Thursday, March 05, 2020

Mild In The Streets


I understand that in the middle of a hotly contested campaign, it is impossible to tell anyone anything.  At this point, campaign staffs are not worried about bruised feelings or stepping on toes: they are grinding it out an inches at at time and rooting through their tool kit looking for the biggest hammer available to get them to the finish line.

However, a brazen flip-flop on this scale does what a campaign should never do: drags attention away from what should be any campaign's focus -- the candidate's strengths and ideas -- and instead hangs a big, bright lantern on campaign's internal weaknesses and contradictions.

Here is Sanders' campaign national co-chair, Nina Turner, being appalled that candidates are using Barack Obama as a crutch:
And less than 24 hours after getting stomped in the South, we find the Sanders' campaign using Barack Obama as a crutch (by cutting together several sound bites out of context):
Bernie Sanders has been running for the Democratic nomination on the novel electoral theory that the entire Democratic Party is a wretched hive of scum and villainy and that most of the party's 42 million registered voters are either hapless stooges or corporatist shills.

However (goes the theory) is doesn't matter how alienating those voters may find his burn-it-all-down campaign, because the loss of those weakling moderates during the primaries would be more than offset by a massive surge in new and heretofore invisible young and/or disaffected voters.  And once Sanders secured the Democratic nomination as the vanguard of an explicitly revolutionary new coalition,  those hapless stooges, corporatist shills and weakling moderates would return to the fold because Donald Trump is so fucking awful and ultimately those weakling moderates are pragmatists who will vote for the best available candidate and not fanatics who would piss away their vote out of spite:


And who knows?  That theory might still bear out, because we're now in a political universe where no one knows anything and we're not even halfway through the primaries, so Sanders' revolutionary coalition might very well still break through and win the nomination.

And if he does, he will have my vote.

But if the theory fails...


Chop Wood/Carry Water/Hit Tip Jar




5 comments:

bill said...

Facebook will not let me link to this because "It violates our community standards"

Go figger...

dinthebeast said...

I think it was Ezra Klein who said that Bernie can't be the leader of the Democratic party when his campaign treats them as the enemy.
Be that as it may, Sanders has a couple of problems: One, his strategy for winning the general is a massive mobilization of young previously inactive voters, and the turnout numbers, even in places where they were double the 2016 turnout, showed no increase in the proportion of the young.
And two, last night he showed an unwillingness to even acknowledge that fact when asked about it point blank multiple times.
I don't know what I expected him, or anyone in that position, to say right then, but to deflect answering the question by asserting that the general can't be won by standard politicking was discouraging, to say the least.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Jason said...

DG, I'm not sure if you're throwing the snark around regarding Sanders and his campaign because you disagree with his positions, his refusal to broaden his rhetoric and policies to create a larger coalition or you're just upset with the Bernie 'Bro' attitude crap and lacing into Sanders over that. Just curious. Carry on.

Robt said...

I enjoyed the blast from the past with "Wild in the streets".

Shelly Winters under her LSD guru's care. As Spock would put it, "Fascinating".

Robt said...

On the text.

What we as voters are denied is the real deals as Joe puts it.

Biden voted for Iraw War and Sanders did not. Sanders did not vote for Gun law but Biden did.
Does this make them bad? On the surface they did not vote as I would have.

Never do they sit down in front of the camera and go through the full positions and the bills they vote and how they got to that vote. So we are left to assume that doesn't help.
Joe is more Wall Street than main street in his history and Bernie is more main street than Wall Street.
For me, it is not one or the other. Wall street needs representation and main street needs it. We know money corrupts the legislation and main street is not at the table.

It is how Trump can run a Fraud University and at the brink of found guilty. The judge stresses to Trump that he will be found guilty and best get in and negotiate a settlement (with NDR). As this crime does not go on his record nor sees any jail time. If only it worked this way for main street?

Part of what I see,
Trump ran on many democratic popular issues and made all sorts of promises. He knew he would nevr keep. Example; I will redo health care, make it very affordable for everyone, bring down drug prices by replacing the black guys ACA.
So Trump's populist message to people across the spectrum resonated

Sanders is running on that populist message and for some reason. Bernie is a socialist because his populist message to main street is commie socialist Maoist Marxist

The diff between Trump and Sanders is, Trump lies about it and Bernie means it.

This scares people?
Who represents listing to the people more.
Bernie, Joe or Trump?.

Who can resist the special interest big money on legislation? favors?

Who will resist and more inoculated to resist the wealth power and rule and ownership of our government.

That includes some of our Dem congress folks too?

The GOP has ran extremism and rammed it down America's throat. Which is what they said Obama/Dems did.
The senate resembles the Russian DOMA.

McConnell says he is the Grim Reaper to Dem House bills. Says nothing will come to the Senate floor unless Dear leaderasks for it or ok's it. Exactly how Putin operates his legislature.
This means people have no say through their representative government. Combine that with the wealthy who buy and own government.
There are a lot of concerns.
I just know, it does not matter how deep a lake is to a duck to float on it. But that duck should be aware of the alligators in it.