Bernie Sanders vs. Elizabeth Warren

When it’s all said and done, the most important characteristic of either candidate is who has a greater chance of beating Trump. I believe, in fact I know, that person is Sanders and your suggestion for a Sanders/Warren or Sanders/Gabbard ticket is a great idea. An idea Sanders should seriously consider.

However, this may all be moot. Sanders has to get past the DNC and I don’t see that happening for the reasons others here have stated on many occasions. The DNC has telegraphed the nominee will either be Biden or Harris. Biden could be the trojan horse with Harris inside ready to pop through, meaning surge in the polls, at just the right time.

Neither of these candidates, be it Sanders or Warren, will be enough to stave off the collapse of America and ultimately civilization. That’s pretty much baked in the cake at this point. It’s just a matter of when and when may be much sooner than people think.

Let’s see if ACO has fully transformed into a political animal with not even a year under her belt in office. Sanders is the logical choice if she’s not fully transformed. If she endorses Warren, you’ll know she’s lost her soul.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dangles 2020 endorsement: Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren?

But the freshman House member, a superstar of the progressive movement, has more history with Warren’s leading rival for progressive votes in the 2020 Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. They too have teamed up on many legislative and political matters. Many Democrats find it hard to imagine Ocasio-Cortez will not eventually back Sanders, as she did in 2016.

The fact that a 29-year-old freshman House member is being sought out by two presidential candidates with years of congressional seniority who are more than twice her age speaks volumes about the state of the Democratic Party and the dynamics of its primary process.

Ocasio-Cortez embodies a younger generation of Democrats led by women and people of color — a progressive voting bloc that brings intense passion to the fight to oust President Trump. She also has a gift for creating social media sensations that old-school Democrats can only dream of.

“I would argue that she is one of the most important endorsements in the Democratic Party right now,” said Rebecca Katz, a strategist who used to work for former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “She has a huge reach beyond any other member of Congress. She knows how to use her voice.”

It is disheartening to hear that Sanderbackers and Warrenwanters are being mean and/or even vicious to eachother. I don’t think the two nominee-wannabes themselves are being mean or vicious to eachother . . . or to eachother’s supporters.

But if the two sets of supporters are being mean and vicious to eachother, then the hopeful idea I had over how one of the 4 Decent Democrats could take the nomination on the first ballot . . .will never happen. Because if groups of supporters are being vicious to eachother then those groups of supporters will never entertain the idea of seeing which Decent Democrat comes to the convention with the most First-Ballot-Vote delegates and then all the next-three-in-order Decent Democrat groups of delegates all voting for Decent Democrat number One.

And that was going to be the single one only hope of breakthrough that a Decent Democrat would ever have at the convention.

By the way, the atmosphere of viciousness was fostered over these many years by the Clintons and their Clintonites. It was part of their drive to take over the Party and drive out every healthy cell, leaving nothing behind but the Clintonoma cells.

So how do we know that it is really supporters of Sanders or Warren who are being vicious? My FIRST suspicion, the VERY FIRST PLACE I WOULD LOOK, would be at the first few hundred supporters who showed viciousness. I would subject them to extreme vetting and extreme forensic opposition research to see which ones were really Undercover Clintonite and which ones where really flecks of pus from Davind Brock’s Correct The Record group, and which ones were covert Flying BrockMonkeys.

Fostering viciousness between Sanders and Warren supporters would be entirely typical of the Nixonian hidden-hand black-advance Segretti-style ratfucking entirely typical of Clintonites, Obamazoids, and the kind of DNC DemParty filth embodied by Perez at DNC.

Why fight decades of propaganda by calling your self a socialist when you could just call yourself a ‘New Dealer’.
In every interview you do, spend less about 30 seconds explaining how neoliberalism was set up to kill the New Deal, when and how it happened and what the fruit it has borne.

@450.org,

The Catfood Democrat Party Leadership has one Prime Directive. Never ever let a Decent Democrat get the Presidential Election nomination. Never. Ever. The Catfood Democrats consider a 45-State Trump Victory in 2020 to be a price they are ready to pay in order to prevent a Decent Democrat from getting n0minated.

Nominating a Decent Democrat is no guarantee of winning the election. If Warren conquers the nomination, there is a chance of her winning. If Sanders or Gabbard conquer the nomination, tens of millions of Clinton voters will either vote for Trump or vote Third Party or not vote at all . . . in order to do all they can to make Sanders or Gabbard lose. And that is not Sanders’s or Gabbard’s fault. That is strictly the fault of the Catfood Democrat DNC and the Clintonites who hate Sanders and Gabbard for daring to challenge Her Imperious Herness’s “rightful claim” to the “throne”.

Until we can exterminate the Caftood Democrats from political life and from public existence, we will never ever have nice things. Never. Ever.

Speaking of DNC and media sabotage, here’s the Heartland Institute’s favorite “Lefty,” Froma Harrop, laying the blame for Hillary’s 2016 defeat not at the door of those pesky, meddling Russians, but instead it’s all Bernie’s fault.

Why does this woman have a voice? Why does her opinion matter? I think we know why.

Harrop: Many Democrats happy to go with Warren over Sanders

History will best remember Bernie Sanders for his role in helping elect Donald Trump. Happily for many (if not most) Democrats, Sanders is now fading big time.

The earlier assumption was that the 2020 Democratic race would boil down to a brawl between Sanders and Joe Biden. Now we see Elizabeth Warren edging Sanders out for second place in a few polls. Biden, meanwhile, remains comfortably ahead of both of them.

What did Sanders do wrong in 2016? It wasn’t challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. That was fair. Rather, it was his savaging her long after she had become the obvious victor. By May 3, Trump had become the presumptive Republican nominee, but Sanders withheld his endorsement for Clinton until July 12. The game was political extortion, threatening the Democratic Party and its candidate with chaos at the national convention if his demands weren’t met.

The old joke applies: “the key is sincerity, if you can fake that, you have got it made.”

It is not just the DNC establishment and their business model of taking donor money from FIRE and Silicon Valley and Hollywood and using that money to appeal at the margin to old, white Republican women in the suburbs, because those voters do not want policies that would make the donors uncomfortable. The Democratic establishment dreams of making Trump the issue on stylistic grounds.

But, there is an electoral base for that strategy among the professional classes and in the big urbanized states where the globalized, financialized internet economy has created a prosperity of sorts. California, New York, Seattle, Boston, northern Virginia, maybe even Texas in a pinch — wouldn’t that be wonderful!?!. Neoliberal complacency has more than one constituency and those constituencies are more than willing to be fooled, are eager to be fooled.

Politicians are constrained by how confused and uninformed the great majority of voters are. The politicians and their propaganda masters worry about both how people will react (with all the depth of thoughtful commitment of Pavlov’s dogs to the dinner bell) to any argument, any soundbite offered by the candidate and also opening themselves to the arguments and soundbites of others.

The counterfactual wishful thinking of people like me who feel alienated from the partisan idiocracy that prevails in Media does not mean much. The deplorables are widely deplored among Democratic voters and activists. All you really have to do to sink the populist impulse is to “explain” that Trump and all his supporters are racists motivated by racism — racism explains everything, stop thinking. Russian interference put Trump in the White House, stop thinking. Impeaching Trump is the most important thing and there are obvious grounds for it, obvious! How can anyone not see how guilty Trump is! Stop thinking.

It takes a lot of thinking, reading, discussion, engagement to understand the political context well enough to reliably attach meaning to what candidates say or what pundits say about them. Most people are not engaged.

The most important person for the left of the Democratic Party to attack, and attack viciously where possible, isn’t Trump, or Clinton, or Biden, or Pelosi or Neera Tanden let alone Warren or Sanders or AOC in “infighting” — imho, it is Obama.

As long as a majority of Democratic voters feel safe and morally good in their complacency, in their nostalgia for Obama’s image (in contrast to the policy reality which most forget and do not acknowledge), the Democratic Party will remain unavailable for reform.

Aha, links don’t work. Warren’s “accountable Capitalism Act.
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Accountable%20Capitalism%20Act.pdf

It would be interesting to know how much of this fighting is genuine and not standard divide and conquer tactics on the part of the Catfood Establishment Dems. As others have stated the party would rather lose to Trump than nominate an actual leftist. What better way to do that than repeat the standard BernieBro B.S. that works time and again.

I still think SpyGate will be the biggest issue, and most likely secure Trump a 2nd term absent WW III in the ME.

I’m afraid all of this political talk is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Even if Sanders or Warren (or my gal Tulsi) were to win, the swamp creatures will eat them alive. The Democrats have already laid out the road map for how a non-non conformist president can and will be treated: bombarded with BS investigations into their supposedly treasonous conduct. If Sanders wins, expect a vigorous CONgressional investigation into how he tried to undermine and destroy America when he honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Also expect contemptible Cintonites like Mark Warner to be among those cheering on the investigations while blocking every White House legislative initiative.

We’re better off spending our energy preparing for the upcoming climate catastrophe as you’ve suggested than worrying about an election which likely rigged anyway.

What you said about the difference between Warren and Sanders is why I have my preference. No, Liz (and Bill H) capitalism IS the problem. Yes, you can put patches on it to improve it but history has demonstrated that those patches never hold, you should seek a more permanent solution.

Sanders, though, is not really a ‘socialist’ but a New Deal Democrat (which is what so-called “Nordic Socialism”, which is essentially (generous) welfare-state capitalism, really is). Yes, both the New Deal and Nordic welfare-state capitalism are far better than our current purer capitalism (yes, our system is crony capitalism but lassiez-faire capitalism *always* becomes crony capitalism given time). But Nordic “socialism” today has frayed, and it still allows like 5-6 % -plus unemployment today, and that’s not acceptable there any more than it should be here.

What is needed is real socialism, which is taking the reins of control of the economy away from the investor class and handing over to those who actually do and create and deliver (i.e., the workers). “Socialism”, or at least the end of capitalism, need not equal state control over firms; you can still have privately owned worker-controlled firms and a free market. But it does mean that investors don’t dictate to produces what they can and can’t do.

Neither Sanders or Warren will win, as the DNC will make sure of it. If they by some miracle do, the DNC centrists will torpedo their chances in the general. No matter how much they lecture the left about not being gung-ho for HRC in 2016, and how awful Trump is, they would easily rather have Trump than someone who would upset their rich donor class.

And no, Biden is not a placeholder for Harris, Biden’s in it for the prize; the other centrist Dems are there because they have a job to do. That job you saw with Hickenlooper last week: attack Sanders or Warren or anyone remotely left. That way, Uncle Joe gets to act presidential and above the fray, while the other center-rightists do his dirty work for him. Hickenlooper’s attack made *no sense* whatsoever from his electoral prospects–he’s not going to lure away any Sander voters, if he were genuinely in it to win he’d have to go after Biden, not Sanders. Biden’s support would be where his support would come from. But notice he didn’t attack Biden…

@SB: I turned 56 last month. I figure I don’t have enough time on this planet left to waste any of it reading the propaganda organs of the Horseshitshoe Left.

I look forward to when the sane majority takes this country back, and exiles both the Mad Right and the Mad Left to the political oblivion both have earned many times over.

But you may rest easy, SB. You have served your Sith Tsar well, so he probably won’t Force-choke you, unless he’s just in a bad mood this evening.

Both Warren and Sanders are de facto pro-capitalists. They are both New Deal liberals or maybe in the case of Sanders a social democrat but none of them are going to do anything serious to move the United States away from capitalism. If they manage to win and get their reforms passed we will just have a more regulated version of capitalism. That is not a bad thing and would probably be good for most Americans but I think it is important to differentiate between capitalism and socialism.

Socialism has come to mean “when the government does stuff” and it is confusing. First conservatives used that definition of socialism to scare people back when socialism was associated with the Soviet Union and now people on the left use that definition because socialism is associated with the Nordic countries or specific policies that people want like universal healthcare or free college or a higher minimum wage.

However, almost nobody in the United States or the West in general want to get rid of capitalism and replace it with socialism. The only reason we are seeing more interest in social democratic reformism now is because of the deterioration of conditions for many members of the working class and because of downward mobility among the middle class.

The left needs to avoid tearing each other to pieces because many Democratic primary voters are not leftists and will willingly vote for a politician like Biden or Harris. No corruption by the DNC is necessary. Left-wingers often overestimate how popular their ideas are and tend to think that the only way they can lose is if they are cheated out of an election and this leads them to complacency or even worse, an arrogant attitude that they don’t need to actually convince people to vote for them. I can already see the tantrums coming if Sanders or Warren loses.

@russell1200,

What is a Catfood Democrat . . . the concept is loose and the definition is still in flux. The term “catfood” as used in recent political discourse first emerged after President Obama organized his “Commission on Debt and the Deficit” or whatever he called it exactly. It was co-chaired by Republican Alan Simpson and notorious Free Trade Clintonite Chester Bowles. It was sometimes called the “Simpson-Bowles” Commission.

The term “catfood” hearkens back unto the day when Old People were expected to eat catfood or nothing at all, because that was what they could afford. Once Social Security took long and firm hold, Old People were issued enough survival subsistence money that they could eat a step above catfood. The purpose of the Simpson-Bowles Commission was to invent excuses for destroying Social Security and Wall-Street-Privatizing the wreckage and the revenues. It was going to put tomorrow’s Old People ( like me) back on the catfood diet. So some people started calling it the Catfood Commission.

https://www.laprogressive.com/catfood-commission/

https://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/simpson-bowles-catfood-commission-voodoo-economics-.html

https://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/24/catfood-commission-part-two/comment-page-1/

(I liked to think I had invented the phrase “Catfood Commission” but now I think I must have absorbed it from the political air all around me.)

But I KNOW I have invented the phrase “Catfood Democrat” and I am donating it to the language, in case the language wants it. In the narrowest sense, every Democrat who supported or served on the Catfood Commission is/was a Catfood Democrat. In the broader sense, every Democrat who wanted to impoverish millions of Americans back onto the catfood diet is/was a Catfood Democrat.

Bill Clinton is a Catfood Democrat. He was part of the Democratic Leadership Council conspiracy to turn the Democratic Party into the Catfood Party. ” Millions of Gratitude Dollars after office for me, Free Trade for Business, cat food for you.” I keep reading persistent reports that Clinton and Gingrich were conspiring to destroy Social Security and Wall Street Privatize the wreckage and the revenue. But the Lewinsky Affair derailed the Gingrich-Clinton Catfood Conspiracy. Citizen Lewinski is a true American Hero . . . or maybe Shero if you are a feminist.
She saved my Social Security from the Evil ShitBastard Bill Clinton, and for that I will be forever grateful.

So I hope that Catfood Democrat will come to mean ” every single Democrat who is not a survivor or renewing uptaker of the New Deal Wing remnants of the Democratic Party.” Free Trade Democrats like Clinton, Obama, Pelosi, Gore ( sad to say, nice guy otherwise), Biden, Booker, Boot Edge Edge, etc. etc.

Cenk Uygur’s big on Bernie. Cenk was allegedly once a conservative and now he’s an espoused radical progressive. He apparently went the opposite direction of Ronald Reagan who was allegedly once a liberal and miraculously transformed into an arch conservative.

Either way, what a weird & bizarre name he chose for his media organization. Can you say genocide? Does this guy have some form of intelligence backing? If I was a betting man, I’d say he does. Containment within containment within containment within containment. With all this containment, there’s no way out.

The Young Turks Turkish Nationalist Movement

While in power, the Young Turks carried out administrative reforms, especially of provincial administration, that led to more centralization. They were also the first Ottoman reformers to promote industrialization. In addition, the programs of the Young Turk regime effectuated greater secularization of the legal system and provided for the education of women and better state-operated primary schools. Such positive developments in domestic affairs, however, were largely overshadowed by the disastrous consequences of the regime’s foreign policy decisions. An overly hasty appraisal of Germany’s military capability by the Young Turk leaders led them to break neutrality and enter World War I (1914–18) on the side of the Central Powers. Ottoman troops made an important contribution to the Central Powers’ war effort, fighting on multiple fronts. In 1915, members of the Young Turk government directed Ottoman soldiers and their proxies in Eastern Anatolia, near the Russian front, to deport or execute millions of Armenians in an event that later came to be known as the Armenian Genocide.

Upon the end of the war, with defeat imminent, the CUP cabinet resigned on October 9, 1918, less than a month before the Ottomans signed the Armistice of Mudros.

Primary polls mean damn near nothing this early. The tell is this: polled among likely democratic primary voters. Who supplies those lists? Probably dnc or dccc or one of the corrupted consultant outfits vetted and paid by them.

You want to give creepy Uncle Joe a lift, poll among voters who were VERY SATISFIED with the reign of his former boss, the former head pr man for the one percent himself: Barack Obama. Want to give Warren a rise? Pull from the group that loved Hillary and hates Bernie. Substitute that Hispanic cab driver with a Hispanic software programmer who went to an Ivy League school.

The “edgy” and “accurate” Nate Silver had Clinton at a 99% chance of winning the presidency on election day. There are your polls for you.

Z

Disclaimer re my own feelings before I get started on the rest:

I am increasingly favoring Tulsi Gabbard as my first choice, but definitely more a Bernie person than a Warren person (to the point that I am not nearly as fond of Warren as either Ian or Different Clue). I will be ecstatic if Tulsi wins, happy if Bernie wins, and I need to know more about Inslee but he’s my third choice right now.

Now, to answer DC as to when all the sniping between Warren and Bernie camps started, I first noticed it with this horrible article back in February, which set the tone for most of what has come after (and which has been coming non-stop, tho both anti-Bernie and anti-Tulsi and pro-Warren friends of the DNC have been ramping it up on twitter the last two weeks, and I will again point out how REALLY hard they are attacking Tulsi given her relative poll numbers, msm invisibility and name reocognition, which might be the single best reason to vote for her, just as the DNC/MSM fondness for Warren’s candidacy might be the single best reason to be skeptical of it):

“Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?” by Moira Donegan

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/20/sanders-elizabeth-warren-feminism-identity

subhead: “Progressives don’t have to choose between macho socialism and corporate feminism. Elizabeth Warren offers the best of both worlds”

containing quotes such as:

(Bernie’s) candidacy raises questions about the continued viability of the leftist resurgence that was ushered in partially by his influence in the 2018 midterms, and has sparked fights, similar to those that sprung from Sanders’ last unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016, over whether the Democratic base should commit itself to ameliorating economic inequality, or to fighting racist and sexist bigotry. Leftist feminists and racial justice advocates can be forgiven for already feeling very tired. It’s all just a little too familiar

&

his supporters attacked her with a virulent misogyny that belied their nominal commitments to equality. For leftist women, to express enthusiasm for Sanders’ policy proposals was seen as condoning the sexist attacks on Clinton.

&

Why would Democratic voters choose Sanders when Warren is running? The two are not ideologically identical, but the differences between their major policy stances, on regulation of financial services and the need to extend the welfare state, are relatively minor, especially compared to the rest of the field. Warren calls herself a capitalist, the Sanders partisans point out, while Sanders is unafraid of the label “socialist”. That’s one thing. But this point has the quality of a post-hoc rationalization. It is cited by those seeking a politically acceptable reason to vote for a man and not for a woman – those who would vote for this man, and perhaps not any woman, no matter what.

&

Warren’s primary virtue over Sanders is that she seems to understand the inextricable binds between racial and gender discrimination and the economic injustice that both candidates abhor. She has made statements about the reality of racial discrimination, how it compounds with economic injustice to keep people of color from entering and staying in the middle class.

followed by lots more insinuating that Bernie is somewhat racist and sexist, or at best blind to both of these, which is such an infuriating outright pack of lies given his civil rights history that it makes me want to go all Villanelle on her supporters pushing this repackaged from the worst of Clinton 2016 meme. (I will note, further, that this is coming from someone who was, in the civil rights era, a Republican, and who falsely claimed Native American ancestry to advance her academic career, and her claims were not a few check marks on a few boxes, she also made claims of family members still being alienated from each other because of the non-existent interracial family divide at a family funeral, and made these claims fairly recently; this indicates something really, really wrong w/her imo; Trump has attacked her only clumsily on the issue but actual investigation makes her look worse, not better)

Okay, taking a few deep breaths . . .

I started to link to some other hatchet jobs, also going back to February, but decided not to give them the hits. There’s been a steady stream of them.

Also a steady stream of Warren supporters on twitters, or, as I suggested to one of them, possibly Warren-haters trying to alienate people from her, going on about how Bernie “cultists” don’t understand politics or policy or they would just loooooove her wonderful policy proposals, which mostly seem like they would help middle and upper middle class people while not doing anything much for the working class or poor, and some of which might actually hurt most working class or poor people.

Sadly, I’d say the main impact of her presence and her campaign thus far has been a non-stop litany of racial pandering designed specifically to alienate any white voters not already in love with identical politics, and help push independents toward Trump or not-voting, if the rest of the Dems follow.

By comparison, Kamala Harris’s “Lift” plan, while I don’t actually believe she would fight for it, actually would do some good for all poor and working class people, as opposed to only helping “people of color” without regard to their class standard, as a lot of Warren’s proposals do. She seems to be at the forefront of the MSM efforts to depict the US at present as more or less equivalent to the pre-civil rights era. (Kamala, corporate favorite notwithstanding, has actually moved ahead of Warren on my personal preferences,).

As one of the Bernie people who don’t particularly like Warren, aside from the above mentioned pandering and personal integrity issues, and w/the caveat that I find “Better than Biden” an inadequate slogan, I can tell you that
(1) I don’t think she’d be any better on foreign policy than Clinton/Pence/Kaine/Cruz/Bush/Biden etc;
(2) Her campaign has a suspicious amount of MSM / corporate media support;
(3) I haven’t forgotten the failure to pick sides back in 2016 Massachussetts, when that could have been a difference maker,
(4) Generally not a sense that she’s on my side or particularly trustworthy, sorry;
(5) Her campaign almost seems to be run for the express purpose of derailing Bernie’s and helping get a corporatist elected, more than to win for herself
(6) Her much lauded detailed policy proposals mostly seem to be the sort of technocratic death-by-a-million cuts proposals that never go anywhere or, when they get officially enacted, never do anything, which seems to be a “feature, not bug” of these proposals
(7) I don’t think she gets climate change, at all, and probably thinks the Paris Accords were just dandy;
&
(7) okay, those above mentioned pandering and integrity issues really do need to be mentioned again.

Her people infuriate me but that’s irrelevant; I love Bernie and his people infuriate me frequently, as well.

Given what I think she’s trying to do, her campaign is being run well; if she’s angling to win the general, not so much. Sadly, no matter what he’s tyring to do, Bernie’s campaign is not impressing me this time. It seems to be apparently aimed for the purpose of keeping Warren from outflanking him and addressing the criticisms from and winning over the “we love Clinton AND identity politics” crowd who will never, ever back him no matter what he does, even should his only opponent be named Damien Cthulhu & running on a “Murder the Republic and give everyone Nightmares Forever! Death and Destruction to ALL!” platform. (which is what climate change is going to do anyway, but no one except Bernie, Tulsi, Inslee, Gravel and some of their supporters get this, so . . .).

For fellow Tulsi backers, while I realize she will never get the free media exposure Trump did, and the MSM is already not making the mistake of underestimating her like they did Trump and Bernie in 2016 and trying to kill her campaign since before she declared, it is worth noting that Trump was also polling around 1% and not one of the top candidates in any polls at this time in 2015. 🙂

US presidential campaigns are traditionally run on tribal identity and personality, not on policies and/or what’s best for the country. In fact, 9 times out of 10 you don’t know what policies the candidates are actually espousing, nor do you have any idea what they will actually do when in office. Those things are not for the unwashed to know and rarely are they for the little people to care about.

Trump shook that standard up a bit in 2016. He ran on a platform of cruelty and deception and of replacing Those People with His People to carry out his largely cruel designs and desires. This was said to be Truth Telling and laudable. Or something.

For some reason, Democrats did not get the message. But then, the Dem hierarchy has long ignored the interests and wishes its the Base, and has cheerfully paid for it with tons of lost seats over the past several decades. They don’t care. They act as a bulwark, a dam against the rising storm of protest and populism. By tapping into that rising storm, Rs gain seats and power, but they can’t do everything they want. It’s not Democrats who prevent them. Democrats largely agree with them, though not with their style. It’s the structure of government that serves as a brake on some of the worst impulses and desires of both Ds and Rs.

So in 2020, the likeliest outcome, even with a Dem wave in congress and a Dem restoration to the presidency, the Base will continue to be ignored most of the time, while the fewest possible bones will be thrown to the masses to keep them (relatively) quiet. Violence from the right is likely — but then it’s always a threat.

No matter who is elevated to the presidency by the 2020 election, what s/he is able to do will be strictly limited by that structure of government that constrains Trump despite all his ranting and furious tweeting. In fact, what he has been able to do may serve as a template for whatever his successor may get done.

For example, he’s had a free hand in scapegoating and fomenting fear and hatred against brown people. There’s been pushback, yes, but the threat that non-whites and immigrants face in this country is unrelenting. There’s no subtlety and very little succor. Scapegoating, in other words, is allowed. Perhaps a Dem successor would pick up the cudgel. Who would feel the presidential wrath?

Well, the Rich, right? The 1%. The makers of misery. Right? Certainly if Bernie or Warren arrive at the Oval Office, the obscenely well off would be the immediate scapegoats, right? Especially if, as some economists surmise, the economy goes into a tailspin next year. Ah, but they have the power to fight back which Trump’s brown hordes don’t. So what do you suppose the outcome would be?

I think we put too much stock in elections to produce the kinds of change we (think we) want. They’re meant more to prevent that kind of change, and they work pretty well at doing so.

Even with the current gang of thieves and mountebanks in charge.

I doubt that either Bernie or Warren will win the prize. But you never know. Stranger things have happened.

From the above article:

“Bernie Sanders made folks like me eat a stack of humble pie on Tuesday night. He won the Michigan primary over Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 48 percent, when not a single poll taken over the last month had Clinton leading by less than 5 percentage points. In fact, many had her lead at 20 percentage points or higher. Sanders’s win in Michigan was one of the greatest upsets in modern political history.

Both the FiveThirtyEight polls-plus and polls-only forecast gave Clinton a greater than 99 percent chance of winning.”

The author of the article was not Nate Silver by the way, the “me” was Harry Enten from 538.

Z

@S Brennan,

I don’t know what explains Sanders’ failure to protect and defend and support Gabbard in public over various anti-Gabbard aggressions and offenses.

Whatever emotions he might have about it aside, he seems not to realize that if he defended Gabbard on camera . . . then the eyes of CSPAN would be upon her, and maybe the eyes of some bigger media as well. He has lost many opportunities to do that. Pray he does not lose any more.

My guess is that a lot of former Hillary Clinton supporters who despise Bernie Sanders are now joining either Team Warren or Team Harris. I would love to see a Warren presidency, but my first choice is still Sanders, and ideally I’d like to see a Sanders/Gabbard ticket.

I have no trust in my fellow citizens making a smart decision, however, and have just read that Trump raised $25 million in the last 24 hours. Trump stands a very strong chance of beating any of the Democratic candidates right now. This was not the year to have a bevy of candidates that will split Democratic voters.

I hope that Democratic voters choose Sanders or Gabbard, and that the nominee chooses a young VP like Gabbard or Yang who will energize voters to get to the polls. Right now I’m feeling pessimistic about the Democrats doing the right thing that will ensure a Trump loss.

@SBrennan– yes to everything you said; very eloquently & truly spoken.

@DifferentClue’s reply to SBrennan — yes again.

@Hugh — agreed w/everything but the last bit; elections do make some difference, otherwise, the establishment powers-that-be would not be doing everything they could to destroy Sanders & Gabbard; but yah, those same forces are doing everything they can to ensure the status quo doesn’t change, right up until environmental or refuge-induced disaster overtakes their inability to plan long term.