"[Warren] is demonstrating that she is EXACTLY what many have always heard she was. Conniving snake in the grass. A spineless, selfish, sneaky snake in this for her own self aggrandizing greed."
Matthew Rock, Sanders Supporter, Facebook
We are seeing a continuation of the Democratic nomination fight of 2016.
The wounds are still raw.
It looks like a tiff between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over essentially nothing has become something important.
Maybe--possibly--a Sanders staffer in Iowa wrote an innocuous suggestion sheet on how to encourage a voter to support Bernie instead of other candidates. It became a public fight of she-said and he-said over first that campaign brochure and then a conversation that possibly happened two years ago between Sanders and Warren.
It is pretty ridiculous. But it reveals old wounds.
There is a history of unsolved resentments that have not yet been digested. The problem is the 2016 nomination.
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| Warren: a snake |
1. A great many people on the left, people who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, were dismayed that Hillary Clinton won. They also were surprised, in part because within the silos of political communities, each candidate had overwhelming support.
2. The Democratic Party leadership preferred Hillary. She was known, had paid her dues to the Party, and seemed very electable in the summer of 2016. Bernie was the outsider insurgent winning votes in Democratic states, but he wasn't actually a Democrat. From a Party point of view, support for Hillary seems obvious and inevitable, but it is not perceived as such by Sanders' supporters.
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| The 2016 nomination fight continues |
4. In the aftermath of the 2016 disappointment Bernie Sanders and his supporters regrouped and worked to re-build the Democratic Party as the party of populist change, rather than--and in opposition to--the Party of Obama and Biden, now understood as moderate, centrist incrementalists.
5. Bernie Sanders himself, as this blog noted yesterday, is working to position himself as the policy leader of the Democratic Party, and therefore a consensus-builder. However, his supporters are still raw from what they consider the theft of the nomination. Therefore, they are hostile to candidates opposing Bernie, viewing the array of 20-plus candidates essentially as Bernie or non-Bernie, and perceiving the not-Bernie as linked to the 2016 enemy, i.e. Hillary, the DNC, incrementalism, and elites. They are treated as opponents, not allies.
Matthew Rock's headline quotation at the beginning of this blog post is a vivid example.
Matthew Rock's headline quotation at the beginning of this blog post is a vivid example.
Result: an insignificant campaign memo gets blown up and partisans of Bernie and Warren re-live the 2016 nomination fight. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are weakened politically.
Tonight's debate: Watch for this. It is possible that Klobuchar and Steyer will step out to position themselves as Democratic Party unifiers, and if so, dramatically change their momentum going into the Iowa caucuses.
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| "DNC-killing democracy" |
4 comments:
Sen. Sanders is a wonderful man. He will never be President of the United States. He and his cult exhibit many of the same characteristics as the current resident and would merely polarize the country in the other direction in the unlikely event of election.
On the other hand, Sen. Warren has a shot. It is time to elect a woman president, especially a Progressive, which by the way Sec. Clinton was not. Is she perfect? No, (are you?) however she does exhibit a level of self-awareness (Obama!) which is more than I can say for most of the other candidates. Call her "just like Bernie but on planet Earth" if you like.
The biggest problem this society faces is the patriarchy and the misogyny and bigotry it perpetuates. Electing a woman will inspire more women to engage in public life and bring some equanimity (I fervently hope!) to our discourse.
At least half of our leaders should be women, for a start. It's called "representative government" for a reason.
The biggest problem this society faces is identity-group balkanization, and the reductionist grievance-mongering which modern progressives insist upon wallowing in.
"Electing a woman will....bring some equanimity...to our discourse". Like electing Barack Obama twice brought one jot of peaceful progress on matters racial? Youbetcha.
Sanders supporters are not naive. Posting the vitriol at the start of this is like asking folks not to think of a pink horse (Lakoff, 101).
One unrepresentative allusion aside, why are Sanders supporters so supportive of Sanders? Is it just about the rigging in 2016? Well, yes there were those pesky Podesta emails indicating DNC employees, including Chair Wasserman-Shultz, overtly favoring Hillary over Bernie (no worries...W-S had to resign and was replaced by Donna Brazile whose favoritism was evidently limited to providing Clinton confidential debate questions ahead of debates with Sanders...again,no worries...Brazile said, post-rigging, that she "regretted" having done so and Wasserman-Shultz became Hillary's campaign chair after Podesta left). Let me count only a few ways:
--They didn't like Max Baucus getting 800k from the Healthcare Industry for his own senate political campaign while he was finance chair overseeing the demise of single-payer and promoting the "more palatable" ACA
--They don't like the fact that the DCCC and DSCC blacklist forever vendors and consultants who work for incumbent challengers in the primaries.
--They don't like the fact that the DNC turned over its supposed impartiality to Hillary when she gave them a million dollar bailout with strings attached, including overtly discouraging Bernie's campaign (see emails)
--They don't like it that one phone call from Obama in favor of "centrist" Tom Perez, nixed progressive Keith Ellison's chairmanship of the DNC.
--They know that they not only have to take on Trump and the oligarchs, they have to take on the wealthy elite in their own party, the folks who believe that the market (laizzes faire capitalism), pay-to-play, and unsustainable neoliberal economics comes before the mission (democratic republic and the common good).
--They know, as the Business Roundtable just admitted, that Milton Friedman/Ayn Rand economics is unsustainable; capitalism eventually devours itself when money lacks velocity.
--They know that the work really begins on the day Bernie is elected, that it is not about him as some sort of "cult" leader but about us, we the people, not we the sheeple who once again, like Manhattan indians, appear to be willing to sell out their purported values for the empty promises of the wealthy elite and a few shiny baubles.
--They know you can either drop your fear and embrace the future or hang on in desperation to a fading past, kicking and screaming all the way.
Andy Seles
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admits cheaper illegal alien workers drive down wages for America’s working and middle class but continues to support amnesty for illegal aliens, decriminalization of the United States-Mexico border, and throwing out President Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order.
Sanders navigated through the issue during an interview with the New York Times, attempting to explain his previous statements where he has admitted that opening the U.S. border is detrimental to the nation-state and has slammed the concept of hemispheric open borders.
During the exchange, Sanders says “of course” cheaper illegal alien workers hired by businesses at “$5 an hour” will “lower wages” for America’s working class, who are often looking for entry-level jobs.
“Yeah, if you’re being paid $5 — if you’re being paid $5 an hour, now of course it’s going to lower wages,” Sanders said. “Why would I hire at a higher wage?”
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