Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › the circular firing squad: Sanders v. Warren supporters
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June 27, 2019 at 9:00 am #102425znModerator
Warren Is No Hillary. She’s Also No Bernie.
LIZA FEATHERSTONE
The feud between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren supporters is getting ridiculous. Warren isn’t Hillary and Bernie is no sexist.
Elizabeth Warren is not a neoliberal.
Characterizing Warren as a “neoliberal” or, even more stupidly, a “Clintonite,” some misguided online Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be trying to cast her as the archvillain in the sequel to 2016’s horror flop, Hillary. With Warren’s advocacy for aggressive government regulation, her support for redistributive programs, her sharp critique of antisocial corporate behavior, and her rejection of individualistic folklore (remember “You didn’t build that”?), she’s emerged as a relatively mild but nevertheless quite serious opponent of neoliberal ideology — the worldview in which markets can solve everything and, in Margaret Thatcher’s words, “There is no such thing as society.”
If Bernie Sanders weren’t running, an Elizabeth Warren presidency would probably be the best-case scenario. Warren is a “good liberal,” a species that nearly went extinct after Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign and has only recently been spotted again roaming the savannahs of Washington, DC. Left and socialist organizing has been at least partly responsible for the resurgence of this highly vulnerable political animal; we should claim credit for such creatures, not misclassify them.
However, while Warren isn’t a neoliberal, Sanders supporters aren’t the only ones making shit up. Her own supporters have been spinning a series of fictitious narratives rooted in classic neoliberal identity politics, using feminism and anti-racism to discredit Sanders’s socialist agenda.
There is, of course, nothing inherently neoliberal about opposition to race and gender oppression or struggles for full social rights and inclusion for LGBTQ people, immigrants, the disabled, the indigenous, or any other group. But the term “neoliberal identity politics” refers to the way the politics of identity can be — and often are — abused by those in power, to undermine the very politics of collectivity upon which the liberation of all oppressed groups depends.
One of these curious neoliberal narratives is that only sexism could explain why people support Sanders over Warren, since the candidates are exactly the same politically. Earlier this year, Moira Donegan, writing in the Guardian, asked, “Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?” While Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones,” Sanders is a lifelong socialist. Donegan dismissed that distinction, writing, “this point has the quality of a post-hoc rationalization. It is cited by those seeking an acceptable reason to vote for a man and not for a woman — those who would vote for this man, and perhaps not any woman, no matter what.”
That “perhaps” is doing a lot of work here, considering the outpouring of money, volunteer energy, and enthusiasm from Sanders supporters for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Tiffany Cabán, Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, Julia Salazar, and other socialist women who have newly run for office within the past two years. Neoliberal identity politics is a kind of Etch A Sketch into which socialism instantly disappears.
Yet that narrative has (forgive me) nevertheless persisted. The Twitter feeds of liberal feminist journalists are obsessed with the supposed sexism of Bernie supporters. And in April, when Warren’s campaign was failing to take off, Irin Carmon wondered in New York magazine, “I wonder where all the ‘but I love Elizabeth Warren’ guys are now.”
Of course, Bernie Sanders surely has some sexist supporters. Given the prevalence of knuckleheads in the population, if he lacked any appeal to such people, he’d probably still be hanging out in Burlington, Vermont. Yet at a time when health-care and pharma profiteering are killing people and capitalist greed threatens the existence of the human species, the idea that there is no other reason to choose a lifelong socialist over an agreeably indignant liberal is simply not serious.
It’s not only bearded men at DSA meetings (or Jacobin writers) who find the distinction meaningful. The ruling class and its pet thinkers do, too.
Politico reported this week that for establishment centrists, Warren was emerging as an acceptable alternative to Sanders. Third Way, a proudly centrist think tank that has drawn donations from some of the same hedge funders who backed Mitt Romney — its board is made up of bankers and other Wall Street executives — once vilified Warren’s economic populism as “disastrous.”
But one of the group’s cofounders recently praised her as a “Democratic capitalist,” in contrast to Sanders, a socialist. (Although Warren calls herself a capitalist, it’s uncharacteristically imprecise for her to do so; clearly she means that she favors capitalism over any other system, as she doesn’t actually own any companies.) This is probably one reason her campaign, which was flagging just a few weeks ago, has recently seen a flurry of media coverage, much of it emphasizing that she is taking votes from Sanders, and using words like “surging.”
For people who prefer to discuss issues — most voters are not especially ideological — Sanders is better on those policy areas where he and Warren differ. That’s because rejecting capitalism affects the way a person thinks about everything.
While it’s true that Warren supports Medicare for All on paper, she has recently waffled on the matter. Relatedly, Sanders’s view that abortion should be part of a full reproductive health-care plan offered under single-payer is stronger and more specific than Warren’s pro-choice position. She talks a lot about a “strong military” and “military readiness,” while Sanders has been doggedly leading the fight to end the devastating war in Yemen. Warren is a committed fan of American global power, one of the most destructive forces on earth; Sanders has been an enemy of imperialism all his life, growing even more outspoken over the past year, hardly the typical trajectory for a presidential candidate.
A second myth is that Sanders is sexist and dismissive toward his female opponent. This is a revival of a fairy tale from 2016, popular at that time with the media and professional class. It appears to be based on the fact that Sanders, who emphatically points his finger a lot, did not stop doing this when his opponent, Hillary Clinton, was present. (The claim doesn’t appear to make any more sense than that.)
This myth has recently been repackaged: now it’s allegedly Elizabeth Warren he’s disrespecting, despite the fact that the two senators are friends and colleagues.
Vanity Fair reached new levels of mendacity with its headline last week: “Sanders: Warren is Surging Because She’s Got Ovaries.” The lede of the article, by Bess Levin, summarized Sanders’s comments in the most tendentious way possible: “she has two X chromosomes and voters are all eh, you’ll do.” But, as the article itself makes clear, Sanders said nothing of the kind. Rather he acknowledged that “there are a certain number of people who would like to see a woman elected, and I understand that.”
What kind of oblivious, sexist monster would have failed in this context to say that? If he hadn’t mentioned the desire of progressive voters to see a woman become president, the media would have rightly nailed him. He also noted that there are “a lot of factors” and that “she’s running a good campaign.” Of course, the headline and lede writers belong in Fake News jail, but the fact that so many liberal media hacks were sharing this on Twitter shows their enduring attachment to the myth of Bernie’s sexism.
A third, equally peculiar story is that Warren has been widely embraced by black voters, in contrast to Sanders, who, according to the same corporate media, black people supposedly don’t like. She was a big hit at a recent “She the People” forum, where candidates addressed an audience of women of color. Warren wrote an op-ed for Essence. Media coverage makes much of the idea that black women are attracted to her concrete approach to issues like black maternal mortality, free college, student debt, and child care. A Grio headline on her “She the People” appearance read, “Elizabeth Warren building unlikely connection with Black women voters.” Her proposal to support minority-owned businesses has been widely reported.
It’s good that Warren is addressing these important matters. But there’s a problem with the narrative that black voters prefer Warren over Sanders: It isn’t true.
A Hart Research poll in late May found 58 percent of black voters “enthusiastic” or “comfortable” with Sanders, while only 37 percent felt that way about Warren. Sanders is more popular among black voters than any candidate except Biden, who benefits from his association with President Obama.
Warren supporters and the media have no business peddling these neoliberal identity fables. Those of us who support Bernie Sanders should also stop tarring Warren with the “neoliberal” and “Clintonite” epithets, since they’re equally inaccurate. And while we’re on the subject of accuracy, Elizabeth Warren should probably stop calling herself a “capitalist” — though we’re not responsible for how she chooses to identify herself.
June 27, 2019 at 1:22 pm #102427
wvParticipant“… for establishment centrists, Warren was emerging as an acceptable alternative to Sanders…”
Yeah, and this is exactly what i expected. They’d love Biden, but if they think Biden cant win, they’d hold their nose and support Warren.
Anyone but Bernie for the centrists.
One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vJune 29, 2019 at 12:40 am #102447
waterfieldParticipantSanders is done after last night. He and Biden both come off as being old for the job. Sanders has one message-fuck the rich-and it hasn’t changed. Same stuff each time he opens his mouth. Its old-he’s old. Biden wasn’t much better. Buttigieg impressed me more than anyone. Far more Presidential. Trump would be hard put to beat this guy. Andrew Yang had the best and most practical economic message: give everyone $1000 a month. That’s not money that’s going to be saved. It will be spent which will be good for the working class. While Harris is getting all the publicity IMO she was aggressive and can tell a story-but that’s it.
Of the two days the most impressive to me were Warren, Buttigieg , Gillibrand, Booker and Castro. Which of course is ironic since the favorites were Biden and Sanders. I love Biden but he’s been through and awful lot in his life and I think James Carville is right when he says he may well be too old for this job. Sanders is like a cult hero. Nothing more and the debate last night displayed just that. He can’t hold a candle to Warren on the issues that they share. She articulates HOW to get to a more equal distribution of wealth and is much brighter and quicker than he is.
The key to getting Trump out will be that segment of the population that did not go to the polls in 2016-african americans. Sanders can’t do that. Right now Biden has them in his pocket but he is slipping-maybe not with the people but with his fellow democrats. Buttigieg can’t get much support from that segment. I hope Warren can because I think she may lead the ticket.
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This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by waterfield.
June 29, 2019 at 8:58 am #102449znModeratorSanders has one message-fuck the rich-and it hasn’t changed.
W, that’s what YOU hear.
Either way thanks for expressing yourself about these people. Lots to discuss.
…
June 29, 2019 at 9:15 am #102450
MackeyserModerator“… for establishment centrists, Warren was emerging as an acceptable alternative to Sanders…”
Yeah, and this is exactly what i expected. They’d love Biden, but if they think Biden cant win, they’d hold their nose and support Warren.
Anyone but Bernie for the centrists.
One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vWell, they did before, in large numbers.
I’ll just put this out there.
Trump is GOING to get re-elected because the DNC is feckless. Bernie NEVER had a chance and the DNC would rather fundraise another four years on Trump’s tweets than actually engage in representative democracy that is responsible to the constituent base as opposed to corporate donors. That’s why campaign finance was never going to happen.
I really tried for a minute to hold out hope for a Bernie candidacy, but when the DNC argues in open court that they do not have a fiduciary responsibility to the Bernie supporters who gave money and that they can use the money in any way they like and appoint a candidate in a backroom if they choose because violating their charter is not criminal… well, that was game over.
I’m glad Bernie is running insofar as he is the gravity to keep this from being a 1981 Republican vs a 2019 Trumpian, but unfortunately, I’m not sure even the gravity of a black hole could move the Dems to the actual center left, let alone to the left (Bernie being on the Center left and all).
Oh, also, hi all. Mea culpa, I’m an ass for not posting… at all. Between medical issues and my damned “outta sight, outta mind” functioning, I’m just terrible at communicating, it seems.
Hope this little ray of sunshine finds all of you well. Only the ray of sunshine is meant sarcastically, of course.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
June 29, 2019 at 9:32 am #102451znModeratorBetween medical issues and my damned “outta sight, outta mind” functioning, I’m just terrible at communicating, it seems.
Hi Mack. You’re always welcome. You know that. No apologies necessary. BUT I do worry. Medical issues? You okay?
June 29, 2019 at 9:51 am #102453
Billy_TParticipantHope all is well, Mac.
On Waterfield’s comment: I wish Sanders would say that. He’s not. But he’d be correct if he did. Though it goes much deeper than that, IMO.
It’s the system itself. And by that I don’t mean “neoliberalism.” I mean capitalism. Because any economic system in the form of economic apartheid is going to cause horrible things to happen, including massive inequality. That’s just baked in. And all the efforts to mitigate this amount to a waste of time and energy. Why try to endlessly reform a horrible system when we could replace it with one that doesn’t need all that reform in the first place?
Am reading a very interesting (though uneven) history of Native Americans, by David Treuer: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, and there are a host of takeaways so far. One of them is the endless efforts to try to offset the effects of our economic system, which turn us all into Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the hill. He talks about LBJ and the War on Poverty, and I thought, trillions spent to undo the impact of a system designed to concentrate wealth at the very top . . . is absurd.
Get rid of the system itself, go with one that DOESN’T do that, and you don’t HAVE to keep “redistributing” overly concentrated capital, only to see your efforts wiped out by the next administration, etc.
No Dem or indie is talking about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. That includes Sanders. Perhaps they know they can’t. Perhaps they know they’d be shot if they did . . .
???
June 29, 2019 at 9:57 am #102454Billy_TParticipantQuick note on the book:
The vast, vast majority of it, of course, is about Native Americans — the author generally uses the term “Indians,” and explains why early on — focusing on broken treaties, wars, internal strife, endless laws crushing Indian sovereignty, etc. etc. It’s not about LBJ or non-Indian life in general. But he does provide the larger context, and does that really well. It’s basically his answer to Dee Brown’s classic . . . part homage, part update, part attempt to show the resiliency of American Indians . . . which he thinks Dee Brown failed to do for the most part.
I’m about 400 pages into a book in the 455 page range. Very good overall.
June 29, 2019 at 11:48 am #102459waterfieldParticipantBilly:Spent some time earlier this year visiting Montana and South Dakota. In Montana we spent considerable time where the Battle of Bighorn (“Custer’s Last Stand”) took place. There is a monument inside the area dedicated to the great tribal leaders who lost their lives also during the battle. Quite moving. The entire battle took place over several miles which I had not known beforehand. In South Dakota we went to the monument to Chief Crazy Horse and also listened to several lectures on how the government broke many promises made to the Lakota tribes in order to bring an end to hostilities. All in all quite a moving experience. I’m no fan of reparations but we did destroy an entire culture and way of life. If you haven’t already I think you would truly enjoy going there.
June 29, 2019 at 12:00 pm #102462Billy_TParticipantBilly:Spent some time earlier this year visiting Montana and South Dakota. In Montana we spent considerable time where the Battle of Bighorn (“Custer’s Last Stand”) took place. There is a monument inside the area dedicated to the great tribal leaders who lost their lives also during the battle. Quite moving. The entire battle took place over several miles which I had not known beforehand. In South Dakota we went to the monument to Chief Crazy Horse and also listened to several lectures on how the government broke many promises made to the Lakota tribes in order to bring an end to hostilities. All in all quite a moving experience. I’m no fan of reparations but we did destroy an entire culture and way of life. If you haven’t already I think you would truly enjoy going there.
Thanks, W,
I need to visit those places, definitely.
The book reminded me of something important. We didn’t just screw over the Indians a few times in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was ongoing. The book details decade after decade of this, on into the 1970s. When I finish it, I’ll have the story up to the present . . .
Usually, when you go into “negotiations,” both sides end up with something they want. In the case of Indians versus the US government, that rarely happened. They’d go from having a few million acres, to a few hundred thousand, after one of these sessions. With rare exceptions, they kept losing more and more, while being told they would greatly benefit each time. And, of course, they were also told this would be the last time they had to move, etc. “This is your land forever” never meant forever. Usually, just a few years.
Have to go see those places. Thanks.
June 29, 2019 at 3:02 pm #102465waterfieldParticipant“One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vWell, they did before, in large numbers.”
Your saying that moderates in the Democratic party,like me, in large numbers, supported Trump over Bernie ? Where and when was that? I didn’t think they ever faced each other. Maybe your referencing some sort of poll where some moderates “said” they didn’t care for Bernie and even “liked” Trump better ? I don’t recall anything resembling that. Assuming that is true I don’t see that translating into actual voting for Trump as opposed to Sanders if he had been the nominee. Not by the time the election was at their doorstep.
June 29, 2019 at 4:07 pm #102466wvParticipant“… for establishment centrists, Warren was emerging as an acceptable alternative to Sanders…”
Yeah, and this is exactly what i expected. They’d love Biden, but if they think Biden cant win, they’d hold their nose and support Warren.
Anyone but Bernie for the centrists.
One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vWell, they did before, in large numbers.
I’ll just put this out there.
Trump is GOING to get re-elected because the DNC is feckless. Bernie NEVER had a chance and the DNC would rather fundraise another four years on Trump’s tweets than actually engage in representative democracy that is responsible to the constituent base as opposed to corporate donors. That’s why campaign finance was never going to happen.
I really tried for a minute to hold out hope for a Bernie candidacy, but when the DNC argues in open court that they do not have a fiduciary responsibility to the Bernie supporters who gave money and that they can use the money in any way they like and appoint a candidate in a backroom if they choose because violating their charter is not criminal… well, that was game over.
I’m glad Bernie is running insofar as he is the gravity to keep this from being a 1981 Republican vs a 2019 Trumpian, but unfortunately, I’m not sure even the gravity of a black hole could move the Dems to the actual center left, let alone to the left (Bernie being on the Center left and all).
Oh, also, hi all. Mea culpa, I’m an ass for not posting… at all. Between medical issues and my damned “outta sight, outta mind” functioning, I’m just terrible at communicating, it seems.
Hope this little ray of sunshine finds all of you well. Only the ray of sunshine is meant sarcastically, of course.
=============
Hey Mack, send me an email sometime. I got some Braz. Jujitsu questions
Ike26501@yahoo
w
vJune 30, 2019 at 11:13 am #102479
ZooeyModeratorGood to see you, Mack. I was just wondering about you a few hours before I opened this thread up.
I think Bernie needs to freshen his message. I can see why W sees him as running on “Fuck the rich.” I don’t think that’s what Bernie means, but I can see how it comes across that way.
Personally I think the winning message is a Vision of a green future with economic prosperity created through green industries. New jobs, new possibilities, a high tech, low carbon footprint world full of flowers and cute little wild animals.
I don’t think it’s enough to run Against Trump. The Democrats need to sell a Vision. People will buy that. Right now, it’s “Trump Sucks…and here’s a vast smorgasbord of policies.” I’d be out there talking about self-driving green cars, booming alternative energy industries, cellulose-based “plastics,” AI/Robots, colonizing Mars, Virtual Reality, high tech surgery, the whole Star Trek thing. All free from foreign oil entanglements. Democrats haven’t offered a vision since Kennedy. This country is still clinging to Reagan’s vision – in spite of the fact it has brought us HERE – because nobody has hit the Reset button.
I think Biden is going to fizzle in an embarrassing way if he continues to run on a “Obama 2: The Sidekick” trail. People want change. Trump offered it, and won. There are a lot of people out there saying, “No, not that kind of change,” but a return to the status quo isn’t enough for the people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and that’s half the country or more. They want a vision of a world that includes THEM in an economic expansion, not just a removal of Trump, and not just a redistribution of wealth through taxes and programs.
It’s interesting that the debates are on Bernie’s ground, though. The issues front and center are the issues he raised, and the DNC doesn’t like it, but the cat is out of the bag. The Overton Window has moved. I just can’t believe that the Green New Deal isn’t in the center of it. The DNC can limit questions on climate change, but I am surprised that none of the two dozen candidates if forcing the issue. It’s polling as the most important issue to people. The MOST important. And it’s a second or third tier topic, down there with expanding social security, or something.
I didn’t see the debates, but the “viral” bits were not about the GND.
Long ways to go, here. I will say I expect the Center to pull behind Harris, rather than Warren, should Biden’s hull take on too much water. This thing looks to me like it’s headed towards a brokered convention, though, because Biden, Harris, Warren, and Sanders are all going to get delegates. And maybe someone else, like Buttigieg, could catch on.
June 30, 2019 at 12:46 pm #102483waterfieldParticipantWell one candidate has focused almost entirely on climate change: Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington.
Buttigieg was very impressive-at least to me. Super “presidential” and likely the smartest of the bunch-w/ Warren a close second.
June 30, 2019 at 1:31 pm #102486waterfieldParticipantThe problem with “fuck the rich” is that it asks the public to assume the rich are less “worthy” than the poor. The truth is that there are lots and lots of wealthy people that are very “worthy” in that they are empathetic to the less fortune, do plenty of good deeds, are not selfish, blah blah blah. OTOH there are plenty of the poor who are, bluntly, just ass-holes and could care less about their fellow man -poor or rich. In that light keep in mind what Steve Bannon recently said: In order for Trump to get re-elected he needs to get every single “deplorable” out to vote. And Sanders one shoe fits all message just gets tiring and old as its repeated and repeated. I think both he and Biden are simply too old to travel in this world we live in today. God help us if the white house idiot remains at the helm.
June 30, 2019 at 2:42 pm #102487znModeratorThe problem with “fuck the rich” is that it asks the public to assume the rich are less “worthy” than the poor.
The problem with “fuck the rich” is that it’s not a real thing. That’s just your own ears inventing that. And it has nothing to do with who is “worthy.” That’s the cartoon version.
It has to do with economic policies. For example, the actual real social and economic effects of structural inequality. If we’re not discussing policies, IMO, then nothing real is happening.
Actually every poll I saw before the last election that asked who would win in a Bernie/Trump matchup favored Bernie.
June 30, 2019 at 3:44 pm #102488ZooeyModeratorThe problem with “fuck the rich” is that it asks the public to assume the rich are less “worthy” than the poor.
The problem with “fuck the rich” is that it’s not a real thing. That’s just your own ears inventing that. And it has nothing to do with who is “worthy.” That’s the cartoon version.
It has to do with economic policies. For example, the actual real social and economic effects of structural inequality. If we’re not discussing policies, IMO, then nothing real is happening.
Actually every poll I saw before the last election that asked who would win in a Bernie/Trump matchup favored Bernie.
I agree with you on this, but I don’t think W is alone in hearing it that way. I think there are a lot of people who would assess Sanders the same way which is why I think he should change his packaging. He won’t, though. It obviously remains to be seen whether he will garner enough support, but the big money will test out EVERY other alternative to Bernie with all their might.
June 30, 2019 at 3:47 pm #102489ZooeyModeratorAnd I agree with this assessment of Harris. I think she’s going to be a serious contender.
Kamala Harris Is Everything the Establishment Wants in a Politician
Caitlin Johnstone / Medium
California Senator Kamala Harris won the Democratic presidential debate Thursday night. It was not a close contest. She will win every debate she enters during this election cycle. If she becomes the nominee, she will win every debate with Trump.
Night two of the debates was just as vapid and ridiculous as night one. Candidates interrupted and talked over each other a lot, questions about foreign policy were avoided like the plague to prevent NBC viewers from thinking critically about the mechanics of empire, and Eric Swalwell kept talking despite everyone in the universe desperately wanting him not to. Buttigieg and Gillibrand did alright, Bernie played the same note he’s been playing for decades, and everyone was reminded how bad Joe Biden is at talking and thinking.
Biden has been treated kindly by polls and regarded as a “frontrunner” in this race exclusively because for the last decade he hasn’t had to do anything other than be associated with Barack Obama. Now that he’s had to step out of that insulated role and interact with reality again, everyone’s seeing the same old garbage right-wing Democrat who sucks at making himself look appealing just as badly as he did in his last two presidential campaigns. By the end of the night, even Michael Bennet was slapping him around.
Embedded video
Axios
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@axios
The full exchange between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden on Biden’s history with racial issues.1,347
7:25 PM – Jun 27, 2019
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The moment everyone’s talking about was when Harris created a space for herself to attack Biden on his citing his collaboration with segregationists as an example of his ability to reach across the aisle and “get things done”. Harris had not been called upon to speak, and once given the go-ahead by moderator Rachel Maddow after interjecting went way beyond the 30 seconds she’d been allotted in tearing Biden apart. She skillfully took control of the stage and engineered the entire space for the confrontation by sheer dominance of personality, and Biden had no answer for it.That’s the moment everyone’s talking about. But Harris had already been owning the debate prior to that.
The goal of a political debate is to make yourself look appealing and electable to your audience. You can do that by having a very good platform, or you can do it with charisma and oratory skills. It turns out that Kamala Harris is really, really good at doing the latter. She made frequent and effective appeals to emotion, she built to applause lines far more skillfully than anyone else on the stage, she kept her voice unwavering and without stammer, she made herself look like a leader by admonishing the other candidates to stop talking over each other, and she hit all the right progressive notes you’re supposed to hit in such a debate.
Unlike night one of the debates, night two had a clear, dominant winner. If you were a casual follower of US politics and didn’t have a favorite coming into the debate, you likely went away feeling that Harris was the best.
This wasn’t a fluke. Harris has been cultivating her debate skills for decades, first in the Howard University debate team where she is said to have “thrived”, then as a prosecutor, then as a politician, and she’ll be able to replicate the same calibre of performance in all subsequent debates. There’s more to getting elected than debate skills, but it matters, and in this area no one will be able to touch her.
Harris won the debate despite fully exposing herself for the corporate imperialist she is in the midst of that very debate. While answering a question about climate change she took the opportunity to attack Trump on foreign policy, not for his insane and dangerous hawkishness but for not being hawkish enough, on both North Korea and Russia.
“You asked what is the greatest national-security threat to the United States. It’s Donald Trump,” Harris said. “You want to talk about North Korea, a real threat in terms of its nuclear arsenal. But what does he do? He embraces Kim Jong Un, a dictator, for the sake of a photo op. Putin. You want to talk about Russia? He takes the word of the Russian president over the word of the American intelligence community when it comes to a threat to our democracy and our elections.”
Harris is everything the US empire’s unelected power establishment wants in a politician: charismatic, commanding, and completely unprincipled. In that sense she’s like Obama, only better.
Harris was one of the 2020 presidential hopefuls who came under fire at the beginning of the year when it was reported that she’d been reaching out to Wall Street executives to find out if they’d support her campaign. Executives named in the report include billionaire Blackstone CEO Jonathan Gray, 32 Advisors’ Robert Wolf, and Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly. It was reported two entire years ago that Harris was already courting top Hillary Clinton donors and organizers in the Hamptons. She hasn’t been in politics very long, but her campaign contributions as a senator have come from numerous plutocratic institutions.
Jordan
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@JordanChariton
· Jan 10, 2019
Kamala Harris Set to Announce 2020 Run On or Around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In 2 Years in Senate, majority of her donations have come from financial interests including Wall Street, financial industry lawyers, and real estate industry. https://kcbsradio.radio.com/blogs/doug-sovern/harris-ready-enter-race-president-sources-say …View image on Twitter
Jordan
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@JordanChariton
In the summer of 2017, just half a year into her term as Senator, Harris met with @HillaryClinton’s top donors in the Hamptons. I do not think they were there strategizing how to pass #MedicareForAll and free public college https://pagesix.com/2017/07/15/kamala-harris-meets-with-democratic-elite-in-hamptons/ …349
7:17 AM – Jan 10, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacyDems’ rising star meets with Clinton inner circle in Hamptons
“Kamala is the big Democratic star right now, at a time when they badly need a star,” an insider said.pagesix.com
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View image on Twitter
View image on TwitterJordan
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@JordanChariton
Kamala Harris Set to Announce 2020 Run On or Around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In 2 Years in Senate, majority of her donations have come from financial interests including Wall Street, financial industry lawyers, and real estate industry. https://kcbsradio.radio.com/blogs/doug-sovern/harris-ready-enter-race-president-sources-say …757
7:15 AM – Jan 10, 2019Trump supporters like to claim that the president is fighting the establishment, citing the open revulsion that so many noxious establishment figures have for him. But the establishment doesn’t hate Trump because he opposes them; he doesn’t oppose existing power structures in any meaningful way at all. The reason the heads of those power structures despise Trump is solely because he sucks at narrative management and puts an ugly face on the ugly things that America’s permanent government is constantly doing. He’s bad at managing their assets.
Kamala Harris is the exact opposite of this. She’d be able to obliterate noncompliant nations and dead-end the left for eight years, and look good while doing it. She’s got the skills to become president, and she’ll have the establishment backing as well. Keep an eye on this one.
June 30, 2019 at 4:17 pm #102490wvParticipantI didnt watch the debate. Didnt even know they were having one, to be honest. I no longer have any desire whatsoever to keep track of ‘the rigged system’ or whatever we wanna call it. But thats just me 🙂
I did talk to a nice, centrist/conservative/WV-democrat the other day at the courthouse. She likes Biden, more or less. She winces at the mention of Bernie’s name. She sez “he wants to give everything away.” She blames the poor for making bad choices and thinks Bernie would enable people by giving away too much ‘free’ stuff. Thats how she interprets things. Bernie is giving stuff away for free. People should have to work for things.
Sigh.
I wish the rapture would come, and these people would all disappear.
w
vJune 30, 2019 at 4:36 pm #102491znModeratorHarris is everything the US empire’s unelected power establishment wants in a politician: charismatic, commanding, and completely unprincipled. In that sense she’s like Obama, only better.
Yeah.
.
June 30, 2019 at 6:09 pm #102493waterfieldParticipantSorry but “fuck the rich” is a very real thing. If its in the minds of people-and it is-then its real. I don’t buy polls when it comes to Trump. When it comes to polls people will say who they “like” . When it comes to pen to paper they vote on whats best for them regardless of who they like. I know too many people who don’t care for Trump at all but I know when they are in the booth they will vote for him if they believe he is a better for their own individual needs and desires. Like the person WV referred to above there are nice, friendly, people who genuinely believe the progressive will give a away too much-meaning they’re going to take stuff away from them. We are basically a selfish nation and Trump knows how to handle our fears and anxieties to his own benefit-maybe more than anyone ever who ran for President. Someone needs to take the mantel and somehow get us to think less about our selves and more about those in need. I think Warren and Buttigieg can do a far better job of that than Sanders. he looked so inept when he had to admit the middle class will pay more in taxes. He really didn’t want to do it and it showed. IMO what is needed is a candid who can face the nation and say: “We need to raise taxes because…” and make the case for it much like JFK’s “ask what you can do for your country” speech.
June 30, 2019 at 7:16 pm #102494wvParticipantSorry but “fuck the rich” is a very real thing. If its in the minds of people-and it is-then its real. I don’t buy polls when it comes to Trump. When it comes to polls people will say who they “like” . When it comes to pen to paper they vote on whats best for them regardless of who they like. I know too many people who don’t care for Trump at all but I know when they are in the booth they will vote for him if they believe he is a better for their own individual needs and desires. Like the person WV referred to above there are nice, friendly, people who genuinely believe the progressive will give a away too much-meaning they’re going to take stuff away from them. We are basically a selfish nation and Trump knows how to handle our fears and anxieties to his own benefit-maybe more than anyone ever who ran for President. Someone needs to take the mantel and somehow get us to think less about our selves and more about those in need. I think Warren and Buttigieg can do a far better job of that than Sanders. he looked so inept when he had to admit the middle class will pay more in taxes. He really didn’t want to do it and it showed. IMO what is needed is a candid who can face the nation and say: “We need to raise taxes because…” and make the case for it much like JFK’s “ask what you can do for your country” speech.
==============
Are you for single-payer health care, W ? Maybe we’ve talked about this, but i forget.
Is Warren for it?
Is health care in the top-3 issues for most voters? What are the top 3 issues for MOST American voters these days?
I ‘wish’ Imperialism-endless-deep-state-War was the big issue. But its not. Never will be.
w
vJuly 1, 2019 at 10:00 pm #102538waterfieldParticipantI’m in a single payer system: Medicare-and I love it. Do I think it will work in this country for everyone ? No. There’s no comparing Canada’s system w/ roughly 35 million people to the US w/ roughly 300 million people. I’m attaching what I consider a scholarly article from Forbes that goes into detail on this subject. I urge you to read the entirety of the article even though it was written by a doctor. (i.e. “I couldn’t get past the fact that the author…”) IMO the comparison to Medicaid and Medicare (both government run) is quite telling.
“until we find an effective way to limit healthcare spending, American healthcare will continue to fail — whether it is funded by private individuals, by competing insurance companies, or by a single payer… The drivers of cost inflation are drug prices rising at double-digit rates, new medical technology increasing expenditures on procedures, wages going up in response to labor shortages, and expensive regulatory requirements. Price controls in this environment can’t work.”
IMO the most logical answer is to carefully look at how we can improve the Affordable Care Act ( ObamaCare) and have to the guts to implement those changes that are needed.
July 1, 2019 at 10:19 pm #102539znModeratoruntil we find an effective way to limit healthcare spending, American healthcare will continue to fail — whether it is funded by private individuals, by competing insurance companies, or by a single payer…
Hi W. I’ve read that article and I think it is flawed. One of the main reasons american healthcare is expensive is because private insurance companies operate with higher adminstrative costs than public insurance systems do. To the tune of billions of billions dollars more, not a penny of which has anything to do with health care. It’s costly and ineffective.
Plus doctors have to keep staff whose sole purpose it is to sort through the red tape of dealing with several different private insurers. This is just one of thousands of statements on that:
. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/22/the-real-reason-medical-care-costs-so-much-more-in-the-us.html
Health care professionals in America also reported a higher level of “administrative burden.” A survey showed that a significant portion of doctors call the time they lose to issues surrounding insurance claims and reporting clinical data a major problem.That kind of thing contributes directly to costs.
I also don’t buy the argument that the relative size of the country makes a difference `in the system. More people means more pay into the system. If we could land on the moon we can set up efficient national public insurance.
….
July 2, 2019 at 7:09 am #102543MackeyserModerator“… for establishment centrists, Warren was emerging as an acceptable alternative to Sanders…”
Yeah, and this is exactly what i expected. They’d love Biden, but if they think Biden cant win, they’d hold their nose and support Warren.
Anyone but Bernie for the centrists.
One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vWell, they did before, in large numbers.
I’ll just put this out there.
Trump is GOING to get re-elected because the DNC is feckless. Bernie NEVER had a chance and the DNC would rather fundraise another four years on Trump’s tweets than actually engage in representative democracy that is responsible to the constituent base as opposed to corporate donors. That’s why campaign finance was never going to happen.
I really tried for a minute to hold out hope for a Bernie candidacy, but when the DNC argues in open court that they do not have a fiduciary responsibility to the Bernie supporters who gave money and that they can use the money in any way they like and appoint a candidate in a backroom if they choose because violating their charter is not criminal… well, that was game over.
I’m glad Bernie is running insofar as he is the gravity to keep this from being a 1981 Republican vs a 2019 Trumpian, but unfortunately, I’m not sure even the gravity of a black hole could move the Dems to the actual center left, let alone to the left (Bernie being on the Center left and all).
Oh, also, hi all. Mea culpa, I’m an ass for not posting… at all. Between medical issues and my damned “outta sight, outta mind” functioning, I’m just terrible at communicating, it seems.
Hope this little ray of sunshine finds all of you well. Only the ray of sunshine is meant sarcastically, of course.
=============
Hey Mack, send me an email sometime. I got some Braz. Jujitsu questions
Ike26501@yahoo
w
vI don’t do email anymore, but you can text me any time you like. Can we do DMs on this site? If not, I’ll just email you my contact info.
LOVE to answer some BJJ questions!!!
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
July 2, 2019 at 7:24 am #102544MackeyserModerator“One wonders if they’d support Trump over Bernie?
w
vWell, they did before, in large numbers.”
Your saying that moderates in the Democratic party,like me, in large numbers, supported Trump over Bernie ? Where and when was that? I didn’t think they ever faced each other. Maybe your referencing some sort of poll where some moderates “said” they didn’t care for Bernie and even “liked” Trump better ? I don’t recall anything resembling that. Assuming that is true I don’t see that translating into actual voting for Trump as opposed to Sanders if he had been the nominee. Not by the time the election was at their doorstep.
Sorry, I misread (and subsequently deleted a long harangue about DNC malfeasance. You’re welcome.).
The answer is if moderates/indys would support Bernie over Trump, the answer going back to early 2016 is a resounding YES. Even after the convention when Clinton should have had a bounce, Bernie STILL beat Trump by 10+ points on an almost daily basis and it was always a super close call up to the election.
But I misread, so mea culpa.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
July 2, 2019 at 7:38 am #102545MackeyserModeratorGood to see you, Mack. I was just wondering about you a few hours before I opened this thread up.
I think Bernie needs to freshen his message. I can see why W sees him as running on “Fuck the rich.” I don’t think that’s what Bernie means, but I can see how it comes across that way.
Personally I think the winning message is a Vision of a green future with economic prosperity created through green industries. New jobs, new possibilities, a high tech, low carbon footprint world full of flowers and cute little wild animals.
I don’t think it’s enough to run Against Trump. The Democrats need to sell a Vision. People will buy that. Right now, it’s “Trump Sucks…and here’s a vast smorgasbord of policies.” I’d be out there talking about self-driving green cars, booming alternative energy industries, cellulose-based “plastics,” AI/Robots, colonizing Mars, Virtual Reality, high tech surgery, the whole Star Trek thing. All free from foreign oil entanglements. Democrats haven’t offered a vision since Kennedy. This country is still clinging to Reagan’s vision – in spite of the fact it has brought us HERE – because nobody has hit the Reset button.
I think Biden is going to fizzle in an embarrassing way if he continues to run on a “Obama 2: The Sidekick” trail. People want change. Trump offered it, and won. There are a lot of people out there saying, “No, not that kind of change,” but a return to the status quo isn’t enough for the people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and that’s half the country or more. They want a vision of a world that includes THEM in an economic expansion, not just a removal of Trump, and not just a redistribution of wealth through taxes and programs.
It’s interesting that the debates are on Bernie’s ground, though. The issues front and center are the issues he raised, and the DNC doesn’t like it, but the cat is out of the bag. The Overton Window has moved. I just can’t believe that the Green New Deal isn’t in the center of it. The DNC can limit questions on climate change, but I am surprised that none of the two dozen candidates if forcing the issue. It’s polling as the most important issue to people. The MOST important. And it’s a second or third tier topic, down there with expanding social security, or something.
I didn’t see the debates, but the “viral” bits were not about the GND.
Long ways to go, here. I will say I expect the Center to pull behind Harris, rather than Warren, should Biden’s hull take on too much water. This thing looks to me like it’s headed towards a brokered convention, though, because Biden, Harris, Warren, and Sanders are all going to get delegates. And maybe someone else, like Buttigieg, could catch on.
That seems to be the plan. folks like Mayor Pete, Warren, Harris and maybe one or two others including Biden will do everything to stay on until the convention. Then after the first vote doesn’t yield a consensus, it’ll go to a brokered convention and the super delegates kick in and then we’ll have Harris and Harris will slay at the debates and Dems will think it’s in the bag and we’ll see billions in negative ads and Trump will once again win because it will be all to easy for the RNC operatives to get someone like Harris spinning like a top with all the flip flops and policy changes which sometimes change day to day.
I did see the debates and it seems like the plan is to feed Biden to Harris to show that she’s the toughest. Also with such a wide open field, they’re also draining a lot of Bernie’s money insofar as plenty of people want others like Tulsi, Booker, Yang, Castro and others to be included in the debates and thus mentioned in the reporting.
With 1.2 million volunteers, Bernie OWNS the ground game for sure, but most of the rest of the Dem candidates are doing a Clinton and leaving much of the ground game to generic DNC stuff which is minuscule in comparison.
I dunno.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
July 2, 2019 at 8:01 am #102546MackeyserModeratorI didnt watch the debate. Didnt even know they were having one, to be honest. I no longer have any desire whatsoever to keep track of ‘the rigged system’ or whatever we wanna call it. But thats just me
I did talk to a nice, centrist/conservative/WV-democrat the other day at the courthouse. She likes Biden, more or less. She winces at the mention of Bernie’s name. She sez “he wants to give everything away.” She blames the poor for making bad choices and thinks Bernie would enable people by giving away too much ‘free’ stuff. Thats how she interprets things. Bernie is giving stuff away for free. People should have to work for things.
Sigh.
I wish the rapture would come, and these people would all disappear.
w
vHahahahahahahahaha!!!! That was a GREAT line!
It’s funny how decent people who know nothing about how our gov’t works or even what certain basic terms mean have these rather involved opinions.
YEARLY Worldwide oil subsidies are nearly twice the GDP… OF THE UNITED STATES!!!
As for Bernie, I don’t want him changing anything. The whole point is that the dude’s been a broken record for 30+ years and it’s his consistency that is his strongest attribute. He’s opposed regime change since the 80s and likely back to the 60s as a student. I watched a speech of his from the late 80s and it’s basically the same damn speech.
The problem is that he’s only recently gotten a wider audience as millennials led the charge toward him as they saw en masse that the current system of parasitic capitalism wasn’t even going to allow them the fantasy of the Matrix while sucking their life forces as if they were batteries.
Most people no longer hold illusions of fairness or upward mobility, but SOME hold out hope, because the alternative is too horrible for them to contemplate.
I’ve found with my own mom that boomers are REALLY going to struggle with how we have to redefine everything as the entire nature of work shifts.
We have WAY too much work capacity in most fields and as automation kicks in on an exponential level so much massive change is coming that they will struggle. Firstly, we can’t simply “work” our way out of economic problems because all the investment isn’t in human capital, but specifically to remove humans from the means of production.
We’re going to see a MASSIVE shift soon. Right now there aren’t enough truck drivers. There are as many as 3.5M truck drivers and another 7+M people in support of that industry from mechanics to truck stops to all the logistical support to container repair technicians, etc. Well MUCH of that is going away…and right soon. And you aren’t going to get a truck driver with a HS diploma and 30 years in a rig to become a coder in 9 months anymore than a bunch of coal miners became coders.
Moreover, as self-driving cars become more reality and fleet leasing becomes the preferred mode of “ownership”, You’ll have vehicles that ALWAYS follow the rules. They won’t overstay a meter or exceed the speed limit or make an illegal turn.
As of 10 years ago and I’m certain not much has changed, LA county got something like 35% of it’s operating budget from traffic control. With no DUIs, no parking violations and no moving violations, how are cities big and small going to make up that revenue? In some small cities near interstates, it can be higher than 90% (one in Maryland is like that).
Everything from how we consider ourselves and our role in society to how we fund our services is going to have to change and radically.
The baby boomers who are maybe the generation most connecting of their value to their work is going to struggle the most with it.
In 2019, there are people who make their living on Instagram and putting content on Youtube or Twitch or other platforms.
I should just write a paper or something so I can quit going on all these rants… Think of all the pixels I would save!
#savethepixel
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
July 2, 2019 at 8:15 am #102547MackeyserModeratorI’m in a single payer system: Medicare-and I love it. Do I think it will work in this country for everyone ? No. There’s no comparing Canada’s system w/ roughly 35 million people to the US w/ roughly 300 million people. I’m attaching what I consider a scholarly article from Forbes that goes into detail on this subject. I urge you to read the entirety of the article even though it was written by a doctor. (i.e. “I couldn’t get past the fact that the author…”) IMO the comparison to Medicaid and Medicare (both government run) is quite telling.
“until we find an effective way to limit healthcare spending, American healthcare will continue to fail — whether it is funded by private individuals, by competing insurance companies, or by a single payer… The drivers of cost inflation are drug prices rising at double-digit rates, new medical technology increasing expenditures on procedures, wages going up in response to labor shortages, and expensive regulatory requirements. Price controls in this environment can’t work.”
IMO the most logical answer is to carefully look at how we can improve the Affordable Care Act ( ObamaCare) and have to the guts to implement those changes that are needed.
I read that article when it came out and it’s just wrong on so many things. I apologize but I’ve talked about it in other spaces and I’m all talked out about it.
The whole point of the currently proposed Medicare for All is that while there is a transition period, Medicare is bolstered significantly to account for the disparity in private/public payments. The article does a poor job iirc in speaking to how some hospitals will see MORE money because they are actually getting paid for care they were not being paid for before. Moreover, in a M4A situation where everyone is covered, they can see a GP well before they need to go to the ER and thus can save thousands per person in underserved areas.
it also ignores that the single biggest impediment to entrepreneurs growing their business is employee cost and healthcare is the biggest hurdle.
Two things trouble me, tho.
1) The minute there’s a M4A option, various insurance companies will drop out of the market entirely because a) it’s never a good idea to stay in a dying industry and b) creating havoc will only weaken the attempt to remove the profit motive from other fields… like incarceration. That means that things like freezing insurance rates prior to the M4A launch is a must or we’ll see the same shenanigans we saw prior to the ACA launch. The M4A law has to account for MILLIONS of people entering the system all at once and plan for a ROBUST launch.
2) Cost controls HAVE to be baked in from the start. Otherwise, the private market will simply choke the public system. Bernie’s right that it’s not enough even to pass M4A. if there isn’t broad pressure to get all the parts right, it won’t be enough and the 1% will kill it and we’ll be back to before the ACA and the debate will be dead for a generation or more.
Now, imho, we should also confront the Pharma manufacturers and make clear to them that much of what they make they got from US lab development. If they want to sell in the US, they’re going to negotiate. If they threaten to move overseas like they did with vaccines, then we’ll just nationalize that medicine like we should nationalize the vaccine program, seize their research and facilities under legal grounds of both National Security and Eminent Domain and distribute the medicines out of the FDA at cost.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
July 2, 2019 at 1:16 pm #102566Billy_TParticipantI support medicare for all. But it’s not the entire answer to what ails us. And it’s a bad fit with a private, for-profit delivery sector, for (to me) obvious reasons.
As in, M4all is going to greatly reduce costs on the insurance side. Likely more than 30% in the aggregate. Which means trillions over time. But ever increasing prices on the delivery side will continue, and that creates a conflict for the funding side as well. That means higher and higher taxes to cover those increases, which our political system has rejected at least since 1964.
The answer, in my view, is to decommodify health care, period, on both sides. Take profit out of it across the board. Make it all non-profit and publicly held. Set up “free” health care clinics in every town possible, and pay doctors and nurses salaries.
Currently, NIH and other government institutions do the R and D for roughly 75% of our pharma, yet our system hands that over to the for-profit sector, and we the people end up paying for it twice . . . taxes and later purchases. How about keeping publicly funded research in the public domain?
Instant and radical cost reduction for pharma.
To make a long story short, we need to lower the costs of care itself, not just the insurance covering it. This can’t happen in a hybrid system of public coverage for for-profit care. It’s just a really bad match. The two sides of the equation have radically different interests, and they’re at odds.
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