Bernie Sanders appeared on The Young Turks talking about the Presidential campaign, the immedidate danger to democracy that Trump represents right now and in the immediate wake of the November 3 election, and how he would like to see progressives act in relation to a Biden Administration. BERNIE Joins TYT Live to Talk COVID; Trump’s Wall Street Handouts 10/15/2020:
Biden's town hall was on ABC, because President Bunker Boy chickened out of having an actual debate. ABC would probably have preferred to have a crazy clown show instead of the substantive discussion they got. Watch ABC News Joe Biden Town Hall in Philadelphia Moderated by George Stephanopoulos 10/15/2020 (town hall begins around 1:01:00):
Around 1:54:00, Biden seems to be saying that he would expect his Justice Department to conduct independent, professional investigations of crimes committed by Trump Administration officials. I hope he's serious about that. Because that really is what needs to happen.
Remembering that Biden guiding campaign theme is I'm Not Donald Trump, he does give a decent presentation of his own political priorities, and displays his empathy well. Without the COVID-19 pandemic, I don't believe an essentially passively-framed campaign would be doing as well as the polls currently show that he is. He did talk about bringing people together and building broad coalitions in Congress. But I don't believe he said either "bipartisanship" or "budget deficit" the whole time. And that's a good thing!
To the surprise of no one, it was pretty demented. Also, the sun rose in the east this morning. He did manage to say that he denounces white supremacy (in the middle of spewing about "antifa") and that he accepts a peaceful transition (and then spews about plots against him and his fantasy massive voter fraud). Standard Trump ranting, in other words.
Writing about American politics right now seems a bit like writing on of those obituaries news organizations keep in the can on prominent people.
Only the subject in this case is American democracy. Because as Bernie Sanders said in a speech this past week, "This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy." Sen. Sanders on Trump's 'threat to our democracy'PBS Newshour 09/24/2020:
But my favorite bellwether for mainstream Beltway Village commentary, the Mark Shields and Bobo Brooks weekly gab fest, provides a picture that fits into the mood of mourning, and of dread that liberal democracy is the US is on the verge of a sad turning point, Shields and Brooks on Ginsburg’s legacy, Trump’s election rhetoricPBS Newshour 09/25/2020:
Short version of the discussion on Trump's new Supreme Court nominee, rightwing Catholic/Pentecostal theocrat Amy Coney Barrett:
Bobo (verbally finger wagging): It would be very, very naughty For Democrats to challenge Bennett's qualification to be a Supreme Court Justice in any way.
Shields: David's absolutely right. Nothing could be worse than for the Democrats to fight for their own side in this confrontation, which the Democrats shouldn't treat as a confrontation at all.
More literally:
Bobo:
Amy Coney Barrett also has values. She's a conservative. She is well-regarded. When she was Supreme Court clerk to Antonin Scalia, all of the clerks, regardless of party affiliation, admired her. When she was on the Notre Dame Law faculty, all of the faculty members, regardless of party ideology, admired her, that, personally, she seems — I have never met her.
She seems reputed to be a wonderful person. But she has a conservative record. She was a law professor for a long time and wrote a lot of articles, some of which were controversial and, in her 2017 confirmation hearings, were brought up.
I think it'll be hard to mount personal attacks, given what we know now. But there will be some conservative attacks. [Presumably meaning attacks on her conservatism]
Shields:
She — you could say, if you're a conservative, she's probably not going to be John Roberts. She is a true-blue and committed conservative.
But I would point out, as David laid out sort of the political land mines for Democrats, she has admirable personal credentials, the mother of seven, two adopted children. She brought a Down syndrome pregnancy to birth, a child, is raising it, and was endorsed by both, not only the conservative members of the law faculty at Notre Dame, but all the liberals as well.
I think it's a potential land mine for both sides. To the degree that abortion becomes the centerpiece issue, it's going to be a problem for Republicans among suburban women. To the degree that it becomes an issue and the Democrats go on the offensive against Amy Coney Barrett, then Joe Biden's hopes of reaching out across to blue-collar white voters who had flirted with Trump in the past, maybe former Democrats, becomes a problem.
And I think if, in fact, there is any sort of a mean personal attack mounted against her, it will only — it will only hurt the Democrats.
You get the drift.
Both cheerfully ignored the immediate effect of her approval for the Court could mean for Trump's brazenly advertised intentions to steal the election to stay in power. Shields did conclude the segment with a sadly expressed hope "that there is some beat [sic] of a soul still left in the party of Abraham Lincoln."
Why he may think such a hope is realistic in any way, he didn't say.
But appointing another far-right hack to the Supreme Court actually is a very big deal, especially at this possibly very late date in the history of American democracy as we've know it.
Michael O’Loughlin writing for the Jesuit America gives a carefully Mugmump description of the male-supremacist, theocratic "ecumenical" group with which Barrett is closely associated, Explainer: Amy Coney Barrett’s relationship with People of Praise 09/24/2020.
No one is raising objections to the possible nomination of Barrett for a SCOTUS seat on the basis of her being a Christian. If anyone actually contended that Christian faith is disqualifying, that would leave very few eligible appointees to any position in a majority Christian nation. But to effectively push back on the flood of gaslighting currently being unleashed by the Christian Right, we need to flip the script.
Lord knows (if you’ll pardon the expression), the Democratic Party is far from godless. But, while God talk in the party may sometimes annoy non-religious Democrats, no serious liberal argues that adherence to a religion itself is disqualifying for public office, which would be to advocate for an unconstitutional position. The difference is this: in the vast majority of cases, Democrats of faith understand their religious commitments as compatible with an approach to pluralism that provides robust equality for all in the public square. Right-wing Christians, on the other hand, espouse an anti-pluralist understanding of their faith, using and abusing the rhetoric of “religious freedom” to demand the right to be, as it were, “more equal than others.”
[Updated to correct misspelling of Amy Coney Barrett's name]
My take on the Democrats' "virtual" convention's first night is that it was pretty underwhelming. It was basically a long series of infomercials with a music video thrown in here and there. Even though it was pre-billed as Night One of the Republican Convention, the Republicans' and the Democrats' infomercials were pretty much equally bland. Full Democratic National Convention Feed Night 1 08/17/2020:
We got lots of pictures of diverse kinds of people, and lots of talk about Unity in general and bringing Americans together, yada, yada, Going High, other no-red-America-no-blue-America stuff. Including a short clip of a black woman protester rushing up to hug someone who I assume was a cop of some kind, although from his gear he looked more prepared for exploring the surface of the moon. (They didn't show where he clubbed her unconscious or whatever happened after the hug!)
Sanders' infomercial included his typical combative style, hit some substantive issues without bogging down in a laundry-list, and stressed the fight for democracy and against "authoritarianism". He even said "oligarchy"! (Where's the fainting couch?) And he gave an unambiguous endorsement of the Biden-Harris ticket. Just like he did for Hillary Clinton in 2016 along with very actively campaigning for her in the general. Corporate Democrats have trashed him ever since for insufficiently supporting her and blaming him for her loss. When they're not blaming Vladimir Putin or Jill Stein. I assume they will give him the same level of appreciation for loyally supporting the ticket in 2020.
Michele Obama gave an abbreviated version of her feel-good motivational speech, heavy on nostalgia for the harmonious days of the Obama Presidency and tailor-made for good reviews on The View. It was fine. It included a bit of polite scolding that "four years ago too many people believed their votes didn't matter." She did include, "George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered." So at least somebody mentioned that. But, "You know I hate politics?" What?!
The closing music video of "For What It's Worth" (1967) was the perfect Mugwump message for Republican Convention Night One. "Nobody's right if everybody's wrong". Because, hey, all we need is a President with a little more empathy and half-sense and everything will be fine, right? We've just gotta get past all these people carrying signs saying Hooray For Our Side. Both Sides Do It!Billy Porter & Stephen Stills perform "For What It's Worth" for DNCC-Span:
Biden's opening remarks are cut off, one of those things the Biden campaign needs to improve (deep sigh).
The two campaigns obviously worked together on the appearance. And Biden here manages to sound like an actual Democrats. Though he soon falls into more of the wishlist format of typical establishment Democratic speeches. He even works in some words of concern for young people instead of, you know, sneering at them.
Biden is a conservative Democrat. And his Presidency will reflect that, if he wins. That's why it so important for the activist base of the Democratic Party push Biden to act seriously on the rhetoric he's using here.
Because at-least-he's-not-as-bad-as-Trump is not good enough to win the election in November. And it's certainly not enough to put the Democratic Party on the road to the sort of transformative change that is so badly needed. After four years of Obama, who many Democrats obviously still see as The Best That We Can Do, we wound up with Donald Trump as President.
This is qualitatively the best appearance I've seen from Biden since he adopted the home studio mode. He's going to have to keep the hits against Trump coming.
Digby Parton, as she so often does, succinctly expresses a central point for the 2020 election: "I have no illusion that Biden will be the second coming of FDR. But he won’t be Trump." (Compare and contrast Hullabaloo 04/07/2020.
I'm assuming at this point, like presumably most people do, that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders is still in the race but in a more low-key mode. The Bidenistas seem to be replaying 2016, repeating Bernie should drop out, Bernie should drop out, Bernie should drop out. And we're already hearing a preliminary version of "Biden lost to Trump and it's all Bernie Sanders' fault."
Sad as the Democratic establishment is, I don't recall in previous Presidential elections that they were promoting an excuse for losing long before the actual election.
Segregationist voter suppression against blacks and Latinos as well as complications created by the COVID-19 crisis are both likely to be serious problems for the Democrats in November. There is an economic slump happening now, especially with the closures required to limit the spread of COVID-19. And it's not easy to predict its severity or length. Nor is it immediately obvious that it will work more against the Republicans than the Democrats. (Bryce Baschuk, The Evidence Mounts That the Global Recession Is Already HereBloomberg News 04/08/2020)
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8. April 2020, 06:00)
When it comes to predicting historical turning points, I lean toward Hegel's Owl of Minerva theory that we only begin to really understand the meaning of a historical era when it's coming to an end. ("When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." - From the Preface the Philosophy of Right)
Dani Rodrik indulges in a version of this kind of Hegelian restraint in Will COVID-19 Remake the World? Project Syndicate 04/06/2020:
COVID-19 may well not alter – much less reverse – tendencies evident before the crisis. Neoliberalism will continue its slow death. Populist autocrats will become even more authoritarian. Hyper-globalization will remain on the defensive as nation-states reclaim policy space. China and the US will continue on their collision course. And the battle within nation-states among oligarchs, authoritarian populists, and liberal internationalists will intensify, while the left struggles to devise a program that appeals to a majority of voters.
In American politics, the fact that the Republican Party is now headed by a remarkably corrupt, evidently sociopathic character like Donald Trump is, for me, a sign that the center-right project that began with the Reagan-Thatcher era that the Owl of Minerva now views as the beginning of the neoliberal period in the US and Europe has effectively run it course. Rightwing economics with Reaganesque charm, strong-daddy John McCain vibes, or Romney-like oligarchic slickness and smarm just doesn't work for the Republican Party anymore. Trump provides Mussolini authoritarian vibes, astonishing levels of corruption combined with the staggering inefficiency in managing essential government business that normally comes along with it, and a creepy mixture of Christian Right fanaticism and Russ Limbaugh general contempt for decency and facts.
The Republican Party has now decayed into a straight-up Reverend Bittery party. The Reverend Ezekiel Bittery was a minor character in Sinclair Lewis' novel Gideon Planish (1943), a representative of the crackpot rightwing fanaticism that is now conventional practice in the Trumpist Republican Party:
Brother Bittery is a flannel-mouthed rabble-rouser who used to be charged not only with stealing the contents of the church poor-box, but of taking the box itself home to keep radishes in, and who at present if he isn't on the pay-roll of all the Fascists, is a bad collector.
Once Brother Bittery gains some national notoriety, reporters marvel at the crassness of his views:
And during all this time, the Reverend Ezekiel himself will, as publicly as possible, to as many persons as he can persuade to attend his meetings, have admitted, insisted, bellowed, that he has always been a Ku Kluxer and a Fascist, that he has always hated Jews, colleges and good manners, and that the only thing he has ever disliked about Hitler is that he once tried to paint barns instead of leaving the barns the way God made them.
In 2020, the Reverend Bittery would be giving daily press conferences on the COVID-19 epidemic.
The qualitative degeneration of the Republican Party is one aspect of what Rodrik calls "the slow death" of Reagan-Thatcher neoliberalism. That's not to say that an undead version can't continue to stagger along and wreak further damage.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party seems to have exhausted its own version of center-left neoliberalism. Let's face, whether or not Bernie Sanders is in the picture, Joe Biden is a conservative. Even a Democratic conservative with traditional commitment to actually make government function, even if it primarily functions for the wealthy and the most affluent of the middle class, would be far better than Ezekiel Bittery Trump.
Biden is an unusual front-runner. He doesn’t draw the biggest crowds or have the largest base of donors. At a time when the Democratic Party is shifting to the left, he often seems annoyed by progressive demands, taking swipes at protesters calling for action on climate change or immigration. He reassured rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. This seems the opposite not just of Sanders’s political revolution but also Obama’s promise of “hope and change.”
In Pennsylvania, Biden has the clear support of the state Democratic Party, winning endorsements even from politicians who had initially supported other candidates. Former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter backed Bloomberg but has now joined the crowded Biden camp, which also includes Rendell, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, state Treasurer Joe Torsella, and most of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation. Representative Conor Lamb and Senator Bob Casey have been notable endorsements because they illustrate Biden’s popularity among centrists. This long list speaks to his strength in positioning himself as the candidate who unites tried-and-true Democrats.https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrat-pa-biden-problem/
Sanders has a much less impressive array of supporters here. But whoever becomes the party’s nominee will have to win over not just committed Democrats but also more marginal voters. This remains Biden’s weak spot.
Biden has an enthusiasm problem, as Heer notes in this tweet:
1. As the presumptive nominee, Biden is in pretty good shape for the general. He's consolidating support in the party and has a robust lead in national polls. The one weak area is enthusiasm, where he's weakest Democratic candidate in 2 decade. pic.twitter.com/UMG4QEzSWU
And the in-two-decades part refers to the fact that the data the chart uses only goes back 20 years.
Biden and his campaign have to fix this. Bitching and moaning at this point about how the Bernie Bros are mean to them won't do it. Getting better technical performance on Biden's home studio operation will help, but it won't solve the problem. Oh, and for God's sake, don't use your bookshelves as the background for his home studio appearances! The one time the dorky conservative Democratic marketing strategy might be useful is here. Hang a huntin' rifle on the wall an film him in front of that! Or a deer's head! Or some patriotic World War II poster!
Democratic operatives and activists who at this point are still chanting the "It will be Sanders' fault if Biden loses" mantra are effectively saying, "we know Biden will lose to Trump."
There is a Joe Biden YouTube channel. Check out a couple of videos there and see how well he stresses clear popular themes, or not.
Biden's first comment shown: "This is bigger than any one of us. This is - calls for a national rallying to everybody move together." The first four clips of Trump show him bullying reporters. The last two show Trump promoting his favorite untested medical miracle cures for the virus, but they don’t include the virus part.
Who is the target audience here? And why only clips about Trump bashing the press and saying how narcissistically confident he is? Those are all clips that voters open to Trump will like. The clips show Biden talking calmly but vaguely about things he thinks should be done. But it includes none of Trump saying something obviously stupid or irresponsible about the crisis response. The message seems to be that Trump is crude while Biden is the proverbial adult-in-the-room which so impresses Democratic "Make America Boring Again" voters. But no one will come aware from that particular ad thinking, "Wow, Trump really screwed up the roll-out of testing" or anything else about Trump's actual response.
Meanwhile the press is also repeating its 2016 practice by running Trump's daily COVID-19 briefings where Trump does his I'm-the-strong-guy-in-command act and throws in some professional-wrestling digs at people his voters consider bad, e.g., The Press, "Deep State" bureaucrats, doctors, military commanders who don't show personal fealty to Trump.
The Trump campaign will not focus on winning over 2016 or 2018 Democratic voters this year. They will focus on turning out their basis. And they will try to demobilize Democratic voters and potential swing voters for Biden. Bot of which means they will make their usual rabid attacks against Biden and the Democrats. The Senate Republicans are already prepping an investigation of Hunter Biden pseudoscandals. And Biden does have a sexual assault allegation against him by a former staffer that just went public that the Republicans will use no end. Trump's sexual abuses and escapades mean nothing to Republican voters. If anything, they signal to authoritarian voters that Trump is a Strong Man and Great Leader. But those two scandals alone have a lot of potential to convince less-engaged Democratic voters not to vote for Biden. This is a turnout election. So generating some real enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket is critical.
And Democratic operatives and activists chanting "It's all Bernie's fault!" will not win the election. In fact, anyone at this point saying, "It's all Bernie's fault!" is effectively admitting that they assume Biden will lose.
Bernie Sanders previews debate strategy against Joe Biden in 'fireside chat'The Hill 03/15/2020. The next couple of days will presumably be either the height of Sanders influence, or a big turnout in his Presidential campaign. And he's in top form. "You can't be a President and just talk off the top of your head. Especially when you don't know anything."
Here's a video by Richard Wolff. TRIGGER WARNING, especially for corporate Democrats. Wolff identifies as a MARXIST. So if your reaction to that is "OMG!! VENEZUEEEEE-EEEELA!!!", you should probably skip this one. I think he tends to be a bit melodramatic anyway, but staring straight into the camera enhances the effect. AskProfWolff: COVID-19 and the Stock MarketDemocracy At Work 03/11/2020:
And, for good measure, the Steve Earle song from the 2000s that suddenly has new currency, And I'll show
a little solidarity with the Bidenistas and suggest this should be Joe Biden's campaign song, Amerika V. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do) (Live):
Okay, that's kind of thin solidarity, I know. But, hey, "it's the best that we can do."
Scientific American brings us a column by Jennifer Beer on The Inconvenient Truth about Your “Authentic” Self 03/05/2020. Pointing out that authenticity is not only considered desirable but that "feelings of authenticity" have been shown to have demonstrable benefits to individuals, she writes:
... authenticity is a slippery thing. Although most people would define authenticity as acting in accordance with your idiosyncratic set of values and qualities, research has shown that people feel most authentic when they conform to a particular set of socially approved qualities, such as being extroverted, emotionally stable, conscientious, intellectual and agreeable.
This is the paradox of authenticity: In order to reap the many of the benefits of feeling authentic, you may have to betray your true nature. [my emphasis]
Authenticity is perceived as being true to one's convictions and values for example, but that is not the same as being perceived by others as "authentic" or feeling oneself to be authentic.
She is working with an understanding of authenticity that is consistent with the sense of internal consistency, honesty and genuineness, as opposed to hypocrisy, deviousness, pretentiousness, or phoniness:
From a psychological science standpoint, a person is considered authentic if she meets certain criteria. Authentic people have considerable self-knowledge and are motivated to learn more about themselves. They are equally interested in understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and they are willing to honestly reflect on feedback regardless of whether it is flattering or unflattering.
Most important, authentic people behave in line with their unique values and qualities even if those idiosyncrasies may conflict with social conventions or other external influences. [my emphasis]
And there is the catch. Because people are social animals and the daily-life concepts of authenticity are produced by social discourse, the feeling of authenticity is defined by individuals to a major degree by whether they are conforming to the expectations in their social environment of what is right and important and therefore genuine.
We could take that to mean that for a person to be "authentic" in situations where they are defying the immediate social consensus, they have to be willing to feel "inauthentic" in those situations.
I tend to think that "authenticity" in politics is greatly overrated. Whether a politician is sincere in wanting to enact a policy I think is good is considerably less important than whether they get it passed. In any case, what most elected officials have to decide most of the time is not especially ideological. If we think of a planning commission in a large city, for instance, development decision can be very important and consequential. Especially if they involve critical infrastructure, like the water supply or schools. But if we looked a list of the thousands of proposals the planning commission have to make in a year, we would be hard-pressed to decide for most of them which decision was liberal or conservative, left or right, more or less environmentally sound. Whether a strip-mall should be slightly bigger or a little smaller is hard to treat as a clear ideological matter. Even if we took the time to dig into the details, which basically only the developer proposing it and the city staff reviewing it actually know.
In the current Presidential campaign, we've have some examples of more or less "authenticity" in style from candidates. Pete "Mayor Winecave" Buttigieg sounds like a perky android who bounces from one position to another with every shift in the big-donor winds. That tends to be coded as "inauthentic". Bernie Sanders is on the other end of that spectrum with his gruff but engaging Tio Bernie presentation of himself, boosted by his long-term consistency on major issues.
Status Quo Joe Biden is very much part of the corporate-donor wing of the party like Buttigieg. But he actually does have an old-fashioned glad-handing, back-slapping politician's style that also can come off as "authentic" because it seems friendly and familiar. Even his gaffes can sound "authentic", when they don't come in the form of garbled sentences or weird expressions like "lyin' dog face pony-soldier". Also, hair-sniffing tends to come off as more creepy than "authentic".
But politics is politics. If members of Congress vote for good policies not because they personally much care about them but because of political pressure from their voters, that's a good outcome. The "authenticity" of the intent doesn't matter. And if they approve a bad policy that corporate donors want while personally sincerely favoring that policy, their "authenticity" doesn't improve the outcome a bit.
The concept of authenticity is also an important one in the philosophy of existentialism. I wrote about his in Theodor Adorno's "Jargon of Authenticity" and Adorno's criticism of existentialism 03/10/2013. In philosophical terms, Adorno saw the jargon of existentialism, of which the notion of authenticity has been central, is to humanize the specialization of knowledge that is so much a part of our daily lives in the present-day world. But he also saw it as part of the way that individualism valued abstractly in nominal disregard of its social content, a feature which he found particularly problematic in Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
Twitter is full of the sounds of deep sighs of relief from the Make American Boring Again faction now that Status Quo Joe is officially the frontrunner in delegate count (barely). That's understandable, and hard to begrudge.
And I give the Corporate Centrist faction credit for waiting at least a day or so before going into smug-like-Hillary-supporters-in-2020 mode. I hope for all our sakes that Biden and his campaign are very aware of and prepared to compensate for his weaknesses.
It would also be good if Biden could pick one or two good, popular policy themes by which he can define his campaign.
This Biden-booster article by Yascha Mounk, Biden’s Agenda Is Plenty BoldThe Atlantic 04/04/2020, apparently seeks to convince us that a from items from the boilerplate list of issues from Democratic fundraising letters amounts to a gutsy policy agenda: "Biden has pledged a higher minimum wage, a big increase in Social Security benefits for the poorest Americans, more generous health subsidies, and strengthened union rights. While unabashedly in favor of markets, Biden is just as unabashedly in favor of completing the American welfare state."
Except he's definitely against "completing the American welfare state" with comprehensive national health-insurance, aka, Medicare for All. Definitely not that!
Mounk also uses the argument that Biden's program is "social democracy", which he assumes that will be perfectly acceptable to voters while Sanders' "democratic socialism", which voters will presumably find horrifying. I don't recall ever hearing of Biden use "social-democracy" to define his program. And while I heard someone the other day make some kind of distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism, it was surprised to hear it. Because I'd have to do research myself to to figure out how to make an argument like that. And I have at least a passing familiarity with the history of socialism.
And at the risk of harshing the mellow of Biden fans envisioning floating on the clouds of contentment they thought Electable Hillary Clinton would deliver to them in 2016: Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee will be running against the Republicans. That means, they are going to call him a socialist and a communist and lots of other things as well. Don't kid yourselves.
Bernie Sanders win in California Tuesday is a real win. But the other states' results mean that the day didn't come close to being the blowout his supporters would have liked to see. Biden's streak of wins, including in Massachusetts and (apparently at this writing) Texas is impressive. We won't know for a while yet what the delegate counts will be in California. There is a 15% threshold statewide to win any delegates and how the vote sorted out by Congressional district also affects the delegate count. But it looks like only Sanders and Biden and maybe Michael Bloomberg are likely to surpass the minimal hurdle to win delegates. Depending on how the final count shakes out, Sanders could win a majority of the California delegates if Bloomberg doesn't make the hurdle.
A few things seem pretty obvious immediately afterward. Maybe the most impressive is how well Biden did in large states like California and Texas while having a minimal field operation and his own campaign not having much money to spend on media buys compared to Sanders. His high name recognition and the weekend consolidation of the centrist wing of the party after Biden's South Carolina win came through for him. It's definitely now a Sanders vs. Biden race, with Bloomberg apparently on the verge of backing out.
It sounds from the early results that the Sanders' campaign's goal of activating new primary voters wasn't achieved in most places. And his vote skews young, while older voters are more likely to participate.
Sanders is definitely the anti-establishment candidate and that's how he consistently has positioned himself. Now he'll have to make that work in a head-to-head contest with Biden. Elizabeth Warren is still a minor factor. But based on the polling of her supporters, it's hard to tell at this point whether her presence in the race benefits either Sanders or Biden more.
The punditocracy processes primary results especially through as though voters make their choices along a consistent left-to-right ideological scale. And no amount of contrary evidence seems to be able to shake them off that approach. At this point, Biden undoubtedly benefits from a comfort factor, i.e., Make America Boring Again. No doubt a worthy goal in comparison to the Malicious Orange Clown Show that we've experienced for the last three years.
It may be near-impossible for pollsters to measure. But I wonder to what extent Trump's bumbling, irresponsible handling of the coronavirus crisis may have boosted the return-to-normalcy mood among Democratic voters on Tuesday.
This is about the future. It's not about the past. It's about our children and grandchildren about leading in this country and leading the world once again. We have to remember who we are. This is the United States of America. It is time for America to get back up. And once again, fight for the proposition that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal, endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights.
We saw it often in school but don't realize how profound it is. We never lived up to these words, but until this president we never walked away from it. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe with every fiber of my being that's who we are. Let's get back up. We are a decent brave, resilient people. We can believe again but we are better than this moment. We are better than this president.
It’s plain now that, for the moment, anyway, a large part of the Democratic primary electorate is hungering for a president that it can ignore for four or five days a week. ...
I will grant you that the Harding precedent doesn’t bode well for a possible Biden presidency. However, what he’s been pitching ever since South Carolina is essentially the same appeal, with Sanders (and, to a lesser extent, Warren) in the roles of revolution, agitation, surgery, and so forth. It was the theme of all three endorsement speeches presented at the big hootenanny in Dallas; of course, it was Pete Buttigieg’s raison d’etre for his own campaign, so that wasn’t a stretch at all. The comfy shoes are triumphing.
The coronavirus crisis is a dramatic instance where boring and competent is dramatically better than bad know-nothing melodrama.
They write, “Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders's candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance.”
Wait, what about The Resistance? You know, Party Unity against the unique menace to democracy represented by Donald Trump and all that?
But at least the New York Times recognizes that the "Democratic Establishment" is really A Thing.
This is especially entertaining: “A number of superdelegates dream of a savior candidate who is not now in the race, perhaps [Ohio Sen. Sherrod] Brown, or maybe someone who already dropped out the race, like Senator Kamala Harris of California.”
I'm trying to imagine if their sources actually managed to tell them with straight faces: So, Sanders gets to Milwaukee with 45% of the delegates, and the convention votes to nominate Kamala the Cop instead. It's brilliant, man!
Yeah, that’s gonna happen ...
That fantasy also may be circumstantial evidence that use of hallucinatory chemical substances may be common among this “Democratic establishment.”
A lot of the article consists of various angles arguing against Sanders' position that the candidate that comes into the convention with a plurality of delegates should get the nomination. Of course, everyone tries to frame it in terms of high principle. But it's actually a tactical issue. If one of the other candidates besides Sanders was the most likely to get a plurality on the first ballot, they would be taking the position he's taking now and Sanders himself would be arguing that the convention needs to make its own decision despite the plurality.
Lerer and Egstein define their version of the "Democratic establishment": “The Times has interviewed 93 party officials - all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention.” along with, of course, various party big names that for shorthand we could call Bloomberg supporters.
Also, I was happy to see this mention of a group of which I'm part, "“Superdelegates from Democrats Abroad count as half a vote each.” Democrats Abroad counts as a state party so it also has DNC members. And WE ALL SUPPORT BERNIE SANDERS. Well, mostly, probably. At the 2016 convention, Democrats Abroad sent nine delegates for Sanders and four for Clinton.
This also provides some comic relief:
Others are urging former President Barack Obama to get involved to broker a truce - either among the four moderate candidates or between the Sanders and establishment wings, according to three people familiar with those conversations.
William Owen, a D.N.C. member from Tennessee, suggested that if Mr. Obama was unwilling, his wife, Michelle, could be nominated as vice president, giving the party a figure they could rally behind.
"She's the only person I can think of who can unify the party and help us win," he said. "This election is about saving the American experiment as a republic. It's also about saving the world. This is not an ordinary election." [my emphasis]
So the way to save the American Republic and the entire world is ... nominate Michelle Obama as Vice President?
The primary race is just beginning, although I certainly hope Sanders wins big on Super Tuesday next week.
It's telling that the first concerned anti-Sanders Democrat the Politico article quotes is this one:
“In 30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with so much doom and gloom,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way after Sanders' win in Nevada.
Bennett said moderates firmly believe a Sanders primary win would seal Donald Trump’s reelection. “It’s this incredible sense that we’re hurtling to the abyss. I also think we could lose the House. And if we do, there would be absolutely no way to stop [Trump]. Today is the most depressed I’ve ever been in politics.”
"Hurtling to the abyss"? Dude, have a glass of wine. Smoke a joint. Chill out.
If you've never heard of Third Way don't feel bad. Beltway Village reporters are basically the only ones who have heard of it. It's a hardline centrist group whose only purpose seems to be trolling any Democrat to the left of Joe Lieberman. If the Sanders movement is so progressive it depresses the three or four people who care what Third Way says, that's a good thing.
BTW, I notice that pundits like King have been referring to Nevada as "a liberal state".
Politico also quotes another professional centrist, Simon Rosenberg, hoping for a win for Status Quo Joe Biden. And they make this observation about Tio Bernie's win in the Nevada caucuses, "It was not just Sanders’ victory, but the lopsidedness of the outcome that struck fear into moderate Democrats. In one day, Sanders proved that he could broaden his coalition beyond the narrow base that many assumed would limit his appeal."
Harold Meyerson has some important observations on the significant of Latino support for Tio Bernie (Bernie Blowout Highlights Latino LiberalismAmerican Prospect 02/22/2020):
First, as in all communities throughout American history with a disproportionate share of immigrants, it’s the young - most born and schooled here, often more fluent in English than their elders - who not only are the most active politically but who also guide their elders through the labyrinth of American politics. As Bernie and Bernie’s policies speak more compellingly to the young than do any of his rivals and their policies, it’s no surprise that Latinos have tilted so sharply Berniewards in these caucuses.
Second, and even more fundamentally, the level of backing among Latinos for governmental support for economic equity and advancement has long exceeded that of any other demographic group in the electorate. One look at the exit polls on California ballot measures over the past quarter-century shows that, when voters have been asked to approve funds for schools or parks, and to decide on minimum-wage levels and the rights of unions, Latinos have been the most liberal voting bloc there is - more so, even, than African Americans. On one 1998 California ballot measure that would have greatly curtailed unions’ ability to involve themselves in elections (fortunately, it lost big), Latinos voted no at a higher rate than union members.
There’s an old conventional wisdom that says that because Latinos are supposedly more conservative on issues like choice or preserving the traditional family, they’re not all that liberal. It’s wrong. First, younger Latino voters aren’t conservative on those issues. Second, and more important, election after election has shown that when it comes to their choice of candidates, Latinos consider the candidate’s position on economic questions to be far more decisive than that on any cultural issue. [my emphasis]
Krugman isn't thrilled to have Bernie Sanders as the Democratic frontrunner. But he's also pushing back against anti-Sanders nonsense. His characterizing Meidcare for All as simply "abolishing private health insurance", though, is just silly. It's a purely polemical formulation.
But I think Sanders will listen to a lot of Krugman's economic policy advice.
People demanding more medical records from Bernie Sanders should be specific about what they want to see. X-rays and brain scans? Video of Sanders nekkid being examined by his doctor? Weekly drug tests by a parole officer?
In the records I linked above after a rudimentary Internet search, I didn't see any of those things in Bloomberg's, Biden's, and Warren's medical records release, although Warren's includes some details from a blood workup. I didn't find medical releases from Buddigieg or Klobuchar. But Mayor Winecave did say in the Nevada dwebate Tuesday that he would be willing to take a physical and release the results.
In a few days, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary will have given us a better picture of the Presidential field.
But for today, I want to mention the analysis by David Dayen and Alexander Sammon (They Forgot About BernThe American Prospect 01/28/2020) of how the Democratic political establishment more-or-less pretended that Bernie Sanders' campaign didn't exist until around the first of this year:
Sanders has been in the race since last February [of ], which means he’s spent some 350 days shattering donation records, building a committed fan base of millions, and never exiting the top three in polling, while spending the majority of the race in second place. Meanwhile, he’s run up a long list of high-profile endorsements from prominent politicians and celebrities. This is not someone who snuck up on the field.
Of course, Sanders was a close runner-up during the last presidential cycle, who never really stopped running once Donald Trump was elected. His years of building political infrastructure and track record of appealing to young voters was evident four years ago. He came close to taking out Hillary Clinton, an overwhelming favorite with massive institutional advantages that no 2020 candidate matches. It’s somewhat unfair to say that the political powers that be should’ve seen Sanders coming from a year off; they’ve had the entire latter half of the decade to apprehend his candidacy. [my emphasis]
Dayen and Sammon basically mock the Democratic establishment for being so negligent, even from the standpoint of their own sectarian, inner-party interests. "These are the strategic geniuses we should trust, not only with a general-election campaign against Donald Trump, but with running the country? The people who couldn’t see a Jupiter-sized asteroid headed straight for them?"
I'm a little more fascinated by the mystery of why they took this approach. Some of it was probably plain miscalculation and wishful thinking, i.e., if we ignore him and his annoying supporters, they will go away.
The laziness and groupthink among the major media probably had a lot to do with it, too. They didn't take Sanders seriously as a candidate because none of the people they talk to on a daily basis took him seriously. He and his proposals may be popular. But to cable TV stars earning hundreds of thousands or even millions a year, he just sounds like a crank.
For hardcore Hillary loyalists, it's likely that some of them are still irritated that he challenged her in 2016. Even calculating politicians and political activists can let resentment get the best of them.
And I do think that mainstream Democratic rhetoric about the Trump win contributes to fuzzy thinking about the current race. The self-styled Democratic "resistance" hasn't been able to focus on who to blame for 2016 outcome: Vladimir Putin, Jill Stein, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, James Comey, Bernie Sanders, and so on. Depending on who you're listening to at any one moment, any one of those is clearly to blame. Fuzzy thinking about the 2016 campaign that bounces freely from one scapegoat to the other is not necessarily conducive to thinking clearly about the current race.
As Dayen and Sammon put it, "The blind rage towards Sanders, evinced by the corporate wing of the party, seems to have manifested itself as literal blindness toward an enduring front-runner who could only charitably be described as hiding in plain sight."
These days we typically date the beginning of neoliberal dominance in the US and Britain to the Reagan-Thatcher era. In the US, that has resulted in an asymmetric polarization of the two main political parties. The Republicans have embraced the market-fundamentalism of neoliberal economics with a political Christian fundamentalist view on social and legal issues and a steadily building authoritarian orientation. At the present moment – specifically the weekend after the Senate voted not to call witnesses in Trump’s (first?) impeachment trial – the Republican Party has established a form of the “illiberal democracy” with which Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. At the moment, the 2020 elections still offer a promising opportunity to reverse that trend. But the Republican Party is now an authoritarian, white nationalist party.
The Democrats have also embraced the basics of neoliberal market-fundamentalism, although they try to put a more human face on it. The two parties do lean toward different segments of the American oligarchy: the Democrats tend to favor the finance and digital segments while the Republicans have a famous affection for the extractive industries, for instance. But the Democrats are on board with the basic neoliberal economic menu: lower wages, weaker unions, reduced social services, privatization of government service (even including prisons!), lower pensions, weaker safety regulations, an so on.
As Andrew Bacevich helpfully describes in The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory (2020), the Democrats combined their embrace of market fundamentalism with a surprisingly strong embrace of formal legal rights and representation for women, African-Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ people, and other groups long discriminated against. Surprising, because even in 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton considered same-sex marriage too controversial to endorse. And, in general, the Democrats have shown more concern for preserving democratic and Constitutional procedures and limits.
But that formal reverence for diversity also coexisted with harsh law-and-order measures with which the Clintons and Joe Biden are particularly identified, notably due to Clinton’s Crime Bill and the “war on drugs” generally. There was a bipartisan consensus on a legal regime that put large numbers of black men in prison for relatively small drug offenses, i.e., marijuana possession. Such convictions have been used by many states to support the Republicans’ Orbanist/segregationist project of suppressing minority votes by banned formerly convicted felons from voting.
The Democrats’ commitment to formal legal and symbolic equality also didn’t prevent the Obama Administration from pursuing a draconian policy against national-security leaks or giving officials of the Cheney-Bush Administration a pass on criminal conduct, mostly strikingly on the torture crimes.
Bacevich takes the post-1989 world as his age of illusions, which was famously characterized as The End of History. While both parties made their adaptation to the neoliberal era, for the Democrats it meant abandoning their New Deal/Great Society orientation and moving far toward conservative Republicans positions. For the Republicans, it meant that they could more enthusiastically pursue the conservative, pro-corporate, anti-labor politics with which they were already very comfortable.
Burke clearly has contempt for Sanders and his political program:
But by running again and proposing many of the “boldest” but least viable plans in the Democratic field, such as arbitrarily cancelling all student loan debt, or implementing national rent control—both of which have tepid support even among Democratic members of Congress–he has shifted the debate of serious issues in an unserious direction.
Much like Donald Trump in 2016, Sanders is standing out in a crowded field by making promises he can’t keep. He’s not giving voters an honest assessment of how he will improve their lives. Like an airbrushed magazine model who makes real people look bad by setting an impossible standard of beauty, Sanders is harmfully distorting our view of other candidates by refusing to stick to reality.
But later he writes, "Needless to say, it is not fair or accurate to compare Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump." Huh. Cute.
There’s nothing original about this. It’s the same kind of condescending sneering that has been standard rhetoric of conservative Democrats against those to their left. Including ones that didn’t specifically call themselves democratic socialists. It’s not worth wasting energy to be irritated or get huffy over it.
Because not only is it unoriginal. He gives away the meaning here:
Sanders is not offering aspirational goals and saying he will try his best; he is making promises. He has directly told voters: “We will pass Medicare for All. We will eliminate co-pays, premiums and deductibles.” His website doesn’t say he will work to reduce medical debt. It says flatly: “We will eliminate all past due medical debt in this country.” He also promises to “Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million Jobs,” provide guaranteed, universal, affordable child care, and more.
In other words, Democrats should have no grand visions. No serious commitments to reform. No willingness to address serious existing and developing problem head-on. And, most importantly, they should be acting like they intend to fight for their own positions.
This is the asymmetric polarization on full display. The Republicans are willing to pursue radical positions, even ones that are unpopular, and fight to push them through. They haven’t been shy about pursuing a Reagan Revolution or a Gingrich Revolution.
While the Democrats, on the other hand, have spent a large part of the last four decades in a defensive crouch, adopting Republican framing of issues and afraid to aggressively push for their own expressed goals, campaigning as though they were embarrassed by their own supporters. We saw a particularly notable example in 2019, when Nancy Pelosi was swept into the House Speakership by a stunning Democratic turnout in the 2018 midterms, and then spent her first half year as Speaker strongly arguing against impeaching Trump. She even gave the Republicans a perfect talking point, that impeaching Trump would hurt the Democrats politically. She didn’t abandon that defensive crouch position until Democrats newly elected in swing districts insisted that their reelection prospects would be politically damaged if the House didn’t move on impeachment.
One of her arguments was that the House Democrats should pursue impeachment only if they had assurance beforehand that they would get a 2/3 majority for removal in the Republican-dominated Senate. “Don’t fight unless we already know we can win” is anything but an inspiring battle cry. Burke makes the same kind of argument against basically everything about Bernie Sanders:
Sanders is often praised for his honesty and authenticity. But in this respect he is actively misleading voters. Most of his promises depend on Congress to keep them. There is virtually no evidence that, even if he becomes President, he will have the votes necessary to enact any, let alone all, of these ideas. Critically, that isn’t just because Republicans are standing in the way—it’s because there is not enough support among Democrats either.
For almost any important political issues to which there is any kind of opposition, “Don’t fight unless we already know we can win” is the same as “Don’t fight at all. Don’t even try.”
For the Make American Boring Again Democrats, the sentiment of the Pete Seeger song that became a major anthem for the civil rights movement in the 1960s is incomprehensible:
The only thing we did was wrong
Staying in the wilderness too long
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
The only thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
The Iowa caucuses are two weeks from this coming Monday. New Hampshire's primary is eight days later. So the Democratic primaries are likely to sort out to three or even two leading candidates in a few weeks.
It would be seriously awesome if it came down to a Sanders-Warren race with Warren as the conservative candidate.
Mayor Winecave is down to 7% according to this poll. But it's a national poll and he has previously been showing up well in Iowa polls, although he's slipped more recently. Buttigieg's campaign is assuming they need a really strong showing in Iowa to stay viable.
Bloomberg's candidacy so far is mainly a reminder of how ridiculously dependent American elections are on big donors and pseudo-"independent" expenditures, the candidate himself being the big donor here. The only way I can think of that the oligarchical financing could get worse would be for Congress and/or the Supreme Court to prohibit individual donations of less than the current limit of limit of $2,500.
The Trump cult is going after Biden like crazy, of course. And they've started taking Sanders more seriously. Sanders probably benefitted from the national media and Big Pundits assuming he was meaningless until basically a couple of weeks ago, in that the Republicans largely held off on the oppo against him. The Project Veritas video this past week is a hint of how the Republicans will work the anti-Semitic propaganda against him.
That was the Jew-Bolshevik version. We'll also get a lot of the rich-Jews-controlling-the-world version complete with Puppet-Master George Soros and the like. Susan Collins at some point will say she's "very disappointed" that Republicans would use such tactics.
Sanders explicitly describes what he means by wanting a "political revolution." This will be helpful to remember when the corporate Democrats and the Republicans roll out the stock accusations that Sanders wants to guillotine everybody in sight, and other things along that line. From the transcript:
I think that the only way we bring about real change in this country is not within Capitol Hill. What I believe is, we need a political revolution, like the labor movement did in the '30s, like the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the gay movement.
Millions of people have got to stand up and fight for justice. So what our campaign is about is twofold. Number one, I do believe I'm the strongest candidate to beat the worst president in the history of this country, the most dangerous president, Donald Trump.
But ... what I know is that no president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it alone.
So, what this campaign is about, it's not just winning the election. It is about building a movement of millions of people who, in fact, will stand up to the greed and corruption of the fossil fuel industry, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the military industrial complex, et cetera.
That is the only way that I know as to how we can bring about real change. We are the only campaign, I think, who goes going forward in that direction. [my emphasis]
To be fair to the corporate Democrats, they and their big donors do oppose the kind of democratic and anti-corporte movement Sanders describes there.
So while their demagoguery against Sanders may be malicious and dishonest, they do understand what his popular programs is and they do oppose it.
That quote is also a good illustration of drawing the populist dichotomy of the People versus the Elite. Sanders' version is left populism, of course.
Bernie Sanders war am vergangenen Wochenende auf der amerikanischen Nachrichten-Sendung Face the Nation aufgetreten. Full interview: Bernie Sanders on "Face the Nation" 06/23/2019 (alle Übertragungen aus dem Englischen sind meine):
Der Teil des Interviews über die Iran-Politik erregte besonders meine Aufmerksamkeit:
BRENNAN: Ich möchte Sie nach dem Iran fragen.
SANDERS; Gut.
BRENNAN: War die Entscheidung von Präsident Trump in dieser Woche, diesen [militärischen] Streik auszurufen, die richtige?
SANDERS: [kichert] Sehen Sie, es ist, als würde jemand einen Korb voller Papier in Brand setzen und ihn dann auslegen. Er hat dazu beigetragen, die Krise zu schaffen. Und dann stoppte er die Angriffe.
Die Idee, dass wir einen Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten betrachten, der, erstens, denkt, dass ein Krieg mit dem Iran etwas ist, das gut für dieses Land [die USA] sein könnte ...
BRENNAN: Er hat nur einen begrenzten Streik gemacht.
SANDERS: [bewegt die Hände, sprincht sarcastisch] Oh, nur ein begrenzter Streik, oh, nun, Ent-schuld-igung! Ich wusste einfach nicht, dass es okay ist, einfach ein anderes Land mit Bomben anzugreifen.
[gemält Anführungszeichen in die Luft:] "nur einen begrenzten Streik."
Das ist ein Akt der Kriegsführung.
Also zwei Punkte. Das wird einen Flächenbrand im gesamten Nahen Osten ausbrechen. Wenn Sie den Krieg - wie ich - den Krieg im Irak, Margaret, für eine Katastrophe halten. Ich glaube bis ins Herz meines Herzens, dass der Krieg, ein Krieg mit dem Iran noch schlimmer wäre, mehr Verluste an Menschenleben, nie endender Krieg in dieser Region, massive Instabilität. Wir reden darüber, wir sind jetzt seit 18 Jahren in Afghanistan. Dieses Ding wird nie enden! Ich werde also alles in meiner Macht Stehende tun, Nummer eins, um einen Krieg mit dem Iran zu beenden.
Und, Nummer zwei, und hier ist ein wichtiger Punkt. Ja auch, sollen wir uns daran errinnern, was wir in der Bürgerkundeklasse gelernt haben, ja auch, als wir Kinder waren. Es ist der Kongress der Vereinigten Staaten unter unserer Verfassung, der über eine kriegsschaffende Autorität verfügt. Nicht der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten. Wenn er den Iran angreift, wäre das meiner Meinung nach Verfassungswiedrig.
Ich gönne mir hier ein bisschen "Theaterkritik". Brennans Formulierung der Frage nach dem Streik: War die Entscheidung von Präsident Trump in dieser Woche, diesen [militärischen] Streik auszurufen, die richtige?", ist angemessen. So wurde es diskutiert, und andere, darunter einige Demokraten, haben den Vorfall genutzt, um Trump eine Optik von Schwächen zu beschuldigen. Journalisten sollten sondierungs- und provokative Fragen stellen. Und es wäre ein wichtiger Moment gewesen, wenn Sanders die Prämisse der Frage einfach akzeptiert hätte. In diesem Fall wäre eine angemessene Folgefrage gewesen: "Glauben Sie, dass die Entscheidung, anzugreifen, die richtige war?"
Aber sie zeigte die zugrunde liegende militarisierte und imperiale Denkweise von viel zu viel der amerikanischen Großmedien, als sie seine Antwort mit „Er hat nur einen begrenzten Streik gemacht" unterbrach.
Der ehemalige Präsident Jimmy Carter, der als Präsident als Teil des konservativeren Flügels der Partei galt - sowohl Ted Kennedy als auch Jerry Brown hatten sich 1980 in den Vorwählen gegen ihn gestellt - sagte früher dieses Jahres seiner Sonntagsbibelklasse, dass die Vereinigten Staaten seien "die kriegslüsternste Nation in der Geschichte der Welt". (Brett Wilkins, Jimmy Carter: US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World'Common Dreams 04/18/2019; Emma Hurt, President Trump Called Former President Jimmy Carter To Talk About China NPR 04/15/2019)
Die beiläufige Annahme in den Mainstream-Medien, dass die USA routinemäßig Militärschläge starten und Kriege beginnen können, ist ein Spiegelbild der Zeit militaristischen Denkens, die in der amerikanischen Politik viel zu präsent ist. Andrew Bacevichs Beschreibung in The New American Militarism (2005) ist auch 15 Jahre und zwei Präsidenten noch immer eine wichtige Beschreibung des düsteren Phänomens.
Sanders zeigte in seiner Antwort nicht nur, dass er das Thema sehr ernst nimmt, sondern dass er sich tatsächlich emotional mit der ernsten Angelegenheit beschäftigt, das Land in den Krieg zu führen. Viel zu viele demokratische Politiker - und praktisch alle Republikaner - sind mehr besorgt, ihre Bereitschaft zur Kriegsandrohung hervorzuheben.
Sanders erwähnte auch Trumps Drohung zur Aufdeckung und Ausweisung von Millionen von Arbeitern ohne Papiere zur Folge und nannte sie zu Recht "schrecklich" und "unamerikanisch".
The segment of the interview about Iran policy particularly caught my attention:
BRENNAN: I want to ask you about Iran.
SANDERS: Good.
BRENNAN: Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?
SANDERS: [chuckles] See, it's like somebody setting a fire to a basket full of paper and then putting it out. He helped create the crisis. And then he stopped the attacks.
The idea that we're looking at a President of the United States who, number one, thinks that a war with Iran is something that might be good for this country ...
BRENNAN: He was just doing a limited strike.
SANDERS: [waving hands] Oh, just a limited strike, oh, well, I'm sor-RY. I just didn't know that it's okay to simply attack another country with bombs.
[With air-quotes:] "Just a limited strike."
That's an act of warfare.
So, two points. That will set off a conflagration all over the Middle East. If you think the war - as I do - the war in Iraq, Margaret, was a disaster. I believe to the bottom of my heart that the war, a war with Iran would be even worse, more loss of life, never-ending war in that region, massive instability. We're talking about, we have been in Afghanistan now for 18 years. This thing will never end! So I will do everything I can, number one, to stop a war with Iran.
And, number two, and here's an important point. Y'know, let's remember what we learned in civics, y'know, when we were kids. It is the United States Congress under our Consstitution that has war-making authority. Not the President of the United States. If he attacks Iran, in my view, that would be un-Consititutional.
I'll indulge myself in a bit of "theater criticism" here. Brennan's framing of the question on the strike, "Was President Trump's decision this week to call of that strike the right one?", is appropriate. That's the way it's been discussed, and others, including some Democrats, have used the incident to accuse Trump of a show of weakness. Journalists should ask probing and provocative questions. And it would have been a important moment if Sanders had simply accepted the premise of the question. In that case, an appropriate follow-up question would have been, "Do you think the decision to attack was the right one?"
But she displayed the underlying militarized and imperial mindset of way too much of the corporate media when she interrupted his answer with, "He was just doing a limited strike."
The casual assumption in the mainstream media that the US can routinely launch military strikes and start wars is one reflection of the time of militarist thought that is way too present in American politics. Andrew Bacevich's description in The New American Militarism (2005) is still an important description of the grim phenomenon 15 years and two Presidents later.
What Sanders showed in his response was not only that he takes the issue very seriously but that he actually is emotionally engaged with what a serious matter it is to take the country to war. Way too many Democratic politicians - and virtually all Republicans - are more concerned to highlight their willingness to threaten war.
Sanders also brought up Trump's threat to round up and expel millions of undocumented workers and rightly called it "horrific" and "un-American."
