DemocracyMouse
DemocracyMouse's JournalUSA TODAY: Face Facts, Bernie Sanders Is Electable
I've seen enough negativity on DU after Sander's win in Nevada to force me to sprain all twelve fingers transfering links from reputable news sources into this near-frenzied forum (I'm being colorful, friends. It's going to be OK)
Face facts, Bernie Sanders is electable
It’s well past time to bury the 'Bernie is unelectable' trope. He has a better shot than moderate Bloomberg.
KIRSTEN POWERS
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/4812232002?fbclid=IwAR0JzuQNa0MZBbQao2tzkU_39g9UmstpbwSsHsVsKf7XBBEKoSCHV-pvh74
THIS! It's A Great Day For American Democracy
Are TRADITIONAL Democratic values making a comeback? With Bernie Sanders I believe they are. Even the rank and file union members defied their leadership to embrace what was once a proud Democratic tradition: support the public, keep corporations and monopolies in check, and the public will prosper. Small business will prosper.
Despite the freakout from TV pundits, the Nevada caucuses are a cause for optimism in dark days.
By Zach Carter, Huffington Post
02/22/2020
The results of the Nevada caucuses are, first and foremost, a great sign of hope for American democracy. In an era of rampant corruption and corporate control in both political parties, Nevada handed a blowout win to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ― one of two candidates in the race who have sworn off the old pattern of billionaire patronage and instead produced a policy platform designed to make this country work for working people of all colors.
The caucus results are also a reason for optimism about the future of the Democratic Party. Despite the best efforts of the party’s power brokers and big donors, voters overwhelmingly decided to back a candidate whose agenda calls for a transfer of power away from those elites and into the hands of the people.
These are causes for celebration. It has been a dark decade for democracy around the world, and the spectacle of Americans coming together to rebuke the Democratic Party’s aristocratic drift, which has driven so much of the turn to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian populism, is both beautiful and profound.
But you wouldn’t know this from the way establishment pundits, including many ostensible Democrats, reacted to Sanders’ win Saturday evening. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews literally compared Sanders’ victory to the fall of France to Nazi Germany. MSNBC host Nicole Wallace, a former George W. Bush staffer, described Democratic enthusiasm for Sanders as “political suicide,” and, puzzlingly, said the supporters of the night’s runaway victor constitute only “a squeaky, angry minority.”
This reaction is yet more evidence of the haplessness of the Democratic elite. It has been clear all year that Sanders is the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination. And after his impressive showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the moneyed minds of the party scrambled to get behind untested thirty-something ex-Mayor Pete Buttigieg and erstwhile Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg. On the debate stage earlier this week in Las Vegas, both men did their best to beat up on Sanders, but failed to deliver so much as a scratch. Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did as she promised she would, torching Bloomberg in a debate performance for the ages.
A theory of the "center"
[This is theoretical and not naming candidates. So please don't get your panties in twist about what category it should be filed under]When I hear Democrats call for a centrist, I've always wondered what they mean by that. Republicans clearly are revealing who they like in their current support of tax-free millionaires and billionaires. They label this class preference the "right." They genuinely think of the right as pro rich people, pro aristocracy, the left as pro everybody else.
So when Democrats speak of certain politicians affectionately as "centrists" do they mean "people leaning towards supporting the aristocracy with some crumbs to appease the screwed?" Are such Democrats ready to switch to the Republican Party (like this clown below wants to switch from Republican to centrist Democrat?)
The following article in Raw Story brought all these concerns to mind.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/we-must-exorcise-the-demon-longtime-gop-strategist-publishes-a-devastating-column-as-he-registers-as-a-democrat/
“I and a number of other long-time Republicans have re-registered so we can vote for the candidate closest to the center with the best chance of winning the Democratic nomination and defeating Donald Trump in November,” Stipanovich writes. “Hopefully, that choice will be clearer after Super Tuesday, but it looks like Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg today.”
Slate Magazine: Yet another establishment Democratic frontrunner is failing to get the job done
All last year some of us on DU have tried to convince other DU members that we need to return to our traditional, pre-Clinton, pre-Reagan roots. We need to get the nation back to democracy and inspire OUR base to turn out, just as Trump has. We must remember how much larger our base actually is.
Yet after a year of hearing "but Biden's more electable" we are now seeing how uninspiring such a mantra actually is. Bernie is bold like Trump and THAT's what makes him more electable.
But he's lightyears ahead morally, politically and environmentally. And that will take him and the Democrats to the Whitehouse if the older Democrats can trust their youthful counterparts, and trust their own inner idealistic self. Go bold and win, fellow Democrats. Bernie — surprise, surprise! – is a traditional FDR Democrat. 😊
Yet another establishment Democratic frontrunner is failing to get the job done.
By BEN MATHIS-LILLEY
FEB 11, 2020, 11:52 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/joe-biden-the-would-be-sure-thing-is-a-distant-also-ran-in-new-hampshire.html
Joe Biden announced that he was running for president in April 2019 and soon led the Democrats’ crowded field by 25 points. His position in the Obama administration gave him instant access to top party donors and campaign operatives. He was endorsed by high-profile New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein before he even entered the race. His name recognition was as universal as possible, and his pitch to voters—he’s Uncle Joe, the hot-headed but trustworthy ol’ rascal who’s just as comfortable negotiating in Congress as he is bullshitting with the boys down at the union hall—was already locked in.
With 75 percent of precincts reporting on Tuesday in New Hampshire, Biden was in 5th place with 8.3 percent of the vote. In Iowa, he placed 4th. He now trails a socialist in national polls and is quickly being caught by a small-city ex-mayor who barely clears the age requirement and a guy who endorsed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s reelection at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
As writer Jedediah Purdy noted, Biden’s campaign was always about confidence: The confidence that he would be an “electable” candidate because everyone else had confidence in him too. But his campaign rallies failed to generate the enthusiasm or attendance that his rivals’ did, his debate performances ranged from adequate to totally incoherent, and he didn’t even raise that much money. There’s not much for him to fall back on now that the confidence in his collective appeal is beginning to collapse.
Right now, Biden looks likely to become the fifth consecutive Democratic candidate in an open primary who failed to become president despite starting with major support from the party’s most powerful figures. In 2000, designated Clinton successor Al Gore put down a challenge from liberal free-thinker Bill Bradley in the primary—a CNN story from March 1999 described Gore’s “orchestrated rollout of endorsements” demonstrating his clear hold on the Democratic establishment—but lost, as it were, to George W. Bush. In 2004, John Kerry succeeded in reining in outsider candidate Howard Dean—who’d been denounced as an unelectable “McGovern-Mondale” extremist by the Democratic Leadership Council—before Iowa but also lost to Bush. (In the party’s defense, it didn’t necessarily anoint Kerry—Dick Gephardt, another experienced moderate, was also running—but it definitely didn’t want Dean to be the nominee, in part because of his then-radical belief that the Iraq War was a bad idea.) Hillary Clinton started the 2008 primary cycle with advantages in polling, endorsements, and large-donor fundraising, but lost to Barack Obama. She nearly lost an even larger lead in the 2016 primary, and then, in the general election … well, you know.
Now there’s Uncle Joe, who seemed to believe his party connections and public association with Obama would be so strong that he’d be able to coast to a primary win without having to spend significantly on ads, develop any signature proposals, or even appear that often in public. There’s still a little time left to, like, start doing that stuff: Biden’s polling leads in Nevada (Feb. 22 caucus) and South Carolina (Feb. 29 primary) are shrinking, but they still exist, and wins there could help him keep his numbers up in the southern Super Tuesday states where he’s been expected to do well with black voters. But the candidate whose sales pitch was that he came with forward momentum pre-installed is, so far, completely inert. If he still wants to win, he’ll have to earn it just like everyone else, without any help from his important friends.
Taxing the rich now supported by 53% of Republicans in new poll
----> 53% of Republicans
----> 77% of Democrats
now want the essence of the progressive paradigm: Taxing the richest to pay for social programs. Even the wealthy in both parties are saying enough is enough.
So that leads to a very straightforward conclusion (for those who aren't drinking): Progressives, even Republicans pretending to be progressive when it suits him like Trump, are the most electable.
I hope this lights a fire under ALL democrats. Get your New Deal pajamas on and dance.... oh, and make it a Green New Deal so we can go friggin' solar already. California, Australia and the Amazon burning and Venice is sinking.... and too many people are doing 2-3 jobs to make ends meet.
See below:
January 10, 2020
By Common Dreams
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/see-not-radical-new-poll-shows-nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-support-a-wealth-tax-to-fund-universal-programs/
“It’s simple. The majority of Americans believe that we should tax the rich.”
Supporters of a wealth tax to combat persistent economic inequality in the U.S. pointed to recent polling by Reuters/Ipsos showing that nearly two-thirds of respondents support taxing the rich at higher rates to support programs that would benefit all Americans.
Sixty-four percent of respondents said they either strongly or “somewhat” agreed with the statement, “The very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.”
The sentiment found support across race, gender, and income demographics as well as from across the political spectrum. Seventy-seven percent of Democrats agreed that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate, while 53% of Republicans agreed.
Why Castro just endorsed Warren's "fighting Democrat"
This is a deep dive, but may explain how the Democrats lost their path after Reagan, and why Castro just endorsed Elizabeth Warren. Warren, along with other "traditional progressive" Democrats (and social Democrats) is trying to reconnect the party to its former mission.
How America Broke Up With the Democratic Party
By Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute
Dec. 19, 2019
The year Reagan was sworn in, we were the richest nation in the world, and other than a few wobbles during the Civil War and two World Wars, our national debt had been relatively steady in inflation-adjusted dollars since the administration of George Washington. We were the world’s largest creditor—more countries owed us money than any other nation on earth.
Today, after nearly 40 years of neoliberal Reaganomics, we are the world’s largest debtor nation, and our national debt nearly outweighs our annual GDP. The year Reagan was sworn into office, the United States was the largest importer of raw materials in the world, and the world’s largest exporter of finished, manufactured goods. We brought in ores for manufacturing, and shipped out everything from TVs and computers to cars and clothing.
Today, things are totally reversed: We are now the world’s mining pit, the largest exporter of raw materials, and the world’s largest importer of finished, manufactured goods. We’ve gone from trade surpluses to trade deficits, a reflection of the fact that our factory floors had moved to Asia and Mexico.... In 1960, about one in four Americans worked in manufacturing, producing things of lasting wealth for our nation. Today, after jumping headfirst into one free-trade agreement after another, fewer than one in ten Americans work in manufacturing. Between 2000 and 2017, 5.5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. They didn’t disappear; they just moved to low-wage factories in foreign nations.
Ironically, Republican President Eisenhower (1952-1960) knew that Americans loved FDR’s New Deal, and continued FDR’s trade policies... He told his brother Edgar in a 1954 letter, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” Eisenhower added, “There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are… Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” But Clinton and the “moderate” DLC Democrats embraced becoming Eisenhower Republicans, even as Eisenhower would have repudiated their policies.
“CLINTON SWIPES THE GOP’S LYRICS” read the headline of a 1996 Washington Post column by E.J. Dionne, which opened with this prescient paragraph: “‘The good news is that we may elect a Republican president this year,’ said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. ‘The bad news is that it may be Bill Clinton.’” The result was the beginning of the Great Uncoupling the Democratic Party experienced in the 1990s, with formerly Democratic-voting working-class and poor people going over to the GOP, a trend we saw continued with Trump’s election. As Harry Truman once said, “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time..."
Choose a Democratic candidate that DOESN'T support war
And watch this heroic Veteran spill his guts on US imperialism... before it's taken off YouTube:
A blood curdling parallel: Trump is the ghost of Andrew Johnson
To save our country, I sincerely believe we must become a (non-violent) army of democracy nerds, beginning with this great article in Mother Jones:
IMPEACHMENT
Trump’s Not Richard Nixon. He’s Andrew Johnson.
Betrayal. Paranoia. Cowardice. We’ve been here before.
TIM MURPHY
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 ISSUE
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/trumps-not-richard-nixon-hes-andrew-johnson/
It’s not hard to think of a historical precedent for President Donald Trump’s attempts to trade military assistance to the Ukrainian government for actionable dirt on his chief political rival. The pathetic desperation of the crime itself, the bungling attempt at a cover-up, the incriminating transcript—“it really is stupid Watergate,” one Democrat told the Washington Post in September. The similarities to the scandal that forced Richard Nixon from office in 1974 extend to the people talking about it. An attorney on Nixon’s House impeachment committee, Bill Weld, is running for president. John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel, and Carl Bernstein, who helped break the scandal, are CNN contributors. A Nixon dirty trickster, Roger Stone, recently went on trial for doing more of the same for Trump. And of course there’s Trump himself, channeling Nixon’s appeals to the “silent majority” and “law and order,” and pillorying the “enemy” press. There’s even an attempt to cover up a break-in at the Democratic National Committee—read the partial transcript of Trump’s call with the Ukrainians and you’ll find the president floating a cheese-brained conspiracy theory absolving Russia of its 2016 hacking of the DNC.
But coverage of the Trump fiasco is focusing on the wrong impeachment. The best parallel to Trump isn’t Nixon; it’s Andrew Johnson, a belligerent and destructive faux-populist who escaped conviction in the Senate by the thinnest of margins. Yet for more than a century, the official narrative of the first presidential impeachment has been butchered and distorted, reduced to a historical curiosity, a showdown between two irresponsible factions in which voices of reason ultimately triumphed. You were likely taught (if you were taught at all) that the 1868 fight to remove Johnson from office centered on an obscure and dubious law, the Tenure of Office Act, and that “Radical” Republicans—their influence inflated in the aftermath of the Civil War—overstepped their bounds in a quest for even more power.
Andrew Johnson was a sort of anti-Lincoln—a stumpy, vengeful, subliterate tailor who rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party in East Tennessee by railing against elites. In 1861, he was the only Southern senator to stay loyal to the Union, leaving him not only without a state but largely without a party. Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, and later, hoping to shore up his support ahead of his reelection campaign, added Johnson to the ticket. Johnson showed up drunk to his own swearing-in, then hid out at a friend’s house in Maryland, ashamed to show his face. A few weeks later, Lincoln was murdered and Johnson was president. As the historian Brenda Wineapple explains in her lively 2019 book, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, the road to impeachment began in the violence and political turmoil that followed the assassination, as Johnson wrestled with Republicans in Congress about what postwar Reconstruction should look like. The impeachment process was rife with bumbling and paranoia, but nonetheless centered on a profound question: whether the nation would continue on its path toward a pluralistic democracy or revert to the white supremacist state that had existed before Fort Sumter.
Alarm bells began to sound early on. Johnson was erratic. He was wavering. Frederick Douglass met with him at the White House and came away disturbed. In the meeting, the president had suggested deporting millions of freedmen and appeared not to know that Douglass had been enslaved. Johnson granted mass amnesties to Confederate soldiers and appointed ex-Confederates to key posts. In the spring and summer of 1866, a wave of racial pogroms broke out in the cities of the former Confederacy, targeting African Americans—34 killed in New Orleans; 46 killed in Memphis. Why hadn’t Johnson done anything to stop it? Why was he suddenly blocking every effort by Congress to bring white supremacist violence in the South under control? People who had once seemed enthusiastic about the project ahead were beginning to talk about the I-word.
Authoritarian Surveillance for Christmas
This isn't a Russian disinformation scare tactic. It's our 3rd world-caliber unregulated tech industry:
December 20, 2019 By Common Dreams
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/our-jaws-hit-the-floor-why-a-shocking-new-report-on-cellphone-tracking-is-absolutely-terrifying/
The New York Times‘ on Thursday sparked calls for congressional action by publishing the first article in its “One Nation, Tracked” series, an investigation into smartphone tracking based on a data set with over 50 billion location pings from the devices of more than 12 million people in the United States.
The data, from 2016 and 2017, “was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so,” explained reporters Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel. “The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers.”
Readers and fellow journalists quickly turned to social media to draw attention to the reporting. Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, tweeted: “This is the most important article you should read today. Period.”
Aaron Zitner of the Wall Street Journal concurred, writing on Twitter: “This is surely the most consequential piece of journalism published today, and its presentation is the highest form of storytelling. Think of what an authoritarian state is already doing with this technology.”
It's label time. The screaming Republicans are now plainly a unified phenomenon with only one name:
And they shall be called:
CLOWNS of MOSCOW
And the Heavens shall rain down the label upon the people that they shall have an accurate, meme-friendly phrase to repeat with joyful voices. Instead of warriors (which they like to think of themselves as, justifying belligerence and endless lying), they are nothing but Clowns of Moscow.
Profile Information
Name: Mouse de la SoulGender: Do not display
Hometown: New Jersey
Home country: USA
Member since: Sat Dec 9, 2017, 01:41 PM
Number of posts: 2,275
