Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Winner: The Democratic Establishment


Dylan Matthews, Vox.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been one week since Super Tuesday, as the landscape of the presidential race has shifted dramatically over the past seven days. Biden’s commanding performance that night, including an unexpected win in Texas, has spurred the party’s major donors like former rival Mike Bloomberg, luminaries like former candidates Sens. Kamala Harris (CA) and Cory Booker (NJ), and congressional leaders like Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (IL) to line up behind Biden.

There were two ways that decision could have played out. It could have dramatically backfired. If Sanders had managed a come-from-behind victory in Michigan, and maybe a closer-than-expected performance in Mississippi where Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba endorsed him, then the narrative of a primary that was winding down would have been challenged. Additional undecided Democratic politicians would have hesitated to jump in. They might have concluded that Harris, Booker, Durbin, etc. miscalculated, and that those figures might find themselves on the wrong side of Sanders should he ultimately become the nominee.

The other possible outcome was what actually happened: Sanders losing to Biden across the board, and Biden’s endorsers looking like they made a difference. Indeed, Biden has already gotten new, powerful backers, like the prominent and deep-pocketed Super PAC Priorities USA, which spent nearly $200 million in the 2016 presidential cycle.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat whose support helped Biden to his remarkable string of victories, took a victory lap over Sanders supporters in the wake of the night’s results:


This is a bit much, given that Americans still haven’t seen Biden and Sanders face off one-on-one in a televised debate. Given each’s advanced age, and their ability to rely on having limited screen time in previous contests, the next debate might be revealing of their stamina and debating prowess in a one-on-one match with Trump.

But the core of Clyburn’s case is sound. Biden is the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination, and voters show no sign of rebelling for Sanders in defiance of party leaders. The party decided, and the voters are ratifying that decision.

Follow the links.  In particular, that last one.  Next up: the field negro.

Poor Bernie has never been able to capture the black vote, because black folks tend to be a little too pragmatic for his "revolution". We know that the white power structure will not allow the political system that benefits the few and the powerful to stray far from the status quo. And so we vote with our heads and not our hearts. We want to beat trump, and we don't think that Bernie is the man to do it.

Still, I am a little leery of the democratic party that can always count on us, but we can't always count on them. Republicans see our angst, and that's why Donald trump is cranking up his Negro outreach.

Follow the link.

Had African Americans turned out to vote in 2016 like they did in 2012, Hillary Clinton would be the president of the United States. Instead, Democrats overlooked and under-invested in the community, resulting in a cataclysmic drop-off in black voter turnout. The percentage of eligible African Americans who voted dropped to its lowest level in nearly 20 years, allowing Trump to eke out his razor-thin electoral college victory.

I titled the penultimate chapter of my book “Conservatives Can Count”, and Republicans have indeed done the math and are working overtime to reduce the margins by which they lose the black vote. During the Super Bowl, Trump’s re-election campaign spent $11m on a very effective ad featuring an African American woman who’d been released from prison after criminal justice reform legislation. She says in heartfelt fashion to the millions of people watching the ad: “I want to thank President Donald John Trump.”

I'm so old I remember when Black Democrats said they were voting for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004 because "he needs to clean up his own mess".  How'd that work out?

Black Dems don't want the blame for Trump this go-around (sorry to disappoint all the Jill Stein haters and Russia conspiracy theorists out there).  But going back to 'the way it was', BT (Before Trump)?  When Obama was president?  When kids were first put in cages at the border and thousands of civilians were killed by drones?

"It's the economy, stupid PDiddie," you say.  Right; the Obama economy that Trump is running on, BC (Before COVID19).  When Goldman Sachs alums were in charge of the economy that Goldman Sachs alums wrecked during Bush's second term.  That Biden wants to put in charge.

This isn't a rant directed solely at my African American Boomer brothers and sisters.  There are plenty of shithole centrist white people driving the Biden Bus.  And we know that it is predominantly Democrats in elected office suppressing the vote in minority precincts, and also where young voters showed up, but were discouraged by long lines, forced to wait outside in sub-freezing weather, and got the least-reliable voting machines to use.




Exit polls taken yesterday revealed voters think "the system needs a complete overhaul", and support a government-run single-payer healthcare system.



Yet Joe Biden swept to victory by telling his wealthy doors "nothing would fundamentally change", and that he would veto a Medicare for All bill if it reached his desk as president.

I am sensing a disconnect somewhere.

WTF ever happened to hope and change?
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