’s it (and don’t be surprised if much of what Trump has done is quietly continued).

“Biden is not a 21st Century Republican and doesn’t act, look, walk, quack, or vote like one.”

You’re right. He’s a 20th century Republican.

different clue, electability for the Democratic party Establishment means the candidate they want. It means that candidate can dispense with standing for or defending anything because electable.

We keep getting these ghastly choices. Sometimes it’s the party’s fault. Sometimes it’s ours. But either way things are going to continue to get worse and are never going to get better as long as we allow and participate in such a self-destructive process.

Oh man, this is fantastic:

“ Last weekend, a few days after Elizabeth Warren dropped out, Shakir and one of his deputy campaign managers, Ari Rabin-Havt, started contacting her top staffers and supporters to see what could be done to bring together the two camps before the primaries on Tuesday.

Sanders spoke to Warren a “handful” of times throughout the week, a campaign aide confirmed, but she has declined to offer her endorsement.

Several leading figures in Warren’s circle balked at the outreach effort — Sanders and his aides, they said, had months to lay the groundwork for that kind of partnership, but only did so this week from a position of desperation. About a month ago, when it was clear that Warren had little chance to win, one such person said they put out feelers to Sanders’s operation in an attempt to start a running conversation. They showed little interest, the person said, in reciprocating.”

So for all y’all’s bullshit about Warren, it was in fact Bernie who was the problem. Warren’s team puts out feelers after NH, and Team Bernie rebuffed the effort. “Bend the knee”. What a failure.

youtube Jake Tapper Suddenly Realizes Joe Biden Could Lose

the youngsters must figure out how to communicate this message en masse, asap, so that bernie is the party choice at the convention in milwaukee.

At this point, I hope that the Sanders community and the Gabbard community both separately consider working to get the Sanders name AND the Gabbard name onto each of the fifty state ballots as a possible presidential pick to maybe vote for.

If those names are on the ballots, there is a chance that more people will vote for one or the other of them than will necessarily vote Green or other existing Third Party.

It would also give Gabbard a reason to keep having rallies and events and ads all the way to Election Day. She would probably be disturbed by the thought of her brothers and sisters in arms being led by a deeply senile Commander in Chief. But she can’t run if she isn’t on the ballots. And she can’t put herself there.

I am wearily resigned to the sad fact that Sanders will campaign for Senator Sloppy Dead Cabbage Walking. We can discuss Sanders’s spiritual and personality/psychological weaknesses at some future point.

Just because Sanders will Support The Blue No Matter Who doesn’t mean that all ( or any) of the Sanders Movement people have to do the same. They can put Sanders’s name on all 50 state ballots even if Sanders tells them not to. If the name is there, it might draw votes from part of the ” I’m mad as hell! And I’m not going to take it Any MORE!!” community.

@Mallam

Warren is a lying snake, so I wouldn’t put it past her staffers to also be lying.

Regardless, that’s just the campaign itself doing their own version of ‘a Bernie Bro was mean to me, so I’m denying poor people healthcare’. If Warren actually cared about progressive policies, she would have endorsed Sanders automatically. ‘Groundwork’ was not needed; they’re supposed to already be on the same page.

@highrpm

The Democrats would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders. Beating Trump was never the goal; stopping a progressive takeover of the party was.

Quoting a thread commenter over on Wonkette:

Weird how the Sanders supporters voter out reach strategy of “your candidate sucks and you are an uninformed establishment dumbass if you don’t vote for Bernie no you are the offensive angry one shut up” didn’t work out so well.

😈

Okay, so lay out the path and math for me: of the remaining states in the primary race, which of them will Bernie Sanders likely win a blowout majority over Joe Biden, make up the differences and then let Bernie overtake Biden?

@ dc If elected, Biden would be a pioneer, breaking the dirt ceiling as the first President representing the vegetable kingdom. So instead of a crash dummy in the otherwise empty chair, maybe a rutabaga?

@Ivory In some respects I think you have a valid point in that the Sanders campaign mobilization strategy and tactics inspired a countermobilization larger than they could handle. All political movements encounter the problem that every action creates a reaction and sometimes the reaction mounts great force.

Democracies often require people to agree to disagree on the rationalization, while “compromising” on carefully balanced policy action that different people accept for a variety of contradictory reasons. It does seem to me that American political culture places a premium on right thoughts and deprecates respectful engagement. If you want to, say, enact M4all, you cannot do it by righteously trying to get 50%+1 to enact medical care as a human right. Some people including Bernie revel in that kind of rhetoric; they would almost rather conquer consciousness on that score than build a functioning institution. I think it is politically necessary to accommodate many points of view: a pragmatic administrative efficiency argument needs an airing. Every objection cannot be persuasive met by scorn. Some people instinctively object to, “free!” – – and they are not necessarily wrong to do so, especially with respect to particular details that might well apply to working out a policy design of genuine benefit to the whole society. People have to have some tolerance both for systems that are necessarily complex in some respects, even when they are arguing for simple principles (e.g. “single-payer”) and a diversity of (opposing or contradictory) viewpoints.

Where I disagree with you, Ivory, is in thinking anger is the problem. Anger is appropriate.

A large fraction — maybe a majority — is cognitively disengaged and get impatient with people who have been convinced by elaborate considerations or arguments. People who could be drawn in, say, by Russia,Russia,Russia may not exactly be stupid, but they also are not available for critical thought. Joining the Greek chorus reciting the poetry of the resistance was never a winning strategy for the left.

In extreme times, radicalism is appropriate, but it is not going to make sense to many on first and reluctant engagement. But, joining the fools and tools in wonderland does not work either.

perhaps not, Willy. They dice rutabega before cooking.

@ K T Chong,

At this point, it is about Sanders doing his part to leave behind a whole movement-load of people
still organized and still motivated. The best way to do that is to keep running and contesting all the way through the Convention.

That’s what Clinton did versus Obama ( and at that time Clinton looked like the better choice and would have been better likely to win without sneaky DNC rule changes.) Clinton’s stiff resistance until she and Obama were both summoned to the Bilderberg Society meeting near Chantilly, Virginia and given an offer they couldn’t refuse left behind a very energised and devoted Clinton movement.

If Sanders does the same thing this time around, he will leave behind the same sort of movement behind him. And if that movement is ready to find other leaders to lead the movement where the movement wants to go, the movement might get somewhere.

But if Sanders stops contesting and leading now . . . before the Convention itself . . . he will demotivate and demobilize all the people who worked very hard on his behalf in their own interests. They will decide their interests will never be served and they will go home and fester till some genuine social mass-destruction opportunity gives them an opening to get broad spectrum revenge.

Let’s see. If progressives help Biden get elected, we will be written off and forgotten by him and the Democratic party 5 seconds after they have the votes they need. On the other hand, no matter what, if Biden loses, we will be blamed for it. So many incentives to choose from…

Benjamin:

This reporting comes directly from Ruby Cramer at Buzzfeed News who is covering the Bernie campaign. Sorry if reality interferes with your narrative about the Lying Snake Warren, but Bernie World were the dumb dumbs who rejected possibility of endorsement when they could have used it. Now they’re desperate losers who have no friends and are on an island by themselves. That’s what “coalition building” means. You can’t just shit on everyone, demand they bend the knee, and then get pissed off when it doesn’t happen. If they weren’t trying to secure her endorsement when it mattered, they wouldn’t be able to effectively govern and would be like Jimmy Carter. Sorry if your savior is piss poor at this part of governance.

Let’s see. If progressives help Biden get elected, we will be written off and forgotten by him and the Democratic party 5 seconds after they have the votes they need. On the other hand, no matter what, if Biden loses, we will be blamed for it. So many incentives to choose from…

Sucks to be you, eh, Hugh? 😈

Meanwhile, Wolfie reinforced the Horseshoe Theory with his last comment about Benedict Donald being the lesser evil. Of course, the left-wing mental adolescents prefer their fellow mental adolescents on the right wing to the adults.

450 wonders about the apparent gap between online and real-world support for Sanders.

How much of the online support for Sanders is real, versus how much of it is a handful of cyber-savvy operatives in St. Petersburg (and I don’t mean the one in Florida)?

The Horseshoe theory only works if there’s actually a horseshoe. The idea that there can only possibly be left/right, right/wrong, with no other possibilities possible, works well for sheep, who can’t know the difference between a sheep dog just doing his job or the wolf that wants to eat them.

The “Third Way” was just a sheep dog costume for wolves.

@Ivory Bill Woodpecker

Except aggressiveness was never the strategy of the Sanders campaign. Nor was it the conduct of the vast majority of his supporters. The entire narrative of an army of mean ‘Bernie Bros’ was always bullshit, a story very useful for the establishment to push.

But I see you’re well-versed in bullshit narratives, given that you’re still peddling Russiagate.

And you’re not really in a position to try and smear other people as ‘mental adolescents’ when you won’t even except basic historical realities, like Clinton being the key voice in the destruction of Libya.

@Mallam

Hilarious, since one of the actually valid criticisms of the Sanders campaign is that it’s been too damn nice and conciliatory. This meme of the ungracious Sanders isn’t going to stand the test of time.

And again, if she was actually a progressive, she would have endorsed automatically. She didn’t, so she isn’t.

Again, I have found someone else who states my viewpoint better than I do:

Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station:

http://www.stonekettle.com/2020/03/happy-kittens-fart-sunshine.html

😈 https://i.imgur.com/KXtDphL.jpg

watching a tube of bernie sanders interviewed, 1991,
“We Are Becoming a Second-Rate Nation: Bernie Sanders on Economics, Finance & Debt”
recommend watching. (lends credence to jason brennan’s arguments in his book, Against Democracy. that a highly unqualified biden experienced a resurgence against this guy, indicates that very few are spending their precious time digging around beneath the mainstream media waters and the majority simply don’t care about their “democracy” enough.)

Mallam:

About a month ago, when it was clear that Warren had little chance to win, one such person said they put out feelers to Sanders’s operation in an attempt to start a running conversation. They showed little interest, the person said, in reciprocating.”

How can this be reconciled with the accusations coming from the Warren camp about the ‘Sanders said a woman can’t win’, in roughly the same time frame? That doesn’t sound very conciliatory or sounds very consistent with the Warren camp desiring an agreement.