Bernie's endorsement of Biden, per Guardian, this link.
Enough of non-news reporting. Worth detailed consideration, again Guradian online, this morning under the heading "Opinion" -
Nathan Robinson wrote,
Joe Biden needs to do a lot more if he wants to win over Sanders voters subhead: His ‘concessions’ so far have only demonstrated that he isn’t serious about listening to leftwing voters
oe Biden has a problem: the young people who fueled Bernie Sanders’ second-place campaign are not very interested in Joe Biden. Biden has a well-known enthusiasm gap and even though he has dominated recent primary states, younger voters tended to prefer Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Progressive student groups around the country are declining to endorse Biden. A group of leftwing youth organizations sent an open letter to Biden demanding better policies if he wants their support.
On Monday, Sanders endorsed Biden, as he has long said he would. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has remained skeptical, saying that Biden needs to be made “uncomfortable” before there can be any kind of party unity. Many younger people share Ocasio-Cortez’s perspective; they are waiting to see what Biden can offer rather than reflexively supporting him because he is the Democrat.
Why is Biden struggling with young progressives? Well, one reason is that he has spent a lifetime opposing key progressive goals, and used to be proud of his reputation as one of the Senate’s “most conservative” Democrats. He was anti-abortion, pro-Iraq war and in the pocket of big banks. Even today, Biden says he has “no empathy” for young people who complain about indebtedness and precarity. He has told millennials who raise concerns about his environmental policies that they should “go vote for someone else”. Plenty have been willing to do just that. So while some commentators, such as Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, have suggested that activists and left media are responsible for Biden’s “unity problem”, the more blameworthy culprit is Biden himself.
In fact, it doesn’t seem as if Biden has much interest in solving his “unity problem”. In an ostensible effort to reach out to the left, Biden recently debuted new policies on healthcare and education. Did he adopt the policies recommended in the activists’ letter, namely Medicare for All and canceling all outstanding student debt? No, he did not. Instead, he merely proposed lowering the existing Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 and canceling tuition-related debt for students who attended public colleges who earn under a certain income.
The first of these policies almost seems like a deliberate insult. Biden’s response to those young people demanding a better health policy is to offer a policy that won’t help any of them for decades. And to understand just how pitifully stingy this “concession” is, remember that dozens of Democratic senators, including plenty of “moderates”, have already endorsed lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 55. You can find an op-ed in Forbes (not exactly the Democratic Socialists of America newsletter) suggesting 50 would be a better age. Bill Clinton proposed 55 in 1998, and Hillary Clinton advocated 55 in 2016. So Biden’s big concession to the left is actually more conservative than a centrist Democratic proposal! It’s not nothing, but it’s about as close to nothing as a policy can get without literally being nothing, and it shows that Biden isn’t serious about courting the left.
[...]
[links in original omitted] As expected, that latter item as quoted drew an extensive reader commentary stream.
Opinions can differ; however, I cast my last lesser evil vote already, and have no more of them in me.
Biden earns it, or not.
But it is my vote and not the property of Tom Perez, nor Michael Bloomberg, nor Haim Saban spending and pontificating as they do.
What did happen in the ramp-up to Bernie's concession, here at least, was a loss of respect for Sen. Klobuchar over her doing on the eve of Super Tuesday exactly what the little mayor from South Bend did; while such treachery was expected of him all along but something of a wake-up call re Klobuchar. Yes, Klobuchar after all is a career politician like Obama, Biden, Tom Perez, the Clintons, little mayor, et al. Still, it was shabby.
She will run again.
A reform broom has to have a wide sweep. A Trump four-more might be the price of starting actual and substantial reform against machine politics entrenched in propagation of an intolerably sick status quo.
_____________UPDATE____________
Keeping an open mind, but a skeptical one, the view here is Joe Biden will not do one fucking thing about this shameful situation. (Hat tip to Dan Burns for highlighting that post.) It explains a problem, and if Joe Biden expects to be President he'd better face up to what is expected of a true DEMOCRAT. Fixing problems instead of blessing them while the campaign rolls in money from the perps would be a refreshing Biden CHANGE. I do not see Joe Biden having that strength of character. If he had, he'd have shown it by now.
Whistling past the Joe Biden graveyard might lead to a world of hurt for those doing that.
2016, Bernie would have won. 2020, Bernie would have won. Bernie's comparative character next to Joe Biden is something nobody should forget, nitpick against, or dissemble over. Biden stinks of compromise with the worse of the nation; the exploitative malefactors of great wealth. He either moves to better policy than his life to now suggests to be expected, or comes in second to Trump. TRUMP! DONALD FUCKING TRUMP! And the Tom Perez crowd will again shrug shoulders and blame progressives for not bending over to their will. To the will of unchecked wealth doing politically blessed evil.
Lesser evil from the Democratic Party gets really tiring when nothing but lesser evil is way too often on the table.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
David Sirota has begun a new website, bookmark it:
https://sirota.substack.com/
Where that link offers an email subscription, or a toggle from thee opening screen to content.
Recently on the site Sirota posted:
Which Joe Biden Are We Getting?
[,,,] Is this the Joe Biden who will be the Democratic nominee? Does he think he needs to shit on progressives to prove that he’s a “moderate”? Does he believe he can behave that way and get away with it by simply telling Democratic voters that if they don’t vote for him, they get the monster?
Are we getting a new and evolved Joe Biden?
But, then, another possibility is a new Biden — a Biden who finally realizes that the best way to unify and energize disaffected Democratic voters is to engage them, make real policy concessions and take them seriously. Is that even possible?
I wish I knew the answer, but the signs are mixed, at best.
Biden has made a few modest policy concessions in recent days -- but on the merits they were fairly weak. For example, his sudden support for reducing the Medicare eligibility age to 60 is actually less progressive than what many Senate Democrats proposed ten years ago.
Biden has said he wants to unify the party, but Biden has been periodically thumbing his nose at progressives -- in 2018, he basically told millenials to screw off; in May 2019, he promised only a “middle ground” climate policy during a climate emergency; in November 2019 he told a progressive critic that “you should vote for Trump”; and in March 2020 he went out of his way to continue denigrating Medicare for All, as a lethal pandemic was starting to spread across the country, causing mass layoffs and throwing millions off of their health insurance plans.
Biden has in recent days said some nice things about Bernie Sanders, but after the final debate, Biden’s top aide shat on Bernie and Bernie’s movement in really ugly terms (and, anyway, when it comes to a national election with implications for the country and the planet, we should care far less about whether he is personally nice to Bernie and far more about the actual policy).
Clearly, the politics of triangulation are reflexive for Biden and the Clinton-era dinosaurs who run his campaign. Triangulating and hippie-punching is what he and they have always done -- and that retrograde behavior is not just morally offensive, it is politically dangerous in what is likely to be a general election that will be all about motivating the base.
To defeat Trump, we need an energized Democratic Party.
Biden and the Democratic establishment sneering at disaffected progressive voters to prove to mythical Republican swing voters that they aren’t liberal -- that’s not going to cut it.
Telling young voters to fuck off and vote for Biden or you get Trump -- that’s not going to cut it either.
The best hope to defeat Trump is to positively and constructively motivate a large Democratic turnout. The best way to do that is to show progressive voters they are actually valued, rather than taken for granted. And the best way to show them that they are valued is to actually embrace an agenda that they want.
[much text and all of many links in the original are omitted, so read the item at Sirota's new site]
Sirota seems to suspend judgment in hope for a changed, evolved, more adult Biden. He does not mention Biden's overarching tendency to kneel to money. He should. As much or more skeptical, the view here. The old sayings resonate about a leopard and its spots, and not biting the hands that feeds his campaign and family members.
What Sirota implies is Joe Biden has to show something legitimate to progressives, real and substantial, not transparently dismissive and disingenuous. People who will swing the election are ones who can smell bullshit and avoid it - not the Dem. regulars wanting to protect public sector jobs and pensions and screw all else; not the Dem donors who are less contributors than investors when it comes to politics; but legitimate voters wanting a better deal from Washington than they've had over the balance of my lifetime (which is close in length to equaling Biden's). Put another way - we don't want any more GOP-lite Clintonism, which sucks. Joe has the choice, CHANGE -
OR LOSE.
--------------------------------
FURTHER: There are two schools of thought that seem available to progressives (voting Trump not being a realistic option): first, leave the presidential ballot line blank, vote Dem down-ticket; second, stay home.
Klobuchar is not up this cycle, but down-ticker were her seat up, she was an integral part of the Clyburn and inner party hack show running all around Bernie in Iowa and New Hampshire; then pulling the South Carolina shuffle, booggying out the door on the eve of Clyburn's show of Biden love, etc. As part of that circle jerk, Amy has burned bridges, at least here if not more widespread. She's been basically a dumpling over multiple Senate terms, and her being within this collective dump on Bernie is the cherry atop the sundae. She needs to be joined next time, into a primary, by a progressive. She's not a part of any solution; hence part of the problem, that problem being love of big money coupled with unresponsiveness to real needs of real people.
We do not need that. Not at all. She's a Tom Perez of the other gender. (Is there a greater insult?)