Who's Worse-- Mayo Pete, Status Quo Joe or Michael Bloomberg?

Another addition to the B Team

I saw a headline yesterday, How The Insufferably Woke Help Trump. Uggghh, how did that Fox crap get into my news feed? But it wasn't Fox, it was a pro-Biden op-ed by insufferably #NeverWoke 65 year old NY Times columnist Timothy Egan. His sister is like my brother-in-law, except he loves his sister, who works cleaning toilets in a Walmart in eastern rural Oregon. I've long ago given up on my brother-in-law, who I've known since we were both teenagers in the '60s. Is there a pc word for "retard?" He's that. Egan seems to think his sister is still salvageable even though no matter how much he points out "that Trump is trying to take away her health care protections by litigating to kill Obamacare, that his tariffs have made it harder to pay her bills, that he is the most repulsive and creepy man ever to occupy the White House, she holds firm. Why? One reason is what she hears from the other side. Many Democrats, she says, are dismissive of her religious beliefs and condescending of her lot in life. She’s turned off by the virtue-signaling know-it-alls."

I feel bad; we've failed people like his sister and my brother-in-law. And his sister is probably a rocket scientist or novelist who works at the Walmart cleaning toilets because she finds it meditative. It's possible. Alan Grayson is one of the smartest people I ever met and he put himself through Harvard cleaning toilets. My brother-in-law, on the other hand, has an IQ too low to understand anything more abstract that how to turn on the Rush Limbaugh show. Maybe there was a time I could have rescued him from his ignorance-- but I doubt it and it's too late now anyway. And it's probably too late, from what Egan writes, for his sister. It's a shame and if he wants to blame it on Bernie and Elizabeth... well I hope that gives him some solace.

I know plenty of white working class people who aren't like Egan's sister and my brother-in-law. I ran a large company that employed hundreds of them. They're my people. It's where I come from and who I'll always be. But, apparently, not Egan: "It’s no mystery why so many Democrats can no longer connect to the white working class. Progressives promise free college, free health care, free child care, and scream in bafflement, What’s wrong with you people?" His sister feels "insulted and dismissed." Sorry, but that doesn't mean the Democratic Party needs to be turned into a vehicle for theocracy, racism and a set of reactionary policies the Republican Party already represents well enough. If Bernie can't connect to Egan's sister, she and my brother-in-law likely have as much in common as I suspected, namely: she's neither a rocket scientist nor a novelist.

Eric Levitz might not have won a Pulitzer yet, but he's a lot smarter than Timothy Egan and Levitz's new New York Magazine column, Michael Bloomberg’s Ego Is an Agent of Socialist Change, is far more relevant and worthwhile. "There are anxious days," he wrote, for for Democrats who favor gated communities and unfettered trade. Americans who believe in a woman’s right to choose and private equity’s right to loot, now need a Klonopin with their morning news. Elizabeth Warren-- the slayer of Summers, stumper of Stumpf, and all around bane of (finance) capital-- boasts comfortable leads in Iowa and New Hampshire. In at least one of those states, a Trotskyist fellow traveler is her closest competitor. Now, the betting market’s invisible hand is pointing leftward. And those who fear that blue America is “going red” seem to have no safer bet than a septuagenarian who’s never quite sure what state he’s in (or else, a college-town mayor who may or may not have one black friend). Which is to say: Davos Democrats’s disaffection with the 2020 field is understandable. The fact that their wing of the party has found itself banking on Joe Biden-- a 76-year-old who is rambly beyond his years, and infamous for running memorably awful presidential campaigns in his prime-- is surely distasteful for folks accustomed to hiring only the finest of help. But their frustrated entitlement is starting to cloud their judgment... If blue America’s deep-pocketed political patrons collectively made peace with their predicament, and went all in on Biden, they would have an excellent shot of securing control of the party’s commanding heights. Alas, collective action doesn’t come naturally to this set. And so, Michael Bloomberg appears hell-bent on redistributing vast sums of his own wealth, so as to (unintentionally) advance the cause of democratic socialism."

Mike Bloomberg is jumping into the Democratic presidential race because he believes that Joe Biden is fading, opening the moderate lane next to Elizabeth Warren, sources close to the former New York mayor tell Axios.

Why it matters: “Mike will spend whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump,” a Bloomberg source said. “The nation is about to see a very different campaign than we’ve ever seen before.”

Levitz wrote, hopefully, no doubt, that "past precedent suggests that the dictates of reason may eventually prevail over the pleas of his ego (and/or money-hungry consultants). But the fact that he is even considering an entrance is a testament to the super-wealthy’s boundless capacity for self-delusion. Bloomberg won mayoral elections in New York City by building a coalition of moderate Democrats and Republicans, and wildly outspending all of his rivals. In a Democratic primary, Bloomberg’s broad, bipartisan appeal among Hamptons homeowners will be of little use. And in a high-profile presidential race-- in which all top candidates have ready access to earned media-- the billionaire’s money will be much weaker currency than it was in NYC."

Bow Down Before The One You Serve

In 2020, no one can win the Democratic nomination without significant support among either white liberals or African-Americans. A Wall Street titan who (erroneously) insisted that only the systematic harassment of young nonwhite men could keep New Yorkers safe-- and that “it was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis”-- has no appeal with either constituency. He cannot possibly assemble Biden’s current coalition, let alone build on it. To the extent his campaign can have any impact (beyond diverting funds away from actually viable Democratic candidates), it will be to fracture the anti-anti-billionaire vote, thereby shaving precious percentage points off Biden and Buttigieg’s share of delegates. In other words, a Bloomberg candidacy would be an in-kind contribution to the Warren and Sanders campaigns.

Remarkably, the former New York mayor isn’t the only Establishment Democrat mulling an unintentional gift to the party’s progressive wing. Former Attorney General Eric Holder is also considering a late entrance to the 2020 race. And while Holder isn’t as wildly out of sync with the Democratic base as Bloomberg, he also has no obvious advantage over the existing center-left candidates. If Booker and Harris haven’t connected, why would a slapdash Holder campaign hit the mark?

All this said, corporate Democrats can still make “hope and stasis” their party’s 2020 ethos. They just need to put class solidarity above self-striving. Fortunately for the left, “not me, us” plays better streets than it does in the C-suites.

Now's as good a time as any to consider the editorial from this week's Nation: their anti-endorsement of Status Quo Joe. They believe and wrote that the presidential debate "has been stifled by the continuing candidacy of a man whose chief rationale for running-- that he alone can defeat Donald Trump-- has become increasingly threadbare. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden offers the promise of picking up where the Obama administration left off: a restoration of business as usual for the K Street lobbyists and Wall Street speculators whose prosperity the 2008 financial crisis did little to disturb. Indeed... the man posing as “middle-class Joe” has built his career and his family’s wealth on an eagerness to serve not the many Americans crushed by credit card debt but the very banks whose hands are around their throats. The candidate who insists Medicare for All is too expensive for Americans is also the candidate who, like Clinton, endorsed NAFTA, China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership-- all of which have savaged U.S. manufacturing and workers. Clinton’s record cost her the industrial heartland (Ohio, Pennsylvania, [Wisconsin, Iowa,] Michigan) and, with it, the election."

Biden’s long record of poor judgment-- on everything from the 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration to his botched handling of Anita Hill’s testimony against Clarence Thomas to his defense of Bill Clinton’s brutal welfare cuts to his support for the Iraq War to his role as cheerleader for Wall Street deregulation-- renders him an even weaker opponent for a president whose reelection poses a clear and present danger to America’s survival as a constitutional republic.

Stumbling through the primaries, Biden’s zombie campaign crowds out worthier challengers, handing Trump a free pass on the very issues that should be his Achilles’ heel.

On issue after issue, Biden’s candidacy offers Trump a unique opportunity to muddy what should be a devastatingly clear choice. The Nation therefore calls on Biden to put service to country above personal ambition and withdraw from the race.

Also, while the enduring loyalty of Biden’s black supporters is to his credit, the very tenacity of that loyalty diminishes race as a factor at a time when white nationalism is a growing threat. His early withdrawal might well boost candidates of color into the currently all-white top tier.

Let us be clear: Joe Biden is not a crook. Unlike Donald Trump, he has not violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution or appointed members of his family to positions of influence and power. The point about “legal graft”-- the corrupt trading of favors, from Tammany Hall to the Delaware Way, so ably anatomized by DiStefano-- is that it’s perfectly legal.

But that doesn’t make it right or a winning platform. Biden and his backers need to face the facts. It may still be unclear which Democrat is best positioned to beat Donald Trump, but we know one thing: The answer is not Joe Biden.

I agree with every word-- except "Biden is not a crook." He certainly is, even if he hasn't been found guilty by a judge and jury yet. As you already know, our political system has a way of protecting crooked politicians.