While it spends most of it’s space talking in circles and not going anywhere, there are points to the recent article in Politico regarding the waning of Elizabeth Warren’s support on the Hard-Left.
The article raises some good points – one of the best being “The final outcome is what, in the end, really matters,” Kazin said. “When Trump is president, we won’t have time to say: ‘Well, let’s fight another day. Too bad we didn’t win, but I’m glad I didn’t support Warren, because that would have been a betrayal of my principles.’”
He added, “You can’t change society unless you win elections.” – but it also doesn’t actually move the conversation forward. It’s more of the same circle of pundits sitting in the gloom and contemplating their belly-button lint that ended us up with the current nightmare.
For thirty years or more the Democrats have been limping along, wringing their sweaty palms and bemoaning the state of politics in the modern era. Yet too gutless and afraid to beat the Rethuglicunts at their own game of leading the electorate (read: “sheep”) around by their short ‘n’ curlies. When they HAVE deigned to play hard-ball they’ve approached the game with an obvious case of revulsion at the thought that they might actually have to work up a sweat and get their hands dirty. My crotchety old great-grandmother, Dodie (don’t call her Dorothea or she’ll snatch you bald on both ends) always said “if you’re going to butcher a hog, you gotta catch him first – and that means you’re gonna get dirty.” The same applies to modern politics. If you’re going to beat Trumpletwat and the NeoFacist slime that is the Republican party (including their voters), you have to be willing and able to not only play their game, but you have to be amazing at it. You have to make them understand in their bones that they’ve been played for fools, raped like a $4 Filipino whore, and tossed aside like one of the aborted fetuses they pretend they know so much about.
Neither Sanders or Warren can do that.
Sanders is the grumpy, drunk uncle at the family reunion that everyone tolerates because he’s old and loopy and craps his pants regularly. But he’s also racist and misogynistic, and every bit as much a slave to Corporate America as Trump. His wife is evidence enough of that. Nor is he any real friend to the LGBT community, and his foreign policy (what little there is of it) harks back to Wilsonian isolationism.
Warren started off well, but has morphed into the harpy aunt who has a plan for everything, but rarely – if ever – tells you exactly what that plan is. When she does, it’s a mish-mash of things that don’t make much sense and you know in your gut won’t work, nor will it make anyone really happy with the outcome.
Biden? No. We already have someone in the Oval with a case of Tourette’s, though I’ll give him props for being far less offensive and definitely more amusing than Trumpletwat when he forgets to keep his mouth shut. Aside from that, the one thing he did right as V.P. was to come out in favor of marriage equality before Obama did. Even his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan beat him to the punch. As for policies, what little he’s said has been largely a continuation of Obama era things that – while far left of what the the Rethuglicunts espouse – are still those that favor corporations over working people.
Buttigieg is perhaps the most realistic and presents some of the most workable policy proposals, but they are largely too centrist to attract the far-left purists. He’s also been saddled with the over-inflated and baseless “racist” trope from fringe elements of the Black community who love nothing more than swinging that dead cat at anyone who isn’t brown. He inherited the racist mess in his city’s police force, and he handled it poorly. That’s a given. The rest is entirely based on an attack piece written by some bitter blogger who intentionally misquoted Mayor Pete, and then led his readers through another diatribe about a well-meaning white friend from his childhood whose comments, though mildly insensitive, weren’t racist either – though the blogger chose to paint them that way in broad, technicolor strokes.
The rest are only in it for the publicity, and for enriching themselves as much as possible before awkwardly bowing out after the polls repeatedly show them with no support. Or, as in the case of Kamala Harris, to do their damnedest to destroy the party from within by taking a cue from Sanders’ 2016 campaign, adding a little Fux Mooz hypocrisy, liberal amounts of hubris and megalomania, and then throwing shit at the wall until something sticks.
The fact is, there is no “ideal candidate” – they’re all human, and that fact brings with it all the human foibles and fallacies along with the hope and vision.
Hold your nose and endure, O’ My Children. Let your voice be heard. Be patient while the workings of economics and time sort out the chaff, and then VOTE. If you don’t vote, you’ve no right to bitch about the outcome and we’ll end up with that traitorous asshole for another four years.
