Dear DINO Princess Kyrsten Sinema: I want my fucking $30 back!

Democrat in name only U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona gives a literal thumbs-down vote on raising the federal minimum wage to $15. We need to give Sinema — who of course never would even try to live on even $15 an hour herself — a thumbs-down vote by giving her a viable challenger from the left when she faces her next primary election in 2024. (The nausea-inducing video of Sinema’s actual princess-like, way-too-fucking-cute curtsy while voting down a more liveable wage for Americans can be seen here.)

I don’t at all understand “Democratic” U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The Democrats hold only 50 seats in the U.S. Senate, yet she must vote as a Repugnican.

Sinema’s latest outrage is having cavalierly given a literal John McCain-like thumbs-down vote against raising the federal minimum wage to $15. What the fucking fuck?

I lived in Arizona for the first 30 years of my life. I’ll always remember Arizona fondly as one of our most backasswards states, and surely it would have been a slave state had slavery extended that far West. (Indeed, I’m sure that wage slavery reigns there still.)

I fully understand that an Arizona Democrat is nothing like a California Democrat (I’ve lived here in California for more than 20 years now since I moved away from Arizona for good); most Arizona Democrats, even the supposedly most left-leaning ones, are like California’s moderate Repugnicans.

But newly minted U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, also a Democrat, voted for the $15 minimum wage — and literally displayed a thumbs-up to register his vote.

So why does Kelly feel comfortable siding with the poor and the working class, but Sinema does not? Is she that much of a spoiled fucking princess? (That was rhetorical, but the answer very apparently is a resounding yes. [I mean, the video speaks a million words.])

Sinema also is one of two U.S. “Democratic” senators who reportedly oppose eliminating the filibuster.

If the filibuster — the anti-democratic and anti-Democratic requirement that legislation needs a super-majority of 60 votes or more to pass the U.S. Senate (and which is not provided for in the U.S. Constitution) — is not eliminated, then President Joe Biden will get nothing even remotely progressive passed.

And consequently, the Democrats will lose the U.S. House of Representatives, and perhaps also the U.S. Senate, in November 2022. And former “President” Pussygrabber’s chances of becoming “president” again in November 2024 will be greater than they otherwise would have been had President Biden been able to make America a little bit greater again.

The Democratic establishment sorely needs to have a come-to-fucking-Jesus chat with Sinema.

And not just to pick on Sinema — the other “Democrat” in the Senate who loves the filibuster, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, also needs to decide if he wants to be a Democrat or a Repugnican. If you love the Repugnican agenda — under which the majority of the American people socioeconomically languish while the already-filthy-rich laugh even louder all the way to the bank — then become a fucking Repugnican.

In the meantime, I regret the small donation of $30 that I gave Sinema to help get her elected. (That $30 would have represented two hours of labor under the minimum wage that to Her Highness is just too high.) Sinema was running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat and I actually believed that she would legislate as a Democrat. I’d love my money back, because the Repugnican-loving princess-bitch-sorority chick fucking punk’d me.

If I pick on Sinema more than on Manchin, that’s probably because we, the people, very probably can unseat Sinema much more easily than we can unseat Manchin.

Manchin’s very red, very backasswards state of West Virginia in November 2020 went to former “President” Pussygrabber, 68.6 percent to 29.7 percent. That being the case, I wish that Manchin would just go over to the dark side already and call himself a Repugnican, since that’s what he already is. (Of course, it would be nice if Manchin would switch parties after the Democrats have a solid majority in the Senate, but if he’s not on board with anything remotely progressive anyway, such as eliminating the obsolete, antiquated and anti-democratic filibuster, what difference does it fucking make if he remains a “Democrat”?)

Sinema’s state of Arizona, however, went to Joe Biden in November 2020, albeit narrowly, 49.4 percent to 49.1 percent. I don’t see that she has nearly the same political pressure to vote like a Repugnican that Manchin does.

And again, Kelly and Sinema go before the very same electorate, yet why is Kelly acting like a Democrat (at least like a moderate Democrat) and Sinema is acting like a fucking Repugnican?

Until and unless Little Princess Let Them Eat Cake Kyrsten does a 180 — which I don’t see her doing — she gets not another penny from me, and if she has an actually Democratic challenger when she is up for re-election in 2024, I will support her most progressive yet most viable challenger.

Thus far I’ve given Mark Kelly $35, and after I post this I’m going to give him another donation of $25.

There needs to be rewards for our elected officials working for the people — and punishments for their treasonously working against the people and for our plutocratic overlords.

That’s the only way for us, the people, to take our country back: We need to say sayonara to the Sinemas.

P.S. Donation of $25 to Mark Kelly made.

You can donate to him also if you wish to; go to ActBlue.com and type in “Mark Kelly” in the search bar, and give to Mark Kelly “AZ-Sen 2022.” Yes, Kelly is up for election again in 2022, just next year, yet he voted yes on a more liveable minimum wage.

P.P.S. To be fair even to DINO Sinema, she issued a statement indicating that her main problem with the vote on raising the federal minimum wage to $15 was that it was coupled with COVID-19 relief and that she thinks that a minimum-wage increase should be pursued via separate legislation.

I am unmoved. Again, her fellow senator for the state of Arizona voted yes and he’s up for election again next year.

In any event, there is no excuse for Sinema not comporting herself like a U.S. senator, but comporting herself — acting and dressing — like a little teenaged bitch-princess when millions upon millions of real people’s lives are on the line. She’s 44 years old and it’s sickening.

And finally, to be fair even to the late John McCain, he was giving a thumbs-down to evil (to abolishing the Affordable Care Act without anything to replace it). Sinema, of course, was giving a thumbs-down to doing the right thing.

AfterBern redux

That’s about how I feel.

Bernie Sanders is a bit of a sad figure to me these days.

I still get his long e-mails about what a piece of shit the “president” is (no, he’d never use that kind of language, of course, but the meaning is the same) and all of the steep challenges that face us (it’s not always, um, uplifting to read his e-mails).

Thing is, Bernie is fairly political powerless, at least in terms of presidential politics. I give him credit for still doing what he can, but he ran for president twice and I don’t see him running a third time. (Hidin’ Joe Biden ran three times, but he put a lot of years in between his runs: 1988, 2008 and 2020.)

Bernie is, I think, too nice, too conciliatory. I don’t think that that works in today’s political environment, perhaps especially given how craven the so-called Democratic Party has become.

No, Bernie never had to be an asshole like “President” Pussygrabber, but he could have stood his ground more forcefully. Yes, Billary Clinton’s illegal shadow e-mail set-up was something, was not nothing — and although he gave her a pass, the Billary-led Democratic National Committee fucked Bernie over anyway — and Bernie also was way too nice to Joe Biden, and the result of that was that right before Super Tuesday, Biden & Co., center-right corporate-whore assholes all, suddenly closed ranks in order to tank Bernie’s campaign; no way could these sellout turncoats allow an actual progressive to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

In politics, probably especially presidential politics, politeness does not pay.

I get it that after the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary contests, Bernie has had to return to the U.S. Senate, so he couldn’t annihilate his bridges in his quest for the Oval Office. But he has been too damned nice, and in today’s presidential politics that is perceived as weak.

You can be strong without being an asshole — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an example of that. She takes a lot of heat from the wingnuts but she gives it right back — better than it was thrown at her.

I don’t regret that I supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, including having donated hundreds of dollars to him and having voted for him in the presidential primary elections. I believe that Bernie has laid the groundwork for a progressive takeover of the corporate-whore Democratic Party.

Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. Wingnut Barry Goldwater lost big-time in 1964, but few who are knowledgeable disagree that he laid the groundwork for the “Reagan revolution” of the 1980s (which began the downfall of the United States of America).

It’s possible, if not probable, that what’s going to be required for the Democratic Party to ever become progressive again is that all of the center-right old fucks who call themselves Democrats (most of them baby boomers, of course) will have to die off, and year after year they’ll be replaced by younger Americans who subscribe to progressivism.

Indeed, the United States’ youth and young adults, having been set up to fail at birth, and realizing very personally how very fucked up it is to screw over the generations that are following yours, might save the nation that the baby boomers and those older than the boomers have destroyed out of their bottomless selfishness and greed and incredible short-sightedness. From the ashes might rise a United States truly made great again.

And while Bernie Sanders probably won’t live to see that promised land, if it materializes, he was instrumental in its creation. He will have been a founding father of the new nation.

In the meantime, while I still respect Bernie, he is not my boss.

I get Bernie’s e-mails encouraging me to vote for Hidin’ Joe Biden. I will not vote for Biden.

Again, I live in California, one of the bluest states there is; there is no question that Biden will win California and all of its 55 electoral votes.*

Again, if you live in one of the swing states — Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin* — then I encourage you to vote your conscience, but I have the luxury of not having to worry about helping Pussygrabber get a second term, since it’s a foregone conclusion that Biden will win my state and all of its electoral votes.

(No, I don’t give a fuck about the popular vote, since it doesn’t determine who becomes president. It should, but it doesn’t. Bragging rights about having won the popular vote don’t give you the presidency and the political power that comes with that. Ask Billary Clinton.)

If I had to put money on it, I’d say that Biden will beat Pussygrabber in November, for several reasons, but primarily because of COVID-19 and its socioeconomic effects. The economy tends to be the No. 1 factor in a president’s re-election (“re”-election, in this case), and I don’t see the train wreck that is the United States improving nearly enough between now and Election Day for Pussygrabber to pull out a win, even just an Electoral College win, as he did in 2016.

Also, lucky Biden is benefitting from being able to use COVID-19 as an excuse, valid or not (mostly valid, probably), to not have to run a traditional presidential campaign. Less campaigning means fewer of Biden’s, um, senior moments. Less campaigning means that voters largely will be voting for the Joe Biden of yesterday, not of today.

What would I expect a Biden presidency to look like? Much like the Obama presidency looked like: nice words, little substance, negligible improvement in the average American’s life.

Barack Obama for the most part was a caretaker president, and after the Repugnicans won back the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm election (and kept the House until the 2018 midterm election), there was no way that they were going to allow Obama to have any progressive victories. You don’t even try to negotiate with terrorists like the Repugnicans, but the naive and probably arrogant Obama did so right out of the gate — probably the No. 1 mistake of his presidency — and the rest is history.

I expect a Biden administration to make the same mistakes that the Obama administration did. (After all, stuck-in-the-past Biden thinks that parents still routinely use record players for their children.)

If the Democrats win back the White House, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House in November, which is quite possible, I expect them, “led” by Biden, to squander their political capital with their bipartisan “Kumbaya” bullshit, just as Obama did when, in the first two years of his presidency, the Dems controlled the White House, the Senate and the House — and utterly wasted all of that political capital when the stars don’t align like that (having control of the White House, the Senate and the House) very often.

Indeed, last week’s sad Democratic National Convention, in which much more love was shown to moderate Repugnicans than to progressive/actual Democrats, doesn’t bode well for a progressive agenda being passed through should the Dems once again win the White House, the Senate and the House.

Were I to vote for Biden, to me it would mean that I supported the continuation of a center-right, Repugnican-Lite, corporate-whoring Democratic Party — when I didn’t even have to, since I live in deep-blue California.

And I’m still not sure which would be the better longer-term outcome: Pussygrabber gets a second term, perhaps demonstrating amply, for once and for all, that the center-right, sellout campaigns of the likes of Billary Clinton and Hidin’ Joe Biden don’t work anymore, inducing the Democratic Party to, at long last, return to its progressive roots; or that Biden wins, and that this center-right, sellout bullshit under the banner of the Democratic Party continues indefinitely. “President Harris” gives me nightmares.**

In the meantime, it’s hard to describe the feeling that I have whenever I get one of Bernie’s e-mails or see him in the news. I still respect him — he is not dead to me, as self-serving, pseudo-progressive snake Elizabeth Warren is — but today Bernie makes me feel like a deflated convention balloon.

And I look to our younger generations to get us out of this abyss. They shouldn’t have to, but it has been forced upon them to, and they just might prove to be our next greatest generation.

—

*One of the most helpful graphics that I’ve seen is fivethirtyeight.com’s “snake chart,” which you can see here. The extreme two ends of the “snake” represent the states that are going to go to Biden or to Pussygrabber without doubt. As we progress toward the center of the “snake,” we see which states are less solidly blue or red, and which states appear to be the swing states. The 10 states that I’ve listed above as swing states are the 10 states that make up the middle area of the “snake,” which is the 270 electoral votes that must be won in order to win the White House.

**If Kamala Harris were a progressive, instead of just another centrist corporate whore who takes whatever political positions she deems most likely to help her political ambitions right now, a la Billary Clinton, I’d be happy to have her as president. That she’s a woman of color would be the icing on the cake. But there has to be some fucking cake.

Something wonderful just might rise from the ashes of the United States

“President” Pussygrabber opposes the people who oppose neo-Nazism because he’s a fucking neo-Nazi himself. Our fascist overlords are paper tigers, however; because they are parasites on the rest of us, all that we have to do is rise up, refuse to allow them continue to suck our lifeblood, and they’ll fall like the house of cards that they are. They know this, and it terrifies the shit out of them that the game might, this time, finally, be up.

The looting and vandalism that has taken place in numerous Americans cities over the past several days — including my own — at first blush probably looks to many if not even most Americans as pretty senseless.

It would appear, superficially at least, that there is no logical line from the cruel, slow murder by cop of George Floyd in Minneapolis last Monday to the looting and vandalism of (mostly) small and larger businesses throughout the nation, but the line is there.

You just have to flush out all of the dust from your eyes that the capitalists put there with years and years and years of their profits-and-property-over- people propaganda, aided and abetted not only by the corporately owned and controlled “news” media doing the bidding of the corporations and of the corporatocrats, but also by our corporately owned and controlled elected (and “elected”) officials, from the local level all the way up to the White House.

Looting and vandalism seem like desperate acts, but the cruel, unjust, dog-eat-dog American socioeconomic system naturally, inevitably produces an awful lot of desperate people.

History suggests that a majority of Americans won’t learn a fucking thing from what’s going on now — the ongoing nationwide novel coronavirus pandemic as well as the nationwide unrest caused by a bad white cop who didn’t cause all of this, but who definitely lit the fuse — and that the American impulse will be to try to sweep all of this unpleasantness under the national rug and pretend that none of this ugliness had ever happened.

I mean, fuck, the coronavirus is still doing its killing, but after not even a full three months of a nationwide shutdown (it’s been more like a slowdown than a complete shutdown, but still), already a huge chunk, if not the majority, of Americans want to pretend that the coronavirus thing is all over already and open up the nation again — which is going to have quite predictable results.

Property destruction in the wake of another murder by cop seems appropriate to me. Maybe in the past I’d have questioned the logic of it, but it is clear to me now.

Why? Because the upper classes constantly give the message to the lower classes* that the property of the former is far more valuable than are the very lives of the latter.

No, the upper crust don’t come out and say that that is their belief, but their words and actions, repeated year after year after year, make it clear that that is their belief nonetheless.

So, if our lives are so expendable and “your” property (which our labor and our common natural resources have made possible in the first place!) is all that you care about, then we’ll go after “your” property, the message of the looting and the vandalism is, whether we are willing to acknowledge that or not.

All of this — the nationwide coronavirus pandemic, the protests that are roiling the nation right now — are identifying for us, starkly, our long-standing national problems, and the solutions are just one step behind our identification of and acknowledgment of the problems.

Ironically, actually solving even our entrenched problems probably isn’t the biggest hurdle — it’s acknowledging them in the first fucking place that is the biggest hurdle, because with such genuine, widespread acknowledgment would follow a radical reordering of the socioeconomic order that those at the top have been doing their best to stave off for generations. They even put a considerable chunk of their fortunes — I say “their” fortunes, but, again, since they stole “their” fortunes from the rest of us, they’re our fortunes — toward maintaining their unfair socioeconomic and political advantage.

(These plutocrats and oligarchs pour billions of dollars into pro-corporate propaganda that’s pumped to us masses en masse every fucking day, and they give billions of dollars to corrupt elected officials who are supposed to do the bidding of the people but who instead do the bidding of their highest corporate bidders.

And, of course, the plutocrats and the oligarchs spend quite a lot of money [again, our money, since they stole it from us by reaping the benefits of our labor while we try to survive from paycheck to paycheck] on personal security [including having the “people’s” cops and the “people’s” military in their own rich, right-wing pockets] and ensuring that in their day-to-day activities they have as absolutely little actual contact with us dalits as possible.)

You know that the recent nationwide protests are working, because “President” Pussygrabber, the Looter in Chief, now proclaims that he is deeming antifa a “terrorist organization.”**

Clearly, this would be just the first step in the unhinged, fascist “president” declaring all of his political detractors to be “terrorists” when he and his right-wing, fascist ilk, of course, are the actual terrorists, just as they are the actual looters.

And, of course, our “president” opposes an anti-fascist group only because he’s a fucking fascist himself.

Hitler and his supporters did all that they could do eliminate their domestic political opposition, too, before they expanded their reign of terror.

We’ve seen this playbook before.

It’s up to us to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself this time. American fascism must be stopped in its tracks.

It probably will get ugly, but what emerges from the ashes just might be wonderful.

That’s why I still say: Let it burn.

P.S. I would be remiss if I did not note that the pro-corporate Democratic Party establishment is guilty as sin, too, of course.

The people — you know, we dalits — had hope in actual Democrat (that is, the actually progressive) Bernie Sanders actually becoming president and helping to turn the Titanic around, but the pro-corporate Democratic Party establishment hacks, always only ever looking out for themselves like the fucking traitors that they are, made damn sure that they torpedoed Bernie (by coalescing right before Super Tuesday) — and they gave us, in Bernie’s stead, the utterly uninspiring corporate whore Joe Biden, who barely can speak a coherent sentence (but who at least by now, hopefully, finally at least has learned to keep his nasty hands to himself).

We, the people, were just supposed to sit down and shut up about the fact that the party that is supposed to stand for the people fucked us, the people, over yet once again, like Lucy with the football on crack.

This time, we, the people, are not just sitting down and shutting up like the good little sheep that we’re supposed to be.

—

*To be clear, by “class” here I mean strictly income level and the level of possession of wealth, not the level of one’s character.

Most wealthy Americans are of low character — it disturbs them not that their excess comes at the expense of those who don’t have the basic necessities of life — and many if not most Americans who are struggling to get by are of high character (because if nothing else, they — we — should have brought out the guillotines a long, long time ago, but we have yet to do so).

**As with most of the vile things that “our” vile “president” threatens to do, he does not have the legal authority to unilaterally designate entire swaths of American citizens as “terrorists.” Politico notes today:

President Donald Trump tweeted [today] that the U.S. government would be “designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”

There were just two problems with that. First, he doesn’t appear to have the legal authority to do so. And second, it’s by no means clear the loosely defined group of radical activists is an organization at all.

The Trump administration’s push to crack down on antifa — short for “anti-fascist” — comes as large and small businesses in a host of American cities were looted and vandalized as people protested the death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

The president and his top officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr and national security adviser Robert O’Brien, have blamed antifa for violence and property damage. In an on-camera statement Saturday, Barr said the Justice Department wouldn’t hesitate to prosecute people who crossed state lines to participate in violence, citing his authorities under anti-riot legislation.

Barr did not invoke laws against terrorism, which do not let the U.S. government designate purely homegrown groups as terrorist organizations.

Under current law, the State Department can designate foreign organizations as terrorist groups. But the U.S. has no domestic terrorism statute, and the FBI uses other legal authorities to prosecute domestic terrorism here. … [Emphasis mine.]

This is why you don’t “elect” as “president” an abject fucking retard who has not held high office before, at least as the governor of a state, as a U.S. senator or as vice president.

Pussygrabber clearly has no idea of — and certainly has no respect for — what the U.S. Constitution allows and disallows him to do. Had he had any experience in high elected office before, he might fucking know something about the constitutionally instituted limitations on the power of any U.S. official, including, and probably especially, the president.

Instead, Pussygrabber has treated the presidency as just an extension of his corporate kingdom, over which he is the undisputed and absolute monarch.

The United States of America is not a fucking monarchy and we’ll never allow it to become one.

If Mad King Pussygrabber knew his very basic U.S. history, he would know that much.

On Tara Reade

Associated Press news photo

Tara Reade does strike me as being a little off, but I don’t know if Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 or not, because I wasn’t there — and neither were you, unless you are Joe Biden or Tara Reade.

I’ve yet to weigh in on the Tara Reade affair, and that’s because one, as I’ve already documented here copiously, Repugnican Lite Hidin’ Joe Biden never was going to get my support anyway (I will not give him a penny or my vote); two, the only two people who know whether or not Biden finger-raped Reade back in 1993 are Reade and Biden; and three, generally speaking, in cases of unsettled or still-unfolding facts, I often don’t feel the need to come out with guns blazing from the get-go.

But I can say a little about the Reade thing now.

My stance on it is that it’s not entirely unlike Elizabeth Warren’s mid-January allegation that Bernie Sanders had told her during a private, one-on-one meeting that a woman couldn’t win the presidential election.

Warren, apparently via her campaign henchpeople, divulged this juicy little tidbit to CNN right before a CNN-sponsored Democratic debate so that CNN could run with the “news” story that it itself had “broken.” (That Warren’s campaign was floundering and desperate, with the Iowa caucuses just around the corner, was pure coinky-dink, I’m sure.)

CNN also used its own apparently fabricated “news” story to have one of its debate “moderators” shamelessly ask Bernie in the CNN-sponsored debate: “CNN reported yesterday — and Senator Sanders, Senator Warren confirmed in a statement — that, in 2018, you told her you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”

It no longer was just a rival presidential campaign’s politically opportune allegation, you see; it magically somehow became “fact”!

In his defense, Bernie said that he had told Warren that “President” Pussygrabber would try to weaponize a female presidential candidate’s biological sex against her (um, true), not that a woman couldn’t win the presidential election. As Bernie himself said, after all, Billary Clinton (well, he calls her Hillary) won the popular vote in November 2016, so obviously a woman could win a presidential election — a woman had just won the last one.

So yes, I tend to believe Bernie over Warren. Warren already had had a slippery relationship with the truth and was politically desperate, so she had the incentive to embellish or to outright fabricate.

But, could I know for sure that Bernie didn’t say that to Warren? No. It doesn’t at all seem like him to me, but as I wasn’t fucking there and as it wasn’t reliably recorded, no one could say for sure what did or didn’t happen during that one-on-one meeting between Bernie and Warren. (Which was the beauty of it, right, Liz?)

Granted, Warren didn’t accuse Bernie of having finger-raped her, although she could have, right? I mean, no one else was there…

And that’s the problem with the Reade allegation: Again, the only two who know what did or didn’t happen are Reade and Biden.

It’s absolutely true that Biden has a history of putting his hands and face all over female specimens of the species, who usually don’t look like they’re enjoying it. Here are some famous examples:

Photo taken in 2015; published by The Washington Post


Photo taken while Biden was vice president; published by The Washington Post

Photo taken in September 2012; published by Politico

Admittedly, while there is some interesting side-eye from her two male companions, the woman in the last photo looks like she’s OK with Uncle Joe’s, um, proximity.

That said, should the vice president of the United States (and a married man) have gotten this up close and personal with females — and repeatedly so?

Is it believable that Biden finger-raped Reade? Yes, I think so.

Is it impossible that Reade would be making shit up?

No. The creepy photos above are not evidence that Biden sexually assaulted Reade with a digit or digits.

Do I find Reade to be credible?

I’ll just tell you what my gut says. My gut says that maybe the woman is not entirely stable. Just from the photo of her above, to be honest, to me, anyone who feels the need to carry a cross that is bigger than the cross that the probably mythical Jesus Christ had to bear seems to be of questionable sanity, in my book.

Oh, sure, you have the First Amendment right to wear a cross, like “President” Pussygrabber’s shiny new spokesnake does:

Photo published May 1 by The Washington Post

And I have the First Amendment right to express my belief that if you feel the need to announce to everyone you encounter that you’re a “Christian,” then you range from creepy to mentally unstable, and I know that I’d rather just not deal with you, not because I’m a vampire or a satanist who can’t stand the sight of the cross, but because in the year 2020, you apparently believe in complete and utter backasswards bullshit like Adam and Eve and the virgin-born miracle worker Jesus, whose zombification you celebrate on Easter.

Also, if you publicly wear a cross, are you communicating that your religious beliefs are the only correct ones? Are you communicating that you feel hostile to those who don’t share your religious beliefs?

And with those exposed shoulders in the photo above, isn’t Tara Reade just asking for some creepy old man to come up from behind her and put his hands on her shoulders?

OK, that was a fucking joke, but in all seriousness, Reade’s demeanor is what’s weird to me. She seems to at least somewhat enjoy her status as a Me-Tooer just a tad too much. Having been sexually victimized isn’t an occasion to try to be a media celebrity. I mean, reportedly, she has worked hard to get herself on TV, and it’s not shocking that Faux “News” of course put her on the tee-vee first and has put her on the tee-vee more than any other tee-vee outlet. (Why, it’s as though “President” Pussygrabber never was recorded in 2005 bragging about grabbing women by the pussy! But he never said that he inserted a finger, so that’s OK!)

I don’t mean that if you have been victimized you should just shut the fuck up about it. No. But at some point, trying to get as much attention as you can over your supposed past victimization just seems odd.

In the end, though, yes, it seems to me that it’s quite possible that Tara Reade is telling the truth.

Thing is, this is something that, it seems to me, we’ll never know with any certainty.

And, as I said, I never was going to vote for creepy Uncle Joe anyway.

Mostly that’s because of his center-right political positions and his long history of selling us out to his and his party’s corporate sponsors, but it’s also because someone who won’t keep his hands to himself clearly has a problem regulating his use of personal power, and someone who cannot wield his or her personal power responsibly certainly shouldn’t be sitting behind that big desk in the Oval Office.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, in terms of whether or not he should be president, whether Joe Biden is guilty as charged by Tara Reade. He already has demonstrated amply that he’s unfit, rape by finger or fingers or not.

Why AOC & Co.’s endorsements matter

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appear together at a campaign rally in July 2018. AOC has endorsed Bernie as the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee. (Washington Post news photo)

Bernie Sanders needed a comeback. He’s been at No. 3 in nationwide and early-state polling* for a little while now, and that heart attack of earlier this month appeared like it just might doom his second presidential campaign.

But perhaps when everything is at stake is when your supporters really step up.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive rock star, and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, also a lightning rod for the neo-Nazis who comprise the Repugnican Party because she challenges the status quo (that is, right-wing white-male supremacy), this week endorsed Bernie, as did Michael Moore. (A full list of Bernie’s endorsers is here.)

Michael Moore’s popularity has been, I think, slipping over the years, so his endorsement, while certainly yet another indicator that Bernie is the real and the most dependable progressive in the race, isn’t the prize that is AOC’s endorsement. I mean, AOC has been in Congress for not even one full year yet and already we’re referring to her by her initials.

Why do AOC’s and Omar’s endorsements of Bernie matter? Again, they demonstrate that Bernie is the true-blue progressive. They demonstrate that just as the young members of “The Squad” represent the future, so does Bernie, even though he’s 78 years young.

And, of course, prominent progressive women of color endorsing Bernie blows away the DINOs’ bullshit “Bernie bros” myth; Bernie is just fine on women’s issues and on the issues of non-whites, even though according to the Billarybots, who unfortunately are still with us, he’s “just another” white man.

It’s obvious to anyone who has two brain cells to rub together that Repugnican Lite Joe Biden would be a milquetoast president at best — if he could even win the November 2020 election, which he probably could not (Hi, Billary!) — and it’s also becoming clearer that Elizabeth Warren is a cheap knock-off of Bernie.

Warren has demonstrated brains — plans upon plans upon plans, including, I’m sure, plans for more plans, and lots of political calculation — but she hasn’t demonstrated much heart. Former Repugnican Warren wouldn’t dare to run against Billary in 2016 because she is a cowardly party hack, and now she challenges Bernie, who, in my estimation, deserves the nomination alone for his central role is relegating Clintonism to the dustbin of history, where it belongs, and who recognizes, entirely unlike Warren, that capitalism must go before it kills all of us.

Why does Bernie appeal to so many of us while Warren doesn’t? Because, again, Warren is a political calculator, eerily like Billary Clinton, except that Warren has been smarter than Billary and has realized that she at least needed to co-opt Bernie’s message from the get-go if she wanted to win. (As I’ve noted, Billary co-opted Bernie’s message, but way too late in the campaign, whereas Warren slyly co-opted it before the campaign began.)

It’s true that progressive rock stars like AOC and Michael Moore may not appeal that much to the entire general November 2020 electorate, but, as Nate Silver recently noted, “Sanders’s objective for now is to win the nomination, not the general election.”

Indeed, you win the party’s presidential nomination by exciting and inspiring the base, something that Joe Biden’s woefully outdated Clintonism and Warren’s cold calculations don’t do.

Unfortunately, it will take at least several days to see how Bernie’s good performance in this past week’s fourth debate and his recent endorsements help him in the polls.

But methinks that it’s inarguable that while it looked like he was in danger of slipping off of the mountain, he’s climbing right up it again.

—

*Don’t get me wrong — Bernie’s many competitors who can’t even hit the double digits would love to be in Bernie’s place, with double digits in the polls and with the best fundraising numbers of any other Democratic presidential candidate, but third place in the polls isn’t optimal.

That said, I think it’s entirely likely that Biden will implode soon enough, as he did when he ran for the nomination in 1988 and in 2008, and that this race essentially will be between establishmentarian Warren and actual progressive Bernie.

If it gets ugly, like 2016 got ugly, so be it. The future of the nation and the world is far more important than is any one individual and his or her feelings and those of his or her supporters.

Will Bernie break our hearts?

In the video grab above, Bernie Sanders leaves a Las Vegas hospital yesterday after what first was reported on Tuesday as “chest discomfort” during a campaign event and then later was confirmed to have been a heart attack. This bad news came after it was reported that Bernie had raised more money than did any other Democratic presidential candidate in the third quarter. Bernie’s campaign says that he is doing well and that he intends to participate in the next primary debate, which will be on October 15.

News of the apparent heart attack that Bernie Sanders had on Tuesday while campaigning his heart out in Nevada predictably raised the question of his age (he is 78 years old now, and if elected, would enter the Oval Office at age 79, making him the oldest president we’ve had).

Two stents were placed in one of Bernie’s coronary arteries, he was released from the hospital yesterday, and his campaign says that he intends to participate in the October 15 debate in Ohio.

Will this sink Bernie?

I don’t think so. It gives those who weren’t supporting him anyway a(nother) “reason” to justify their self-defeating snubbing of the most consistently progressive presidential candidate that we have, but those of us who steadfastly have stood by Bernie will continue to do so.

As long as Bernie does well in his public appearances and has no more significant medical incidents, I expect this to blow over. It’s early October, after all, and the first voting isn’t until February 3, when the Iowa caucuses take place — and this is the United States of Amnesia.

And I think it’s fair to ask the question if it’s OK to stigmatize someone for having had a medical event after which one can, with medical attention, live normally and capably for many years. I know that if I had a heart attack but most likely still had several decent years of life left, I wouldn’t want to be written off.

Good news for Bernie from this past week is that in the third fundraising quarter of this year, he raised more money than did any other Democratic presidential contender — $25.3 million.

Close behind him was Elizabeth Warren, with $24.6 million, and poor Uncle Joe Biden raised only $15.2 million — he was eclipsed even by Boy Scout Pete Buttigieg, who raised $19.1 million. (Unlike Bernie and Warren, the center-right Buttigieg [like Biden] takes contributions from Big Money, though, so don’t take that fundraising figure as grassroots support for him that doesn’t actually exist.)

If fundraising is a measure of excitement for your campaign — and I think that it is for those few who, like Bernie, don’t take money from corporations and lobbyists and other power players — then Biden should be shitting his Depends. (Ah, c’mon; I had to go there…)

On that note, Biden continues to drop in the polls. Right now his nationwide polling average is around 27 percent, and Warren is nipping at his heels, with an average of almost 24 percent.

Bernie is at third place, with 16 percent, and after Bernie, at a rather distant fourth place, is Buttigieg, with around 6 percent. (Poor charisma-free Kamala Harris, who yet has to make a compelling case as to why she should be president, is at fifth place, with around only 5 percent.)

As I’ve noted about a million times before, I expect Biden to tank, as he did when he ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008, and, as long as Bernie’s health holds up, I expect 2020 to be a race between Bernie and Warren.

It can’t be a direct comparison to the 2016 Bernie-vs.-Billary race, because while Billary only “found” progressivism rather late in the game during the 2016 cycle, this time around, from the get-go, Warren deftly has mimicked Bernie’s progressive angle while at the same time not pissing off the Democratic Party establishment hacks.

Warren, it seems to me, has a very good chance of winning this thing (the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination, I mean).

Unfortunately, Warren also has a good chance of losing in November 2020 — I still believe that Warren’s No. 1 weakness is that she so easily can be painted by the Repugnicans as just another clueless, weak egghead from Massachusetts, as was Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004.

Perhaps only the increasingly obvious and absolutely undeniable mega-corruption of the unelected Pussygrabber regime (including a copious amount of treason) can overcome this “swiftboating” tactic that has worked pretty well for the Repugnicans in the past.

P.S. With his hectic campaign schedule and his famously impassioned speeches, one might wonder why it took this long for Bernie to have a heart attack. Just sayin’…

I’m thinking that Bernie might want to slow down. He has, I think, built up enough political capital that he can relax just a little, at least for a little while.

Biden should tank, so Bernie probably doesn’t have to worry about Biden, and Team Bernie should, I think, emphasize the fact that he was an avowed progressive decades before Elizabeth Warren, who was a Repugnican as late as the 1990s, decided to join the club.

It’s a fair criticism — it is true, and it is, to me, anyway, at least a bit concerning.

Why has Warren surged?

Reuters news photo

I posit that one of the reasons for Elizabeth Warren’s current surge in the nationwide polls of 2020 Democratic Party presidential preference is the leftover pain and anger from women voters who didn’t see the first female president elected in 2016.

There was a time not so long ago that I believed that Elizabeth Warren probably should just drop out of the 2020 presidential race already, as she was languishing in the polls and was unable to put the “Pocahontas” bullshit behind her.

However, that has changed, at least for the time being. She now is poised to overtake Bernie Sanders, who has been at second place (behind Joe Biden) for quite a long time now. Here is the graph that accompanies Wikipedia’s page on nationwide polling for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination:

Warren is represented by the red line, which sharply is trending upwards. (Biden is the sharply dropping red line and Bernie is the slightly declining orange line.)

If the trend continues, Warren will overtake Bernie, as so many Bernie-haters hope will happen.

Why is Warren surging now? Matt Taibbi’s theory, as to at least the media coverage of Warren’s surge, seems about right to me. He recently wrote for Rolling Stone that

… Warren’s obvious [current] appeal to the conga line of think-tankers and D.C. political consultants currently swooning over her campaign is her perceived utility in helping remove Sanders from the race. It’s why Bernie’s in almost every headline about her rise.

The Sanders campaign has come to expect the doom-saying headlines, even taking them as validation. Echoing the famous FDR quote, “We welcome their hatred,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir suggested it’s all par for the course.

“This isn’t bean-bag politics,” he said. “It’s a war for what vision of the country you believe in.” …

Indeed, as Taibbi also notes, “Horse race coverage exists so commercial news can cover presidential races without talking about issues.”

Indeed, let’s set up a false horse race between Sanders and Warren instead of talking about the status-quo-disrupting structural reforms that they have advocated. You can’t expect the corporately owned and controlled mass “news” media to advocate for the loss of their own power, can you?

To be clear, as would Taibbi, I would be fine with Warren in the White House.

However, after her fellow Massachusettsans Michael Dukakis and John Kerry lost their presidential bids because they were depicted as clueless eggheads, I’m not at all sure if Warren could beat “President” Pussygrabber, but she has been my second choice, behind Bernie, for a long time now.

Warren is my second choice because she was a Repugnican as late as the 1990s and because she calls herself a capitalist while I see present-day capitalism as very probably beyond anything like meaningful reform. Capitalism is evil, and “reforming” it only means making it a little less evil (if that’s even possible).

Also, of course, I still hold it against Warren that she didn’t have the balls to challenge Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton for the nomination in 2016, and I still believe that Bernie deserves the 2020 nomination in no small part because he did have the balls to go up against the Clinton machine.

If Warren actually ends up getting the nomination, which seems to be a real possibility, since she now is in third place (and since at least for right now both Biden and Bernie are dipping in the polls), it probably will be because she successfully has straddled both worlds: that of the (probably dying) Democratic establishment (in which one dare not to have opposed Queen Billary in 2016) and that of those of us who actually are progressive (and thus, in my book, the only true Democrats; corporate whores, in my book, are not Democrats, not at all).

Part of the reason that Warren appears to be surging now also might be from the lingering disappointment that in 2016 we didn’t get our first female president.

I was fine that we didn’t, as DINO Billary would have been a very disappointing first female president, but I know that millions of American women were crushed to see the first female presidential candidate of either major party be defeated by the likes of Pussygrabber. (And the fact that he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but still ascended to the Oval Office was only salt and lemon juice ground into the wound.)

I’d be fine if Elizabeth Warren were our first female president, but today I’m still backing Bernie.

My third choice probably would be Pete Buttigieg, but I don’t see him getting the nomination, even though he’s surging lately, too. (He is represented by the blue line in the graph above, which shows him at fourth place.)*

I find Joe Biden to be utterly unacceptable, and even if he won the 2020 nomination, I would not vote for him. You can’t whine that the Democratic Party has become too much like the corporate whores who comprise the treasonous Repugnican Party and at the same time support a corporate whore like Joe Biden.**

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention as a possible if not probable factor in Warren’s current surge the fact that she doggedly has been putting forth progressive policy proposals.

I acknowledge that hard work of hers.

It’s that I rather doubt, in our corporately owned and controlled mediated environment, which is all about personalities and the horse race, that Warren’s hard work much benefits her.

Indeed, in our anti-intellectual national environment, stoked by the likes of fascist and treasonous “President” Pussygrabber and his band of treasonous and fascist grifters, being an intellectual often counts against you, not for you.

—

*Buttigieg is in third place for me because although the then-young Barack Obama promised “hope” and “change” but delivered only more of the same, I suppose I’m still at least a little susceptible to the supposed political promise of a young upstart.

But perhaps because I felt perpetually punk’d by Obama after he actually took office, I’m still gun shy enough to keep Buttigieg in third place.

**Before you fucking say (or even think) a word, please remember (or educate yourself for the first time…) that the U.S. president is selected under the Electoral College, not by the popular vote, and that the Democratic presidential candidate, whoever it is, will win my very blue state of California and thus all of its electoral votes, no matter how I fucking vote.

Under the awful Electoral College I could fucking vote for Pussygrabber in November 2020 and that wouldn’t at all change the fact that every single one of my state’s electoral votes will go to the Democratic candidate, regardless of who it is.

There is not, and there should not be, affirmative action for elections

Getty Images photo

Your race and your biological sex aren’t qualifications for elected office, whether you were born a white male or a non-white female (or non-white male).

The identity politicians are apoplectic that white men are the front-runners for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Indeed, most nationwide polls of Democratic presidential preference taken over the past two weeks or so show Joe Biden at No. 1, Bernie Sanders at No. 2 and Pete Buttigieg at No. 3.

Kamala Harris, a two-fer for the identity politicians, had been in third place for a long time before she was bumped (perhaps only temporarily — who knows?) by Buttigieg.

Politico reported a few days ago:

Houston — The women of color who packed into a university auditorium here Wednesday for a first-of-its-kind presidential forum delighted in the rhetoric of candidates who vowed to make Donald Trump a one-term president.

But their frustration was just as palpable — over the heavy media attention being paid to white male candidates in the early days of the Democratic primary, and over polling they contended is feeding a misleading narrative that only a white man can defeat Trump.

“With all due respect to the vice president, he hasn’t even announced yet but he’s the front-runner?” Leah Daughtry, a political operative and former Democratic National Committee official who helped organize the “She the People” event, said of Joe Biden [who would go on to officially announce the next day].

“Racism and sexism are part of the fabric and the fiber and the founding of our country,” she added, “and the way that the [Democratic] candidates are being treated, it just reminds you of that. We’re not past it.” …

Thing is, it seems that the identity politicians’ belief is that we, the people (on the Democratic side, anyway), must support, preferably, a non-white female candidate for president (if it must be a male, he must be non-white).

But electoral politics don’t work that way. The people support and vote for whomever they support and vote for (even when they support and vote for appallingly awful candidates such as George W. Bush and Pussygrabber).

There isn’t, and there cannot be, affirmative action in democratic politics, because democratic politics is all about choice — not about having candidates of certain demographics rammed down the throats of the populace.

I understand the frustration and disappointment over the fact that female and non-white candidates are campaigning but aren’t gaining traction. Kamala Harris as of late can’t make it to even 10 percent in most nationwide polls, and Elizabeth Warren can’t do as well as even Harris, and Cory Booker is behind both Harris and Warren.

Beto O’Rourke is polling right around where Warren is — proof, methinks, that merely being a white man isn’t enough.

Harris, Warren, Booker and O’Rourke all, in my book, lack substance and/or charisma. Harris doesn’t have much of either, Warren has a lot of substance but not a lot of charisma, Booker has neither and ditto for O’Rourke, whose laughably contrived “charisma” isn’t charisma at all, because you can’t fake charisma; you have it or you don’t.

Obviously, because every U.S. president except for Barack Obama has been a white male (and Obama is half-white), within the collective American psyche, apparently, is the belief, if even subconscious, that the president should be a white man. Many, many women even hold this belief, even consciously (most of them are Repugnicans, but still…).

Obama overcame this challenge because of his charisma — and also because, as he acknowledged himself, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (Indeed, upon that blank screen I projected — because of his campaign’s relentless, ubiquitous promises of “hope” and “change” — that Obama would be a progressive president. Boy, was I punk’d!)

Obama, an astute political opportunist, struck while the iron was hot; his window of political opportunity was rare and unique and it was brief. For Harris or Booker to believe that she or he easily could replicate Obama’s success simply because of his or her race not only is cynical and shallow and superficial, but quite obviously dead wrong.

I support Bernie Sanders not because he’s an old white guy — I loathe “President” Pussygrabber, but not because he’s an old white guy, but because he’s a fascist, treasonous criminal who wasn’t even actually elected — but I support Bernie because of those candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in the top three tiers (which I define as consistently polling at 3 percent or more in nationwide polls), he has the most experience in D.C. and is the most progressive, entirely unlike Creepy Uncle Joe, who is an obsolete Clintonian sellout.

I easily could argue that Bernie is the only true Democrat in the race, which is ironic, given how often he is criticized for not actually being a Democrat.

My second choice probably would be Warren, even though her campaigning has been tone deaf and even though it does bother me at least a bit that as recently as the 1990s she was a Repugnican.

The reason I’m not giving Warren money or otherwise actively supporting her is because the polls of those within her own party clearly show that she isn’t exciting them, and I don’t and won’t squander my money, time, energy and emotional investment on a candidate who can’t excite even his or her own base.

My third choice probably would be Buttigieg, but I’m still gun shy from Obama. Even though Obama was an unknown, I put my support behind him, hoping for that change, and I was bitterly disappointed to see that we didn’t get change, but for the most part got only more of the same. Obama was a caretaker president at best.

So I can’t dive in and blindly support Buttigieg, as I did Obama.

Plus, Buttigieg isn’t ready to be president. He’s precocious and ambitious, to be sure, but I don’t think that it’s time to turn over the Oval Office to him. I’d love him to run for governor or for the U.S. Senate — and win (and then do a good job in the office) — first.

And, unlike how the craven identity politicians would support (probably exclusively) only someone who shares their own demographics, I’m not going to support Buttigieg primarily or even solely because he’s a gay white man like I am. It’s not enough that he and I both happen to white, male, and not heterosexual. This isn’t junior fucking high school.

Again, if it’s indeed the case that most American voters believe that the president should or even must be a white man, that’s sad, but, in a democracy, in which the voters are free to elect whomever they wish to elect, whether you or I agree with their choices or not, what, exactly, can be done about that?

That was a rhetorical question, but I’ll answer it anyway: qualified candidates who aren’t male and who aren’t white should continue to run for office, from local office to the presidency. Over time, their candidacies, successful or not, will change the national psyche. I know of no other democratic way.

Finally, it also should be pointed out that Biden and Bernie have run for president before, which is a huge reason that they are at No 1 and No. 2. On the national political stage they are fairly known quantities, unlike the likes of Harris and O’Rourke and Buttigieg. (Sadly, the problem with candidates such as Booker and Warren apparently is that they are known quantities…)

Ironically, at least for now, anyway, it seems to be Buttigieg who is filling the “hope” and “change” spot — that is, he is the bright and shiny newcomer on whom many voters seem willing to take the chance. (It had looked like that spot would be filled be O’Rourke, but he has turned out to be the flash in the pan that it was pretty clear he was going to be.)

And I’m sure that many black Americans, who tend to be homophobic, are pretty incensed that a gay white man apparently has displaced Kamala Harris, who “deserves” the presidential nomination because she’s a black woman, you see; the way that she was born are her “qualifications,” which is ironic, given that we’ve established that merely having been born a white male aren’t qualifications.

What I’m hoping is that young progressive politicians now, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Katie Porter and Rashida Tlaib (and Buttigieg!), get more and more electoral and governance experience under their belts and give us the diverse bench of qualified presidential candidates that we don’t really have now.

That, to me, seems to be the best solution — not to piss and moan ad infinitum that the American people apparently still prefer presidential candidates who are white men.

Whining incessantly about “sexism” and “misogyny” — while ignoring her glaring flaws and shortcomings as a presidential candidate — didn’t help Billary Clinton the last go-around.

Further such whining isn’t ever going to work in the future.

Bernie now No. 1 in WaPo’s ranking

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake’s quasi-quarterly ranking of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates has Bernie Sanders topping the list of 15.

(Blake notes that “this list is in order of likeliness to be the Democratic nominee” and also notes that “The field is also largely set now, with just a few big question marks outstanding,” with which I pretty much agree.

The Post notes that Bernie returns to No. 1, but I don’t remember that he ever made No. 1 before — that spot usually was reserved for establishmentarian candidates who weren’t actually No. 1, like Kamala Harris.)

In ranking him at No. 1, Blake too-briefly notes of Sanders: “Sanders’s $18.2 million raised in the first quarter tops in the field. Now we’ll see if he can rekindle some of the magic of 2016, which I’m not sure we’ve really seen just yet. It would sure help if he can get past this tax-return unforced error.”

Even while calling him No. 1, the establishmentarian, corporately owned and controlled media can’t resist taking a shot at Bernie.

Bernie’s “tax-return unforced error,” I guess, is that although he’s been railing against millionaires and billionaires (or millionayahhhs and billionayahhhs) for years now, he has become a millionaire himself from book sales. (Bernie has promised to release 10 years of his tax returns no later than tomorrow.)

If you’re already a Bernie hater, then you ignorantly, smugly, disingenuously scoff at his financial success — a millionaire democratic socialist! — but how you earn your money fucking matters.

Bernie wrote books that people chose to buy, including his best-selling Our Revolution; he didn’t obtain his money by paying a bunch of overworked employees a non-living wage and/or by outrageously overcharging someone for a live-saving pharmaceutical and/or by contributing to the destruction of the planet in order to get his million. He earned it fairly and squarely. Therefore, I have no problem with his financial success — which, compared to the income of the titans of capitalism, is a fucking pittance anyway.

And why would it be a shock that someone with Bernie’s national renown — he did quite well against Billary Clinton in 2016, and because of his 2016 run he starts out in a much stronger position this election cycle — should have some money?

And as fucked up as it is, we do still live in a capitalist system — in which anyone, if he or she writes a best-selling book, for example, can get some moolah.

But I digress.

In his current ranking of 15, Blake drops Joe Biden all the way down to No. 6, noting:

Whatever you think about the complaints women made against Biden alleging inappropriate physical contact, Biden’s handling of it — deciding to turn it into a joke — was a reminder how quickly things can go awry with the freewheeling Biden.

I’ve been arguing for a while that his stock is too high, and this episode has helped affirm it. He’s got a front-runner’s poll numbers but needs to actually show he’s a much better candidate than he was in 1988 and 2008.

I agree wholeheartedly that Biden’s “stock is too high” and that he “needs to actually show he’s a much better candidate than he was in 1988 and 2008,” and not only do I very much not want the uninspiring, centrist, corporate-friendly Biden as the nominee (again, to me he is Billary 2.0), but I don’t think that he’ll emerge as the nominee, not in the current political climate, in which the party’s nominee won’t be decided by the national electorate (which for the sake of argument we’ll say is centrist), but will be decided mostly by party animals, who these days lean to the left.

But as much as I’m not a fan of Biden, I think that putting him at No. 6 is too low; I think that he still probably still belongs in the top three, as we never should underestimate the power of Democrats to pick (or just sit back and allow…) a shitty candidate to become the presidential nominee. I mean, they just did that in 2016 with Billary.

Blake ranks Kamala Harris as No. 2 (still too high, probably, given her single-digit nationwide polling numbers), Elizabeth Warren as No. 3 (probably too high, given that her polling numbers are even lower than Harris’), Cory Booker at No. 4 (way too high, as he can’t even get 5 percent in most polls), Beto O’Rourke at No. 5 (I believe that the ideas-free O’Rourke stands almost no chance, although he polls closely to Harris), and Pete Buttigieg at No. 7, behind Biden.

Buttigieg actually has a better chance than many if not most might believe, I think.

He has polled in the top three in at least two polls of Iowa voters taken over the past month, and polled in the top three in at least one poll of New Hampshire voters taken this month.

We shouldn’t forget the case of John Kerry, whose presidential campaign was on life support until he came back, Lazarus style, when he won the Iowa caucuses (which Howard Dean was “supposed” to win [he came in third]) and then won the New Hampshire primary — and then went on to win five of the seven states in the next contest, dubbed “Mini Tuesday.”

After that, the nomination was all Kerry’s.

Thus far I’ve focused on the nationwide presidential preference polls and have neglected to talk about the slingshot effect that winning Iowa and/or New Hampshire usually has on a presidential race. (The Iowa caucuses are the first contest of the presidential primary season, followed quickly by the New Hampshire primary.) Win one or both of those two states, and you are in good shape.

(The only Democratic presidential nominee who hadn’t won Iowa or New Hampshire in my lifetime was Bill Clinton, who came in at second place in New Hampshire but still eked out a win of the nomination.

In case you were wondering, in 2016 Billary “won” Iowa by 49.8 percent to Bernie’s 49.6 percent — yes, it was that close in the midst of talk about cheating by Team Billary — and Bernie blew Billary out of the water in New Hampshire, 60.1 percent to 37.7 percent.)

I think it’s unlikely that Pete Buttigieg will pull a surprise win like John Kerry did in 2004 — I mean, Kerry had been a U.S. senator at that time, whereas Buttigieg has been only the mayor of a not-huge city — but it’s not impossible.

As the voters on the Repugnican side chose outsider Pussygrabber in 2016, it’s not impossible that the Democratic voters in 2020 will want a fresh, young face, and that would be Buttigieg’s.

Still, though, if I had to put my money on it, I’d say that Bernie Sanders is going to be the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee — not just because he’s the candidate I want to become the nominee, but because he came surprisingly close to Billary in 2016 and because the party today is more Bernie’s than it is the Billarybots’, as evidenced by how most of the contenders for the 2020 nomination have adopted Bernie’s key positions.

You don’t mimic a loser. You mimic a winner.

Beto O’Verrated

My thoughts on Beto O’Rourke haven’t changed since I posted the piece below on December 15, so I’m simply running the piece again here (it’s below).

O’Rourke hasn’t been able to reach even double digits in the nationwide polling of 2020 Democratic Party presidential preference, and for a while now, along with Elizabeth Warren, he generally has been around fourth (or fifth) place, behind Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris (in that order), all three of whom poll in the double digits. (See here and here.)

I expect O’Rourke’s formal announcement of today to give him a bump of a few points in the nationwide polling (maybe five points), but I don’t expect that to stick, since he is a substance-free candidate.

Not only does he lack substance, but I don’t find his slacker-hipster style to be interesting (much more endearing) at all. I find it to be annoying.

O’Rourke needs to grow the fuck up already. We already have a man-child in the White House and we don’t need another.

P.S. I do hope that for however long he is in it, O’Rourke serves to further split the vote, only helping Bernie. My guess is that Joe Biden stands to lose the most from O’Rourke’s candidacy, as both Biden and O’Rourke stand for the same thing: nothing.

Robert's Virtual Soapbox

To those who found Barack Obama’s generic — and ultimately unfulfilled — campaign slogans of “hope” and “change” to be appealing, Beto O’Rourke’s “sometimes saccharine call to summon the nation’s better angels” (per The New York Times) appeals. Let’s smother this one in the crib, for God’s sake.

Jesus fucking Christ, I hope that Betomania doesn’t last long.

Indeed, Beto O’Rourke is the white Barack Obama, the candidate with the initials B. O. who is whatever you want him to be, just a blank, white wall upon which you project your probably-futile dreams of hope and change.

“Will a soon-to-be-former congressman, with an unremarkable legislative record and a [U.S.] Senate campaign loss, upend [the Democrats’] best-laid plans?” asks The New York Times, acknowledging that O’Rourke is quite substance-free.

Even O’Rourke himself apparently doesn’t know whatthe fuck, if anything, he stands for.Reports Politico:

Asked if he…

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