Determined to stop Bernie Sanders from continuing his status as frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Democratic leaders arranged for Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg to drop out of the primaries and endorse former vice president Joe Biden. The only problem is, Joe Biden is probably the least electable of the moderate wing of the party.
Nothing Matters More Than Beating Bernie Sanders
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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It’s funny. Of the four people being discussed, the woman was simply a retread of Sanders’.policies (except more dilute), the billionaire was expecting to buy the damned thing because that’s what money entitles you to do, and the articulate guy was simply imitating Barack Obama and his homespun Clintonesque “folks are hurtin’ ” gimmick wrapped about a BS core of service to the top 1%.
It took a lot of effort by the dnc, and I still can’t believe they managed it (success: a first for them), but they look like they are going to manage to finesse the nomination from Sanders again.
And we can all say goodbye to M4A, student debt relief, etc. Because Biden won’t fight for it. If someone handed it directly to him, he’d have to run to his masters and ask for instructions on how to veto it.
We’ll know for sure on March 11, after Michigan and the rest.
«[M]oderate wing» ? Ted, if Mr Sanders represents the left wing of the Democratic Party (despite his formal status as an «Independent»), surely Joseph Robinette Biden must represent its right wing ? Or do you mean to suggest that the Democratic Party is so far «left», that it has no right wing ?…
Henri
But “the least electable”, I surmise becomes “electable” when Biden chooses Hillary Clinton as his running mate, thus garnering the “anything”-with-a-vagina vote.
“Anything”, including war mongering, cackling about knife up the ass assassin, most left of the extremely far right war-mongering duopoly.
Screwed by the sham of identity politics once again.
As if it matters which parasite sucks one’s life blood away.
And she hates Bernie Sanders, to hear her vicious denunciation of him at the mention of his name in her recent “All Things Considered’ interview of the last week.
This is how she repays Sanders’ good-natured endorsement of her after all of her dirty tricks against him in 2016.
«This is how she repays Sanders’ good-natured endorsement of her after all of her dirty tricks against him in 2016.» Not merely «good-natured endorsement», Glenn, but active campaigning – he did some 39 rallies for her in 13 US states in the three months prior to the 2016 election. Compare that with the number of rallies Ms Clinton did for Mr Obama in 2008….
It would seem that the only person in the US political leadership who really believes in «anything but Trump» is Mr Sanders himself, while the DNC mantra is, as Ted points out above, «anything but Sanders»….
Henri
Hi Henri,
FWIW: my version of the answer to your question has finally been delivered from moderation quarantine … at the end of comments for the previous comic “If You Praise Anything about the United States.”
My complaint is similar. Use the word “moderate” only in quotation marks, or not at all. The word “moderate” is one of =their= words, not ours. It’s like calling the military branch of our government the department of “defense.” It’s a narrative that they’d like us to believe, but it’s not true. (By the way, did you notice that the Department of War was so renamed shortly after the novel “1984” was published?)
Call them neoliberals, or corporatists, or plutocrats. Or, if you don’t want to be quite so open about their biases, call them the people who are opposed to change; that’s just a neutral statement of fact. Biden did say aloud that under his presidency there would be no fundamental changes — and he said that in one of the moments when he wasn’t having difficulty completing sentences. In a world that desperately needs great changes, there is nothing “moderate” about promising to make no changes.
«Or, if you don’t want to be quite so open about their biases [i e, those of people like Mr Biden], call them the people who are opposed to change; that’s just a neutral statement of fact.» But alas, it’s not : people like Joseph Robinitte Biden and those who finance them are not opposed to change in itself, but rather to change in a certain direction, while favourable to change in other directions. Thus, for example, the GINI coefficient of income distribution in the United States changed from 0.43 in 1990 to 0.49 in 2018, encouraged by political decisions with regard to taxation and benefits in which Mr Biden, as US senator and later vice president played a certain role (Mr Biden was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 ; earlier estimates of how GINI coefficients have changed can be found, e g at hbs (dot) edu/faculty/conferences/2014-business-beyond-the-private-sphere/Documents/How%20did%20inequality%20change%20in%20the%20US%20from%201967%20to%202012%20-%20Putting%20the%20Gini%20back%20in%20the%20bottle (dot) pdf). (As we know, differentials in income vastly understate economic inequality ; in 2016 the top 1 percent of US households owned more wealth than the bottom 90 percent (www (dot) washingtonpost (dot) com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/) – and changes since then have merely exacerbated the trend). Thus, if the description is to correspond to the facts,it would have to be that Mr Biden and his ilk are opposed to change which would lessen income and wealth inequality (which change they call «socialism»), while they facilitate change which increases such inequality. Plutocracy by any other name would smell as sweet….
Henri
PS : I resorted to the «(dot) transformation» twice above in an attempt to avoid being moderated by Ted’s algorithm ; we shall have to see if my efforts were in vain…. 😉
My work-around above failed – even a single link now seems to call forth «moderation» on these threads – I presume it’s «moderates» like Joseph Robinette who are doing it…. 😉
Henri
Joe is promising to make changes. Lots of changes. We need to justify a military that is far larger than the next 7 put together by forcing lots and lots of regime changes. The DPRK and Cuba (as Bush, Jr promised) Russia and China (as St Hillary promised), Venezuela and Mexico and maybe Monaco.
The US is always changing: other countries’ regimes, but that’s change (and more and more $$$$$ in the pockets of the `MIC, which is where they all belong).
The proper word for someone averse to or resistant to change is ‘conservative’. There is nothing moderate or ‘centrist’ about it.
Have Trump in charge is great for the opposition party. Fundraising is much easier. You do not have actually do anything but run investigation committees. It covers the party sins such as deportations – – Trump is getting the blame for something that was significantly ramped up under Obama.
The biggest fear of the current party leadership is losing control of the party. Biden isn’t going to lead a coup against them. Staying in power is the win that they want and need.
The names of the parties most accurately name the targets that the two institutional parties work together to suppress.
The Republicans oppose the function of a republican form of government and the Democrats oppose democratic interference with oligarchic rule.
Corporatocracy is not a republican form of government and the rule of oligarchs will never be democratic.
Each party does its part to frustrate organized opposition to the Oligarchic Corporatocracy and so work together in their opposition in order to suppress their particular charges (their electorates).
The voters who do not perceive the duopoly’s deceptive illusions for what they are are doomed to charge endlessly and ineffectively like a bull charging at each of two matador’s capes.
Of course, the duopoly rules because they are more duplicitous and cynical in the modern sense of the word.
We live under the dictatorship of no alternatives, to use the words of Roberto Unger, former law professor to Obama.