Is resistance futile yet?
Bernie's win in Nevada was decisive, with 47% of the vote and 22 of the 36 available delegates. MSNBC had a complete melt-down.
"Full transcript: Ninth Democratic debate in Las Vegas" - I want to see the expressions on their faces, but most people read faster than I do so maybe you prefer this. Still looking for a link to the full debate.
The big take-away from the debate, for some people, was about the feisty performance of Warren, who laid serious gloves on the centrists in the race. Mike Lux says: She's Baaack [...] Elizabeth first got a following in the progressive movement by her searing questioning of Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: people figured that if she was willing to challenge the Democratic Party's leadership, she would be willing to fight for them on the issues that mattered the most. And when she got to the Senate and was named to the Banking Committee, in her first hearing as Senator, her questioning of a witness was so devastating that the video became the first Banking Committee hearing ever to get over a million views on YouTube. She knows how to be tough. Well, that Elizabeth Warren is back, folks. Maybe with her running from behind and being written off by the pundits, she felt freed up to go back into Socrates with a machine gun mode. I hope she stays there, and that she stays in this race over the long haul. We need that toughness."
A Culinary Union boss tried to scam his workers with a flier fear-mongering over Medicare for All. It didn't work. The flier, tweeted out, got lots of pushback from union members and other defenders of M4A. Naturally, they were all called "BernieBros" and all accused of attacking "the culinary workers' union". Shamefully, Elizabeth Warren jumped onto this bandwagon, but that didn't work, either, and the union workers themselves backed Bernie and helped give him his win. "Culinary Workers Bucked Their Leadership by Backing Bernie Sanders in Nevada. Here's What They Knew."
There was a lot of misreporting of what was going on when the Democratic Party reform committee was working on the new rules, so it's always interesting hearing about it first-hand from Nomiki Konst. "Why does every candidate but Bernie want to keep Superdelegates?"
Also, Nomiki explaining what's wrong with Joy Reid's story about the Platform Committee and the Reform Commission.
And now that Russiagate is being aimed at Bernie, Nomiki's Dispelling Russia-gate: "Bernie Edition" with Aaron Mate is very useful and contains some interesting surprises.
Sam Seder interviews Thom Hartmann on The Hidden History of the War on Voting, and how they're winning that war now. Keep checking your registration regularly, folks!
According to Newsweek, "76 Percent Of Democrats Say They'd Vote For A Socialist For President, New Poll Shows [...] When it came to candidates who were socialists, Democrats were most likely to answer that they would vote for them. Seventy-six percent of Democrats said they would back a socialist candidate, compared with 17 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents." The interesting thing is that other polling shows that the percentage of indies who say they would vote for the specific person called Bernie Sanders show he is more popular than this generic socialist is.
McGovern concern trolling is popular again. People forget that no one could have beaten Nixon in 1972. He was a popular president with 60% approval ratings. The economy was genuinely good, because Nixon was no austerian and spent money in the real economy. And George Meany, the powerful union boss, hated McGovern and vowed to make him lose, thus restoring his own power in the party. Meanwhile, Vietnam was the Democrats' war and Nixon claimed that he had a plan to get out. The war created a huge split within the party that hugely weakened it. This article was written before Biden's poor showing in the primaries, but it's still relevant. "Bernie Isn't McGovern. Biden Might Be Humphrey. [...] But the Democrats, as usual, have learned all the wrong lessons from history. McGovern didn't lose because he was too left-wing. He lost because he was confronting a very popular and savvy incumbent in Richard Milhouse Nixon. Even more importantly, McGovern and his left-wing politics rose to the top because the party was confronting a devastating crisis over its prosecution of the Vietnam War. The fissures the war carved in the party made politics as usual an impossibility."
And Robert Kuttner, "Sanders Is Not Another McGovern. I Know — I Worked on McGovern's Campaign. [...] Jim Hightower, a left-wing Democrat who won statewide office in Texas, has noted that within the white middle class, there are more downwardly mobile angry voters who would be more attracted to Sanders's call to shake up the system in a progressive direction than a return to normalcy. The status quo ante doesn't have that much appeal."
The H8%, again with help from Liz Warren, has been pretending Sanders didn't release his health records. Actually, that's a lie.
Old videos of Bernie Sanders allegedly (but not really) praising Fidel Castro are being trotted out again, but "As a Young Cuban-American, I'm Defending Bernie Sanders (OPINION): I am the son of Cuban immigrants. I grew up in South Florida. My grandfather was a political prisoner under Fidel Castro in 1961. He passed away in 2017, and before my grandfather left us, I sat down with him to listen to his stories about his time in the prison camp. That was a deeply emotional conversation, and a day like today makes those memories flash back into my mind. These disingenuous attacks against Bernie Sanders have been deeply offensive and hurtful, as I see these political hacks using my grandfather's suffering and that of other political prisoners to advance their cynical political agenda."
Jesse Jackson in The Chicago Sun Times, "The important word in 'democratic socialism' is 'democratic': Here's the reality. The important word in 'democratic socialism' isn't socialism, it's democratic. Sanders isn't talking about making America into Cuba or Venezuela; he's talking about extending social guarantees like those offered in most other advanced industrial states, invoking Denmark or Sweden. These countries have universal health care at lower cost, paid family leave, guaranteed paid vacations, higher minimum wages, more generous public retirement programs. They also have vibrant and competitive economies, lower inequality, less poverty, and higher life expectancies. Sanders is seeking a popular mandate from voters to move in this direction."
"Why Does Mainstream Media Keep Attacking Bernie Sanders as He Wins?" It really amazing watching some of the derangement - especially major media figures insisting that Bernie Sanders would cheer if commies executed him in Central Park, comparing his supporters to brown shirts, and insisting that winning a primary was like the Nazis taking over France. Some of these people seriously need mental help.
Let's see what Fred Hiatt did this time to earn another America's Worst Editorial Page Editor award from Atrios. "A line-by-line response to Fred Hiatt's pro-oil, anti-Sanders climate op-ed." Fred thinks Sanders is as "unrealistic" as Trump because he doesn't think that a carbon tax, by itself, will solve climate change.
"How Money Works: Why we can pay for nice things!" If only every householder could get the kind of attention the stock market gets from the Fed when they had money troubles....
Vanity Fair, "Get A Grip, Bernie Bed-Wetters: His Message And Media Machine Could Be Potent Against Trump: Socialist Schmocialist. Sanders has a set of political assets—celebrity, fundraising power, committed foot soldiers, media sophistication, relentless consistency—possessed by no one else in the race."
In In These Times, "Barbara Ehrenreich on Her Endorsement of Bernie Sanders and Why Socialism Should Be Fun: In a sprawling interview, Ehrenreich explains why Sanders is her choice for 2020, the joys of radical politics and why there's no time to wait on capitalism to solve the climate crisis."
"Mayor Pete's Health Care Plan Is a Joke: Pete Buttigieg can't stop attacking Medicare for All. But his own health care plan is so bad it borders on the comical." No one ever asks him how he'll pay for it, either, which is pretty rich since he hectored Warren mercilessly about how she'd pay for hers. But the pay-for pales into insignificance in light of the other problems. "This is, in a nutshell, what is wrong with 'technocracy' as it has come to be known in the discourse. What masquerades as technical competence and a light touch is, more often than not, really science fantasy delusions about what a state can actually successfully administer." The extra-large version of the individual mandate doesn't seem like a particularly smart move, either, seeing has how unpopular it already was. And his plan is actually more expensive than Medicare For All, which raises the question of why we should settle for that. It's not as if any public option plan is going to thrill the insurance industry, given how many customers they would still lose, so they will still fight hard against it.
"Opinion: Bernie Sanders isn't a radical — he's a pragmatist who fights to un-rig the system: Sanders would use both markets and government to reverse the upward redistribution of income to the already rich: As Bernie Sanders continues to increase his standing in the Democratic primary, and his opponents in both parties feel the pain, there is an effort to paint him as an extremist of some sort. Someone who might even lose to Trump because of this alleged 'radicalism.' But it's not that easy to make the case on the basis of facts. He has a 40-year track record as a politician. The things he is saying now are mostly what he has shouted from the mountain tops for pretty much the whole time. The main difference is that now, other Democratic politicians have joined him: on a $15 minimum wage, student-debt relief, free tuition at public universities, expanding Social Security, reducing income inequality, and some even on Medicare for All. His actions speak even more consistently than his words: he understands that politics is about compromise. He fights hard for what he has promised to voters, but then takes the best deal he can win if it will advance the ball down the field, and prepares to fight again the next day."
David Dayen, "Tom Perez Should Resign, Preferably Today: Tom Perez should never have been DNC chair. He was used as part of a proxy war between Barack Obama's faction of the establishment and the rest of the party, which was fully ready to move on after the 2016 mess. Both Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer had embraced Keith Ellison, one of Bernie Sanders's top surrogates in 2016, for the position, a show of unity that might have helped rebuild broken bonds within the party. Just as Howard Dean's elevation to DNC chair in 2005 brought insurgents within a broader circle of power, Ellison's victory would have at least attempted a rough union between the Sanders and Clinton forces, and given the party's left wing more of a shot at creating a strong and legitimate message to counter Donald Trump. Obama couldn't handle it. He pressured Perez, who was musing about running for governor in Maryland, into the race, and bore down on the establishment to break with the Ellison unity shtick and accept his preferred candidate. This eventually succeeded, with the help of a party coup in Puerto Rico that delivered Perez all of that delegation's votes. Obama, now a movie studio boss and occasional public speaker, had no personal reason to force Perez on the party. The most logical reading of his rationale would be that he did it for the blob, the network of consultants, strategists, pollsters, lobbyists, policy mandarins, and media figures for whom politics is their business. They didn't want the spigot to close on the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow through campaigns, and they needed to eliminate the threat of a gatekeeper like Ellison, who might have different ideas. So Perez was installed. The disastrous past week of Democratic politics is the result, deeply damaging the perceived competence of a party that is attempting to ask the American people to put them back in power to engage in activist government. The Iowa results weren't just one snafu but part of a pattern of self-dealing and stupidity within a party elite that's more concerned with staying in power than taking power."
"Emily's List Weighs In Hard In Texas Primary — Against A Leading Woman In The Trump Resistance: EMILY'S LIST IS dumping big money into an upcoming Democratic primary in Texas's 7th Congressional District, pitting the women's group against a pro-choice woman who was, in the months after the election of Donald Trump, a face of the resistance. Laura Moser, as creator of the popular text-messaging program Daily Action, gave hundreds of thousands of despondent progressives a single political action to take each day. Her project was emblematic of the new energy forming around the movement against Trump, led primarily by women and often by moms. (Moser is both.) It was those types of activists EMILY's List spent 2017 encouraging to make first-time bids for office. But that doesn't mean EMILY's List will get behind them. Also running is Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a corporate lawyer who is backed by Houston mega-donor Sherry Merfish. EMILY's List endorsed her in November."
"Michael Bloomberg Is Legitimately Dangerous [...] Bloomberg is poaching staffers from smaller races, paying well above market rate and offering huge perks like housing and free laptops and iPhones. What's really terrible is that it sounds like he's repeatedly done this right before those candidates' elections or other critical points in their campaign, 'hobbling their political program,' as one operative put it, and leading to the election of Republican opponents."
"When Bloomberg News's Reporting on China Was Challenged, Bloomberg Tried to Ruin Me for Speaking Out: I AM ONE of the many women Mike Bloomberg's company tried to silence through nondisclosure agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg. But my story shows the lengths that the Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg's company, Bloomberg LP, is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its lawyers threatened to devastate my family financially if I didn't sign an NDA silencing me about how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of Chinese Communist Party leaders. It was only when I hired Edward Snowden's lawyers in Hong Kong that Bloomberg LP eventually called off their hounds after many attempts to intimidate me."
"Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils [...] Does this sound like a guy who would do anything substantial to reverse Trump's worst policies? If we're lucky, he might reverse the Muslim ban and let a few people out of the CBP camps. If we're not, he'll implement a much quieter and more effective version of the same policies, and partisan Democrats will reverse-engineer justifications for these being somehow necessary (or just ignore them, as they did during the Obama years). Recall that Bloomberg once argued that every Social Security card should have fingerprints so unauthorized immigrants would be unable to get jobs. [...] Given his wretched politics, even Bloomberg's superior competence is a mark against him. Right now one tiny silver lining of the Trump administration is that the people trying to commit atrocities through the federal bureaucracy are so inept they keep fumbling the legal procedures and getting stopped in the courts. Bloomberg is sure to appoint competent authoritarian maniacs."
"A Republican Plutocrat Tries To Buy The Democratic Nomination: No Democrat should consider Michael Bloomberg as a candidate. The idea of Michael Bloomberg becoming the Democratic presidential nominee should be too absurd to even consider seriously. For one thing, he is a conservative who openly believes that the poor should be ruled over by the super-rich and is trying to buy the nomination outright. He has a history of saying monstrously offensive things about women and transgender people, and oversaw an infamous racist police regime that terrorized Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. If he did somehow manage to spend his way to the nomination, bypassing the democratic process, it would be such an outrage—and so demoralizing to the Democratic base—that it would guarantee Trump's reelection. If the choice were between two sexist billionaires who hate the poor, how many young people would drag themselves to the polls to support 'our side's' billionaire? It would permanently disillusion an entire generation and vindicate every cynical theory of politics as a domain where money rules absolutely. But, troublingly, Michael Bloomberg's candidacy has not entirely been laughed out of the room. [...] "
In USA Today, Stop Bloomberg. He's showing billionaires how to buy the presidency and it's dangerous. How far would you go to get rid of President Donald Trump? Would you give up any pretense that we live in a democracy of the people, by the people, for the people? That seems to be the bet Mike Bloomberg is making. [...] While it might feel comforting to have our self-made real billionaire beat the spray tan off the fake mismanager of his daddy's wealth, here's the spoiler: You don't have any billionaires; they have you. And once they figure out it's easier and cheaper to buy the presidency than an NFL franchise, the excesses of Trump — or even King George III — will seem trivial in comparison."
Peter Beinart in The Atlantic, "Regular Democrats Just Aren't Worried About Bernie: Many in the party elite remain deeply skeptical of the Vermont senator, but rank-and-file voters do not share that hesitation. [...] Judging by media coverage and the comments of party luminaries, you might think Democrats are bitterly polarized over Bernie Sanders's presidential bid. Last month, Hillary Clinton declared that 'nobody likes' the Vermont senator. Last week, James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, said he was 'scared to death' of the Sanders campaign, which he likened to 'a cult.' Since the beginning of the year, news organization after news organization has speculated that Sanders's success may set off a Democratic 'civil war.' But polls of Democratic voters show nothing of the sort. Among ordinary Democrats, Sanders is strikingly popular, even with voters who favor his rivals. He sparks less opposition—in some cases far less—than his major competitors. On paper, he appears well positioned to unify the party should he win its presidential nomination. So why all the talk of civil war? Because Sanders is far more divisive among Democratic elites—who prize institutional loyalty and ideological moderation—than Democratic voters. The danger is that by projecting their own anxieties onto rank-and-file Democrats, party insiders are exaggerating the risk of a schism if Sanders wins the nomination, and overlooking the greater risk that the party could fracture if they engineer his defeat."
"AT&T is doing exactly what it told Congress it wouldn't do with Time Warner: AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be 'irrational business behavior.'" And no one is surprised — they asked for it, they got it, and of course they asked for it because they planned to use it.
"AIPAC Is Helping Fund Anti-Bernie Sanders Super PAC Ads In Nevada: THE AMERICAN ISRAEL Public Affairs Committee is helping to fund a Super PAC launching attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on Saturday, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement. The ads are being run by a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, founded by longtime AIPAC strategist Mark Mellman. The Nevada attack ads, which will air in media markets in Reno and Las Vegas, follow a similar spending blitz by DMFI ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Like the ads that aired in Iowa, the Nevada ads will attack Sanders on the idea that he's not electable, Mediaite reported."
"Feminist Scholar Barbara Smith on Identity Politics & Why She Supports Bernie Sanders for President [...] The reason I support Bernie Sanders is because of the fact that he has a theory of change. You know, that's a popular phrase now. He has an understanding of like why things are not working in our U.S. society, and he has ideas like Medicare and healthcare for all, like changing the criminal justice system, like having access to college for all young people and not just for those who are privileged. He has good ideas about how we can actually fulfill that promise that the Founders supposedly put out, in their very flawed way, since they didn't really include people like me. They didn't include women. They didn't include black people. But they had some great ideas about freedom and justice for all. He has the plans. He has the passion and the compassion. He has the base of support, which is much more diverse than, I think, any of the other candidate at this point."
In The New Republic, "The Obsolete Politics of James Carville: The Clinton-era avatar of respectable Democratic politics continues to confuse elite opinion with public sentiment [...] Times change, however. At present, Carville represents much that's wrong with the Democratic Party—its refusal to learn from its mistakes; its obsession with appealing to wealthy suburbanites while telling its traditional base of the working class and people of color to suck it up because the Republicans are worse; its preference for the performative over the substantive (Pelosi ripped the speech!); and, above all else, the belief that 'operatives' and 'consultants' know the pulse of the nation and can soothsay the will of the common man. [...] Carville is the most skilled practitioner of a hobby common to his social and political stratum: ascribing to 'the working class'—or simply 'voters'—a resistance to any kind of change that inconveniences people like James Carville. Simply put, his performances seek to demonstrate the remarkable coincidence that 'voters,' particularly of the central casting Average Joe variety, dislike all of the same things he dislikes."
Everyone is posting this study but just for the record, "Medicare For All Would Save $450 Billion Annually While Preventing 68,000 Deaths, New Study Shows: The Medicare For All plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year and would prevent tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, a new study shows. The analysis, conducted by researchers at Yale University, the University of Florida and the University of Maryland, found that transitioning the U.S. to a single-payer health care system would actually save an estimated $450 billion each year, with the average American family seeing about $2,400 in annual savings. The research, which was published Saturday in the medical journal The Lancet, also found that Medicare for all would prevent about 68,000 unnecessary deaths per year. 'Our study is actually conservative because it doesn't factor in the lives saved among underinsured Americans—which includes anyone who nominally has insurance but has postponed or foregone care because they couldn't afford the copays and deductibles,' Alison Galvani, an author of the study and researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health, told Newsweek."
Dday, "Welcome to the Bullshit Economy: The Iowa caucus disaster is a function of a broken economic structure that rewards con artistry over competence. [...] But the spectacle has highlighted a much more consequential problem in America, something I have called the bullshit economy. We've seen elements of it all over the place. When MoviePass offers unlimited screenings for ten bucks a month, when Uber gets an $82 billion valuation for a low-margin taxi business it has never made a dime on, when WeWork implodes after the slightest scrutiny into its numbers, that's the bullshit economy at work. We have seen the farcical bullshit of Juicero and the consequential bullshit of Theranos. Even at the highest levels, bullshit pervades, in fraudulent advertising metrics and fake numbers peddled to convince the world to siphon cash through Facebook and Google's dominant platforms. So many counterfeit goods pass through Amazon that the site might get listed on the U.S. Trade Representative Office's 'Notorious Markets' list. We have endured the more comprehensive bullshit of the financial industry marking corporate progress by manipulated stock prices and air rather than productive advances for society. We had a financial crisis based on bullshitters telling us housing prices would endlessly rise. We have the bullshit of the private equity industry extracting value from companies through the skillful use of debt and other financial engineering, without regard for whether the companies succeed or fail."
Also Dday, "Michael Bloomberg and the Dangers of 'Any Blue Will Do' Politics: The presidential candidate is a mirror image of Trump. [...] And I'm going to say something controversial. There has been plenty of conjecture over whether a Trump-like figure could take over the Democratic Party. And I would say with Bloomberg that we're about to find out. The cries of 'Bloomberg is not Trump!' will rain down on me now, and, of course, he's not. But there are a disturbing number of similarities. We have a figure without connections or the same value system as the party he seeks to represent, with racial and sexist skeletons in his closet, and a penchant for subverting democracy and showing contempt toward the rule of law. Democrats who are acting as pundits and thinking that Bloomberg offers the most certain close to the Trump era are playing with a stick of dynamite. [...] Too many Democrats have spent the Trump era looking for a Republican 'daddy' to rein in the toddler-in-chief and restore both Republican and American decency. From John Bolton and James Mattis to Jeff Flake and Mitt Romney, surely some conservative with courage and self-respect would step up and straighten things out. I think it would be a disaster to extend this delusion by actually nominating a Republican to lead the Democratic Party."
In which George Soros writes a letter to The Financial Times demanding the temporary removal of Zuckerberg and Sandberg until the general election is over.
"'Utterly Shameful': Pelosi Slammed for Boosting Koch-Backed Texas Democrat Over Progressive Challenger Jessica Cisneros: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stirred outrage Saturday by visiting Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar at his campaign headquarters in Laredo and voicing hope that the Koch-backed, anti-choice Democrat will ride to a "resounding victory" over progressive primary challenger Jessica Cisneros on March 3." Also, why is his SuperPAC called "Voter Protection Project" instead of Cuueller SuperPAC?
FAIR, "Factchecking NPR's Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders" - My favorite bit is this one: "As the two journalists continued to chat, Liasson took closer aim at Sanders, stating with bold authority that 'you don't even need to do the research part of oppo-research because his policy positions are opposed by big majorities of Americans.' Clearly, these journalists did little to no research preparing for this important broadcast. So many polls have documented what the public thinks about Sanders' policy positions, and the evidence is overwhelming: From a wealth tax to minimum wage, they are extremely popular."
"Joe Biden, Ukraine, nazis, John Conyers and the fall election" — Russ Bellant, an award winning journalist and author of Old Nazis in the Republican Party, says that the story of the Bidens and Ukrain is a lot more complicated than we know, and there are no good guys.
Oh, my The Washington Post admits, "Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to suspect fraud. Bolivians will hold a new election in May — without ousted president Evo Morales As Bolivia gears up for a do-over election on May 3, the country remains in unrest following the Nov. 10 military-backed coup against incumbent President Evo Morales. A quick recap: Morales claimed victory in October's election, but the opposition protested about what it called electoral fraud. A Nov. 10 report from the Organization of American States (OAS) noted election irregularities, which 'leads the technical audit team to question the integrity of the results of the election on October 20.' Police then joined the protests and Morales sought asylum in Mexico. The military-installed government charged Morales with sedition and terrorism. A European Union monitoring report noted that some 40 former electoral officials have been arrested and face criminal charges of sedition and subversion, and 35 people have died in the post-electoral conflict. The highest-polling presidential candidate, a member of Morales's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS-IPSP) party, has received a summons from prosecutors for undisclosed crimes, a move some analysts suspect was aimed to keep him off the ballot. The media has largely reported the allegations of fraud as fact. And many commentators have justified the coup as a response to electoral fraud by MAS-IPSP. However, as specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia's October election."
RIP: Derek Fowlds, 82: "The actor Derek Fowlds, who has died aged 82, enjoyed long-running stardom on the small screen in popular TV shows ranging from children's programmes to sitcom and drama." And most vividly remembered by me from Yes, Minister.
RIP: "Legendary Rock Poster Artist Bonnie MacLean Dead at 80." Those iconic Fillmore posters were instantly recognizable to us all.
This article is by a career Bernie-hating journalist — it's what he does — but it's pretty clear that Bernie had an important role is preventing Obama from passing chained CPI, and thus saving many lives and homes. "The Hidden History of Sanders's Plot to Primary Obama." I liked Atrios' take on the portrayal of the argument between Obama and Sanders over chained CPI when Obama responded to Sanders' opposition by saying, "'You're acting like I'm the enemy.' Obama was trying to say, 'I hear you that you want this revolution, but explain to me, how's this going to happen?" Atrios: "Not cutting Social Security is a fucking revolution." Luckily, Sanders' "revolution" won.
Just for the record, Glenn Greenwald answered the whole BernieBro scam four years ago with "The 'Bernie Bros' Narrative: a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism and Social Activism."
"Norway Is Far More Socialist Than Venezuela." Of course, our right-wing pundits are happy to make bold statements about what makes Venezuela "socialist" without actually making the comparison with other countries.
"How Bernie Sanders Should Talk About Venezuela and US Intervention in Latin America [...] As mayor of Burlington in the 1980s he found time in between initiatives to build affordable housing and transition the Burlington Electric Department to renewable energy to speak out against Reagan's dirty war in Nicaragua. He needs to draw on that understanding now, using silly red-baiting questions about Venezuela as an opportunity to talk about how and why he would pursue a foreign policy as president that would be fundamentally different from that of any of his predecessors."
"'Bernie or Bust' Voters Have a Point [...] Yes, it sounds like ugly hostage taking—not a brilliant persuasive strategy but a crude ego-boosting exercise for a group of leftists who can't resist the impulse to lord some power over an electorate that doesn't normally consider them relevant. But that's exactly what makes it so normal, even understandable, in a depressing 'we're all human' sort of way. Because the truth is this: Every threat these Sanders stans are explicitly making is one the venerated Centrist Swing Voter makes implicitly—and isn't judged for. The centrist never even has to articulate his threat. The media narrates it for him. 'What does the swing voter want?' is the kind of question that rescues this brand of voter from owning or even admitting any moral consequences at all. The question is framed as sensible, and so is its subject. The swing voter—which, let's be clear, is diminishing in this political landscape—is typically treated as the antithesis of a Bernie stan: as a rational and passionless subject (as if contemplating just not voting in an election were a morally neutral choice). That the swing voter is arguably worse than the Bernie or Bust crew—in that in lieu of just staying home and not voting at all, he might actually vote for the other guy—doesn't even register. That's how accustomed we all are to being held hostage to the centrist concerns. As for leftists, who are undeniably real? Well, the Democratic machine has never wondered what they thought; it's simply taken them for granted. After all, who else are they going to vote for?"
"Make America Radical Again: A Conversation with Harvey J. Kaye [...] Harvey Kaye: We're confronting not only the Trump Administration and a truly corrupt and reactionary political regime, but also 45 years of corporate class war from above — a class war that is not just economic for it involves assaults on the rights of workers, women, and people of color — a class war that not only conservative and reactionary Republicans but also neoliberal Democrats have advanced. All of which led to the Trump presidency... And we now face a crisis...."
"The Problem with Alinsky: Saul Alinsky's work formed the intellectual basis of what we call community organising today — but his ideas were deeply hostile to the Left, and should be treated with caution."
Joanna Russ' papers are online, including her correspondence with James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon.
Just in case you didn't have enough podcasts to listen to, let me recommend You're Wrong About, which tells you a lot of things you didn't know about our cultural stories and how most people have it all wrong.
"Opinion Rhapsody" is pretty well done.
"Someone Built a Distraction-Free Cellphone With a Working Old-School Rotary Dial."
Peter Parker finally gets his driver's licence.
00:51 GMT comment
Now I know you're not the only starfish in the sea
Bernie won New Hampshire, but it doesn't seem he gets more delegates out of it than second-placer Buttigieg. Klobuchar obviously got some mileage from all that media love, leaving Warren and Biden distant fourth and fifth, respectively. Meanwhile, Yang dropped out and Tom Steyer appears to be teetering on the brink. (Naturally, the headlines are all about Amy and Pete, not Bernie's win.)
It's still unclear who officially won the Democratic caucuses in Iowa, despite Sanders having more votes in both the first and second round. Buttigieg declared victory first with 0% reporting, then later with 38% of the vote still unreported and the news media seemed happy to let him, but even with the convoluted reasoning they use, his lead was drying up as a few more of the late-reporters started coming in. And then Tom Perez said they needed a re-caucus. The facts we have: Sanders got the most votes. But doesn't get the most delegates.
R.J. Eskow, "Iowa Wasn't a Technology Failure. It Was a Failure of Democratic Values. This kind of behavior undercuts the Democratic Party politically. To put it in today's corporatized vocabulary, "democracy" is the party's brand—and lately they've been trashing it. [...] On its face, the level of incompetence leading up to the Iowa fiasco seems almost incomprehensible. First, a party that has spent the last three years talking about data hacking took a manual process and shifted it onto on one of the most hackable devices in the world: a cell phone. Then, having created a vulnerability where there had been none, it spent more money protecting itself from this self-created vulnerability. The technology in question was then rushed into production without proper training for its users, when the stakes for democracy were high—and the whole world was watching. Crazy, right? Actually, no. It all makes perfect sense—once you realized that the software was only a secondary concern for the people involved. Max Blumenthal reports that Shadow Inc, the software company that produced the app, had ties to the Buttigieg campaign both as a contractor and (through its top funder) as a donor. ( 'Shadow Inc'? Really? Were all the best evil names taken, like 'Spectre' and 'Hydra?') Shadow Inc's website says that its employees are veterans of the Clinton and Obama campaigns, as well as the DNC—although, like the Men in Black, it refuses to identify its operatives by name. This reinforces the sense of an insider clique with an interest in the caucus results, rather than a team of the most qualified tech experts. As Blumenthal observes, 'the conspiracy theories write themselves.' The technology failed, but the deal-making worked just fine. Its underlying purpose wasn't to produce an app, or any other product. The deal was the product. The app was merely the residue of an agreed-upon cash transfer among insiders. Its functionality was a secondary concern."
"Sam Seder RIPS Into Iowa Caucus App and Democratic Swamp." — You could say we got Mooked again.
FiveThirtyEight shows Sanders now leading nationally, though RealClearPolitics tells a different story with Biden still slightly ahead of him, and Bloomberg ahead of him.
It's worth right-clicking this link for an incognito window to see just how dangerous McKinsey Pete really is: "Buttigieg health plan hinges on 'supercharged' version of unpopular Obamacare mandate: Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg sells his health-care plan as a moderate alternative to Medicare-for-all — offering a government-sponsored plan to those who want it while letting others keep their private and employer-sponsored insurance. But the South Bend, Ind., mayor's plan has a catch: If you choose not to enroll in any coverage, you could still be on the hook for thousands of dollars. Under Buttigieg's proposal, Americans who lack coverage would be automatically enrolled in the government plan, potentially saddling them with a big bill at the end of the year for 'retroactive' coverage. [...] 'Instead of paying a $695 fine at the end of the year for being uninsured, you are hit with a bill to pay an entire year of premiums that could be ten times that amount,' he said. 'This will be a political nightmare.'"
Joseph Stiglitz, "The Truth About the Trump Economy." Wages are still low, Americans are dying of "diseases of despair" in record numbers, but the Democrats, for some reason, let Trump go on crowing about his "great" economy as if it were true. I wonder why that is?
"Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump in polls, even when you remind people he's a socialist" - being called a socialist in polls doesn't seem to hurt Sanders much - maybe even less than being called a Democrat.
At The Toledo Blade, recognition that Trump will have a hard time getting under Sanders' skin, "How Bernie Sanders hangs in: THE BIGGEST national political story of the holidays was a sleeper: the resilience of Bernie Sanders. After flirtations with various new flavors and saviors — Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, to name two — the two old white guys are still standing and, in polling terms, stronger than ever. Even the promise of Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg has faded. But whereas Joe Biden seems permanently diminished by his own verbal and intellectual confusion and by his son's self-dealing, Bernie is getting stronger."
"'We Will Not Be Intimidated': Journalist Glenn Greenwald Defiant After Being Charged With Cybercrimes By Right-Wing Bolsonaro Brazilian Government: Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit back after being charged with cybercrimes by Brazilian authorities Tuesday in connection to his reporting on corruption in the country, saying he would fight to defend the right to a free press and his right to report the truth. [...] The move to charge Greenwald by the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro was quickly and forcefully condemned by progressives and journalists around the world. [...] Prosecutors claim that Greenwald—who has lived in Brazil with his husband, David Miranda, for many years—is at the center of a "criminal conspiracy" to hack cellphones of government officials."
Tom Perez ensures tilted scales by nominating staunch anti-Bernie people to the 2020 Democratic National Convention committees. Have a look at who those people are.
The New Republic, "Tom Perez Stacks the DNC Deck Against Progressives: A rogues' gallery of influence-peddlers and insider power brokers will run the party's powerful convention committees.." I think what irritates me most is remembering all those people who insisted that we shouldn't be upset about how Perez was inserted into the race against Ellison because after all the head of the DNC has no power to do anything.
The DNC changed the rules for the debates to allow a Republican, Michael Bloomberg, to participate. This inspired The Onion, "DNC Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop Sanders [...] 'He's obviously not our first choice, but Trump has a track record of winning elections, not to mention he does well with the conservative voters we'll need to swing some red states blue—if that's who we need to ask to ensure Bernie doesn't win, we'll do it,' said DNC chairman Tom Perez, who had circled Trump's name on a white board listing dozens of potential candidates the party could try to convince to jump into the Democratic Party primaries in order to obstruct a Sanders nomination."
"The Stop Bernie Movement Is Inherently Anti-American," but one thing I like about the Stop Bernie movement is that they have ads that probably convince more normal people to vote for him.
"Why the centrist extremists are an incredibly dangerous political animal" — mainly because they have a constituency of about 3.8% of the population and keep trying to pretend they are the entire voting public except for a few "extremist crackpots, when in fact those "extremists" make up nearly three-quarters of the electorate.
The Onion, "Liberals Say Sanders's Acceptance Of Rogan Endorsement Sends Dangerous Message He Trying To Win Election [...] Griffin added that it was even more disturbing that Sanders would attempt this during an election year."
End of Blame Game: Sanders (and His Supporters) Helped Hillary Win Popular Vote in 2016: Sanders voters were an indispensable contribution to her popular vote tallies. [...] If Sanders voters hadn't voted for Clinton, she would have lost. Badly. Not just the national popular vote either.....Clinton would have lost all the states she lost anyway but by larger margins, and would have also lost New Hampshire, New Mexico and Minnesota by even the more expansive figure, Virginia"
"Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon. Don't buy it: The real issue of 'representation' isn't that there aren't enough powerful women. It's that what is represented as feminism is actually corporatism."
She has actually vaguely walked back on what the headline here is, but it's really not about that, anyway, but about the dishonestly of Clinton's claims. "Hillary Clinton Won't Commit to Endorsing Sanders If He Wins Nomination [...] It is true that Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for years and that Jeff Merkley was the only senator to endorse him in the 2016 primary. But everything else Clinton says here is false. Eight members of Congress have endorsed the Vermont senator this cycle, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and three of the House's most prominent first-term congresswomen. The fact that these lawmakers have rallied to Sanders's side — despite the presence of another viable progressive candidate in the race — suggests that they have a high-level of interest in working with him." [...] The notion that Sanders 'got nothing done' over his long tenure in Washington is also untrue. During his 16 years in the House, Sanders passed more amendments than any other member of Congress, shoehorning small progressive wins into must-pass legislation." The come-back to this is always some variation on, "Oh, just amendments. Anybody could do that." They never realize that this raises the question: Why didn't they? Why did Bernie Sanders have to be the one to write and get passed over 90 amendments? Why didn't Hillary Clinton write and pass even one amendment? Bernie wrote amendments and got a lot of good things done - and they didn't. Why is that?
"Key House Democrat says Perez must go: 'He doesn't lead on anything': A top Democratic voice on election reform is calling for the ouster of Tom Perez, the powerful chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) who has come under fire following the Iowa caucuses. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee's subpanel on elections, said Perez has failed to take responsibility for the Iowa vote-counting debacle as it unfolded this week, instead shifting blame on lower-ranking party leaders in Des Moines. [...] Fudge, the former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, also accused Perez of neglecting DNC promises to diversify the organization with more minority leaders, citing as an example the DNC's recent personnel shake up in Milwaukee, where the Democrats are set to hold their convention in July. [...] Fudge also went after Perez over reports that the DNC had approved — and later retracted — a lucrative exit package for the chairman and two of his top deputies."
You know, I can't help the feeling that Matt Yglesias is starting to feel the Bern. "Bernie Sanders showed us he's a very skilled politician: He's a much savvier operator than the establishment gives him credit for."
RIP: "Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin creator MC Beaton dies aged 83 Marion Chesney Gibbons, who wrote under the pseudonym MC Beaton, was the prolific author of the Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin crime novels." - I never read the books, but I loved the TV show and, of course, that's where we discovered Robert Carlyle.
RIP: Kirk Douglas at 103: "No actor now would dare to perform with the zest and belief that drove him. In Douglas, we can recognise a kind of acting that seems as antique, as 'period', precious and charming as the way the Gish sisters fluttered their hands and widened their eyes in the silent era. No one now is capable of the fun that Douglas had, or all the conviction he brought to good work and garbage alike. But he was Kirk Douglas — and others were not."
Robert Kuttner in The American Prospect, "Was Putin Inevitable?: How policy blunders under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush helped bring about a post-communist Russia hostile to democracy, free markets, and the West [...] The Western officials who inflicted raw, uncushioned shock therapy on Russia's economy and needlessly treated Russia as a defeated enemy rather than a new security partner virtually invited a nationalist reaction likely to produce a Vladimir Putin or someone like him. This observation doesn't make Putin a good guy. Quite the contrary: He is a thug, an autocrat, and an ally of kleptocrats. But the history shows that the twin conceits of America as sole superpower and abrupt marketization as the cure for communism interacted to create a needless catastrophe that ranks with the Treaty of Versailles. The fact that an American president has been enlisted as Putin's agent only deepens the disaster. The rise of Hitler, at least, paralleled the ascent of Roosevelt."
"Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton's Five Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives [...] Clinton never had a really great relationship with workers' organizations, but the worst thing Clinton he did to them was NAFTA. There were many trade agreements, of course, but NAFTA was the one that mattered, both because it was the first one and because labor put everything into stopping it. Indeed labor had stopped it when George H. W. Bush tried to get it through Congress. Clinton got it done, however, with a little muscle and a vast fog of preposterous claims about how NAFTA would increase exports and manufacturing employment. His admirers saw NAFTA as his 'finest hour,; because he had stood up to a traditional Democratic constituency. What an achievement. NAFTA handed employers all over America the ultimate weapon against workers: They could now credibly threaten to pick up and leave at the slightest show of worker backbone — and they make such threats all the time now."
Thom Hartmann, "The Republican Party has been running a long con on America since Reagan's inauguration, and somehow our nation's media has missed it — even though it was announced in The Wall Street Journal in the 1970s and the GOP has clung tenaciously to it ever since.: This scam has been killing wages and enriching billionaires for decades [...] First, when Republicans control the federal government, and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results — it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the 'tax-cut Santa Claus.' Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how 'our children will have to pay for it!' and 'we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!' This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus."
"2 truths and 31 lies Joe Biden has told about his work in the Civil Rights Movement: Since the early 1970s, Joe Biden has been a serial liar when it comes to his "work" in the Civil Rights Movement. It's the equivalent of stolen valor and is fundamentally disqualifying. [...] Temporarily, Joe Biden paid a price for most of those lies, but was never fully held to account for the worst of them all. On the backs of people who actually paid an enormous price for being activists and organizers in the Civil Rights Movement, Joe Biden created a completely false narrative of his work and contributions to the movement that persists to this very day. Instead of plagiarized speeches, he was plagiarizing details about his actual life. He not only told these lies in previous generations, they have now fully returned to his current stump speeches in churches and venues around the country as if he never acknowledged and apologized for them in the past. It's shameful. Below is a full accounting of every lie Joe Biden has told about his work in the Civil Rights Movement. First, though, we must begin with two truths."
"Ep. 10: Reconsidering Ralph (feat. Ralph Nader) ["RUMBLE with Michael Moore" podcast]" - in which Michael recalls asking Al Gore if he blamed Nader for his loss, and Gore said, "Absolutely not. I blame me."
Nick Hanauer's Pitchfork Economics: "How Neoliberalism Captured Democrats (With James Kwak)" Recommended.
"The Enemies of Truth: What is George Packer so afraid of?" This is a marvelous essay about the distinction between self-important journalists who think they're too good to take criticism from their readers and journalists who actually try to get the job done. "As Packer reminds us, Hitchens once said that 'views do not really count.' 'It matters not what you think,' he said, 'but how you think.' The remark is important because it is wrong. The views counted a great deal to the Iraqis. By the time the bombs fell, it mattered little how many strokes of the chin sent them down. And that is why a writer's ultimate obligation isn't to any particular mode of discourse, but to the truth."
A great deal of how Democrats behave is down to one thing: "It's Intimidation, Not 'Moderation' [...] One early line stood out to me, 'Democrats are afraid of appearing weak on defense.' This line says so much about our national discourse. We are so used to hearing it. Democrats do things because they are afraid of how things they do and say will 'appear.' They don't want to 'be seen as' holding certain positions that trigger a certain response. Just how does that 'appearance' reach the public? Through our nation's information channels. Think about this. In a supposed democracy members of the country's majority party are 'afraid' of how they will be 'made to appear' if they do not conform to certain positions."
New from Ansible Editions, Homefront: Fandom in the UK: 1939-1945. "Another massive fanhistorical compilation by Rob Hansen, this time focusing on British fandom during World War Two. Homefront brings together a great many first-hand accounts of wartime experience through fannish eyes, showing how the lines of communication between fans continued during that huge national disruption — and so, somehow, did the fannish sense of humour. Ansible Editions ebook added to the TAFF free library on 1 February 2020. 161,500 words." Comes with an online photogallery.
In which Walt Willis invents Nudgism.
The Cyrkle, "Red Rubber Ball"
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