
W.J. Astore
Last night’s election results show a big delegate haul for Joe Biden, as the Democratic National Committee (DNC) conspired to eliminate Biden’s main challengers for the “moderate” vote, Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar. That conspiracy worked, boosting Biden to wins and cutting into Bernie Sanders’s haul of delegates. When the results from California are final, Biden and Sanders may be roughly equal in delegates, setting up a two-man race that’s reminiscent of Hillary-Bernie in 2016.
As my wife quipped this morning: The elections are rigged. No Russians required.
Speaking of rigged elections, the DNC is putting its thumb on the scale yet again by changing the rules so that Tulsi Gabbard won’t be allowed to debate, even though she qualified with a strong showing in American Samoa. Here’s how Caitlin Johnstone put it:
The establishment narrative warfare against Gabbard’s campaign dwarfs anything we’ve seen against Sanders, and the loathing and dismissal they’ve been able to generate have severely hamstrung her run. It turns out that a presidential candidate can get away with talking about economic justice and plutocracy when it comes to domestic policy, and some light dissent on matters of foreign policy will be tolerated, but aggressively attacking the heart of the actual bipartisan foreign policy consensus will get you shut down, smeared and shunned like nothing else. This is partly because US presidents have a lot more authority over foreign affairs than domestic, and it’s also because endless war is the glue which holds the empire together.
And now they’re working to install a corrupt, right-wing warmongering dementia patient [Joe Biden] as the party’s nominee. And from the looks of the numbers I’ve seen from Super Tuesday so far, it looks entirely likely that those manipulations will prove successful.
All this means is that the machine is exposing its mechanics to the view of the mainstream public. Both the Gabbard campaign and the Sanders campaign have been useful primarily in this way; not because the establishment would ever let them actually become president, but because they force the unelected manipulators who really run things in the most powerful government on earth to show the public their box of dirty tricks.
Just so. The DNC and its machine, including the corporate-owned mainstream media, have been fighting since day one to smear and red-bait both Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders. They will do most anything to deny the nomination to Bernie, handing it to Joe Biden, a man who is well past his prime, and who will almost certainly be humiliated and then defeated by Donald Trump.
But, to quote Jimmy Dore, the Democratic establishment would rather lose to Trump than win with a truly progressive candidate like Bernie Sanders.
Even Donald Trump knows the score. He tweeted that: The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN! Even the fact that Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race was devastating to Bernie and allowed Sleepy Joe to unthinkably win Massachusetts. It was a perfect storm, with many good states remaining for Joe!
So, I hope Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard join forces and run together as third-party candidates. For if the choice is between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that’s really no choice at all.
Update: Mike Bloomberg has dropped out, endorsing Joe Biden. Surprise! In a truly democratic party, news that a Republican-leaning, Stop&Frisk billionaire endorsing Biden would be a big negative. But not in Biden’s moderate right Democratic Party.
Warren will probably drop soon and likely will endorse Biden. She’s probably negotiating her price right now, just as Mayor Pete and Amy K. did.
But here’s the reality: A moderate right party (the Democrats) will not defeat a hard right party (the Republicans) in November. Not with Joe Biden at the helm. Just think of the enthusiasm gap between these two rightist parties.
Grim news, but there you have it.
Will Rogers was right, the Democrats are not an organized political party.
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Or, from a different angle, they are organized against their progressive base. They uphold the status quo, meaning their own status, which is what being “organized” means to them.
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I don’t think a third party run would be effective in building on the movement Sanders is part of. However, building the fight in the remaining primary states is vital. We need Warren to drop out and back Sanders. (Mostly wishful thinking on my part.) We seem to be moving toward a brokered convention-a hell or high water moment if there ever was one!
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I used to think that it would help if people were to read more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/yesterdays-man-by-bra…/
But I now think that, actually, Democratic voters are fully on board with the so-called “moderate” or “centrist” position, which, as I pointed out in another comment on an earlier post, has nothing moderate or centrist about it; and looking at the facts about Joe Biden (or other “centrists”) wouldn’t faze them at all—indeed, might get people like that even more votes. You are right, Mr. Astore, that “If the choice is between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that’s really no choice at all” except as to who rakes in the filthy lucre (which is a BIG difference to THEM). As for the Democratic party in general, this film: http://metanoia-films.org/lifting-the-veil/ does a pretty good job of explaining why it’s no better than the other half of the duopoly but also makes painfully clear that this macabre and belaboured electoral process is a complete sham.
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And now Bloomberg has also exited and endorses Biden. So Bernie is now all alone, fighting the ‘moderates’, with in addition Warren chipping away at his support. I suppose she cannot endorse Biden without losing face and won’t endorse Bernie from spite : if I cannot get there, you won’t either. Sometimes the T. hits the nail on the head and may we both be wrong.
A tiny psychological lift from California : https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/mind-biden-bounce-bernie-trounce-trump-200303075057596.html
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I now see only two potential reasons for Trump NOT being a two-term POTUS: 1.) he gets bored, never having really wanted the office in the first place [in which case, Pence would likely successfully ride The Donald’s coattails into the highest office in the land]; 2.) he finally has the aneurysm I’ve been hoping for during one of his temper tantrums. [In which case President Pence would become an instant reality!] Should I start playing PowerBall in search of the funds I need to kiss this country goodbye and renounce my citizenship??
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Sorry I disagree with you analysis of what is going on here if I may offer an alternative view. I like Bernie, he is a great guy, but his hopes to totally change health care and all the other programs will not win the support of other democrats in the house and senate, let alone getting past a Republican.
I never thought Joe could beat Trump—until I saw how I saw how many voters supported him yesterday. He wants many of the same things as Bernie–he just doesn’t want to ram it down our throats. I like it when he says he wants to change the Affordable Care Act to make health care for all possible.
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Sorry — Joe Biden’s record proves he doesn’t want “many of the same things as Bernie.” Wish that were true, but check his record closely. Biden has courted support (and money) from Big Pharma and health insurance companies, so forget about affordable health care for all with Joe.
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Mike Bloomberg has dropped out, endorsing Joe Biden. Surprise! In a truly democratic party, news that a Republican-leaning, Stop&Frisk billionaire endorsing Biden would be a big negative. But not in Biden’s moderate right Democratic Party.
Warren will probably drop soon and likely will endorse Biden. She’s probably negotiating her price right now, just as Mayor Pete and Amy K. did.
But here’s the reality: A moderate right party (the Democrats) will not defeat a hard right party (the Republicans) in November. Not with Joe Biden at the helm. Just think of the enthusiasm gap between these two rightist parties.
Grim news, but there you have it.
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Couple of articles worth reading…..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/04/joe-biden-electable-trump-2020-election
After losing her home state, would it not be best for Ms Warren to drop out and endorse Mr Sanders? Her supporters would readily support Mr Sanders as they agree on almost every issue! Or she is not doing so out of spite??
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IMHO right now it’s about the negatives. Democrats need exactly NO positive reasons to go to the polls in November. ZERO. But Rebublicans need lots of motivation to get off their butts, and Bernie is their man. They will brave active gunfire to vote against him. Joe is blah enough not to set off any hair-trigger explosions of right-wing frenzy. All he really has to do is more-or-less say one thing: “I am not Donald Trump”
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“I am not Donald Trump” is not enough of a motivator. It didn’t work for Hillary Clinton.
You need to give people reasons to vote. You need to inspire them. Obama did this in 2008 and 2012. And Trump, in his own way, did this in 2016, and will do so in 2020.
If Biden is the nominee, can he really inspire lots of people to vote? Especially people under 45 years of age? I don’t see it.
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And if Trumpty Dumpty’s weird appeals for sympathy for Bernie are not the kiss of death, then what is? Go ahead Bernie supporters and stick to your principles, just like Ralph Nader did in 2004, giving Bush II another 4 GOD-CURSED YEARS and giving us 2008-2009.
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Leaving the Ralph Nader and Russian scapegoating aside as asinine and juvenile, Michael Lind explains the simple reason for Donald Trump’s winning of the 2016 election. See: ,
By Michael Lind,
“The debunked “Russian influence” nonsense is infantilizing liberals”, Salon.com (January 27, 2020). I just excerpt the concluding paragraph:
“In 2018, Hillary Clinton told Britain’s Channel Four News: “The real question is how did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania–that is really the nub of the question.” No, the real question is why so much of the US and European establishment accepted and promulgated Clinton’s alibi for her failure to follow her husband into the office of president of the United States. A Clinton or a Bush was president, vice president, or secretary of state in every year between 1981 and 2013, an era in which working-class incomes stagnated, offshoring devastated US and European manufacturing, the world suffered the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the US plunged into multiple disastrous wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Trump became president by running against a Bush in the Republican primaries and a Clinton in the general election. The desire of many American voters to disrupt the quarter-century cycle of nearly identical versions of technocratic neoliberalism under alternating Bushes and Clintons is quite sufficient to explain the presidential election of 2016.”
Nothing to do with Ralph Nader. Nothing to do with the “Russians.” Just the neoliberal status-quo names “Bush” and “Clinton.” Enough to curdle the stomach and boil the blood of every working class person fucked over by the two right-wing factions of the Monolithic Corporate Oligarchy. I suggest looking into the real reasons why particular candidates and their political parties lose elections. Scapegoating marginal, unorthodox figures and “evil” foreigners only makes one look weak, lame, and — yes — childish.
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And speaking of Ralph Nader (for whom I happily voted twice), he has the following astute observation to make about March 3, 2020:
“The state and federal Democratic machines gang up on Bernie Sanders for Super Tuesday. Got Pete, Amy and others to endorse Big Business Biden and drop out suddenly. The Dems are immolating themselves with a bumbling, war-mongering Wall Street toady.” -R
The corporate Democrats will have no trouble accepting another four years of President Donald Trump. That gives them four more years to to take their donor-class handouts while bitching, pissing, and moaning about “Russians” — and Bernie Sanders who had the effrontery to think that working class people should have a voice in their government — without having to actually oppose Trump’s judicial appointments, war budgets, or economic policies.
Those Democrats wishing to have Joe Biden for their champion can have him for the moment, at least until someone else shoulders him aside “out of concern for his rapidly fading mental health” and magnanimously accepts the nomination by super-delegate acclamation. The courts have ruled that the Democratic Party, as a private corporation, can select its presidential nominee any way it wishes. And so it will . . .
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Dear Mr. Murray,
This is a blanket hurrah for everything you post to Bracing Views. I have never found anyone whose critical views are as close to mine as yours are, not least in your mode of expression and the sources to which you refer. Your energy saves me a tremendous amount of work in not having to write very much myself, because you speak from my heart and with something close to my voice. And Mr. Astore, God bless him, seems to listen to you. So, thanks very, very much. Let us keep up the good fight.
Warm wishes,
Mikjall
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Here is the latest…..whether Sen Warren will prove to be a real team player for ALL progressives or not is anyone’s guess.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/warren-to-think-through-her-future-top-aide-says/2020/03/04/bf7d20ca-5e38-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html
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Earlier today I was watching a 12-part documentary on the “undeclared war” we waged in southeast Asia from (roughly) 1960 -1975. After footage of Ike and the Nix, Diem, Mao, and Uncle Ho, suddenly there was JFK. My immediate reaction was, “Wow! That’s the kind of guy I want in the White House. He even looks like he should be President.”
Then I remembered something Lenny Bruce once said regarding presidential candidates: “It’s a young man’s gig. Riding herd over 180 million people (US pop. in 1960) is not something I want my grandfather doing.” And yet today, the people running for that office (at least those given any chance of winning) are decidedly old (and rich).
And this: Who was the last Vice-President who couldn’t easily have been replaced by a cardboard cut-out or a box of cereal?
I’m wondering how E. Warren ever came to be described as “progressive.”
I’m also wondering:
How polling places can be shut down before an election in an obvious act of voter suppression and no one so much as raises an eyebrow in outrage, let alone a legal challenge.
How “millions of votes” in California can remain uncounted on Thursday after being cast on Tuesday.
How “Mayor Pete” has become an object of pity/sympathy (“hated by The Left” according to The Guardian) despite having “transformed the political landscape” by showing Americans will accept an openly gay presidential candidate (I’m thinking “tolerate” would be more accurate than “accept,” judging by his lack of votes in any state that counts – sorry, folks, but we’ve now seen Iowa primary results don’t mean anything in any place but Iowa).
How anyone can seriously contend that having The Bern at the top of the ticket will hurt the chances of those farther down the ballot, but Joe Biden won’t.
How anyone can think a third party will set things back on the right track. From all indications, we only have one party, and. the relationship between Republicans and Democrats is no different than that of older brother to younger brother: the younger brother may be a pain in the ass from time to time, but he’ll always come around in the end.
Finally, I’m wondering if anyone remembers Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, “Slapstick,” in which a pandemic was caused by a Chinese miniaturization project that got out of control. Hundreds of millions of Chinese were shrunk to the size of microbes, were then borne up by the winds and subsequently inhaled by an equal number of poor unfortunates around the world. Life imitating art?
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I take no pleasure in posting this compilation of Biden’s gaffes, mistakes, etc. Being president is demanding, and it’s reasonable to ask whether Biden is still up to the task.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/05/stop-calling-it-a-stutter%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8ahere-are-dozens-of-examples-of-bidens-dementia-symptoms/
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Just excruciating to watch. But the title graphic says it all: “Joe Biden = Jeb Bush + Alzheimer’s.” President Donald J. Trump will not fail to make this formula agonizingly explicit, although he will try to snarkily combine “low energy” and “befuddled” within the more socially acceptable euphemism “sleepy.” Sean Hannity and FAUX NEWS, of course, will not observe such scruples.
I agree about the demands of the presidency, Bill, but I would not use word “still” in connection with Joe Biden’s qualifications for the task. He has auditioned for this role many times in the past and has never demonstrated either the aptitude or ability required, even when he had a brain capable of remembering quotations stolen from other English speaking persons.
Anyway, not a pretty sight for those of us who have had to watch elderly parents mentally disintegrate before our eyes. I can never forget the day my mom went straight through a red light at 30+ mph while driving my wife and me somewhere. I had her pull over so that I could drive. Then I took her car keys from her and she never drove a day after that. Mom always wrote out a check for her bills and mailed the payment the day the notification arrived. Then she would write “paid” and the date on the bill’s envelope; put the marked envelope in a bundle with her other paid bills; wrap a rubber band around them, and place them all neatly on the kitchen table counter. Very organized. When I drove mom home after that frightening traffic incident, I found unpaid bills lying scattered all over the kitchen. When I asked her why she hadn’t promptly paid her bills like she always did, she replied: “They want too much money.” Then I noticed the cigarette burns in the carpet. So I had to take her cigarettes — that she always called “my little friends” — from her, too, lest she accidentally burn down the house. My wife took very good care of Mom in the little less than a year that she had left to live. The doctors just shrugged their shoulders helplessly. A hard but decent and harmless life finally came to an end with a machine doing her breathing for her on February 4, 2002.
I don’t care for the war-championing corporate toady Joe Biden as a political leader, but I feel sorry for his family and what they have in store for them as he further disintegrates mentally.
But to put a man who belongs in a rest home out on the campaign trail as “leader” of America’s junior right-wing political faction — that has to rank as somewhere between terminally stupid and simply cruel. And all because Joe Biden served as Vice President for the Former President Black Guy Empty Suit Rhetoric Reciter? You know, the guy who told a roomful of crooked bankers immediately after his inauguration: “I’m the only guy standing between you and the people with the pitchforks.” So we peasants with the torches and pitchforks should vote for confused and addled Joe Biden because he served as VP for that Former Black Guy President?
Bernie Sanders should have dispatched Joe Biden long ago. Tulsi Gabbard would have. Just ask former “first tier” candidate Kamala Harris. But as long as Bernie keeps on mouthing drivel such as, “I like Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a friend of mine,” he might as well just come out and advise his supporters: “Vote for my friend Joe Biden.” I mean, that’s what he wound up doing in 2016 when “She’s-With-Her” demanded and got his spineless capitulation. (And she hates him to this day for even daring to run in a rigged primary against her)
So, here we go again with Bernie’s latest TV ad, the one which fawningly claims that “The Former Black Guy President likes me, too.” You know, the same Former Black Guy President who just spent 72 hours orchestrating a desperate “elite” party consolidation against Bernie Sanders in favor of “Senior Moment” Joe Biden. Bernie certainly does have a strange conception of what political “liking” means. In Bernie’s case that unfortunately translates to something more like “licking.” (What a difference the little letter “c” can make).
In point of fact, the Democratic Party will not have Bernie Sanders. It will not have Tulsi Gabbard, either. It will not have anyone who can defeat President Donald Trump whom the donor class loves and will gladly have for another four years. The “Democrats” will get paid their little table scraps only as long as they perform their scripted part in the Kabuki stage presentation: namely, screw the working class and boost crooked casino gamblers (i.e., “bankers”). As always:
Buy some Republicans. They’ll shout “Gawd Bless!”
Rent a few Democrats. They’ll lose for less.”
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Mike: I read your thoughtful and personal reply late last night and have been thinking about it.
The “rally ’round the Biden” push is so deeply cynical — I know it’s Biden’s decision to run, but the man is visibly in decline. How can we expect him to serve with vigor until 2024? It’s obvious he can’t, but the DNC and its toadies don’t care. Their priorities are to protect themselves by stopping Bernie, then to control Biden or push him aside if he somehow were to win.
Showcasing more cynicism is the decision to exclude Tulsi Gabbard yet again. I watched a little of MSDNC last night and they talked of a two-man debate. Tulsi simply doesn’t exist to them. A woman of color, a Hindu, an Iraq war veteran, all those attributes the DNC allegedly promotes: diversity, gender equality, respect for “the troops”: it all doesn’t matter because Tulsi is a DNC critic/disloyalist.
The DNC: Crooked in 2016, even more crooked in 2020. Yet we’re supposed to support them because they’re “not Trump.” No thanks.
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Totally agree. The sad thing is that, quite apart from his dementia, Biden is considered someone that one might elect, even if not one’s favourite choice. People evidently know nothing about him—or perhaps don’t care to know. But they could know, because it’s all out there:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/yesterdays-man-by-bra…/
Major war monger:
Plundering crook and manipulator (first 4 parts of a continuing 8-part series):
https://ukrainegate.info/part-1-a-not-so-solid-prosecutor/
https://ukrainegate.info/part-2-not-so-dormant-investigations/
https://ukrainegate.info/part-3-a-not-so-noble-president/
https://ukrainegate.info/part-4-shokin-strikes-back/
I did something about my own pain by leaving the good, old USA, so I don’t have to vote for the supposed “lesser of two evils” every time.
Best wishes,
Mikjall
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And DNC will do anything to deny Tulsi Gabbard platform to say her piece…..
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/05/dnc-scrambles-to-change-debate-threshold-after-gabbard-qualifies/
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Could be solved by Bernie Sanders taking her on as his running mate, assuming that he gets nominated by some miracle. She’d be great in the campaign. But I am afraid that Bernie is too chickenshit and doesn’t really support her positions. Really sad.
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Given the events of the last week and Biden’s only successful campaign period in all these months, what happens when the reality of having him as the nominee becomes clear?
I can see Bernie demolishing him in a debate. No matter how much spin there is, it will be clear that Trump will do much, much worse. Or if his dementia takes a turn for the worse – how much DNC coverup is possible to make that go away?
And what happens when the Bernie and Tulsi supporters finally have their fill of an outcome that was decided many, many months before now?
It sure feels like the DNC is doing it to us again. But wait, Hillary is rested and ready to go…and she even now has a podcast.
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For Hillary and her inflated opinion of herself, perhaps we should call it a “godcast.” 🙂
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Just heard that Elizabeth Warren is dropping out. A sensible choice, given that she came in 3rd in her home state.
Now it’s Bernie, Biden — and Tulsi Gabbard. But you won’t be hearing anything from Gabbard, whom the DNC has erased from the campaign.
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Just in tears at the way the progressives are being run over. What a fear-filled country we are. No chance for an FDR-like improvement. Am attempting to cope with the fact that only $ rules.
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Exactly. Money rules. Look at how the DNC allowed Bloomberg to debate, but won’t allow Tulsi Gabbard. They change the rules to favor the rich and block critics. Forget about principles like diversity, fairness, free speech, etc.
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Jimmy Dore notes how the DNC is blocking Tulsi Gabbard. Because two white guys in their late 70s is what diversity is all about. We can’t allow a woman of color who’s a veteran of the Iraq War to speak in the debates, right?
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I am a little saddened at Sen. Warren’s departure. But the DNC’s plan all along now comes into crystal-clear focus. Biden WILL be the name on the ballot come November, folks. Time to stare reality in its sometimes very ugly face. And I don’t care who the Dems put in as his VP candidate, I am actually “calling” this election right now: Trump defeats Biden. With the Democratic Party having devolved into the stinking rotting corpse it now is, we may see nothing but GOP presidents of this country as far into the future as one may dare try to gaze. That is to say, USA is going to Hell in the proverbial handbasket (where DO these quaint old expressions come from??) faster than even I had imagined.
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OK. As sad as this is for progressives, I have to take some pleasure in the prospect of the upcoming Trump-Biden debates. Two over the hill nit wits who won’t even know what time zone they’re in, trying to remember their one-liners and canned talking points. At least the rest of the world will have a good laugh. I’m in my 70’s and we still have candidates OLDER than me. WTF? We boomers need to just go away. And it looks to be still true that no woman is going to be President in my lifetime. Thanks for trying Tulsi, Bernie, et al.
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You’re dreaming if you really think Trump vs. Biden will go down like that. Trump is an “over the hill nitwit” but he’s vicious and revels in fighting, especially when it’s dirty and can see weak spots from miles away. I predict a scenario more like this:
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From Common Dreams:
Interesting Question to Elizabeth Warren:
A Profound and Historic Question for Elizabeth Warren: Which Side Are You On?
Now, days later, with corporate Democrat Joe Biden enjoying sudden momentum and mega-billionaire Mike Bloomberg joining forces with him, an urgent question hovers over Warren. It’s a time-honored union inquiry: “Which side are you on?”
How Warren answers that question might determine the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In the process, she will profoundly etch into history the reality of her political character.
Facing the fact that her campaign reached a dead end, Warren basically has two choices: While Bernie Sanders and Biden go toe to toe, she can maintain neutrality and avoid the ire of the Democratic Party’s corporate establishment. Or she can form a united front with Sanders, taking a principled stand on behalf of progressive ideals.
For much of the past year, in many hundreds of speeches and interviews, Warren has denounced the huge leverage of big money in politics. And she has challenged some key aspects of corporate power. But now we’re going to find out more about how deep such commitments go for her.
“Here’s the thing,” Warren said in a speech to a convention of the California Democratic Party nine months ago. “When a candidate tells you about all the things that aren’t possible, about how political calculations come first . . . they’re telling you something very important—they are telling you that they will not fight for you.”
We’ll soon find out whether Elizabeth Warren will fight for us.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/05/profound-and-historic-question-elizabeth-warren-which-side-are-you?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
===============================================
The last time in 2016 Warren took the Duck and Cover approach.
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This what you need know about the DNC:
Corporate Lobbyists Control the Rules at the DNC
Two-thirds of DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members are corporate lobbyists or corporate consultants, including ten at-large DNC members appointed by DNC Chair Tom Perez.
https://readsludge.com/2020/02/28/corporate-lobbyists-control-the-rules-at-the-dnc/
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