March 21, 2020
2020-03-21-reply-to-James-Anderson
My reply to James
James Anderson send out an email to several of us. (2020-03-21)
This does not contain James’ whole post: I have selected arguments and claims that I want to respond to.
The Prediction
Joe Biden is going to lose, and badly to Trump.
I’m glad to have a good clear testable prediction. If Biden wins, which part(s) of your argument will you change?
Sanders and his supporters misread the 2016 primary results
This article compares Sanders/Clinton votes in 2016 and Sanders/Biden in 2020 and concludes that sexism and anti-Clinton sentiment hurt Clinton and helped Sanders.
“The explanation [for Sanders’ poorer performance against Biden than against Hillary] isn’t that Sanders became less popular with these folks [in wealthier suburbs] over the last four years, but that he was never all that popular in the first place. A large percentage of his vote was cast not for him, but against Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
“Clinton’s toxic standing among wide swaths of the electorate was the gravitational force causing the phenomenon Bernie fans misread.”
This finding is discouraging to women and their supporters as well as to Sanders supporters (and me).
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 against Trump. Biden won’t have her disadvantage.
Trump is popular. Not
Even with the stock market emaciated and languishing and a full-blown global health crisis that has been botched and bungled in every imaginable way, Trump’s approval ratings are fucking rising.
David has already pointed to this refutation
The Fascists will stop at nothing to defeat Biden
Republicans politicians and operatives are evil to their core, and when it comes to the culture war and to messaging, that is an advantageous trait. They deflect, deny, draw strawmen, gaslight, play the kayfabe, and it has worked consistently in every single election where Democrats have done the cowardly thing that they always fucking do and “played it safe” by running a moderate candidate.
I agree with this description of how Republicans campaign. Trump’s biggest ally is fear and he will exploit it without regard to the truth, as you point out.
Since Reagan, The two Democrats who have won the presidency have been charming and camera-savvy, and especially in the case of Obama, secured the both the nom and the office in spite of the DNC and not because of it.
Well, damn! The establishment failed to stop them! How did they manage to stop Sanders, who is so much better?
For my personal political inclinations, both Obama and Clinton were too close to the center, but as far as campaigners go, they won because of their people skills. They got the “big-tent” coalition because they were charismatic and people naturally flocked to them.
Hmmm. So sometimes people do matter.
Biden has none of that at all.
I would agree that Biden is less charismatic then Clinton or Obamba, but I’ve seen him 2-3 times in my life and find him pretty compelling. OTOH I’ve met few people my age who aren’t put off by Sanders’ people skills, viz, his yelling and interrupting all the time in debates.
The Establishment did it
The sub-humans in the DNC literally could not have chosen a worse candidate to run against Trump.
- Yes they could have
- The DNC didn’t choose Biden, voters did.
Apparently Bernie people like to have some “establishment” to blame, and the DNC does have its opinions and power, but it was James Clyburn and actual voters in SC who pushed Biden into a position where many Democratic voters, who had been waiting for people besides Bernie to coalese around, could all agree on one person. I think that saying that African American voters and voters like me voted for Biden because the DNC told us to is not only wrong, it is insulting.
(BTW, this is precisely what scares me about the idea of having one national primary election day. People like me, who do not know what the average American thinks, like to see who appeals to them and then I often join them (not always).)
What the average American wants
[Biden’s] stance on literally everything is to the right of the average American.
I need proof to believe this.
A mendatious inconsistency?
[Biden] has changed his tone on several issues, but it’s all been recent enough to make him closer to being a liar than to an individual whose “thoughts have evolved.”
You’re good, James!! As someone who’s changed his mind several times in my life, I find Biden’s changes perfectly comprehensible and no reason to diss him. Bernie has been consistent, I admit. During the last debate, when Biden said he’d changed his mind and now agreed with Bernie on something (I forget), all Sanders could say was, “I said the first” instead of being happy about it. Grow up!
Oh come on, James.
Not once in a single debate did [Biden] express a cogent thought or point.
Going negative
The Republicans are going to stitch together the biggest sound collage in the history of humanity of the man sounding like he should have his license suspended, and it is going to work.
Believe it or not, there’s plenty of Trump material that will be used against him, too.
Jamesean rhetoric rocks!
The only reason anyone liked Biden in the first place was that he looked great sitting behind Obama and giving finger guns to the camera. Now the man has the charisma of a sun-bleached viper carcass, and when he is challenged by anyone, that viper carcass reanimates and starts striking blindly while simultaneously looking like a fucking idiot. The Republicans will gleefully pull every clip of him looking foolish and threatening to fight Joe Six Pack, or shouting down a person with a valid concern and make him look like a blind hornet, furiously bumping into the same window again and again, and it is going to work.
There are hours of footage of him being creepy towards women and girls. I am NOT saying that Biden is actually a creep. He might be. Who knows. Irrespective of speculation, that footage is a wet dream for anyone running a campaign against him. If anyone thinks that come September Biden’s entire campaign won’t grind to a halt while he (ineffectually) combats allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault, they have not paid attention to the Republican political machine. They will make Biden look like Jeffrey fucking Epstein, and it is going to work.
Damn! You’re a good writer, James! Ain’t gonna try to answer this.
Timeline
By contrast, Bernie Sanders (whom the DNC railroaded by convincing all of the centrist goblins in the primary to withdraw before super Tuesday because they are cowards and just as much under the thumb of corporate oligarchs as the Republicans), …
Yes they dropped out before Super Tuesday but - little detail here - after the SC primary
You seriously don’t think that running out of votes and money was enough to convince them? You seriously think they were ‘railroaded’?
Here’s the timeline according to wikipedia:
- February 29:
- South Carolina Democratic primary is won by Biden[261]
- Unable to win any delegates during the first four Democratic contests, Steyer drops out of the race.[262]
- March 2020
- March 1: Following his fourth place finish in the South Carolina Democratic primary, Buttigieg drops out of the race.[263]
- March 2: Klobuchar drops out of the Democratic race. Both she and Buttigieg then endorse, and urge moderate Democrats to rally around, Biden.[264]
Morning in America?
[Bernie] is a charismatic candidate who has the hearts and minds of a broad coalition of Americans whose relentless optimism about the path forward is infectious and consistent …
If you think that Bernie comes across as optimistic, I suggest you do a little focus grouping with people besides Bernie supporters.
A tautology
Moderate Democrats fucking lose because they are fucking losers.
Wrong variable in the equation
That old moronic Democrat calculus of “hey if we run someone who stands for nothing, then maybe we can attract imaginary Republican swing voters because 1-1=+2!!!” is exactly what is going to lose the 2020 election.
You haven’t been paying attention. They’re running to attract unaffiliated voters, not Republicans, and both the 2018 elections and the current primary results seem to show that this is working.
This is why I love you, James. Among other reasons.
I am going to vote for the Democratic candidate in November, no questions asked.
Millenials aren’t the only ones tired of the two-party system
Millennials are tired of choosing between two parties comprised of far right ethnocapitalists and center-right establishment poltroons, and we are tired of being admonished for pointing out the need for new blood in the political pool and the boring dystopia of being told “vOtE bLuE No MaTTeR wHo~~” even if it means choosing a candidate who represents nothing about who we are or what we believe.
We’re all tired of it, too, but the only solution I know of is one where we can vote for candidates in order of preference (this has several names, all of which I seem to have forgotten.) That way we could vote our hearts and then, if our first choice didn’t win, our vote would go to the next on down, and so on. But this is a case where both major parties are indeed at fault and who can blame them?
Meanwhile, given the system we have, why didn’t the tired Millenials get their asses out and vote in the primaries? Even Sanders admitted that he greatly overestimated their support.
Don’t people like AOC show that Millennials are already gaining power?
Literally the only silver lining that I can see is that maybe there will be a mass culling of DNC leadership and they are replaced with people who aren’t satisfied with being whimpering curs, grateful for being allowed to function as controlled opposition to the most gleefully evil people in politics.
That’s what I thought I was accomplishing in 1968 when I wrote in Gene McCarthy and got Nixon. The Democratic Party did, in fact, make some radical and needed changes and we got a fantastic candidate who lost every state except one. I will always regret my 1968 vote.
My $0.02, based on an article in an establishment newspaper
Personally I think we all should stop thinking we know how our fellow citizens are going to vote or what they want until they actually vote (or don’t). And even when voting, we’re often forced to vote for people who have beliefs we don’t agree with. Sometimes we have to vote against someone.
This morning I read this article from the NY Times. It fits in pretty well with my impression of Sanders.
I came away with two general conclusions.
A. Bernie Sanders is a very decent person with a good heart.
He’s shown a true generosity many times, I believe. This article quotes him as saying:
“It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way,” Mr. Sanders told CBS News.
And he didn’t want to go negative.
B. Sanders is a poor collaborator and often failed to cooperate with his own supporters.
Let me state a belief that I consider to be almost axiomatic: 327 million people cannot agree on very many issues or policies. Getting something done requires compromise and cooperation. This is true even between two persons.
The part of the article labeled “Revolutionary to a Fault” shows how Sanders’ ideology blinds him to the realities of our complex country and to the need to colloborate, which he consistently refused to do, according to the article.
For example, “Ms. Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly urged the campaign to broaden Mr. Sanders’s message and seek out new allies, outside his familiar base.” But he didn’t.
In fact he campaigned against people who might have helped him later:
So confident was Mr. Sanders that he would vanquish Mr. Biden that he spent valuable days trying to force two other candidates out of the race by campaigning in Minnesota and Massachusetts, the home states of Ms. Klobuchar and Ms. Warren. He won neither.
Is it any surprise that Klobuchar endorsed Biden as soon as he won SC? That didn’t take any “establishment” telling her to do so.
C. Blaming “the establishment” shows Sanders’ ignorance of what motivates voters.
As soon as someone starts feeling that other people are controlled by a vague force - let’s call it the “establishment” - they are denying that those people have their own agency. People are indeed influenced by organizations and other people, but there are lots of them, not one or two “establishments”. It may seem like it when we’re forced to choose between only two nominees, but there are lots of little establishments pushing us into one bucket or the other.
After being routed across the country, Mr. Sanders knew who to blame in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
“What the establishment wanted was to make sure that people coalesced around Biden and try to defeat me,” Mr. Sanders said. “So that’s not surprising.”
Frankly, although Sanders is a decent person with good values, his world-view scares me. He would make a terrible President.
Written and posted with love
- ge
2020-03-22 James responds at length
I didn’t really answer James’ challenge:
Tell me why I should be excited about Biden
This is an excellent question, James, and I didn’t do much to answer it.
I’m ambivalent about this question. Some amount of excitement is needed to get some people out to vote, but I’m not sure just how important that is and have no data to decide either way except for the fact that excitement about Sanders doesn’t seem to have increased turnout for him.
OTOH, excitement bothers me because, like falling in love, it can blind us. I remember the excitement around JFK, who died just in time to prevent us from being disappointed at his warmongering and womanizing. His assassination - a kind of excitement, I suppose - enabled LBJ to pass civil rights legislation that eventually helped the lives if African Americans (and led to Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the racist turn of Lincoln’s party).
I can’t really give you a good reason to be excited about Biden. I’m certainly not. But I like and trust him, just as I did with Hillary. I think many people like him because of his genuine love of his family. Moreover, Jill Biden is a tremendous asset. She doesn’t just stand there like a model: she reacts to what he says and fights protesters who attack the podium. En plus, she has a career helping people and strongly pushing Joe in the right direction.
Anecdote smanecdote!
I’ll try an equation (okay, an inequality): 2016 vote + (SC Biden vote - SC Sanders vote > 2016 vote. In other words take the difference made by sexism and 20 years of hugely funded anti-Clinton hatred from the right and left (calculated by subtracting Sander’s 2020 SC vote from Biden’s) and add it to Hillary’s popular vote majority of 2016 and Voila! (possibly) enough votes to overcome the Electoral College gerrymander.
In English: Hillary won the popular vote in spite of sexism. Biden is not losing those votes this year.
you could find a metaphor so much better than mine that I don’t even dare to try, damn it!]
March 5, 2020
2020-03-05-Heather-Cox-Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson on the Democratic nominating process
The process is not rigged
There is a lot of news about both the novel coronavirus and politics tonight, but I’m going to let it rest so I can address the concern that has been popping up in my email and messages all day. People are concerned that there has been some sort of a corrupt bargain between the “Democratic establishment”—possibly even including former President Barack Obama– and retiring presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to throw the Democratic nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden in order to thwart the popular will to nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
First of all, the nomination process is not over, and there is not currently a winner. Second, the nomination has not been rigged. This is a deeply problematic construction at a time when our actual elections really ARE in danger; it is also an argument pushed by Russian disinformation to undermine faith in democracy.
Here’s how the Democratic nomination process currently works.
(I am not going to talk here about the Republican system—I’ve talked about it before—but it permits less input from voters than the Democratic system.)
First of all, neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, nor any other party, is a government institution. While they have to abide by our laws, they make their own rules, and a LOT of jockeying goes into the writing of those rules. (FWIW, Sanders is the only candidate running who had a hand in writing the current Democratic National Committee rules. Three of his top advisors were on the commission that wrote the current rules, and he chose four others.)
1968
The process is crazy-complicated, but it makes more sense if you know some of the history behind it. Democratic presidential candidates used to be chosen by party leaders, behind closed doors. That exploded in 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without winning any primaries as a solo act— he had been running as President Lyndon Johnson’s vice president when Johnson abruptly withdrew from the race too late for Humphrey to enter the primaries. Humphrey was associated with the ”establishment” and the war in Vietnam (although he was eager to end it), at a time when leaders were increasingly suspect and 80% of voters in the Democratic primaries had voted for anti-war candidates (including Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was making a strong play for the nomination when he was murdered). So when he won the nomination over anti-war candidates, demonstrators began to protest and the police counter-rioted. The convention turned into violent chaos. And, of course, Humphrey lost the election to Richard M. Nixon, who dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam, (among other things!).
(She does not mention Eugene McCarthy, who was brave enough to attack the “establishment” much like Sanders does today. RFK felt like an interloper me, partly because as US Attorney General he supported wiretapping. I only learned in the past few years that J Edgar Hoover was blackmailing him into doing that.)
Post-1968 rule changes
After the 1968 debacle, DNC leaders commissioned a 28-person panel overseen first by South Dakota Senator George McGovern and then, when he resigned to run for president himself, Minnesota Representative Donald M. Fraser, to figure out how to get more people involved in the nomination process. The result was the state primary, which has now replaced caucuses in all but three states (and three territories), by my count. In primaries, voters cast ballots for their choice for the nomination, who then gets allotted delegates to the convention. With luck, there will be a clear winner, but if not, the convention delegates will wheel and deal to decide who should win the nomination. The commission also reduced the roles of party leaders in the nominating process, and required better representation for minorities, women, and young people.
These rules governed the 1972 convention, which gave the presidential nomination to McGovern himself, who was enormously popular with young people and those opposed to Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War, but much less so with the traditional Democrats (especially workers) who had lost representation at the convention under the new rules.
- McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide—the Electoral Count was 520 to 17, and McGovern didn’t even carry his home state.
- Then Democratic President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid by a similar landslide (the Electoral College split was 489 to 49).
At that point, Democratic leaders decided the nomination process had swung too far away from professional politicians. They thought that primary voters, who tend to be much more extreme than those in the general election, were choosing unelectable candidates.
(Of course, Carter had been elected once, so this is not ironclad logic here.)
1981-82 rule changes
Another commission, this one of 70 people, met in 1981 and 1982, and added back into the nomination process the voices of state party chairs, the Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents and vice presidents, and certain DNC leaders. These are the so-called superdelegates, and they are not pledged to any candidate. The idea is that, having won or run elections, these people will have a sense of who can win at the national level and will provide a counterweight if primary voters choose someone unelectable. Originally, the superdelegates made up about 15% of the delegate count, but before the 2016 election they had crept up to about 20%.
Before the 2016 election, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sanders tussled to win the nomination, the DNC overwhelmingly voted to change the rules to compromise between the two camps. Under those rules, a new commission of 21 people, including 9 nominated by Clinton and 7 by Sanders, met in 2017. They reduced the percentage of superdelegates to about 15% again, and refused to let them vote on a first ballot, bringing them in only if the nomination is contested.
Post 2016 Sanders get changes to nominating rules
Here is a good explanation of what happened
So back to the question of rigging. The Sanders camp wanted to get rid of the superdelegates altogether, believing it would help him win the 2020 nomination. But they had to compromise on keeping the superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, expecting that he could win quickly with a majority if the superdelegates stayed out of it. But now that it looks like he will likely not win outright, he will likely be sunk when the superdelegates are in play on a second ballot. So now he wants the nomination to go to someone with a plurality of delegates - that is, not a clear majority, but more than anyone else - on the first ballot. This would be highly unusual: brokered conventions used to be the norm, and they are a good way to unite the party behind a candidate.
(Elizabeth Warren describes Sanders’ positions this way:
“That was Bernie’s position in 2016, that it should not go to the person who had a plurality,” she said during a CNN town hall meeting. “And remember, his last play was to superdelegates. So the way I see this is, you write the rules before you know where everybody stands. And then you stick with those rules. … I don’t see how come you get to change it just because he now thinks there’s an advantage to him for doing that.” )
Is Sanders electable?
But do members of the Democratic establishment—those who could be superdelegates—want Sanders as the nominee? Almost certainly not. They do not think he is electable. He is not popular with African American voters, who are a key part of the Democratic Party’s base, and he has a history that will play badly with moderate voters.
Are they right that he is unelectable? Before Tuesday, I was not at all certain of that. But Sanders’s big play for the nomination has been that he could bring new voters into the party by attracting young people. He certainly is popular with younger folks, but they did not turn up to vote for him on Tuesday, suggesting his key strength is not as strong as it seemed. Still, political prognostications at this stage of the game are a fool’s game. My opinion and $3 will get you a cup of coffee.
Did Buttigieg or Klobuchar cut a deal with Biden before endorsing him? Almost certainly. But that is not a corrupt deal; it’s how politics works. If they followed the norm, they will have gotten him to promise to make a priority in his administration (if he is elected) something they and their supporters care about. This is key to the other part of the nomination process that is going on now: hashing out the issues (they’re known as “planks”) that will be in the party’s platform, indicating its priorities. The jockeying going on now between voters and candidates and the party’s eventual leader is key to that construction.
This is why we go through this process, and why the president and the platform matters. We often forget that when we show up at the polls every four years to pick a president, we are not simply electing a charismatic leader, we are electing someone who can get legislation we care about passed by nailing together coalitions that will move the country in a direction we like. That is incredibly important, and it’s why working with experienced politicians matters.
But it is also important to put pressure on those leaders to move in directions we want. If your favorite candidate has left the race or looks to be pushed aside, it is more important than ever to continue to advocate for the causes (and people) you believe in, to keep those things front and center. That, too, is part of the political process. Most famously, in 1890, an upstart reform party took America by storm. It organized as the People’s Party in 1891 and demanded a slew of changes to take American finance and politics out of the hands of the very wealthy. The party largely fizzled out when the Democrats absorbed their ideas in 1896. Within twenty years, though, most of their reforms had become law.
——
Notes:
Bernie rigs system against himself
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/URC_Report_FINAL.pdf
Sanders now wants plurality to get nomination
Democrats vs Trump/Democrats strip super delegates power
young voters
February 23, 2020
politics
Barry Saunders
I went to Denise Allen’s exhibit this afternoon at the Carrboro Century Center, where Ms Allen gave a wonderful talk about her life and work.
In the back of the room was an African-American gentleman (for some reason, I feel like using this expression, which I’ve never used before, perhaps because it’s not quite correct to use it in this case).
After the talk I went up to him and asked him:
me: Are you who I think you are? gentleman: That depends. Does he owe you money? me: Yes! You are Barry Saunders!!
It was wonderful to meet one of my favorite columnists in person. He gave me his card and told me to subscribe to The Saunders Report, which I have done. You should, too.
Email to Barry Saunders (Too much trouble to send with images, so I didn’t)
Dear Mr Saunders,
I love finally meeting you this afternoon. I’ve subscribed to your website with Feedly.com an RSS aggregator.
Because you use Wix, your site has an RSS feed, something that many people still use. I read almost everything on the web with Feedly.
The link to your RSS feed is here: https://www.thesaundersreport.com/feed.xml. I won’t make much sense to look at it because it’s structured data to be read by programs called RSS aggregators. I use Feedly.
I love RSS feeds because they enable me to scan hundreds of sites every day. What’s more, Feedly (and most RSS aggregators) lets you view the RSS feed in several different ways.
 |
| I like this because I can see more posts at one time |
I have no way of knowing how many people use RSS, but I do know that many people do and many sites have them.
Alonside your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram icons, I suggest that you add an RSS symbol linking to your RSS feed. RSS Icons look like this.
I really enjoyed finally meeting you today
I’ll keep reading more of your stuff now that I’ve subscribed to it.
best, ge
February 23, 2020
2020-02-23-Billionaires
2020-02-2 Hate the sin, not the sinner
Wikipedia says there were 621 American billionaires in 2019. I took a quick look through the list to see if they’re all as evil as the leftists in my party seem to think.
I made a quick list:
I have a good impression of these billionaires
- Bill Gates
- Elon Musk
- George Soros
- Jim Goodnight
- Steven Spielberg
- Warren Buffett
I’m not sure about these billionaires
- Jeff Bezos
- Sergey Brin
- Steve Ballmer
- Larry Page
- MacKenzie Bezos
- George Lucas
- Eric Schmidt
- Mark Zuckerberg
I have a bad impression of these billionaires
- Carl Icahn
- Charles Koch
- Larry Ellison
- Rupert Murdoch
- Sheldon Adelson
I haven’t decided about this billionaire
My takeaway
It bothers me to hear Bernie and Elizabeth demonize billionaires as if being one is some kind of character defect. Some billionaires do tremendous good and others terrible evil.
I imagine that most of them advocate low taxes on their wealth the way Bloomberg does, but that’s an effect of having that much wealth. Our personalities and values are affected by our circumstances even if we all like the illusion that we have some kind of “true self”, a fixed set of values and morals that are unaffected by our friends, family, mob, class, wealth, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.
I generally agree with Elizabeth and Bernie that the rich skew our political process in ways that increase general suffering and inequality. But I don’t think that saying that wealth is a character defect is either very accurate or very helpful except perhaps to galvanize people on the left to hate the rich.
I think that the wealthy should be much more heavily taxed on income and accumulated wealth, not because they’re evil but because it gives these individuals too much power and deprives too many others of theirs.
I think that corporations should not have individual rights because that gives them too much power.
I think that some monopolistic corporations should be broken up in some cases because that gives them too much power to stifle competition, charge unreasonable prices and influence our political processes. (I think some monopolies, particularly regulated ones, do provide a benefit that only monopolies can provide.)
My $0.02
