Black History Month 2020 has been a little better than last year. The Emmett Till Anti-lynching law was passed in the House this week and will soon almost certainly be signed into law. We have seen a frontrunner emerge in the Democratic presidential primaries in the early going ahead of the monumental Super Tuesday coming up next week.
Early voting is getting late. Time to get out there and vote. If you are in California and you have a vote by mail ballot be sure to mail it NOW or drop it off at your local country board of elections. Or, don’t forget to bring it with you in person to the polls on March 3.
The staggeringly sad news of the untimely and shockingly sudden passing of Midwin Charles, the civil rights attorney and television legal analyst and commentator, has not yet registered for me. I write this in a state of disbelief and disorientation.
Midwin Charles was only 47. Well respected, beloved and sought out for her valued contributions, Ms. Charles personified wisdom, expertise, energy and excellence in the legal profession. Her joy, enthusiasm, incisive analysis of legal issues and complex situations in legal cases, particularly criminal law litigation and trial strategy, was the aspect of her greatness that I enjoyed the most.
Ms. Charles had been well-liked. Her legal acumen was sharp and unmistakable. Charismatic, warm and honest, Midwin Charles told it to you straight, clear and true. I, like other a vast swath of avid television viewers, couldn’t wait to hear her commentary and analysis on some of the most pressing legal matters of the day.
It is not yet known how Midwin Charles passed but the news of her passing was such a jolt and shock to my system and to so many others. She will be sorely and terribly missed.
My deepest and most heartfelt condolences to her family on this most incomprehensible and devastating loss.
If you voted for Hillary Clinton you may have long repressed that painful memory. Or, perhaps you can still smell it, four years later.
The fumigators have been working overtime at the place you see above these words to eradicate the swampy stench that metastasized into the gigantic, distressing scale of hatred, lies, criminality, separation, terrorism and death over these last four years, and particularly the last 11 months, including the last two weeks.
How could we forget how we felt on January 20, 2017? Or at any point of 2020?
For most of us, it was not a happy feeling.
Today at least, is our moment.
Ours.
No one can take that away. Even the militarized presence that shrouds this historic inaugural day in the United States of America will take a back seat to the immense joys and glories of our hard work.
Today is our moment. Part one of our moment.
To all of you who made this happen, who voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who fundraised, who put your Biden-Harris sign in your window, who donated, who knocked on doors, who phoned voters, who got on social media and communicated to vote for Joe Biden, who held conversations, meetings on video conferencing platforms, talked to friends and family, your spouse, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other, work colleague, complete stranger:
THANK YOU.
Take a deep bow. Have a drink. Or a non-alcoholic beverage.
That was my immediate reaction as I drank champagne and drank more champagne, joyously, in some kind of insane attempt to purge the memory of the grim toll of the previous 366 days of a singular, cruel leap year. The celebration was subdued but one borne of relief as fireworks exploded in San Francisco with robust cheers ringing out as an accompanying anthem to the percussive early morning explosions.
I received several phone calls and texts well before midnight Pacific time so I was already mentally in 2021 early on during the final hours of 2020. In all respects my psychological benchmark, the marker of transitioning out of 2020, had actually begun almost two months ago. This New Year’s morning’s official calendar shift to 2021 however, was just the tonic. The champagne itself was the perfect transition.
What a horrible year 2020 was. The most evil and collective gloom, misery and global radical life change we’ve seen and experienced for quite a few decades.
At least I think so.
Good riddance to 2020.
Annus horribilis. Remove one “n” from the first word in this sentence and it describes exactly how and where we got shafted by these last 12 months. Some of us far, far worse than others.
This new year named 2021 surely must be different.
Either that is my naivety writing or it is optimism and hope shouting from my fingertips, punctuated by the sound of the keyboard I enter these words from. I’d like to think that optimism and hope matter — and that those two words are not just words or a language that some privileged or rich people speak without any real substance or meaning in those words, or even a devout belief in those words.
Hope must be grounded in something tangible and real and meaningful. For example: grounded in hard work, collective activism, vision, organization, passion and the commitment and action to fight for a better, more just world.
We must also fight to be better people, individually and collectively.
And love must be the core operating principle. As must justice and compassion.
After the varying degrees of hell we went through in 2020, surely better days will come.
Yet we must continue to fight for those better days, not just wish or hope them into existence.
Things will never go back to the way they were, what with technological invasions and revolutions literally reshaping the way we live, think, speak, work and behave.
In other words there’s no such thing as “normal”. There never has been. (And “normal” for whom and what, exactly?)
“Normal” is for the birds.
The coronavirus pandemic has truncated us further from our human selves and deeper into a compromised, selfish, fearful, hopeful, paranoid, terrified, wayward sea of humanity and confusion. With this deadly virus raging on around the globe somehow I think we are being groomed and doomed to become robots for some unwanted experiment of attack on our endurance or fortitude, an attack that tests our resolve and resilience, and for that matter, our individual independence.
Something is happening. We have to figure out what that “something” is. Maybe you already know the answer.
Masks may have hid our faces (those of us wearing masks at least) but they did not hide our hearts.
Masks covered our mouths, but our souls shined through our eyes.
We were challenged in 2020 but we did not fail — at least as much as we could have failed.
We had some successes. Some victories. Some respites.
We faced setbacks but did all we could to fight back against them.
Not everything in the world or about us as people was unclean in 2020 but for so many of us our spirit was clear, resolute and undaunted. These good, life-affirming things amidst the grim, mass death showed. These good things we did shone the world over. Acts of kindness. Compassion. Life-saving. So many of us managed to do good things amidst all of the pain, suffering, grief and death.
If we could get through 2020, we can get through anything in 2021.
*I think*.
So yes, a New Year has arrived. New opportunities. New possibilities. New challenges. New horizons. A chance to turn the page in your heart and be better. A chance to be better to yourself and better to others.
A chance to wipe your slate clean. To the degree that you can do so.
In this brand New Year the world awaits our footprint. We must make it a positive, life-celebrating, justice-advocating footprint.
The New Year has begun and we must begin to forge a new path with a vision that says that people matter, that Black Lives Matter. That Black people matter. We must push, change and be the architects of the laws and mentalities that reject everything encompassing that vision.
Laws must be designed to respect and recognize the humanity of all people, particularly and especially Black people, instead of laws designed to protect and consolidate the economic interests of a few rich white men. The world cannot survive like that. Nor can it possibly thrive like that. Just look at how the world has fared so far under that rubric.
All I know is, what’s right is undoubtedly right — and what’s wrong is emphatically wrong.
So we must be proactive. We must. We cannot afford to go backwards. We cannot afford to go backwards, not even 24 hours from this first new day of 2021.
Photo: A street on New Year’s Eve 2020, in San Francisco. (Photo by: Omar Moore)
NOTE The Politicrat now has a brand new website dedicated to the daily podcast! Visit thepoliticrat.com.
While you continue to stress out (especially with some of the U.S. corporate cable television news media coverage) here are my predictions for the 2020 General Election.
Joe Biden wins the presidency — LANDSLIDE (a total of 385 ELECTORAL VOTES or more)
Biden will win: Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania
Democrats will regain control of the U.S. senate
My prediction of the Democratic U.S. senate winners:
Let’s start the bidding shall we: 77,000? 160,000? 200,000? 300,000?
Do I hear 500,000?
One million dead people?
How about ten million dead people from the racist man with the orange face over there?
You know, the orange man who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still not lose supporters?
Sold!
One of the numbers above could be the actual number of people who have died from COVID-19 in the United States Of America. Right now. In 2020.
What will it take for you to be uncomfortable? What will it take for you to say, enough is enough?
We have already slipped into dreaded numbness of numbers. Numbers of bodies. Numbness of bodies. Numbness of people. Numbness of life.
Numbness has left us cold in America.
And this happened at least 244 years ago.
Way before that, actually.
We have collectively been held in thrall of a death cult.
And this didn’t start with Donald Trump.
He is the illogical or logical manifestation and embodiment of it.
Death cults have been in America with the enslavement of Black people, with the genocide of Native Americans, with the dropping of nuclear bombs on the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The daily cults that clamored around mutilated, castrated, dangling, burnt Black bodies with excited white people gleeful and awe-stricken.
It was, and is a family affair. Don’t you know? Just ask the McMichaels.
We are old, sick pros at this. At least some of us are.
Politicians in the US talking about dying for the economy was taken as an absurd, cruel joke just three weeks or so ago when Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said this psychopathic madness on Fox News no less.
Now this talking point from Mr. Patrick is literally what at least 44 states in these deeply twisted and troubled United States-in-crisis will implement as their mantra as they will all reopen by the end of this weekend. They will all open without even the minimum Centers For Disease Control guidelines for 14 straight days of declines in coronavirus deaths and cases being met by ANY state.
And no serious testing, tracing or isolation or physical distancing.
Only in America.
Brooks & Dunn called: they want their song back.
They don’t want their song to be associated with America’s love of death.
The deaths from coronavirus continue to rise.
And a vast minority of people in the US want to go back to work amidst a rising tide of death as the coronavirus keeps spreading and killing.
Profits over people.
Herd immunity.
These are the calculations Donald Trump (who knew about this coronavirus as far back as at least last November) and other callous money-first multi-billion-dollar business leaders have made. (Trump has alluded to herd immunity on numerous occasions this year, one occasion of which was reported in The Washington Post.)
By the way, here is a four-point Cliff Notes edition of Trump, Republicans and multi-billionaire leaders’ ideology:
Out with the old, in with the young, most promising and longevity-favored.
Out with the Black people who are losing their lives to COVID-19 in record, disproportionate numbers.
Out with the Brown people who are afflicted with COVID-19 and are in detention centers, concentration camps in the U.S.
Out with the infirm and those with disabilities.
On this VE Day, is there a person that those last four refrains and mentalities evoke?
A screenshot of the Friday, May 8, 2020 The New York Times online.
This psychopathic, sociopathic loving of death also applies to Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, finally arrested yesterday after more than two months of living life high off the dead body of Ahmaud Arbery, his video-recorded execution by the McMichaels, a father-and-son tag-team of death, passed around like a new, dangerous, sick fetish or virus.
Meanwhile, the killing of Black people continues.
Did I mention Calvin Munerlyn?
Or Douglas Lewis?
Or Sean Reed?
Last time I checked, Black Lives Matter(ed).
They still do.
They always will.
Black lives will always be on the line because of institutionalized and systemic racism, four words that few on 24-hour cable news television are willing to say, even while we and they are engulfed by the obvious. Black lives have become invisible in America. Black deaths have become very visible at the same time.
To that end, as the disproportionate rates of death increase among Black people (at least 60 percent of those dying now in densely populated areas in the U.S. are Black people), the National Football League, whose white owners treat its Black players with contempt–how dare you silently protest police murdering Black people!–published its 2020 regular season schedule yesterday.
Rah rah! Go team! We’re number one!
Happy days.
As the Death Cult rages amongst the violent, racist and misogynist white demonstrators parading around with guns in broad daylight in the same open carry states where unarmed Black people are routinely attacked and killed by police, Donald Trump isn’t losing any sleep. Not a wink.
Trump doesn’t want any more tests of people for coronavirus.
Trump isn’t worried about the amount of lives lost.
Too lazy, afraid and cowardly to wear a mask as even the most symbolic of sacrifices, Donald Trump has been busier telling people how to end their own lives than he has playing golf.
Lately.
Captain Lysol aka Trump, has been telling you to inject disinfectant into yourself.
He has been telling you to take hydroxychloroquine a drug that causes cardiac arrests and death.
And many people in America (including in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Maryland) have followed Trump and his stable genius advice like Jim Jones.
To their deaths.
They died taking his advice based on his hunches and feelings.
Donald Trump isn’t worried about the deaths of Americans.
Trump says the word “death” often as if it is a punchline, turn-on or fantasy.
One of his good friends died from COVID-19 and Trump was publicly nonchalant about it.
In his 2017 inauguration speech when Trump said that “American carnage ends right here” and it “ends right now” he meant exactly the opposite.
Trump derides nurses who are dying on the frontlines to save lives. He implicitly accused frontline workers of stealing masks. He refused to give New York state the 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators governor Andrew Cuomo was calling (or is that begging?) for.
“The federal government isn’t a shipping clerk, Trump said last month.
What Donald Trump does care about, aside from himself, is money and the economy. And the loss of over 20 million jobs in April in the U.S. alone really has Trump running scared as November 3 awaits.
We need a culture of pro-life in America — meaning a culture that respects the rights of people to have a living wage, to have an education, to have free healthcare, to have food on the table, to breathe clean air, to have a roof over their heads.
International Gangster Criminal And Lying Liar Strikes Venezuela And Kidnaps The Sitting President –
The Politicrat
On this new episode of THE POLITICRAT daily podcast Omar Moore on the criminal act of Donald Trump in bombing Venezuela (and for an hour and a half) and kidnapping and overthrowing a sitting head of state. Also: The long U.S. history of overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world.Recorded January 4, 2026.NEW MUST-READ: The First Of The Year (January 1, 2026)https://open.substack.com/pub/mooreo/p/the-first-of-the-year?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=webSUBSCRIBE: https://mooreo.substack.comSUBSCRIBE: https://youtube.com/@thepoliticratpodSUBSCRIBE: https://politicrat.substack.comBUY MERCH FROM THE POLITICRAT STORE: https://the-politicrat.myshopify.comBUY BLACK!Patronize Black-owned businesses on Roland Martin's Black Star Network: https://shopblackstarnetwork.comBLACK-OWNED MEDIA MATTERS: (Watch Roland Martin Unfiltered daily M-F 6-8pm Eastern)https://youtube.com/rolandsmartin
The November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election will look more like the presidential election of November 8, 1932, not November 8, 2016.
In 1932 in the U.S. the Great Depression of the late 1920s had affected millions of Americans, ravaging the economy and putting 25 percent of the workforce out of work. Originally called The Republican Great Depression (since the GOP presided over it), the economic downturn didn’t raise any concerns in then-Republican president Herbert Hoover, who took no measures to help people or to arrest the chaotic and devastating crater in American society, health and well-being that the Depression caused.
FDR, who had won the New York governor’s race just four years prior, won the Democratic presidential nomination and ran against an inept, ineffective, indifferent and callous incumbent Hoover. Hoover had sought a second term in office. FDR ran on Hoover’s terrible record and the promise of a New Deal that would rejuvenate the American economy and enliven and invigorate the American people and their spirit.
FDR won the 1932 U.S. presidential election in a landslide.
Herbert Hoover won six states.
The forthcoming presidential election this November 3, even with the massive vote stealing from millions of American voters that Republicans are already doing in numerous states (and the avoidance in some of those states of vote by mail), will result in similar fashion to 1932. The coronavirus pandemic (and Donald Trump’s foolish trade wars with China and two tax cuts for the billionaire class) has brought on a second Republican Great Depression now in the U.S., with miles-long food bank lines across the country and more than 26 million people unemployed in just the last five weeks alone. The job gains of all of Obama’s eight years in office have been completely wiped out in that same five-week time period.
Unemployment will soon be at 30 percent in the United States, easily surpassing the percentage of unemployment during the last Republican Great Depression. Over 54,000 people and counting have died from Covid-19 in the U.S., with the sad numbers approaching the 58,000 killed in Vietnam during the war there. All of these deaths will have occurred over just seven-plus weeks.
Home-building declined in March 2020 by more than 22 percent. Consumer confidence has tanked. And despite dangerous, rash measures by Republican governors like Georgia governor Brian Kemp to re-open businesses (in trades mostly aimed at the working class) people are not flocking back to stores amidst fears that they could catch the virus.
With an indifferent Donald Trump as an incumbent very slow to act, if at all, during this deadly pandemic to help many of the states and their Democratic and Republican governors, and the irresponsible, dangerous statements and the lies he has told, November likely election returns are already spelling out a Trump defeat.
Though Joe Biden has had a bland, less-than-energetic start to his campaign as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the man that Trump sought to derail in phone calls and correspondence to Ukraine last July, he is slowly beginning to go on the attack, rightly assailing Trump as someone who did nothing during the month of February as this pandemic was raging. Biden has already been endorsed by numerous Republicans, including George Conway, Rick Wilson, George Will and others. Some Trump voters have openly regretted voting for him and said they will vote for Biden this November.
Like Hoover, Trump has been indifferent to the mass deaths and suffering of millions of Americans. He has sought to distract the public from his static response to this pandemic (which he knew of from at least November 2019) with daily campaign rallies from the White House briefing room or the Rose Garden, rather than provide useful, important information to the general public, which has already grown weary and exhausted by Trump and his aimless, dishonest daily rallies. Biden has been more aggressive on social media, particularly Twitter, where ads against Trump have been far more hard-hitting than the presumptive nominee himself has.
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, has behaved more like a president than Trump has, and sounds more like the presumptive Democratic nominee than Biden does.
Quietly, Joe Biden is listening to Progressive Democrats and Bernie Sanders to broaden his own message and appeal to the American public and its left-wing flank. While Biden has faced limited scrutiny surrounding Tara Reade’s rape allegations against him (which will probably have no impact on the election; in their respective elections Trump and Bill Clinton allegations did not), Biden has started making the rounds on local television to various demographics across the country he will need to win. Biden has pointed to an op-ed he wrote in late January warning of the pandemic and making it clear Trump was the worst possible leader to be in charge during it.
So far, Biden has been proven right.
At this point, with the U.S. economy continuing into a second Republican Great Depression and the deaths of people from coronavirus scaling towards 100,000 people (and the numbers are surely much higher due to a lack of testing), the handwriting is on the wall for Trump, whose Hoover-like, but even worse lack of response has been damning.
The election to come may resemble 2016 only in the “lesser of two evils” approach, but because of the trail of destruction the impeached Trump has left and continues to commit and the sheer contrast of Joe Biden as an experienced government official and reasoned voice, if a far-from coherent and clear one, the general public has seen enough of the Trump freak show of death and are heading to Biden to exert their outrage, frustration and anger with a Republican Party that has pledged to a dictator and one-party “minority” rule.
Bernie Sanders stepped out of the 2020 presidential race on Wednesday at noon Eastern U.S. time, marking the end of his run for national office. An inspirational Progressive suspended his campaign, citing a near-impossible path to the Democratic presidential nomination and the challenges of a raging pandemic which has taken nearly 100,000 lives across the globe including over 15,000 lives in the U.S. (and counting).
While Sanders, who ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2016, has again fallen short in his White House run, in his speech he mentioned that the movement for Medicare For All and the other issues he and his campaign fought for was anything but finished. Bernie’s ideas as advocacy have now taken hold in the U.S. and have become fused into the mainstream. The speech struck several tones, varying between thanking, supporters, surrogates, organizers and volunteers.
Notable reaction to Bernie’s exit came in on Twitter from several former presidential candidates, some of whom had vigorously attacked Bernie Sanders at the podium only a couple of months before. The reactions to some of Bernie’s fellow competitors was interesting to say the least, including a classy, conciliatory tweet from Joe Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee in the wake of Bernie’s campaign suspension.
I know Bernie well. He’s a good man, a great leader, and one of the most powerful voices for change in our country. And it’s hard to sum up his contributions to our politics in one, single tweet. So I won’t try to. https://t.co/Z6OkCDWFNm
I’ve admired @BernieSanders’ courage for 20 years and loved getting to know him this last year on the trail. He and his supporters are a tremendous force, and I’m looking forward to teaming up to end the Trump presidency and open the door to a better American era.
.@BernieSanders &Jane are good friends of ours. Bernie &I came into the Senate together &in the words of Paul Wellstone, he‘s always fought tirelessly to improve peoples' lives. His decision to end his campaign is a decision to unite our party &shows he is a true public servant.
Bernie is suspending his campaign but his efforts advanced many ideas our nation must embrace from health care as a right to ending the nightmare of crippling college debt.
I look forward to continuing to work with @BernieSanders in the Senate for true justice for all.
My friend Bernie Sanders has committed his life to the fight for justice, healthcare, and equality for all Americans. I'm confident he will continue that fight. My aloha and thanks go out to @BernieSanders, @janeosanders, @ninaturner & #NotMeUS movement for their dedication! pic.twitter.com/2vjc1qzE1s
.@BernieSanders is an extraordinary leader. From health care to climate change, his campaign drove the conversation around what's in the best interests of working families. We must continue that spirit and ethos as we work to unite the party to defeat Trump.
Thank you @BernieSanders, for fighting so relentlessly for America’s working families during this campaign. Your fight for progressive ideas moved the conversation and charted a path for candidates and activists that will change the course of our country and party.
Deepest gratitude, Bernie. You articulated a vision for a much better America & we’ll keep working to make it happen. For those who’ve supported you, it will take a few days to process this. But we’ll rise up with passion & renewed dedication, always with your name on our hearts.
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) April 8, 2020
Bernie Sanders is a fucking hero. Let’s come together and beat this guy.
The Sanders campaign galvanized and energized the U.S., and it was a sad day for his supporters even though Senator Sanders gave an uplifting, triumphant and moving address from his home in Burlington, Vermont. Bernie Sanders thanked Jane Sanders for her tireless commitment and gave supporters a kind gesture by announcing his name would still be on the ballot in the remaining 23 states yet to vote. For any Sanders supporter vowing to write-in Bernie’s name instead of voting for Joe Biden in November: here is your chance, if your state hasn’t voted already, to cast your vote in the remaining primary for Bernie.
Time can be afforded in the near future for analysis of where things didn’t go right for Bernie, but right now at least, and for the next few days and weeks, Bernie supporters can reflect, mourn and be inspired by a politician and good, genuine person who fought the good fight and never lost his integrity in the process.
I don’t see it. Not at the moment, anyway. At least not publicly.
Here we are in the penultimate date of March, 2020, in the midst of a pandemic not seen since 1918, in an election year in the United States, with Donald Trump polluting the airwaves daily with lies, disinformation, gaslighting and racist, misogynist insults from his campaign rallies in the Rose Garden and elsewhere. Which begs the question, how are Democrats and the DNC responding to this fusillade of bullshit?
Answer: Tepidly.
Which is very worrisome, some seven months and four days or so before the critical November general election.
What on earth are Democrats and the Democratic National Committee waiting for?
Their online national convention this July?
Odds are that the state of Wisconsin, a key state in the general election in 2016, will not be hosting a physical Democratic National Convention this July given the coronavirus pandemic.
Given this inevitability (especially since the Tokyo Olympics scheduled for late July were cancelled last week), what is the Democratic Party doing to combat and push back against Trump ahead of the November 3 general election? It is very troubling that Trump is virtually unchallenged as he continues to lie relentlessly to millions of people across the country.
So far the corporate news media has continued to cover his campaign rallies on coronavirus and today CNN actually cut away from the rally and then provided updates. This is what all of the corporate news media should be doing.
If some of the news media’s approach is to rightly truncate or avoid covering someone who has lied more than 17,000 times in the last three years, then the Democrats will also have to get tougher on Trump, whose lies get covered while the truth is swimming in the ether. These are the critical moments for the Democratic Party to actively be out front and center in full view of the American public.
My advice for the corporate and Establishment Democrats: do what you did at the start of this month when you coalesced around Joe Biden, tipping the balance for voters. Back then you were all over TV screens. It was you, Pete Buttigieg. You too, Cory Booker. And Beto O’Rourke. Amy Klobuchar. Kamala Harris. Joe Biden himself. They all expended more energy (and canned enthusiasm) in attacking or siding against Bernie Sanders than they have in attacking Trump for his abominable failures not just over the last three months but over the last three years.
Now, all those ex-candidates have been absent from TV. If they have been on, it is not to give strong State Of The Union-like responses to Trump’s daily pathological lies.
Their damning, overwhelming silence in the face of such brazen disregard by Trump of his constitutional oath of office…feels like assent.
Throughout the last few months but especially now, Joe Biden has at best been unsteady in his rebuttals to Trump, stumbling, staggering, sputtering, monotoned and without a hint of passion or urgency about a man who has willfully put thousands and potentially millions of American lives in danger with his inaction. Asked on Meet The Press yesterday whether Trump had blood on his hands, this was Biden’s answer:
It gets worse for @JoeBiden. Trump knew about this in December. DID NOTHING. On Thurs. he said New York didn’t need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. Trump is a murderer. Joe: WAKE UP. You are appeasing Trump. (You don’t want to debate @BernieSanders?) #Berniepic.twitter.com/H8Dhgc9yXE
Not the most encouraging fightback from the man who is just about 800 delegates away from the Democratic presidential nomination. In an election year.
Here’s a suggestion: all the Democrats who were presidential candidates, who fell over throwing food in the faces of each other on the debate stage over the last few months, should “enthusiastically” support the candidate they all but bumrushed to join on March 1. The truth is apparent for they and all others to see: Joe Biden just doesn’t have that old time rock and roll. And after the debacle of this finale last Friday during a CNN town hall on the Coronavirus and the debate against Bernie Sanders, Biden has said “no mas” to future debate encounters.
If Joe Biden can’t debate Bernie Sanders at least once or twice more, how on earth is he going to hold anywhere near his own on a debate stage against an asymmetrical debater like Donald Trump? If he can’t even stake out clear, definable positions or core beliefs that voters can see and tangibly embrace, what is the point of his presidential campaign? Biden has hardly allayed concerns about his fitness since his last primary victories two weeks ago. Two weeks will turn into three until the next primary on April 7. And despite the chaos, illness, death and fear that has rattled the planet, life incredibly still goes on, as crude as that might sound.
In other words, there remains additional issues to discuss and address in the world to COVID-19. The corporate news media however, sadly thinks otherwise.
Simply put: it is time for the DNC to implement any private strategy they have cooked up and start deploying it pronto publicly in the oft-chance a fear-stricken America starts falling in love with a dictator’s lies. If it happened in Germany during a depression then it could happen in the United States in what is expected to be another Republican Depression (which is what it was called under Hoover’s watch back in the late 1920s.)
While Trump’s message of lies and hate remain relentless, toxic and oppressive, the Democratic message has been self-muting and devoid of confidence. The Democratic Establishment has been silent, shadowy and equivocating. The Democratic Party has also been hypocritical in its stance on rape allegations Tara Reade made earlier this month against Joe Biden (Al Franken was jettisoned from the Democratic senate for far less severe but nonetheless unbecoming conduct owing to a vigorous Democratic movement led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who endorsed Biden last week). The Party has also behaved like a Republican outfit, with Party elders like Jim Clyburn calling for a close down of primaries (in a veiled effort to help hide Joe Biden from any scrutiny, which he’s never received in earnest in 50 years of a political career.)
The bottom line is, the DNC has to show voters right now at this critical juncture that as many thousands lose their lives across the country the Democratic Party has the mettle, the leadership, the robust opposition to Trump and most importantly the agenda that will grab the panicked public conscience and inspire them to vote this November 3. The DNC should not take anything for granted and must avoid 2016 at all costs.
The chance for the Democratic Party to win in November begins right now.
The Politicrat Audiocast, March 18, 2020 – What is written below is not reflected in this podcast
Some Bernie Sanders supporters are understandably upset. I’m one of them. I was among the many millions of people who worked very hard to try to get Bernie Sanders elected as the Democratic challenger to Donald Trump here in California. I am glad that those efforts paid off. The hard work did not stop there for me. Voter education was a huge part of this campaign, as much as it was getting undoubtedly the best and strongest candidate elected.
Unfortunately, the last two and a half weeks have been a huge, bewildering disappointment, including last night’s clean (some might say unclean) sweep of Arizona, Florida and Illinois by Joe Biden. The handwriting on the wall has now become even more legible.
The math is clear to all who will choose to compute it: Joe Biden is now less than 800 delegates from being the Democratic presidential nominee.
I have outlined my issues with Joe Biden: his fitness, his policies, his horrendous votes, his comments about busing, his malapropisms, gaffes and unforgettable if not unforgivable statements. Those issues and others about Biden won’t ever disappear.
Bernie Sanders literally points out to me at a rally last month in California.
The frustration for me is that Joe Biden did very little campaign-wise in this Democratic primary race to become the nominee. He had floundered for many months at debates. He had been throttled by Bernie Sanders in Nevada. Corporate Democrats running in the same race almost immediately ended their campaigns and supported Biden after his first primary win (South Carolina). The truth is, the corporate news media was a far better campaign manager than Anita Dunn has been so far.
However, once Joe Biden dominated Super Tuesday sadly it was the beginning of the end for Bernie Sanders. This is the sad reality.
With all of this, and voter suppression by Republicans (in South Carolina, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere) and at best funny business by some Democratic officials (in Minnesota and California) there is an inescapable truth: voters trust Joe Biden. That doesn’t mean they don’t trust Bernie. (The voters appear to trust Biden more, whether they know his ghastly record or not.)
Whether there is fear (and there is), whether this is a fear election (and I think it is) whether Bernie Sanders has made one or two operational mistakes (and he has via his campaign strategists), it is clear that the path to the Democratic nomination is a very steep climb for Bernie. I frequently criticized and challenged Bernie and his campaign to go after Black voters of all demographics not just young Black voters. I have called for some of his key strategists to be Black, not just surrogates or chairpersons. I wanted Bernie to have a brain trust that included more Black people making critical decisions for the campaign not the typical old white male vanguard that is as present in parts of the Progressive movement as it is in the Establishment Democratic Party.
Even though people are supporting Medicare For All, they are still voting for Joe Biden. Even though people have seen Bernie Sanders in the 2016 campaign and again this time they are still lining up behind Joe Biden. This cannot be disputed.
What is also not disputed: the coronavirus is dominating our thoughts, our lives and the news media. The New York Times has reported that this virus could last for at least 18 months.
The national and global emergency with this coronavirus dictates that a united front is needed against a wannabe dictator in the White House.
This extraordinary circumstance mandates that we must coalesce behind Joe Biden. That does NOT mean we give up our Progressive values in doing so.
We must keep pushing Joe Biden to not only espouse but ENACT Progressive values and put them into policy. We must hold Biden accountable as we would Trump, or Bernie Sanders himself.
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders before Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate.
Rather than foolishly declare that you will not vote for Joe Biden in November when the most dangerous, racist and misogynist “leader” to occupy the White House continues to destroy the country you live in — you can literally do what Bernie Sanders himself has done: fight to change the face of the Democratic Party from the inside. Bernie has been responsible in no small part for helping get Progressive candidates elected over the last four or five years, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib. These Progressive women are not only the changing face of the Democratic Party they are the present and future of it.
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is a profoundly influential leader in the House Democratic Progressive wing after just over a year in Congress. She is already creating changes in the Party and influencing its policies and platform. Just last night the Progressive Democrat Marie Newman, whom Bernie endorsed, defeated the virulently conservative Democratic politician Dan Lipinski in the 3rd district of Illinois. Numerous other Progressives like Ro Khanna, Marc Pocan and Pramila Jayapal and others have won congressional races over the last few years and are pushing the Democratic Party more leftward and Progressive. What remains of the corporate Democrats are the stubborn older holdovers who will soon become outnumbered and whose support will ultimately fade.
Furthermore, Joe Biden has already begun incorporating Bernie’s ideas in his speeches and as recently as Sunday’s debate agreed with Bernie on many occasions. Biden, who last week echoed Bernie by saying that “healthcare is a right not a privilege” understands that these times will affect his approach as the almost-certain Democratic nominee. Biden knows that he will have to campaign more to the left. And we as Bernie supporters must push him to do so. Sitting on the sidelines now and venting without acting to forge a more Progressive agenda within the Democratic Party in order to transform it will not change anything.
Anyone deciding not to vote for Joe Biden if he is the nominee (and it is almost a certainty now that he will) is simply a Trump voter, a GOP or Russian-paid troll, a nihilist, or someone who is white, male, rich and privileged and won’t stand to lose anything if Trump, god forbid were to win. (He won’t. This pandemic and his pitiful response to it ensure that.)
Simply put: the coronavirus pandemic is a price that is too high to pay. For all of us. We are seeing that now. This pandemic has obviously become the world’s foremost priority. And with that backdrop if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee I’d rather Joe Biden, with all his faults, issues and bowing to corporate masters intact, be president in this crisis than Donald Trump. November is less than eight months away. That is not long at all. Participating in any semblance of “democracy” means to vote, among other things. Even more than that it means turnout. Even more than that still it means to hold the person you vote for accountable — even after you have voted them in.
The new face of the Progressive movement and already the new face of the Democratic Party. From left to right: Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ihlan Omar
Rather than doomsaying that turnout won’t be there for Joe Biden (and I think it will be there for him) — go out there and encourage people to vote for him AND urge them to push Progressive agendas (Bernie’s Medicare For All and Bernie’s/AOC’s Green New Deal) in the process. Keep Biden’s feet to the fire. That is what participation — not cowardly walking away from your responsibilities in angry defiance — requires. Strategy demands more than only the anger. Use that anger to push Biden, to organize, to infiltrate the Democratic Party and push it to the left. This is actually already happening, and Michael Moore showcased this in his 2018 film “Fahrenheit 11/9”.
Voting for Joe Biden doesn’t compromise you as a Bernie supporter. Not voting in November for Joe Biden if he is the Democratic presidential challenger certainly compromises your whole mission to avoid having Trump in office for four additional years.
Strategically voting for Joe Biden requires that you do the work NOW to keep pushing him and demanding Progressive policies and administration that will push those values and policies forward.
Biden will be stepping into a White House that is embroiled in a pandemic. He and his officials will be forced to behave differently. And we will have to stay active and engaged. Third parties won’t suffice. They will be shunned. They have been shunned, and into wholesale irrelevance and ineffectuality. It has been 200 years since we’ve had a viable third party in the United States. Instead of establishing a third party that will be at the very edges of the political process, how about doing what the Progressive Shahid Buttar is doing in San Francisco?He is running for office against Nancy Pelosi this November.
There is no reason why you, me or anyone else can’t use the energy and passion we have about Bernie and run for political office ourselves.
We can vote for Joe Biden in November and continue to challenge him and demand a Progressive agenda. That is what these urgent, important times require.
Vote Blue no matter who.
Challenge and push your agenda to change the country to make it more just — no matter who, even if Bernie Sanders were in office. You would be required to challenge him, too.
POLITICRAT 