For too many, their main problem with Bernie Sanders remains that he is white

Updated below (on Monday, November 12, 2018)

Associated Press photo

Bernie Sanders campaigned relentlessly for Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, but for too many, Bernie remains unacceptable as a Democratic Party presidential nominee because he is a white man, whether they’ll come out and say that or not.

The 2020 Democratic Party primary fight has begun, because already it’s being declared yet once again that Bernie Sanders isn’t good enough on black issues.

Before I delve into that, let me make a point: We’ve never had a Latino U.S. president (and Latinos comprise the largest non-white racial group in the United States). Or a Native American president. Or an Asian president. Or an openly non-heterosexual and/or non-gender-conforming president. Or, for fuck’s sake, even a biologically female president. We haven’t even had an openly non-“Christian” U.S. president; claiming to be a Christian, as even Pussygrabber has, always has been a prerequisite to sit in the Oval Office.

Yet many so-called Democratic voters, if the next Democratic Party presidential nominee isn’t black, are going to scoop up their marbles and go home. (Not that that is racist or black supremacist or anything…)

So the latest “controversy” that “proves” that Bernie Sanders actually is a crypto-white supremacist is a recent remark attributed to him by The Daily Beast, which reported three days ago:

Democratic officials woke Wednesday morning searching for answers as to why the party was unable to win several marquee Senate and gubernatorial races the night before.

But for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the explanation was simple. The candidates who under-performed weren’t progressive enough; those who didn’t shy away from progressivism were undone, in part, by “racist” attacks.

“I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American,” Sanders told The Daily Beast, referencing the close contests involving Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia and ads run against the two. “I think next time around, by the way, it will be a lot easier for them to do that.”

Sanders wasn’t speaking as a mere observer but, rather, as someone who had invested time and reputation on many of the midterm contests. The Vermonter, who is potentially considering another bid for the presidency in 2020, mounted an aggressive campaign travel schedule over the past few months and endorsed both Abrams and Gillum. He also has a personal political investment in the notion that unapologetic, authentic progressive populism can be sold throughout the country and not just in states and districts that lean left.

Surveying the victories and the carnage of Tuesday’s results, Sanders framed it as a vindication of that vision. The candidates who performed well even though they lost, he said, offered positive progressive views for the future of their states, including Gillum, Abrams, and Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. Those who were heavily defeated, Sanders said, didn’t galvanize young voters, people of color, and typically non-active voters.

“I think you got to contrast that to the votes of conservative Democrats who did not generate a great deal of excitement within the Democratic Party,” Sanders said, alluding to a host of Senate Democrats who lost re-election on Tuesday night. “[They] did not bring the kind of new people, new energy that they needed and ended up doing quite poorly. In admittedly difficult states. Missouri and Indiana are not easy states, but neither is Florida or Georgia or Texas.” …

Sanders … credited Abrams with a “brilliant campaign” for her efforts to bring non-active Democratic voters into the electoral process. He marveled at O’Rourke’s fundraising prowess, which allowed the Texas Democrat to raise $38 million in the third quarter of this year — the largest of any Senate candidate in history — and earn more than 48 percent of the vote against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). And he noted that Gillum helped generate turnout that led to the successful passing of Amendment 4, which will restore voting rights to 1.5 million convicted felons in Florida. [This is great news that would warrant a blog post on its own, but I can do only so much…]

“I think he’s a fantastic politician in the best sense of the word,” Sanders said of Gillum. “He stuck to his guns in terms of a progressive agenda. I think he ran a great campaign. And he had to take on some of the most blatant and ugly racism that we have seen in many, many years. And yet he came within a whisker of winning.” …

Of course the anti-Berners ignore the second paragraph (and, well, every other paragraph as well) and focus like a laser on the third, which contains the juicy quote, “I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.”

On the bare face of that, of course I disagree with it. If you are a white voter who feels uncomfortable voting for a candidate primarily or solely because the candidate is not white, then you are racist, whether you’re fully conscious of it or not. Even just an “innocent” belief that elected officials “should” be white because that’s what you are accustomed to is, of course, deeply rooted in racism.

But I don’t know exactly what Bernie meant by his statement, and therefore I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Did Bernie mean that some white Democratic primary voters, knowing how racist their states are, hesitated to vote for black candidates because they figured that they’d only lose in the general election because of the racism in their states? Not wanting to lose an election because of racism doesn’t make you racist yourself, and it seems to me that there is a good chance that this is what Bernie was trying to say, albeit woefully inartfully.

What about white voters in Georgia and Florida who didn’t vote for either Abrams or Gillum primarily because they believe that Abrams and Gillum are “socialist” and they won’t vote for a “socialist”? Or primarily because their political tribalism precludes them from voting for anyone outside of the Repugnican Party (even if they wouldn’t brand Abrams or Gillum a “socialist,” although they probably would)?

“Socialist” Bernie Sanders campaigned for Abrams and Gillum relentlessly, not just in person, but in many, many e-mails (including, of course, fundraising e-mails for them) that I received myself over the course of months. Wouldn’t that be enough to brand Abrams and Gillum “socialist” at least by association?

Is it always simply about race? Always?

It’s also possible, it seems to me, that Bernie Sanders, if he was quoted accurately by The Daily Beast, was trying to be overly diplomatic in trying to win over some white voters who tend to vote only for whites by giving them an out on the charge that they are racist — believing that if you label them as racists, of course they’ll never consider voting for you.

That’s certainly not a tack that I would take, but if that’s what Bernie was trying to do (not likely but not impossible, from what I can tell), was it unforgivable? No. I’d call it rather stupid and inadvisable, as well as unnecessary (I don’t believe in coddling racists, or that it’s politically necessary to do so), but not evil. 

Full disclosure: I am a gay white male progressive and I have given both Abrams and Gillum campaign contributions ($30 each, if you must know; how much did you give to either of them?), and I hope that they ultimately win; Florida started a recount of its gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and some other races yesterday, and in Georgia, if the finalized vote count puts Abrams’ despicable Repugnican opponent below 50.0 percent, then there will be a runoff election early next month.

I gave to Abrams and Gillum in part because they’re black in that I believe in a truly representative democracy. How soul-crushing it must be to live in Georgia, for instance, which is about a third black, and never see yourself represented in the governor’s mansion or in the U.S. Senate for your state. That’s some fucked-up shit.

But I wouldn’t have given a penny to Gillum or Abrams if they were Repugnicans (I judge you by the company that you keep!) or if they didn’t espouse progressivism but instead espoused the stand-for-nothing, do-nothing, pro-corporate centrism that the likes of DINO Claire McCaskill still espouses even though her sorry arse just got tossed from the U.S. Senate for being a worthless, milquetoast piece of shit.

I have supported Abrams and Gillum primarily because they are progressive; that they have stood a chance of making our democracy (what’s left of it, anyway) more representative of all of the people has been the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself.

That’s why I find it disturbing that so many so-called Democrats don’t care how progressive a (so-called) Democratic candidate is or is not; all that they care about is that he or she is black and calls him- or herself a Democrat.

I don’t support Kamala Harris for the White House for 2020 because as attorney general of California she was rather unremarkable and because she hasn’t been in the U.S. Senate for even two full years yet. Her getting cheeky in some Senate hearings, while laudable (and at least somewhat entertaining or at least gratifying if not entertaining), is not enough to vote for her for president in 2020.

And Cory “I Am Spartacus” Booker is just another corporate whore. As one black commentator put it early last year:

… The Democrats leading the charge against Trump must meet exacting qualifications. They have to be loyal servants of the one-percenters, of banksters, hedge funds, charter school sugar daddies and privatizers of all kinds. They must be dependable supporters of apartheid Israel, of military contractors, drone warfare and U.S. military interventions of all kinds around the world.

To boost their party’s fortunes in this new era, Democratic party spokespeople need to be gifted hypocrites willing to pose as advocates of immigrants and champions of civil liberties going forward, even though they unflinchingly supported the biggest deportation and mass surveillance regimes in history implemented by the Democrat who just left the White House. They must focus narrowly on the handful of issues on which corporate Dems actually disagree with Republicans like abortion rights, and not stray to areas which might indict their own party along with Republicans.

And they must absolve their party of responsibility for running an incompetent campaign by blaming the Russians. Hillary is history, but her big stinking tent is still there, and Democrats are crying for a “united front” against Trump, led by spokespeople who can stick to the corporate script.

Cory Booker is a great fit. …

Yup. We were punk’d by Barack Obama, who barely lifted a finger to push through a progressive agenda and who accomplished little outside of some spiffy speeches. He was dignified, sure, but he actually did next to nothing. Shame on us if we’re punk’d again by an Obama 2.0, such as Cory Booker and probably such as Kamala Harris.

On that note, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake is out with his quasi-quarterly rankings of the competitors for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates. Here are his top five now, from one to five: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Cory Booker.

I find Harris’ spot at No. 3 inexplicable. She hasn’t even been well known here in my home state of California, so how she could win a presidential election eludes me entirely. I did vote in November 2016 to send her to the U.S. Senate, but she hasn’t proven herself there, as it hasn’t even been two fucking years yet.

Obama had been in the U.S. Senate for only four years of his first six-year term before he ascended to the White House (his naivete of the “Game of Thrones”-like workings of D.C. was glaring) and that was a huge mistake, one in which I won’t participate again.

For a long time, if not always, Aaron Blake had put Bernie Sanders at No. 1, so Bernie’s slippage to No. 2 on Blake’s rankings to me indicates that perhaps Warren is seen by the Beltway establishment as the perfect fusion/hybrid of an establishment candidate like Billary Clinton and a populist candidate like Bernie Sanders; she’s to be a parting gift for us Berners. But that’s the coward’s way out.

I can support Warren if she fairly and democratically emerges as the presidential nominee, as she is my second choice behind Bernie, but I still have serious concerns about her ability to win a presidential election. I’ve said it a million times before, but I’ll say it again: I would expect her to get labeled as just another weak egghead from Massachusetts; I would expect her to get Michael Dukakis’d or John Kerry’d. (You heard it here, perhaps first.)

In the meantime, I expect Bernie Sanders to continue to be attacked as not good enough for blacks, even though as president the black front runners Kamala Harris and Cory Booker probably would do no more for black Americans than Obama did, but would be, like Obama was, mostly just symbolic — and even though it would be great, if we must apply affirmative action to our electoral politics, that we don’t demand only a white or a black president and continue to shut out all of the other groups that never have been represented in the White House.

And I expect Bernie’s continued support for black progressives like Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum to be dismissed cynically as just Bernie’s dishonest attempt to shore up his pro-black bona fides — this from actual racists and racial supremacists whose main problem with Bernie Sanders, today as it was the case in 2016, is that he is white (and of Jewish heritage).

These hypocrites must continue to call Bernie Sanders a racist in order to try to obscure their own racism and racial supremacism and their own rank, racist political motivations.

P.S. This is interesting: The Washington Post reports that just more than 2,000 voters (Democrats, Repugnicans and independents) in 69 battleground U.S. House districts were polled on November 5 and 6, and that those who reported that they supported a Democratic candidate (33 percent of the total number of those polled) were asked to give their preferences for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee.

The poll found that Joe Biden was their No. 1 choice, with 35 percent; Bernie Sanders was at No. 2, with 15 percent; Kamala Harris at No. 3, with 12 percent; Elizabeth Warren at No. 4, with 10 percent; and Cory Booker at No. 5, with 7 percent.

I don’t see Cory Booker winning (the vice presidential slot maybe), that’s for sure, and while I think that Aaron Blake probably accurately captured the top five candidates, I don’t agree with the order in which he ranked them.

For instance, while he put Warren at No. 1, the poll put her at No. 4.

Also, while Biden looks strong in the poll, what really matters to me, it seems, is which candidate, Biden or Bernie, if both of them run, inherits most of the support of the other candidates who drop out over time. For instance, if Warren were to drop out while Bernie and Biden were still in the running, I do believe that Bernie would inherit most of her supporters.

Also, of course, if Biden doesn’t run and Bernie does, I have to wonder how much of Biden’s support Bernie would get. (My best guess is that most of Biden’s support would go to the other much more establishmentarian candidates rather than to Bernie.)

All of that said, I’m not sure if polling voters in certain battleground districts is reflective of the field of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters as a whole, but, again, I do believe that with a high degree of accuracy, we can state that the top five contenders for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination (alphabetically) are Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

I am a little tempted by such dark-horse candidates as California U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell or lawyer Michael Avenatti, but if you haven’t been at least a governor or a U.S. senator, you’re probably never going to make it to the White House. I can’t say that I want to support a presidential candidate who has little to no chance of winning.

Bernie Sanders, as long as he runs, of course, remains and probably will remain my No. 1 choice until the final nominee emerges.

And yes, while I could not bring myself to vote for Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton in 2016, I’m most likely to vote for the Democratic nominee, even if it is not Bernie, over Pussygrabber in November 2020.

P.P.S. OK, I just stumbled upon a CNN poll taken early last month. The poll of Dems and Dem leaners put Biden at 33 percent, Bernie at 13 percent, and Harris at 9 percent. (Warren comes in just behind Harris, with 8 percent, and behind Warren comes Cory Booker, tied with John Kerry at 5 percent.)

I’m thinking that it’s probably safe to say that the top three are Biden, Bernie and Harris.

Biden, methinks, would represent the old-guard/establishmentarian vote (as well as a good chunk of the Obama-by-association/black vote, from which Billary benefited in 2016), Bernie would represent the progressive-regardless-of-race-or-sex vote, and Harris mostly would represent the non-white/identity-politics vote, and it might also help her that she’s a woman (speaking of identity politics, as taboo as that might be [rank tribalism over ideology in electoral politics is a fact]).

I don’t put Warren in the top three. In the top five, yes, but not in the top three. I think that the Beltway pundits overestimate her popularity among actual Dems and Dem leaners, many of whom, myself included, like her enough as an individual but just don’t see her beating Pussygrabber in 2020.

Update (Monday, November 12, 2018): I don’t want to do another P.S., so here’s some more discussion on this topic:

CNN inexplicably puts Kamala Harris at the front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, as though Beltway wishful thinking were fact (maybe there is something to that “fake news” charge…).

Seriously, though, here is CNN’s Beltway-wishful-thinking-filled ranking, in this order: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar(!), Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders (at No. 6!), et. al.

Right.

The polls — you know, surveys of the voters who actually will decide this thing (not CNN’s “analysts”) — show something quite different. Another poll, this one from Politico/Morning Consult of 733 Dem and Dem-leaning registered voters taken from Wednesday through Friday, shows Joe Biden with 26 percent, Bernie with 19 percent, Beto O’Rourke with 8 percent, Elizabeth Warren with 5 percent, Kamala Harris with only 4 percent, and Cory Booker with only 3 percent.

So while CNN dreams of Kamala Harris — its “analysts” fantasize that the “2018 election convinced us that Harris seems to be exactly what Democratic voters are telling the party and its politicians they want representing them going forward,” Politico reports something else:

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) enter the 2020 election cycle as the leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination to take on President Donald Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted in the immediate aftermath of last week’s midterms.

More than a quarter of Democratic voters, 26 percent, say Biden is their first choice to be the Democratic nominee. Another one-in-five, 19 percent, would pick Sanders, the runner-up for the nomination in 2016.

The two septuagenarians — Biden will be 77 on Election Day, 2020, and Sanders will be 79 — are the only two prospective candidates to garner double-digit support. The third-place candidate is Rep. Beto O’Rourke (R-Texas), who built national name-recognition through his losing Senate bid last week, with 8 percent. …

I surmise that O’Rourke will flame out as a presidential contender for 2020, and that he came in at third place in the poll only because of the immediacy of the midterm election (and he did do well for Texas), but all (or at least almost all) of the reputable recent nationwide polls consistently put Biden at No. 1 and Bernie at No. 2.

Because CNN puts Bernie at a laughable No. 6, I surmise that we can expect CNN to attack Bernie throughout the entire process, because CNN’s “woke” “analysts” don’t want Bernie to win. 

Don’t get me wrong; I certainly right now don’t count Kamala Harris out (I pretty much count Booker out, and I’m on the verge of counting Warren out if her polling doesn’t improve), but, again, the polls of Dem and Dem-leaning voters thus far show that the top two front-runners are Biden and Bernie, whether the identity politicians like it or not.

Oh, yeah. Liz is running for prez.

Getty Images photo

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is shown with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the background. Today Warren released an apparent pre-presidential campaign video that lays waste to years of Repugnicans’ lies about her.

Today U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in a rather brilliant video that as of this writing has had more than 1.6 million views, announced the result of a DNA test that shows Native American genes in her lineage.

The video also features snippets of interviews with individuals stating that her ever having indicated that she has Native American blood never was a factor in her hiring to teach at Harvard Law School and at other law schools; besides “President” Pussygrabber repeatedly offensively calling Warren “Pocahontas” (and daring her to get a DNA test), Repugnicans (starting with her 2012 opponent for the U.S. Senate, Scott Brown) for years have claimed that she lied about her background in order to give her an unfair advantage in the workplace.

The “Pocahontas” bullshit already has been dismissed by the majority of the voters of Massachusetts, who in 2012 elected Warren as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate for the state. She beat Brown with 53.7 percent of the vote, pushing him out of the Senate after he’d “served” there for only two years after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, and I expect her to do even better in next month’s election.

Therefore, Warren had nothing to prove to the voters of Massachusetts, and so I can’t help but think that Warren, anticipating the “Pocahontas” bullshit as the Repugnicans’ main criticism of her — and it’s pretty fucking lame and fucking juvenile criticism — is running for president in 2020.

I’m already committed to Bernie Sanders should he run again, but if he doesn’t, then Liz is my candidate. I cannot support Joe Biden or Cory Booker or Kamala Harris or anyone else over Bernie or Liz. Just can’t and won’t. Not in the primary season, anyway.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong. For me, anyway, it’s not about Elizabeth Warren’s heritage. I mean, I’m sure that it’s important to her, but I personally don’t care how much Native American blood she has coursing through her veins.

I care that she fights back against the Repugnican liars and traitors among us and does so effectively, something that the Democrats too rarely do. But more than that, I care that Warren truly cares about socioeconomic justice. It’s her No. 1 concern, and it’s long past time that we elect a president who makes socioeconomic justice the centerpiece of his — or her — administration.

Our first female president being the second coming of FDR would be more than just fine with me.

P.S. In Warren’s video, her family members call her Betsy, which is the first I’ve heard of that moniker for her.

And although Pussygrabber said on camera at one of  his KKK rallies in July that he’d give $1 million to Warren’s favorite charity if she took a DNA test “and it shows [that she is] an Indian,” I’m sure that he’ll weasel out of it by saying that she’s not Native American enough. He is, after all, a fucking liar; he even denied today that he ever made that statement, even though it’s on fucking video.

Reportedly the Cherokee Nation isn’t pleased that Warren had the DNA test done, but not only did Pussygrabber dare her to do it and promise to give her $1 million to her favorite charity if she did, but the charity that Warren picked is the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.

Bernie Sanders is still No. 1, and ‘Democratic’ ‘superdelegates’ are an endangered species

The Democratic National Committee is about to vote on seriously reducing the anti-democratic power of the so-called “superdelegates,” power that even the Repugnican Party’s equivalents do not have. Of course many of the over-privileged “Democratic” “superdelegates” are crying foul.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake periodically updates his top-15 list for the most likely 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee.

Bernie Sanders still tops that list, which Blake last updated on July 6.

Bernie still gives the self-serving, sellout DINO members of the dying Democratic Party establishment heartburn, of course, because his continued popularity and influence threaten their continued abuse of power that always has been at our expense.

A big thing that Bernie has been working on changing, for a great example, is reining in the so-called “superdelegates.”

Remember them? “Superdelegates” are so fucking evil that even the Repugnican Party did away with them a long time ago — that is, because Repugnican “superdelegates” must vote the way that the voters of their states voted, they’re basically, at most, just window dressing, as they should be.

So ironically anti-democratic and craven is the “Democratic” Party establishment, however, that many if not most of the party’s “superdelegates” are fighting to preserve their unfair power to vote against how the people of their states have voted.*

Yup. A recent Politico article quotes several “Democratic” “superdelegates” whining like the petulant, over-privileged children that they are that proposed party rules changes for the 2020 presidential election cycle — the changes wouldn’t allow the “superdelegates” to vote in the first round of voting at the party convention — would make them (much like their Repugnican counterparts) irrelevant.

Um, they have been irrelevant for years. We never needed them, don’t need them, and never will need them, and their insistence on maintaining, against the will of the voters, their undue power and influence is harming, not helping, the party.

(Indeed, because of how the Democratic Party establishment fucked over Bernie and simply coronated Queen Billary, I re-registered as an independent voter about two years ago, and I never, ever give a penny to the Democratic Party or to any of its arms tentacles, but only to Democratic candidates who strike me as actually progressive [that is, more or less actual Democrats].)

Remember how 2016 went down? (It’s etched in my mind.) We were reminded, constantly, even before a single ordinary person had cast a vote at a presidential primary election or at a caucus, that Billary Clinton already had x number of “superdelegates” in her pocket.

Indeed, even before we Californians got to weigh in on Tuesday, June 7, 2016, the date of our presidential primary election, the media were reporting that Billary already was “the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee” because between 500 and 600 “superdelegates” reportedly already had promised to vote for Billary at the convention (no matter how the voters of their states already had voted or later would vote).

“My problem is that the process today has allowed Secretary Clinton to get the support of over 400 superdelegates before any other Democratic candidate [even] was in the race,” Bernie Sanders stated at the time, adding, “It’s like an anointment.”

“Like”? Indeed, the constant reportage of how many more “superdelegates” Billary had than Bernie did very apparently was meant to give her the image of the winner — and thus the momentum — and Bernie the image of the loser, even though “superdelegates” are just over-privileged party insiders.

Back to The Washington Post’s top-15 list: Bernie has topped the list for some time now. The top 10 are:

1. Bernie Sanders (he was at No. 1 last time)
2. Elizabeth Warren (she was at No. 2 last time)
3. Kamala Harris (was at No. 4 last time)
4. Joe Biden (was at No. 3 last time)
5. Cory Booker (was at No. 5 last time)
6. Kirsten Gillibrand (was at No. 6 last time)
7. Deval Patrick (was at No. 9 last time)
8. Terry McCauliffe (was at No. 8 last time)
9. Eric Holder (was at No. 12 last time)
10. Michael Bloomberg (his first time on the list)

There’s no reason to regurgitate all 15, because pretty much only the top five listed above have a chance, methinks.

And the further down in the rankings you are, you’re probably vice-presidential material, if even that.

Perhaps ironically, to me the most troubling race would be Bernie vs. Elizabeth. For progressives it could be a difficult choice. Both Bernie and Elizabeth are progressives, but a critical distinction between the two of them, to me, is that Bernie has been willing to take on the Democratic Party establishment weasels — just having dared to run against Billary “Crown Me Already” Clinton was very brave of Bernie — whereas Elizabeth hasn’t wanted to rock the boat, but always has played it safe.

The boat needs rocking, much more rocking, so Bernie remains my top choice for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. A leader is willing to ruffle some feathers, and Elizabeth has been too cautious. Way too cautious.

That said, I could accept her as Bernie Sanders’ running mate, although that probably won’t happen, since they are senators from neighboring states (indeed, the two states share a border).

A better pairing probably would be Kamala Harris as Bernie’s running mate.

I’m fine with Harris as vice president (and maybe, after that, president). But just as it was a mistake to send Barack Obama to the White House after he’d been in the U.S. Senate for only four years, it would be a mistake to send Harris to the White House after only four years in the Senate. She needs to learn D.C. a lot more before she takes the top job there; Jesus fucking Christ.

Indeed, I have to surmise that it was because Obama had been in D.C. for only four years before he became president — because of his naiveté and his hubris — that he squandered 2009 and 2010 trying to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in Congress, who obviously never were going to work with him in the first fucking place, and therefore the Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2010 and then the U.S. Senate in November 2014.

Indeed, for at least six of his eight years in the White House, Obama was crippled, and his crippling was of his own doing. Again, he didn’t own and use the political capital that he’d earned in November 2008, but instead squandered it spectacularly in 2009 and 2010.

Harris as the 2020 Democratic Party vice presidential candidate would be a nice geographical placement (a president from Vermont and a vice president from California), and as there appear to be two broad wings of the Democratic Party — progressives (those who focus first and foremost on socioeconomic issues) and identity politicians (those who focus first and foremost on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, etc.) — the pairing should bring the party together as much as it’s possible to bring the party together.**

Personally, while I like Elizabeth Warren, despite her disconcerting lack of courage, I see Team Pussygrabber taking her down rather easily in November 2020, painting her as the weak egghead (the whole “Pocahontas” bullshit entirely aside), so I hope to hell that she doesn’t win the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

I’m just being honest about that. I’d very probably vote for her should she actually win the nomination, but I wouldn’t expect her to win the White House. I’d expect her to get Dukakised.

Joe Biden remains a has-been. He’s too aligned with both Billary Clinton and with Barack Obama, and that brand of the Democratic Party — the do-nothing center-right — is dying to the new Democratic Party that is struggling to be born. I cannot and will not and would not support Joe Biden. It would be going backwards.

Cory Booker is a corporate whore and an empty suit who only cynically and superficially would be trying to be the next Barack Obama. I cannot and will not and would not support Cory Booker. I wouldn’t even want him as a vice-presidential candidate.

There’s no reason to even discuss Nos. 6 through 10 because none of them is going to win the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination, unless Nos. 1 through 5 die unexpectedly.

Although it’s discussed as though it’s a wide-open field, really, it’s not. I agree with Aaron Blake’s assessment that the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee probably is going to be Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris — maybe Joe Biden, if he runs and if he gets lucky, if he can eke out a win via the dying Democratic Party establishment’s bullying, anti-democratic bullshit. (Even Billary couldn’t do it, so I doubt that Biden could.)

Bernie has run for president before, giving him a big leg up, and not only that, but he won 22 states and 46 percent of the pledged — the actually democratically won — delegates to Billary’s comparatively paltry 54 percent, which was a very strong showing for someone who had pretty much come from nowhere to challenge Queen Billary Herself.

Indeed, had it not been for the rigged, anti-democratic system of “superdelegates” (among other pro-Billary riggings within the Democratic National Committee), it might be Bernie Sanders instead of “President” Pussygrabber sitting in the Oval Office right now.

The Billarybots never will tell you this, but Bernie always polled a lot better against Pussygrabber than Billary ever did (see here and here), and even one of Pussygrabber’s own pollsters said that Bernie would have beaten Pussygrabber had he been the Democratic Party’s nominee.

If you want to blame anyone for “President” Pussygrabber, blame the anti-democratic, self-serving, center-right Democratic Party establishment hacks who still are trying to suppress the will of the people in order to preserve their own undeserved power and over-privilege.

We’re still stuck with “President” Pussygrabber for the time being, but at least you’ll be right — instead of a buffoonish sellout who deserves only derision from those of us who actually live in reality.

P.S. Some more great editorial cartoons about the “Democratic” Party “superdelegates” from 2016:

—

*As CNN reported in early July 2016, when they and other media coronated Billary (The Associated Press was most at fault), “They [superdelegates] make up 15 percent of the total delegate universe, which makes it nearly impossible for any Democratic candidate for president to secure the nomination without the support of both pledged delegates and superdelegates.”

**To be clear, the Democratic Party must address both socioeconomic issues and issues of equal human and civil rights, but to me, if we must rank the two, socioeconomic justice is more important for two reasons: One, it affects more people, regardless of their demographics, and two, if you want to win a national election these days, you must make socioeconomic justice your centerpiece, for fuck’s sake.

If you are, for example, a toxic “feminist” (you know, the kind who tosses around terms like “Bernie bro” and “brogressive” [because you’re actually just a misandrist]) or a race hustler who demands that every Democratic president from here on out must be black (because Obama!), then you are going to lose huge swaths of the electorate who (gee!) for some reason don’t share your bitter hatred of them. Case in point: November 2016.

Identity politics loom over 2020; will the so-called Dems fuck it up again?

Boston Herald file photo

Politico reports that former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, pictured above in 2006 with Barack Obama, is Team Obama’s favorite for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Never mind that Patrick works for Mittens Romney’s Bain Capital; if we actual progressives have a problem with that, then we’re “racist.”

Friday was former President Barack Obama’s 56th birthday, and we witnessed another national spasm of Obamamania. (“Barack Obama Day,” a commemorative but not a legal state holiday, begins in Illinois next year.)

Thing is, academic historians and political scientists on average list Obama as only the 17th best of our 43 past presidents.

(No, “President” Pussygrabber is not included in the presidential rankings, since his “presidency,” unfortunately, isn’t over yet, and one president, Glover Cleveland, was president twice, and so usually is called the 22nd and the 24th president, but, of course, up to and including Obama, only 43 men have been U.S. president. [And yes, we need that streak of men to stop, but no, Repugnican Lite Billary Clinton wasn’t the woman to break that streak.])

So, which 16 past presidents are ranked above Obama? They are, in this order: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon B. Johnson, James Madison, John Adams, James K. Polk and James Monroe.

(I agree with the top two, anyway, and no, I wouldn’t have Reagan in there, and Jackson, Pussygrabber’s idol, was a prick who caused harm to many, many people, too.)

And the five ranked below Obama, to round out the top half of all of the past presidents, are Bill Clinton, William McKinley, Cleveland, John Quincy Adams and George H.W. Bush. (George W. Bush, in case you were wondering, ranks at No. 36, which is too high, in my book. [And again, Pussygrabber isn’t ranked because it’s too early.])

So Obama ranks in the top half, which is better than ranking in the bottom half, but still, historians and political scientists overall give him a fairly middling ranking, at toward the bottom of the top half.

What has benefited Obama the most, methinks, is that he was sandwiched between two of our worst presidents ever, Gee Dubya and Pussygrabber.

By comparison to these two, yes, Obama, in retrospect, looks like he indeed was the second coming of Abraham Fucking Lincoln (indeed, when Obama first announced that he was running for president, he did so in Springfield, Illinois, and apparently tried to look Lincolnesque).

But historians and political scientists, taking a longer view and a more dispassionate view than most of us commoners do, rightfully don’t rank Obama up there with Lincoln, and I surmise that as the years pass, Obama’s ranking won’t improve, but probably will drop, although probably not dramatically; I suspect that he’s at No. 17 in large part because his presidency is still so fresh and because even academics, being human beings, can’t help but to some degree compare him to Gee Dubya and to Pussygrabber.

I don’t allege that Obama was a bad president, just that he wasn’t a great one. He was, as I have noted before, a caretaker in chief more than he was anything else. With Obama it was refreshing to have a president actually win the popular vote — twice — and while Obama committed no huge blunder like Gee Dubya started the illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked Vietraq War (after he apparently had just allowed 9/11 to happen), just allowed Hurricane Katrina to kill almost 2,000 Americans, and tanked the U.S. economy, Obama had had a shitload of political capital at his disposal when he first took office in 2009, and he squandered it on “Obamacare,” which requires Americans to buy for-profit “health-care” insurance, which has been called “progressive.”

Another FDR Barack Obama was not. Let’s get that historical fact straight.

But the widespread but incorrect belief that Obama was a great president apparently has given rise to the widespread — if (mostly) publicly unspoken — belief that the next Democratic president must be black, too.

(And, I further surmise, Gee Dubya and Pussygrabber have given the widespread impression among many of those who call themselves Democrats that all white presidents are bad, and therefore, we never should have another one. This is incorrect thinking that is blinded by recent history [as well as by anti-white sentiment], and it lacks historical perspective.)

Indeed, Politico depressingly reports that Team Obama, including Big Bad Obama himself, is pushing for former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to run for president in 2020 — never fucking mind that Patrick works for Mittens Romney’s Bain Capital.

(Wikipedia notes of Bain Capital: “Bain Capital is a global alternative investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. It specializes in private equity, venture capital and credit products.” Orwellian terms like “alternative investment” and “credit products” should send shivers up and down your spine, like they do mine.)

If Politico’s report is true, it’s proof that the Democratic Party establishment has learned nothing — no thing: It’s A-OK to front a total corporate whore as the next Democratic Party presidential candidate, as long as this corporate whore isn’t a white man, because the Democratic Party establishment still wants to play identity politics as cover for the fact that it still wants to lick corporate and plutocratic ass while still calling itself “populist.”

Here is my deal: I won’t support another corporate whore. I refused to support corporate whore Billary Clinton. I refused to vote for Obama a second time after it was clear from his first term that, whether we fairly can call him a corporate whore or not (we probably can), he had had no intention of enacting a boldly progressive agenda. (Yes, I’m old-fashioned; I believe in actually holding an elected official to his or her fucking campaign promises.)

I don’t give a flying fuck that, very predictably, the selfish, narrow-minded, black-supremacist Only Black Lives Matter crowd will call those of us who won’t support a black corporate whore like Cory Booker or Deval Patrick “racist.”

I don’t give a flying fuck about that any more than I did about the sellout Billarybots calling us men who have supported Bernie Sanders because he was the only real Democrat in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination “sexist” and “misogynist.”

Such lame identity-politics terrorism doesn’t work on me; instead, it makes me support my chosen actually progressive candidate only even more so; it only strengthens my resolve to work against the sellouts and craven identity politicians who call themselves “Democrats.”

That and, unlike the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Pussygrabber supporters, I know how to vote in my own best fucking interests, and supporting just another corporate whore who calls himself or herself a “Democrat” while furiously sucking corporate cock is not in my own best fucking interests.

Of the top three potential black Democratic/“Democratic” presidential candidates widely spoken about thus far for 2020, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of my state of California is the one I can support the most, but she just became a U.S. senator in January, for fuck’s sake.

I’m not at all yet sold on Harris being presidential material. It was a big mistake to put Obama in the White House after he had been in the U.S. Senate for only four years, not even a full Senate term — Obama pretty much ran only on his gauzy and ubiquitous (and, ultimately, bullshit) campaign promises of “hope” and “change” — and it would be a mistake to do the same with Harris.

For 2020 I’m still supporting either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, should one of the two of them run. Why? No, not because they are white and I am white, but because they are the least beholden to corporate interests and are the most progressive.

If both of them were to run, it would be a shitty choice to have to make since I respect and admire both of them, but, as I have noted, Bernie’s nationwide approval ratings long have been significantly higher than have Warren’s, and I still surmise that while Billary did not face actual sexism and misogyny — Americans just fucking hate her because she’s a despicable “human being,” regardless of her sex (indeed, in general she still polls no better than does Pussygrabber) — Warren would face actual sexism and misogyny, I surmise.

No, I don’t want to give in to the sexists and misogynists, but I also want to deny Pussygrabber a second term, and overall, Bernie Sanders to me appears to be better able to do that than does Warren, who would, I think, be depicted (probably successfully) as another Michael Dukakis (and thus probably would go the way of Dukakis).

Bernie Sanders already went before the American electorate and he won 46 percent of the pledged (democratically earned) delegates to Billary’s 54 percent, and he won 22 states — a remarkable achievement by a largely previously unknown underdog against Billary “Crown Me Already” Clinton, who was in her second run for the White House.

Although the craven, sellout members of the Democratic Party establishment still act like he doesn’t even exist and didn’t come in at a fairly close second in 2016 despite the Billarybots of the Democratic National Committee brazenly having cheated to help Billary, Bernie Sanders remains the most popular politician in the United States of America.

And that’s because although the “Democratic” sellouts say that Bernie isn’t even a Democrat, ironically, he is so popular because he is a real Democrat — one of only a few real Democrats in D.C.

Really, I need say no more.

P.S. You know that I can’t shut up, though.

One (probably) final thought: Yes, undoubtedly, Obama had the style of being U.S. president down pat, but he woefully lacked substance. His was a rather hollow presidency. And he wasn’t playing the U.S. president on TV; he was the actual president, and we sorely needed more than style from him, especially after what Gee Dubya (“w” for “wrecking ball”) had done to the nation.

True, Pussygrabber woefully lacks both style and substance, but is a chaotic, incoherent colossal mess, and even Gee Dubya, compared to Pussygrabber, had the style thing down a lot better.

But for me, substance is going to win out over style every time, and I’d love a president with some fucking substance for once.

That wouldn’t be a President Patrick, a President Booker or, probably, a President Harris, who as California’s attorney general was competent enough but who safely went along the established Democratic Party lines and never did anything especially courageous that I can think of.

P.P.S. I’m not the only one who does not want to see a Deval Patrick candidacy. Slate.com’s Ben Mathis-Lilley writes:

The world of finance! There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. People need banks so they can buy houses and cars, and need to invest their money for retirement and whatnot. Some of my closest friends work in finance, and I enjoy being invited to their beautiful country homes, where I drink their pink lemonade and lounge on their fine divans.

And yet … do I think that any of these friends of mine should run for president in 2020 on the ticket of America’s liberal party during an era of unprecedented wealth inequality and consolidated corporate power?

No! And neither should Deval Patrick, the ex–Massachusetts governor who now works for Bain Capital and is for some reason the subject of a Tuesday Politico story with this headline: “Obama’s Inner Circle Is Urging Deval Patrick to Run.”

You may remember Bain Capital as the private-equity company co-founded by Mitt Romney — as in, the Mitt Romney who Barack Obama (a Democrat) effectively attacked for enriching himself through mass layoffs during a 2012 election that many “Obama insiders” should have at least a passing familiarity with.

As it happens, many Obama voters — including those in, to name three states at random, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — would go on to vote four years later not for the Democratic candidate whose insider connections and high-priced speeches to Goldman Sachs became a major campaign issue, but for the Republican candidate who made repeated and energetic (albeit totally dishonest) promises to stick it to the rich and powerful.

Apparently Obama insiders do not have a passing familiarity with that election, but it was bad. It was a problem.

This is not merely a matter of “optics” or electoral strategy, though. It’s also a matter of principle. Individuals whose main day-in, day-out concern is the well-being of financial service executives and corporate shareholders naturally tend to advocate policy goals friendly to the interests of financial services executives and corporate shareholders.

Those interests sometimes, but do not always, overlap with the interests of potential Democratic voters, as this comparison of corporate profits to inflation-adjusted household income during the 21^st century indicates:

Federal Reserve via Jordan Weissmann

Corporate profits: way up! Income for normal people: eh.

One group that believes that Democrats shouldn’t overtly represent the interests of the wealthy, in fact, is the current Democratic Party. Even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker who counts Wall Street executives among his most prominent constituents (and top donors), is on board with a 2018 Democratic platform that frames the party’s agenda as a matter of increasing wages while diminishing corporate power.

Is a finance executive who conducted his Politico interview at “Bain headquarters in Boston” really the ideal messenger for this sales pitch?

The Politico article acknowledges this practical reality, sort of, writing that “Bernie Sanderized Democrats … are suspicious of finance types to begin with, and were taught by Obama’s 2012 brutal campaign attacks on Mitt Romney to think of Bain as a curse word.” (Again, though, the group that swung the 2016 election was not “Bernie-addled coastal leftist elites,” it was former Obama voters in the Midwest.)

The piece then suggests that Democratic voters in 2020 might rally around the idea of “taking on Trump’s management shortcomings” and “calling for a different way of merging government and business experience.”

And, well, I suppose anything can happen in three years, but if the 2020 Democratic primary turns on an angry base’s passionate demand for “a different way of merging government and business experience,” I will eat a hard copy of the Mitt Romney “47 percent” video. …

Indeed, Billary’s ties to the weasels of Wall Street hurt her more than the Billarybots ever will admit. I just ordered OR Books’ copy of this* —

— but never would buy Billary’s own forthcoming predictably bullshit account of how she lost the 2016 election, whose No. 54 placement on Amazon.com’s top-100 book list right now gives you an idea as to how much Americans still care about her.

And hey, how great it is to be a baby boomer! You can blow a presidential election spectacularly and still get another lucrative book deal!

—

*OR Books describes How I Lost By Hillary Clinton like this:

Judging by the stance of the leadership of the Democratic Party and much of the media, Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss in the presidential election of November 2016 was all the fault of pernicious Russian leaks, unwarranted FBI investigations and a skewed electoral college.

Rarely blamed was the party’s decision to run a deeply unpopular candidate on an uninspiring platform.

At a time of widespread dissatisfaction with business-as-usual politics, the Democrats chose to field a quintessential insider. Her campaign dwelt little on policies, focusing overwhelmingly on the personality of her opponent.

That this strategy was a failure is an understatement. Losing an election to someone with as little competence or support from his own party as Donald Trump marked an extraordinary fiasco.

The refusal of the Democratic leadership to identify the real reasons for their defeat is not just a problem of history. If Democrats persevere with a politics that prioritizes well-off professionals rather than ordinary Americans, they will leave the field open to right-wing populism for many years to come. [Emphasis mine.]

Drawing on the WikiLeaks releases of Clinton’s talks at Goldman Sachs and the e-mails of her campaign chief John Podesta, as well as key passages from her public speeches, How I Lost By Hillary Clinton also includes extensive commentary by award-winning journalist Joe Lauria, and a foreword by Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

It provides, in the words of the Democratic candidate and her close associates, a riveting, unsparing picture of the disastrous campaign that delivered America to President Trump, and a stark warning of a mistake that must not be repeated.

Fully expect the Democratic Party establishment to try to repeat that mistake, however. It’s up to us to stop them.

Bernie takes Oregon, Billary (barely) takes another former slave state

Updated below (on Wednesday, May 18, 2016)

With 99.9 percent of its precincts reporting, Billary Clinton won the presidential primary in Kentucky today by only 0.5 percent (46.8 percent to 46.3 percent), while with just over 61 percent of Oregon’s precincts reporting as I type this sentence, it’s Bernie with 53.1 percent to Billary’s 46.9 percent.

Kentucky has been called for Billary and Oregon has been called for Bernie. This brings “fringe” candidate Bernie to 20 states won thus far.

Here’s the updated map, with Bernie’s wins shaded green (Billary’s are in puke yellow and the states that have yet to vote are in gray):

Note the states that Billary won/“won” by not even 2 percentage points:

• Iowa: 49.9 percent Billary, 49.6 percent Bernie (0.3 percent difference)
• Massachusetts: 50.1 percent Billary, 48.7 percent Bernie (1.4 percent difference)
• Illinois: 50.5 percent Billary, 48.7 percent Bernie (1.8 percent difference)
• Missouri: 49.6 percent Billary, 49.4 percent Bernie (0.2 percent difference)
• And now, Kentucky, by a whopping 0.5 percent

The only win within 2 percentage points that was Bernie’s was Michigan, 49.7 percent Bernie to 48.3 percent Billary, a difference of 1.4 percent.

I’m happy that Bernie is staying in the race until every last state has voted. This is what democracy looks like: Giving all of the people a voice.

Whether Bernie wins or loses, at least the people of each state will have had the opportunity to weigh in on the next leader of the nation.

The Billarybots hate this, which tells you volumes about their character, their ethics and their morals.

P.S. Speaking of character, ethics and morals, compare the map above to the map of the states right before the Civil War:

It’s a chilling fact: For the most part, states (and former territories that now are states) that had slavery (like, um, Kentucky) have voted for Billary, and states (and former territories that now are states) that were free (like, um, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, which used to form the Oregon Territory) have voted for Bernie.

The two graphics are worth thousands of words.

Update (Wednesday, May 18, 2016): With 100 percent of its precincts now reporting, Kentucky still sits at only a 0.5 percent difference, and as I type this sentence, Oregon, with 92.6 percent of precincts reporting, stands at Bernie with 55.8 percent and Billary with 44.2 percent, a difference of 11.6 percent.

I expect Bernie to win California on June 7. Yes, that’s a prediction. I don’t predict that he’ll win it by a double-digit margin, as he won the other Left Coast states of Oregon and Washington, but I expect him to win it by at least two or three percentage points.

I make this prediction even though The Huffington Post’s average of polls of California right now has Billary ahead by 9.1 percent and Real Clear Politics’ average of California polls has Billary up by 9.7 percent right now.

I have seen precious little enthusiasm for Billary here in California thus far. If my prediction is wrong and she does win the state, it will be because she’ll get the geriatric vote (seriously) — people who are voting for her but just don’t talk about it (including the fact that they’re not on social media voicing their politics). And also, I suppose, it will be the support of younger people who are just too embarrassed to admit that they’re actually voting for Billary.

If Billary does win California, which I put at less than a 50-percent chance, I expect it to be by less than two or three full percentage points. It might even come as close as Kentucky or Iowa or Missouri (that is, no more than half of one percentage point).

Let me make it clear that while I support Bernie winning every delegate that he possibly can, I expect Billary Clinton to clinch the nomination. The super-delegates pretty much by definition are Democratic Party hacks, and hacks do what they’re told to do, and Billary going into the convention in July with more pledged delegates than Bernie — which is likely to be the case (she still leads him by about 275 pledged delegates, as has been the case for a while now) — will give the super-lemmings delegates the excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway: crown Billary.

I expect the super-delegates to give the win to Billary even though Bernie Sanders is doing two to three times better than she is in the match-up polls against Donald Trump. Real Clear Politics right now has Billary ahead of Trump by only 5.2 percent and Bernie ahead of Trump by 13 percent. Horrifyingly, The Huffington Post’s average of the match-up polls has Billary only 3.3 percent ahead of Trump and Bernie with a much more comfortable margin of 12.1 percent.

With Billary only around 3 percent to 5 percent ahead of Trump in the match-up polls right now — and this is because the nation’s electorate apparently hates Billary just a little less than the nation’s electorate hates Trump — you’d think that the Billarybots would be a lot nicer to us Berners instead of painting pretty much all of us as sexist, misogynist, violent animals who are just like Trump’s supporters.

But no.

The Lemmings for Billary are determined to go right off of that looming cliff that is in plain, clear view.

Live-blogging the eighth Democratic presidential debate tonight

Tonight’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Miami, Florida, is the eighth of 10 scheduled Dem debates (recall that six originally had been scheduled, but then four more were added), and it takes place just a few days after the seventh debate, in Flint, Michigan, which I think we safely can say Bernie Sanders won, since he won Michigan yesterday.

(Bernie won Michigan by 1.5 percent, but hey, it was a win; again, Billary “won” Iowa by only 0.3 percent and won Massachussetts by 1.4 percent.)

While I just live-blogged a Dem debate and am not too excited about live-blogging another one so soon afterward, tonight’s debate is an important one. Hey, Bernie debated in Michigan and then won Michigan; if he wins Florida on Tuesday, which would indicate that he’d also win Ohio (and perhaps also Illinois and/or Missouri) on Tuesday, I don’t know that Billary could recover from that.

And yes, were Bernie to continue win the big states, such as Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California and New York, I don’t see the “super-delegates” continuing to support Billary against the popular tide (especially against how their own states voted).

So: I will live-blog tonight’s debate, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific. The debate is being sponsored by Univision and the Washington Post, and one of its moderators is Univision’s Jorge Ramos, whom I like and respect greatly.

Information on how to watch the debate is here; I probably will watch it via CNN’s online streaming.

Still Bernie or bust for me (also: Live-blogging the 7th Dem debate tomorrow)

Reuters photo

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a progressive U.S. senator for Vermont, is hugged before a rally today in Warren, Michigan. Today Bernie handily won the caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska, while Billary Clinton picked up yet another state of mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging denizens in the South (Louisiana). Tomorrow night Bernie debates Billary Clinton in Flint, Michigan. Michigan holds its primary election on Tuesday; if Bernie takes the state, gone (at least until Billary’s next win) should be the bullshit talk of Billary’s “inevitability.”

Today Bernie Sanders won the Democratic Party presidential caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska, and Billary Clinton, in keeping with her popularity in the South, won the backasswards red state of Louisiana.

Thus far the map of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary race (this one from Wikipedia) looks like this, with Bernie’s wins in green and Billary’s in gold:

Note that Iowa was a tie, with Billary “beating” Bernie by a whopping 0.3 percent. Also close was Massachusetts, which Billary won by 1.4 percent. (It apparently helped her to at least to some degree that Bill Clinton apparently was electioneering for Billary at polling places in Massachusetts on “Super Tuesday.” [His mere presence at a polling place, even if he didn’t speak a word, was electioneering, in my book, given how well he is known as a former president and since his wife appeared on the ballot at the polling places that he visited (only to “thank the poll workers,” he claimed). Of course, the Clintons are royalty, and members of royalty are above the law.])

Nevada wasn’t a blowout win for Billary, either; she won that state’s caucuses by 5.3 percent.

Billary’s wins in the Southern states have been in the double digits, which speaks volumes to me. The South is another fucking country, as far as I’m concerned.

Bernie’s double-digit wins in states like Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Vermont (and his almost-wins in Iowa and Massachusetts) indicate to me that he represents the real America — you know, the portion of the United States that didn’t practice slavery and wasn’t part of the Confederacy.

Queen Billary says that she’s the real Democrat in the race, yet why is her power base in the South — which is not exactly a bastion of the values and beliefs of the modern Democratic Party?

At any rate, although Billary once again stupidly was declared “inevitable” after “Super Tuesday” this past week (she won seven states [all of them, except for Massachusetts, in the South] to Bernie’s four), this remains a race.

(As many have noted, if a clear majority of the voters and caucus-goers pick Bernie over Billary, the so-called “super-delegates” will be pressured not to subvert democracy, but to go with the popular will and to therefore go with Bernie — if the Democratic Party is to survive.*)

Next up is Maine, which caucuses tomorrow, and then on Tuesday, Michigan and Mississippi hold their primary elections.

I expect Bernie to win Maine, and of course Billary will take the backasswards red state of Mississippi. I’m hoping that Bernie takes Michigan; that would be a real coup for him.

In any event, tomorrow night is the seventh Democratic Party presidential debate. It will be held in Flint, Michigan, and is to be carried by CNN at 9 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Pacific.

I plan to live-blog it, but I might do it differently this time; truth be told, after having live-blogged the first six Democratic debates, I can tell you that these debates get repetitive. Tomorrow night I might decide to live-blog only new material and the more interesting exchanges, and let the repetitive crap go.

Finally, if you are a regular reader of mine you will know this already, but I’ll say it again: For me it’s still Bernie or bust.

I will not support Billary Clinton, Queen of the South, in any way. Not a penny and certainly not my vote, not in California’s primary election in June or in the general presidential election in November.

Billary Clinton does not represent the United States of America or the Democratic Party to me.

My world is a progressive one, and she is from another planet.

P.S. Speaking of other planets, as far as Donald Trump is concerned: I’m sorry that he has gotten this far. It’s a sad statement on the sorry state of sociopolitical affairs in the nation that he has.

Donald Trump does not represent all white male Americans. Let me say that. He represents some of them. (White males are around 31 percent of all Americans, and Trump has the support of about 36 percent of Repugnicans, men and women, and around 39 percent of Americans identify as Repugnican or leaning Repugnican, while around 43 percent of Americans identify as Democratic or leaning Democratic. So Trump has the support of around 36 percent of around 39 percent of Americans, including women, so let’s please not say that he’s representative of most white American men. He is not. He is representative of a loud and obnoxious minority of them who share perhaps three brain cells among themselves.)

Donald Trump to me is evil not so much in that he has all of these definite evil plans for the groups of people whom he definitely would persecute, like his forebears the Nazi Germans did, but in that because he has no moral compass and no apparent conscience, but is pure ego, he would go in whatever direction he would perceive to be politically beneficial to himself, regardless of its harm to many others. He sociopathically lacks all empathy, very apparently.

Sure, that also pretty much describes corporate-ass-licker Billary Clinton’s entire political career, but would another Nazi Germany arise under Billary Clinton? Probably not. Under Donald Trump? It certainly could.

That said, I still think that I prefer the overt fascism of Donald Trump to the “friendly” fascism of Billary Clinton; I still think that I’d rather deal with the obvious wolf than with the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

On that note, both the Democratic Party and the Repugnican Party establishments — the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party — need to go.

Yes, the thought that the establishment parties’ demise could be replaced by something akin to Germany’s Nazism (that is, nationalism, far-right-wing ideology/fascism, white supremacism, etc.) is a frightening thought, but there is an alternative to that: the progressive, inclusive, democratic socialism that real Democrat Bernie Sanders promotes.

—

*While I don’t share Salon.com writer Andrew O’Hehir’s assessment of Billary’s chances of emerging as the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee — I think that he overstates her chances (for one thing, she remains underwater in her favorability polling of all voters by double digits — while Bernie’s favorability polling of all voters still has him liked more than disliked by double digits) — I do agree with O’Hehir’s assessment that there is a civil war within the Democratic Party just as there is within the Repugnican Tea Party.

It’s just that the Democrats are “nicer” about it, and it hasn’t blown up (yet).

Whether Billary emerges as the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee or not, the fact remains that her center-right brand of Democrat is sorely out of date, is unsustainable and needs to go, and it will go; it’s only a question of for how much longer the Clintonistas can keep the Democrat-in-name-only game going.

If we Berners — progressives — can’t take back our party this year, we will take it back in the near future.

Billary Clinton is not in a good place politically, not in the long term.

Why?

Well, if Bernie beats her, it will be seen as a victory for progressives. (Of course, if Bernie beats her but then goes on to lose in November, he’ll be lumped in with the likes of George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, which probably would be damaging for the progressive brand and seen as vindicating the Clintonistas’ brand of the Democratic Party, of course. [This wouldn’t last forever, but would last for some time, I surmise.])

But if Billary wins the nomination but then loses in November, it most definitely will be the final stake in the cold, stupid hearts of the Clintonistas. The members of the party will look for a new direction, and we progressives are quite ready to supply that direction.

But even if Billary wins both the party’s presidential nomination and the White House, she’ll have a very rough go of it.

She will be attacked relentlessly by the Repugnican Tea Party traitors, and if you look at who her supporters are now, it appears as though as president she’ll have the support of the Democrats in the South — Democrats who are fairly powerless within their own states.

The rest of us — us Northerners, mostly — aren’t at all thrilled about Billary Clinton now, so she probably can’t count on much political support from us should she actually become president.

And that’s her fault, not ours.

Nate Silver: Bernie Sanders would be ‘losing’ even when he is winning

Nate Silver provides this chart to support his argument that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — hailing from the state with the highest percentage of white liberals — could win the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary yet still lose the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination. If the 50 states all voted and caucused on the same day, Silver would have a solid point, but as the states will caucus and vote over a bit more than a four-month period, Silver’s argument misses the factor of momentum (or, as I might put it, the movement of the lemmings from one candidate to another) over time. Silver’s argument demonstrates, however, that Bernie Sanders is an uber-underdog.

Far be it for me to question Prognosticator King Nate Silver (Prognosticator Queen? Like I am, he is gay…), but a recent post of his on his website fivethirtyeight.com bears this headline: “Bernie Sanders Could Win Iowa and New Hampshire. Then Lose Everywhere Else.”

The emphasis there, I think, I hope, is on the word “could.” Lots of different scenarios could play out from this early point in the game, but I find it unlikely that Sanders would win both Iowa and New Hampshire and yet not win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

The crux of Silver’s argument apparently is that “Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa and Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire are really liberal and really white, and that’s the core of Sanders’ support.”

The chart above is posted with Silver’s article, and assuming that its statistics are correct, yes, it’s no shock that Bernie Sanders is polling well right now in Iowa and in New Hampshire, the first two states to pick their 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate, in early February.

Silver notes that “Sanders has so far made very little traction with non-white Democrats,” suggesting that this could cost Sanders the eventual win.

I don’t know about that.

I do know that Billary Clinton, for whatever reason or reasons, is big here in California, so I couldn’t see Sanders winning California — if California voted early. But California isn’t voting early in 2016; in 2016, California’s presidential primary election will be in June.

Billary beat Barack Obama here in California in 2008, but that year the presidential primary was held here in February, on “Super Tuesday.” It was a big chunk of delegates early on for Billary, but Obama still eventually beat her and won the nomination, of course.

Given that California doesn’t weigh in until June 2016, when it most likely will be (but might not be) a moot point anyway, yes, Billary could still win California’s primary, even if Bernie already had sewn up the party’s presidential nomination (and Billary had conceded), I suppose, but at the same time, in the world of presidential politics, June 2016 is a long, long time away, and so of course it’s possible that Sanders could win California’s primary in June 2016, especially if he already had swept most of the states in the earlier voting.

Not just California, but many other states, probably especially red and purple states, might remain steadfastly loyal to Billary in 2016, even to the bitter end, but as this was not an insurmountable obstacle for Obama in 2008, I don’t see that it would be an insurmountable obstacle for Sanders in 2016.

As I have intimated above, perhaps the biggest flaw in Nate Silvers’ argument is that to me his chart of the states and their makeup of white liberals seems to suggest that all of these states are going to be voting close together, when, in fact, the 2016 presidential primary elections and caucuses stretch from February 1 through June 7 (yes, California is the last to vote, along with four other states on that date.)

If all 50 states held their primary elections and caucuses on one day, or even within one month or maybe even two, then yes, I’d probably expect Billary to win, but that won’t be the case; that won’t be how the game is played. (But nor do I see the 2016 contest being drawn out until June, as it anomalously was in 2008. My best guess is that it will be done by April at the latest. [John Kerry wrapped up his 2004 win in March, and Al Gore also had wrapped up his 2000 win in March.])

All of that said, no one really knows what might happen if Bernie Sanders were to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. It seems to me that Billary probably would implode spectacularly. Yes, it is true that only two states aren’t representative of the entire nation, but coming in at first place in Iowa gives a candidate a huge boost, as it did for Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008. All three of those candidates, of course, went on to win their party’s presidential nomination. (The last time that the Democratic first-place winner of Iowa didn’t go on to win the party’s presidential nomination was Tom Harkin back in 1992.)

Yet we’re so sure that for some reason or reasons it would be different for Bernie Sanders were he to win first place in Iowa. (He is nothing if not an underdog.)

I could see an Iowa win giving Sanders such momentum that of course he wins New Hampshire, and from there it easily might be All She Wrote for Billary. Billary can come back from losing Iowa — her husband did in 1992, after all (and while she lost Iowa to Obama in 2008, she did win the popular vote in the 2008 New Hampshire primary [but tied with Obama for the delegate count]) — but were she to lose New Hampshire in February, too, um, yeah…

Of course, as many have noted, the better that Bernie were to perform in February, the more that the panicked Clintonistas (who pretty much are synonymous with the center-right Democratic Party establishment) would attack him. It is an unknown as to whether the Clinton Machine could destroy Sanders. It certainly didn’t destroy the upstart Barack Obama during the long, drawn-out presidential primary season of 2008 (again, Billary didn’t finally concede to Obama until June 2008).

And you never know how an attack is going to play out for you. It might work and you might win; or, it might generate sympathy for your victim and hurt you, either giving your victim the win or giving you a very tarnished win, a pyrrhic victory.

I mean, Bernie Sanders comes across as the humble, rumpled college professor whom you like, the professor who at first appears to be fairly eccentric but whom, once you listen to what he has to say, is quite sane and quite wise and quite big-hearted, you realize. Sanders also (probably wisely) fairly steadfastly sticks to his philosophy of not savaging his political rivals, but of sticking to the issues.

By attacking Bernie, Billary can’t come out of it not looking like an even bigger harpy with a dynastic, coronate-me-already mindset than she already does. So Team Billary savaging Bernie is far from an assured winning strategy.

And again, I’m quite surprised that in his piece, Nate Silver doesn’t talk about what I might call The Lemming Effect of Iowa and New Hampshire. It wasn’t that long ago that John Kerry rose from the political dead in early 2004, beating Howard Dean to win Iowa and New Hampshire, shocking pretty much Everyone in the Political Universe, even his long-time supporters (such as myself), and once he won Iowa and New Hamsphire, the vast majority of the rest of the primary and caucus states quickly fell to him like dominoes. (Howard Dean won only his home state of Vermont. John Edwards, who would go on to be Kerry’s running mate, won only two states.)

Again, it speaks to Bernie Sanders’ status as the uber-underdog, methinks, that one might posit that while the rest of the states fell like dominoes after John Kerry won both Iowa and New Hampshire in 2004, this wouldn’t happen for Bernie Sanders.

And look at where John Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts sits on Silver’s chart: It is listed at No. 4, but apparently tying with Iowa as the third-most white and liberal state. By Silver’s own argument, it seems to me, John Kerry, because he came from such a white and such a liberal state, shouldn’t have done nearly as well as he actually did.

I’m not especially picking on Silver, and I think that the moral of the story is that presidential politics can be much like a Plinko game: the chip, once dropped, can fall in one of many directions, and predicting where it finally will land can be very difficult. Especially before the chip has even been dropped — before Iowans have caucused and New Hampshirites have voted — we can only speculate what might happen. Only after the chip has dropped and gained momentum will prognosticating be easier and more accurate.

Still, I find it fun to discuss what might happen. Again, my best guess is that if Bernie Sanders wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s all over for Billary Clinton. She probably would win significantly more states’ primaries and caucuses in 2016 than did, say, John Edwards in 2004, but losing both Iowa and New Hampshire would be, I believe, such a blow to her right out of the gate that she’d never be able to recover.

I just don’t see that Billary has the charisma to recover from something like that. Few Billary supporters will admit it, but most of them don’t actually like her all that much, don’t find her to be warm and fuzzy and likable. (Certainly, those voters in three important swing states find Billary to be neither honest nor trustworthy, and almost 60 percent of all Americans don’t find Billary to be honest or trustworthy, and when Obama famously once remarked to Billary during a 2008 primary season debate, “You’re likable enough,” he was being quite charitable.)

No, most of Billary’s supporters support her because they delusionally believe that a candidate whose unfavorability ratings consistently exceed her favorability ratings in national polls is a strong candidate. They delusionally believe that as unlikable as Billary is, she’s the only Democratic candidate who can keep the White House in the party’s hands come November 2016.

But how strong can Billary be when so many of her so-called supporters have to hold their noses in order to support her, and support her primarily or even only because they believe that she’s the only candidate who can prevent the Repugnicans from taking back the White House?

That’s not a very strong base of support, and so were Bernie to win Iowa and New Hampshire, again, I think that most likely we’d see a sea change; we’d see the Lemmings for Billary rush to Team Bernie. After all, Billary never exactly excited them anyway; at best, they found Billary likable enough. Or at least that’s what they told themselves and/or others.

P.S. Again, let me be clear: I could see Bernie Sanders winning the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination but losing the 2016 presidential election, as the American electorate can be stunningly anti-intellectual and pro-dipshit, as we saw with how Americans just allowed the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging George W. Bush to blatantly steal the 2000 presidential election. (Al Gore, widely perceived in an anti-intellectual nation as a wooden egghead, didn’t inspire the in-the-streets revolution that a stolen presidential election should have.)

One could argue, I suppose, that New Englanders, being whiter and more liberal than the nation as a whole, or at least being perceived as such, tend to do poorly in presidential elections, and point to Michael Dukakis’ loss in 1988 and John Kerry’s loss in 2004. (Both are from Massachusetts, of course, as is U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom I’d most likely be supporting right now if she were a presidential candidate.)

But Bernie Sanders is well positioned to win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, it seems to me, and I’d be willing to risk losing the 2016 presidential election with Sanders as the Democratic Party’s candidate, as the Democratic Party’s long slide to the right (first under Bill Clinton and then under Barack Obama) has to be reversed (and not continued and worsened under a President Billary).

As I’ve noted, if Bernie Sanders ends up being something like the Barry Goldwater of the left, that’s perfectly fine by me. Better to win the long game than to lose the long game, and a President Billary would mean losing the long game.

P.P.S. As I’ve noted many times before, I always go for the most progressive presidential candidate possible, regardless of his or her demographics. Being a Californian, I also highly value diversity — note that Nate Silver’s chart puts white liberals like me at only about a quarter of California’s population in 2008 — and so it would be great if Bernie Sanders weren’t yet another older white man and if he came from a more diverse state (Vermont is in the top few whitest states in the nation, if it isn’t at No. 1).

But Bernie’s demographics are his demographics. His being an actual progressive trumps Billary’s being a woman but being a Democrat in name only who no doubt as president would continue to kiss plutocratic ass and sell out the working class and the remnants of the middle class, as her triangulating husband did in the 1990s.

And, of course, our first non-white president has done little to nothing to significantly socioeconomically boost non-white Americans.

A white-male progressive certainly could do, and probably would do, more good for more people than would a DINO president who is not white or who is a woman.

Run, Liz, run!

Associated Press photo

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachussetts speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., last month. Warren has the support for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination of Democracy for America and MoveOn.org, the latter of which has just created Run Warren Run, a campaign to draft Warren to run for the White House. Below is a bumper sticker produced by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an apparent take-off from Howard Dean’s proclamation that he represented “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” (Which, apparently, Dean borrowed from the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone.)

Progressive political activist groups MoveOn.org and Democracy for America (the latter of which grew from Howard Dean’s campaign for the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination) have thrown their political weight behind U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

In online voting last month, Warren was the choice of 42 percent of Democracy for America’s membership (myself included), with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at No. 2 (with 24 percent) and Billary Clinton at No. 3 (with 23 percent). After 81 percent of MoveOn.org’s membership (myself included) recently voted that MoveOn should encourage Warren to run for president, MoveOn launched the Run Warren Run campaign, which is at runwarrenrun.org.

In response to MoveOn’s move, Democracy for America today began another online survey of its membership, simply asking, “Should DFA draft Elizabeth Warren to run for president?” The survey closes on Tuesday. (DFA’s website indicates that if enough DFA members vote yes on drafting Warren, DFA would have its own draft-Warren effort, but it seems to me that DFA and MoveOn [and other progressive groups] could and probably should work together instead of in parallel, duplicating efforts.)

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s home page right now prominently features an article on and an image of Elizabeth Warren and offers for sale in its store (via its home page) a T-shirt that reads “I’m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.” (When you click through to buy the T-shirt, however, you see an image of the T-shirt that reads “I’m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of American politics.” I’ve sent the PCCC an e-mail to find out, I hope, which of those two not-so-subtly different messages the T-shirt [and the bumper sticker that you also can buy] actually convey.) I see no Billary gear (or gear for any other politician) offered up on the PCCC’s website.

The Clintonistas and other assorted unimaginative and dismissive types blow this stuff off, no doubt, but remind yourself that your Democratic Party primary voters and caucus goers are significantly further to the left — that is, progressive — than are your general election voters among whom Billary might not do too terribly (should she get that far).

And recall that Billary “Crown Me Already” Clinton came in at third place in the 2008 first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, behind the No. 1 Barack Obama and the No. 2 John Edwards, a stunning blow from which she never recovered, eventually losing, of course, to Obama.

Given that Billary is not the choice of the majority of MoveOn’s and Democracy for America ’s membership of progressives (nor, of course, is she the choice of the PCCC), how well can she do in Iowa in 2016 (and in the following 2016 primary-season contests) if she has a viable, more progressive (well, just an actually progressive) challenger?

But Elizabeth Warren won’t run, you protest.

It’s true that in the end she might not run – it remains, after all, her choice – but it sure would be easier for Warren to run with these outside progressive groups clamoring for her to run, wouldn’t it?

Warren truthfully could point to popular demand as having compelled her to jump into the race.

Such popular demand would give her at least some degree of political cover from the anti-democratic “Democrats” who believe that anyone who dares to challenge Queen Billary’s Claim to the Throne in the Oval Office should be excommunicated from the Democratic Party (if not executed altogether; yes, Billary would make a great decapitation-happy Red Queen).

If Warren does indeed run after all and the Clintonistas are too shrill in their anti-democratic attacks that no one should oppose Billary the Great for the party’s presidential nomination, they will look like the anti-democratic fascists that they are.

Even if Warren ran for the 2016 nomination but lost, surely she’d come in no lower than at second place, positioning her well for future presidential contests.

I can’t see Warren politically losing, really, from running for the White House right now.

If Billary Clinton wins the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, however, we all lose — whether she wins the general presidential election in November 2016 or not.

Bernie Sanders for President 2016 (thus far, anyway)

Associated Press photo

Progressive U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, probable 2016 presidential candidate, speaks at a news conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month geared toward overturning the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, which declared that corporations are people and as such have the “First-Amendment” right to spend lavishly on political candidates who will do their bidding.

Independent/democratic socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the sole individual on the planet who thus far has raised the prospect of running as an actually progressive presidential candidate against pseudo-progressive/Democrat in name only Billary Clinton. (It’s not about Billary, he has claimed, but oh, methinks, ’tis.)

“A, I don’t know if Hillary Clinton is running, and B, I don’t know what she is running on,” Sanders said on “Meet the Press” yesterday. “But this is what I do know: I know the middle class in this country is collapsing. I know the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider. I know there is profound anger at the greed on Wall Street, anger at corporate America, anger at the political establishment — and anger, by the way, at the media establishment. The American people want real change, and I’ve been taking on the big-money interests and special interests all of my political life.”

“The issue,” Sanders added, “is not Hillary Clinton.” But since Sanders’ actually progressive agenda is antithetical to Billary’s actual agenda – whether she’ll cop to possessing her actual center-right, pro-plutocratic, pro-corporate, pro-Wall-Street-weasel, pro-military-industrial-complex agenda or not – it is about Billary.

I’m fine with having our first female president, but I don’t want just any female president, just so that we can say that we finally have had our first female president. We’ve been there, done that with our first black president, haven’t we?

I want a progressive president. The other demographics – skin tone, the possession of ovaries or testes, age, religion, etc. – I don’t much give a flying fuck about. I’m a gay man, and sure, from a purely selfish, tribalistic standpoint I suppose that it would be great to have our first openly gay male president (and if he is married, perhaps our first First Husband in the White House, too), but if he were a wingnut or even a so-called “centrist” or “moderate” (translation: sellout), no thanks; give me the actually progressive heterosexual president instead, hands down.

I’d be fine with Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Masschusetts as our first female president, but although she put a book out not long ago, she seems unlikely, to me, to run against Billary in 2016.

That’s because the unspoken but very understood rule within the Democratic Party establishment is that you don’t run against Billary, even though she has zero charisma, zero accomplishments, and her unlikeability (under which falls her apparent inability to generate an iota of actual human warmth) means that she’d be a risky candidate to put up against the Repugnican Tea Party not only in 2016, but in any presidential election year. (Besides, as I have noted, Billary acts like a Repugnican Lite, and why would the voters choose Repugnican Lite when they can vote for an actual, full-bodied Repugnican?)

After seeing Barack Obama’s ubiquitous promises of “hope” and “change” crash and burn, my bet is that the voters are hungry, starving, for an actually progressive Democratic — that is, real Democratic — presidential candidate right about now.

For millions of actual progressives like me, if we’re going to just coronate Queen Billary already, there is no reason whatsoever for me to pay attention or to become involved in the 2016 presidential race in any way (except, of course, to blog about how awful Billary is). That “At least Billary isn’t a Repugnican!” isn’t an effective talking point for the Democrats anymore, because she essentially is a Repugnican. She ran to the right of Obama in 2008 and she’s running to the right of him again — and he’s already right of center.

And I truly want a truly progressive candidate to win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. No, I don’t just want Billary to be forced by a progressive/actually Democratic challenger, during the upcoming presidential primary season, to pretend to be the populist that she never has been and never will be, only to go on to the White House to govern like her husband did or like Obama has: as a Democrat in name only, driving yet another nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party. I want Billary “Crown Me Already!” Clinton to be denied the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016 just as she was in 2008. I want her pathetic, sorry, right-wing, self-serving, pro-plutocratic ass to be defeated once again. (Again, though, should she emerge as the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, I can see the Repugnican candidate beating her.)

Bernie Sanders stated yesterday that he’s still considering which course of action would be better for him, should he decide to run for president for 2016 (and it sounds to me like he already has decided that he will): to run on the Democratic Party ticket (although he isn’t a Democrat, as an independent/democratic socialist he always has caucused with the Democrats in D.C. [what other choice has he really had?]) or to run on an independent ticket, a la Ralph Nader.

Given the uphill battle of running as an independent presidential candidate in all 50 states, it seems to me that Sanders would run as a Democrat.

Either way, if it comes down to Bernie or Billary, I’m going with Bernie.

No way in hell am I going to hold my nose and suppress my gag reflex while I cast a vote for Billary Clinton. I want to feel good (not guilty and dirty) about my vote, and I would feel great voting for Bernie Sanders — hell, if for no other reason than that for a long time now, it has looked as though no one else left of center would have the cajones to challenge Queen Billary in 2016, with the conventional thinking being that because she came in at second place in 2008, 2016 automatically is rightfully all hers.

A run for the White House by Sanders — especially as a Democrat, but again, I would support him as an independent — would represent to me a glimmer of hope, the possibility that the teeny-tiny ember that is all that is left of what the Democratic Party used to be still, even at this late hour, even after what Bill Clinton (with Billary) and what Barack Obama have done to the party, can be stoked to its once-flaming glory.

P.S. A Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren or Warren-Sanders ticket would, I think, be my dream ticket for 2016. And I’d still entertain a return to the presidential arena by Howard Dean, although that seems unlikely.