white right wing men be stupid as fuck online. “why won’t you debate me? why did you leave our discussion?”

babe, i’m making fun of you. your opinions are so stupid they’re funny and i’m laughing at you. your only rebuttal is to insult me based on things you made up about me. it’s like you’re a little toddler on the playground. you get so mad so easy and that’s funny to me. i’m not trying to listen to what you have to say i’m here to laugh at it.

the fact that they don’t understand that is so funny to me. and then when you leave they’re just like “where’d you go??” lmao i’m playing peek a boo with you. you buffoon.

Thoughts on Marianne Williamson for 2024? Or her just in general? I don’t know much about her, but the left/progressives claim she holds their moral values and believes in radical change. Is it possible she’ll just be another Bernie, who made ‘preaching to the choir’ statements without actual plans to enact the policy they want? Or can she be a considerable candidate for 2024? I’m planning on voting for Biden for re-election, but I do want to know more about Marianne.

She is a flake, a kook, has no real experience, is anti-vax, anti-depressant, generally completely unfit for being president, and I don't know why the Online Leftists have latched onto her.... okay, yes, I do. It's because they are diehard, pathologically averse to voting for the only candidate who can a) beat Trump and b) has actually enacted progressive and helpful change for real, and not just in their fever-dream fantasies. And because they haven't learned ANY lessons from how badly 2016 was fucked up, they insist on putting us through this "uwu I need a Special Third Party candidate uwu" rather than doing anything useful whatsoever. I will try to control the rant here, but yeah: this is a trigger for me. I fucking hate everyone who still lives in Cloud Cuckoo Online Leftist Land and refuses to acknowledge the damage they did because they "just didn't like" Hillary in 2016 and are guzzling at the teat of Tankie Propaganda about Biden and are still therefore utterly useless (and indeed, actively and viciously harmful) at the project of opposing actual theocratic fascism. So. Yeah.

Reflecting on some of the posts that I have made and seen in the last couple of weeks, both here on Tumblr and on TikTok, I am increasingly suspicious of anybody that insists that voting is a useless or misdirected effort of energy. Not only have I seen innumerable cases in my state where this is simply not the case, entire sections of the federal government are effectively locked into right-wing positions because Trump won his election. He has entire sections of the appeals system and federal government more broadly aligned with him precisely because of how many nominations he's successfully put forward. Now, this does not mean that Biden or even the Democratic party more generally is going to ride to the rescue, however it speaks to the power that voting results wield.

Not voting is not an effective protest. All you are doing by not voting is saying hey someone else make this decision for me. By not voting you are not actually saying to the system "Hey I'm protesting against you!" At that point you have given the government system cart blanche to fucking ignore you.

I don't know who told you that not voting was anything other than giving up what little power you have to influence your government and therefore how your tax money and society operates on an everyday level. They lied to you. After a certain point there's no nice way to put this.

If you choose not to vote, that is a choice. I view it as an incredibly poor one. I also look at voting third party outside of elections where you know the candidate has no honest to the Gods shot to be a waste of time. You can vote however you want. If you want your vote to be effective then you're going to have to play with the system we've got until we can make a better one. These things take time. If we are being realistic, it is likely more than a few election cycles.

Another thing I have found intensely distasteful this entire election cycle has been from some leftists to sneer at harm reduction, as though opposing Republicans with Democratic candidates is just caving to fascism. Democrats and my State backed up unions and secured a woman's right to choose and secured bodily autonomy not only for women but forLGBTQIA+ folks. Republicans have fought against that.

"Oh but Manchin-" "Oh, but Sinema-"

Are not the whole of the Democratic Party. They were conservative holdouts in a largely center to center right coalition party whose younger constituents are far more left that the old guard. They fucked up some excellent legislation (or at least excellent opportunities) to put us in far better positions through helping to kill the Democrats' Build Back Better Plan and similar legislation.

Trying to punish the Democrats retroactively for not pushing Roe v Wade into law or not fulfilling all their campaign promises, by withholding your vote come the elections is short sighted, retrograde, and ultimately, harmful. It hands power to the Republicans without a fight, and allows them to set the boards for zoning, schools, city council, and so much more. It actively shoots your fellow citizens in the foot so you can feel moral superiority.

It reminds me of folks saying "Well I'm not filing because I am not gonna pay my taxes!" Unless your income is entirely under the table or illegal, or you intentionally changed your contributions, chances are that you were paying taxes this entire time and the only thing you're doing by not filing is potentially fucking yourself.

I get being angry, desperate, and despairing at the state of things, whether the political system, the world more broadly, or whatever issue you hold most dear to your heart. I'm not saying don't be angry, sad, depressed, or raging. I'm saying use it well. If you cannot summon up the give-a-shit on your own case, do it for those around you. Every bit we can do helps, and voting can make a lot of difference in our neighborhoods, and from there, the greater world.

Whether you are reading the missives from various pulpits or you're looking at project 2025, Christofascism is here. Folks have been warning about this for quite a long time, and it is here and it is in full swing. We cannot afford for the Republicans to take over. Heathens, Pagans, magical folks, none of us can afford a Republican victory at this point. Republicans have shown a deep willingness to use the apparatus of the state to harm queer and non-Christian people. They have shown a disdain for the separation of church and state. If you are on the right in this country you should be concerned if you're in any marginalized group. You will not be spared because you're "one of the good ones ".

Did you not see how they treated the Log Cabin Republicans? Did you not see that? Voting red will not save you, it will not make you more palatable. If the Republicans take power and get what they really want through their Christofascism and Project 2025, it does not matter how long you've been a Republican; if you are queer or Pagan you may as well not exist.

Believe me, I am not for a moment stating that Democrats are our saviors. They are a coalition center right political party that we can influence through our lobbying and votes. We can influence them through a variety of other means, including direct action is some have done. Some of you have failed to notice that your direct actions actually were useful! Kamala Harris came right out and said that they were pushing for a ceasefire, after so long of just leaving it off the table entirely. It is not that the narrative cannot be pushed, it is not that we cannot be heard, but you all need to recognize when you are heard and act accordingly without moving the fucking goal posts.

You demanded the administration work on a ceasefire and now they are. That is a victory! However, the Democrats cannot make the Israeli government and the Palestinian government come to a ceasefire. There is also only so much that we can do given the treaties and the alliances that we have. Yes, I know that America has a history of breaking it's treaties and why couldn't we just break this one? Well, because we're just not going to because it's been policy for almost the last 80 years. I just fervently wish the left more generally understood the political process better than it does and realize that we are doing quite a lot to move things along from where they could have been.

If you think for a second that Trump presidency would be better on any of these things you're wrong. That there are some leftists want to sink this project of American democracy simply because they didn't get what they want reminds me a lot of screaming fucking children who want a toy and are going to scream and shout when they don't get it. There's a sincere lack of understanding of the political process that I am seeing right now, especially given what I saw during the primary elections, and is sincere lack of understanding the political process with regards to our position with Israel. Again, I am not saying for a fucking moment don't be angry and don't do everything that you can't tell lobby for the Palestinian people. Engage in whatever diversity of tactics appeals the most to you. Part of having a diversity of tactics is including voting and on the ground diplomatic work. It isn't fun, it isn't sexy, but it's absolutely necessary in the meantime to get us to a place where we can be more effective. I would rather be more effective than being morally pure. I would rather be more effective and do what is possible than see everything around me fucking burn because it isn't just right.

I really do not hold with deontology. As a heathen my ethics are more centered in consequentialism. I care about how the tapestry looks after it's been woven, more than I care about how it has been woven. I will take an imperfect way of getting to the end of a tapestry then the tapestry never getting finished or being finished poor due to constantly unraveling it. There is no way that burning everything down is going to be helpful or effective for most folks. In any case, burning everything down with nothing to replace it leaves folks like me who rely on regular medications like insulin completely fucked. To be sure, the system fucks me and those in my position. It fucks the poor, the disabled, the marginalized. However, not having anything to replace it and just burning everything down, having no complex systems in place to slot into place will do immense, untold amounts of damage. Reforms are not sexy, and but they are how we can continue to live while we do the work needed to make things more equitable, more fair, more just.

I want change. We need to change as a society to become more just, equitable, fair, and to survive in the face of the challenges that we are facing. However, stepping away from the system as a whole, as though you're not going to be wrapped up in it as things go forward, that, to me, is giving up. It's not revolutionary. I would far rather see leftists and left-leaning Heathens and Pagans to flex their vote and their activism locally, to make the changes on the ground that we can where we live, how we live, with the Ginnreginn we live alongside.

You can be unhappy with a candidate and still realize that they are the best candidate of the two. It is so so rare to find a candidate that your views 100% align with. I feel like Biden is the practical choice. There isn’t anything that can be done to introduce a third party candidate that would defeat Biden and Trump in a three way race this close to the election. I would also be wary of those that tell you not to vote as a protest. In 2016 and 2020 there was a lot of fuckery going on with Russians interfering in the election. There is a wikipedia page all about it if you want to look into it. I feel like this is Russia urging people who would otherwise never vote for Trump not to vote at all. Even though Biden isn’t doing what you think he should in regards to Palestine, he has done a lot of very valuable things. Two things off the top of my head is lowering the cost of insulin to $35 a month and lowering bank overdraft and credit card late fees. It is also very possible that the guy who gets elected will also choose a supreme court justice. We don’t need the supreme court to get more conservative.

I'm not naive enough to think that I would ever align 100% with any presidential candidate, and I do know about Russia's involvement with the 2020 election. I guess that's always a possibility but there are some grassroots groups and organizations that have been around pre-2020 sharing these sentiments, so I'm not just taking my opinions from random people on the internet.

I also totally believe votes and money are the only things that will ever actually motivate a politician in our current 2 party system, it's been proven, so it's not that I disagree with a vote boycott as an idea as much as I keep seeing it but no coherent follow up plan and that's what freaks me out. The only reason it doesn't seem like a good idea to me is that I don't see any cohesion, so I guess I made that post more or less to see if I was missing something......because without cohesion a sporadic boycott is going to fall on deaf ears and endanger every single minority in the country, I feel.

Edit: the insulin thing is great don't get me wrong, but it feel like Biden's insistence on supporting a colonist country committing a genocide kind of cancels that out

The leader of “There Is Such a People” and former showman, Slavi Trifonov, announced that President Rumen Radev has nothing to do with his party's idea of the signature initiative started by them to convene a national poll to change the country's form of government - from a parliamentary to a presidential republic.

"I haven't seen him since he's been president, maybe I've seen him once, we haven't talked about this idea of ours, it's about our idea of majoritarian elections, and the presidential republic is the highest form of majoritarian vote," he insisted at a specially called press conference at his party's headquarters.

Trifonov was categorical that the head of state has nothing to do with "this whole story".

"I guarantee you this, we supported him in the last elections, not only us and other parties too, but our support was as a political formation, but I have not had any such talks, which concerns this idea of a referendum," he said.

We remind you that on Monday, "There Is Such a People" launched a signature initiative for a national poll with the question: "Do you support holding elections for a Grand National Assembly to resolve the issues of changes in the form of government from a parliamentary to a presidential republic?"

The party admits that the vote can be held together with the local elections in the fall of this year.

“There Is Such a People” (TISP) now has 3 months to collect 400,000 valid signatures to be submitted to parliament, which in turn must schedule the referendum.

"We will not form a coalition with anyone in the upcoming elections, there will be no such pre-election coalition, it is impossible," said the TISP leader.

Regarding the missing billion, which Kiril Petkov spoke about during a TV interview, Trifonov pointed out: "This is an absolute lie, why did he say it - I don't know, when he was prime minister he also lied, but this is an absolute lie. There is no such billion, I did not call him about any billion and I did not ask him ‘where is my billion?’".

In this regard, Trifonov announced that April 21 was his first defamation case against Kiril Petkov.

"I think that the change in the results of TISP in the elections is related to unsatisfied expectations of the people towards us. We did not have the opportunity to form a government, because the parties with which we could have allied publicly refused - BSP, DB and Stand Up BG. In the next parliament we could do, but you are witnesses of what happened. We will do everything possible to make the next parliament work," he added.

Slavi Trifonov insisted that he has time to decide whether to be a candidate for deputy, but "I still have time to think", but "’There Is Such a People’ will do everything possible to enter the next parliament with a decent result".

He also commented on the subject of the tax declaration he did not submit: "The authorities who should know, know, they are doing the necessary checks in an absolutely legal way. And I said to myself that it is high time to act purely legally, I apologized, I did that. I will submit the declaration, you will be witnesses of this thing".

The leader of "There Is Such a People" believes that Bulgaria should return the veto over North Macedonia's membership in the European Union.

"This is the only mechanism by which the anti-Bulgarian campaign can be affected and stopped," he said.

At the beginning of the briefing, a sociological survey was presented, conducted in the form of a telephone interview among 1,000 respondents between December 19 and January 10, announced the host of the press conference, Katya Ilieva.

The study was commissioned by TISP of the sociological agency "Ipsos" in Germany, which, according to TISP, is the third largest in the world.

Slavi Trifonov's idea of a referendum receives 53% support, according to the survey. 50% of those asked support a change in the country's form of government, and 46% are against it.

The study also ranks the parties for which people would vote in the upcoming early elections: GERB, WWC, DPS, DB, "Vazrazhdane", BSP and TISP, with "Bulgarian Rise" remaining behind.

In this regard, Toshko Yordanov expressed his doubts that TISP received a result below 4% in the previous elections, after the scandals that broke out months ago in the plenary hall with the codes of the voting machines.

Image: KAL

The Case For A Third-Party Campaign In 2024 Is Actuarial, Not Ideological

No Labels wants to be political insurance for the democracy, yet may doom it

— July 20th, 2023

Nothing in American politics is more quixotic than a third-party presidential campaign. Thus, to political insiders, nothing is also more pathetic or else more cynical: in the best case, the campaign is detached from reality, and in the worst (and, to insiders, the more probable case, since this is politics for God’s sake) it is serving some hidden motive, some interest in the shadows.

Yet, because nothing is more quixotic than a third-party campaign, might it not actually be the most idealistic expression of American politics? Americans may have elected only one candidate to the presidency from a third party, but he was Abraham Lincoln. And good third-party politicians always seem so pure. They know the odds are stacked against them, but they also know Americans yearn for something different, for big ideas and hard truths. It sounds good to anyone who is in fact yearning for something different, which is pretty much everyone who is not an insider.

Enter Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, one of the more cynical American politicians or possibly one of the more principled, weighing a third-party bid in the latest twist of a presidential melodrama no strike-breaking screenwriter could pitch with a straight face. Whatever further criminal indictments, mislaid cocaine, unacknowledged grandchildren, unvaccinated Kennedys, old-age pratfalls or attempted Russian coups may yet await, Mr Manchin’s eventual choice could prove decisive.

Craggy and folksy, Mr Manchin has won in a state Donald Trump carried twice by about 40 points, but by casting votes that made progressives despise him. What Mr Manchin has seen as wise positions for an old-school blue-collar Democrat from coal country, they have seen as evidence of racism, truckling to special interests and egomania. As the spotlight of presidential speculation shines upon him, Mr Manchin is doing nothing to dispel that last suspicion. A fellow Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, recently called him “America’s biggest political tease”.

If Mr Manchin runs for president, he would do so as the candidate of No Labels, a centre-left organisation that argues Americans are dissatisfied with their emerging choice, between President Joe Biden and Mr Trump. The group intends to raise tens of millions of dollars and petition its way onto the ballot in every state. On July 17th, in the early primary state of New Hampshire, Mr Manchin appeared at a town-hall meeting organised by No Labels alongside a Republican, Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, ex-ambassador to Moscow and Beijing, and past presidential candidate.

“I truly believe that all 435 people elected to Washington want to do good,” Mr Manchin said when asked about a radical House member. But the “business model” of both parties leads politicians to motivate supporters by creating or exaggerating division rather than compromising. Through No Labels, he said, “We can talk about the real problems. We don’t have to villainise the other side just because they might think different than I do.”

All of this is driving some Democrats crazy. The more sensible a No Labels candidate sounds, they fear, the more he will undercut Mr Biden’s advantage among sensible people. They argue that polling shows more Republicans identify with their party’s extreme than Democrats do with theirs, meaning a centrist candidate will take fewer votes from Mr Trump.

No Labels insists its polling shows it would hurt Mr Trump at least as much. It says it will field a candidate only if, after the Super Tuesday primaries next spring, the choice does come down to Mr Trump and Mr Biden, and only if the No Labels candidate has a clear shot at winning. “Those are deeply subjective judgments,” warns Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group organising against No Labels, “and so far at least we have no faith they are making those judgments correctly.” The day Mr Manchin turned up in New Hampshire, some political luminaries opposed to Mr Trump launched Citizens to Save Our Republic, a super pac dedicated to fighting No Labels. The Arizona Democratic Party is suing to keep No Labels off the ballot there.

Unfortunately for those opposed to No Labels, such machinations are classic grist for the third-party idealism mill. In New Hampshire Mr Huntsman remarked that he had previously heard only Russian and Chinese officials discourage more political participation. Mr Manchin argued that fear of No Labels would force the Democratic Party to embrace more centrist positions. “Why are they scared that they may be threatened to do the right thing?” he asked. “Why are they scared to say, ‘Hey, you’re too far to the left and it doesn’t make any sense’?”

Better Angles

Yet No Labels is also playing games. As a non-profit organisation, it is not obliged to disclose its donors and it does not. Struggling to defend that practice, Mr Manchin fell back on saying that Republicans and Democrats also benefited from “dark money” and that he would vote, if given the chance, to do away with it.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Mr Manchin or No Labels in seeking more public debate about the national debt, the need for national service or the decline of patriotism. But after the attack on the Capitol, only cynical political calculation could pinpoint the sensible centre of American life as equidistant from both parties. A party in thrall to Donald Trump is dangerous in ways a party resigned to Joe Biden is not.

In fact, some of his Democratic colleagues acknowledge, Mr Manchin deserves credit for blocking Mr Biden from moving farther left in the heady years when Democrats had majorities in both chambers, and for helping achieve landmark bipartisan legislation. Partly thanks to Mr Manchin, Mr Biden can justly claim to be the centrist’s alternative to Mr Trump. Only should Mr Biden’s health fail might Americans be lucky to have No Labels on the ballot (though Mr Manchin is 75). That is the only real argument for this third party, and it is the most cold-blooded one imaginable. ■

—This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Manchin in the Muddle"

Presidential elections are local. You have to win each state as long as we are stuck with the current state-based electoral system. It doesn't matter if all 40 million people in California vote for a third-party candidate, they can still only win the state of California even though that's the same number of people as in 10 - 15 Republican states. Unless socialist Taylor fans go homesteading en masse across multiple red states, it very much matters that she couldn't get the Democrat the victory in Tennessee. You can yell dismissively at me, or you can accept that it's not as simple as you pretend it is.

It's QUITE telling to me that you focused only one point in my reply to you when I responded to your ENTIRE argument in my original ask. Let's recap, shall we?

In response to this post, I presume, you proceed to send me a long ask that admonishes socialists for not mobilizing properly and not attracting "regular people" instead of the "extremists" that the movement is currently made up with. In response to your complete ignorance at WHY exactly national elections have difficulty having visible third party candidates (HINT: regular people can't afford to raise over 200,000 on a RISKY bet every few years), I pointed out that your equivocation of socialism with extremism is extremely telling.

This is not a dismissal, this is pointing out your SEVERE ignorance on socialism and systematic national barriers (not local barriers, of which TN has MANY- including districting issues that not even Taylor Swift herself can overcome with a simple tweet) is extremely telling.

It is quite frankly not my job to educate you on why you're ignorant on socialism because anyone who comes into my inbox equating socialism with extremism is not arguing in good faith. If you really gave a fuck about the issues facing "lgbt people, women, people of color" etc. you would not go around so carelessly demonizing a political movement/ideology that was, ironically, invented by the very people you claim to care about.

That is why my THIRD point to you was that Taylor has a moral obligation to use her platform to help as many people as possible and supporting establishment democrats is not the way to do so. If you care to learn more about that, google is free. I encourage you to look into the history of socialism but I am not a history teacher and this is not my job.

Even now, your equivocation of TN local elections with national elections is extremely telling of your own political ignorance on the systematic barriers in place for both of these elections and how they ARE different from one another. That is why my first point to you is to point how stupid it is to equate "taylor having influence over half of americans" with the statement "taylor has influence over half of any local population of a state" by pointing out that I was focused on Taylor's NATIONAL INFLUENCE over the NATIONAL election system.

Your insistence that her sway over TN election has any bearing over her ability to draw NATIONAL ATTENTION TO SOCIALISM is such a strange strawman when that's not the point of my original post. Like, did you just get offended that I critiqued Taylor's political cowardice?

What exactly is the issue you're having with the post I made that stated that Taylor has political influence over her national fanbase? It seems like you just wanted a reason to demonize socialism because that was the focus of your original ask. Don't move the goalposts now, bestie. Stay focused.

And anyways, despite the fact that TN is red, democrats still won the 2020 presidential election, proving your point that "presidential elections are local elections" is ignorant at best and intentionally misleading at worst.

The Golden Calf Of Trump

BAFMNOTES:

"Trump worship has seriously "corrupted" the United States' evangelical movement. And he [Matt Labadsh] cites far-right evangelicalism John Hagee as a glaring example"--Alex Henderson, Raw Story

"What's disturbing…. about Hagee, is that he isn't some stand-alone aberration but rather, by now a familiar type: people who haven't just let politics influence their faith, but who have let politics supplant their faith," Labash writes. "When the two are in conflict, politics wins. See Pastor John MacArthur insisting that 'any real, true believer' had to vote for Trump, or Franklin Graham, the moral runt of Billy's litter, comparing House Republicans who voted for Trump's impeachment to Jesus' betrayer, Judas Iscariot."

"But even for those of us Christians who understand that there have indeed been Christian crimes against humanity –  the Inquisition, Christian rock, the entire Falwell family -  there are still some that leave me gobsmacked.   One such crime hit me just the other day over breakfast...

No, the thing that got me was an item about how pew after pew of  congregants at San Antonio pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church were chanting “Let’s go Brandon,” which has become a minced oath for “Fuck Joe Biden...”

How anyone could marshal enough energy to chant “Let’s Go Brandon” after listening to the dreary fan-fiction of the likes of Lindell [The Pillow Guy] is beyond me. I’d personally rather hang myself by Lindell’s patented Giza Dream Sheets from the balcony railing.  But it seemed like a peppy crowd. In fact, the video even went viral: But even if it wasn’t officially a church service, it all took place in Hagee’s church. A typical church service only lasts about two hours, tops. But this conspiracy-stoking wankfest lasted three days – about as long as it took J.C. to rally from the grave.

While this became a story, it didn’t become a very big one. And why? Perhaps because it’s now like cultural wallpaper – it just blends into the background and we walk past it without noticing.  We’ve become so used to people of faith acting like drooling party hacks that it no longer even fazes us. Not to be a tutting moralist, but when did the type of behavior, as exhibited at Cornerstone, become acceptable in Christian culture? And how does a shepherd square his sheep bleating eff-you chants in church? Well, he can’t...

When I look through the last few years of Lifeway Research data (the polling arm of the Southern Baptists, the church of my youth), a not terribly flattering self-portrait is painted:  49 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors say they frequently hear congregants repeating conspiracy theories. A third of pastors now personally endorse candidates outside their church role. (A ten-point jump from one cycle earlier.)  A third of evangelicals say they agree with the statement: “When someone with my political beliefs is accused of wrongdoing, I typically respond by citing examples of wrongdoing by the other side.”

My point here isn’t to say Trump is bad. (I have tons of friends and family members, some of them immediate, who voted for him.)  Rather, my point is to say that too many people of faith have taken their eye off their deity, and erected a graven image – or an orange one - letting politics corrupt their faith, or at least letting the former take primacy over the latter."

"...Matthew tells us that he [Jesus] “drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers.” Mark tells us that he said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. But you have made it a den of robbers.”  John tells us that Jesus went so far, when driving out the defilers, to make “a whip of cords.”

Yes, Jesus got so angry, that he went all Billy Jack on us.  I wonder what he’d do with the Let’s-Go-Brandon chanters?"

Democracy Is Not a State

Delivered to the Washington Ethical Society on January 10, 2021, by Lyn Cox

Congressman John Lewis reminds us what is possible when we join together, combining our collective action and sense of purpose to keep our country grounded in our best and highest ideals. His final instructions to us were to “walk with the wind,” to stay together and respond to the movement of our time in the spirit of peace and with the power of love. 

That is what is happening in Georgia. This past week, we learned that Georgia will have two new Senators. The Rev. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black Senator from the state, of which about a third of the population is Black. The congregation Rev. Warnock leads, Ebenezer Baptist Church, is the former pulpit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also a congregation that Rep. Lewis attended. Jon Ossoff will be the first Jewish Senator from Georgia. Ossoff interned for Rep. John Lewis as a young man, after having written him a fan letter when Ossoff was 16 years old. Relationships built over years make a difference.

Regardless of political party, we can agree that democracy depends on the ability of citizens to exercise their right to vote. True democracy rests on free and fair elections, in which obstacles to the right to vote are not placed unfairly and disproportionately in front of voters from marginalized communities. The runoff election in Georgia was historic, not only because of the outcome, but because of the momentous turnout. Overcoming voter suppression was a major task, and one that grassroots organizations in Georgia have been working on for years. Multiracial democracy is a threat to white supremacy, and white supremacy has been trying to prevent the full flowering of multiracial democracy from the beginning.

Yet there is progress. Between 2018 and the November election, 800,000 new people registered to vote in Georgia. Registering and mobilizing new voters is the big story of this election, and that was achieved one conversation at a time, one knocked-on door at a time, one phone call at a time, one relationship at a time. Stacey Abrams is a strategic genius and a focused advocate, having started the New Georgia Project seven years ago and Fair Fight two years ago.

Abrams will be the first to tell you that a wide variety of leaders and grassroots organizations share the credit for voter turnout in this election. For instance, LaTosha Brown has been fighting voter suppression since 1998, and her Black Voters Matter project helped mobilize voters across the South. In a series of tweets on Friday, Abrams named 30 different grassroots organizations that coordinated their efforts to help Georgians exercise their right to vote, noting that the runoff election was a demonstration of “decades of strategy, grit, + building.”

Between Rep. Lewis’ reminder about clasping hands and moving together, and the turnout in Georgia’s runoff election, our takeaway should not be limited to admiration for the most visible leaders, candidates, and public officials. We can and should admire their good character traits and their dedication to service. We can and should thank the movement leaders who made this possible, especially Black women. But we should not elevate these officials and movement leaders to the point where we regard them as something other than human, an example too rarified for us to follow.

The lesson here is that organizing is happening all around us. Coordinated solidarity to enact structural change for liberation is part of how we help bring the full promise of multiracial democracy into being. There may well be someone like Stacey Abrams in the movements you are part of at your workplace or in your neighborhood. Let’s listen. There are definitely organizations in our own communities being led by the people who are most impacted by marginalization. We can follow the example that has been set out for us by supporting power-building and relationship-building that is already happening locally. Grassroots organizing takes a long time. It requires a lot of one-on-one conversations, very little in the way of immediate results, and broad participation. That path is available to any of us, nobody has to be a superstar to participate in repairing the soul of our nation.

We contrast the progress in building multiracial democracy in Georgia with the violent attempt to destroy multiracial democracy that happened on January 6. Because this Platform is being recorded for posterity, I feel that I have to be very clear about the events of this week; please take care of yourself if a reminder of these events is overwhelming for you. On Wednesday, at the urging of their demagogue, white supremacist insurrectionists invaded the Capitol building, threatened the safety of elected leaders and staff, looted the building, and left chaos in their wake for others to clean up, primarily janitors and facilities staff who are People of Color. They were not merely rascals ignoring the rules of orderly protest, they were an armed mob seeking to disrupt the practice of democracy. Computers were stolen, putting our national security at risk. Five people died, including an officer from the Capitol Police.

In our community, I know we are holding intense emotions about this incident. I am particularly mindful of the impact that this has on those who work for the Federal government, for whom the area around the Capitol is an everyday environment, a place full of memories and colleagues. My heart also goes out to those who live near the Capitol, who had to deal with armed white supremacists wandering the neighborhood unimpeded. To anyone who has ever been treated roughly by the Capitol Police for non-violently exercising their first amendment rights, the lack of resistance to the mob may not have been surprising, but it was yet another insult, a reminder that the level of force with which police respond to protestors is a choice. For People of Color, Queer people, Muslim people, Jewish people, immigrants, or anyone who holds an identity targeted for violence by these insurrectionists, Wednesday’s events were a chilling show of power that was precisely intended to make us feel afraid for existing as our whole selves. We cannot let that fear stop us from living fully, nor prevent us from persevering in the work of liberation.

On Wednesday night, I invited the WES community to gather by Zoom to process the day’s events, to overcome the numbness of trauma by feeling our feelings, and to lift up our shared values in a way that only a community like ours can do. It was short notice, and I apologize if you didn’t hear about it in time. Please reach out if you would like to talk to me or to a member of the Pastoral Care Associates about how you are feeling. More than twenty of you were able to attend. Just from that sample, I know that there are feelings of rage, worry, disgust, helplessness, disappointment, and confusion. There are also feelings of readiness, of curiosity about what to do next, relief about the Georgia election, and even optimism that there are long-deferred actions for repair that can take place with the new Congress. Emotions are what they are, and they will be affected by your previous experiences with oppression, trauma, and violence. Feel your feelings. Please know you don’t have to be in those feelings alone.

The violence on January 6 was designed to reinforce white supremacy. It was a reaction to the expansion of multiracial democracy, fed by the shock of racist white people that the votes of people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color were allowed to have an impact. White people have been told since the moment Europeans arrived on this continent that the land and its abundance and the benefits of government are for ourselves, that white people own this country, and that this is unassailable no matter what happens to the bodies, voices, and lives of those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This worldview is gravely harmful and wrong.

The incredulity with which the insurrectionists faced the results of the 2020 election, urged on by politicians who capitalize on their racism, is rooted in the belief that only white votes are legitimate. Their invasion of the People’s House was meant to mark their territory, to show that their ownership remains primary, and that they can and will use violence to maintain that ownership. White supremacist violence as an attempt to derail multiracial democracy is not new, and it has worked before. We all have choices ahead of us to reduce the chances that this tactic will continue to work.

One avenue is to confront and dismantle white supremacy in all of the ways it shows up around us. For those who have been the targets of racism their whole lives, simply living and thriving is an act of resistance. For those of us who were socialized as white, the construction of a wall of ignorance around the machinations of white supremacy is part of how the system operates. For those of us who were raised with barriers to perceiving racism, let’s not wait another moment before removing those barriers and taking action to uproot racism.

We saw again this week how deadly white supremacy can be. It shows up in the minds and hearts of well-meaning people and in the institutional practices of well-meaning communities. It shows up in the decisions of governments from the level of homeowners associations to the U.S. Congress. It shows up in art and music and literature. We don’t have to look far to find a place to begin uprooting racism. For all of us, the outpouring of voter empowerment in Georgia reminds us that there is room for everyone in expanding multiracial democracy.

Another thing we can do is to insist that the threat of violent white supremacy is real, and that we should take it seriously. Perhaps that seems obvious after this week, but we’re already seeing efforts to humanize, sanitize, and excuse the perpetrators of destruction. News articles about insurrectionists who died emphasize their good qualities or accomplishments instead of their criminal records; an obvious departure from the media treatment of racial justice activists and those who have been murdered by police. Jokes about the perpetrators seem to imply that they are too stupid to be held responsible. Calls to understand their pain and excuse their racism rely on stereotypes that are demonstrably untrue. Exhortations to “move on” without practicing accountability reinforce the idea that harm caused by white people should be consequence-free. White supremacy is and always has been a threat to our national security and our national wellbeing, and the sooner we recognize and address that, the better.

Failing to take white supremacy seriously contributed to our vulnerability to Wednesday’s events. Racist militia groups have been allowed to grow and thrive for years when anti-racist groups have been infiltrated, sabotaged, and undermined with outrageous punishments and mysterious deaths. After the Charlottesville event where Heather Heyer was murdered, nothing happened to reduce the potential for future right-wing violence. The Capitol Police knew that the crowds planned for Wednesday were likely to be dangerous. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said:

We all were aware of the danger. Ten days ago, Maxine Waters had raised the issue of our security on a caucus call to the Speaker and asked what the plans would be. And 48 hours before, we had gotten instructions from Capitol police about all the threats: that we had to be on high alert, that we had to get to the Capitol by 9 a.m. before the protesters, that we couldn’t plan on going out, that we should have overnight bags. It was very clear, and everyone understood what the threats were.

Rep. Jayapal points out the discrepancy between what the Members of Congress were told about impending events and how the Capitol Police were prepared on the outside of the building. Whether failing to have adequate staff or backup or hard barriers was a result of underestimating the threat or of deliberate collusion or both, the lack of preparedness is a product of white supremacy.

When we recognize the enormity of the problem, we are led to work on systemic solutions. That means examining laws and policies, and the uneven application of those laws and policies. At a Symposium yesterday, award-winning peacemaker and spiritual care activist Najeeba Syeed spoke about the “myth of interpersonal peacemaking,” and how it can be a distraction and derailment of the systemic justice-making that provides the foundation for authentic, lasting peace. Trying to understand and relate to Nazis does not yield systemic change. Attempting to de-radicalize loved ones is another project, not the same thing as building multiracial democracy or expanding liberation. Professor Syeed reminded us that “Peace is not the absence of violence … Peace is the absence of injustice.”

In a week with so many low points, even as we notice the high points, it is understandable to feel disoriented. I have said before that hope is doing the next right thing, working toward a better world even when the outcome is not assured or even clear. Yet if your sense of reality was turned upside down this week, or you were overwhelmed with an experience or a reminder of trauma, maybe the next right thing is especially elusive right now. In that case, the next right thing is to take care of yourself. Drink water. Eat nourishing food. Maybe go outside at some point during the day. Talk to people who care about you. The movement will still be there when you have regained a sense of the ground underneath you. You are a precious being of worth.

Another next right thing is to check up on each other. Remember your federal employee friends. Follow up on a Caring News email. If you’re reaching out to someone who might be having a hard time, you might ask, “Is it OK if I ask how you are?” Let’s try not to make people feel obligated to re-live negative experiences if they aren’t ready. Just being present is often helpful. Even if we can’t fix anything, we can give people the option not to be alone in their grief.

If you have a little more energy and want to channel your feelings into positive actions, consider something that will have a material impact on your local community. R was telling me about Mutual Aid in Washington, DC, especially in Ward 5. For information about Mutual Aid throughout the District, check the website for Bread for the City or find them on Facebook. I also checked in with D, who is involved with Silver Spring/Takoma Park Mutual Aid. You can find them on their Wordpress site or on Facebook. If you’re involved in Mutual Aid, feel free to mention it during Community Sharing or post in the Facebook group later.

R tells me: “Mutual Aid is a non-hierarchical way for neighbors to help neighbors. Anyone can ask for any kind of assistance, and anyone can offer to help. Some roles require some training and learning codes of ethics/responsible service. It's not a particularly ‘formal’ or ‘organized’ thing - it's all hands on deck, and everyone is just doing their best.” R went on to say that there are short-term and long term roles, and those who are able can donate any time.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with dismantling white supremacy, building relationships with your neighbors both is and is not about a larger goal. Building relationships with neighbors is a primary good; it’s something that is valuable and satisfying to do for its own sake. Similarly, offering care when you can and giving people a chance to practice care when you need it are both good, full stop. Neighbors helping neighbors is a form of resistance to oppressive structures. 

In addition, neighbors who have strong bonds with each other are in a better position to advocate for their communities. If you and your neighbors are working to overcome environmental racism where you live, or redirect funding to basic human services, or update policies in the local school that have a negative impact on students of color, you will have a head start if you already know each other. This could be its whole own Platform, so I’ll pause there and just say that strong, connected, diverse local communities can be a manifestation of multiracial democracy and a home base for even more positive change.

Forming authentic relationships with our neighbors, community organizing, building power, paying attention to local issues, caring for ourselves and each other: these are some of the tools with which we will resist white supremacy and build multiracial democracy. This way is slow, and it is often hard, and it works. Growing multiracial democracy is a constant practice; Rep. Lewis reminded us that “democracy is not a state.”

When white supremacy attempts to use violence to enforce a warped and harmful vision of who we should be and how we should be together, one of our avenues for resistance is renewing our commitments to communities living into a vision of wholeness. That can mean your local mutual aid society, it can mean a project like the Food Justice Initiative, it can mean a coalition like the Washington Interfaith Network or the Congregation Action Network, it can mean a voting rights organization like Fair Fight, it can mean a community like WES. A better world is possible. There are pockets of it already living and moving among us and around us and within us. Clasping hands (figuratively, for now), traveling together with the winds of our time, let us gather our collective strength to stay grounded in a vision of the world that is possible.

May it be so.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 29, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

The ripples of the explosive testimony of the four police officers Tuesday before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol continue to spread. Committee members are meeting this week to decide how they will proceed. Congress goes on recess during August, but committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) suggested the committee would, in fact, continue to meet during that break.

Committee members are considering subpoenas to compel the testimony of certain lawmakers, especially since the Department of Justice on Tuesday announced that it would not assert executive privilege to stop members of the Trump administration from testifying to Congress about Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection. This is a change from the Trump years, when the Department of Justice refused to acknowledge Congress’s authority to investigate the executive branch. This new directive reasserts the traditional boundaries between the two branches, saying that Congress can require testimony and administration officials can give it.

Further, the Department of Justice yesterday rejected the idea that it should defend Congress members involved in the January 6 insurrection. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) sued Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, as well as the former president and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, for lying about the election, inciting a mob, and inflicting pain and distress.

Famously, Brooks participated in the rally before the insurrection, telling the audience: “[W]e are not going to let the Socialists rip the heart out of our country. We are not going to let them continue to corrupt our elections, and steal from us our God-given right to control our nation’s destiny.” “Today,” he said, “Republican Senators and Congressmen will either vote to turn America into a godless, amoral, dictatorial, oppressed, and socialist nation on the decline or they will join us and they will fight and vote against voter fraud and election theft, and vote for keeping America great.”

“[T]oday is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!” he said. He asked them if they were willing to give their lives to preserve “an America that is the greatest nation in world history.” “Will you fight for America?” he asked.

To evade the lawsuit, Brooks gave an affidavit in which he and his lawyers insisted that this language was solely a campaign speech, urging voters to support Republican lawmakers in 2022 and 2024. But he also argued that the Department of Justice had to represent him in the lawsuit because he was acting in his role as a congress member that day, representing his constituents.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice declined to take over the case, pointing out that campaign and electioneering activities fall outside the scope of official employment. It goes on to undercut the idea of protecting any lawmaker who participated in the insurrection, saying that “alleged action to attack Congress and disrupt its official functions is not conduct a Member of Congress is employed to perform.” This means Brooks is on his own to defend himself from the Swalwell lawsuit. It also means that lawmakers intending to fight subpoenas are going to be paying for their own legal representation.

If the committee does, in fact, start demanding that lawmakers talk, Brooks is likely on the list of those from whom they will want to hear. Trying to bolster the new Republican talking point that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) should have been better prepared for the insurrection (this is a diversion: she has no say over the Capitol Police, and she did, in fact, call for law enforcement on January 6), Brooks told Slate political reporter Jim Newell that he, Brooks, knew something was up. He had been warned “on Monday that there might be risks associated with the next few days,” he said. “And as a consequence of those warnings, I did not go to my condo. Instead, I slept on the floor of my office. And when I gave my speech at the Ellipse, I was wearing body armor.” “That’s why I was wearing that nice little windbreaker,” he told Newell. “To cover up the body armor.”

Brooks is not the only one in danger of receiving a subpoena. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) admitted on the Fox News Channel that he spoke to the former president on January 6, although he claimed not to remember whether it was before, during, or after the insurrection. He tried to suggest that chatting with Trump on January 6 was no different than chatting with him at any other time, but that is unlikely to fly. Jordan also repeatedly referred to Trump as “the president,” rather than the former president, a dog whistle to those who continue to insist that Trump did not, in fact, lose the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, it looks more and more like Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), are eager to change the subject. McCarthy today tried to walk back his previous blaming of Trump for the events of January 6, trying instead to tie Pelosi to the riot. He told reporters that when he said on January 6 that “[t]he President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters” and that Trump “should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” he made the comment without “the information we have today.” Then he tried to blame Pelosi for the Capitol Police response.

McCarthy seems unable to figure out how to handle the changing political dynamic and is continuing to shove the octopus of his different caucus interests into the string bag he’s holding only by promising that the Republicans will win in 2022. To that end, he is essentially walking away from governance and focusing only on the culture wars.

In addition to pulling the Trump Republicans off the select committee on the insurrection, he also pulled all six of the Republicans off a key committee on the economy, the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth. At a time when voters in all parties are concerned with the huge divergence in income and wealth in this country, a divergence that rivals that of the 1850s, 1890s, and 1920s, members of this committee could make names for themselves.

Ohio Republican Warren Davidson was one of those removed from the committee; he told Cleveland media he had been “looking forward” to participating and would “gladly rejoin” the committee if McCarthy relented, but it was Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur, still on the committee, who got the headline and the approving story.

Instead of this productive sort of headline, Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) staged an event in which they tried to visit the accused January 6 rioters at a Washington, D.C., jail. Refused entry, Gohmert told the press: “We’re in totalitarian, Marxist territory here. This is the way third-world people get treated.”

McCarthy and fellow Trump supporters are trying to get their own headlines by opposing new mask mandates as the Delta variant of coronavirus is gathering momentum across the country. On Tuesday, the attending physician for the United States Congress, Dr. Brian Monahan, reinstated the use of masks in the House of Representatives and recommended it in the smaller Senate. On Wednesday, Pelosi required the use of masks in the House, and reminded members that they would be fined for refusing to wear them. All of the Democrats in the House are vaccinated; it appears that only about half of House Republicans are.

Today, House Republicans launched a revolt against mask use. They are trying to adjourn the House rather than gather with masks. Chip Roy (R-TX), said "This institution is a sham. And we should adjourn and shut this place down.” Representatives Greene, Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), all maskless, gave Roy a standing ovation. Today, a group of House Republicans without masks posed for cameras as they tried to gain entrance to the Senate.

Consolidating around Trump after his November loss was always a gamble, but increasingly it looks like a precarious one. Just this week, the former president tried to sabotage the infrastructure deal, and 17 senators ignored him. In Texas, on Tuesday, Trump’s ability to swing races was tested and failed when the candidate he backed—even pumping a last-minute $100,000 into the race—lost.

McCarthy has promised to win in 2022 with culture wars rather than governing, and that looks like an increasingly weak bet. But make no mistake: the ace in his vest remains the voter suppression laws currently being enacted across the country.

—

Notes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/07/29/mccarthy-walks-back-saying-trump-bears-responsibility-for-capitol-riot/

Chris Cioffi @ReporterCioffiNOW: large maskless group of House GOP members has just crossed onto the Senate side and asked to enter the Senate Chamber. 1,507 Retweets3,942 Likes

July 29th 2021

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jan-select-committee-meet-steps-move-subpoenas/story

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/where-things-stand-july-28-2021-jim-jordan-confirms-talked-trump-jan-6

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/27/trump-officials-testify-us-capitol-attack-house-doj

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/26/1020786560/a-lawsuit-against-jan-6-rally-speakers-forces-doj-to-consider-whos-legally-immun

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.228356/gov.uscourts.dcd.228356.20.0_7.pdf

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21018141/7-27-21-us-response-mo-brooks.pdf

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/republican-mo-brooks-insurrection-lawsuit-doj.html

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/mo-brooks-body-armor-jan-6-rally.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/27/politics/republicans-withdraw-economic-disparity-and-fairness-in-growth-committee/index.html

https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/07/new-select-committee-on-economic-disparities-is-shunned-by-republicans-but-not-by-toledo-democratic-rep-marcy-kaptur.html

https://www.rollcall.com/2021/07/28/mask-mandates-return-to-the-capitol-white-house/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/republican-reaction-covid-mask-congress/index.html

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/07/24/donald-trumps-pac-makes-last-minute-ad-buy-for-susan-wright-in-district-6-congressional-race/

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/07/27/jake-ellzey-leading-trump-backed-susan-wright-in-race-to-replace-the-late-ron-wright-in-congress/?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true&s=03

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/565562-gop-reps-gaetz-green-and-gohmert-turned-away-from-jail-to-visit-jan-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

On the third night of the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. In what’s being described as a “stark, sober address” intended to frighten Americans about the dangers of a second Trump term, the former president took a moment to acknowledge the hopelessness and cynicism that has become so prevalent in today’s political discourse:

“Look, I understand why many Americans are down on government. The way the rules have been set up and abused in Congress make it easy for special interests to stop progress. Believe me, I know. I understand why a white factory worker who’s seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all. I understand why a new immigrant might look around this country and wonder whether there’s still a place for him here; why a young person might look at politics right now, the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies and crazy conspiracy theories and think, what’s the point?”

Now, I’m not a factory worker, a Black mother, or a new immigrant, so I can’t speak for them, but Obama’s assessment of why each of those people may be “down on government” seems more or less accurate. Factory workers do feel betrayed, Black people in general have good reason to think the government never cared about them, and it stands to reason that new immigrants would feel unwelcome given the current administration’s overt hostility towards them.

Obama’s explanation for why young people have grown jaded, however, is far less convincing. In fact, it’s completely made up. As a fairly young person myself who discusses current affairs on a literal daily basis, I can assert with great confidence that young people today aren’t bitter about politics because of “the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies, and crazy conspiracy theories.” They’re bitter because of the failed presidency, and tone-deaf post-presidency, of Barack Obama.

Millennials such as myself remember what it was like to feel optimistic about politics. We first felt this sense of hope in 2008 when Obama first ran for president. We created a grassroots movement behind his campaign, carried him to the Democratic nomination in what initially seemed like a Quixotic battle against the Clintonian Democratic establishment, and voted for him in droves in November, propelling him to a landslide victory. And what did all of this hope, and effort, and enthusiasm get us, even when we won? Romneycare.

So in 2016, after a hugely disappointing Obama era, most of the young people who supported him twice, as well as a new generation of even younger voters, became equally involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign, which the Democratic Party conspired against in favor of Hillary Clinton, the very person the youth rejected in favor of Obama eight years prior. When she lost to Donald Trump, and Sanders ran again this time, yet another crop of young people supported him in overwhelming numbers. This time, it seemed there were enough of them to finally win, until, once again, Barack Obama, the man the older millennials invested their hopes in twelve years ago, intervened in the eleventh hour to align the party against the Sanders campaign, once again crushing the candidate that the youth had rallied behind.

In short, that’s why so many young people are “down on government.” It’s not because politics is too mean, or too circus-like, or that there are too many conspiracy theories to keep track of. It’s because young people invested their hopes in Barack Obama, and he failed them.

Obama continued:

“Well, here’s the point: This president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote does not matter. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers until it’s no democracy at all.”

While his assessment of youth apathy and cynicism was undoubtedly deceptive, this paragraph is pure Orwellian propaganda.

First, the premise is false. Anyone with any political understanding knows that there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C. that serves to protect and maintain the status quo. To classify “this president and those in power” as the sole beneficiaries of “keeping things the way they are” is simply dishonest. Obama’s subsequent claim that Republicans seek to depress and suppress the vote by depressing and disempowering the electorate is fair enough, but of course, Democrats have their own underhanded means of protecting their power, just as Republicans do.

In fact, I could very easily rewrite this segment of the speech to describe how the DNC protects its own interests at the expense of the common good. It would go something like this:

Well here’s the point – the Democratic establishment – those who benefit from keeping things the way they are – they are counting on your support. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to blackmail you into voting for them, and to convince you that your vote matters when it really doesn’t. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers until it’s no democracy at all.

Notice I didn’t have to change much at all. Because as far as political strategy is concerned, the only real difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the Republicans sell despair and the Democrats sell false hope. Republicans overtly encourage people to shun civic responsibility altogether and think only of themselves, whereas Democrats manipulate their base into participating in masturbatory dead-end exercises of meaningless civic engagement, i.e., voting for Democrats.

When we got involved, got inspired, and mobilized to elect the last Democratic president, did that stop the economy from being “skewed to the wealthy and well connected?” Did it stop people from “falling through the cracks” of our for-profit market based healthcare system? Did it protect our democracy from undue influence by oligarchs and demagogues? Of course not. If it had, the Wall St. criminals who tanked the economy would be in jail, we’d have at least a public option, and we wouldn’t have President Donald J. Trump.

And so when Obama addresses these issues, he speaks as though he were never the president; as though he were never in a position to prove to young people that government could in fact work for them; as if he was never entrusted with the task of renewing people’s faith in politics as a means for enacting positive change; as if he never rallied his base behind a campaign slogan of “Yes, We Can,” and as if he never let them down.

At this point, the only people still fawning over Barack Obama’s empty rhetoric and revisionist historicizing are those who don’t care how empty and revisionist it actually is. The liberal class’ privilege allows them to be hypnotized by Obama’s eloquence, charisma, and “classiness,” and to conveniently ignore both his failures as president and his inability to acknowledge them in his post-presidency. They pontificate about how much they “miss having a president who can speak in complete sentences,” as if complete sentences alone are of material benefit to poor and working class people struggling to make ends meet.

In 2008, Obama’s base of support was an idealistic coalition of multiracial young people brimming with excitement over his aspirational vision. Twelve years later, his speeches resonate only with those who can afford to revel in their superficiality. This much is obvious to anyone who’s not already in the tank for the Democrats, but it hasn’t seemed to dawn on Obama himself one bit. The lack of self awareness in this speech is a perfect example of why Democrats are so loathed by so many, and why they’re always the last ones to learn just how unpopular they are.

The rise of Donald Trump is an unfortunate but undeniable consequence of Obama’s failure to deliver on the promise of “hope and change.” If Barack Obama is too prideful, or too insulated from reality, to admit this to himself, it’s about time Democrats start admitting this to each other, because this whole convention gave off major 2016 vibes. We saw an elitist party basking in its own perceived moral and intellectual superiority while making no substantive policy pitches to anyone who they fear may be on the verge of giving up and staying home in November. Speaker after speaker stressed the importance of voting by insisting our democracy might fall if we don’t. Never did anyone stop and ask themselves why they should expect people to feel so invested in a “democracy” whose political outcomes have rendered 63% of Americans unable to afford a $500 emergency. Sure, democracy is nice for people like Julia Louis Dreyfus, whose roasting of Donald Trump on the convention’s final night went over predictably well with comfy #resistance liberals, but what good is it to everyone else if they don’t get anything out of it except the opportunity to vote for sleazy politicians who don’t look out for them?

This country is battered, broken, beaten down, and ready to throw in the towel. This was true four years ago, and it may be even more true now. The unfulfilled promise of the Obama years is a big part of why that is, a big part of why Trump was elected in 2016, and a big part of why America might just double down on despair in 2020.

What is the purpose, I wonder, of Bernie continuing to shit on the Democrats while not offering plausible solutions for the progressive ideas he has? Surely he’s not naive enough to not realize that splitting the Dem vote or even threatening it, with what we’re up against, is a good idea? I’m just very confused because leftists hold him up as some kind of example for where we should be heading and I wonder how possible it is for him to even be that if he can’t recognize the realities of the dire situation we’re in and direct his supporters to do the thing that’ll get us out of it.

Here's the thing about Bernie. I think he does care on some level, and that he definitely does prefer having Biden/the Democrats in office, rather than Trump and the Republicans. But if he's built his entire brand on criticising both of them endlessly (and he has), then it is, personally, no skin off Bernie's nose, or damage to his brand, which one is in office. Either way, he can earn cred points on criticizing them and positioning himself as the Morally Superior Outsider (despite, as I said, being a senator for 15+ years and accomplishing nothing significant, despite all his righteous talk).

That, I think, is the biggest problem with both him and his supporters who think in the same way: if it's essentially meaningless to you who's in office, whether an outright authoritarian fascist narcissistic con man and his band of anti-everything religious zealots, or a flawed liberal democratic political party that, despite mistakes, generally tries their best, there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with your ethical and moral philosophy. Because everything is just a thought exercise to you, and you're automatically presuming that you're always right, you're totally ignoring or making false equivalences between the moral choices available to you -- which, at this point, flatly do boil down to good and evil. You can talk all you want about Third Parties and Alternatives to the System, but none of those exist in any meaningful way and trying to act like they do will only hasten the impending and very real violent fascist white supremacist takeover. And doing anything that increases the likelihood of that outcome is, in fact, NOT a moral, ethical, or defensible choice, no matter how many thought experiments you want to play and no matter how much Woke Jargon you know.

Bernie has made a few desultory gestures toward telling his supporters to get behind the Democrats and vote for them, but still not as much time as he spends criticizing them, and certainly not as much as he could have, given his immense platform and influence (good or otherwise) on segments of the American public who view themselves as leftists. That's because Bernie has built his brand on being an anti-establishment contrarian and (like Ralph Nader also used to do) openly equivocating the two parties as "equally bad" or painting the Democrats as only barely better than the Republicans. If he's put himself in a position where he can't tell the truth without his fanbase turning on him, then it's time to take a good hard look at what exactly that fanbase believes and if it is indeed anything other than the leftist version of Trump's Big Lie. Because the grievance, the paranoia, the insistence that elections must not be fair or otherwise their candidate would never lose, that people have to be forced to make the Right Choice and all would magically be solved if they did, sounds, frankly, an awful lot like it.

13 Keys to the White House: 2024

Historian Allan Lichtman has produced an astonishingly accurate system for predicting presidential elections; although first implemented in 1984, going backwards it correctly accounts for every election since 1860, with the only hiccup coming from the hotly contested 2000 election. He predicted Gore would win, and he wasn’t entirely wrong, there was just some brotherly nepotism and Supreme Court fuckery. Anyway, his system posits 13 yes or no scenarios about the state of the union; if at least 8 are true then the incumbent party wins another term, less than 8 and the challenging party wins. Simple.

It’s pretty early in Biden’s term to tell for sure, but we can make some soft predictions that we can refine over the next few years before solidifying in 2023 or 2024.

Midterm gains: after the midterms, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House than they did in the previous midterms. Almost certainly false. 2022 will see new districts drawn by the predominantly Republican statehouses, giving them an immediate advantage. Democrats have a razor thin majority as is, it’s never been this close to tied before, I can’t see them holding on when you take into account new census data and partisan gerrymandering.

No primary contest: is there no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Almost certainly true. Like him or hate him, Democrats are stuck with Biden. There hasn’t been a serious primary challenge in either major party since Reagan tried to take on Ford in 1976.

Incumbent seeking re-election: the incumbent candidate is the president. Again almost certainly true. There was an unspoken agreement that Biden would only run for one term, considering the fact that he’ll be 82 at the end of it, but o think he thinks he’s in for the long run now. If he does in office, Harris will become president and run for re-election herself, so the only way this would flip false would be if Biden just decides not to run again. In that case, the #2 might also flip false because I could see a weak senator like Joe Manchin running against Harris to get out of his own impending failure in West Virginia.

No third-party: no significant third party challenger. Too soon to tell, though I’m leaning towards true. The last nationally successful third party candidate was Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. He didn’t win any states, but he split some states nearly in thirds; Clinton and Bush and Dole all won states with less than 50% of he vote because Perot split the ticket. In 2000 Ralph Nader lost New Hampshire for Al Gore, giving it and the presidency to George W. Bush, and the same thing happened with Jill Stein in 2016 in the Midwest. Spoilers don’t need to be major on the National scale to have significant effects in specific states. Lichtman only flips this one false when a third party candidate wins 10% of the vote, so I’m going with true.

Short-term economy: the economy is not in recession. Probably true, but still too early to tell. We are either in the middle or nearing the end of a covid recession, I can’t see it lasting three more years without recovering at least a little, especially with the $2 trillion stimulus package they just passed. The economy is random, but if you look at a plot of unemployment since the Great Depression you will see that it consistently trends up under Republicans and trends down under Democrats. Trump was the only president is recent history to actually destroy more jobs than he created, so Biden could. It have inherited an easier path to victory. He shouldn’t be able to fuck up when the bar is so low, but I’m not holding out hope.

Long-term economy: real pet capita growth equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. Probably true, too soon to be sure. We’re so deep in the hole after Trump that any even remotely upwards tick will count as growth. I can’t see us dipping deeper than 2020 anytime soon, but then again that’s what they said in 2008, so who even knows?

Major policy change: the incumbent administration effects major change in national policy. False, I can call it now with utmost confidence. With Manchin and Sinema protecting the filibuster, Biden will get absolutely nothing substantive done in his first two years. He’ll end up losing one or both houses in the midterms, accomplishing even less in his next two! If he loses the Senate, it’s all over. It’ll be 2016 2.0, no more appointments, no more nominees, complete and utter obstruction until the Republicans take back he presidency and fill all the vacancies themselves.

No social unrest: no sustained social unrest during the term. Too soon to tell, but maybe true. 2020 was an anomaly, a once in a generation thing like 1968, so many crises all compounded together; the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the wild fires, the hurricanes, utter chaos. I don’t see 2024 being as bad, but don’t quote me on that.

No scandal: incumbent administration is not tainted by scandal. Who knows?!? Biden seems pretty white bread/plain vanilla/mayonnaise, but Republicans insist he’s the most corrupt politician since their own guys (Trump and Nixon; lowering the bar for all their successors). They milked Benghazi for years and found nothing, but still tanked Clinton’s integrity going forward, I’m sure they’ll try to milk whatever BS They can find on Hunter Biden, especially if they retake the House or Senate. Whether any accusations will stick is up in the air, but I could see Republicans impeaching Biden just because they can.

No foreign/military failure: incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign/military affairs. Who knows? Biden’s foreign policy isn’t significantly different than Trump’s, so there’s no telling what could go wrong. The Saudis will keep cutting people’s heads off, North Korea will never disarm itself, Iran will probably arm itself, Afghanistan will drag on forever, and I can smell war brewing in the Caucasus, Venezuela, and Bolivia. The future is as clear as milk.

Foreign policy/military success: incumbent administration achieves major success in foreign/military affairs. Probably not, but too soon to tell. Succeeding is very different from not failing, so 10 and 11 aren’t necessarily linked. You can not fail AND not succeed, they’re not mutually exclusive. I don’t see anything good happening overseas for a very long time. If we pull out of Afghanistan, the power vacuum will pave the way for ISIS 2.0, so our hands are tied there. Our best bet would be to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, but then we’ll just be back to status quo anteTrumpum, zero sum gain.

Charismatic incumbent: the incumbent party nominee is charismatic or a national hero. False, false, a million times false. Biden isn’t even beloved by his entire party, let alone the country; Republicans hate him even more than they ought to just because he wears a blue tie instead of a red one (his policies are so middle-of-the-road inoffensive to them that they shouldn’t have a problem with him, but Trump told them to, so they do). If Biden dies or refuses to run, Harris is even more divisive because she’s a woman and a disingenuous liar (she pretends to be super progressive, but she’s a cop, a Clintonesque moderate through and through). Obama in 2008 was a breath of fresh air which got very stale by 2012; 2008 was lightning in a bottle, and neither Biden nor Harris could ever dream of catching it again. They’re nowhere near as nationally beloved as the Roosevelts or Kennedy or Reagan.

Uncharismatic challenger: the challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. True, true, a million times true. It will almost certainly be Trump again in 2024, and he is even more despised than Biden. Sure, he’s beloved by his own party, but they make up less than half of he country. He never had majority approval and lost the popular vote twice, he’s a loser! If by some miracle he chooses not to run, the Republicans will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to appoint a successor. They’ll want one of his kids to run, maybe even his daughter in law who is looking to run for senate in 2022, but they’re tainted by affiliation to the Gonad Lump himself; they’re all the same. Ted Cruz sucks ass, Ron DeSantis might actually have an intellectual disability so I feel bad making fun of that piece of shit bastard, I pray that Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz suffer debilitating brain aneurysms on live TV, Nikki Haley is a nobody, and Lauren Boebert and Majorie Taylor Green are too regional to have national appeal (though Green will probably run against Raphael Warnock in 2022, so she will almost certainly be a senator by 2024). There are no nationally beloved politicians on either side of the aisle, so I would expect Republicans to cheat like they tried in 2020 to stop black people in swing states from voting.

So, the tally stands thus:

3 are certainly true

4 are probably true, leaning uncertain

2 are uncertain

1 is probably false, leaning uncertain

3 are certainly false

Democrats need 8 true to win, Republicans need 6 false to win. Right now, Biden had a slight edge because it is historically difficult to defeat an incumbent, Trump just sucked. I don’t see a rematch being significantly different, I suspect Biden would still win the popular vote, but Trump could eke by with the electoral college like he did in 2016, especially now that Republicans are taking over the judiciary in Pennsylvania (they’re changing the rules so that judges are elected in gerrymandered districts instead of statewide races). You saw how hard Republicans fought in 2020, they’re not going to change tactics in 2024, they’re gonna double down and try even harder next time. Fewer polling places, fewer drop boxes, shorter early voting, shorter hours, more stringent ID laws. Their MO is systemic voter suppression because their rhetoric has become too toxic to win on a national level. The majority of Americans vote against them in almost every election, general and midterm, but they continue to rule in the minority.

Something has got to give, this can’t go on forever, eventually the situation is going to boil over, be it in a civil war or a constitutional convention to overhaul the entire country; neither are probable, and either outcome would almost certainly hurt people of color in predominantly conservative states.

Biden thought he would be an arbiter president, he thought he would be able to unite the country, heal the divide, being both sides together under mutual compromise, but he failed to understand that Republicans hate him on principal. Doesn’t matter how much he tries to appease them, they still hate him because they have to hate him, even if they agree with him. It would be political suicide for any of them to side with Biden on anything, Trump has already vowed to support primary challengers, his presidency was the final nail in the coffin of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is dead, it hasn’t been alive in decades, and the only people who call for it are the minority party.

Trump is hard liquor, unappealing to anyone but his alcoholic voters; Biden is diet ginger ale, inoffensive and boring, nobody really wanted him, he only ran to try and settle everyone’s stomachs, and he hasn’t been very successful yet. He honestly believed he would be a neutral alternative for the alcoholics; that level of optimism would be adorable if it weren’t so pathetic. It’s gonna take a lot more than 12 steps to break the country’s addiction.

Heather Cox Richardson:

December 23, 2020 (Wednesday)

The main story today was that Trump has essentially quit even pretending to govern, and instead created chaos in Washington before leaving for Mar-a-Lago until sometime in the new year. The confusion he has sown promises to keep him central over the holidays, and remaining central is what drives this man.

Today the White House first told staffers that they would “start departing” the week of January 4, then told the same staffers to “please disregard” the earlier memo.

Trump vetoed the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act today, complaining that this bill, which funds the military and is usually a bipartisan must-pass bill, changed the names of military bases currently named for Confederate officers and did not repeal the protection for social media companies from liability for content posted by third parties. This second demand has nothing to do with the military, but Trump wanted it to give him power to rein in the insults he sees on Twitter and Facebook. Congress is expected to repass the bill over Trump’s veto.

In his fury at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senator John Thune (R-SD) for recognizing Joe Biden as President-Elect, Trump yesterday attacked the hard-won Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 bill, which Congress passed after months of struggle late Monday night. The bill contains a coronavirus relief measure which provides $600 to individuals in a one-time payment. Trump insisted the amount should be $2000. Republicans had rejected a higher payment than $600 during negotiations, and a Republican official noted today that Trump had been informed of the discussions of the bill as they progressed and had made no objection to the terms at the time. His complaints now, the official said, were driven by his desire to skewer McConnell and Thune.

After indicating he might veto the bill and leave the government unfunded, Trump has not told anyone how he would like the bill amended to be sure of his signature. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi urged the president to “sign the bill to keep government open!”

Meanwhile, the president’s attack on the $600 payments has opened the door for Democrats, who always wanted a higher amount, to propose a stand-alone bill increasing those payments. They will likely do so tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve. Republicans still oppose that measure, and Trump has put them in the likely position of voting down this payment to needy Americans on Christmas Eve.

Trump's stall on signing the bill and his sudden call for higher payments also threatens to hurt the Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, who have been campaigning on the promise that there would be a coronavirus relief package before Christmas. Their Democratic challengers have seized on the idea of higher payments, putting the two Republicans, who oppose higher payments, on the spot. A Georgia Republican strategist complained that Trump had put the Republican candidates in “an impossible situation repeatedly throughout the entirety of the runoff.”

In Washington, one top Republican aide told Politico reporters Anita Kumar, Melanie Zanona and Marianne Levine that Trump’s handling of the bill was a “complete clusterf***.”

Trump wasn't done for the day. Tonight, he pardoned 26 more people, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his friend Roger Stone, both of whom were instrumental in connecting the 2016 Trump campaign to Russian operatives. He also pardoned Jared Kushner’s father Charles Kushner, who was convicted of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions. It is likely that Attorney General William Barr made his resignation effective today because he didn’t want to be associated with these pardons.

Legal analyst for CNN Elie Honig notes that the pardons mean that “every significant Mueller defendant who refused to cooperate (or started but then stopped) has now been pardoned. Only Rick Gates and Michael Cohen—both of whom testified publicly, in court or Congress—have not been pardoned. The math isn’t hard to do.”

The CDC announced today that more than a million Americans have received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, a significant milestone but far below the 20 million goal the administration had aimed for. Currently, the nation is averaging more than 200,000 new cases a day.

As the Trump administration has largely given up governing, the incoming Biden administration is trying to prepare to take over despite being kept in the dark about key issues. The transition process started late, as Trump officials refused to recognize Biden’s election, and now administration officials either can’t or won’t tell Biden’s people what’s going on. In some departments, “the professionals are at a loss” to explain what’s happening, Biden said today. “I can’t tell if I have a clear view of where the landmines are,” he said. His team has not received a briefing from the Defense Department in close to a week, leaving him largely unclear about Russia's recent cyberattack on the government and key businesses, among other things.

Biden says that part of the reason he has chosen old hands in Washington to fill key positions is because they, at least, know the ropes well enough to get the ship of state underway again.

Since I’m getting at least one reply-via-comment which actually kind of needs a longer reply, here’s a post for it:

The only bad thing Trump has done which is actually new is to announce policies on Twitter. (And even that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although it is the way he does it, without talking to anybody first.) There is nothing in his record, otherwise, which was not at least strongly foreshadowed in the the previous two administrations.

I’m a lot older than the average Tumblr user — I can remember the Reagan years — and I can tell you that all of this bullshit we are facing from Trump has its roots not just in Republican pushing to the right but in Democratic refusal to push back. And Biden didn’t just refuse to push back, he was worse than many Republicans and is directly responsible for a lot of our current problems, in a demonstrable way. (The crime bill he let the police write in 1994, the bankruptcy bill of 2005, the scuttling of Anita Hill to get another right-wing Supreme Court justice, etc.) He isn’t “the lesser of two evils”, he is genuinely as bad as Trump, but less personally obnoxious.

You know the voter suppression the Democrats are now complaining about? That was a major topic in the news back around 2004. The Democrats knew it was happening, they took Congress in 2006 and did nothing about it. They added the Presidency to their control in 2008 and still did nothing. (And the reason they did nothing, it has been more than hinted, is because the right-of-center crooks in the party like Joe Manchin, who reliably votes for Republican causes — remember the Kavanaugh confirmation? — and is deeply involved in the unreasonably high price of things like insulin, can only stay in office by using the same tactics.)

Police brutality? Nearly all those riots are against police in cities with Democratic mayors, usually in states with Democratic governors as well. Minneapolis? Democratic mayor, Democratic governor. Chicago? Democratic mayor, Democratic governor. Portland? Democratic mayor, Democratic governor. New York?… you get the idea. The Democrats not only are not interested in addressing the problem, they are actively giving the orders to carry out police brutality.

DHS and ICE? The Democrats not only went for those, but the 2016 and prospective 2020 nominees supported it. (Hell, Biden helped Obama oversee an expansion of ICE, and the renewal of all the contracts for the people running detention centers who had already caused lawsuits because they were already treating immigrants as badly as Trump does.)

The Democrats spent the Obama years desperately trying to avoid taking action. Have you noticed that the Republicans don’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but they’re still passing bills? Under Obama, the lack of a 60-vote supermajority was used as an excuse to avoid even introducing any bills to address issues. No matter how critical the issue was or how much support the public showed for it — and if you’ve forgotten, when Obama took office, over ninety percent of the public was in favor of breaking up the Too Big To Fail banks and smacking down Wall Street for the 2008 meltdown; even 90% of Republicans wanted him to do it — the Democrats deliberately avoided even trying to fix anything.

And now, when Trump has demonstrated that everything the Republican Party stands for is just outright wrong, to such a degree that anybody with an IQ above single digits can’t deny it without also ludicrously insisting that nearly the entire world is involved in a conspiracy, the party has insisted on nominating the furthest-right member it has, a man who has deliberately sabotaged the public through his entire career, and refuses to even make a symbolic stand in their platform.

Why bother voting for them? If the Democrats win we will still get Republican policy — we just won’t get it with Trump’s rudeness; it will happen “naturally”, without any opposition except a token show from the Republicans because they automatically fight anything the Democrats do, even when it’s their own ideas being put into action. (NAFTA and the ACA, for example, were both originally Republican plans, which right-of-center Democrats took up and sold to the idiots in the Democratic base as great ideas. NAFTA was a Republican idea under Reagan, specifically to bust unions, and the ACA was originally a plan from a right-wing think tank as an example of how you could avoid universal healthcare.) We won’t even save the Supreme Court — Biden is the guy who gave us Clarence Thomas, the furthest-right current member, by sabotaging the resistance to him. A vote for a Democrat is a wasted vote. Moreso than voting third-party knowing you will lose. At least with a third party, you stand some tiny, remote chance of getting somebody into office who will try to solve problems; the Democrats have now made it official that they will not even try, because they are so afraid of offending the rich.

Fuck ’em all. And fuck absolutely anybody who says “Blue No Matter Who” unironically — you are the toxin which has rotted the party and made it worthless. The US is a hellscape because you were willing to support godawful candidates on the basis of partisanship.

BERNIE 2020

This time last year, everyone who announced they were running for the Democratic nomination was running using chunks of Bernie Sanders' 2016 platform. Everyone supported a $15 minimum wage and Medicare-For-All. It was then announced that the health insurance industry was going to go all out in terms of the money they were going to spend against a single-payer system, and as the months went on, not only did all those people walk back their support, or attribute the phrase "Medicare For All" to their own plans which were not that, more people announced they were running, who never claimed any of these beliefs. Many candidates have dropped out, many more have joined. While once it seemed like everyone was claiming Bernie's policies, but offering a more diverse slate of identities, now everyone is running to the right of him, with more and more people joining to be even farther right still.

Honestly, the very fact that Bernie has not caved, when everyone else did, in the wake of all the money which is very clearly stacked against him, should put you in his corner, if you believe that integrity matters in the slightest. What's going to drive me insane is that it feels like the forces arrayed against him are specifically AGAINST integrity, the very idea that someone cannot be bought. I am aware my ideas might seem like "conspiracy theories," but it's all so out in the open that it genuinely feels more like terrorism. Anti-abortion activists killed Dr. George Tiller, and now less people receive the medical training to perform the procedures he performed. What we are witnessing now is that money will be spent to kill your career, if you want to get money out of politics. A few months ago I was insisting no one under forty was going to vote for Joe Biden. Now, to take his role in the race, of "old white man with right-wing politics who is ostensibly electable in terms of being able to win over voters who are undecided between Democrats and Republicans despite the fact that no one likes him" is Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg is, somehow, worse than Joe Biden; arguably, perhaps even probably, worse than Donald Trump. Like Biden, there's a long history of racism and sexism in terms of policy he has pushed and things he has said. Michael Bloomberg spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2004, in support of George W. Bush, at the height of the Iraq war. He also supported stop and frisk in New York City, and changed the laws so he could run for a third term as mayor: Everyone worried about Trump declaring himself "president for life" and not retiring quietly should look to Bloomberg's example of how plutocrats bend the rules in their favor. I don't believe he would win an election, he is a truly sub-John-Kerry proposition. However, it is arguable Bloomberg would be a worse president than Donald Trump, able to impose right-wing policies without any of the opposition Trump enjoys. That opposition, as it is, feels pretty nominal, and the fact that Democrats seem to prefer Bloomberg be the nominee over Sanders points to why. It feels like the idea of insisting people vote for Bloomberg for the sake of "beating Trump" is psychological warfare, not a "compromise" but intentionally designed to degrade and demoralize not just "the left" but anyone with any sort of historical understanding or basic opposition to right-wing hegemony. I will not vote for Michael Bloomberg in a general election. If offered the false choice between Bloomberg and Donald Trump, two Republican plutocrats, we should give up on the idea that democracy exists and all become full-on anarchists. It is in both the Democratic party's interest, and my own personal psychology, to avoid making me feel this way about the assorted other candidates running. I basically avoid learning too much about Pete Buttegieg, though I already resent that I know how to pronounce his last name. I truly hope he goes away forever. Elizabeth Warren would've been, at one point, an "acceptable compromise" between the left and more moderate wings of the party, who I would be happy to support, but her campaign is now being run by people interested in the paradigm of degrading the left and it's pretty depressing to think that she has no interest in actually passing Medicare-for-all or any of the other large, sweeping changes this country sorely needs. I think all these people, Bloomberg and Biden especially, would lose an election. Regardless of my vote, I believe that Bernie Sanders is the only person who can win, although perhaps he can only win if the entire media apparatus is not violently opposed to his campaign. To his credit, he is not actually publicizing this conspiracy for the sake of his campaign. He did so in 2016, when he was running against Hillary Clinton. It is considered "divisive" to do so. Sanders instead is basing his campaign on how many people his policies would help, how painful our current society is, how much pain there is in our society. I feel like I have made it obvious, in other places, how this includes me. I've written often about being poor, and having limited options in this society, despite my assorted privileges. What's funny is that I feel like something I have in common with Sanders, besides our Jewish heritage, is a disinterest in talking about ourselves. I don't want to say "My life is pathetic, I am poor, and voting for Bernie would help me out." And Bernie doesn't want to say "All these bastards are arrayed against me, vote for me so they can lose power and we can start to have a functioning democracy." So it's my role to say what Bernie won't. There are people who think talking about Sanders, and his obvious integrity contrasted with other politicians, is akin to believing in a cult of personality. I don't want to accuse everyone of participating in acts of projection, but what's interesting is I think centrists largely believe that every politician has integrity. That's why they don't think it matters when someone takes high-paying gigs giving speeches, or whatever. There isn't the same understanding of power acting to protect itself by maintaining a status quo. Without this basic belief in what integrity is, the whole fact of Sanders' popularity seems suspect. There are pundits who describe the fact that Sanders has large crowds of passionate supporters as in itself Trumpian, whereas Bloomberg and Biden, with their histories of racism, sexism, mental decline, lying, and support for the rich, actually manifest the parts of Trump's being that are the problem. Bernie Sanders is real, he's genuinely what every person who has professed liberal opinions over the past thirty-odd years claims to be. The people who hate him are not all political operatives, but they're people who think like those operatives do, fake as hell smiling backstabbers who are allergic to the real. There are huge contradictions between the values they claim to have and how they act, and so they are unable to see the lies of the politicians they support. However, the rest of us, the vast majority of society, see through all of it, and recognize Bernie Sanders as being genuine. This is why Bernie Sanders can win, and why he should win, and why he'll be able to be a good president once in office. He's right, when everyone else for the past forty years has been wrong. Bernie Sanders is right because he's the only person who is not lying to themselves, and that gives him an enormous advantage in terms of his basic relationship to reality.