Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

Is the media about to have a conniption fit over Bernie Sanders?

Bernie Sanders might actually win this thing. A recent poll has him in first place in Iowa, and he is basically tied with Joe Biden in New Hampshire. Sanders is running second in Nevada and South Carolina, where he has vastly improved his margins among southern black voters (which doomed his candidacy in 2016), and outright ahead in California. The Democratic Party might be about to nominate the first self-identified socialist for president in American history.

This is already sparking panic and anger among the Democratic Party establishment and their co-ideologues in the mainstream press. If Sanders’ polls continue to rise — and especially if he starts to win — we’re about to see an epic conniption fit. In fact, it’s already started.

On the party side, the case against Sanders is supposedly about electability. Sanders would lose to Trump, complain the party hacks, which simply can’t be risked. “You need a candidate with a message that can help us win swing voters in battleground states,” former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the Associated Press. “The degree of difficulty dramatically increases under a Bernie Sanders candidacy. It just gets a lot harder.” An anonymous Democratic “strategist” complained to The Hill that Sanders’ attacks on Biden were unfair and helping Trump. And this isn’t new — for months party grandees and big donors have been fretting that with Biden running such a feckless campaign, there isn’t a strong not-Sanders campaign to unify around.

Now, Donald Trump is an incumbent president and the economy is strong, and therefore Sanders definitely could lose. But that is also true of any other candidate — there are simply no guarantees here. Electability is a vague and nearly unknowable concept, and trusting that centrists are a safer bet has repeatedly blown up in the party’s face. As Ryan Grim writes in his book We’ve Got People, the party elite pulled this same trick in 1988 against Jesse Jackson when he ran a Sanders-style campaign attempting to assemble a “Rainbow Coalition” of working-class people of all races. When Jackson pulled out a surprise victory in the Michigan primary, elites scrambled to boost up Michael Dukakis, arguing that he was the best chance to best then-Vice President George Bush. Dukakis, of course, went on to lose badly.

Similar arguments were deployed on behalf of John Kerry against Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential primary. Better to have a war hero to run in a time of war, the argument went. Instead, Kerry got badly tangled up with his votes to invade Iraq but against additional spending to fund it, and he lost to George W. Bush. And as Grim notes, when Rahm Emanuel ran the Democratic campaign for the House in 2006, he recruited and campaigned for conservative candidates — and cut money off from progressives who won primaries, deeming their seats “unwinnable.” But some of those he refused to fund still went on to win in the general, while others lost by only a tiny margin. Party hacks like Emanuel make centrist “electability” a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Funny, look at the headline:

Flap With Warren Knocks Sanders’ Strategy off Course

The best-laid plans of Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders were upended this week – and his campaign is struggling to get back on track.

Sanders went into the week looking to draw a sharper contrast between his progressive agenda and that of former Vice President Joe Biden, a moderate and his top rival for the Democratic nomination.

Instead, his flap with fellow senator, friend and progressive ally Elizabeth Warren over gender and electability has dominated the news, an unwelcome twist for a campaign that pulled into the top of the race in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire just weeks before the first voting begins.

The U.S. senator from Vermont has found himself on the defensive after Warren accused him of telling her during a 2018 meeting that a woman could not beat Republican President Donald Trump in the November election. Sanders has denied saying that.

The disagreement between the two liberals grew more inflamed after a CNN microphone caught Warren telling Sanders he made her out to be a liar at Tuesday’s debate in Iowa.

The back-and-forth has had their supporters at odds on social media, distressing progressives who want to present a unified front against a “corporate Democrat” going into the 2020 nominating contests, which kick off on Feb. 3 in Iowa.

So far, the dispute does not appear to have hurt Sanders, who saw his support among independents and Democrats rise by 2 points to 20% – ahead of Biden’s 19% – in the past week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday.

Bernie is struggling… his campaign is off course… but “the dispute does not appear to have hurt Sanders”. Funny how they still manage to get a dozen+ paragraphs out of that.

Hilary Rosen: “I Believe Elizabeth Warren,” Bernie Sanders Was Trying To Get Her Not To Run For President

Democratic party operative and CNN political commentator Hilary Rosen said Sen. Elizabeth Warren was “seething” at the debate because she felt confident that Sen. Bernie Sanders told her that a woman could not win in 2020.

“I think it pissed her off that Bernie denied that he ever said it,” Rosen told CNN’s Don Lemon. “Look, he was trying to get her not to run for president. Who do we believe? Like I believe Elizabeth Warren.”

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/14/michigan-voter-turnout-2020-election-results-delayed/4460065002/

Huge Michigan voter turnout could turn into national embarrassmentTwo Michigan elections experts have some record-breaking predictions for 2020 that could end up putting Michigan in a potentially embarrassing national spotlight.

Chris Thomas, the former Michigan director of elections at the Secretary of State’s Office, said Michigan is on track for a record-breaking turnout in 2020, reaching up to 5.3 million voters. The last time Michigan came anywhere close to that total was 2008 when 5 million Michiganders cast ballots.

Mark Grebner, the founder of the East Lansing-based Practical Political Consulting, which tracks voters and voting trends in Michigan, had an even more eye-popping prediction of 6 million votes in November.

“Turnout is going to be huge,” Grebner said. “And there are going to be big problems.”

[Stay up to date on Michigan politics as we near the 2020 election: Sign up for our free elections newsletter here.]

They both cited the enthusiasm shown in the 2018 election cycle when a record 4.3 million voters cast ballots in an off-year election. That total busted the previous record by more than a half-million votes and both expect that the controversial presidency of Donald Trump will only see higher than normal civic engagement rates in 2020

The video is worth watching

Bernie Sanders’s Foreign Policy Is Too Evidence-Based for the Beltway’s Taste

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post published a trove of confidential documents detailing “explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public” about the prospects for victory in Afghanistan. These papers revealed that America’s military commanders distorted “statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case,” while its civilian leadership buried intelligence testifying to the Taliban’s resurgent strength. The aim of this systematic mendacity was to insulate our foreign-policy elites’ plans for “winning” the conflict from the threat of an informed public debate. And yet, even as our leaders sacrificed democratic accountability to the higher cause of military victory, they had no clear idea of how to define the latter concept, let alone achieve it. Now, 18 years, $1 trillion, and over 2,300 American deaths later, the U.S. military is slowly but surely bequeathing Afghanistan to the Islamist forces that U.S. troops were trying to topple in the first place.

One week after the Post alerted the public to this historic scandal, Congress rewarded the bureaucracy responsible for it with a $22 billion budget increase. Before Donald Trump took office, the U.S. was spending more on its military each year than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan’s military spending, combined. With the passage of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon’s budget is now $130 billion larger than it was in 2016. Meanwhile, nearly 2 million Americans are still living in places that do not have running water.

Eighty-six senators voted for that NDAA. Bernie Sanders was not one of them. Despite the Post’s revelations — and the Taliban’s impending triumph — almost no one in Congress has been willing to describe the war in Afghanistan as a mistake. The socialist senator is an exception.

Right-Wing ‘Review Boards’ in Missouri Would Pave Way for Arresting Librarians Over Books Deemed ‘Inappropriate’

The Missouri Library Association says it is monitoring a bill put forward in the state House by a Republican lawmaker, which, if passed, could create committees across the state with the power to jail librarians for distributing material the panels deem “inappropriate.”

Under the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act (H.B. 2044), locally elected “parental library review boards” would be permitted to unilaterally remove books they decide are sexually explicit or otherwise inappropriate for young readers from library shelves.

Libraries that allow children to borrow books that have been banned or whose access has been restricted would risk losing state funding, and librarians could be ordered to pay fines of up to $500 or sentenced to jail time for up to a year.

The Missouri Library Association (MLA), a non-profit which advocates for library service and librarians, said in a statement and on social media on Wednesday that it “will always stand against censorship and for the freedom to read, and therefore opposes Missouri House Bill 2044.”

The Warren-Sanders Squabble is Foolish

I like Elizabeth Warren. I also like Bernie Sanders. On ideological grounds, they are my preferred candidates. Whether either can win remains to be seen. The primary contest is an important “barometer,” though there is no ultimate test beyond winning itself.

Warren’s electability argument might be right. Or it might not be right. Again, we will see how things unfold . . . .

At the same time, I think the latest brouhahas about Sanders and his “dissing” of Warren are kind of absurd.

First it was claimed that he was “going on the attack” because apparently some campaign offices were making scripted phone calls to potential voters that said that Warren was a more centrist candidate than Sanders, that her base of support was “educated people,” and that she did not mobilize new voters the way that Sanders does.

We can argue about whether these claims are right or wrong (they seem arguably true to me, especially the first two). But in any case, it is hard to see them as slanderous. or even “attacking.” They do assert a difference between the candidates–and there is a difference, indeed more than one! Isn’t that what campaigns do?

And isn’t that what Warren has done recently when she has muted her support for Medicare for All, and then claimed that she is the best candidate because she can “unify” disparate wings of the party?

To Polar Bear about Bruno Latour

and the lack of common ground for geopolitical issues

Polar Bear provided a link to a book review of Bruno’s latest book. It was behind a paywall so I didn’t get the whole thing. The book itself has been Xeroxed and posted on the web and is linked below. It is only 102 pages of texts with long footnotes.

Bruno Latour
Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime

***
Here is a later article by Bruno Latour which describes the challenge of global politics.

“We don’t seem to live on the same planet”
—A Fictional Planetarium

Architects and designers are facing a new problem when they aspire to build for a habitable planet.1 They have to answer a new question, because what used to be a
poor joke—“My dear fellow, you seem to live on another planet”—has become
literal—“Yes, we do intend to live on a different planet!” In the “old days” when
political scientists talked about geopolitics, they meant different nations with
opposing interests waging wars on the same material and geographic stage. Today,
geopolitics is also concerned with wars over the definition of the stage itself. A
conflict will be called, from now on, “of planetary relevance” not because it has the
planet for a stage, but because it is about which planet you are claiming to inhabit and
defend.

I am starting from the premise that what I have called the New Climatic Regime
organizes all political affiliations.2 The climate question is not one aspect of politics
among others, but that which defines the political order from beginning to end,
forcing all of us to redefine the older questions of social justice along with those of
identity, subsistence, and attachment to place. In recent years we have shifted from
questions of ecology—nature remaining outside the social order—to questions of
existential subsistence on threatened territories. Nature is no longer outside us but
under our feet, and it shakes the ground. Just as at the beginning of modern political
philosophy, in the time of Thomas Hobbes, we are dealing with humans not unified
but divided by nature to the point that they are engaged in civil wars as violent as the
religious wars of the past, and forced to look for peace by altogether reinventing the
social order.3 Climate mutation means that the question of the land on which we all
stand has come back into focus, hence the general political disorientation, especially
for the left, which did not expect to have to talk again of “people” and “soil”—
questions mostly abandoned to the right.

Since it is impossible to tackle this sort of conflict head on, I will turn to fiction and
take you on a brief tour of a planetarium of my invention. Whereas old planetary
influences on our horoscopes have been thrown into doubt for quite some time,
there is no question that the gravitational pulls of my seven hypothetical planets
have an immense influence on the way you feel, the way you behave, and especially
the way you predict your destiny. So, let’s visit a fictional astrology verging on
serious geopolitics!

The principle that will lead me in this reckoning is the link between the territory
necessary for our subsistence and the territory that we recognize—legally,
affectively—as our own and thus as the source of our freedom and autonomy.4 In what follows, a territory is considered not as a chunk of space but as all the entities,
no matter how remote, that allow a particular agent to subsist. I will start from the
assumption that the present disorientation is due to the fabulous increase in the lack
of fit between the two sets of constraints: we inhabit as citizens a land that is not the
one we could subsist on, hence the increased feeling of homelessness, a feeling thatis
transforming the former ecological questions into a new set of more urgent and
more tragic political struggles. People everywhere are again in need of land, a
situation that I call, for this reason, the new “wicked universal

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/podcasts/the-daily/bernie-sanders-latino.html

The Obama coalition has become almost mythic within the Democratic Party for having united first-time voters, people of color and moderates to win the presidency in 2008. This year, Senator Bernie Sanders is betting that he can win with the support of young voters and people of color — but without the moderates.

To do that, he’s counting on winning over and energizing the Latino vote. The ultimate test of whether he will be able to do that is in California, where Latinos are the single biggest nonwhite voting bloc. While young Latinos in California overwhelmingly support Mr. Sanders, to become the Democratic nominee, he will need the support of their parents and grandparents as well.

What a world. Ive posted Tucker two days in a row

Some good news in Australia

As wildfires tear through Australia, a specialized team of firefighters has managed to save hidden groves of the Wollemi pine — a rare prehistoric tree that outlived the dinosaurs.

The trees are so rare, they were thought to be extinct until 1994.https://t.co/oLHrccHopZ

— NPR (@NPR) January 16, 2020

On cue, Real Clear Politics, The Hill, and Politico join in to anoint Biden after the CNN manufactured debate flap. Corporate media is so transparent.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/17/this_was_bidens_best_week_of_the_whole_campaign__142178.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/478687-biden-could-be-winner-in-warren-sanders-fight

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/17/biden-2020-election-100184

The Green New Deal challenge

The solution to the plastic waste crisis? It isn’t recycling:
There’s no way of making current levels of consumption ‘environmentally friendly’

I saw the short interview before but missed the fact that it was with the NYT and the tweet says that Bernie’s kick ass is probably why NYT will not endorse him on Jan 19 in two days

On Sun the NYTimes will endorse its candidate for President. They sat down with each candidate to interview them. During his interview, Bernie wouldn’t suck up. When referring 2 the struggle of the working class, he told them,”Maybe the NY Times has failed them too.” Wow. Truth. https://t.co/nkYDDnlMNz

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 17, 2020

In the long pod cast a couple of days ago from Michael Moore he concentrated on Liz and her lies.

During that podcast he mentioned that a couple FBI agents and a NY City cop came to his place in NY (lives there part time) because the bomber suspect in FL had more material on Moore than any other person. His van had bull eyes on several photos including Moore. They went to the post office before going to his house to see if there was anything sent in the mail to him like he did for others.

He noted in that podcast that he had captured the bomber on tape during taping a rally in FL. A little over 3 min of raw film that didn’t make the cut for his movie Fahrenheit 11/9

Shows the fanatics that we are up against and I don’t want to think about them out there and what they might do

The Day We Were Face to Face with Cesar Sayoc While Making Our Movie

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/17/believe-women-elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders

But “believe women” is getting thrown around by political strategists and official opinion-havers to support the Elizabeth Warren’s claim that Bernie Sanders told her, in a private meeting with no witnesses and no evidentiary support, that a woman could not win the presidency in 2020. This is not only a grotesque distortion of what “believe women” is supposed to mean, it undermines the good work the phrase’s use was doing.

The term “believe women” was never supposed to mean “believe everything that women say and don’t bother to investigate their claims”. The simplicity of the message has irked many – including me – in its ability to be misused and misappropriated since its inception, but many activists have taken it up in good faith to say believing women and believing victims is only the start of a process toward justice. But in the last couple days after Warren’s campaign first made the accusation and then double-downed at Tuesday’s debate (with an unfair and obviously biased assist from debate moderator Abby Phillip), many are using it to try to shut down any debate, investigation, or dissent. When Sanders’ campaign denied the accusation and supporters showed interviews going back decades of Sanders saying a woman could be president, plus evidence of Sanders’ wide support of female candidates in various campaigns, commentators remained unmoved. “Believe women.”

The language of abuse and trauma is creeping into political rhetoric, as if every interaction between a man and a woman these days can be understood as a potential violation. Virginia Heffernan wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Sanders had gaslighted Warren over whether he told her a female candidate couldn’t win the 2020 election.” Gaslighting is a term for one person lying to their romantic partner so effectively and consistently that they start to question their version of reality. Had Heffernan simply said Sanders lied, it would not have given the accusation the melodramatic pull of centuries of stories of women being tormented and abused by the men in their lives. Lying is something politicians do. Gaslighting is something misogynistic monsters do.

The goal is to put the offense on a higher level than one of just lying. That way, if the Sanders campaign decides to point to all of the lies Warren has told throughout her career – that her father was a janitor, that she is Native American – her lies won’t matter as much because she’s just electioneering while his lies are rooted in misogyny. It’s a trick that still works for Hillary Clinton, who has repeatedly complained about the lack of support Sanders gave to her campaign, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. (Clinton, after losing the primary to Obama in 2008, appeared at two rallies with Obama and did 10 solo campaign appearances to help him get elected. Sanders, after losing the primary to Clinton in 2016, did three events with Clinton and 37 solo events.) Many of her supporters still claim this supposed lack of support is proof of Sanders’ “problem with women”.

This kind of dirty politics can be effective, but the real losers here are the women for whom “believe women” still means something. To turn it from a campaign for empathy to a cheap slogan to siphon off primary voters hurts the credibility of activists who have been trying to use it for good.

There’s always been an element of “by any means necessary” in American politics, with tactics like George W Bush’s 2000 campaign telephoning primary voters in South Carolina to insinuate his opponent John McCain had an “illegitimate black child” being surprisingly common. But it’s frankly disgusting to see so-called feminists undercut the work of judicial activists all for a political win. Using “believe women” in a smear campaign can only work to support the big smirk and the eyeroll of the people we need most to sway.

Voting has begun!

My amazing Rep @IlhanMN feelin’ the Bern 🔥 in the arctic cold MN temperatures… primary vote for @BernieSanders has been cast! ✅🗳 GO BERNIE!! #BernieSanders #Bernie2020 #FeelTheBern #minnesota #democraticprimaries #ivoted pic.twitter.com/e6yQD1BsYL

— Shelby Schnoor (@MNWildHeart) January 17, 2020

It must be nice to be able to buy, well at least have the money to try to buy, everything!

El Bloombito parody account says Bloomberg reached out with proposal to work together

The Michael Bloomberg campaign allegedly reached out to a parody Twitter account dubbed “Miguel Bloombito” in search of potential digital collaboration.

The account teases multi-billionaire, who has hired a Spanish tutor since the start of his campaign, on his mangled pronunciation of the second most spoken language in the U.S.

The account been making fun of Bloomberg since he was mayor, playing off his nickname in New York’s Latino community: “El Bloombito.”

Rachel Figueroa, a Staten Island resident who runs the account, told The Hill a producer at Hawkfish, the Bloomberg-owned tech firm that’s handling the campaign’s digital presence, reached out to her Wednesday asking if they could create content together.

“We are working with the Mike Bloomberg campaign on editorial content and we wanted to reach out because we are super interested in working with your Bloombito parody account,” the employee wrote, according to screenshots Figueroa shared with The Hill.

“I appreciate you thinking of me but no thank you,” she responded.

I missed this:

Black caucus in Nevada’s largest county endorses Sanders

“Bernie Sanders has been a lifelong advocate for civil rights and economic justice. His presidential campaign goes the furthest in addressing issues that impact the African American community nationally and here in Nevada,” caucus chairwoman Yvette Williams said in a statement. “As representatives of this community, CCBC looks forward to working with Sen. Bernie Sanders to ensure our political system works for everyone.”

Clark county, Nevada’s most populous county, includes Las Vegas. The Clark County Education Association, the state’s biggest teachers union, also endorsed Sanders earlier this week.

Nevada is also the first primary state with a substantial Latino population, a demographic with which Sanders has led in several polls this election cycle, particularly among young voters.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/478653-black-caucus-of-nevadas-largest-county-endorses-sanders

Grassroots effort to put up some billboards in SC for #MedicareForAll —> https://t.co/KEXxU3PJPO

— ashlyn “billionaires shouldnt exist” brierre (@ashlynbrierre) January 17, 2020

this is spreading, very purposefully. don’t know if Bannon’s group is still strong, but it seems they have made quite a contribution.

The night the video was recorded, Bolsonaro had said of Alvim: “Now we have a real secretary of culture.”

Brazil culture secretary forced out after appearing to paraphrase Nazi Goebbels

My @guardian storyhttps://t.co/PeNqraANQf

— Sam Cowie (@SamCowie84) January 17, 2020

250 pages.

37,500 words.

Not a single damn mention of “climate change.”

Trump’s NAFTA is a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.

I voted NO because the future of our planet is more important than the short-term profits of Exxon Mobil and Chevron. pic.twitter.com/YgSZcigjjX

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 17, 2020

this is the guy that says these really ugly and violent things. I’m thinking he may well be a plant from Trump.

That’s the beginning of the long-overdue governmental control needed to save our failed country. #Bernie2020

— Kyle Jurek (@KyleJurek3) January 17, 2020

What Separates Sanders From Warren (and Everybody Else)

In America, the term “middle class” has long been used to describe the majority of wage and salary earners, from those receiving a median annual income of around $50,000 to those who earn three or four times that amount. Whether Democrat or Republican, politicians from across the political aisle claim to represent the middle class—that vast-yet-amorphous segment of the population where the managers and the managed all seem to fit together.

The term has always been somewhat problematic when it comes to politics. As Joan C. Williams observes in her 2017 book, “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America,” a “central way we make class disappear is to describe virtually everyone as ‘middle class.’ ” The majority of Americans see themselves as middle class, including those in the top 10% earning several times the average income. According to Williams, a close friend of hers who “undoubtedly belonged to the top 1%” once referred to herself as middle class, a perspective that the author describes as “class cluelessness.”

This cluelessness was also evident in a New York Times article last summer titled “What Middle Class Families Want Politicians to Know,” which included interviews with a number of purportedly middle class families with household incomes of up to $400,000 (only one of the interviewees earned less than $100,000, with the average around $200,000).

The fact that people who earn a quarter-million dollars annually place themselves in the same category as those earning $70,000 tells us just how politically useless the term “middle class” has become in contemporary America. Even when we take into account geographic factors and fluctuations in the cost of living, there is little rational justification for categorizing a $60,000-a-year blue-collar worker with a lawyer or doctor earning in excess of $200,000.

In the post-World War II era, thanks to the struggle of labor and the policies of the New Deal, which aimed to reduce inequality and mediate class tensions, many in the working class became comfortably middle class.

The new middle class flourished until the capitalist class decided to revolt against the legacy of the New Deal toward the end of the 20th century. In the contemporary era, many who would have been middle-class in the postwar years have effectively been proletarianized once again, and economic inequality has returned pre-Great Depression heights. Proletarianization, Mills explained, “refers to shifts of middle-class occupations toward wage-workers in terms of: income, property, skill, prestige or power, irrespective of whether or not the people involved are aware of these changes.

The proletarianization of the middle class over the past 50 years has had an enormously detrimental effect on communities across the country, but it has taken quite a while for many working people in America to recognize their new situation in terms of consciousness and outlook. The enduring popularity of the term “middle class” reflects this state of affairs.

In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has deliberately chosen to use “working class” over “middle class.” Not surprisingly, that candidate is Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The more young and working-class people come to recognize their own situation and place in the 21st century American economy, the more they seem to embrace “socialist” policies that are rejected by “middle class” sensibilities.

In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has made raising levels of class consciousness part of his campaign strategy, and in an election that could very well be determined by working-class voters, this may be the strategy to defeat Trump.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sanders-is-the-only-candidate-who-gets-what-working-class-really-means/

Lowkey on the military industrial complex pic.twitter.com/NHVpwypn5o

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) January 17, 2020

Eric Levitz takes apart David Brooks’ latest lunacy.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-david-brooks-class-war.html

David Brooks’s latest column asserts that, in the United States, workers’ wages are determined largely by the value of what they produce. The quality of the well-paid pundit’s ensuing argument fatally undermines its own premise.

Brooks frames his case as a jeremiad against “Theyism” — which is to say, the belief that there is a “malevolent, elite ‘they’ out there” who “are destroying life for the rest of us.” Brooks argues that the malevolent politicians who engage in this rhetorical mode — namely Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — take a “genuine tension in society” and blow it up “into an all-explaining cartoon in which one part of America is trying to destroy the other part.”

The columnist proceeds to sketch out an all-explaining cartoon in which the They-ists are trying to destroy the capitalist system that is working so well for the rest of us.

Specifically, Brooks posits that Bernie Sanders’s “class-war Theyism” — which holds that “billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else” — is plainly false. What follows is exceptionally dense with fallacies, even for a David Brooks column.

The billionaire class’s investment in the GOP is one reason why our historically wealthy nation has an aberrantly stingy welfare state. And our aberrantly stingy welfare state is a leading cause of our nation’s extraordinarily high levels of economic inequality. If Brooks’s thesis were correct — and America’s inequality problem were driven overwhelming by gaps in productivity rather than policy choices — then inequality in the U.S. and Western Europe should have grown at roughly similar rates over the past four decades, as both regions were subject to the same basic economic developments. But this did not happen, because Western Europe’s plutocrats aren’t quite as good at class war as the ones we’ve got over here.

Fortunately for Brooks, precisely because his column is so exquisitely wrong, its wrongness will have no adverse impact on his economic condition. The market for all-explaining cartoons that comfort the comfortable is a lucrative one, and he is indisputably a master of his trade.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-sanders/after-feud-with-warren-bernie-sanders-releases-ad-aimed-at-women-idUSKBN1ZG2BO

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders, stung by a feud with progressive ally Elizabeth Warren over gender and electability, released an ad aimed at U.S. women voters on Friday touting his support for women’s rights.

Ahead of a weekend trip to New Hampshire, the second state to vote in the Democratic presidential nominating race next month, the ad highlights Sanders’ support for equal pay, abortion rights, paid family leave and affordable child care.

“Bernie Sanders is on our side and always has been,” the female narrator says in the ad, which the campaign said would air in New Hampshire along with a second video touting Sanders’ ambitious goals such as universal healthcare and affordable college.

“Women do not need 80 cents on the dollar. They need the whole damn dollar,” Sanders says in the television spot.

Shared because I love this pic of Bernie.

Sanders climbs, now tied with Biden among registered voters: Reuters pollhttps://t.co/igTSTjUhVw

— Rodney Latstetter (@proviewsusa) January 17, 2020

Not such a great California poll. (Survey USA). Not so different from the last poll except Warren is doing much better

https://abc7.com/5858442/

30% Joe Biden (+2 from Nov)
20% Bernie Sanders (+2)
20% Elizabeth Warren (+7)
8% Pete Buttigieg same
6% Mike Bloomberg (+3)
4% Andrew Yang (-1)
4% Tom Steyer
2% Tulsi Gabbard
2% Amy Klobuchar

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/01/why-does-bernie-sanders-love-trap-beats-so-much/

It turns out that Bernie loves a trap beat. Developed by hip-hop producers in Atlanta and across the South in the aughts, trap has risen to prominence and at times even melded into pop music’s genre-amorphous production palate. By 2017, it found Bernie. Flittering hi-hats, 808 drum sounds, and bouncing spectral synths began accompanying videos on textbook issues: the myth of trickle-down economics, Amazon not paying living wages, immigration reform. But the anti-war video was different. The unapologetic real talk about a manifestly grave issue, the rap braggadocio from a guy who once put out an album of lefty folk classics, the low-budget music video aesthetic—all of it led to the birth of a sort of meme. Trap Beat Bernie.

To discuss the beats, their thematic connections to Sanders’ core issues, and how his team thinks about its use of music, Mother Jones spoke to Ansel Herz and Katie Downey, respectively digital director and deputy digital director for Sanders’ press office.

Why the fuck Bernie Sanders drop a trap beat mid video https://t.co/CEj0VGEwCH

— _riq (@mvnza) January 3, 2020

Check us out! Rose Caucus united! https://t.co/hd7MUhHn3E

— Lauren Ashcraft for NY-12🌹 (@VoteAshcraft) January 17, 2020

DSA all the way!!! 🌹🌹🌹 pic.twitter.com/7Pi6kQgPmk

— Wesley J Wiles #MMT Radical Environmentalist 🌹 (@WilesWj) January 17, 2020

the knight is Bernie.

brb

Tune in for a treat! Lee is about to address the impending shitshow in the CA semi-closed primary!!! #Bernie2020 #BernieinCA #NotMeUs https://t.co/eD53PEp8sX

— CA Voter Education Eowyn🌹 (@WestCoastGadfly) January 18, 2020

pic.twitter.com/q12hRqpEiH

— Trish The Bernie Bro ✌️🇺🇸 🌹🆘🃏🏳️‍🌈 (@NotAMillennial5) January 18, 2020

I wonder why Warren world isn't attacking Bernie on his record or policies, and is instead leaning into this allegation of misogyny. Hm! https://t.co/OxOicz8OQY

— Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) January 16, 2020

Let’s be clear about who is rigging what: it is Donald Trump’s action to use the power of the federal government for his own political benefit that is the cause of the impeachment trial. Democrats are going to unite to sweep him out of the White House in November. https://t.co/FmtsHFsFhN

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 17, 2020

This man is leading with black voters. What a country.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-racist-myth-black-parents_n_5e2215a9c5b674e44b980327?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAArG2AFL6N67ZGm3BtbjhXcW-4AfZqGNMtdXIMQ-fobkxXlS5W4qM7lLERua0z7JZkRoXpRN1bgx6jRZXQpGdsWwlEuZEfQdvJMFX1NEtHgum7a9fegMMmmHKhNXoTiRBTnQFyZVwkTyBnpQlgIcjYq7aRyMema9YYCAYT7S0ZFq

In a long and often rambling interview with The New York Times published Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden responded to a question about the legacy of racism by blaming Black parents for the racial achievement gap.

In the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate, held in September, Biden had said that one way America could address the legacy of slavery and segregation was by bridging the “word gap” between white and Black children. “A kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there,” Biden said. He then recommended that Black parents play records at night to “make sure that kids hear words.”

The New York Times editorial board pressed Biden on these claims and asked him to elaborate on how solving the word gap would address the legacy of slavery. Biden began his answer by noting that former President Barack Obama had also been criticized for advising Black parents to take more responsibility for raising children. He then suggested that America could do more to help minority parents “provide more guidance and better guidance for themselves and their families.”

Finally, he suggested that Black parents may not participate in their children’s schooling due to embarrassment about their own lack of education. Biden said he’d learned from his wife, a former school teacher, that poor parents “don’t show up because they’re embarrassed. They’re embarrassed the teacher’s going to say — and it’s hard to say, ‘Well, I can’t read.’”

While somewhat masked by his choppy delivery, Biden’s suggestion that Black parents are reluctant to participate in their children’s education and are responsible for the racial achievement gap has no basis in fact.

This is the Intercept so what’s said here can be trusted. Bernie’s campaign wants to de-escalate. I don’t understand though why Warren did what she did on stage after the debate was over.

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/17/sanders-warren-vice-president-treasury-secretary/

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN of Sen. Bernie Sanders has researched the question of whether the same person can serve as both vice president and treasury secretary, according to three sources on the campaign. The person the Sanders campaign had in mind with the inquiry was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, his rival for the nomination and the bane of Wall Street over the last decade.

The answer the lawyers came back with was yes: There is nothing in the Constitution that bars the vice president from also serving as treasury secretary. Sanders has made no final decisions on a potential running mate or cabinet officers, considering such questions premature and presumptuous, but the research into the question of Warren’s dual eligibility reflects the political affinity that has long existed between the two — an affinity that was dealt a setback over the past week, as the pair clashed over the contents of a year-old private conversation. The sources were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

Warren and Sanders have been allies since at least 2008, before she came to Washington to chair a panel with oversight of the Wall Street bailout. An author of books on the struggles of the middle class and an expert on bankruptcy law, she was invited by Sanders to a Vermont town hall, where the two talked about their shared agenda. Sanders was a strong supporter of her effort to create a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the wake of the financial crisis and privately lobbied President Barack Obama to name her the head of the new agency. Ideologically, Sanders and Warren are largely aligned when it comes to Wall Street, though Warren has concentrated more attention on bankers, meaning the two different skill sets could complement each other in the same administration.

Warren, after her election to the Senate in 2012, lobbied for and won a seat on the Banking Committee, where she continued to hammer away at Wall Street and its feckless regulators. Warren’s is the type of oversight and policymaking Sanders could envision leading from the perch at the Treasury Department, sources said, with the added power of being vice president, as well. Though no serious discussions have begun about a cabinet or running mate, the campaign wanted to know whether such a scenario was constitutionally permissible.

The news of the Sanders’s camp interest in a dual role for Warren comes after a week of tension between the longtime allies.

It was widely assumed in the immediate aftermath of the story that Warren’s campaign had planted the story. Indeed, CNN anchor Erin Burnett said as much on air. But Burnett was merely making an assumption, and had no inside knowledge of the sources, two CNN sources told The Intercept.

Since Warren told the story more broadly to a group of journalists, CNN’s sources could have come from outside the campaign.

On Monday, Warren told The Intercept that her campaign did not intentionally plant the CNN story. That Warren told a number of journalists about the meeting a year ago adds context to that statement. If Warren had only told her closest advisers about the meeting, then it would be logical to assume that her campaign dictated the timing of the story, dropping it just ahead of a debate, and just weeks before the primary, to undercut Sanders. But since Warren told the story more broadly to a group of journalists, CNN’s sources could have come from outside the campaign. The revelation does not rule out the possibility that someone in her campaign was a source, but it opens up other possibilities, as well.

In chat groups and in private conversations with people outside the campaign, Warren aides have insisted that they were not the source of the leak, and only learned about it in the midst of debate prep, contributing to the delayed response. The first time the campaign saw Sanders’s on-record denial was in print in the CNN story. “What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist, and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could,” Sanders said. After the story broke, the tension continued to escalate.

Neither camp took potential offroads. Sanders could have allowed that since he had said that “Trump is a sexist…who would weaponize whatever he could,” that he could understand how Warren may have inferred from that that he didn’t think a woman could overcome such obstacles. Warren could have said that she takes her friend at his word that he didn’t mean it, and the press could have moved on. Neither gave an inch, though, and Warren issued a blunt statement. “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed,” Warren said in her statement, that didn’t come until 7:30 in the evening, after the story had festered for much of the day.

Bernie rising, Warren stagnant. Bernie clearly second. Bernie leading the under 50s at 32% to Biden’s 24% and Warren’s 16%. SUSA has been more Biden friendly than other polls but it’s good that Bernie is rising more than anyone other than Bloomberg.

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=b4747822-277e-4d2c-b896-eb4e04672c09

National SUSA poll
Biden 32 (+2)
Bernie 21 (+4)
Warren 14 (-1)
Buttigieg 9 (-2)
Bloomberg 9 (+6)

The other person cannot refute AKasparian, changes topic lol https://t.co/j9FU8S0vK4

— Walter Mathilde (@AynRand_is_Dead) January 18, 2020