Creator of Bracing Views. Contributor to TomDispatch, Truthout, HNN, Alternet, Huffington Post, Antiwar, and other sites. Retired AF lieutenant colonel and professor of history. Senior fellow, Eisenhower Media Network
COVID-19 is now a pandemic, and each day brings news of cancellations and changes in an attempt to curb its spread, or to slow the rate at which it spreads.
First off, I’m not a medical doctor, but I think I understand the gist of the approach, as represented by this graphic:
If everyone gets sick at once, our healthcare system will be overwhelmed. But if we take protective measures and slow the rate of transmission, our healthcare system should be able to cope.
What are some of these protective measures?
“Social distancing”: Avoiding crowds and the like. We see this as schools close and put classes online, the NBA suspends its season, etc.
Quarantine for those who test positive for COVID-19.
Helping to prevent transmission by washing hands vigorously with soap and hot water for 20 seconds and avoiding touching one’s face and eyes.
Cover coughs and sneezes.
Clean and disinfect surfaces.
Wearing a face mask if you believe you are sick.
The chart below may be useful in recognizing the symptoms and knowing the difference between COVID-19 versus regular flu and the common cold. But always defer to your doctor/health care practitioner:
What if Joe Biden had decided to run for president in 2016 — and won?
And what if, while in office during his first term, he started showing signs of cognitive decline like the ones he’s shown on the campaign trail in 2019-20?
Wouldn’t many, if not most, people have advised Joe Biden to step aside, to be a one-term president? Because we know the demands of the presidency are tough enough on men (I say “men” because all our presidents, so far, have been men) in their forties and fifties, let alone a man in his late seventies, a man who’s had two cerebral aneurysms, and (again) a man who’s shown signs of confused speech, among other difficulties.
I think this is a reasonable conclusion. President Joe Biden may well have stepped aside in 2020, perhaps to allow his vice president to run. And in this thought experiment, I’m guessing Hillary Clinton would have been the loudest person advocating that he step aside “for the good of the party and the country,” i.e. so that Hillary could take his place and run yet again.
But of course today’s reality is vastly different. Biden didn’t run in 2016. Hillary lost. We got Donald Trump. And now Biden is already being anointed by the DNC as the last best hope of defeating Trump in November.
With all this in mind, I’ve been reading about Biden’s preparations for the upcoming debate this Sunday. I see where there’s talk of allowing him to sit (lack of endurance). I see where he’s being advised to keep his answers short and simple (because his train of thought tends to derail when he attempts to string sentences together). And I think to myself, does this make any sense for a man preparing for four tough years as the next president of the United States? The next leader of the free world, as we used to say and sometimes still do?
If we were electing a man (or woman for that matter) to our local school board, and if he were pushing 80 and becoming less articulate, and various “handlers” for this candidate were trying to limit his public exposure, we’d probably vote for a different candidate. Not because of ageism but because we know public service is demanding and even unforgiving, and not all are capable of meeting those demands.
I’d add something else as well. What if Joe Biden was Josephine Biden, approaching 80, and having difficulty speaking. Would we be willing to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, or would we dismiss her as “dotty,” as an old biddy, as well past her “sell buy” date? I owe these questions to my wife, who pointed out, quite accurately I think, that Joe Biden is getting a pass in part because he’s male. Sure, he’s getting older, but he’s still got it, the old buck! But do we really believe this?
To show I’m not so young myself, I was watching “Gunsmoke” today and one of the characters had a memorable line. He said the law can’t protect an old man from playing the fool. And I thought of Joe Biden and whether certain powerful elements are allowing him to play the fool for their own reasons.
What say you, readers?
P.S. Readers of “Bracing Views” know I support Bernie Sanders, who is a vigorous 78 years of age. This is not about age.
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?
Last night, I caught a snippet of MSNBC as the panelists talked about the upcoming debates between two white men in their late seventies. Nobody mentioned that a woman of color in her late thirties had also qualified for these debates, and an Iraq war veteran to boot: Tulsi Gabbard.
Today, I saw an article at the New York Times with the plaintive title: “Was It Always Going to Be the Last Men Standing?” Here’s the online summary of the article:
A two-man race? Women aren’t surprised
“One of the hardest parts of this,” Elizabeth Warren said as she withdrew from the presidential race on Thursday, “is all those little girls who are going to have to wait four more years.”
The senator’s exit essentially winnows what had been a diverse Democratic field to two white men, and the debate over an enduring question — can a woman win the presidency? — remains unresolved, our politics reporter Lisa Lerer writes in a news analysis.
I like that little caveat of “essentially winnows.” Because Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race, has qualified for the debates (under the old rules), and is being treated like a non-person by the cynical, corporate, manipulative, and dishonest Democratic National Committee.
People are still telling me to “vote blue no matter who,” even as Tulsi is denied her right to be heard, and even as the DNC conspired to eliminate all moderate challengers to Joe Biden so that they could block Bernie Sanders.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, to put it gently, has shown serious signs of decline and will be 82 years of age in 2024. He has called for cuts to social security and has been a water boy for decades for credit card companies and their usurious interest rates. He voted for the Iraq War, supported job-eliminating trade agreements, and is a servant of Big Pharma and the health insurance industry. among other faults. And has everyone suddenly forgot his creepy tendency to touch women, to sniff their hair, and otherwise to invade their personal space?
If only we had a woman of substance to challenge these two ageing white men, Biden and Sanders. If only she was principled, perhaps even a different religion (Hindu?), perhaps even a woman of color, perhaps even a war veteran, perhaps even principled in her stance against wasteful, regime-change wars.
But where are we to find such a woman? Because I’m sure the DNC would embrace such a paragon of diversity committed to truth-telling. Wouldn’t they?
Update (5:05 PM EST): Tulsi eliminated from the final two debates with a new DNC rule:
For what it’s worth, I posted this personal note on social media:
I know politics is divisive or boring to many. But here’s the story. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has changed its rules to muzzle Tulsi Gabbard, eliminating her from future debates. Remember when the DNC rewrote its rules to allow billionaire Mike Bloomberg to debate?
We’re left with two old white guys, aged 78 and 77, to represent Democratic diversity and “wokeness.” Meanwhile, Tulsi, a woman, an Iraq war veteran, and a Hindu, is cast into the darkness. And while I like Bernie Sanders, I would love to hear a young woman speak against the stupidity and wastefulness of America’s wars, which is the core of Tulsi’s message.
And, of course, look when the DNC announces this rule change: late on a Friday afternoon, when they assume it will go unnoticed. It’s all so cynical and sad.
When the Democrats lose to Trump again in November, remember this moment, among so many other cynical decisions by the DNC.
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.
Three days, three candidates, three exits. First, Tom Steyer. Next, Mayor Pete. And now Amy Klobuchar. Pete and Amy are dropping to clear a path for Joe Biden, and indeed Klobuchar has already endorsed Uncle Joe.
The Democratic establishment thinks this is a good thing — the best way to block Bernie Sanders. But is it?
In debates featuring six or more candidates, Joe Biden was able to elide or hide, to a certain extent, his dubious record, since he had so little time to speak. When he did speak, he came across as angry and sputtering, often garbling his message. Now that there’ll be fewer candidates, Biden won’t be able to hide his poor debating skills as easily. This can’t be a good thing for Joe.
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg also takes votes from Biden. Will he drop out as well? He can’t be bribed, so how will pressure be applied to get the Master of Stop & Frisk to go away?
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren recently claimed she’s in the race until the convention. That can only mean one thing: she’s in the race to block Bernie. In which case, she’ll be rewarded with — something. A VP slot under Biden?
I still think the dream ticket for the DNC is Biden/Harris. And it’s a guaranteed loser as well. But who cares about winning, right? As long as Bernie Sanders’s attempt to mobilize the people is defeated. That is “winning” for the DNC.
As my Kiwi friend just said to me via email:
Democrats now have to choose between Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg…and Elizabeth Warren. Not the most, er, diverse field ever offered to the electorate.
Fascinating times – I still am staggered at how the DNC and mainstream media just cut out Tulsi Gabbard like she was an “unperson” in the Soviet era. One minute she was there, next minute gone.
I still hope Bernie prevails, and if he does, I hope he has the guts to pick Tulsi Gabbard as his VP. Now is not the time for half-measures, Bernie.
In the South Carolina primary won on Saturday by Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard earned only 1.3% of the vote. Her poor showing was due in part to her outcast status among the Democratic establishment joined by mainstream media outlets like MSNBC and CNN. Speaking of CNN, I caught a few minutes of coverage last night during which its commentators confessed they couldn’t understand why Tulsi was still running. (Update: See my comment below for more details on this exchange.) One person (Anderson Cooper, the weasel) suggested she was angling for a job with Fox News. Of course, Tulsi’s principled opposition to regime-change wars and other disastrous U.S. foreign policy decisions went unmentioned. When her name is mentioned by the corporate-owned media, it’s usually in the context of the candidate most likely to succeed – in Russia.
By running in the election, Tulsi Gabbard continues to make an invaluable contribution: She highlights the power of the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex and its rejection of any candidate willing to challenge it. Gabbard’s status as a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, her service in Congress on the House Armed Services Committee, her military deployments to Iraq: all of this is downplayed or dismissed. Meanwhile, Mayor Pete’s brief stint in Afghanistan is celebrated as the height of military service. What’s the difference between them? Mayor Pete plays ball with big donors and parrots talking points of the Complex – Tulsi doesn’t.
In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Tulsi yet again does America a service by calling out red baiting in America’s elections. Here’s how her op-ed begins:
Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.
A “news article” published last week in The Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.
Tulsi is right here – and she’s right when she says that:
The American people have the right to know this information in order to put Russia’s alleged “interference” into proper perspective. It is a mystery why the Intelligence Community would want to hide these details from us. Instead it is relying on highly dubious and vague insinuations filtered through its preferred media outlets, which seem designed to create a panic rather than actually inform the public about a genuine threat.
All this does is undermine voters’ trust in our elections, which is what we are constantly told is the goal of Russia.
She also accurately notes how the “corporate media will do everything they can to turn the general election into a contest of who is going to be ‘tougher’ on Russia. This tactic is necessary to propagandize the American people into shelling over their hard-earned tax dollars to the Pentagon to fund the highly lucrative nuclear arms race that the military-industrial complex craves.”
Tulsi Gabbard may not be in the democratic race much longer, but that’s not because she lacks guts. Indeed, her willingness to buck the system – and her commitment to making the world a less militaristic place – make her a notable candidate. She’s been a noble voice crying in a corrupt and self-serving wilderness.
The face of the Afghan War is an unfamiliar one to Americans
W.J. Astore
In my latest article for TomDispatch.com, I detail America’s lack of an antiwar movement — which is partly due to war being literally out of sight for us. Who knows, for example, of extensive U.S. bombing in Somalia and the innocents killed in that bombing? Nick Turse has a powerful article on that here. Wars are rarely covered critically in the mainstream media, and the Trump administration, even more so than previous administrations, has essentially issued blackout orders on information pertaining to U.S. wars and casualty figures.
One piece of encouraging news comes from Afghanistan, where a truce with the Taliban offers hope of an end to that disastrous war. Yet, as the New York Times reports, the reconciliation process won’t be easy:
In the second decade of this conflict, begun as an act of vengeance by the United States in 2001 and at its peak involving a force of more than 100,000 American troops, the war has increasingly fallen on the backs of young Afghans.
Over the past five years alone, about 50,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers have died fighting. The number for the Taliban is estimated to be the same if not more. The fighting has been brutal, intimate, the same forces on each side often battling each other in familiar localities over long stretches of time.
It’s relatively straightforward for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. But what about the Afghan peoples themselves and their struggles with the legacy of this brutal war?
Here’s the beginning of my article:
There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a radical plan for reshaping the Middle East and no protesters, no matter how principled or sensible or determined, were going to stop them in their march of folly. The Iraq War soon joined the Afghan invasion of 2001 as a quagmire and disaster, yet the antiwar movement died down as U.S. leaders worked to isolate Americans from news about the casualties, costs, calamities, and crimes of what was by then called “the war on terror.”
And in that they succeeded. Even though the U.S. now lives in a state of perpetual war, for most Americans it’s a peculiar form of non-war. Most of the time, those overseas conflicts are literally out of sight (and largely out of mind). Meanwhile, whatever administration is in power assures us that our attention isn’t required, nor is our approval asked for, so we carry on with our lives as if no one is being murdered in our name.
War without dire consequences poses a conundrum. In a representative democracy, waging war should require the people’s informed consent as well as their concerted mobilization. But consent is something that America’s leaders no longer want or need and, with an all-volunteer military, there’s no need to mobilize the rest of us.
Back in 2009, I argued that our military was, in fact, becoming a quasi-foreign legion, detached from the people and ready to be dispatched globally on imperial escapades that meant little to ordinary Americans. That remains true today in a country most of whose citizens have been at pains to divorce themselves and their families from military service — and who can blame them, given the atrocious results of those wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa?
Yet that divorce has come at a considerable cost. It’s left our society in a state of low-grade war fever, while accelerating an everyday version of militarism that Americans now accept as normal. A striking illustration of this: President Trump’s recent State of the Union address, which was filled with bellicose boasts about spending trillions of dollars on wars and weaponry, assassinating foreign leaders, and embracing dubious political figures to mount illegal coups (in this case in Venezuela) in the name of oil and other resources. The response: not opposition or even skepticism from the people’s representatives, but rare rapturous applause by members of both political parties, even as yet more troops were being deployed to the Middle East.
Please read the rest of my article here. Let’s do our best to stamp out war.
Last night’s debate from South Carolina had much sound and fury, signifying nothing. Early on, the moderators lost control, and the candidates (or “contestants,” as Bloomberg called them) interrupted and shouted over each other most of the night. The overall impression was a Democratic Party without a core message; the overall winner was Donald Trump, who was hardly criticized (and indeed he was praised by Bloomberg for allegedly rebuilding the military).
As usual, the mainstream media (MSM), this time CBS, came off poorly. As an old friend quipped to me, the MSM is clearly a Russian asset. The usual “gotcha” questions were aimed at Bernie: Why does Russia support you; Why do you criticize Israel — the implication being that Bernie is a self-hating Jew; Will your programs bankrupt America; Is America ready to elect a socialist; and so on.
The so-called moderates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg were given plenty of time to make their case, and no “gotcha” questions were aimed at them. Still, no candidate stood out in a positive light, which overall is a win for the front-runner, Bernie Sanders.
In fact, Bernie had a moment of courage (at least for this crowd) when he dared to criticize American foreign policy for its one-sided support of Israel as well as past interventions on the behalf of authoritarian dictators in places like Chile in 1973 as well as Iran in 1953. Naturally, he had little time to make his points, and his critique of the Saudis and their authoritarian record was drowned out. But, again, he alone of the candidates on that stage was willing to speak some unpopular truths to the American people, so kudos to him.
All night long, Bernie’s fellow “contestants” tried to paint him as a radical red. But, as Bernie himself said, what’s so radical about single-payer health care, a higher minimum wage, and free college tuition in state schools? It’s not like Bernie is calling for a government takeover of the means of production, i.e. real socialism. However, the debate moderators were not about to make any fine distinctions, or any distinctions at all, between Bernie’s sensible calls for moderate reforms to crony capitalism and rabid communism. And so the debate went nowhere.
Anyway, here’s a quick take on the seven candidates contestants:
Joe Biden: Once again, Biden came off as angry. His message, such as it is, was that we need to return to the good old days of Obama.
Mike Bloomberg: Smug, arrogant, and dishonest, Bloomberg almost blurted out that he’d bought the new 2018 Democratic class in Congress. It was his most honest moment of the night.
Pete Buttigieg: Smug, arrogant, and dishonest, Mayor Pete is a fresh-faced Ted Cruz. Lyin’ Ted — meet Lyin’ Pete.
Amy Klobuchar: She said the biggest misconception about her was that she’s boring. I’m not sure that’s a misconception.
Bernie Sanders: Passionate as ever, you can tell Bernie is fed up with these so-called debates.
Tom Steyer: The billionaire with a heart — compared to Bloomberg, at least. Steyer tried to attack Trump and mentioned climate change, but issues didn’t matter in this sad debate.
Elizabeth Warren: Once again, she nailed Bloomberg for his racism, sexism, and his failure to disclose his tax returns. She tried to position herself as the reasonable alternative to Bernie for progressive-minded Democrats, but it’s hard to see her surviving Super Tuesday.
If you missed this “debate,” count yourself fortunate.
Just before Tulsi Gabbard announced her candidacy for the presidency as a Democrat, NBC ran a smear piece that suggested Vladimir Putin and the Russians loved her. This smear was then repeated and amplified by Hillary Clinton, who suggested Gabbard was being groomed by the Kremlin to run as a third-party candidate, thereby ensuring Trump’s reelection in 2020. There was no evidence for any of these claims — none. Yet Gabbard was put on the defensive and her campaign (still ongoing) has been essentially redlined by the mainstream media.
Now it’s Bernie Sanders’s turn. Bernie is much better known than Tulsi with a much larger movement behind him, so the DNC and the mainstream media have a modified tactic: rather than smearing Bernie as a Putin puppet, they’re suggesting the Russians are boosting his candidacy without his knowledge — the end game, naturally, is Trump’s reelection. This was reported yesterday by the Washington Post and echoed today by the New York Times and other media outlets. Here’s how NBC News put it today:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., excoriated Russia on Friday after being briefed that the Kremlin is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic primary and the 2020 election.
“The intelligence community has been very clear about it — whether Trump recognizes it not, or acknowledges it or not, they did interfere in 2016,” Sanders told reporters. “The intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign right now in 2020. What I say to Mr. Putin: If elected president, trust me, you will not be interfering in American elections.”
The Washington Post reported on Friday U.S officials have briefed President Trump, other lawmakers on Capitol Hill and Sanders, who has recently become the frontrunner in the Democratic contest, that Russians are helping his campaign. The Post cited people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
When you look further into these claims, the so-called Intelligence Community (IC) is not telling us specifically how the Russians are allegedly helping Bernie. They just are.
This puts Bernie on the defensive. Already known as a “socialist” who, we’re told, visited Moscow on his honeymoon, Bernie is being forced to issue denials as well as statements against Putin. And this pleases the IC and the DNC to no end. Get Bernie talking about Russia and Putin! Force him to disavow Russian “support,” no matter how nebulous or false that support is. Associate his name with the “bad guys,” the communists, just as Mayor Bloomberg linked Bernie to communism during the last debate. “Cheap shot,” Bernie replied, but the cheap people are desperate and will do anything to win.
To the DNC, IC, and MSM, it doesn’t matter if these accusations of Russian interference are believed. What matters is shifting the narrative and thereby weakening the credibility of candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.
Anyone who criticizes or threatens the power and privileges of the military-industrial complex, the IC, and the MSM must be attacked and defeated. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake here. This is why other candidates issue no criticisms of these powerful entities. Can you recall Mayor Pete, or Joe Biden, or Amy Klobuchar, or even Elizabeth Warren saying anything truly critical about the MIC, the IC, and MSM? For the acronym-wary, that’s the military-industrial complex, the intelligence community, and the mainstream media.
Again, judge the candidates by the enemies they make. The more the powerful smear Tulsi and Bernie, the more you know they are the candidates with principles and integrity.
Bracing Views 