No Time Like Now For Bernie To Start Planning For What He Can Do For The American People During His First Week In Office

Feeling The Bern by Nancy Ohanian

Bernie's polling has been going up, up, up. And Biden-- the status quo establishment's choice for the 2020 Hillary role-- has been watching his "inevitability" shatter. Biden-- not as corrupt as Trump, but too corrupt to be president-- is looking like a loser in Iowa and New Hampshire. The new Civiqs poll for Iowa State University shows Biden battling it out with Klobuchar, the other conservative with race problems in the Iowa contest, for 4th place.

• Bernie- 24%
• Elizabeth Warren- 19%
• Mayo Pete- 17%
• Status Quo Joe- 15%
• Klobuchar- 11%
• Yang- 5%
• Steyer- 4%
• Tulsi- 2%
• Bloomberg- 1%

The latest NBC News poll by Marist of New Hampshire likely primary voters has Biden in third place behind Bernie and Mayo Pete.

• Bernie- 22%
• Mayo Pete- 17%
• Status Quo Joe- 15%
• lizabeth Warren- 13%
• Klobuchar- 10%
• Tulsi- 6%
• Yang- 5%
• Steyer- 3%

And the newest poll out of Nevada shows Bernie catching up to Biden, who now leads him by less than 2 points.

• Status Quo Joe- 19.4%
• Bernie- 17.6%
• Elizabeth Warren- 10.6%
• Mayo- 8.2%
• Steyer- 7.6%
• Yang- 4.4%
• Klobuchar- 3.6%

The latest polling in California shows Bernie with double the support of Biden, who is in third place after Warren.

• Bernie- 30%
• Elizabeth Warren- 16%

• Status Quo Joe- 15%
• Mayo Pete- 8%
• Yang- 5%
• Bloomberg- 4%
• Tulsi- 4%
• Klobuchar- 3%
• Steyer- 2%

Even in Biden's Southern stronghold, Bernie is catching up. The new Texas Lyceum poll shows Biden ahead of Bernie by 2 points (28-26%) but shows that Bernie comes closer to beating Trump in a general election match-up. Biden's till has one state he's doing well in, South Carolina, but that looks like it could be the only state he wins-- a state where he wouldn't come close to winning in the general election.

As Holly Otterbein pointed out at Politico yesterday, Bernie is starting to be viewed-- and treated-- as the frontrunner, for better and worse. The darkest forces of the Democratic establishment has unleashed their Kraken against him-- barrages of ugly, vicious ads to kill his campaign. "Faced with the dilemma of how to respond in the face of bombs dropped on him," she writes about the Biden SuperPAC, "days away from the Iowa caucuses, the Sanders campaign is mostly sticking to pocketbook issues-- for now. Sanders’ TV ads in the state remain centered on Medicare for All, a major focus of his campaign, as well as women’s rights and his movement... The spots are designed to remind Democratic voters of one of Sanders’ key strengths: Polls show they trust him on health care more than any other 2020 candidate. But they also risk feeding into perceptions among some voters that he is too far left to defeat President Donald Trump, particularly as outside organizations amplify that message with negative ads... Sanders responded in an online video, using the attacks as an opportunity to underscore his populist message: 'It is no secret that our campaign is taking on the political establishment and the big-money interests who are now running negative ads against us in Iowa. The billionaire class is getting nervous, and they should.'"





On Wednesday AP's Will Weissert reported on a speech Bernie gave in Sioux City on Sunday: "You can tell how good I feel by how nervous the establishment is getting. We’re their worst nightmare." The far right of the Democratic establishment, stinking of putrid corruption-- what establishment media inaccurately calls "moderates-- "argue that Sanders’ liberal views, which include universal, government-funded health care under a Medicare for All program and tuition-free public college, are too extreme." But that isn't what voters think, just what the super-rich think, since they are well aware that their taxes will go up.

Donald Shaw broke a story for Sludge about how corrupt MSNBC, a pro-Biden operation, is. "A Sludge review of Federal Election Commission records," wrote Shaw, "shows Biden is the preferred candidate of the station’s owners, the behemoth Comcast Corporation. Biden has received 17 large campaign contributions from executives and vice presidents at Comcast, including eight for the legal maximum of $2,800. Of all the other candidates still in the race, only South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has received any Comcast executive contributions-- Buttigieg received a single contribution from Comcast Managing Director Amy Banse. In addition, Comcast’s top lobbyist, David Cohen, co-hosted Biden’s kick-off fundraiser in April and he is listed as a bundler for the campaign, meaning that he has collected at least $25,000 in contributions from others for Biden." Does that matter? Well, MSNBC's on-air coverage of Bernie has been worse than Fox's! Bernie has received not only the least total coverage (less than one-third of Biden’s), but the most negative, with the multimillionaire status quo on-air shitheads like Chris Matthews going out of his way to insert snide anti-Bernie remarks and inviting on anti-Bernie self-servers as frequently as possible.

From a policy point of view, Comcast’s support of Biden makes sense. Comcast has been a leading force against neutrality rules, spending millions on lobbying against the issue, and, unlike Sanders and Warren, Biden’s record does not suggest that he would be a strong advocate for restoring net neutrality as president.

In 2006, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden said that he did not think net neutrality rules were needed. “[Biden] indicated that no preemptive laws were necessary because if violations do happen, such a public outcry will develop that ‘the chairman will be required to hold this meeting in this largest room in the Capitol, and there will be lines wandering all the way down to the White House,’” CNET reported. The next year, he declined to co-sponsor the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, a bipartisan bill that would amend the Communication Act of 1934 to include net neutrality protections. Sanders was a co-sponsor of the bill. Warren signed on as a co-sponsor of Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) net neutrality bill in February 2014 just weeks after becoming a U.S. senator.

Comcast is the nation’s largest broadband provider, operating regional monopolies that give consumers no choice but to subscribe to their services or have no home internet service. About 68 million Americans have access to no broadband or only one internet service provider. For the majority of those with just one ISP option, that option is Comcast. In 2018, Comcast’s revenue from its internet division alone was more than $17 billion.

Sanders has called for Comcast’s regional broadband internet and cable monopolies to be broken up and Warren has called for aggressive antitrust action tech companies. Biden, on the other hand, has not put forth an antitrust platform and has a history of fighting against strong antitrust rules.

In the 1970’s, Biden broke with his Democratic colleagues to oppose legislation that would have blocked corporate mergers based on the total size of the resulting company. Biden voted with Republicans to exempt soft drink companies from antitrust legislation and he voted against a bill from Sen. Ed Kennendy (D-MA) to ensure consumers had authority to sue companies for antitrust violations.

“The Biden-Kennedy split carried symbolic connotations beyond the policy implications of their individual votes,” HuffPost reported. “Where Kennedy wanted to use the Judiciary Committee to continue the old New Deal-era attack on corporate power, Biden became an advocate for corporate interests that had previously been associated with the Republican Party.”

Last year, Comcast spent more than $13 million on lobbying the federal government. In 2014, the company’s PAC  donated to nearly every member of the congressional committees reviewing its bid to take over TimeWarner Cable, according to Politico. Former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) told Politico that the company had “an army of over 100 lobbyists ready to swarm Capitol Hill.”

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, Jeff Stein and Sean Sullivan reported that while Biden and his team are working with the plutocracy to undermine Bernie, he "is considering dozens of executive orders he could unilaterally enact on a wide range of domestic policy issues if elected president, including immigration, the environment and prescription drugs. The document reviewed by The Post shows how the Sanders campaign has already begun extensive planning for how the senator would lead the country in his first days as president if he won the Democratic nomination and defeated Trump in November. Many of the proposals Sanders has floated on the campaign trail do not have support from congressional Republicans and are opposed by some Democrats, so a willingness to move forward without congressional approval could determine whether many of his policies are enacted."

And by the way, yesterday the American Postal Workers Union, whose membership is close to a quarter million, endorsed Bernie. APWU Secretary-Treasurer Liz Powell: "Senator Sanders was a champion of workers’ rights long before he became a candidate for president. Like those who make up the core of the APWU, he is a firm believer in social and economic justice for all. It’s no wonder that he is ranked as the most popular member of the U.S. Senate. Union president Mark Dimondstein emphasized that Bernie's campaign "is boldly uplifting the goals and aspirations of workers. Simply put, we believe it is in the best interests of all postal workers, our job security and our union to support and elect Bernie Sanders for president... [W]when we judge candidates by their long-term and consistent actions, Bernie Sanders stands out as a true champion of postal workers and all workers throughout the country. Bernie Sanders has proven he is a fierce advocate on the side of postal workers. He has opposed the closures of postal facilities and reduced service standards. He has been a leader in the fight for expanded postal financial services and was the lone senator who stopped postal privatizers from appointments to the Postal Board of Governors."