SANDERS 2020 is seriously dangerous <3

[Wombaticus Rex]

They're going to port the Corbyn hit template across the pond to whump Sanders all through 2020. Which will make it even funnier, since Sanders is ... well, who needs to lower themselves to typing out something so gauche, so trifling.

Overall, it's striking to me how much energy and thought that electoral politics can consume, versus the paltry non-results that electoral politics delivers. The asymmetry is total, it's a black motherfucking hole for human cognition, emotion and effort.

I'd like to see the turnout in 2020 as low as possible. Low enough to make pundits visibly scared on camera. Low enough to make the thinktank fuckwits spend years using media assets to float "Compulsory Voting" test balloons. (They can just swap out the "Sensible Gun Control" essays, you won't even need to involve actual writers past laundering their byline.)

Bernie is a popular candidate, Bernie is a potential roadbump for The Great Extraction, so Bernie will not and cannot win the DNC nomination. All manner of skullduggery and ratfuckery will be employed in order to ensure this -- an exercise in full-spectrum dominance and cynical control. We know this, we see this coming, but what does it really avail us?

If anything, a map. Seeing the actors march in concert, tracing the money, the networks, the mechanisms of power. But in order to do what?

Does anyone actually think we're going to beat the house at some point?

[liminalOyster]

If anything, a map. Seeing the actors march in concert, tracing the money, the networks, the mechanisms of power. But in order to do what?

Does anyone actually think we're going to beat the house at some point?

No, but being (extremely fucking) unlikely doesn't make it impossible. Plus the map is really especially clear here for, at bare minimum, a whole new generation of I-want--to-handle-the-truthers: https://www.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/top/

[RocketMan]

They're going to port the Corbyn hit template across the pond to whump Sanders all through 2020. Which will make it even funnier, since Sanders is ... well, who needs to lower themselves to typing out something so gauche, so trifling.
...
Bernie is a popular candidate, Bernie is a potential roadbump for The Great Extraction, so Bernie will not and cannot win the DNC nomination. All manner of skullduggery and ratfuckery will be employed in order to ensure this -- an exercise in full-spectrum dominance and cynical control. We know this, we see this coming, but what does it really avail us?

Indeed, it has already begun at the outer borders...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... sm-problem

Bernie's campaign has an anti-Semitism problem

And the lead:

Bernie Sanders may be ethnically Jewish, but his campaign is rapidly turning out to be the most anti-Semitic in decades.

[JackRiddler]

Overall, it's striking to me how much energy and thought that electoral politics can consume, versus the paltry non-results that electoral politics delivers. The asymmetry is total, it's a black motherfucking hole for human cognition, emotion and effort.

Hey, me too. But then you look at the alternative means of fighting for change, at least within this country, and for all their good and honest work and for all their necessity they're pinned to the wall of ineffectiveness by the structures determined by law and state, which are not going away.

I'd like to see the turnout in 2020 as low as possible. Low enough to make pundits visibly scared on camera. Low enough to make the thinktank fuckwits spend years using media assets to float "Compulsory Voting" test balloons.

An example of how you're a lot less cynical than I. Can't speak on every pundit, but if that happens for the most part they will join the power elite in figurative dancing on the street. I mean, they will be low-key about this turn, but from their perspective it will be a happy thing. This is what the GOP and the conservative majority of the establishment endorse, often openly, in case you didn't notice. Most of them will treat it as Mission Accomplished. At last the annoyance and cost of having to rig elections every year will become more manageable.

(Liberalism is just an ideology of convenience produced by the establishment, a way of masking the status quo, but it is not the actual majority belief system among them. They like the status quo and maintenance of the present wealth and property relations, and are thus mostly conservatives; while many of them believe themselves to be the elect, and are thus supremacists of one kind or another.)

Through the decades, including back when I too endorsed Nobody for President, I've heard lots of radicals express this belief, or rather absurd hope, that a non-voting supermajority would damage electoralism. This would never happen. Everyone elected would take office claiming a mandate. Business would proceed exactly in the same way.

I mean, if you're really going to say the electoral stuff is a totally pointless energy suck, just put that energy elsewhere. I find it dismaying that some make a big issue out of non-voting and put their energy there, having an argument with the pro-voting idealists who can never be convinced.

Bernie is a popular candidate, Bernie is a potential roadbump for The Great Extraction, so Bernie will not and cannot win the DNC nomination. All manner of skullduggery and ratfuckery will be employed in order to ensure this -- an exercise in full-spectrum dominance and cynical control. We know this, we see this coming, but what does it really avail us?

If anything, a map. Seeing the actors march in concert, tracing the money, the networks, the mechanisms of power. But in order to do what?

Trying seems like a better shot at exposing the map of said Great Extraction and system of skullduggery and ratfuckery than not. Also, if it's so irrelevant who occupies these offices, why will they deploy so much effort?

Does anyone actually think we're going to beat the house at some point?

Leaving aside who you mean by we, I think it's possible. That is all.

.

[RocketMan]

Sanders actually managed to get published in WaPo... to criticize US military spending and military Keynesianism!

Bernie Sanders: Deficit hawks once again show their hypocrisy on military spending

The Senate will be voting this week on the Trump military budget, which calls for a massive increase in defense spending.

I strongly oppose this legislation, just as I have all previous Trump military budgets. (Editor's Note: He limits his opposition to TRUMP military budgets... he's not without sin, but in the current predicament, I doubt we have the luxury of re-litigating Obama and Clinton era votes...) At a time when we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality; when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck; when more than 500,000 Americans are homeless; and when public schools throughout the country are struggling to pay their teachers a livable salary, it is time to change our national priorities. It is time to invest in the working families of this country and not a bloated military budget.

I find it ironic that when I and other progressive members of Congress propose legislation to address the many unmet needs of workers, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, we are invariably asked, “How will we pay for it?” Yet we rarely hear that question with regard to huge increases in military spending, tax breaks for billionaires or massive subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.

Despite the fact that 87 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, the establishment tells us every day that we cannot join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a human right through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

Even though roughly half of older Americans have no retirement savings and 20 percent of senior citizens struggle to survive on an income of less than $13,500 a year, we have been told by the corporate elite that we must cut Social Security.

While hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans are unable to go to college because of the outrageous cost and millions of Americans are drowning in student debt, we are told that we cannot afford to make public colleges and universities tuition free or cancel student debt.

At a time when 18 million families are paying more than half of their limited incomes on housing, we are told that it’s too expensive to guarantee everyone in the United States a decent place to live, affordable child care and a job that pays a living wage with decent benefits.

But when it comes to giving the Pentagon $738 billion — even more money than it requested — there is a deafening silence within Congress and the ruling elites (Editor's Note: A VERY refreshing choice of words from a major US presidential candidate) about what our nation can and cannot afford. Congress will just authorize and appropriate all of this money without one penny in offsets, no questions asked.

I find it curious that few of the "deficit hawks” are asking if it is fiscally prudent to be spending more on defense than the next 10 countries combined — more than half of our nation’s discretionary budget.

And there is little discussion taking place as to why the Pentagon — riddled with fraud, cost overruns and corporate price fixing — is the only major agency of government that has not successfully undergone an independent audit.

When I talk about changing national priorities, I’m talking about the fact that the $120 billion increase in Pentagon spending — compared with the final year of the Obama administration — could have made every public college, university, trade school and apprenticeship program in the United States tuition free, eliminated homelessness and provided universal school meals to every kid in our nation’s public schools.

The time is long overdue for us to take a hard look at military spending, including the “war on terror,” and whether it makes sense to spend trillions more on endless wars, wars that often cause more problems than they solve.

Call me a radical, but maybe before funding a new space force, we should make sure no American goes bankrupt because of a medical bill or dies because they can’t afford to go to a doctor on time.

The massive unpaid-for defense bill is just one obvious example of the hypocrisy of the deficit hawks in Congress and their corporate enablers.

Where were these politicians, many of whom want to cut food stamps and affordable housing, when Congress passed a tax bill that provided more than $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and most profitable U.S. corporations?

As a result of the Trump tax giveaway to the rich, billionaires now pay a lower tax rate than the bottom 90 percent of Americans, and companies such as Amazon, General Motors, FedEx, Eli Lilly and IBM pay nothing in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

I am running for president because it’s time for a new vision for America and a new set of priorities. Instead of massive spending on a bloated military budget, tax breaks for billionaires and huge subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, we need to invest in the working families of this country and protect the most vulnerable. We need a government that represents all of us, not just the corporate elite.

[liminalOyster]

[stickdog99]

I don't get it.

I am convinced that trying helps. Just look at gay marriage and marijuana policy. Just look at what the Democratic candidates are forced to talk about onstage in 2020 compared to the nonsense platitudes about non-issues that they got away with pretending to debate about in 2008. Until they finally round up all of us millions of progressives into their concentration camps. I will continue to insist that trying is better than not trying.

Consider that Warren seriously damaged her campaign by waffling on Medicare for All. Consider that Kamala Harris was not able to successfully weaponize her identity and market herself as the female Obama. Consider that Michael Bloomberg's $100 million in ad buys has done nothing (except perhaps ensure that the news programs these ads sponsor never, ever mention Bernie Sanders in a positive light).

Finally, consider that Pete Buttigeig is supported by less than 3% of voters under 45. If nothing else. we can at least take some solace in that.

[RocketMan]

I don't get it.

I am convinced that trying helps. Just look at gay marriage and marijuana policy. Just look at what the Democratic candidates are forced to talk about onstage in 2020 compared to the nonsense platitudes about non-issues that they got away with pretending to debate about in 2008. Until they finally round up all of us millions of progressives into their concentration camps. I will continue to insist that trying is better than not trying.

Consider that Warren seriously damaged her campaign by waffling on Medicare for All. Consider that Kamala Harris was not able to successfully weaponize her identity and market herself as the female Obama. Consider that Michael Bloomberg's $100 million in ad buys has done nothing (except perhaps ensure that the news programs these ads sponsor never, ever mention Bernie Sanders in a positive light).

Finally, consider that Pete Buttigeig is supported by less than 3% of voters under 45. If nothing else. we can at least take some solace in that.

These are good points. Bernie's out there with his thousands of volunteers, busting some serious ass, sweating blood, the volunteers probably juggling one or more jobs on top of it all. Along with all the other activists out there on the field. Let's not pretend it's for no impact at all.

Leonard Cohen, my spiritual guru, was not very savvy about politics probably, but he sure picked up on cultural currents, see for instance his song The Future, which sounded excessively bleak in the beginning of the 90s but which proved to be horrifyingly accurate. But I digress, I wanted to quote another song from him from the same album, about American democracy and its contradictions:

It's coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it's here they got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA

I love how he said around the time that the Berlin Wall came down that "Democracy IS COMING to the USA".

[JackRiddler]

Good points from stickdog.

There is no way to know what the counterfactuals might have been. Just to look at antiwar, which seems to do nothing but lose:

For all its faults had there not been a strongly-voiced 9/11 skepticism, maybe we'd have had another.

Had there not been protests against Iraq, maybe they'd have gone for Iran.

Had there not been small protests against the impending Syria war in 2013, maybe it would have happened.

Or maybe everything would have proceeded as it has. There is no way to know for sure.

I know, it's a bit like an argument for prayer, isn't it now?

.

[RocketMan]

For all its faults had there not been a strongly-voiced 9/11 skepticism, maybe we'd have had another.

Had there not been protests against Iraq, maybe they'd have gone for Iran.

Had there not been small protests against the impending Syria war in 2013, maybe it would have happened.

Indeed! The 9/11 Truth movement has had its charlatans and freaks, that's for sure, but those folks who held their 9/11 signs high in public events were and are damn brave, I think, making it visible that there is a sizable contingent in the population who don't buy the official 9/11 narrative. They are held up to ridicule most of the time, except some minor victories, like when Geraldo Rivera didn't straight up laugh the idea out of the studio that one time.

I think there is a strong case to be made that TPB might be more reluctant to try a major-scale false flag attack with the influence of the louder and more coherent "9/11 conspiracy theorists" than without.

Let's not forget that Gore Vidal brandished Griffin's A New Pearl Harbor in television back then!

[RocketMan]

Wow, sorry, was this the Bernie Sanders thread??!

Terribly sorry.

[stickdog99]

[liminalOyster]

Obama talks up Warren behind closed doors to wealthy donors
BY AMIE PARNES - 12/23/19 06:00 AM EST

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has spent her presidential campaign railing against the donor class, making it known she doesn't want their help.

She has publicly bashed millionaires, has sworn off high-dollar fundraisers and has refused large checks from Democratic bundlers.

But behind the scenes in recent months, former President Obama has gone to bat for Warren (D-Mass.) when speaking to donors reluctant to support her given her knocks on Wall Street and the wealthy.

And if Warren becomes the nominee, Obama has said they must throw the entirety of their support behind her.

The former president has stopped short of an endorsement of Warren in these conversations and has emphasized that he is not endorsing in the Democratic primary race.

But he also has vouched for her credentials, making it clear in these private sessions that he deems her a capable candidate and potential president, sources say.

“He’s asked all of the candidates who have sought his advice three questions: Is your family behind you? Why you? And why now? She checked the box for all,” said one longtime Obama ally.

“I think he feels licensed to give an opinion on her because he’s ‘hired' her,” the longtime Obama ally said.

While former Vice President Joe Biden is the best-known Obama figure running for president, he’s not the only one in the race to have worked for the administration.

Julián Castro was the secretary for Housing and Urban Development under Obama, and Warren in 2010 became an assistant to the president and special adviser to the secretary of the Treasury, where she helped set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“He obviously thinks she’s very smart,” one Democratic donor added. “He thinks her policy ideas matter. And I think he sees her running the campaign with the most depth.”

A source close to Obama said the former president would go to bat in the same way for any of the Democratic candidates running for president, pointing to comments Obama made last month.

"Look, we have a field that is very accomplished, very serious and passionate and smart people who have a history of public service, and whoever emerges from the primary process, I will work my tail off to make sure that they are the next president," the former president said in a question-and-answer session at a Democracy Alliance event in Washington.

Obama's praise of Warren is a contrast of sorts from his days at the White House, when the two were said to have disagreements on economic issues including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The tension between the president and Massachusetts senator frequently became fodder around the administration.

Since then, the friction has continued to make headlines, including the time in 2015 when Obama was dismissive of Warren's opposition to the TPP.

“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” he said in an interview with Yahoo.

On 2017, Warren took a shot at her former boss, saying she was “troubled” to hear of Obama's six-figure speaking deals as a former president.

Now, as she runs for president herself, Warren has distanced herself from some Obama's policies but has also spoken glowingly about the time in 2002 when she met Obama — who remains enormously popular among Democratic voters.

Last week, more than 200 lower- and mid-level Obama staffers who worked on his presidential campaigns and in his administration threw their support behind Warren.

The endorsements came at a pivotal time for the campaign with less than 70 days left until the Iowa caucuses and as candidates like Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) seek to win over the Obama coalition.

To date, Warren has been unable to secure more senior-level Obama veterans. That support from the highest levels — including former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew — has gone to Biden.

Obama remains “incredibly fond” of Biden and is watching his campaign with interest, said one Obama ally who has spoken to the former president. But Obama — who is currently in Hawaii for his annual Christmas vacation — has intentionally sought to remove himself from the 2020 race. He has said he would not endorse anyone during the primary, including Biden, and is not expected to be out on the campaign trail until there is a nominee.

At the same time, those around him say he worries that Democrats in financial services “will have an issue her,” as one ally put it, if she wins the nomination and is trying to “rally the troops” preemptively.

During the Democratic debate on Thursday night, Warren singled out Buttigieg for hobnobbing with big donors at “wine cave” fundraisers to help boost his campaign.

“The mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900-a-bottle wine,” Warren said.

Buttigieg, ready for the attack, accused Warren of being a millionaire herself and said she had accepted donations from wealthy donors during her Senate campaign. He also said the Democratic presidential nominee must accept money from all donors for the general election fight against President Trump.

Warren and Buttigieg are in a battle for Iowa, which is a key contest for both in the path to the White House. While Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are also in the mix in the Hawkeye state, a victory there is not seen as pivotal for either candidate.

It’s been a topsy turvy run for the Massachusetts senator. While she saw an upward trajectory throughout much of the fall, she has fallen in recent polls, trailing behind Biden and Sanders.

An Emerson College poll out this week showed Biden receiving 32 percent of support among Democrats while Sanders received 25 percent and Warren pulled 12 percent, falling 8 points since the last survey in November.

Obama hasn’t publicly singled out any of the candidates but occasionally, behind closed doors, he’ll offer assessments when he is asked. Those who know him well say that while he is stylistically and temperamentally different from Warren, “he appreciates her intellect and is impressed by the campaign she’s run.”

“If anything, she has the most substantive achievements from his time in the White House,” one former Obama aide said. “And he’s someone who can talk at length about her accolades.”

While Obama has remained quiet in recent months, during a private event in Singapore this week the former president said that women are “indisputably better” than men.

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything ... living standards and outcomes,” Obama said according to the BBC.

Later, after he was asked if he would go back into politics, he said he believed in making room for new leadership.

“If you look at the world and look at the problems, it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” he said.

Asked about the comment at the debate, Biden said that Obama wasn’t talking about him.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... thy-donors

[Grizzly]

fuck obomber!

[liminalOyster]

Why Trump should fear Sanders much more than Warren in 2020
BY JAMES BARNETT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/06/20 06:00 PM EST 734

It’s conventional political wisdom that President Trump stands his best chance in 2020 if Democrats nominate a far-left candidate like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. That’s half right. I’ve witnessed both of these candidates up close as a former chairman of the Vermont Republican Party during Sanders’ ascent from backbench congressman to the Senate, and as campaign manager for then Senator Scott Brown’s reelection campaign against upstart Warren. It’s given me some insight into both of their strengths and weaknesses.

Sanders may be a socialist, but his populist brand of rabble rousing mirrors Trump, and could cut into the president’s blue-collar base. Warren, on the other hand, is a traditional liberal who poses as a populist. Working-class voters recognize the difference between Sanders’ sincerity and Warren’s sanctimony. To understand this dynamic, compare two instructive elections in locations that have little in common: tiny Essex County in the most rural northeast corner of Vermont and New England’s only metropolis, Boston.

Essex is the most Republican part of what long ago was the most Republican state in the nation. Today, it’s the lone GOP holdout among Vermont’s 14 counties. In 2016, it was the red dot in Vermont’s sea of blue, going for Trump by 18 points. Flashback to 2006 when Sanders ran for Vermont’s open Senate seat in the only serious contest he had faced since 1994 when socialism was still a dirty word. He cruised to victory and won Essex County with 59 percent of the vote even as those same voters overwhelmingly supported Republican Governor Jim Douglas’ reelection.

To be clear, Vermont is not up for grabs in 2020 or anytime soon, but these same white, rural, working-class voters are scattered throughout Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They are the voters who delivered Trump his narrow victory in 2016. Fast forward six years to Boston and the 2012 election when Warren rode President Obama’s coattails to the United States Senate. On election night, the Commonwealth’s former governor and GOP standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, lost Boston proper without cracking 20 percent. Warren won big there too, but trailed Obama’s showing by five points.

Why? Because in places like gritty South Boston, Whitey Bulger’s old haunt, many working-class voters rejected her. Like in Essex County, Vermont, those are Trump voters and could be Bernie voters. But they aren’t buying what Elizabeth Warren is selling. As Warren marched in the Southie St. Patrick’s Day parade that year, one man on the curb mimicked her often repeated refrain about the “hammered” state of the middle class. Only he added a disdainful twist as only a Bostonian could: “Hey Warren, this is the middle class gettin’ hamm-ud,” as he downed the final swig of his Bud Light.

These street smart voters can sense a phony when they see one, and Warren is a fraud of the first order. Whether it’s the current uproar over her wine cave hypocrisy, her false claim of being Native American to gain a leg up on her professional competition, or her faux outrage at big corporations she used to collect huge paychecks from: Warren will say or do anything to get ahead.

Like him or not, Sanders is anything but fake. He’s been singing off the same song sheet for a half century. You won’t find any big corporations on Bernie’s resume. His disdain for millionaires and billionaires is as fervent as ever, even as he’s become one. He does not shrink from his ideas out of political expediency. He believes what he says, as wild as it may sound.

With the Cold War in the rear view mirror, culturally conservative, blue-collar types can look past Sanders’ ideological extremism to see someone promising to shake up the status quo bigly. That’s the same quality they saw in Trump. In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a total of just 77,744 votes. In 2020, he can’t afford any attrition. If the past is a prologue, Sanders can take some of those votes. Warren has no such track record. That’s why President Trump should be rooting for Elizabeth Warren

James Barnett is a Republican strategist and founding partner of the public affairs firm Battleground Strategies. He served as a campaign manager for Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/47 ... en-in-2020