The Cold, Cynical, Corporate DNC

 

biden
Biden briefly mixed up his wife and sister in a speech this week.  It wasn’t a good look for the gaffe-prone former VP

W.J. Astore

Is it OK to feel sorry for Joe Biden?

I remember him running for president in 1988.  It was a disaster.  He plagiarized speeches and lied about his college record.  To be specific, he claimed he graduated in the top of his college class, with three degrees, on a full scholarship, while winning an award from the political science department.  The truth was he graduated near the bottom of his class, with one degree, on a half-scholarship, while winning no such award.  When it comes to talking about his record, Biden’s got more than a little of Trump in him.

Biden has never done well running for president — until these last eight days, when victory in South Carolina led the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to go “all-in” on him.  Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar conveniently dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden (no collusion here, people!), and other prominent democrats quickly followed suit in singing Biden’s praises.  Rumor has it Barack Obama was involved behind the scenes, making phone calls, twisting arms, getting the corporate tools to line up behind his former vice president (not that they needed much convincing).

In a way, it worked too well.  Biden vaulted ahead on Super Tuesday and is now the front runner and presumptive nominee.  The DNC, and Daddy Warbucks Mike Bloomberg, are pledging undying love and lots of money.  Even Kamala Harris, the little girl who was so, so hurt by Biden’s opposition to school integration, is now a big Biden booster.  What happened?

The answer is obvious.  A cold, cynical, corporate DNC decided Biden was the best man to stop Bernie Sanders.  Stopping Bernie and stomping on the progressive base of the Democratic Party is the paramount goal of the DNC.  And they are likely to achieve this goal.

What the DNC doesn’t really care about is defeating Donald Trump.  Good thing too, since Joe Biden can’t do that, and the DNC knows it.  Assuming he’s the nominee, Biden is going to be humiliated in the general election.  His weaknesses, which are legion, play to Trump’s strengths.

People are hiding this harsh reality from Joe Biden.  And maybe he’s hiding it from himself as well.  I really don’t want to get into signs of Biden’s cognitive decline, for even if he were sharper, let’s say the Joe Biden of 2012, he’d still lose to Trump, and badly.

I’m sure the DNC is already generating excuses for the post-election press conferences in November.  They’ll say things like Bernie hurt Biden by staying in the race too long.  They’ll claim Russian interference again in Trump’s favor.  Perhaps they’ll say the economy was too strong, or they’ll blame millennials for not voting, or they’ll condemn the electoral college, and so on.

The real reason will be staring back at them.  Joe Biden is exactly the wrong candidate to go up against Donald Trump, but no matter.  Four more years of Trump is far better than a principled progressive agenda advanced by a man of integrity like Bernie Sanders.

Did I mention the DNC is cold, cynical, and corporate?

45 thoughts on “The Cold, Cynical, Corporate DNC”

  1. Couldn’t have said it better. It is looking like the orchestrated shows from the old Soviet Union. And no, folks, don’t look at Russia (the preferred corporate misdirection), they really can’t get a word in edgewise. Corporations are filling all the slots. And Orwell thought it was the government. Huxley was closer: Soma-phones, Soma-apps, Soma-book and so forth.

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    1. One more. The “rules of participation” are really just for show and to fill up the pages of civics books. The real rules are dictates of the moment from the board rooms.

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  3. QUIT YOUR GODDAM BITCHING. I don’t care if they nominate a long-dead person, or famous character from classic literature. And every Bernie supporter who stays home on Nov 3rd equals precisely 1 vote for Trumpty-Dumpty.

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    1. Not voting does NOT mean a vote for trump. That’s really stupid. Running a candidate like Biden ensures that millions of Americans will NOT vote for either man. Because they are both idiots.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Would you like the mathematical proof of my assertion? I am referring strictly to a Bernie supporter, who would not vote for Trump under ANY circumstances short of a 7-figure bribe or having their family held hostage at gunpoint, staying home on Nov. 3rd.

        And kindly do an honest accounting: Biden is the devil we know, and simply does not inspire the Rebublican fear and loathing that Red Bernie does. Conservatives that would skip voting to watch Dancing with the Stars on Nov. 3rd would cross Death Valley barefoot to vote against him. You and I know that Bernie is nowhere near a real commie, but good luck explaining that to the crackers.

        Agreed, both are idiots, but lesser of evils is always and everywhere a legitimate political strategy.

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        1. Most of us don’t care, Trump and Biden are both corporate puppets their masters remain the same,
          Just because they change instruments doesn’t mean corporate influence in govt will be gone, trump isn’t the enemy, it’s his backers and it always has been. If trump gets re-elected, so be it. Bernies base isn’t going to give the DNC the satisfaction of us picking their lesser until they vote someone in who wants real change. Enjoy the apocalypse, you’ll have front row seats.

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          1. And the lowest and most unkind think I could possibly respond to that with, is that you sound exactly like the Trumpists. A dark night of the soul indeed!

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        2. This video is worth watching. The vast majority of Bernie supporters did vote for Hillary in 2016. She didn’t lose because of lack of support from Bernie and his “bros”: she lost because she’s Hillary and ran a deplorable campaign

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          1. Ummm, I checked my calendar. It is no longer 2016. Do you have another argument? I trust that Bernie supporters will make the right call. Personally, Biden was my absolute next to last choice, but the bottom spot will always and evermore be occupied by Orange Jesus.

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      1. Absolutely my favorite Caitlin zinger:

        Russian, adjective
        Meaning: Accurate, in accordance with known facts about reality.
        E.g. “Saying the US armed terrorists in Syria is a Russian talking point.”
        “There’s Russian online chatter saying the Democratic primary is rigged.”
        “WikiLeaks is a Russian asset.”
        Synonyms: true, factual, correct

        Somebody needs to inform Bernie Sanders — probably four years too late — that the entire “Russia-gate” narrative embraced by the Democratic Party (because “She’s-With-Her” demands it) makes him look stupid and terminally divorced from reality. I don’t want an American president who thinks of Russia as an enemy and not a cooperative partner. I thoroughly approve of Russia flying our US astronauts up to the International Space Station and safely back to earth as they have done for the past decade. Russia hasn’t done anything to harm my country, and so accepting baseless CIA and FBI and Pentagram assertions and “assessments” to the contrary leads me to believe that Bernie Sanders does not remember the Bay of Pigs, or Bill Clinton bombing the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, or WMD in Iraq, or any number of other colossal fuck-ups by the so-called “intelligence community.” I can understand Joe Biden believing thees lying bastards because he has dementia. But what excuse does Bernie Sanders have for such manifest gullibility?

        Bernie Sanders should really get to know a few Russians, just on the off chance that one of them might tell him a true thing or two about that country and what the people there think about their own lives and the lunatic American government.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. One of the main reasons I couldn’t bring myself to vote for HRC back in 2016 was the concern about her bellicosity (‘we came, we saw, he died’, her behind the scenes warmongering, etc) possibility leading us into a ‘hot’ war with Russia. As a person with advancing dementia, Biden would even be of more concern — I wouldn’t want that finger on the button. I didn’t — nor would I ever — vote for Trump, but I can see how someone could plausibly argue that on the nuclear war issue, a relatively coherent narcissist is far better than an individual with an advancing case of dementia since the narcissist has a strong sense of self-preservation/glorification, whereas a person drastically losing his/her mental faculties is unpredictable. They can get agitated and do irrational things which is scary enough if they have a knife or a gun, much less a nuclear arsenal at their disposal….

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    3. Reed – LOL. What nonsense. You propose beating a malignant narcissist with an incoherent demential sufferer?! Good freaking luck with that Reed! Biden would be the Orange One’s pinata in any debate between the two. How about we try a novel approach (for the DNC at least) and conduct a fair and unbiased primary process instead? I mean we could even stop disappearing Tulsi Gabbard to make things more interesting. Just a thought.

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    4. A vote for Biden has always been a vote for TRUMP! Don’t blame us because you didn’t heed all the warnings. The election – according to what DNC lawyers said in open court – is (at it’s essence ), NOTHING more than a fixed reality show in which the establishment candidates pretend they need your donations to ‘win”, when really, all they need is for the establishment to tap them on the shoulder and whisper “We choose you”.

      The DNC shocked us in 2016. They’ve accidentally let us see even more behind the veil in 2020. We won’t keep playing a pre-written/rigged game if Biden (a paper tiger candidate) or his mystery Ms. VP is the nominee. Biden’s ticket must EARN our votes and so far, HE is telling us that our votes don’t matter to him – that he doesn’t NEED our votes so if Biden FAILS to GET our votes you can also blame Trump’s 2nd term on HIM, too.

      YOU chose who you wanted to vote for and WE have that exact same right. If you failed to choose Bernie – who just happens to be THE choice of vast majority of voters the Democratic nominee will NEED to win the general election, then that’s on YOU. If Bernie drops out and you fail to put pressure on BIDEN to come EARN our vote, then that failure is on you, too.

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  4. As I’m pretty confident I suggested many moons ago–or at least the moment Biden officially put his hat in the ring–Joe has been the DNC choice all along. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. I have to dissent from this notion that the Dems will be happy to remain shut out of the White House as long as they can help keep an actual progressive out of there. At the very least, there’s the matter of pride! Biden, unfortunately for those of us who’ve been itching to be rid of Trump since Jan. 20, 2017, is merely This Year’s Model of The Hillary: a tired old heap of rusting innards with bald tires, lacking anything like the styling that might–might, I say–inspire enough new voters to show up Election Day to offset the Trump advantage in the Electoral College. If Trump captures the same states he did four years ago, the EC will hand us the same results: a Trump victory.

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  5. Reblogged this on silverapplequeen and commented:
    If Biden is the Democrat candidate, get ready for four more years of trump. & then get ready for all the blaming on the “Bernie Bros” who stayed home. Like the DNC didn’t do everything they could to derail Bernie Sanders from the word GO.

    We’re screwed, people, absolutely screwed.

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    1. His decline barely shows come on….! :/ :O) Time will pass fast, and he’ll be in his new house! — The Retirement home.

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  8. “The truth is that the corporate-liberal media are comfortable with the Trump presidency. They have prospered wonderfully from his entertainment value, even as they staked out a high ground in the anti-Trump ‘resistance’. It will be hard to deny the plausibility of the charge likely to issue soon from the Sanders campaign, namely that ‘the fix is in’; and that, once more, the people are being denied their proper voice – at first through an organised propaganda campaign that was fed into debates as well as news coverage, and at last through public co-ordination by the party establishment to guide Democrats into the one acceptable box.”

    https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/march/on-super-tuesday

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  11. It seems an odd way to choose your candidate, let them all spend lots of money campaigning against each other for months, landing more blows on each other than on Donald Trump. I appreciate I don’t know how it all works in the USA as I am British, but the result matters to the whole world. Would it be illegal for the Democratic Party to meet in advance and declare its leader? I guess the answer is yes. I am not convinced that any of the candidates are presidential material.

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    1. “Would it be illegal for the Democratic Party to meet in advance and declare its leader? I guess the answer is yes.”

      The official position on that question held by the DNC (and stated in court) is that no, it would not be illegal. They have stated that they are not bound by any laws or even their own regulations and can just have a handful of powerful members go in a room and pick whoever they want as the candidate, voter preference be damned. This despite the large amount of public money spent on the primaries.

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      1. Yes, it seems that the Democrats are afraid of democracy. They’d rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie.

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  12. I was going to write about Hillary working behind the scenes on her comeback, but I see it’s already been written:

    https://nypost.com/2020/03/07/democrats-hunt-for-trump-slayer-may-lead-to-hillary-clinton-comeback-goodwin/

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Joe Biden can’t run, the DNC will likely coalesce behind Hillary as Joe’s substitute. Or, if Joe can run, Hillary could be picked as his VP, with Hillary knowing she’d be like Dick Cheney, the power behind the presidency.

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    1. I have feared for several years that Clinton would rise from her crypt and force herself again onto the electorate. In spite of all the chattering class on MSDNC that loves her, I can think of nothing that would add more to the odds of Trump remaining in office past January 2021 than her on the ticket.

      As she’s only 72, it appears that she will return for each election cycle for many years. It’s still her turn, after all.

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  13. To your last comment WJ, I don’t think the DNC will truly be running Biden. They will be running Biden’s VP, with Joe as the willing patsy. The DNC hope/plan: Joe pulls off a miracle, and then falls on his sword and resigns a year or so in, after realizing (or being pressured to admit) that he lacks the capacity to do the job. Bingo…the real DNC nominee steps up.

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  15. You all speak as if Bernie Sanders would win against Trump, which strikes me as delusional, frankly. The man is an avowed socialist, and while a small core of youthful idiots are fanatically loyal to the idea of a socialist United States, there are nowhere near enough of them to put Sanders into the White House. There are far too many voters who equate socialism with Communist Russia, Cuba, and collapsed economies in South America. There may be someone who has less chance of beating Trump than Sanders, but I cannot imagine who it might be.

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    1. Well, at least Bernie is still playing with a full deck.

      Bernie is not a “socialist.” He’s a sensible reformer in the spirit of FDR, a democratic socialist who accepts that private corporations will continue to have a major role in America.

      But of course that distinction is lost on many Americans since the media is constantly red-baiting Bernie.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Fair point, and so you are obligated to weigh the possibility that the “many Americans” upon whom “that distinction is lost” are sufficiently numerous to propel Orange Jesus to 4 more years.

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    2. I can’t speak for what “all” of us think, but as a supporter of Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who also favors a Medicare for All system (only one more on the Australian model):

      According to nationwide polls over a considerable period of time, every Democrat currently running for President has less chance of beating Trump than Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders goes on Fox News and receives warm applause for his Medicare For All proposal while Donald Trump — reportedly a big Fox News fan — calls him a “communist.” A clear majority of Americans, regardless of political party, approve of such a health care system and wish they had something like it. I mean, if Taiwan, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Sweden, Russia, etc. can manage it, why can’t the United States? On the other hand, we have your imagination . . .

      As Bernie Sanders accurately says: the Uber Wealthy Corporate Oligarchy already have socialism for themselves — like trillions of dollars in bank bailouts, no-bid “defense” contracts, lavish subsidies, and tax-avoidance scams. They just demand cut throat capitalism and “rugged individualism” for the working class. The Ruling Billionaire Donor Class (International) have nothing against “class warfare” as long as their class gets to practice it exclusively. And who invented the class system, anyway? The class at the bottom of the pyramid, or the class at the top? To many in the working poor and middle classes, “socialism” means their class finally deciding to fight back. About time, too.

      Concerning collapsed “socialist” economies in South America and around the world — like Bolivia (lithium deposits), Libya (oil) and Iraq (oil) — the US bears an enormous responsibility for collapsing them. Things like coups, attempted “color” revolutions (Ukraine), assassinations, economic sanctions (embargoes), and outright military invasions. Cuba, for example, has experienced over sixty years of unrelenting hostility from the US — of almost every imaginable kind — and still its socialist economy has not collapsed. Cubans apparently like having “socialist” universal health care and free education leading to the highest literacy rate in South America. The Cuban communist government still compares favorably to the right-wing oligarchy of Fulgencio Batista whose thug regime once ran the sugar-cane and tobacco monopolies along with the gambling and prostitution rackets in Havana — and whose expatriate descendants continue poisoning Florida and US national politics.

      Then, too, only recently the US government attempted a coup in Venezuela (0il) and badly bungled it with some US supported guy named Guaido declaring himself “interim president.” Now the Venezuelans in their elected Parliament won’t let this pretentious jerk into the building any more. The “brutal dictator” Nicolas Maduro hasn’t even bothered throwing the treasonous little bastard in jail, so little appeal does he have outside the US White House and Congress (which continues to lavishly fund this weasel and his wealthy oligarch patrons). What an example of “socialist” brutality!

      And then we have that humiliating example of “Democratic” “Capitalist” brutality on display at the most recent State of the Union Speech where the only time Speaker Pelosi leaped to her feet in ecstatic approval occurred when Orange Man Bad singled out the Guaido Guy as America’s guest of honor. A little bit of truly ugly and bipartisan American approval on display there. The word “shameless” does not even begin to cover another typical case US imperial perfidy.

      But enough with the statistical polling and factual history. The general American public has — by design — very little in the way of factual information about either its own secretive government or the policies of foreign governments the US claims to resent, if not fear. Much less does the typical American voter have any understanding of what concepts like “socialism,” “communism,” and “Neo-feudal Corporate Oligarchy” mean. The bed-wetting, diaper-soiling American people wouldn’t know a genuine threat from a vampire unicorn, as their tedious and nearly endless presidential election circuses continue to demonstrate.

      Bernie Sanders has many faults — chiefly a weak-kneed capitulation to Russia-baiting Imperial Foreign Policy — but “socialism,” as it may apply to his tepid and long-overdue health care, economic, and educational reforms, does not count among them.

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      1. Right now IMHO the main obstacle to public health insurance is insurance beneficiaries who get it thru their employer, which dramatically distorted the US health insurance industry in the first place. WTF, do you get your home or car insurance thru your job??? People think it is some kind of free benefit, which is ridiculous, because the cost is just deducted from your salary before you ever see it. YOU PAY IT ALL, BUT YOU THINK THAT YOU DON’T, which qualifies employer-provided health insurance as the mythical free lunch. And it covers the most fit (employees are generally younger, have more money, and are more educated) and leaves the old, poor, and unable to work as a burden on the public. We gotta get rid of the tax break for employer-provided health insurance! People getting subsidized insurance don’t give a fuk about the rest of us cuz they got theirs. Let them feel the same pain as everybody else, and the system will change overnight.

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        1. Seriously! Anyone who tells you how wonderful their health insurance has just has never had to rely on it for a major medical emergency and discovered that not everything is covered. And if you ever want to use your freedom to changes jobs, you lose your insurance and have to start all over again with the insurance provider your new employer decides you get. That’s not wonderful!

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    3. Give me a break, Bernie is not a socialist and could not, would not, make the country into a socialist state. He’s a Democratic Socialist and it’s not the same.

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        1. I’m more interested in people learning about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and cognitive decline, as displayed by POTUS every time he goes on camera.

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          1. I applaud your efforts. You and I are left wondering why his grossly obvious faults do not seem to sway supporters (though some principled conservatives have parted company, like Justin Amash). But never underestimate the human capacity for delusional thinking. Rump support is not about logic, it’s 100% emotional. If you do however find positions or arguments that gain some traction or are effective for deprogramming Rump cult members, by all means tell us! We want to save our own friends and family who have drunk the Kool-aid, not to mention our country.

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          2. Some people favor/prefer authoritarian leaders. Trump is that. Some people also put a cult-like faith in a leader, and Trump’s followers tend to do that. He can do no wrong for them, and even when he does, it can be explained away, e.g. blamed on someone else, like Pelosi or Obama or the never-Trumpers.

            I don’t think there’s a way to reach people who have so much invested in Trump. Rational arguments and facts are dismissed as “fake news.”

            That’s why the Democrats should be seeking to expand the base. I don’t think Biden does this, but Bernie can.

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  16. I would like to recommend readers here check out Jimmy Dore’s show on youtube. a political comedian who fights for progressive causes. Be entertained as you’re being enraged!

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  17. The only other guy on the left I’ve heard say this is Jimmy Dore, self-described jag-off night-club comedian on his youtube show. “The Democrats would rather lose to Trump than win with a progressive.”

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