Biden's Got His Ole Smear Machine Out And Aimed Directly At Elizabeth Warren And Bernie

Imagine, if you will, the likely parameters of a Trump vs Biden campaign. The burning issues: we will be asked to decide the presidency on:

• Who lies more?
• Whose dementia is further along?
• Who's the bigger racist?
• Whose family is more corrupt?
• Who is the lesser evil?

Now consider the likely parameters if it's Bernie or Elizabeth vs Trump-- how to serve America's working families. And that isn't one where Trump can do anything but lie-- incoherently. On Medicare-For-All, he's probably already taking lessons from Biden, who worries, frantically, that 79% of Democratic primary voters want Medicare-for-All... until they are lied to about it. Lying about Medicare-for-All, which you'll recall was endorsed by Obama-- is all Biden ever does when it comes to discussing healthcare. Sahil Kapur reported for Bloomberg today that "A new poll by a firm linked to Joe Biden is testing messages designed to undercut support among Democrats for Medicare for All, one of the most contentious issues splitting the party’s top presidential contenders. The first? The toxic right-wing Third Way. Kapur reported that the Third Way scumbags "found that primary voters start off favoring the government-run health care system by a margin of 79% to 21%, but can be persuaded to oppose it. The study showed that Democrats are most swayed by the arguments that the program would impose a heavy cost on taxpayers and threaten Medicare for senior citizens," two slimy Biden lies, lies that expose what Biden has always really thought of working families.

The Biden-Third Way tactics encourage deceitful headlines like this one over at Fox.com today:

And this one at the always predictable-- and not in a good way-- NY Post, another Murdoch property:

There was an interesting piece by David Daley in The Guardian over the weekend, one that should have been carried in U.S. media but was largely ignored: Ilhan Omar: Biden not right candidate for 'progress we all want to see'. It happened at the Iowa People’s Presidential Forum on Saturday, down the road from the idiotic and humiliating-- but widely covered-- Polk County Steak Fry. There were 19 candidates (including "candidates") at the Steak Fry, but just 4 at the People's Forum. Obviously Biden wasn't there. "To a number of speakers at the forum" wrote Daley, "his absence spoke volumes."

The Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of four new members of the House of Representatives racially abused by Donald Trump, gave the keynote speech. She demanded “a president who realises we are not just fighting for one election, we are fighting for the very soul of our democracy and what society we want to become.”

Asked by The Guardian if Biden could be that candidate, Omar was less than optimistic.

“There are few people who fit into the kind of progress that we all want to see in this country,” Omar said. “And I would say he is not one of them.

“I think it has been very clear to many of the people who have been creating the kind of movement that is exciting generations, that we want somebody who really has a plan that is going to tackle a lot of the systematic challenges that we have, and he doesn’t.”

Asked about Biden’s absence, former housing secretary and presidential hopeful Julián Castro told The Guardian: “I’ll just say that if we’re going to win this election in 2020, it’s going to be because we excite people, and we can’t excite them if we don’t show up for them.”

Like the other candidates who attended, Castro was pushed by questioners from Iowa and other midwestern states on subjects including Medicare for All, immigration reform and the creation of a “Homes Guarantee”-- an initiative that would create 12m new housing units supported by federal rent control to combat a growing housing crisis... Of the four candidates who appeared, only Sanders has endorsed a plan for federal rent control.

...No candidate was as warmly received as Sanders, who was given standing ovations as he answered questions from community leaders. Among a progressive audience there was little evidence that he was slipping, as the most recent polls suggest.

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor, Pete Buttigieg, drew perhaps the most lukewarm response. As he responded to a question about Medicare expansion, which he supports while advocating for a private insurance option, he met with chants of “Medicare for All.” Organisers intervened to quieten the crowd.

The questioner, Sameena Mustafa of Seniors in Action in Chicago, asked a follow-up.

“A market-driven approach has meant that 40,000 people die a year without healthcare, that a $6 vial of insulin is being sold for $300,” she said. “We know as president you will be commander-in-chief. Will you be the healer-in-chief?”

“You can count on it,” Buttigieg said.

Mustafa did not seem convinced.

Yesterday, Status Quo Joe, apparently cognizant that Elizabeth Warren is beginning to overtake him in more and more polls, lashed out at her, like the vicious mad dog he's always been, using GOP and corporate talking points to smear her as a tax raiser and as dishonest. I should point out that according to PolitiFact, Biden is a congenital liar while Warren isn't.

Yesterday, Biden said that Elizabeth Warren would "raise people's taxes" if she became president and managed to implement her proposal for Medicare for All and then-- the asshole who almost never opens his mouth without lying-- criticized her for not being "straightforward" in her support for universal health care. He said that Warren would not be able to beat Trump if she could not "level" with audiences about the details of her plans. "Let's at least acknowledge, tell Elizabeth to tell [us] that it's gonna cost a lot of money. And she's gonna raise people's taxes doing it. And what are we going to do in the middle of a recession, if we end up there?"